Out and about with me in Ramsgate and some thoughts on Manston 200 years after the event.

Manston Green

Manston Cave

If you click on the image to enlarge it and then click on to enlarge it again you may be able to read the writing on the prints, which says. Drawn and engraved by Geo Walker, published June 1^st 1812 to be had at Mr Burgesses Library Ramsgate.

Back in 1812 – the symphony wasn’t written until 1880 – Ramsgate and presumably Mr Burgess hadn’t so long to wait for the event that would change local fortunes. In 1815 the first paddle steamer got to Margate and for a short period of time, before the coming of the railways Thanet was unique in being quickly, reliably and cheaply accessible from London. 

I think Manston back in 1812 must have been a tourist destination, a day out from Ramsgate horse drawn and quaintly rustic type of kidney.

Here is what the 1809 guide has to say

Cheap copy of this guide for the enquiring mind available from my bookshop or online at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id322.htm

So to my mind a bit mixed with manure, however with the recent interest in Manston I wondered if there were any readers who knew a bit more about this one. Incidentally the owner of the prints wants to sell them if any one is interested let me know.

I now also have this from the Rev Richard Barham

The fire-flash shines from Reculver cliff,

And the answering light burns blue in the skiff,

And there they stand, That smuggling band,

Some in the water and some on the sand,

Ready those contraband goods to land:

The night is dark, they are silent and still,

— At the head of the party is Smuggler Bill.

the epic frequently lapses into doggerel:

For Manston Cave, away! away!

Now speed thee, now speed thee, my good dapple-grey,

It shall never be said that Smuggler Bill

Was run down like a hare by Exciseman Gill!'

Manston Cave was Bill's abode,

A mile to the north of the Ramsgate road,

(Of late they say It's been taken away,

That is, levell'd and fill'd up with chalk and clay, By a gentleman there of the name of Day)

Thither he urges his good dapple-grey;...

On the out and about front, work seems to have started again on demolishing the slipways, Goody is/are eating a big lump of concrete there with a very noisy thing.

The scaffolding goes up more or more up on the Pav

The significant glass breakage at the new Air Centre in Harbour Street. This is 17mm plate glass not laminated so a nasty and fairly dangerous one to remove.

Meanwhile our local Lib Dem wants to turn Manston now into Cape Canaveral, see http://www.kentlive.news/manston-ideal-for-a-spaceport-and-rocket-technology-says-liberal-democrat-russ-timpson/story-29808268-detail/story.html it’s an interesting reflection on the Gazette local paper news website that there was so much advertising on this page that it had obliterated the article and it was only by installing AdBlock that I could read the article at all.