Wednesday 21 January 2009

Ramsgate landmarks smashed

Thanet district Council press release

A well-known landmark in Ramsgate, designed by one of the town’s most famous architects, has been smashed in a hit and run incident.

One of a pair of stone lions, sited on the south side of Victoria Parade, close to the Granville, was damaged by a vehicle earlier this month (January). It was hit with such force that the lion toppled to the ground and smashed.

The lions, which are both grade II listed, date from Edward Welby Pugin’s general redevelopment of the area in the late 1860s. They each hold a scroll that is the same as that held by the lions on the Granville Hotel, bearing the Pugin motto “En Avant”. EW Pugin was the eldest son of the renowned architect Augustus Welby Pugin and he designed and built The Granville Hotel.

The costs of repairing the vandalism is estimated to be in the region of £1,500. The latest incident comes after one of the lions had to be repaired in 2007, also following vandalism. As a result, the council is now looking at placing the lions in an alternative site, where they will be less vulnerable to vandalism in the future.

Cllr. Roger Latchford, Cabinet Member for Culture and Economy, said: “It’s a great shame that the council is having to carry out repair work yet again to these lions, as a result of vandalism. We want to ensure their conservation for future generations, which is why we’re now looking at where else we can site them to give them better protection.”

3 comments:

  1. The Gate was left open by whom ?
    If it had been closed we would still have the Lion also I could have been killed if I had taken my dog out a few moments earlier because next to the lion is the DOG BIN should this now be moved ?

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  2. What gate? Is this Rick's Mum? We should be told.

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  3. Anon 16.33 You are a throbber.

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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.