Mainly Margate Lido photos and a minor ramble

First the lido pictures which should expand when you click on them. Do you say lyedo or leedo? Back in goodness knows when I worked there in various capacities. I was once a sort of mechanic to the firm called Associated Leisure that owned Dreamland, most of the amusement arcades along Margate seafront and The Lido complex at Cliftonville. This included some amusement arcades, Hades night club and an American pool room on the end with amazing sea views.

Back in this dark age the actual lido, swimming pool, wosisname had failed to attract enough people to swim in in it to make it viable to operate. On the one hand I think there were fewer visitors because of the foreign holidays, there were now heated swimming pools and perhaps people were less inclined to endure paying to swim in cold water. On the other hand, the days of paying the staff to run this sort of attraction less money than they could reasonably afford to live on combined with laying them all off for the winter, well they were pretty much over.

I think also all the various levels of government failed to understand that a town like Margate runs on its leisure facilities and somehow they have to be supported because when they fail the rest of the town's economy which is reliant on them fails.

I think most of these sites were council owned and rented out to various operators, a bit like the issue with high street shops now, the turnover decreases in a situation where previously it has always increased. Obviously the expenses, rent, rates, wages and so on have to decrease.

Much of Margate's economy hangs on Turner Contemporary at the moment, considering making the gallery run at a profit takes you a long way to understanding the problem.

     

I hope I didn't put any of the same photos in twice

The history here relates to Clifton Baths

which were built around 1830 and would have been a development of the cure that first began in around 1730, this involved drinking a pint of seawater and being ducked under the sea by professional dunkers. By the 1930s the curative effects of hot and cold salt water baths was replaced with the bathing lido.

If you really want to properly understand this I would recommend a good old browse in the the bookshop here in Ramsgate, concentrating on the old tourist guides.

On my bookbuying mission today I became inconvenient in Tankerton, the sign post outside the loos there

  is interesting

Recovered I bought some books for the bookshop there

Still with the bookshop here is the link to the books that went out yesterday

More occult books and other unusual stuff

Another eclectic batch from an album here, some with the writing on the back, from back then, for those addicted to this type of thing.