Beside the Seaside: How Kent’s haunted history inspired Laura Clarke Walker’s Gothic fantasy, Coldharbour

Last month saw the release of brand new Gothic fantasy novel, Coldharbour, from Kent author, Laura Clarke Walker.

A gripping tale of love, loyalty and betrayal, Coldharbour follows the story of Alex Wilde - a woman who returns to her seaside hometown in an attempt to rebuild her life and get her teenage daughter back. However, along with a dangerous new acquaintance, she stumbles into a paranormal murder mystery which sees her start to unravel sinister family secrets which have haunted her since she was a child.

Despite being based in a fictional seaside town in Essex, much of Coldharbour's locations and story was influenced by Laura Clarke Walker's very own upbringing in Kent. In an exclusive guest blog post for Girl About Kent, Laura tells us more about her influences and personal links in her debut novel...

From Kent to Coldharbour

"She had always known those waves, she could name them, not aloud but in her soul."

My house is haunted.

It doesn’t look like your typical haunted house, though: it’s one of those semi-detached ‘new builds’ that sprung up during the Seventies and Eighties. You know the type: the estates with roads named after a certain theme (flowers, artists, countries), the ceilings are oddly stippled, half the garages sit off in their own little alleyway. The pipes aren’t even old enough to clank, let alone any spectral chains in the dead of night.

And yet. This house is haunted.

It’s ‘visited’ by various supposedly impossible things, but is it really that much of a surprise when the house is in Kent? The county that’s home to Pluckley, the most haunted village in England? That has the country’s most iconic hitchhiker ghost on Bluebell Hill? That saw Thomas Becket’s infamous murder in a cathedral?

We’re a county steeped in history. Christianity came to England via Canterbury (hence why the cathedral is so important). We’ve seen rebellions, invasions, and the original sandwich. Like every schoolchild in the Nineties, I spent a lot of time learning about the Tudors and, probably like every schoolchild in the Nineties in Kent, I also went to Hever Castle, home of Anne Boleyn, more than once. And I’d argue that Anne Boleyn is Henry VIII’s most famous wife. She might haunt the Tower of London, but I prefer Hever’s incredible gardens.

And it’s not just me: Charles Dickens was so inspired by Kent that the county features hugely in Great Expectations, in which his depiction of the Estuary marshes has stayed with me ever since I studied the novel at school. David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks showcases the modern, industrial version that I grew up around: we’re talking Gravesend, Medway, Sheppey, those huge stretches of shingle and scrubland that I’ve always found stunning while passing them on the train.

These books are brooding, moody, and atmospheric, words that readers have also used to describe my novel Coldharbour, and in my opinion, it’s all thanks to these Kentish landscapes.

Yes, Coldharbour is set in Essex, yes, I’m a Londoner by blood, but I’ve lived, studied, and worked all over the Garden of England, from Tonbridge to Thanet. My home county runs through me and my writing like the blood-ink on a stick of rock – and anything I wrote was always going to be more than a bit Gothic.

Especially when it comes to our bleak and beautiful seaside towns.

Photographer: Laura Clarke Walker

Seaside Gothic

"Coldharbour wasn’t getting a Millennium Dome any time soon."

I adore the Kentish coast and having worked in a school in one of its most deprived areas, I feel very protective of it too. I like to think that my depiction of this in Coldharbour is clear-eyed but compassionate: our seaside towns have such a rich history but now face serious socioeconomic neglect that is easy to overlook when Kent is perceived as being an ‘affluent’ county.

So it was only natural for me, coming from a working-class background and being the first person in my entire family to go to university, to set Coldharbour in a place like this – they say ‘write what you know’, after all. The Gothic is always associated with beautiful but decaying places; traditionally, we’re talking about creepy castles and old ruins, but there’s no reason why a seaside town that’s seen better days can’t also evoke the same slightly unsettling atmosphere. If you’ve ever been to Whitstable on an overcast day or wandered down the promenade at Hythe or Folkestone, you’ve probably had that feeling too. Not to mention the faded Victoriana vibes of somewhere like Broadstairs or Herne Bay.

As a teenager, I visited the Isle of Sheppey and Reculver, which was when our specific style of seaside properly captured my imagination and just never let go. The starkness of the Roman towers at Reculver is ultimate Gothic, looming over the rocks from the top of a hill (there’s even ancient gravestones dotted about the grass). As for Sheppey, Leysdown is still one of my favourite beaches in the entire country: it’s windswept, quiet (the last time I went, there really were more seagulls than humans), and stretches as far as the eye can see.

So why did I set Coldharbour in Essex if I love Kent so much? For both plot and atmosphere reasons, it needed to be somewhere remote and the fact is, the South East is really crowded these days! Coldharbour the town is in the far north of Essex, i.e. much closer to Suffolk, where the population density plummets and there’s a lot more distance between towns. M. R. James’ ghost stories and The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry are set in very similar places for, I imagine, similar reasons. Also, while the English Channel can be a bit choppy, I wanted the real rough waves of the North Sea – Kent’s a bit too bright and sunny sometimes.

Photographer: Laura Clarke Walker

Influences and Inspirations

"In that strange little town, where the shallows swallow the shingle, the mist settles on the marshes, and the clouds can even choke the moon…"

The name ‘Coldharbour’ refers to the fictional town and its wider district, which has three parts, all heavily influenced by the Kent I know and love. Coldharbour is the seaside town, struggling on long after its heyday; Northmere is the little church-centred village surrounded by marshland; Crossgate is the ‘city’ that only keeps its title thanks to its cathedral and university.

So if you want to picture Coldharbour in your mind, here’s where to start!

Coldharbour: ‘the seaside town, the Victorian part’

My late dad loved sea fishing along the Kent coast. As a child, I’d often go with him in the twilight, when he’d try to catch mackerel, dab, and dogfish. To be honest, I didn’t really care about the art of fishing. I just loved sitting on those pebble beaches, listening to the waves as the sun set slowly, before driving home in the dark. And these beaches were always dead quiet. There might be someone else fishing a few hundred metres away or the odd dog-walker, but this isn’t Brighton on a Bank Holiday. This is where I first fell in love with the seaside.

As I mentioned earlier, Leysdown on Sheppey’s also a big influence on my idea of Coldharbour, but my fictional town also has a promenade that stretches into the distance, which is where places like Hythe, Herne Bay, and Deal come into play. I lived in Canterbury for a long time, so Whitstable and Thanet mean a lot to me. Last year, I finally got to go to Botany Bay, which is used a lot as a filming location and I could see why – those chalk stacks are stunning.

Photographer: Laura Clarke Walker

Crossgate: ‘Roman ruins under Christianised cobbles’

But that’s not all to Coldharbour: there’s also the cathedral ‘city’, which is a nod to how we have Rochester (which has now sadly lost its city status) and Canterbury, which are really towns that happen to have gorgeous cathedrals. I’ve always adored wandering around tiny Canterbury side streets with all their crooked little cottages and the Buttermarket has become King’s Square in Coldharbour, complete with war memorial and cathedral gates (I have added a theatre and an ice cream parlour though).

Canterbury’s history really is fascinating: yes, there’s the Thomas Becket story, but there’s also a Roman museum, enough supernatural stuff going on for there to be ghost tours, and the oldest extant church in the English-speaking world. Plus the last house I lived in, which gave birth to the haunted house in Coldharbour, because guess what? That house was also haunted.

Northmere: ‘a tiny mediaeval village that was more marshland than civilisation’

Last but not least, the village of Northmere, which has a pub, a church, some houses, and not much else, apart from lots of bogland. This is where we look inland for inspiration: yes, the Estuary and Dungeness are still important, but I was really thinking about the very obviously historical towns like Faversham, Rochester, and West Malling. They can seem quaint, but they have their own intriguing stories. Northmere might seem more modest compared to the chill, churning waves of Coldharbour or Crossgate and its enormous cathedral, but I think you need the little village to balance everything out. Also, Northmere definitely has the spookiest graveyard.

A Homecoming

“Weird thinking of this place as home again.”

I’ve been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things and yet, I always end up back here in Kent, just as the Wildes keep returning to Coldharbour. My very first book will always be the most personal one and it never would’ve been what it is if it weren’t for Kent.

Laura Clarke Walker is a writer, teacher, and lover of all things Gothic.

Her first novel Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death is out now (available on Amazon and in all good bookshops).

When she’s not immersed in the world of Coldharbour, she can be found drinking espressos darker than the night, listening to podcasts in other languages, and running around her local lakes.

In the virtual world, you can find her at lauraclarkewalker.com and on Instagram at @lauraclarkewalker.