Focus on Harbour Parade Ramsgate around 200 years ago

This picture of what is now Harbour Parade in Ramsgate looks to have been painted around 1820

Many Thanks to Sally and Rob who bought it for sharing a decent sizes photo of it, click on it to expand it. 

 The domed roof far right or the picture above and far left of the picture below is The Harbour Commissioners Rooms, also marked on the map.

These two pictures are from Picturesque Views of Ramsgate by Henry Moses which was published 1817 so probably drawn in 1816.

I have marked up some of this detail from the 1822 map of Ramsgate to help unscramble what you are seeing.

Next some much more modern photos, before about 1895 and probably after 1860. 

 My guess is that this is the older of the pre 1895ish photos as it was probably The Albion Hotel before the Royal Albion Hotel

With this one you can't see the writing 

This detail from the 1872 map of Ramsgate is probably as close to you are going to get to the pre 1895ish photos as you are going to get. Note by this time The Harbour Commissioners Rooms has become Custom House, later to be built on the other side of the road in 1893/4. Deep red brick with matching terracotta details and copper dome type of thingy.

Apart from selling quite a few maps of Ramsgate to people on the same sort of quest for knowledge we have also sold a lot of local history books in the last few days Here at Michel's Bookshop where I work in Ramsgate.

Here is the link to photos of the books we put out today

As I say your best bet is a browse of the local history books here in the bookshop however for now.

Link to the 1849 map of Ramsgate

Ramsgate Pleasurama sewage and cliff

A few pictures from yesterday, as you can see the hole where the sewage leak was has been filled in and tarmaced over.

This picture also taken yesterday shows the surface of the water in the harbour adjacent, I an not saying that it is still leaking sewage, just that is what it looks like.

Oh and the bit of the repaired Pleasurama cliff facade that was recently rerepaired has now been repainted, it must be about time to weed it again, I am pretty sure there should be an annual contract to do that.

To enlarge the pictures click on them and then click on them again, perhaps not recommended for the one of the surface of the water.

Sewage in Ramsgate harbour update.

The council have taken the emergency measure of capping off the sewage pipe and filling in the hole, I think there are several possible problems here, one being that the condition of the pipe suggested that the sewage would just leak out a bit further along, another is that there is a sluice just like the one that was leaking raw sewage into the harbour to the west a bit and that obviously needs investigating as well.

They were both constructed for the same purpose, flushing the western undercliff outfall pipe and were both connected together within the same system.

The problem for me is that at one time, once I knew that the council were aware of the problem, I would have just dropped the issue assuming that they would do all of the appropriate things to protect the public.

Now both with KCC and TDC as I have pointed out public safety issues to them in the past which still remain unresolved – an example being the failure to set a weight limit for vehicles using the footpath, adjacent to the cliff, top side, behind the Pleasurama development – I find I now have to pursue this sort of thing until I have some sort if written answer confirming their intent. Frankly this is embarrassing and time consuming for all involved, but I don’t see any other course of action as contact with raw sewage can kill people.

Obviously to inspect this maze of old sewers and surface drainage pipes and resolve the safety issues will be an expensive business, something that I expect will make things even more difficult given the present economic climate.

The new outfall site for the Pleasurama roof drainage pipe has mostly been excavated, so far without problems.

Raw sewage running into Ramsgate Harbour and the basements along Harbour Parade.

For as long as I can remember the corner of the inner basin where the King George IV Maritime Heritage Pontoons are situated has often smelt strongly of drains and various people I know with some understanding of the history of Ramsgate’s civil engineering have told me that all is not well with the sewers in that part of Ramsgate.

Last week the workmen excavating the area around the sluice in this part of the harbour discovered a void has formed behind this sluice – something that leaks very badly in both directions – running into this is a sewer.

This means that as the rise and fall of the tide in the inner basin fills and empties this void the sewage is flushed into the harbour, as the basements in Harbour Parade flood regularly, it would also seem reasonable to assume that the floodwater there contains a proportion of sewage to a greater or lesser degree.

I should point out here that the people doing this work are competent as is the contractor for the Pleasurama development and it is my understanding that the dangerous problems here have been reported to the proper authorities.

Incidentally the sewers here and any sewage should be and theoretically have been since Victorian times, at a much greater depth, certainly deeper than the cellars in harbour parade.

The only thing that would be at this depth is surface drainage from the road and possibly peoples roofs, so this a serious problem that either relates to the early to mid 1900s sewage system still being connected, which it shouldn’t be, or that the surface drainage has been illegally tapped into.

This whole area is too dangerous for the work on the outflow to the inner basin to continue and I understand that this has now been rerouted to a different existing opening on the eastern side of the inner basin.

There is of course the more fundamental problem here, that is that the whole infrastructure in Harbour Parade would seem unlikely to be able to cope with the new Royal Sands Development, a problem that is likely to be an expensive and disruptive one.

Some of the pictures to substantiate this are really rather unpleasant, so I haven’t published them, those I have published are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id31.htm I am not sure if this is where the scum on the water comes from but it would seem probable.

Harbour Parade Ramsgate

Also known in past times as Waterside, East End, Goldsmid Place, Harbour Street and Town Quay, something that can cause some confusion when identifying buildings.

Phil About Ramsgate blog http://my-ramsgate.blogspot.com/ has been putting pictures of old Ramsgate onto the web, see http://picasaweb.google.com/115229654097861593494/OldRamsgate# some of which either I have never seen before or I have never seen on the internet so that I have time to study them properly.
The picture above is one of them and immediately prompted the question, is this on the site of the Alexandra Hotel building that is there now

Anyway the net result of all of this is that I have spent most of the day looking at old pictures of harbour parade and the buildings there, trying to work out what was where when.

I wouldn’t say that I am much the wiser but this link takes you to some of the pictures that I have of this part of Ramsgate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id17.htm I am pretty sure that I have published most of them on the internet before but I suppose that any of you who have tried working back through this blog to October 2007 and clicking on the links to pictures of Ramsgate will know that it is quite a task.