Bellevue Road Ramsgate in 1970 and a rant

Here are the entries for Bellevue Road in the 1971 street directory

I think the top photo could be about right datewise the rest are obviously much earlier.

Mi mum having had a guesthouse in Augusta Road in the 60s and 70s I am familiar with pop down to Daws for some pork chops or Gerrard’s for a sack of potatoes and even a bit of under age drinking in The Iron Duke or five Park Drive from Ranyner’s.

The promised confused rant

A bit of a roundup of national and Thanet related news this evening, mainly as I read the articles throughout the day and now have time to look at them properly. 

150 photos of Lord George Sanger’s photos in auction this week, here is the link to the lot https://www.invaluable.co.uk/auction-lot/circus-a-large-and-rare-archive-of-photographs-325-c-8a14cf191e

The leader of the Why not Manston group Henry Bolton has resigned because he has become the leader of UKIP and of course Monarch Airline goes bust. I sort of wondered vaguely if any of this has any impact on the future of the Manston Airport site or Thanet in general.

My own take is that both issues are probably related to brexit and our jump into the unknown, I have never made any secret about my voting to remain, I’m in business and therefore usually avoid voting for change.

I think that my reflections on this are partly related to the street directory posts over the last week and of course talking to the people coming into the bookshop to browse street directories because of the posts.

Could it be that a lot of the people who voted to come out of Europe were really actually voting for the impossible i.e. to go back in time to the early 1970s, the fallout of course is a bit different, so far the only really noticeable change being the exchange rate for the £.

I think aircraft fuel being priced in dollars and getting fewer euros on holiday may have been the straw that broke the back of Monarch.

Of course here in the bookshop more people holidaying at home and increased export sales are producing better figures in the short term at least. The export sales are a peculiar thing and relate to good books that I have bought for the bookshop but haven’t sold in the shop so I put them on the internet, sell them and buy some different titles for the shop.

Looking at today’s books that went on the shelves http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-lion-king-in-bookshop.html I can see that if they don’t sell the books on highland cows may need exporting to Scotland.

The bookshop was reasonably busy today, reading material and local history mostly, I did manage to get down into the middle of the town during the afternoon and to be honest it’s not looking too good at the moment.

There are a few news articles and social media posts saying TDC have announced that work will start on Pleasurama this autumn, can this be right? as I can’t find anything on their website and have been asking them what’s going on for months I think it may be wishful thinking.

As is usually the case the one that sounds most accurate is on The Isle of Thanet News site see https://theisleofthanetnews.com/pleasurama-owners-due-to-start-work-on-derelict-site-this-autumn-says-council-deputy-leader/

I think this stems from https://www.facebook.com/lin.fairbrass/posts/1207065212728343?pnref=story the email address being the one left on the developers website http://royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/ when they took the rest of it down.

I suppose the deviation from the usual council press release to a councillor announcing it on Facebook is a change, mind you Sandy Ezekiel went as far as being photographed down there with a shovel saying it had started.    

I think the jury is still out on whether the henge down there that sits on sand, on a high risk flood zone, is actually real foundations for a real development or something built to extend the planning consent.