Elegant homes destroyed by wartime bombs

St George’s Terrace was part of the great late-Georgian expansion of south east Canterbury that was heralded by the construction of the new turnpike road to Dover (now St George’s Place and New Dover Road) in the late 18th century.

As soon as the new road had been laid out, St George’s Gate was demolished (1801) but then matters were held up by the Napoleonic War, and this saw temporary barrack blocks built along St George’s Place.

Development proper began in 1830, when the new cattle market was laid out along Upper Bridge Street and the adjacent city wall rebuilt in brick to accommodate auctioneer’s chambers.

Above these chambers, a prestigious residential development of mainly threestorey Regency-style town houses was built. This was known as St George’s Terrace. The fine three-storey houses occupied the larger, central section of St George’s Terrace.

At the St George’s Street end was a row of two-storey houses, while at the Riding Gate end, there was a large, detached villa known as Terrace House.

The three-storey houses had their front doors opening out on to St George’s Terrace at first-floor level, whereas their ground floor ancillary rooms could also be accessed from St George’s Lane behind.

St George’s Terrace suffered terribly in the raids of June 1942. The elegant three-storey dwellings were all gutted by fire. Then the otherwise undamaged two-storey houses were wrecked in one of the minor raids that followed.

The ruins had all been cleared away by the end of July that year.

The elegant St George’s Terrace in 1941, left, but a year later and the destruction after bombing raids is evident, right