Many thanks to bob for sharing these photos of Ellington
Park.
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.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
8 comments:
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.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI like the photos. Thank you Bob.
I spent many hours in Ellington Park as a child. We used to bait the park keeper, Sydney Griggs, until he chased us with his stick. If he hadn't chased us then we would have left him alone and wandered off to annoy someone else. I suppose nowadays we would have been charged with criminal damage or some such and Sydney Griggs with assault or child abuse. But in truth it was just a harmless and exciting game.
Was that his name John, bless him, what a dance we led the poor fellow. Looking at the photo's and showing them to my wife, especially the ones of the terrace she now realises I haven't been telling 'porkies' on how beautiful that park was. So many happy memories.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I can't remember his fetures it is more or less a charscature of conker time in Ellington Park on my blog I did a couple of days ago, the photo's would have given the sketch a bit more authenticity to how it was when we were boys.
Thank you Bob for sharing them.
Michael, I trust these photos along with all yours and your sketches and paintings are securely stashed away for, if Councillor Driver is to be believed, art theft is rampant in Thanet though, for some strange reason, the police are not involved. Also reckon you would be well advised to check your bookshop stock if ever visited by people in high places as such are high on his suspect list. Midsommer Murders has got nothing on Thanet Art Thefts.
DeleteTom,
DeleteI suspect it's the work of Raffles.
Tom I think you have got the wrong end of the stick here, the story I heard goes something like this.
DeleteThe council’s Chairman of Governance and Audit received a letter from a concerned member of the public saying that he thought that stuff had gone missing from the council around 2005 and passed it to officers to action.
I think the officers have passed this problem to scrutiny, probably because it relates to something that was reported to the leader of the council in 2005.
My understanding is that the then leader made reassurances that all was well, however as the then leader transpired to have been a crook this has put a different flavour on those reassurances.
I guess if I went to the police tomorrow and said that the security cameras in my shop weren’t working properly in 2005 and now in 2013 I had done a stock check and thought I must have had had a spate of shoplifting seven years ago and would they investigate it. What do you think? Perhaps they would charge me with wasting police time.
Michael, nice try, but there is no time limit on reporting a crime, indeed police have dedicated historic crime units. Tony Ovenden has covered this issue much more thoroughly than anyone else and he makes no bones about suspicions of theft. My point would be that if theft is suspected then it is a matter for the professionals, not some toothless committee. You parrallel example is entirely different and does not involve the loss of public property.
DeleteMeantime, Driver, in his usual way, has hijacked somebody else's research and story and turned it into the Great Thanet Art Theft from which he can point the finger of suspicion at all and sundry.
What wonderful photographs! Thank you for publishing them. We are currently applying for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to try to bring Ellington Park back to its glory days. If you would like to help, please contact me ... Bev 07577852797
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:33Pm,
DeleteThat's good news. Perhaps we should put up a plaque to Syndey Griggs.