Westbrook Avenue, Margate

On 1 April 1935 the Mayor of Margate performed the Beating the Bounds ceremony at the avenue's western end, absorbing Westgate and Birchington into Greater Margate. The Bridge Road corner still holds a wartime ARP warden's post built around 1938, while the Canterbury Road corner housed Westonville Garage, demolished between 2003 and 2007.

In October 2023, Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate executed search warrants at Westbrook Avenue as part of a national class-A drugs importation case, leading to charges against four people including a Margate man. Two earlier incidents, a 2019 midnight robbery and a 2021 arrest on suspicion of a sex offence, are also on record for the street.

The long-vacant Westonville Garage corner won permission for 18 flats in a building rising to five storeys, with 30% affordable housing confirmed when the consent was renewed in March 2022. Behind the avenue, the 2018 housing-land assessment gave the rear gardens of numbers 40 to 115 zero capacity, citing fragmented multiple ownership.

The avenue sits on Head 2 clay and silt over Margate Chalk Member, with Westbrook Bay just 160 m north of the Canterbury Road corner. Below the street itself, a 1,350 mm combined sewer runs alongside smaller foul sewers, while a further combined sewer mapped inside the old garage site could not be located on the ground in October 2024.

The wartime ARP post at Bridge Road had its front and blast walls removed and became a bus shelter, while the avenue itself has been a prohibited street-trading zone since 2005. The Canterbury Road corner cycled from Westonville Garage to Lada dealership to Kwik Fit before sitting hoarded and overgrown for 20 years.