A few Ramsgate pictures from this morning, Albion House and Augusta Stairs, sketch and photos.

Albion House in scaffolding sketch, Pitt Pen size S

Just got back, so a couple more pictures

The beach was busy today.

looking at the sketch at the top I am not happy with it, the Georgian castellated Belgian Pete's cafe factory thingy should be in front of Albion House

 have to consult an art expert, not that one silly.

perhaps I should have used a roller

I have added a bit of 'istory for Augusta Stairs, you will have to click on the images compulsively to read the text

Photos from inside Albion House Ramsgate

I think this link should work OK https://plus.google.com/photos/103118335852639233427/albums/5947309833580746545?banner=pwa&sort=1 you may have to click on the button that says “all photos” top left of the page.

There are also the other pictures I took today and a lot of repetitions, the way Google manages its photo sharing has changes slightly and to be hones I am not quite sure what you will see, at the moment there should be 318 photos including some of my thumb etc.

I am unlikely to try and sort them out today as I am busy with other things. 

Albion House Ramsgate open to the public this Sunday the 17th November.

This opening is between 12 noon and 3 pm with tours on the half hour and is your chance to look inside the building before the renovation work starts that will see Albion House turned into a hotel.  

Albion House Ramsgate, Cash in Your Attic?

Many thanks to one of my readers who sent me pictures of chairs and other furniture from Albion House going off to auction in Canterbury.

Ramsgate Town Council Albion House and the Custom House.

A few thoughts here that come from reading today’s Isle of Thanet Gazette see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/thanet/Ramsgate-town-council-moves-109-years/article-1797328-detail/article.html and Mark Nottingham’s blog see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramsgates-new-town-hall.html

The main thing that concerns me here is that this issue could divide many people who are pro Ramsgate and should be on the same side, the problem being that that the issue of saving Albion House has got confused with the issue of finding an appropriate home for our town council.

Much of this is to do with how grant funding works, the problem being that grant funding that would be available to a non government organisation, and was available for the restoration of the Custom House wouldn’t as far as I understand, be available either to TDC or RTC.

I may have misunderstood this in some way, so please correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it there are only two ways forward for Albion House, one is to form a charitable trust that can get the grants another is to sell it to a private company that can get the grants.

Now at the moment TDC are using Albion House to fight a legal battle with local residents at our expense see http://thanetstrife.blogspot.com/2010/02/expensive-tdc-fight-to-oppose-hoots.html something that I find rather depressing.

The bottom line here though is that TDC has operated a strange policy of making such services as they provide in Ramsgate fairly inaccessible and fragmented through a number of different buildings.

Their offices in York Street, The Town Partnership in York Street (another closed shop now), Albion House (a building that has to have netting on it to stop bits of it falling on people that was never given disabled access), The Tourist Information office (moved from building to building in the town until it was moved to where no tourist would be likely to find it).

I also noticed that TDC want you to pay them to film The Custom House see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure__culture/filming_in_thanet/custom_house_ramsgate.aspx something I found a bit bizarre in the circumstances.

There is also a bit of a myth that Albion House has a long history of being Ramsgate’s town hall, this is just not the case, Ramsgate’s New Town Hall was in the market place on the junction of Harbour Street and Queen Street. It was the town hall from about 1840 to 1955 when it was demolished.

Why save Albion House?

Film from YourThanet 23 November 2009 A tour party of town councillors and architects visited Albion House in Ramsgate on Friday, November 20.
Thanet council plan to sell the building for residential units but campaigners have other ideas...

Albion House Ramsgate a royal residence up for sale.

As some of you will have noticed on Mark Nottingham’s blog see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2009/11/albion-house-to-be-sold-off-ramsgate.html Thanet District Council appear to be selling Albion house off.

I wonder what the new owner would do with the listed status of the ground floor, the mayor is in his parlour and all that, I wonder if the mayor is protected in all this, a stately ornament to Ramsgate, his office or something of that type.

But it does bring sharply into focus what we voted to pay extra for a town council for, was it to have a largely ceremonial function based around an historic building that we couldn’t afford to maintain, something we already had, or was it to have a more accessible elected body to represent the interests of Ramsgate to a district council more focused on Margate?

Would we be perhaps be better off with our town council based in a shop building in the town centre, where they would be much more readily accessible to local people, perhaps sharing a building with the tourist information office, now situated where a tourist would be unlikely to find it.

Window displays featuring major projects that are of concern to local people spring to mind, with information one would expect in this modern climate of open government.

Artists impressions of the new Pleasurama project, samples of the building materials on display, information about progress with the new ferry service, information about the councils support for the maritime museum and Cervia restoration project are examples of the sort of thing I mean.

There is a time and a place for grand buildings and ceremonial and to my mind that comes when local government can say it has achieved something.

Don’t misunderstand me I am not being critical of the town council here it’s too new to have achievements, good or bad, these are just thoughts on the sorts of direction it could consider going in.

Perfidious Albion House planning decision

Well the good news is that the shop front has gone as you see, however I have discovered something rather bizarre which is that English Heritage were not consulted before the plans were passed.

To view the plans you have to put the application numbers F/TH/08/1376 and L/TH/08/1377 into the search box on the TDC planning website click here to go there.

You also have to have a pdf viewing program installed on your computer.

Plans for converting part of Albion House into flats

TDC have applied for planning permission to make most of Albion House into residential accommodation, to view the plans you have to put the application numbers F/TH/08/1376 and L/TH/08/1377 into the search box on the TDC planning website click here to go there.

You also have to have a pdf viewing program installed on your computer.#

Thanks to Gerald for pointing this one out to me.

Flogging off the TDC owned buildings in Ramsgate

Malcolm has just sent me his comments on the Ramsgate asset disposal for publication, he has some interesting thoughts, click here to read them.

Flogging our Assets

There are only a few days left of the public consultation about the councils plans to sell off some of the publicly owned buildings in Thanet.

My concern is that some of these were leisure facilities and that the lack of leisure facilities is both damaging to tourism and social order.

Once again this business of making our towns nastier places directly benefits the out of town facilities at Westwood Cross, I am always suspicious when government makes decisions that the very wealthy benefit to the detriment of ordinary people.

Click here for the councils press release which has contact details should you wish to comment on this as part of the public consultation process.