Margate Fort
Fort Road
Naval power, violence, and early Jewish presence on unexposed coast.
Researched and Written by Katie Blythe
A Maritime History of Early Jewish Life in Margate and Thanet
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The origins of provincial Anglo Jewry are deeply maritime. Historian Geoffrey Green argued that the earliest Jewish communities in England were founded primarily in naval towns. This was not a social accident, but a structural result of how the Royal Navy operated in the eighteenth century.
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Between the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), the Navy expanded dramatically. Thousands of sailors, marines, and dockyard workers needed clothing, shaving equipment, knives and tools, watches, trinkets, repairs, loans, and all the small necessities of life that were otherwise difficult to obtain while docked or at anchor. Sailors were paid in irregular lump sums, arrears, wages, or prize money, which created constant demand for intermediaries who could supply goods and credit quickly.
Jewish traders, particularly those of the working and lower merchant classes, stepped into this role. Often legally permitted to go aboard naval vessels, they developed a niche as slopsellers, silversmiths, pawnbrokers, watch repairers, and Licensed Navy Agents. Navy Agents handled sailors’ prize money for a commission, collected wages, advanced loans, and supported sailors’ wives while the men were at sea. By 1820, Green argues that more than half of all Licensed Navy Agents in Britain were Jewish, with even higher proportions in certain towns.
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This maritime ecosystem produced the earliest stable Jewish communities outside London. Towns such as Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Sheerness, Dover, and Deal became centres of Jewish life because of their military and naval infrastructures. Jewish families settled near the dockyards, naval offices, and garrison towns because these institutions offered steady, if precarious, work.
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On the Kent coast, this pattern was unmistakable. Chatham developed a Jewish community by the mid-eighteenth century. Sheerness followed in the 1790s with its Blue Town synagogue. Dover’s Jewish life emerged around 1770. Deal housed multiple Jewish Navy Agents by 1814. This network created the economic, social, and religious foundation that made Jewish movement into Thanet both possible and inevitable.
In Isaac Cruikshank's 1786 print Voyage To Margate, a Jewish traveller stands centre right, clutching his prayer book.
Thanet Before Settlement: A Place of Passage for Jewish Pedlars and Travellers
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Thanet, by contrast, was not a naval station, nor did it house a major garrison or dockyard. It lacked the large military installations that drew early Jewish settlement to Chatham or Sheerness. Yet Jews were undeniably present in Thanet from an early period, not as residents at first, but as itinerant traders, chapmen, and pedlars who moved between the established Jewish communities of Kent.
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Thanet’s appeal lay in its constant traffic: sailors landing at Margate harbour, soldiers on the move, officers seeking lodging, and, critically, visitors on the Margate Hoy. The Hoy, a regular sailing vessel between London and Thanet, became famous for its seasick passengers and, in the visual culture of the period, for its Jewish pedlars.​​
Satirical prints captured this traffic. In Isaac Cruikshank’s “Voyage to Margate” (1786), a Jewish pedlar clutches his bundle in terror as the deck rolls beneath him. In Charles Catton Jr.’s “The Margate Hoy” (1789), another Jewish figure raises his hands to heaven as his drawer spills spoons and pocket watches across the boards. And in Charles Dibdin’s comic opera, first performed in 1795, the Jewish character Shadrack, no longer a mere pedlar but a small moneylender, appears on the deck of the Hoy, complete with a money box and a joke about stock market “bulls” and “bears”.
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These caricatures matter because they suggest that Jewish travellers were a familiar sight on the regular coastal route to Margate. Pedlars sold goods to passengers, traded with locals, and bought scrap silver and watches from anyone in need of quick money. Thanet, lacking its own Jewish community at this stage, functioned as a thoroughfare, a place where Jewish traders from Canterbury, Dover, Chatham, and Sheerness passed through and conducted business.
The Earliest Evidence of Jews Settling in Margate
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The earliest clearly documented Jewish resident of Margate was Nathaniel Solomon, born in the town in about 1735. His marriage in 1760 to Phoebe de Metz of Chatham, a family already established in a naval centre, reveals the interconnectedness of Jewish life across Kent.
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Nathaniel Solomon prospered as a silversmith and merchant, later owning a house on King Street and a sugar warehouse by 1785. He became a member of the Great Synagogue in London in 1766. Cecil Roth claims that Phoebe de Metz gave birth to perhaps as many as twenty-two children, among them Edward Solomon, watchmaker of Margate, active by 1799, and Saul Solomon, born in Margate in 1780, later a significant figure in St Helena’s political life.
Additional evidence of early Jewish presence is found in the Circumcision Register ascribed to Rabbi Ash of Dover, which spans the years 1768 to 1818 and records Jewish families scattered across Kent, including those in Ramsgate and Margate. Potentially involving multiple mohelim or a key figure like Asher Ash acting under the authority of the Chief Rabbi, this register was preserved and transcribed by Dr Bernard Susser.
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By the middle of the Napoleonic War, the commercial Jewish presence in Margate had expanded. Levi Simons ran a cloth warehouse in the Market Place. The Levy Lewis brothers were setting up bazaars in Margate and Ramsgate, respectively. And by 1813, Jewish traders are clearly visible in local law. An assault case involving Moses Cohen, a salesman of Deal, forced a Margate caravan proprietor to publish a public apology after attacking him. The witnesses included Moses Solomon, another Jewish trader, evidence of ongoing Jewish commercial movement through Thanet.
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These clues collectively indicate that by the early nineteenth century, Jews were not only passing through Thanet but also beginning to anchor themselves there.
c.1780 Visitors on the Fort,
a watercolour by John Nixon
The History of the Margate Fort, Violence, and Jewish Presence
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The Margate Fort, perched on the hill overlooking the harbour, has its origins in Elizabethan defence schemes. Reports from 1558 and 1570 describe early plans to fortify the site, though the fort remained comparatively small. John Evelyn called it “a small fort of little concernment” in 1672. But its importance fluctuated with England’s relationship to continental powers.
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The hill itself had long served a defensive purpose. Local tradition preserves a memory of a Saxon fire beacon once sited there, known as a tenet, part of a chain of early warning beacons that apocryphal lore claims gave the Isle of Thanet its name. The vulnerability of the coastline was well known. In 1666, during the Second Anglo Dutch War, a Dutch fleet bombarded Margate, destroying cottages and ships in the harbour. Later, the green at Fort Hill was used for grazing until the early 19th century, when Fort Crescent was built, and Cliftonville began to develop eastwards.
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During the eighteenth century, the fort became a site of military readiness, beacon lighting, and signalling, precisely the sort of place where soldiers and sailors gathered and where traders followed them.
Research by local historian Anthony Lee demonstrates that the Fort’s importance increased dramatically from 1803 during the height of invasion fears. Defensive arrangements, including batteries on the Fort Cliff, corresponding batteries on the opposite cliff near the Sea Bathing Infirmary, and further artillery on the Pier, formed a network sufficient to protect Margate Harbour. A town-funded battery created in October 1804 contained one 18-pounder gun and five 24-pounders, mounted on the heights commanding the Road and Harbour. An 1809 watercolour depicts three guns on the Fort mounted on raised earth mounds with a red-coated soldier in attendance.
It is also the site of the earliest recorded violence against Jews in Thanet. In August 1786, it was reported that sailors stationed in Margate accused several Jewish Navy Agents of cheating them out of prize money. According to breathless reports in the Derby Mercury and Berrow’s Worcester Journal, seven Jews were seized by sailors, dragged to the Fort, stripped, tied to the guns, and flogged “according to man of war discipline”.
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While it is difficult to confirm the veracity of this assault outside of provincial newspaper articles, it suggests that Jewish Naval Agents were present and active in Margate by the mid 1780s, and that the Margate Fort, though minor militarily, was a place where Jews and naval culture could collide, sometimes violently.
A later archival source further situates Jewish residents of Margate within the military and legal world surrounding the Fort. Proceedings of a Court of Enquiry held on St Helena in 1799 record testimony by Saul Solomon, a soldier originally from Margate, concerning the alleged murder of a local labourer, John Ansell, near the town in 1785 or 1786. Solomon stated that he had known the accused, David Twyman, at home in Margate, and that the case had been the subject of a local inquest. In giving evidence, Solomon noted that Twyman had previously purchased a lottery ticket from Solomon’s father, Nathaniel Solomon, the Margate silversmith and merchant identified earlier as the town’s earliest known Jewish resident. This detail directly links the Solomon family’s commercial life to Margate’s military and judicial affairs, and demonstrates that Jewish families were not only present around the Fort as traders or agents, but were embedded within the town’s wider civic, legal, and military networks, including serving as soldiers
1820 W. C. Oulton - Road leading to the Fort
The Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815): Transformation of Thanet and the Rise of Jewish Visibility
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The Napoleonic Wars reshaped the entire Isle of Thanet. With continental travel restricted, the wealthy classes flocked to coastal resorts such as Margate and Ramsgate. Meanwhile, Kent became a zone of intense military activity. Ramsgate’s port became a major embarkation point, Military Road was constructed to move troops efficiently, army barracks and encampments filled the fields near Birchington and St Peter’s, and officers attended Margate’s Assembly Rooms and theatre, where uniforms “predominated”.
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This influx created a new economy, mixing soldiers, sailors, officers, and middle-class visitors. Where such activity existed, Jewish traders followed. Jewish pedlars, watch repairers, slopsellers, silversmiths, and Navy Agents, already moving across Kent, began to supply this expanded market. Holidaymakers unable to travel to Europe created additional demand for luxury goods, jewellery repairs, souvenirs, and second-hand clothing, all areas where Jewish craftsmen traditionally excelled.​
George Cruikshank's 1825 illustration entitled Paying Off, depicting a Jewish merchant on board a man-of-war, being tormented by sailors.
In the far right of this image sits a Jewish pedlar amid the seasick passengers on Charles Catton's 1785 print The Margate Hoy.
Thanet changed. No longer merely a route of passage, it became a destination, and Jewish presence followed accordingly.
From Pedlars to Businesses: The Establishment of Jewish Communities in Margate and Ramsgate​
As Thanet grew into a fashionable resort and military hub, Jewish life slowly shifted from itinerant to settled. By the early nineteenth century, Jewish traders were beginning to establish fixed premises, with professionals such as watchmakers, silversmiths, and merchants active in Margate. Jewish civic participation appeared through masonic institutions like the Thanet Lodge, where Edward Solomon became a member in 1798.
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In the nearby port of Ramsgate, Jewish life blossomed with the arrival of Sir Moses Montefiore in the 1830s, but its roots lay earlier, within the same naval, commercial, and migration patterns that shaped Margate.
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By the mid-century, Jews were no longer passing through Thanet. They were building businesses, congregations, homes, and community structures. What began as a trickle of pedlars, chapmen, and traders had become the foundation of the lasting Jewish presence in Margate and Ramsgate.
Conclusion​
The emergence of Jewish life in Thanet was not isolated or accidental. It was part of a larger national pattern. The maritime economy of the Royal Navy drew Jews to England’s coast, especially to naval towns. From these centres, Chatham, Sheerness, Dover, and Deal, Jewish traders moved constantly through Thanet, selling to soldiers, sailors, and visitors.
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Satirical prints captured them on the Margate Hoy, newspaper reports placed them at the Fort and in the courts, and early documents show Jewish families establishing businesses in the growing seaside towns.
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As war, tourism, and commerce reshaped Thanet, Jews moved from itinerant trade to a settled community. The history of Jewish Thanet is, at its core, a maritime story shaped by the sea, the Navy, and the currents of movement along the Kent coast.
© Katie Blythe 2026
Primary Sources & Further Reading​
Berrow’s Worcester Journal (1786), report of assault on Jews at Margate Fort, 24 August.
Reproduced in Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 August 1886, “A Hundred Years Ago”, p. 3.
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Catton, Charles the elder (1785), The Margate Hoy. Etching. Published by William Hinton. Yale Center for British Art collection. Available at:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:30679
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Cruikshank, Isaac (1786), Voyage to Margate. Etching. Published by William Hinton, London.
British Museum collection. Available at:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1980-U-1632?selectedImageId=153318001
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Derby Mercury (1786), report on assault on Jewish Navy Agents at Margate Fort, 17 August, p. 1.
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Evelyn, John (1672), The Diary of John Evelyn, Volume II (of 2), edited by William Bray. Entry dated 19 May 1672, p. 80. Reproduced by Project Gutenberg. Available at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42081/42081-h/42081-h.htm
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Gatehouse Gazetteer, “Margate Fort”. Available at:
https://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/5304.html
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Green, Geoffrey L. (1982), “Anglo-Jewish Trading Connections with Officers and Seamen of the Royal Navy, 1740–1820”. Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 29, pp. 97–133. JSTOR. Available at:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/29779812
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Hasted, Edward (1800), The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, vol. 10.
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Hearl, Trevor W. (2013), “Saul Solomon of St Helena, 1776–1852”. Chapter 13 in St Helena Britannica. Society of Friends of St Helena, 1st edn. Reproduced at:
https://sainthelenaisland.info/sthelenabritannica_saulsolomon.pdf
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Jewish Communities & Records – United Kingdom, The Circumcision Register 1765–1818 together with The Wedding Register 1775–1799, ascribed to Rabbi Ash of Dover, edited by Bernard Susser. Jewish Museum, London. Transcribed and reproduced by JCR-UK. Available at:
https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/susser/weddingcircash.htm
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Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal (1813), public apology notice relating to assault on Moses Cohen of Deal, 13 August, p. 1.
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Lee, Anthony (2012), Margate in the Georgian Era: Pleasures and Pursuits in a Seaside Town.Droit House Press. Extracts available at: https://www.margatelocalhistory.co.uk/
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Lee, Anthony (2015), Margate Before Sea Bathing: 1300 to 1736. Chapter 6, “Riots and Wars”. Available at:
https://www.margatelocalhistory.co.uk/DocRead/Before%20seabathing%20Chap%206.html
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Naylor, Isaac (2019), “Thanet’s Military Origins: The Napoleonic Wars”. The Isle of Thanet News, 8 May. Available at:
https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2019/05/08/isaac-naylor-thanets-military-origins-the-napoleonic-wars/
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Olney, Joy (2015), “Nathaniel & Phoebe (de Metz) Solomon”. Family history website compiling material relating to the Solomon family, 28 December. Available at:
https://solomonmossfamilyarchives.blogspot.com
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Roth, Cecil (1950), The Rise of Provincial Jewry. Reproduced by Jewish Communities & Records - United Kingdom. Available at:
https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/susser/provincialjewry/index.htm
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The National Archives (UK) (1799), Proceedings of a Court of Enquiry held at James’s Valley, St Helena, 11 January. Folios 119–130. HO 42/46/58. Evidence relating to David Twyman and testimony of Saul Solomon of Margate concerning the alleged murder of John Ansell in Margate, 1785 or 1786. Available via the National Archives Discovery catalogue at:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12282132