Pictures of The Viking Invasion of Thanet in 1949

pictures should expand if you click on them.

A much better Monday morning in the bookshop on the computer front meaning I can access old local pictures again.

Fortunately the main bookshop computer didn’t go wrong too so the books have been going up normally on the bookshop blog, here is the link to Saturday’s post for the dedicated followers http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/bleeding-edge-in-bookshop.html

I am having another go at trying to understand the internet’s social media, Facebook is really the only other social media site I use and with that I really only either put up what I post on my blog or link what I put up on my blog.

With Facebook the main issue that I am getting at the moment if spam friends requests, difficult for me as a lot of the genuine friends requests I get are from people who have a common interest, rather than people who I would know by name.

For the most part this is local history, but there is also a certain amount watercolour paining related or related to the scandal involving my old school.     

I have now taken to messaging people who send me unlikely looking friends requests before approving the request. 

Events on this week:
19th - 26th - York Street Gallery Exhibition
22nd - 1st May - Looping The Loop, Around Ramsgate
26th - Northwood Singers, St. Marks Church
26th - 3rd - York Street Gallery Exhibition
27th - Blend For Everyone Who Loves to Sing, The Salvation Army Church Hall
27th - Thanet Sound Crowd with Filipe Gomes, Newington Community Centre, Princess Margaret Avenue, CT12 6HX 
27th - Xenia Rubinos, Ramsgate Music Hall
28th - Sam Brookes, Ramsgate Music Hall
29th - Mayor of Ramsgate Civic Dinner, Royal Temple Yacht Club
29th - Alex Paterson [The Orb] - DJ Legend Series, Ramsgate Music Hall
29th - Free Introduction to Bowls, Government Acre, The Esplanade
29th - Make Me A Star 2017 Heat Two, The Salvation Army, High Street

Crazy waterworks in Thanet

Opposite my bookshop is a fire hydrant and recently a chap appeared opened the inspection cover put a metal rod down the hole and listened to the other end for the sound of running water, soon it became apparent that all was not well. The inevitable roadworks ensued.

Next time it rained heavily the road outside the shop became a lake so I called KCC and they sent the chaps with gully emptier to clear the drains who discovered that the chaps who repaired the fire hydrant had removed a section of the pipe for the drains.

Now when the water goes into the drains on the hill opposite the shop it comes out of the drain at the bottom of the hill flooding the road.

My main point here is that it is workers of this calibre repairing pipes at commercial operations on the drinking water aquifer that can lead to problems.

The picture shows water going in one drain and coming out the other.

Clubs and Societies Thanet

Hello Michael,I have been developing a directory of all the Clubs and Societies in the Thanet area. As you obviously have an interest in the area too would you considerhaving a look for any omissions or errors? It's a website where anyone cancontribute, so feel free to make changes.http://www.activethanet.com/

The idea is to provide a resource for everyone looking for a new activity to take up. Life is more than just work followed by pubs and clubs! Andyoungsters are less likely to create mischief if they are not bored. I wassurprised to discover that there is a lot going on in Thanet. So I've tried tobring all this information into one place.All the best,Parker

Immigration Control

Here in the bookshop today we had a visit from immigration control, apparently to see if we were letting out parts of the building to house illegal immigrants. They are apparently visiting all the shops and asking who lives in the flats above them, just telling them that we lived in the flat satisfied them, however after they went it did occur to me that perhaps not the people with flats full of illegal immigrants would admit to it.

It says on the back of the photo, Driver C Crow nigger mistral A Kirby 1920, I believe the location to be Minster as it’s part of a set of a Ramsgate charabanc operators pictures, that are going into the book Postcards of Ramsgate volume 4 that I am working on at the moment.

Health & Efficiency

Peter Checksfield of Naked in Thanet, link on sidebar, has just commented on an old post of mine about local nudist beaches to the effect that Health & Efficiency magazine has done an article about TDCs consultation on local nudists facilities.

Click here to read the article

Click here for the old post

Click here for Peter’s main website

Thanet Ground Water Quality

Is Thanet’s drinking water safe? The following rather disquieting document was obtained through the freedom of information act.

You would have received the documents that where sent regarding the area of the runway and the chemicals/compounds found in the underground aquifer

This application whilst welcome - does not address some of the issues/concerns.

What is not helpful is that this planning application is the wrong way round in that no discharge consent is in place to direct other matters of the application in more detail. For clarity when the discharge application is live then I believe a four month public consultation applies? You could say that we have a cart before the horse arrangement with this application. Click here to read on

Naked in Thanet

As you can see from the picture of Ramsgate in the 1700s Ramsgate has a long history of naturism that dates back to when the human species discovered the beach.

It has come to my attention that Thanet District Council are discriminating against Thanet’s naturists. If like me, you are older or fatter than you would like to be, then like me your first reaction may be to laugh, or is that snigger.

But there is a very serious point here, our naturists Thanetoneons who pay their taxes like you and me, need a beach where they can pursue naturism legitimately, and most importantly where they are protected by the law of the land so that should anyone go there and engage in an indecent or obscene act they can call the police and be protected like anyone else.

Thanet’s civic leaders

I was looking through the 1937 guide to Broadstairs as one does and I noticed the picture above (click on it to enlarge) of the local civic heads. They must have all felt they made their mark on The Isle of Thanet yet after what is three score years and ten, only about a lifetime I wonder if anyone could identify them or say what their achievements were. Perhaps our civic heads today should consider that if they fail to find adequate funding for our local museums in 70 years time there won’t even be a photograph of them for anyone to see.

Click here to look inside the book Come To Sunny Broadstairs Official Guide 1937

Map Madness

I got sucked into one of those local history puzzles that emanated from the Thanet Life blog this week. The puzzle involved dating the map shown.

I thought I had solved the conundrum of the map, it is a prime example of how local history is inclined to tell us lies, because the further back one goes in time the less people are able to produce accuracy added to this is that one book tends to copy the mistakes of the previous book.

I think what happened that around 1800 someone did a fairly decent private commercial survey of The Isle of Thanet, all the earlier maps that I have ever seen show something that is essential the wrong shape, see the map of 1732 at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id51.htm
The earliest fairly accurate map or Thanet that I can put a date to, that I have is 1800 it comes from my copy of Hasted’s History of Kent http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tol/map_of_thanet_about_1800.htm as you can see it is considerably more primitive than Hinds’s map, the earliest Thanet map I have that looks the right shape is in my 1809 guide produced by Hogben Surveyor Margate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/id213.htm
Anyway you have to appreciate that no one surveyor prior to the triangulation of the whole country and the publication of the Ordnance Survey map in 1819, made one survey and got the shape of Thanet right.

Looking at the 1819 OS map I don’t think Hinds used this for the basis of his map so either he drew it before 1819 or was scared of the copyright implications.

Anyway once he had drawn his map he stuck with it, here is the 1872 edition of the same map http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/id211.htm copied from Charles Busson’s The Book of Ramsgate. With railway corrections showing the railway built in 1863 rather proving the point.

So how much Mr Hinds copied from other maps and how much he surveyed himself is a matter of conjecture, however I suspect when he drew the map of Ramsgate in 1849

he may have had more than a passing glance at Collard and Hurst’s map of 1822 http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tol/map_of_ramsgate_in_1822.htm

However it is as well to remember that the first triangulation survey of England in 1787 was made for military purposes the first survey using trigonometry was started in 1791 so in the late 1700s and early 1800s was pretty much rocket science.

Why your house doesn’t appear where it should I just don’t know, I can’t however imagine that either Hogben or Hinds could have cover the whole island with theodolite and compass.

Well I thought that was that but something about the 1872 edition of the map niggled at me last night, it was that it shows the parish boundary or St Lawrence and the boundary of Ramsgate Cinque Port but it doesn’t show other parish boundaries. Now these two boundaries are not on the earlier edition of the map I was trying to date. So I looked in the main history of St Lawrence written by Charles Cotton and published in 1895 facing page 14 is the map that Busson calls the 1872 map of Thanet. It is fairly obvious that the parish boundaries were added to the map in 1895 as it is facing a page about the parish boundaries. It is also obvious that this is where Busson copied it from, although he doesn’t say so. Why he should call a map published in 1895 an 1872 map of Thanet is beyond me.

Now looking at the first map I am fairly certain that it was drawn between 1791 and 1810 this hinges on the way Ramsgate Harbour is shown. If you look carefully you will see that the harbour cross wall has two gates and a further opening at the western end. Now in Smeaton’s plan of the harbour in 1791 http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Smeaton/ you will see that the cross wall has only one set of gates but does not extend quite as far as the west pier. The next plan of Ramsgate Harbour I have is 1817 this shows two sets of gates and the cross wall extending all the way to the west pier. As Hinds was a Ramsgate surveyor I don’t think he would have made a mistake about the shape of Ramsgate harbour and I feel this map must date from between when the second gate was put in the cross wall and the cross wall extended to the west pier.

My guess is that that Cotton wanted in 1895 to use a map of Thanet that was not subject to copyright and so drew the parish boundaries and the railways on and that Busson when he used the map from cotton guessed the date of the map from the railways.

The final act of misinformation that I have found so far is that in section 8 of The Ramsgate Millennium Book where the map is dated 1872 so there you have it, our main source of Ramsgate history patently wrong.

I should add that it would have been most unusual to write an s in the shape of an f after 1820.

You have to be rather tenacious to make any progress with local history.

Footpaths of Thanet by Bob Simmonds

Cedric had already asked if they knew of any attractive back passages in the area, before realising, to his horror, that the 'THANET WANDERERS' were not actually a local walking group, as he had supposed.

Having just read Eastcliff Richard’s frustrated comments to the anonymous ramblers making unrelated comments on his blog about one of Ramsgate’s lifts. “What has all that got to do with the lift? If you want to ramble, please do it in the countryside!” It really is very annoying to be having a chat about a lift while anonymous people are replying about holocaust denial lectures and the smuggling ring run by Geoff Capes in the 1970's as though this was somehow related.


I thought it was time some of us went for a ramble so featured here is my publication, Footpaths of Thanet by Bob Simmonds. The illustration is from the book.

This is a book for those who -

- like to get around without having to use the car,

- take pleasure in seeing their surroundings from a different point of view,

- enjoy discovering unfamiliar parts of East Kent,

- sometimes want to get away from all the noise and the traffic, and take a wander down a leafy lane,

- get a kick out of finding themselves somewhere they least expected,

- prefer to go and come back by different routes,

- or just like walking for the sheer pleasure of it.

With lots of information about the network of footpaths, alleyways and leafy lanes that cover the Isle of Thanet, it will enable you to do seemingly eccentric things - like walk to Westwood Cross avoiding the traffic, get up close and personal with the planes at Manston airport, or find pleasant ways to cut quickly across deadly-dull housing estates.

Click here to read more

Thanet’s tidal surge

The tidal surge was fortunately a bit of a non-event here in Thanet Ramsgate only had a slightly higher tide than the spring tide back in September that was much more spectacular due to the larger waves. I did notice that the dry dock in Ramsgate harbour was leaking pretty badly and suspect it needs some maintenance.
Here are some pictures there are also some on Thanet Life Eastcliff Richard and Zumi blogs