Wednesday 8 April 2020

A Tale of Two many Towers Here in Thanet around 200 years ago, Mystery Photo and Yesterday's answer, perhaps?

Do you know what this is and where it is in Thanet.


For a local historian my general history is embarrassingly bad. My background is as a mechanic of sorts so it's science history where I have a bit more understanding and have done a bit more reading. I wouldn't want to embarrass the academic institutions involved in this process but will merely say it is not just life.

I later graduated to being a shop assistant in various bookshops, meaning I read a lot of books, rather in the way you don’t get many vegan butchers…

So my view of life is that of a voracious reader of fiction with an interest in science.

Yesterday’s mystery question was focussed in the early 1800s and on towers here in Thanet at that time.

I suppose the origins of Frankenstein in the Tambora volcano which had a minor eruption that was in terms of other eruptions very major in about 1810 this started the impact on the much colder weather endured from 1810 to 1820.


Of course it was the main eruption of Tambora in 1815 that caused the writing of Frankenstein. Mary left England for Europe to visit her lover Lord Byron perhaps in the hope of some better weather but in fact the weather in Europe was very bad indeed 1816 I think was known as the year of no summer. So what the Shellys did instead of lying around in boats pretending to fish doing a bit of swimming and sunbathing was to tell each other ghost stories. It is out of this that the novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. Of course the romantics were living under the shadow of the great Wordsworth and literature had moved much more from the courtly dramas into romance which at that time included the genre of horror.

Apart from killing most of the livestock in the northern hemisphere and producing the monster Frankenstein, The effects of global cooling both eruptions probably caused a massive amount of sulphur in the atmosphere and this turned into sulphuric acid particles which reduce the amount of sunshine. The temperature dropped by about 4 degrees and crops to feed people to animals just wouldn't grow.

If you want some idea of the size of the 1816 eruption, the amount of pumice and other solid matter that came out of the mountain was enough to cover the whole of the UK knee deep.

There was a terrible shortage of food in much of Europe the UK was mostly unaffected as they that time, this is part of the agricultural problem alluded to by John Mockett, which was basically that large amounts of cheap grain were being imported by sailing ship from America resulting in the collapse of English agriculture as he knew it. I you clicked away and read it in yesterday's post you are probably still at it.

Here in Thanet several towers were built around this time. I guess part of the reason was as lookout posts and navigational aids during the Napoleonic Wars and the various earlier conflicts between the UK and most European countries.

Here is the one outside the Captain Digby, the pub where In his will Lord Holland' left

provision for Robert Digby's health to be drunk every year by the customers source The Btoadie issue 8

I have drawn Kingsgate Castle over a wosisname in the Digby, in past and easier times
Keep a sketchbook or you may have difficult remembering you were actually alive in the past, type of kidney.

There was another smaller castle, Harley Tower built to honour Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor in 1768,
Whitfield Tower to compliment the previous land owner, and Neptune's Temple (tower), a folly which used to have a tower which was used by observers in WWII. The tower itself was demolished in the 70's but the footings still remain.source The Btoadie issue 8

It may have been taller around 1800 when this was drawn.

Here is a photo, I am pretty sure this tower mostly goes by the name Arx Rouchim.

There was of course the Red Tower or Red Beacon.

Someone on one of the Facebook groups even thought is was North Foreland Lighthouse.

Back to Lord Holland and Holland House and all the stuff about the highest point in the island, The earliest source I can find for this is an early 1800s tourist guide to Thanet. The main reason I trust these old guides and prints is that if they weren't fairly accurate no one would have bought them and the publishers authors and booksellers would have starved in their garrets. 


so finally we get to the answer 
So here is the whole picture which dates from August 1816. I am pretty sure the building in the distance lower left is Bleak House, then Fort Lodge or Fort House back in the early 1800s around the time some of it was it was built.

I had hoped to get the name of this tower from someone who knew a lot about Broadstairs history but most of these people seem to be blocked to me.

It's a strange world, some time ago I was banned from the main Broadstairs Facebook group "Broadstairs" because I linked my Thanetonline Blog posts to it when they had Broadstairs content, I have tired to get disbarred or whatever it is, but I have now given up and so using the Broadstairs material up. 

Next

A word of warning

Later on I will probably past the world's coronavirus statistics at the end of this post, so that I can see what was happening at a later date, so next some filler photos for those who came here to escape, don't keep scrolling if you don't want to know.

















the most notable thing today is the UK death rat per 1,000 infections has jumped above Spain's making it the third worse in the world 

Country, Other
Total Cases
New Cases
Total Deaths
New Deaths
Total Recovered
Active Cases
World
1469245
+38,326
86278
+4,244
316520
1066447
Total:
1469245
+38,326
86278
+4,244
316520
1066447
USA
406697
+6,362
13868
+1,027
22033
370796
Spain
146690
+4,748
14673
+628
48021
83996
Italy
139422
+3,836
17669
+542
26491
95262
Germany
109329
+1,666
2096
+80
36081
71152
France
109069
10328
19337
79404
China
81802
+62
3333
+2
77279
1190
Iran
64586
+1,997
3993
+121
29812
30781
UK
60733
+5,491
7097
+938
135
53501
Turkey
34109
725
1582
31802
Belgium
23403
+1,209
2240
+205
4681
16482
Switzerland
23248
+995
893
+72
9800
12555
Netherlands
20549
+969
2248
+147
250
18051
Canada
18479
+582
402
+21
4333
13744
Brazil
14275
+241
706
+20
127
13442
Portugal
13141
+699
380
+35
196
12565
Austria
12916
+277
273
+30
4512
8131
S. Korea
10384
+53
200
+8
6776
3408
Israel
9404
+156
72
+7
801
8531
Russia
8672
+1,175
63
+5
580
8029
Sweden
8419
+726
687
+96
205
7527
Norway
6086
101
+12
32
5953
Australia
6013
+25
50
+1
2813
3150
India
5749
+398
178
+18
506
5065
Ireland
5709
210
25
5474
Chile
5546
+430
48
+5
1115
4383
Denmark
5402
+331
218
+15
1621
3563
Czechia
5221
+204
99
+11
233
4889
Poland
5205
+357
159
+30
222
4824
Romania
4761
+344
215
+18
528
4018
Japan
4257
93
622
3542
Pakistan
4196
+161
60
+3
467
3669
Malaysia
4119
+156
65
+2
1487
2567
Ecuador
3995
220
140
3635
Philippines
3870
+106
182
+5
96
3592
Saudi Arabia
3122
+327
41
631
2450
Luxembourg
3034
+64
46
+2
500
2488
Indonesia
2956
+218
240
+19
222
2494
Peru
2954
107
1301
1546
Mexico
2785
+346
141
+16
633
2011
Serbia
2666
+219
65
+4
118
2483
UAE
2659
+300
12
239
2408
Finland
2487
+179
40
+6
300
2147
Thailand
2369
+111
30
+3
888
1451
Panama
2249
+149
59
+4
16
2174
Qatar
2210
+153
6
178
2026
Dominican Republic
2111
+155
108
+10
50
1953
Greece
1884
+52
83
+2
269
1532
Colombia
1780
50
100
1630
South Africa
1749
13
95
1641
Argentina
1715
63
+3
338
1314
Ukraine
1668
+206
52
+7
35
1581
Singapore
1623
+142
6
406
1211
Iceland
1616
+30
6
633
977
Algeria
1572
+104
205
+12
237
1130
Egypt
1450
94
276
1080
Croatia
1343
+61
19
+1
179
1145
Morocco
1242
+58
91
+1
97
1054
New Zealand
1210
+50
1
282
927
Iraq
1202
+80
69
+4
452
681
Estonia
1185
+36
24
+3
72
1089
Moldova
1174
+118
27
+5
40
1107
Slovenia
1091
+32
40
+4
120
931
Belarus
1066
+205
13
77
976
Hong Kong
961
+25
4
264
693
Lithuania
912
+32
15
8
889
Hungary
895
+78
58
+11
94
743
Armenia
881
+28
9
+1
114
758
Kuwait
855
+112
1
111
743
Azerbaijan
822
+105
8
63
751
Bahrain
821
+10
5
467
349
Bosnia and Herzegovina
803
+39
34
+1
79
690
Kazakhstan
718
+21
7
+1
54
657
Diamond Princess
712
11
619
82
Cameroon
685
9
60
616
Slovakia
682
+101
2
16
664
Tunisia
623
23
25
575
North Macedonia
617
+18
29
+3
35
553
Bulgaria
593
+16
24
+1
42
527
Latvia
577
+29
2
16
559
Lebanon
575
+27
19
62
494
Andorra
564
+19
23
+1
52
489
Uzbekistan
545
+25
3
+1
30
512
Cyprus
526
+32
9
52
465
Costa Rica
483
2
24
457
Cuba
457
+61
12
+1
27
418
Uruguay
424
7
150
267
Afghanistan
423
14
18
391
Oman
419
+48
2
72
345
Albania
400
+17
22
154
224
Burkina Faso
384
19
127
238
Taiwan
379
+3
5
67
307
Réunion
358
40
318
Jordan
353
6
138
209
Ivory Coast
349
3
41
305
Channel Islands
335
7
34
294
Ghana
313
+26
6
+1
34
273
Honduras
312
+7
22
6
284
Malta
299
+6
5
294

2 comments:

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.