Pen and Watercolour Sketch of Birchington Today from DriftWood Café, more on the Manston cpo situation and a ramble

This painting of Birchington didn’t get finished as I had to get back to Ramsgate for School’s Out, ‘fraid to say I rushed at it a bit at the end.

There is a letter from PwC to The DfT doing the rounds at the moment, it’s in the form of a pdf file so a picture of the beginning and an ocr of the text underneath, as I don’t know how to post pdfs on social media apart from leaving people to download the file.  

 PwC

Dpartment for Transport

Great Minster House

33 Horseferry Road

London  SW1P 4DR

For the attention of **** and ***

26 March 2015

Dear**** and****

Manston Airport Review

Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP (“PwC” or “we”) is pleased to have been appointed as the independent consultant to undertake a review of the documents supplied by Thanet District Council (“TDC”) and RiverOak Investment Corp LLC (“RiverOak”) to the Department for Transport (“DfT” or “you”).

We confirm that we have this week received the relevant documents relating to the Council’s decision not to take forward a Compulsory Purchase Order of the Manston Airport site with RiverOak as the indemnity  partner.  These  documents  cover  the  period  from  4  May  2014  to  25  February  2015  and include financial information provided by RiverOak.

We have agreed a work plan with you and commenced our work. The objective is to provide DfT with a full report  by Friday  22 May 2015. The report will address our scope of work and provide DfT with specific advice in relation to:

1.

Any key considerations that TDC could have taken into account at the time, based on a review of the information provided to TDC (at the time).

2.

Further  key  considerations  that  TDC  may  wish to  take into  account  in any  further CPO  review, based on a review of the information provided by RiverOak to DfT.

3.

On the basis of the findings from the above, PwC’s advice on what, if any, further work TDC may wish to undertake to help strengthen findings from any future due diligence exercise.

However,  PwC  is  not  expected  to  provide  DfT  with  a  view  on  whether  TDC’s  due  diligence  was sufficient, nor on the reasonableness or otherwise of TDC’s conclusions.

2

At this early stage, we can report that we have: Met  with DfT for  an  inception meeting  where  we  finalised  scope, confirmed  our work plan  and reporting;

-

Received dossiers of documents from DfT encompassing the relevant documents from TDC and RiverOak; and Commenced our initial review of the above documents.

Our next actions will involve:

-

Preparing a timeline of the process between, and inclusive of, the document dates outlined above to assist our review;

-

Identifying any areas of difference in the dossiers of TDC and RiverOak, which you have provided to us;

-

Identifying documents, such as RiverOak’s CPO indemnity offer, financial information and other relevant decision documents that may require specific review by subject matter experts;

-

Understanding  RiverOak’s  readiness  to  commit  funding  to  promote  the  CPO  process,  upon signing of an agreement with TDC; and

-

Understanding TDC’s due diligence of RiverOak’s financial status, availability of funding to cover CPO costs and business plan.

We will remain in close contact with DfT, and we will bring to your attention any questions in relation to documents received, including any information gaps which may impact our work.

What it actually means is open to interpretation I guess and will have a go later if I get time.  

I guess the big revelation to come from this letter is something along the lines of; I think most people thought that PwC would either say that TDC had got it wrong and should pursue a cpo, or that TDC had acted correctly and RiverOak were an unsuitable indemnity partner.

Although the PwC letter is framed in legal language it does seem to be saying something else is what they are doing.   

New Old Birchington Book out today

Published today “Birchington In Thanet Kent” Sea & Sun, by F G Redman, price £3.99 click on the link if you want to buy it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/birchington_in_thanet_kent.htm

This is very much a guide in the style of the time as you can see from the sample pages.

I do publish some other Birchington books, recommended are the following:

A History of the Ville of Birchington by J. P. Barrett although published in 1893, so it predates the previous 120 years of Birchington’s history, this is one of the best of Thanet’s Victorian local history books and I would say a must for anyone interested in our local history.

Price £6.99 click on the link to buy it now http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/a_history_of_the_ville_of_birchington.htm

Dangerous Coastline 1939 – 1945 By Derek S. Hart.

This book is about the Second World War seen through the eyes of a child growing up in Birchington.

He tells of finding mines on the beach, the spectacle of the Battle of Britain being fought in the skies above and includes humorous anecdotes involving some of the troops.

Price £7.99 click on the link to buy it now http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/dangerous_coastline_1939_1945.htm

The also ran Birchington publications are:

The Birchington and Westgate Street Directory 1900 £3.99 click on the link to buy http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/the_birchington_and_westgate_street_directory_1900.htm

Birchington Great War Patriotic Record £5.99 click on the link to buy http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/birchington_great_war_patriotic_record_.htm

I will supply any or all of these post free to UK addresses.

Obviously Birchington features in several of the other local books I publish and I often have secondhand copies of other books about Birchington, so I recommend coming to the shop and having a look at the local books if you can. The shop is open from 9.30 to 5.30 but closed Sundays and Wednesdays.

Pictures of the gardens at Quex Park Gardens, at Birchington on the Isle of Thanet.

A little light relief here, what with Ramsgate swarming with armed police today, the youf of today are saying that there was some sort of armed robbery in Camden Road today and some fairly heated comment on other posts today.

Something has gone wrong with the way blogger records comments so you may find my site that does this and works reliably helpful, here is the link http://thanetblogs.blogspot.com/

About 400 pictures of the gardens here are the links.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id20.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id21.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id22.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id23.htm

it will be some time before they all appear I think some will be sideways and some will need deleting like you I won’t be able to look at them until they have published as I just copied them from the camera and pasted them to the internet leaving my computer showing an egg timer for an hour or so.

This last lot have been sorted out a bit and should be better http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id24.htm well I think they are.

The Bells the Bells, Health and Safety? Gone Mad in Birchington.

There is a long history of bells and bell ringing in Birchington going back well over 500 years, the earliest recorded mention of them in the parish records is in 1532.

Item ij new belroyps on to the grett bell and other to the small bell xviiid (1/6 in old money 7 ½ p in new money about £40 at today’s value)

Click here for more details from the book “A History of the Ville of Birchington 1893 by J P Barrett I produce a cheap reprint of this book from the best edition (1908 reprint with additional annals) click here should you wish to buy it.

Although the only connection with TV series and Waterloo tower that I know of is that it appeared in a 1978 Blakes7 episode, on arrival at Quex Park I was greeted by the device in the picture above, click on it to enlarge and was immediately reminded of the TV series The Prisoner.

I am ever mindful that Thanet is an island and with the steady increase of denizens combined with the advances in technology, every time I leave it I check that the exit road hasn’t turned into the entrance road and all escapes have been closed.

Anyway back to the surveillance point or whatever it is, looking at this thing, first impressions suggested that all would not be well with this visit and that the nasty modern world had invaded Amicus Kentis.

Last time I visited the bell tower there, an open day probably about 15 years ago, the most pleasant part of the visit was the viewing gallery, situated in the metal spire 77 feet above Quex Park the views are quite remarkable.

Now the only part of going up the tower (not the viewing gallery I could understand members of the public not being allowed up there) that could by any stretch of the imagination be considered dangerous is ascending the narrow spiral staircases inside one of the turrets.

On yesterdays visit I was told that now heath and safety regulations meant that one could only go up the tower as far as the first floor (nothing much there and you can’t see out of the windows), no one there seemed to know quite why this was the case, the spiral staircase between the other floors is just the same, equally safe or dangerous however you like to see it, all the bells were down, so no danger there.

So no photographs of either the bells or the view only, the only person I knew connected with Quex, who I am sure would have been quite happy to let me all the way up the tower, was Christopher Powell Cotton unfortunately he died in 2006.

Click here for the pictures I did take, I got a bit diverted into photographing various cracks that have appeared in the tower, these don’t seem to be consistent with stresses caused by ringing the bells and interested me.

Some notes on the tower, sources “The Waterloo Tower at Quex Park” by Hazel Basford (8 pages A5 50p published by The Quex park Society of Change ringers) and http://www.quexringers.org/pages/change-ringers.htm but mostly from my own researches.

Information about why John Powell Powell the local squire decided to build his own bell tower is scant.

Tradition has it that he offered various bells and to build a bell tower at the west end of Birchington church, there is no information now as to why his offers were spurned the Powle family have been at Quex since 1673 (vide Hasted vol X 1800), I am assuming the family is the same and the spelling only has changed.

John Powell Powell also built a second tower on his estate for another of his pleasures, the discharging of cannon (vide Ireland vol I 1828 who also points out that nearby is Plum-pudding island, a resort for pugilists exempt from the intrusion of constables &c.) so perhaps he didn’t need a reason.

I digress back to the bells, when completed in 1819 it was the first bell tower in Kent to have a ring of 12 bells the next to this being Canterbury cathedral having only 10 bells at that time.

The tenor bell is inscribed "This peal of bells was cast for John Powell Powell of Quex House, Isle of Thanet, by Thos. Mears of Whitechapel, London, for the amusement of himself and his friends". A truly secular peal!

The architect was William Fuller Pocock the cost of the tower was about £9,000 a considerable sum at that time. The height of the top of the metal spire is 124 ft the top of the brick tower being 60 ft 6 ins above ground.

Originally the bells were hung in two tiers on an oak frame, the bells were cast by Whitechapel Bell Foundry and various recastings have been done by them over the years (people that build bell towers for their own amusement don’t expect to go back to the shop for repairs after a mere 200 years and find they no longer have the spare parts) the last being in 1989 the result of a freak accident when the wooden stopper became detached and jammed bringing the 9th bell to a dead stop and severely cracking it. This bell weighing I believe about 9cwt was then smashed up in the tower and thrown over the side of the tower, the shards being collected up for recasting on the floor of the ringing room. The recast bell was the hoisted up the tower with considerable difficulty and rehung without removing any of the other bells, an operation not without risk.

I should note here that there is an iron grating in the middle of the ringing room, on the ground floor of the tower, under this is a shallow well with short passages leading from it, they don’t go anywhere and are not worth ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers over.

The boards in the ringing room record various feats of campanology, the rules here are always the same, one band of ringers for the duration, no one is allowed a rest or to let go of their rope. If anything goes wrong the peal is considered lost and the ringing stops. As an example of what I mean, the boards record that in 1959 a long length of the Cambridge Surprise Major was rung 13,280 changes taking 8 hours 12 minutes.

Dangerous Coastline – 1939-1945 a wartime childhood in Birchington, Kent

This book by Derek Hart was first published in 2003as the original printing has run out and I have done a reprint. The following is from the introduction.

Derek Hart wrote this book after he retired from the Post Office in 1992. Having attended a seminar for newly retired staff, he was attracted to the idea of writing the story of his wartime childhood. He realised that his experiences were unusual because so few of Birchington’s children remained in the village during the war. When the schools closed in 1940, the majority of local children were evacuated to Staffordshire, with most of the five to eleven year-olds being billeted in the Tamworth area.

Derek went to great lengths to check the accuracy of his memories and spent many hours at local libraries and checking other sources of reference. He tried to find a publisher for his work, but none was interested at that time. Sadly, he died very suddenly on the 28th May 2003, without seeing his dream realised. His widow, Maureen, and his two sons, Jason and Justin, felt that the work was of real significance and ought, somehow, to reach a local audience, so they approached the Birchington Heritage Trust.

As soon as I began to read it, I felt sure that it was of immense value to local readers, because so little information has survived from this period. Between 1940 and 1945 we only have a handful of Parish magazines, usually one of the most fruitful sources of information. The local press holds some information, but it seldom covered the ordinary day-to-day events in Birchington that Derek has so expertly captured. The manuscript has been slightly edited, but only so that it will read more easily for young and old alike. The older generation will know what all the wartime ‘jargon’ means, so we hope they will forgive some of what, to them, may seem like obvious explanations.

Derek’s family are so pleased to see this work in print and feel it is a fitting memorial to a loving husband, father and grandfather, as well as a worthy contribution to our local knowledge of a most amazing period in our island’s history, or as Churchill so aptly called it, “our finest hour”.


Jennie Burgess
Parish Archivist
Birchington: November 2003
Reprinted 2009

Click here to buy the book

Birchington in the spot light.

I took a few snaps of Birchington this morning about 8am I now realise that I should have got there much earlier as there were far too many people and vehicles about getting in the way of the buildings.

I have a reprint of a Birchington book published by me for the first time coming out this week, more about that later, so I have Birchington very much on my mind at the moment.

Having just read my last post which seems to me in retrospect to be a bit of a chaotic ramble induced by trying to use the council’s website to some purpose, I can honestly say the pictures of Birchington aren’t much better, things getting I my way got on my nerves, here are the links to them.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id11.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id12.htm

Ha, but at least I finally got the crud out of my camera, broke all the rules and used methanol at first I thought I had finished it off as I used too much, but eventually discovered a very small amount that evaporates really quickly did the trick.

King Ethelbert School, Birchington’s Try Angle Award

Pupils from the King Ethelbert School, Birchington talk about their Try Angle Award which they won for their school radio station ElectroFusion and KES Kids show. Here they talk to their teacher Lauren Pasola about the award.


Video Your Thanet TV

Ramsgate and Historical Thanet

I have just published another reprint of a local guide, it’s undated but appears to be about 1920 most interestingly to me are the street maps within for Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, Westgate, Birchington and Minster.

As this is pre the unification of the railways you can see the ways the two competing companies managed to reach both of the main towns.

The first railway to get to Thanet was the Southeastern and Chatham Railway the first station to open was in Ramsgate in 1846 as you see from the map it was at the top of the High Street, the present station, at the other end of Station Approach Road replaced it in 1924. Sometime after that (forgotten the date) the line was extended on to Margate.

Then came the London Chatham and Dover Railway via Margate that terminated at Ramsgate Sands Station that opened in 1863 and closed in 1926.

Now of course the two lines are connected together in a loop.

Click on the links below to look at to the information mentioned in this post.

Ramsgate and Historical Thanet

The early 1920s maps

Birchington Great War patriotic Record

Click here to see more pages from the book

Please leave comments related to the book and the people mentioned in it.








The following is by Parish Archivist Jennie Burgess.

“For many years, there has been a large red book in the glass case near Quex Chapel in All Saints Church, Birchington. The book is hand made and beautifully illuminated, containing both text and photographs, and is totally unique. It contains a record of how the people of the village of Birchington responded to the events of the 1914 – 1918 War.

Because the book is irreplaceable, it has been felt that it should not be left in such a vulnerable position, but before it was placed into safe keeping, the pages have all been scanned.




As a result of studying the contents of these pages, some amazing facts have emerged about the life of this enterprising and caring community during those difficult times. Men like Major Powell-Cotton of Quex Park, who oversaw the care of the hundreds of wounded sent to Birchington and Major George F. Holland of 'Clovelly', Berkeley Road, who ran the military side of things in the village and then undertook to write this book at the end of the war.

It is a pity that a similar enterprise was not undertaken after the 2nd World War, for that same spirit was clearly as evident then, as it is now. Our community of Birchington is one of which to feel justly proud, and the old book gives us ample evidence of this.”

Many thanks to Jennie and Birchington PCC for allowing me to produce a facsimile of this attractive and interesting work.

The pictures are pages from the book.