One of the results of the Ramsgate improvement act was the road that connects the Paragon with the harbour that was known for some time as New Road and later as Royal parade, this road is supported by a series of arches built from engineering bricks, these house various harbour related businesses and stores.The rather fine picture above is a fairly modern large size card and is a copy of a hand coloured engraving from about 1850, as you can see the perspective makes the layout of the path up the cliff to the Paragon and Military Road that skirts the harbour below the westcliff somewhat confusing.
Military Road was built for the embarkation of troops during the Napoleonic wars (1792 1802) when Ramsgate was a troop depot, prior to that time the only access to the west pier was via Jacobs Ladder, wooden steps from the cliff top.
Indeed it was the availability of the houses to rent, which had been built for the officers, which gave Ramsgate its initial boost as a rather salubrious holiday destination when the steamboats first arrived in the early 1800s.
I have published a few other pictures to illustrate this post click here to view
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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.