Local historian Michael Hunt’s latest book, Thanet Places – the People Concerned & the Things They Did, supplies exactly what it says on the cover.
‘Not the snappiest of titles’ Michael admits, ‘but it tells you what you’re getting: descriptions of some of Thanet’s fascinating (if lesser-known) private and public buildings, monuments and once-open spaces; together with the stories of those associated with them – those who built, lived in, or merely visited them – so contributing their own histories to an area already steeped in history.
Most of the places described are still there for the reader to discover for themselves. Some have gone but have left their mark on the landscape or memory. Royalty, politicians, scientists, artists and criminals have invested these places with a legacy sometimes inspiring, sometimes chilling. Ghosts walk corridors. Walled-up lovers protest their innocence. Naval heroics, financial chicanery and industrial philanthropy have contributed in their different ways to the Thanet we know today.
Who was the millionaire too mean to have his house connected to the town’s sewers? Whose butler committed suicide within hours of returning to London from Broadstairs? What temporal and astronomical factor connects Ramsgate with Greenwich? What links cowgirl Annie Oakley with Ellington? Why build a railway station and then run no trains? These and other questions are tackled, and largely answered, within the pages of Thanet Places – the People Concerned & the Things They Did by Michael Hunt, published by and available from Michaels Bookshop, 72 King Street, Ramsgate; price £9.99.
Contact Michaels Bookshop on E-mail: michaelsbookshop@aol.com or Tel 01843 589500.
Michael Hunt’
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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.