Ramsgate Sands, going going gone? With some thoughts on the Pleasurama site, the Royal Victoria Pavillion, the sea defences and the world wars.

Before the First World War Ramsgate had no sands at high tide, the shape formed by the promenade and the harbour wall causes some build up of sand but not enough to reach above the high tide mark.

This picture illustrates what I mean, it dates from around 1910.

Ramsgate Harbour had been in its present form for around 80 years when this preliminary sketch for Life at the Seaside by William Powell Frith was drawn in 1850.

During both world wars there was a threat of invasion so a mixture of concrete and barbed wire defences were put on Ramsgate Sands to deter the enemy. 

You can see from this picture taken not long after world war two that the amount of sand trapped by the war defences was considerable.

The situation remained the same throughout the 50s 60s and 70s

During the early 1980s most of the sand and associated wartime defences that held it in place was removed from the beach and used for the infill to build Port Ramsgate.

The amount of sand has been slowly diminishing this was the situation in 2010, note the walkway on the sands for the disabled extending from the concrete area in front of the beach cafe, this was twice as long in 2009

This is the situation today, as you can see we lost a lot of sand during the winter.

With very few exceptions the sea defences around are coast are modern concrete structures built during the last fifty years and maintained by the environment agency.

The sea defences behind Ramsgate Sands are owned and maintained by Thanet District Council. The ones in front of the pavillion date from when it was built in 1903 and had the sea smashing against them for about twelve years before the sand built up and the sea came no where near them. The ones in front of the Pleasurama site were built in 1860 so they were in contact with the sea for around 55 years and for the last 95 years the sea has come nowhere near them.

During this time the council have no record of any sea defence maintenance there and at some point they managed to lose the construction drawings.

The recent concrete steps, seats and coloured promenade sits on the sand held in place by the 1860 sea defence as do the recent Pleasurama foundations. 

  

I will ramble on here about the possible implications for the Pleasurama site and The Royal Victoria Pavillion, if I get time, though I doubt I will need to draw a diagram to get most people to understand that we have a problem. If as much sand goes as went last winter the sea will once again be smashing against the sea defences.   

The progression suggests that the Pleasurama site will be at serious risk within two or three years as it has the earliest sea defence made of slabs laid on the side of the chalk spoil from the railway tunnel that was used to elevate the site enough for the railway station.

The pavillion appears to sit on a more solid concrete defence and the sand in front of it should be the last to go, perhaps five to ten years.

Of course much could be done now to mitigate the problem, but first the situation need a professional assessment, such as the recent one done in Margate, it and the resultant works were funded out of the national coastal protection budget and not out of council tax. 

Update

 I went down there today and the situation with the sand seems to have turned some sort of critical point where it eroding more rapidly, as you see the non tidal area has nearly reached the Pavillion.

A further update this picture was taken today 18.04.2014

Environmental considerations

Here in Thanet there are three big environmental issues, the biggest being the decision not to hold the line on the north coast Wantsum sea defences, followed by a relaxation of the regulations that protect our drinking water supplies and relatively minor in comparison the Pleasurama development.

The first could quite literally wipe a large part of southeast Kent off the map, the second could result in poisoning of our drinking water supply and the third over a thousand people being trapped between the sea and the cliff in a collapsing building.

These are all worst-case scenarios and of course with all of these issues one of my concerns is that I have misunderstood something and am engaged in unnecessary scaremongering.

For the most part all of the issues are controlled by the environment agency and until I became involved in them, I had reasonable confidence that they knew what they were doing.

Now with the China gateway development, the environment agency officer in charge of the case has admitted to me in writing, that he hadn’t read the planning application properly.

“Regrettably the level of resourcing available to assess the flood risk implications of planning applications does not permit the scrutiny of all 271 pages of the flood risk assessment appendices”

As this came from a civil servant, and they don’t normally admit things like that in writing to a member of the public, I take it as a clear signal that something has gone very wrong, it begs a very important question, which is.

“Are the officers making decisions of huge environmental impact on our future, properly qualified and resourced?”

The picture of Ramsgate harbour wall, which is made of granite and is at a higher level above sea level than Pleasurama is an indicator of what happens when we get an easterly gale combined with a high tide.

Thanet and the Wantsum

With all the recent talk of allowing the sea defences to fail that stop Thanet from becoming an island again, I thought some historical background would be helpful to some of you.

When the last ice age ended about 10,000 B.C. the glacial melt down caused by the global warming resulted in sea levels to rising by about 100 meters, separating the UK from Europe. By about 3,000 B.C. the level had filled in the ancient waterway known as the Wantsum.

The geological information suggests that in Roman times the Wantsum a considerable waterway about two miles wide and 30 feet deep. Until it silted up it was the main sea route between the Thames and the North Sea, and the English Channel. Going round the North Foreland has always represented a nautical challenge. It is our local mini Cape of Good Hope or going round the Horn.

If you consider the seas rising leaving Thanet an island, because it is higher and the surrounding land is lower, what you have to start with can be thought of as the typical children’s concept of an island, a chalk hill with a flattish top poking out of the water.

The north, east and south coasts being subject to the full force of wave action were eroded away, the result being our chalk cliffs. The west and southwest coast of Thanet faced the UK mainland and were subject to the gentle silting up of the Wantsum channel. This silting up was a very slow process and without large scale land reclamation Thanet would probably still be an island today.

From about 1,000 AD the two great monasteries of Minster and Canterbury owned most of the land around the Wanstsum and from about this time the monks started building dykes and reclaiming land.