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.

Then the practicalities of the tunnel, the inference from the smuggling is a tunnel towards the sea. The problem is that that would go through the railway tunnel Augusta steps or the HMS Fervent tunnel system.

1872 map

1849 map

Wellington Lodge and Augusta Lodge

1829 map