Ramsgate Maritime museum is open.

I popped out from the bookshop to check that the museum has actually opened and can confirm that it has (picture taken today) Gavin Steele is running it and it museum will be reopening for the summer season. Opening hours are subject to alteration but will start as 10am till 5pm, Wednesday to Sunday.

At the moment the entrance fee is £1 however I am hoping to persuade the new owners to make it free.

Some Historical notes on The Clock house that houses the Maritime Museum now that we can get back in it.

In 1805 Samuel Wyatt the harbours engineer was directed to draw up plans for a watch house and clock house.

In 1809 modifications to the plans were suggested by John Rennie the naval architect and new engineer to the harbour.

Completed in 1817 its main purpose was as a navigational aid part being an astronomical observatory, very important in navigation.

There was a brass transit line embedded in the floor, similar to the one at Greenwich used for determining longitude also important in navigation, this was levered out and stolen in 1975.

The original astronomical clock by Moore of Clerkenwell with grid iron pendulum was constructed under the control of the famous pioneer of precision Captain Henry Kater (1777-1835) who did much research into the accuracy of pendulums.

In 1848 records show that there were two clocks in the clock house the one previously mentioned showing Ramsgate mean Time and a new one showing Greenwich Mean Time.

One of the great advantages of having an accurate clock visible in the harbour was that captains could scale their chronometers without taking these delicate instruments out of their ships.

The first floor central room was constructed as a fireproof repository for charts and papers.

The ground floor housing buoy house, carpenters shop and watch house the basement designed to store flammable materials like tar and pitch.

Ernest Cockburn says in his book COCKBURN’S DIARY
RAMSGATE LIFE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR.

“The Admiralty have also fitted up a wireless station at the clock house in the pier yard (Ramsgate.) During the week the public have been allowed on the pier the London boats have run as usual, but we were not surprised on Saturday morning to find the pier gates closed, and the following notice posted up:-

“Warning
that any unauthorised
person approaching or
attempting to enter the
Navy Office, commonly
known as the Clock House
is liable to be SHOT by the
sentry or police constable.”

It looks very grim to see such a notice on our usually peaceful front. A space around the Clock House is roped off, and a sentry with a loaded rifle and fixed bayonet is stationed there.”

My main source of information is a Bygone Kent article by Robert B. Matkin which I have plagiarised in the tradition of Thanet Historians.

This is what two historians said about our most famous local history book and its author Lewis our most famous historian who published, The History and Antiquities as well Ecclesiastical as Civil of the Isle of Tenet, in Kent .

Thomas Alien, Vicar of Murston, sometime Fellow of University College, writes to his friend Thomas Heame, the antiquary, of Edmund Hall that "it has only an indifferent character and is a poor performance." Heame refers to "that vile, silly Pimp, that vile wretch, Lewis the Pyrate, the same poor writer that drew up and published Wicliffs Life. He is a Wiclivist, Calvinist, Puritan & Republican, and hath wrote and published divers other things of no manner of Esteem among honest learned men. Lewis has the character of a rogue and a villain."

18th century historians mostly vicars had something of the tone of some bloggers about them don’t you think?