Monday 27 March 2017

The New Ramsgate Guide for 1867 by J Bear

Using this type of guide, if you are interested in local history, doesn’t always work out quite how you think it will. A read of the guide or just coming into my bookshop in Ramsgate and having a good old browse of it forms different picture to reading a history book. If you, for instance read Charles Busson’s “The Book of Ramsgate” which was published in 1985 and is a good history of Ramsgate, one thing you unlikely to get is a picture of Ramsgate in 1985. Of course back in 1985, Pleasurama was still running, Ramsgate had a busy town centre and I think most people assumed then – only 32 years ago – that Ramsgate would still be pretty much the same. Guide books are different to history books inasmuch as they tend to a slightly rose tinted view of the now back then.






















Often it’s the advertisements that tell us a great deal, however be careful about the addresses, as some of the street numbering and some of the street names have changed since 1867. Before getting too committed about this I strongly recommend coming into the bookshops and carefully working you way back through the street directories while keeping a weather eye on the 1872 map of Ramsgate on the wall next to the directories, so you don’t wind up venerating the wrong building.

On the supply front I usually have copes of Charlie Busson’s book in stock and in various conditions at various prices, with Bear’s guide a good browse in the bookshop and as a last resort, if you can’t get to my bookshop you can do an online thingy here http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id328.htm or just message me or say something in the comments, all depending on how your ITC skills stack up.  

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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.