Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 29, 2015
Birchington-on-Sea is a village and seaside resort in north-east Kent, England, with a population of around 10,000. It faces the North Sea, east of the Thames Estuary, between Herne Bay and Margate. Its main beach is Minnis Bay (pictured); three smaller beaches are surrounded by chalk cliffs, cliff stacks and caves. Roman and prehistoric artefacts indicate that the area was inhabited before the existence of the village, and Minnis Bay was once the site of an Iron Age settlement. The village was first recorded in 1240. Its parish church, All Saints', dates to the 13th century and its churchyard is the burial place of the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Quex Park, a local 19th-century manor house, is home to the Powell-Cotton Museum and a twelve-bell tower built for change ringing. The museum displays stuffed exotic animals collected by Major Percy Powell-Cotton on his travels in Africa, and houses artefacts unearthed in and around Birchington. (Full article...)