Wednesday 9 April 2008

More old pictures of Margate

Some more old pictures that I hope may offer a little cheer in these rather depressing times click here to look at them

I worked for Dreamland in the 70s as an engineer, in those days it was owned by Associated Leisure, they also owned the Lido and most of the amusement arcades in the town.

At that time everyone was aware of a steady decline both in Margate and in Ramsgate, mostly caused by cheap foreign holidays. The Lido and Cliftonville were already in a state of considerable decline, frankly I don’t think at the time anyone ever really thought that the decline could be prevented, so no one ever got as far as looking for realistic solutions, frankly now it’s all but too late and some realistic solutions must be found.

Now it would seem that the cheap foreign holiday might soon become a thing of the past and air travel an environmentally expensive luxury, so the tourists may return again if there is anything for them to return to.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, I especially like the Winter Gardens pics (I work there as a doorman!).

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  2. What amazing pictures. My grandma took me to Cliftonville every year without fail from the age of four and I continued to go there after she died till the age of sixteen (I am now 42!) I have such happy memories of my holidays there - especially the Lido with Tony Savage the seaside organist,beauty contests,the old amusement arcades with space invaders machines and bar billiards, the theatre (seasonal performances by Charlie Drake, Norman Wisdom etc), Old Time Music Hall, Hades Disco,
    the Jamaica Inn, gift shops, hot dog and candy floss stands, the cliff lift down to the beach, deckchair attendants with the old ticket machines around their necks,trampolines, crazy golf, the dolphinarium.I could go on and on and on! (In fact I am). Cliftonville had it all. What a wonderful place. So sad that its now in decline.

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  3. I remember Cliftonville and Margate as I went on holiday there for 5 consecutive years 1975-1979. In 1987 I went back for a day and was shocked to see how run down it was. I am going again next year for a weekend. We saw so many wonderful shows at The Lido and Winter Gardens. Norman Wisdom, Jim Davidson, Mike and Bernie Winters, Roger De Courcey, Tommy Trinder, Jimmy Tarbuck, Charlie Drake and Dick Emery. Priceless memories.

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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.