Friday, 17 June 2011

Dover Castle

 My day off yesterday as my bookshop is closed on Thursdays and those of us who were in the mood set off to look around Dover Castle.

I particularly wanted to see the changes that they had made to the parts of the underground tunnel system that is open to the public there as there are moves afoot to try and get some of the Ramsgate tunnel system open to the public.
 The Dover tunnels have been a big tourist draw for some years now, and at the moment they have them set out as an Operation Dynamo experience. Not much mention of the little ships and none of Ramsgate, but very entertaining nonetheless.

Unlike the Ramsgate Tunnels there are signs saying photography is not allowed in the Dover Tunnels so no pictures of them I am afraid.

 The Great Tower of Dover Castle has for many years been somewhere that I found disappointing to visit,  years ago when I used to visit the keep it was decorated with an eclectic collection armour and weapons. I suppose it looked a bit like one would expect a baronial hall to be decorated in an old American film based on a British novel.

It then went through a bare period, I believe this was caused by the removal of everything that was thought to be historically incorrect, which was just about everything, this left the castle with about as much atmosphere as an empty industrial unit.
 The last time visited the keep was I think about five years ago, at that time it was going through a sort of educational period, the displays seemed to aimed at people who hadn’t had history lessons at school.

You know the sort of thing large cardboard cut-outs that on closer investigation are made out of plastic, that appear to have been produced with very large primary school children in mind.

Anyway they have finally cracked the thing and done a reasonable job of making it look like an inhabited castle, even a real log fire burning, I took some pictures


With the inside I wanted to produce a series of pictures that were something like a dream of visiting a castle as it could have been in ones imagination, well I have done my best see what you think.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id7.htm

Part of the way they have produced the atmosphere in the great tower is with subtle the lighting, this would be insufficient for conventional photography and of course using a flash would have spoilt the effect.

The rest of the pictures are more conventional, see

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id8.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id9.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover611/id3.htm
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 17, 2011 3:49 pm

    Why is photography banned in the Dover Tunnels?

    Ben K

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael ChildJune 17, 2011 4:50 pm

    Ben I would say having filled it with projectors and lighting effects, people using camera flashes and blinding everyone else could have something to with it, it would be rather like using a camera in the cinema.

    Ramsgate Tunnels although usually fairly full of activity, don’t have any special effects.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 17, 2011 6:18 pm

    I think the main reason is wanting to get the biggest volume of people through the tunnels - a group of 40 all wanting to take photos will grind the whole system to a halt.....

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJune 18, 2011 10:05 am

    I think the main reason is pathetic control freakery. They are desperate that people pay to come in rather than looking at phots of the place on someone's blog. Only a matter of time before TDC tries to stop Michael Childs from taking photographs of Ramsgate and putting them on his blog. No doubt there will be a licence you can buy for several thousands of pounds.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 18, 2011 3:37 pm

    I`m not an English Heritage member, so it would cost me 16 quid to enter.

    Too much...

    Ben K

    ReplyDelete

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.