News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
I would like offer my thanks to Thanet District Council for doing the proper thing about the Pav. Many of us here in Ramsgate have been worried about this charming Edwardian building for some time. I have just read that the council have served a repairs notice on the Rank organisation. Further details are in a Kent Messenger article click here to read it. 
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.
It looks like it was an impressive building in its heyday. I wonder what it is like inside now?
ReplyDeleteDavid Green was saying on his blog that it was for sale leasehold for £650,000. At that price (plus rent) I can't see it being bought to run as tea room some how!
It will be interesting to see who buys it and what is in store for the next chapter of this building's 'life'.
I guess that the pleasurama development (Sorry to mention it Michael) will bring a lot more people into this area and could provide support for something a bit better than a casino.
Mind you, the noise from people going home when Peggy Sue's closed at night was a bit of a pain for those us living on the eastcliff - so we might get that all over again.
Fred
It would be great to see the building opened up with all the modern adaptions ripped out - it would make a great music/theatre venue looking at the old picture....
ReplyDeleteFred with Pleasurama, when they dropped the height below the cliff top my stance was OK it’s an unsuitable design but let em get on with it as some sort of development there is urgent.
ReplyDeleteLater when I discovered that the base line was so low as to be very dangerous in a tidal surge storm, effectively any waves over half a meter high would enter the building and carpark with potentially disastrous results, I consulted the environment agency and they told me that they didn’t think the development should go ahead without a proper flood and storm assessment.
The assessment should cover both shoreline sea defences and emergency escapes for the people living inside. So from my point of view it’s now first and foremost a matter of public safety, with the aesthetic considerations coming a long way down the line.
The bottom line being that if the building collapses due to wave action during a tidal surge storm and the people inside are unable to escape because of the cliff behind, I wouldn’t be very happy with myself if I had failed to ensure an adequate safety assessment.
Surely the only usage that justifies that investment of a million £ + has got to be a theatrical entertainment venue. The H & S element due to the site of the building along with it's small audience capacity is going to cause some problems...
ReplyDeleteMichael,
ReplyDeleteThere must be experience of building in such a location, so I'd assume they would need to follow whatever requirements there are for ensuring structural stability of the building in such a location to obtain building control approval.
Like many others, I would have personally preferred to have seen this one storey less in height - so they could have raised the ground floor up above the promemade level. They would also have had more head room to work with in terms of roof structures and terraces etc.
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Looking at the pavilion this morning, I noticed that the arches around the outside of the building have their openings covered in what looks like plywood.
I assume there must have been windows there originally. It looks a bit odd in its current state as a solid windowless block. It would be nice if the new occupant manged to open it up a bit.
Fred