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.
This gives you some idea of the scale of Ramsgate’s greatest unused potential tourist attraction.
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.
I used to live near Chislehurst caves and feel they had it about right. You had to follow a guide through some pretty spooky bits first then went into a small area done up like a 1940s air raid shelter with flimsy wooden bunks, curtains and other artefacts to make it look authentic and some enlarged photos on the walls showing what it was like during the war. There was also a little shop with WW2 souvenirs. We wouldn't need to open up much of the tunnels to create a similar effect and could do a smuggler's cave as well. Great idea and such a waste of our heritage.
ReplyDeleteWe spent many hours as children exploring these Air Raid tunnels during the 50s. At that time there were no blockages or ceiling collapses in the tunnels. It was great fun.
ReplyDeleteWe forced a way in through the poorly sealed entrance in Ellington Park. There was also another easy way in through an entrance behind brick walled area near Chatham house school.
There is also some old news footage that I have found of the tunnels in use as an air raid shelter click here to view it.
ReplyDeleteThe youth of today say there are several entrances open at the moment and also some work going on down there.
It is good to learn that the spirit of adventure is not dead.
ReplyDeleteThe current work in the tunnels is probably in preparation for TDC to take cover when their latest plans for Pleasurama are discovered by Michael Child.
I thought the plan for the railway tunnel was for a rifle range ?
ReplyDelete