Friday 14 October 2016

Out and about with me in Ramsgate and some thoughts on Manston 200 years after the event.


Manston Green


Manston Cave

If you click on the image to enlarge it and then click on to enlarge it again you may be able to read the writing on the prints, which says. Drawn and engraved by Geo Walker, published June 1st 1812 to be had at Mr Burgesses Library Ramsgate.

Back in 1812 – the symphony wasn’t written until 1880 – Ramsgate and presumably Mr Burgess hadn’t so long to wait for the event that would change local fortunes. In 1815 the first paddle steamer got to Margate and for a short period of time, before the coming of the railways Thanet was unique in being quickly, reliably and cheaply accessible from London. 

I think Manston back in 1812 must have been a tourist destination, a day out from Ramsgate horse drawn and quaintly rustic type of kidney.


Here is what the 1809 guide has to say

Cheap copy of this guide for the enquiring mind available from my bookshop or online at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id322.htm

So to my mind a bit mixed with manure, however with the recent interest in Manston I wondered if there were any readers who knew a bit more about this one. Incidentally the owner of the prints wants to sell them if any one is interested let me know.

I now also have this from the Rev Richard Barham

The fire-flash shines from Reculver cliff,
And the answering light burns blue in the skiff,
And there they stand, That smuggling band,
Some in the water and some on the sand,
Ready those contraband goods to land:
The night is dark, they are silent and still,
— At the head of the party is Smuggler Bill.
the epic frequently lapses into doggerel:
For Manston Cave, away! away!
Now speed thee, now speed thee, my good dapple-grey,
It shall never be said that Smuggler Bill
Was run down like a hare by Exciseman Gill!'
Manston Cave was Bill's abode,
A mile to the north of the Ramsgate road,
(Of late they say It's been taken away,
That is, levell'd and fill'd up with chalk and clay, By a gentleman there of the name of Day)
Thither he urges his good dapple-grey;...


On the out and about front, work seems to have started again on demolishing the slipways, Goody is/are eating a big lump of concrete there with a very noisy thing.


The scaffolding goes up more or more up on the Pav


The significant glass breakage at the new Air Centre in Harbour Street. This is 17mm plate glass not laminated so a nasty and fairly dangerous one to remove.


Meanwhile our local Lib Dem wants to turn Manston now into Cape Canaveral, see http://www.kentlive.news/manston-ideal-for-a-spaceport-and-rocket-technology-says-liberal-democrat-russ-timpson/story-29808268-detail/story.html it’s an interesting reflection on the Gazette local paper news website that there was so much advertising on this page that it had obliterated the article and it was only by installing AdBlock that I could read the article at all.   

1 comment:

  1. I do so agree with your remarks re Gazette ads ... so now I skip their site totally. Our local paper has hiked its price yet again, has moved office to Folkestone where it now has something called a 'group editor' but, clearly still no staff with grammar or proofing skills. Seems they have a self-destruct button.

    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.