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
HMS Fervent system sounds the best fit. Barbed wire and brick wall sounds par for the course. Prior to WW2 anyones guess
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