Friday, 23 August 2019

The anniversary of Ramsgate's WW2 blitz


24th August 1940 was the first major civilian raid of the Battle of Britain, the target was Ramsgate. Over 500 bombs fell on the town, 78 houses destroyed and a further 1,200 damaged.
 I would think the before and after photos of Vye and Son say more than pages of text could.
We publish a booklet about the raid this is the link but one to browse when you are in the bookshop perhaps. ABC Kempe's book here is the link has a very short account of the raid.

More picture of the raid damage 
 Camden Sq
 Camden Sq, Warden's Box
 and again
 Denmark Rd
 a couple of Ramsgate Gas Works


 Margate Rd

next a few other Thanet WW2 photos

 Margate Ambulance corps 1941
 Acol WI Sept 1941

 Blown jetty gap 1940

 Belgrave Rd National Fire Service 1943
Michaels Bookshop Ramsgate, where I work, was reasonably busy today. One thing I was told when I started in bookselling and subsequently on numerous occasions is. "Poetry books don't sell." I can qualify this one, Books containing selections of poems by different poets, don't sell, books by poets you have never heard of don't sell. Customers coming to a bookshop say. "Have you go any Blake, Auden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and so on.








1 comment:

  1. I thought the gap in the pier was made to prevent the pier being used as a landing for enemy troop carrying ships.

    ReplyDelete

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.