Littlestone-on-Sea

Littlestone is the location of Mr Bedford's landing in the sphere in H. G. Wells' book The First Men in the Moon. Mr Bedford leaves the sphere on the beach and enters a hotel. A local boy called Thomas Simmons (the name of an old school friend of Wells) who witnessed Mr Bedford's arrival later enters and takes off in the sphere and is never seen again. ==Littlestone Golf Club==

The textile entrepreneur Henry Thomas Tubbs (1831-1917) established Littlestone Golf Club in 1888 on land bought in partnership with Joseph Lewis (c.1830-1889). Tubbs built a house next to the course in 1889 to act as a Clubhouse until the current one was finished in 1910. This house, which seems to appear as St. Andrew's Villa in the census of 1901, was known then and now as Netherstone. The minutes of the newly formed club committee note that Henry Tubbs as a committed Methodist did not allow alcohol in Netherstone. His nephew points out that this may be contributing to the slow growth in the popularity of the club. Alcohol was available in the 1930s, as narrated by John Bayley in a memoir of his family's holiday home near the golf club. Netherstone is still a home, being the only house to have a balcony facing the links rather than the sea. A similar pattern on a grander scale was seen in Finchley, north London, where Henry Tubbs built Nether Court in 1883. This was ultimately to become the clubhouse of Finchley Golf Club in 1929 after his death, and is still in use as such today. ==See also==