Click to expand the historic Thanet pictures, some thoughts on shops and shopping in Ramsgate and of course a Christmas ramble

 So starting with some archive photos of Ramsgate shops.

Of course back in the day Ramsgate was full of, "are you being served" shops, a situation based mostly on shop staff being paid poverty wages and real estate values being relatively low. 

Although Michaels Bookshop where I work in Ramsgate is a secondhand bookshop we do sell new Thanet local history books and maps. That is both the ones we publish and ones published by other people. Mainly though this is a secondhand bookshop and over recent years buying secondhand books for presents has become much more acceptable. Obviously in a lot of cases you can't really tell if a book is secondhand, so there is that aspect too. Anyway one way or another it's a very busy day here. 

I think the main factor is price and as most of the books we sell are cheaper than you can get on the internet we are selling a lot of books and of course with people's financial pressures we are also buying a lot of books. 

With Ramsgate itself this year, the question. Is it Busy? Doesn't have a simple answer. There are certainly a lot fewer non food shops where you can buy something tangible, so not much Christmas shopping round the town.

Christmas celebration wise Wetherspoons in Ramsgate is so busy that it is often difficult to get seats, meaning over 1,000 customers, while many of the other venues are virtually empty. Price again, with the wholesale price of cheap beer just under £1 a pint cheap beer in Wetherspoons is around £2, as you would expect. In most of the other venues cheap beer seems to be over £4 a pint and so they are mostly empty. Back in the 1960s and 70s when I did bar work in Ramsgate, the pump price was roughly double the barrel price so what's going on here doesn't make sense.

With Broadstairs and shopping I suppose that it's Westwood Cross that has substantially less shops every year but does have a lot more in terms of amusements. 


On to Margate 

Not sure if these are brewery staff outing or where outings ended up

This is the entry to the jetty and a view I hadn't seen before

 

And yes here is the jetty.

Happy Christmas all round

1872 Ramsgate Street Map, a quick sketch in Turner Contemporary Margate where I view "Anya Gallaccio: preserve" exhibition.

 

1872 Ramsgate Street Map

Here where I work at Michaels Bookshop in Ramsgate we sell reprints of some historic local maps to compliment our stock of local books about The Isle of Thanet. Yesterday I went to Margate and bought the map in the picture above. 

Here is a link to what I hope is a bigger size of the picture of the map

We already sell a slightly different 1872 street map of  Ramsgate and I hope that when I have got this one properly scanned and printed it will add the the range of historic maps we have available. At the moment, if you want to enjoy the map then this phone photo through glass is the best there is. There are also some other versions of 1872 OS maps on the National Library of Scotland website. 1872 was the year that the survey was done so 1872 is a date that appears a lot on our maps.

When it comes to historic street maps that we sell and you may want to put on your wall, a lot depends on when your house was built and where your house is located within the town. 

We sell these historic maps rolled up and as they are too difficult (expensive) to post you have to come here to Michaels Bookshop in Ramsgate to look at them and possibly buy them 

With historic maps of Margate there are several on The Margate Local History Website Paper sheet maps of Margate are a bit thin on the ground and I promise to do some eventually.

The copyright situation with historic maps is:-

Maps published by United Kingdom government departments are covered by Crown Copyright, which usually lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which the map was published. For example, Crown Copyright on a map published in December 1970 would usually pass out of copyright in January 2021. For a map published in January 1971, copyright would usually expire in January 2022. Maps produced by Ordnance Survey or the UK Hydrographic Office are covered by Crown Copyright.

Copyright in maps published by commercial companies and private institutions usually lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the map was published. For example, maps produced by the John Bartholomew & Son, Harvey Maps or Stirling Surveys, are usually in copyright for 70 years from the end of the year in which the map was published.

Copyright in maps made by named individuals usually lasts for 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work died. For works with unknown authorship created before 1 August 1989, copyright will expire on 31 December 2039 if the work was created before 1 January 1969; otherwise, copyright expires 70 years from the end of the year in which the work was created.

On to visiting Turner Contemporary art gallery where the main exhibition is called Anya Gallaccio: preserve. here is the link to the page about it on Turner Contemporaries website 

Pictures of the exhibition will expand if you click a bit.

I am afraid that I don't understand contemporary art very well and this exhibition smells strongly of rotting vegetation, so I didn't stay very long.

I had a bowl of soup and a cup of tea in Turner Contemporary Café, the quality was OK and it set me back a tenner, which I thought could have been worse. 

I painted a quick sketch in my sketchbook so I could remember the visit  
 

Click to expand, pictures of Broadstairs, Margate, Ramsgate and an optical illusion from the bookshop in Ramsgate

 

Aerial photo of Broadstairs probably early to mid 50s

Tug Aid in Ramsgate Harbour

Tug Vulcan in Ramsgate Harbour

Dent De Lion Gatehouse

 Pier Hotel Margate Advert

Unknown location probably north Thanet

The next bit of this blog post is about me drawing an optical illusion and how the inspiration came. This is mostly me talking to a future me for my reference, but also people ask about these things.

I was looking drawings by Salvador Dali, on my phone, in bed, Sunday morning (yesterday) and felt there was something about the shapes in this one that was worth further investigation.

Nostalgic Echo Dali

The Nostalgic Echo (1935) by Salvador Dali  illustration for the frontispiece of the book Nuits Partagees (Shared Nights), poems by Paul Éluard.

So I sketched this 

Which developed into this impossible object, instead of three dimensions it has four or five, I think. What do you think?

As you probably know I work at Michaels Bookshop in Ramsgate so the next stage was to represent my impossible object as a book.

Optical Illusion Drawing of a Book

Here is the result, I think this will be the draft for a painting. I think that as optical illusions go this one is to some extent original to me. This is fairly unusual with pen and paper optical illusions, so I am pleased about it.  

Here where I work at Michaels Bookshop we have more newly acquired secondhand books here is the link to the pictures of them 

Some Pictures of Ramsgate Marina Swimming Pool and Margate Lido

Starting with some photos of Ramsgate Marina Swimming Pool

This is a very early photo and you can see the railway track for the crane used to build the pool

Closed in 1976 and people ask why? 

Personally I think this is mostly a temperature related thing, and base this on having been in it, the main problem was the water was very cold.

Perhaps not an issue back in the 1930s when the pool first opened as I think heated public swimming pools started to appear in the UK just before WW2, but didn’t really become common until the 1960s.

You can heat outdoor swimming pools, I think those like the Ramsgate one that used constantly changing filtered seawater to keep the contents clean enough to swim in would be prohibitively expensive to heat.  

Of course there are plenty of people who would pay to swim in an unheated seawater swimming pool next to the sea, we used to when we were children, but I think the main reason for the closure was that there just weren’t enough of them by 1976 when the repair bill was fairly large and it closed for good.

I think another aspect was the closure of the high diving board, which was one of the pool’s main attractions, so there is a safety elf element.

Then there are the rumours.

Some say it was a council blunder that damaged Ramsgate marina swimming pool so badly it could never be used again. The story goes that some bright council officer decided to take the running of it from the borough engineers and give it to the councils leisure department. The sceptical engineers handed it to the leisure department with a set of instructions about running and maintaining it, one of which was never to empty it without supporting the seaward facing side. This was because it was designed so the weight of the water inside counteracted the forces of the sea battering against it. The first thing the leisure department did when they took it over was to empty it unsupported. In the resulting cover up councillors were told that the damage was caused bomb during WW2 that had weakened the structure.

Some say the problem was the old design of the building and that the pool was actually on 'stilts' and you could walk underneath it at low tide. As the tide came in the void was filled with seawater. The dated building measures made this a fatal design fault. Gradually the chalk below began to erode, and as a result the foundations moved, causing the pool to crack. This was patched for years until repairs were impossible. It was also too expensive to replace.

Some say that the chalk at sea edge was excavated deliberately and that the council failed to stop this.

 

A good article on the Lost Lidos site at http://www.lostlidos.co.uk/2015/05/16/ramsgate-marina-pool/

Next Margate Lido

     

We went to Margate yesterday, mostly Old Bank Bookshop and Ghost Papa, mostly buying books for Michaels Bookshop here in Ramsgate.

Here is link to the new secondhand books we put out today