Thursday 4 December 2008

Last Chance to Save Ramsgate Maritime Museum

Tomorrow is the deadline for making your submissions about Thanet District Council’s asset disposal program click here to see what they want to dispose of.

The main two assets for disposal being Northdown House and Ramsgate Maritime Museum, I have just made my submission relating to the Maritime museum below and will be working on the rest later.

The council tell me that their main concerns relate to the expense of repairing and maintaining the building, so this should be considered when making submissions.

I would urge all of you who wish to maintain any of the assets to email your submission to hannah.thorpe@thanet.gov.uk

I should like make a submission about the future use of Ramsgate Clock House now part of the councils asset disposal program, I gather that the deadline for this is tomorrow.

I am asking that the building be retained as a museum and that the tourist information office also be housed there.

Below are various points for your consideration.

1 The current intention to house the tourist information office in the library, which is not in a prominent position in the town, would mean that most tourists would be unlikely to find it.

2 The Maritime Museum’s collection is an important collection of particular significance to Ramsgate which would probably be lost to another part of the country without the building to house it.

3 Ramsgate has already lost its only other museum due to the library fire and I gather that this museum will non be reinstated when the library reopens.

4 While considerable investment is being made in Margate harbour arm, this area is perceived as Ramsgate’s equivalent and there is a perception of considerable disparity between investment in the two places.

5 The building is of considerable architectural importance and would be eligible for grant funding to carry out the necessary repairs.

6 Ramsgate’s maritime heritage, Royal Harbour, Clock House, Smeaton’s dry dock and the historic vessels are a poorly exploited resource, which could play a considerable part in regenerating the town. The council should be finding grant money and supporting an holistic approach to utilising these assets as they are supporting Margate’s regeneration through the arts.

2 comments:

  1. I don't feel very confident about this. TDC are very eager for some cash.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Apparently TDC has an owner already lined up for Northdown House so what's the betting they have someone with a view to taking over the museum building? Makes a mockery of the whole consultation process.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.