Friday 16 November 2007

Architectural disaster



Having just discovered the very interesting Margate architecture blog where the latest posting is related to what was demolished to make way for Argos, Somerfield and Iceland in Margate I thought I would post something about what was on the site of the Ramsgate Argos. I have taken the illustrations above from my publication Ramsgate & Broadstairs by Camera and Pen by J Bavington Jones which was first published in 1904.

I was astonished that that the grand Sanger’s Hotel and Sanger’s Amphitheatre (pictured above) was demolished in 1960 to make way for the supermarket (Fine Fare) now Argos.

It is a sad that the supermarkets and chain stores have, over the last 50 years, caused so much damage to the Thanet towns, both by their developments and eventual closures.


The word that comes to mind here is parasite, feeding of the host town until it's dead and then moving out of town.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for posting this. I hope that this kind of loss is a thing of the past.

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  2. I remember when this was called the Palace cinema and the Sangers was above

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  3. Thanks Jeremy I do my best to fit in a bit of blogging when I get a chance. By the way when I click on your name when you comment it no longer sends me to Corporate Presenter

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  4. I just found this after researching Sanger and his influence on thanet.

    The guy basically gave us dreamland, and was hugely resposnsible for a lot of the tourism circa 1900s with his circus, theatre, hall by the sea..the list is huge.

    For the supermarket to have demolished it is an absolute crime. Id love to know who gave it the go ahead so I can smack them one.. :(

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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.