Regardless of your position related to the future of the
Manston Airport site, if you are interested in the issue you may want to go to
this session which is at The Comfort Inn aka The San Clu on Ramsgate’s East
Cliff from mid-day to 8 pm.
In the latest raft of consultation documents the DCO
applicant is applying for night flights and does seem to be saying that their
airfreight hub will produce harmful pollution. I think.
Of all the quotes from the documentation, the following is
the bit I am having the most difficulty with:-
“There is health evidence drawn from the scientific
literature that allows potential impacts on mortality and rates of certain
diseases due to changes in noise and air pollutant exposure to be predicted
quantitatively (in numerical terms). The scientific evidence shows that,
depending on the level of noise or air pollution concentration, these may
affect diseases of the heart, lungs and circulation system, mental health and
wellbeing, and the overall risk of premature death. Whether there is a health
risk and the magnitude of any impact on public health depends on the size of
change in noise or air pollution and the population affected.”
So if there is anyone who really understands what it means
please explain.
The other key question is has anyone who should have done got heir postal notification from RSP?
On to the San Clu this comes from one of the books I publish about Ramsgate
THE SAN CLU HOTEL, RAMSGATE
On 29th January 1881, Herbert Sankey paid £2,500 to William
Harrison, a local builder, to build an eight-bedroom house in Granville
Terrace, a road which we now know as Victoria Parade. The house in question was
on the corner of Albert Road, now part of the garden of the hotel. A further
seven houses were quickly erected, being numbered two to eight, Granville
Terrace, thus completing the terrace.
In 1897 Mr R.
Stacey acquired the first five houses which he converted into an hotel, naming
it the Hotel St Cloud. Little did he know at the time that he had founded not
only an hotel, but a place which, as the years passed, would become very much
part of the social and civic life of Ramsgate. A 1904 brochure of the Hotel St
Cloud, St Lawrence-on-Sea, Ramsgate, gives a most interesting insight into a
middle class hotel of that period.
En Pension Charges
From 2 ½ to 4 guineas per week to include
Table d'Hõte
Breakfast, Luncheon, Afternoon Tea, Dinner and Bedroom.
Fires in Bed or
Sitting Room per day 1/6d
Baths: Hot 1/-;
Cold 6d; Sea Water hot or cold per pail 6d.
Dogs
charged 1/- per day and not allowed in any of the public rooms. No large dogs
admitted, but they can be cared for at the stables.
Good
stabling and loose boxes, Flys and Private Carriages at a moment's notice.
Accommodation near the hotel can be provided for motor cars; petrol
obtainable.
The Hotel
is furnished and decorated in a very superior manner, and with that artistic
elegance which appeals to the refined taste. It has upwards of 50 Bed and
Sitting Rooms, with spacious Public Rooms viz: Coffee and Table d'H6te Room,
Ladies Drawing Room, Reading and Writing Rooms, Smoking Room.
The Cuisine,
which is made a great speciality, is under the care of famous French and
English cooks.
Such was the fame of the hotel that in July 1904, after only
seven years, the Hotel Chef, Mr Scrivener, was asked to prepare an eight course
meal at the Town Hall for the visit of Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, who
had come to open the Royal Victoria Pavilion erected in memory of her mother,
Queen Victoria.
Mr Stacey, with
his, by now, well-established hotel, entered into the life of the town, and on
15th July 1904 he became one of the first Directors of the 'East Kent Times',
which for well over a hundred years was Ramsgate's much loved local newspaper.
The changing type of visitor to the south coast was by then looking for more
than the ozone and the famous sands.
Ma Robson as everyone remembers her
The Day After the fire, 27th October 1928
Entertainment
was needed. In this field Mr Stacey was a master and he ensured that first
class London companies appeared at the Palace Theatre, with Variety at the
Pavilion. However, his striking successes with fetes in Ellington Park had
crowds from all over East Kent and London making for Ramsgate. One such event
during Easter 1912 had no less than twelve military bands taking part, with a
great Tattoo in the evening. After the 1914/18 war these and other events, once
the sole work of Mr Stacey, were taken over by the Borough Council, but Mr
Stacey could well be regarded in Ramsgate as the father of the modern holiday
trade.
The hotel
carried on through the First World War, during which Ramsgate was, according to
a book published in 1919 by Chas. A.F. Austin with a Foreword by Horatio
Bottomley, MP, the founder of 'John Bull' magazine, 'England's most bombed
town'. It stated that the first raid was something of a novelty, but within a
few months, the population was halved and visitors thought it safer to stay at
home. It
must therefore have come as no surprise to everyone that Mr
Stacey decided to sell the hotel in 1919 and he soon found a buyer in a Mr
Sugden who paid him £10,000.
Everything
carried on as normal until in 1922 Mr Sugden decided to change the name from St
Cloud to San Clu. This was because the local populace insisted on pronouncing
it Saint Cloud instead of giving it the French pronunciation 'San Clu'.
However, apart from
the change of name the hotel saw very little change in the 1920s. Prices were
still only £5.5s.0d per week; servants daily 12/6d; a bath was still 1/-; but
dogs were now 2/6d a day. The Dining Room was still one of the finest on the
coast, but it was the Billiard Room which was the pride of the place, with its
fine oak panelled walls and decorations of swords and armour. Its inviting new
billiard table was considered one of the showpieces of Thanet.
The Back of the San Clu After the Fire
On the night
of 26th October 1928 everything was to change when the hotel was gutted by a
disastrous fire. For six hours the combined energies of the Ramsgate,
Broadstairs and Margate Fire Brigades ensured that part of the hotel and the
adjoin- ing three houses, now flats, were saved. Fortunately there was no one
in the hotel at the time, as it was closed for redecoration, although due to be
opened again at Christmas. The fire was discovered at 2.10 a.m. by P.C. Ford of
the Ramsgate Borough Police Force, who went to the nearest street alarm post
and gave the alarm. Under the direction
of the Chief Constable (Mr S.F. Butler) the residents of the adjoining houses
were helped to safety. Furniture was taken into the road and also stored in the
Coastguard
Mrs Robson Escaping from the Top Floor During the Fire
Station. Throughout the night many people were awakened by
the glare which could be seen from Margate and Deal as well as for miles out to
sea, and they came in large numbers to watch the brigades in their efforts to
put out the blaze. By morning more and more people had gathered and barricades
were put across Victoria Parade, Albert Road and Thanet Road. The hotel owner,
Major Watkins, who had taken it over from Mr Champneys-Taylor, the third owner,
some two years before, was able to rescue some swords from the billiard room.
Following the
fire, four of the five houses which had formed the hotel were demolished and
they have never been rebuilt. Many would have given up at this point, but Major
Watkins set to work restoring the one section which was left and within a year
it was back in business.
In 1935 Mrs
Elsie Robson purchased this small fourteen-bedroom hotel. She had been widowed
at the early age of thirty-five and had two young sons, John and Peter. She ran
the business almost single-handed and even at this early stage of her time in
Ramsgate she began to take a keen interest in the affairs of the town. Then
came war, and soon after the Dunkirk evacuation she closed the hotel and left
Ramsgate for Stafford where she opened a restaurant which, of course, she
called the San Clu. The majority of Ramsgate's school children had been
evacuated to that town, and for many it became home-from-home. Much could be
written of this period of history. Mrs Robson's sons spent the war in the Royal
Air Force as fighter pilots. Her younger son, Peter, was killed in 1945, three
weeks before the war ended, but John survived and was awarded the DFC.
The San Clue mid 1900s
Mrs Robson, who
by now was affectionately known as 'Ma'/ spent four years at her restaurant in
Stafford - but early in 1944 she decided to return to Ramsgate where later that
year she purchased the next two houses and was able to re-open the hotel which
soon had forty bedrooms, all with hot and cold running water. A few years later,
after a long struggle, the last house was purchased from Vera Wilkie and the
hotel was back almost to its original size. So much was to happen there during
the boom years of the 1950s.
The San Clu Hotel
Apart from
running the hotel, the Robson family entered into the life of the town. Ma became a Councillor, and in 1953 was
offered the position of Deputy Mayor, but declined due to pressure of business.
John married in 1950, Betty Geltem, the head receptionist of the hotel, and in
1951 had a son, John Simon, who years later was to take over. John was the
organiser of the Ramsgate Carnival for many years and it was at the San Clu
that the Rotary Club, Round Table, and many other organ- isations made their
headquarters. Memorable events were those such as the presence of Archbishop
Geoffrey Fisher at a meeting and lunch at the hotel in 1954 which sealed a
partnership of Town and Church. This concerned a large housing estate which was
being built at Newington, north of the town, and the result of the meeting and
lunch at the San Clu was the founding of St Christopher's Church on that
estate. The following year the church had been built and was consecrated by
Archbishop Fisher.
The famous
came, and came again - many becoming good friends with locals. From show
business came Dicky Henderson, Bob and Alf Pearson, Norman Wisdom, Jimmy
Hanley, John Ie Mesurier and many others. But they came from every field: Hugh
Scanlon, John Betjeman, Sir Edward Heath, as he later became, and also royalty
from Belgium, Denmark and Thailand. One could go on.
However, time
goes by and history almost repeated itself in 1973 when in January another fire
broke out - this time in the afternoon - and though the damage was great and
the hotel was closed to residents for some months, no one was hurt. The
residents, one of whom was the MP Jonathan Aitken, were all out at the time.
However, Ma was in her room on the top floor, and her dramatic rescue was seen
nationwide on BBC Television News as she was taken down the eighty-foot
turntable ladder by Sub-Officer Frank Webb. She was then 79 years old. Despite
all of this, the bar, though damaged, remained open - the one lifeline giving
hope to staff and locals that once again, like the Phoenix, the hotel would
rise renewed from the ashes. It re-opened at Easter that year.
In 1978, after
forty-three years, Ma retired and handed the hotel over to her son, John, and
grandson, Simon. However, as John said many times - Ma was still the boss.
Sadly, Mrs Betty Robson died in 1980, and her husband John in 1982; then 'Ma'
herself followed them in 1984 aged 90. As a result, Simon took the hotel over
and appointed Mr John Stewart as General Manager. In 1989 he sold the hotel to
Universal Projects and its days as a family owned and run hotel were over.
Changing times
brought another change of name to Amecco Hotels. Under this new management the
number of rooms has been reduced to thirty-two by major refurbishment. With the
decline of the holiday trade the hotel looks in a different direction - to
conferences of up to 150 people as well as all the social functions which have
always been part of its business.
References
San Clu brochures 1904, 1924, 1994; 'East Kent Times' 1928,
October 1955, 1973, 1978; Memorable evenings with 'Ma' Robson and her son John.
Acknowledgements
Photographs: Mrs E. Robson - now part of the D. Long
collections; Mrs A.M. Band; Mrs C.W. Kemp; Mr Simon Robson.
Re. postal notification from RSP, I have not rec'd one.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was working at Pfizer there was a Stella Robson. She was related, by marriage, to the Robson's but I'm not sure how now, it maybe that she had married Simon.
For the record I have not had a postal notification either and I live under the flight path
ReplyDeleteIt's a lot simpler to count the people who did receive a postal notification than the ones who didn't. I hear the Manston Pickle people are collecting names of people who didn't get one. They are getting swamped with names and they haven't even advertised that they're doing it.
ReplyDelete