Ramsgate High Street in 1974, Margate High Street in 1951 and various archive photos of both High Streets

So first with kind permission from Kelly's Directories
Ramsgate High Street in 1974

Next Margate High Street in 1951

For many years Ramsgate and Margate were two competing shopping centres and I think in today's world where most scientists agree that traveling by some sort of vehicle to do shopping has a negative effect on climate change and produces particulates which kill people and result in the early onset of dementia, we may benefit on the mortality front, from walking down into the town to do our shopping.

Most of the existing problems with Ramsgate and Margate shopping centres relate to the arrival of the great WC at Westwood. The future problems will relate to internet shopping and of course the people who don't try to use local shops.

My family have run bookshops for a long time, longer than I have been alive, so the ups and downs of retail have been in the background all my life.

I think one of the major problems we have as a society is that our towns were formed as trading centres and it is the buying and selling that make these towns what they are and to an extent what we are as people. 

Here in Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate we are doing our best to buck the trend, this is mostly achieved by being cheaper than Ebay and Amazon.

Link to the photos of the books we put out today

If you enjoy old Thanet directories we have quite a few here at the bookshop in Ramsgate, we also publish affordable reprints, I strongly recommend coming to the shop and giving them a browse.

However if you can't here's the link