Painting in the Pav and other Thanet diversions

If Wetherspoon’s at The Royal Victoria Pavilion in Ramsgate has a snag it’s the breakdown of heating and ventilation around the upstairs bar area. However despite the beast from the east today, the other side of the balcony area was as warm as toast.

Toast and marmalade with coffee was what I had when I turned up fairly early this morning, having battled through the blizzard, found the town centre closed by the police, and very nearly had to set up base camp on Abbot’s Hill during my diversion.

I spent ages trying to sort out my sketch of the Ramsgate waterfront from out of the window there and then thought I would have a go at sketching down into the kitchen area.

Progress pictures for anyone interested 

On to Christopher Saxton who published the first printed atlas of the English and Welsh in 1579

 Every time a copy of one of the reprints comes in to the bookshop I mull over the Kent Map

 and eventually focus in on Thanet, as you see at his time Ramsgat pere was worth recording as was Broadstore pere.

When Henry VIII’s antiquary John Leyland visited Margate in around 1540 and wrote: “Margate lyith in S. John’s pareche yn Thanet… a village and a peere for shyppes, but now sore decayed.” So I assume in 1579 it had washed away to the point that it couldn't be used.

Funny thing spelling you know, it had it's innings from around 1730, and back in the 1960s it was still common in schools to be beaten, or at least feel the ruler across the hand for spelling mistakes, now of course consigned to whatever the mixture of predictive text, memory or whatever comes up with.

I suppose a modern but not a contemporary convention, irritating I suppose for those who put a lot of effort in to learning to spell, I find the inventiveness of the 16^th century scholars Leyland and Saxton somehow more pleasing to read.

I was thinking that when the Thanet towns first appeared as destinations in around 1730 it was for the cure. Your physician would have sent you here if bleeding, the application of leeches and so on hadn’t worked. This would have involved sending you to one of the Thanet towns for six months or a year, every day you would have gone down to the beach where you would have stripped off, drunk a pint of seawater and professional dunkers would have then ducked under the seawater. Obviously your family and servants would have gone along to assist you.  

By 1809 the Thanet towns were called “Watering Places” which makes me think that the term watering may have been fairly proactive.

    
Back to the painting

and trying various ways of fitting Ramsgate onto a bit of paper, missing bits out, scrunching them up

On to today's photos, taken from the Royal Victoria Pavilion as I didn't venture out with the camera

 The snow covered the hands of the clock so that i couldn't tell the time.

 Watching the people on the east pier was; interesting.