As I guess most readers know this is the tug that is now in
Ramsgate Harbour that you can take a tour of in the summer months. I came
across this picture of her at work in Gravesend during my daily toil in mybookshop and thought it interesting enough to post here.
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.
Wednesday 30 November 2016
Photo of the steam tug Cervia working at Gravesend
Tuesday 29 November 2016
Truro Court Hotel Ramsgate and the mystery tunnel
I received this email from Ben yesterday’
“I haven’t heard of this tunnel – has anybody else?
Ben
East Kent Times, 9th March 1962.
WORKMEN UNCOVER A TUNNEL SMUGGLERS MAY HAVE USED
During demolition of the Truro Court Hotel, East Cliff,
Ramsgate, three men working on the site uncovered an old tunnel which, they
believe, goes down to the cliff face.
David Ralph, Allan Bellis and Frank Bovington took an East
Kent Times and Broadstairs Mail reporter into the tunnel, which descends at an
acute angle to about 60ft below the surface of Ramsgate. Their journey ended in a room roughly hewn
in the chalk. Below that was barbed
wire and a brick wall.
Mr, Bellis said he believes the tunnel was used as an air
raid shelter by the R.A.F when they used the hotel in World War II. Before that it could have been a smugglers’
entrance from the sea.
Although he has made several inquiries, Mr. Bellis can find
no one who knows anything about the tunnels.”
Anyway I don’t know the
answer to this one but I thought blog readers would like to know what I have
done about it so far.
First I quickly copied all the photos showing the area in
the album next to my desk.
They come next and will expand if clicked on
Next as a minor divertion i copied the backs of any with writing on the back
Then I cropped out the bit where Truro Court was
then I found a few few pictures on the internet, here they are
Now my own thoughts. First an embarrassing admission. For
years I confused Trove Court in Ramsgate with Truro Court in Ramsgate.
When I dfl’d in
around 1965 we bought a guest house “The Kyles” at 29 Augusta road the back entrance of which was right next to
the remains of Truro Court Hotel, we used to use this as a short cut from our
back gate to Wellington Crescent.
For a very long time when someone said either Trove Court in
Ramsgate or Truro Court in Ramsgate I thought they meant our shortcut.
This means my memories of whet people may have said about it
are even more muddled than usual.
Sunday 27 November 2016
Some old pictures of Ramsgate and some thoughts about painting people in public places.
I have been busy decorating children’s bedrooms so haven’t
had time for posting things to the internet, so apologies for the absences of
stuff here.
I had to go to Canterbury on Saturday and stopped of for an
hour for lunch at Chocolate Café I was going to get a seat upstairs and do some
more to this picture of the cathedral framed in the window there but it was
very busy, the only table I could get was in the window by the pavement by the
bar where they make and serve the food from.
So here is a sketch of two of the waitresses, nothing like a
photo but none the less the results are highly recognisable particularly to the
individuals being drawn. A sort of mix up of different profiles of them as they
move about within this area.
Being in the window and right by where customers come to pay
the sketch had to be done with lots of people watching, which gave me some sort
of adrenaline rush or something like that.
The sketch is a mixture of felt tip fine liner pen (Pitt XS)
and watercolour, fairly quick – one hour to eat a hot sandwich, drink a pot of
tea and do the sketch, about A5 size.
Generally a good step towards putting recognisable local
people into my sketches of the area, I think – which is the direction that I want
to go in painting wise. A tricky one as you never really know how – the victims,
for want of a better word are going to react.
And Finally some more old pictures of Ramsgate
Saturday 26 November 2016
Lesley Gray at York Street Gallery in Ramsgate
The current exhibition is by Lesley Gray Exhibition - 23 Nov - 30 Nov Exhibitions change weekly on Wednesdays.
Tuesday 22 November 2016
The petrified haystack of Ramsgate
The local adults reading this will probably know what
Charles Dickens said about Holy Trinity Church in Broadstairs, but for any
children reading this it was "we have a church, a hideous temple of flint,
like a petrified haystack." This was in around 1850 and I think Dickens
wasn’t too keen on the napped flint, the church dates from about 1820 so would
have been a modern building. I guess a bit like the people who say Turner
Contemporary a shed.
Well now Ramsgate’s Pav looks like a petrified haystack,
hideous though? I’m not quite sure, more of a photo opportunity I can’t think
anyone would want to look at the rest of the photos on my phone taken when I
went out this morning but here’s the link https://goo.gl/photos/L7EMnFDpqMhu17Wf6
Here is the link to the books that went out in my bookshop
today for the dedicated followers of fiction http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/reading-in-dark-in-bookshop.html
Sunday 20 November 2016
Some old photos of Ramsgate, some new photos of Canterbury and some boring stuff about my camera/phone.
Why would anyone take lots of pictures of the same place?
Behold today’s old Ramsgate pictures.
Sorry I didn’t post yesterday I was in Canterbury having my
day off and when I got home doing a bit of painting and decorating, Sunday
evening now any I have just stopped decorating one of our bedrooms.
About three weeks ago I bought cheap mobile phone an
“OUKITEL K6000 Pro” these are about £130 on Ebay. I don’t have a phone contract
and just have pay as you with a bit of internet as I mostly use wifi and don’t
usually phone people up other than using Skype and WhatsApp.
If that sounded incompressible to you then stop reading
this.
When I first got this phone I did a blog post about it see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/camera-and-brush-in-canterbury.html
and I have used this phone as my main camera since then. I think it’s a very
good phone – the main reason I bought it is because it has a very big battery
which doesn’t go flat if I charge it for about an hour every couple of days.
With a folding blue tooth keyboard I can touch type in MS
Word on my phone and write this blog, I have used my previous phone as a dummy
here as as I took the photo with the new one.
The camera in the new phone is pretty good and I have been
having a dialogue with the manufacturer about improvements for the next software
update to make it even better.
So as part of this I took some more photos of Canterbury to
show them samples of what I am talking about, essentially they can download the
pictures and see the camera settings.
(If you click on the download tab – open the image – three
dots top right – download is on the dropdown. If you select more than one image
and download them together the files will be compressed so the image quality
may be lower. If you then find the image on your commuter – right click on it –
select properties – the details tab will give you some camera settings. It will
also give you the time I took the photos.)
So here is the link to all the photos I took yesterday,
including the ones that went wrong https://goo.gl/photos/z9GDMtD7oe3yk95DA
I wasn’t working in my bookshop yesterday, but the people
who work there on Saturdays were, so here is the link to the books they put out
on the selves http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/low-flying-aircraft-in-bookshop.html
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