Uncle Mac and Broadstairs Information Hunt, fairly high tide at Ramsgate photos, Ramsgate Society back in the Clockhouse

Mick Glover who wrote the book “St Peters and the Forgotten Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens” here is the link http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/st_peters_and_the_forgotten_ranelagh_pleasure_gardens.htm is aiming to do a book about Uncle Mac’s Troupe.

These were the Broadstairs entertainers that operated mainly on the beach from 1895 to 1948, lead by Uncle Mac whose real name was James Henry Summerson.

Mainly identified by black makeup (faces but not hands), mortarboard (teachers) hats, and pretty much always with banjos, any information about them would be useful.

Costume wise they mostly seem to be photographed wearing something close to a clown suit dressed with lace, the 1937 guide http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/sunny_broadstairs.htm says. “Uncle Mack and his Merry Minstrels will present the their usual Popular entertainment” but what the entertainment consisted of I don’t know.

So anyone who remembers the performing? Any surviving relatives?

As far as I can see this troupe would completely predate the controversy related to blacking up with its racialist connotations which I think dates from 1967 although if there was an controversy related to this that extends back to 1948 it would be interesting.

I think that in Victorian times there were some genuinely black mistrals performing in Ramsgate and white “blacked up” musician competition, this is covered in the Gossiping Guide of 1882 http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/1882_a_gossiping_guide_.htm and would need a reread, which I will do when I get the time. So whether the blacking up here in Thanet was originally supposed to be derogatory towards black minstrels or is founded on admiration for black minstrels or comes from the American blacking up that started in the early 1800s I just don’t know.

I found a few more photos online and am concluding this was predominantly a musical performance.

Some pictures of today's fairly high tide, it went about a metre higher than this about 10 years ago, the worry is always that we get a high tide associated with the equinox, combined with a tidal surge associated with low barometric pressure and a storm all at the same time.

King Street Ramsgate in 1939, bit of sketching in Canterbury

These are the Ramsgate 1938/39 street directory pages for King Street, I don’t think there were any directories from 1940 to 1948 because of the war and associated paper shortage

This is 138 King Street from Katharine Brown’s post to the Facebook group Friends of Ramsgate Seafront https://www.facebook.com/groups/1591056714503080/permalink/2000253250250089/ 

These are the Ramsgate 1938/39 street directory pages for King Street, I don’t think there were any directories from 1940 to 1948 because of the war and associated paper shortage, so hopefully the right owners as she said early 40s and this is the closest.

Here is the link for buying the directory http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id327.htm obviously you can come into the bookshop and browse it.

I’ve been watercolour painting in Canterbury today

This one is finished, I think

And this was a quick sketch in Chocolate Café after finishing the other one

A few Canterbury photos from today

A relaxed day off although we bought a lot of books for the bookshop, but then it’s usually a bit of a busman’s holiday for me. Here is the link to the pictures of the books that went on our shelves yesterday http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/born-to-run-in-bookshop.html   

Out and about in 2010 in Thanet

Another of my efforts at republishing old pictures that I took some years ago today.

This lot mostly Ramsgate with a few Birchington one at the end http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id3.htm

This lot Quex Gardens

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id4.htm

This lot Addington Street Fair http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id5.htm

This lot Pinball Parlour when it was in Addington Street http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id6.htm

This lot Margate Old Town http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id7.htm

This lot inside The Tudor House in Margate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id8.htm

This lot inside Margate Museum http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id9.htm 

This lot mostly inside one of the Margate car parks http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id10.htm

This lot inside Walpole Bay Hotel http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop910a/id11.htm

Not sure that much has changed significantly but I am sure everyone can spot a few differences.

York Street and Addington Street in 1970 and Arp, Turners and Tracey Emin's bed soon to be on show in Margate, ramble

I can't find photos from around 1970 for either York Street or Addington Street, I am pretty sure all of one side of York Street was a bomb site used as a car park and that i posted a photo of it recently. Addington Street has always seemed to be a bit of a strange one, another out of the town centre shopping street and photos of it are pretty scarce.

So the York Street 1990 one will have to suffice.

Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998 © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2014 Photo credit: Courtesy The Saatchi Gallery, London / Photograph by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Margate’s Tracey Emin returns to Turner Contemporary with an exhibition pairing My Bed with a collection of works by JMW Turner Tracey Emin, My Bed/ JMW Turner, 13 October 2017 –14 January 2018, Turner Contemporary

On her return to her hometown Margate,Emin has said: “Out of all the places My Bed has been shown this is one of the most exciting and ambitious for me as I know the audience will be very discerning.”The installation will be shown alongside paintings by J.M.W. Turner, another famous ex-resident of Margate who returned regularly to the seaside town for its unique quality of light and skies, which he considered “the loveliest in all of Europe.”

I suppose of all the contemporary art “My Bed” has to be one of the most famous and probably the most famous from the last decade of the last century, so I hope that this will be a successful exhibition for Turner Contemporary.

Turner Contemporary is also having a Jean Arp exhibition “The Poetry of Forms”   Oct to Jan

The renewed plans for Ramsgate Harbour are causing a bit of a stir, see https://theisleofthanetnews.com/renewed-plans-for-doubling-lorry-capacity-and-reclaiming-land-at-ramsgate-port/

And the council document http://moderngov.dover.gov.uk/documents/s23366/East%20Kent%20Growth%20Framework%20-%20Appendix%201.pdf  

I think that at the moment the balance between particulate air pollution produced by transport and its affects on life expectancy has gone off the scale, in terms of recent publications in scientific journals.

I would say that at the moment building anything likely to produce a lot of exhaust, before emissions from jet aeroplanes and ships are drastically reduced, that is immediately upwind of large concentrations of population, is a very big issue.

It’s one thing to discover that an existing port or airport is reducing the life expectancy of thousands of people living upwind, i.e. is killing them, and to be doing something about the problem. It is quite another thing to plan to build something new that you know will kill thousands of people.

I got sucked into this issue over Manston Airport which for me has moved away from being mainly a noise issue to the issue of how many years building a freight hub there would knock of local peoples lives, no I think that’s life’s.

I think with The Port of Ramsgate being directly upwind of the town then whatever is done there needs careful environmental investigation.  

The visible cloud of pollution over Dover is something that worries me and how much of it is carried our way by the prevailing winds. With all the interest in 1970 and a desire by many people to go there it’s as well to remember that it’s as recently as 1972 that asbestos dust was banned in talcum powder.

I think the latest significant publication is http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/early/2017/09/21/ASN.2017030253

In layman’s terms:- For every increase of 10 micrograms of particulates per cubic metre of air, the risk of chronic kidney disease increased by 27%, and the risk of kidney failure increased by 26%. 

With Manston where my reduction in life expectancy in Broadstairs was around three years with this new report I now make it four. The figures are all available on the internet, mostly on the RSP website and I would appreciate anyone who has come up with different ones saying so.   

Back here in King Street Ramsgate

I thought an art shop

but building supplies.

and finally this is the link to the books that went out on our shelves today 

Bellevue Road Ramsgate in 1970 and a rant

Here are the entries for Bellevue Road in the 1971 street directory

I think the top photo could be about right datewise the rest are obviously much earlier.

Mi mum having had a guesthouse in Augusta Road in the 60s and 70s I am familiar with pop down to Daws for some pork chops or Gerrard’s for a sack of potatoes and even a bit of under age drinking in The Iron Duke or five Park Drive from Ranyner’s.

The promised confused rant

A bit of a roundup of national and Thanet related news this evening, mainly as I read the articles throughout the day and now have time to look at them properly. 

150 photos of Lord George Sanger’s photos in auction this week, here is the link to the lot https://www.invaluable.co.uk/auction-lot/circus-a-large-and-rare-archive-of-photographs-325-c-8a14cf191e

The leader of the Why not Manston group Henry Bolton has resigned because he has become the leader of UKIP and of course Monarch Airline goes bust. I sort of wondered vaguely if any of this has any impact on the future of the Manston Airport site or Thanet in general.

My own take is that both issues are probably related to brexit and our jump into the unknown, I have never made any secret about my voting to remain, I’m in business and therefore usually avoid voting for change.

I think that my reflections on this are partly related to the street directory posts over the last week and of course talking to the people coming into the bookshop to browse street directories because of the posts.

Could it be that a lot of the people who voted to come out of Europe were really actually voting for the impossible i.e. to go back in time to the early 1970s, the fallout of course is a bit different, so far the only really noticeable change being the exchange rate for the £.

I think aircraft fuel being priced in dollars and getting fewer euros on holiday may have been the straw that broke the back of Monarch.

Of course here in the bookshop more people holidaying at home and increased export sales are producing better figures in the short term at least. The export sales are a peculiar thing and relate to good books that I have bought for the bookshop but haven’t sold in the shop so I put them on the internet, sell them and buy some different titles for the shop.

Looking at today’s books that went on the shelves http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-lion-king-in-bookshop.html I can see that if they don’t sell the books on highland cows may need exporting to Scotland.

The bookshop was reasonably busy today, reading material and local history mostly, I did manage to get down into the middle of the town during the afternoon and to be honest it’s not looking too good at the moment.

There are a few news articles and social media posts saying TDC have announced that work will start on Pleasurama this autumn, can this be right? as I can’t find anything on their website and have been asking them what’s going on for months I think it may be wishful thinking.

As is usually the case the one that sounds most accurate is on The Isle of Thanet News site see https://theisleofthanetnews.com/pleasurama-owners-due-to-start-work-on-derelict-site-this-autumn-says-council-deputy-leader/

I think this stems from https://www.facebook.com/lin.fairbrass/posts/1207065212728343?pnref=story the email address being the one left on the developers website http://royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/ when they took the rest of it down.

I suppose the deviation from the usual council press release to a councillor announcing it on Facebook is a change, mind you Sandy Ezekiel went as far as being photographed down there with a shovel saying it had started.    

I think the jury is still out on whether the henge down there that sits on sand, on a high risk flood zone, is actually real foundations for a real development or something built to extend the planning consent. 

New local book: Thanet Places – the People Concerned & the Things They Did

Local historian Michael Hunt’s latest book, Thanet Places – the People Concerned & the Things They Did, supplies exactly what it says on the cover. 

‘Not the snappiest of titles’ Michael admits, ‘but it tells you what you’re getting: descriptions of some of Thanet’s fascinating (if lesser-known) private and public buildings, monuments and once-open spaces; together with the stories of those associated with them – those who built, lived in, or merely visited them – so contributing their own histories to an area already steeped in history.

Most of the places described are still there for the reader to discover for themselves.  Some have gone but have left their mark on the landscape or memory.  Royalty, politicians, scientists, artists and criminals have invested these places with a legacy sometimes inspiring, sometimes chilling.  Ghosts walk corridors.  Walled-up lovers protest their innocence.  Naval heroics, financial chicanery and industrial philanthropy have contributed in their different ways to the Thanet we know today.

Who was the millionaire too mean to have his house connected to the town’s sewers?  Whose butler committed suicide within hours of returning to London from Broadstairs? What temporal and astronomical factor connects Ramsgate with Greenwich?  What links cowgirl Annie Oakley with Ellington?  Why build a railway station and then run no trains?  These and other questions are tackled, and largely answered, within the pages of Thanet Places – the People Concerned & the Things They Did by Michael Hunt, published by and available from Michaels Bookshop, 72 King Street, Ramsgate; price £9.99.

Contact Michaels Bookshop on E-mail: michaelsbookshop@aol.com or Tel 01843 589500.

Michael Hunt’

Grange Road in 1970

These are the Grange Road pages from the 1971 directory

Grange Road is a fairly modern road inasmuch as there was nothing much there at all apart from the windmill in 1849, here is the link to the 1849 map of Ramsgate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1849map2/ like the directories we sell the 1849 sheet map in the bookshop. I suppose if you are fairly dedicated and can’t wait for the bookshop to open on Monday morning, you could print of the images that make up the map and Sellotape them together. I don’t post this map to people as the cost, cardboard tube and postage is more than the £9.99 the map costs, so if you live a long way away you will have to do your best.

Not sure when the picture if the mill in Grange Road was taken, I would guess the 1930s, I haven’t been able to find any 70s pictures of Grange Road.

Nor am I sure how many of these shopping streets to blog posts to do, perhaps Addington Street, York Street… I am sure that the shops were an essential part of what made our towns and as the move towards internet and out of town shopping is still grinding on I wonder exactly where this will leave us.

I am very lucky to be able to price the books in my bookshop for less than they can be bought online and of course I can see why this isn’t practicable for other shops. In fact many of the non food and clothes shops I visit have become showrooms for products that will ultimately be bought cheaper online, although how manufacturers will show people their products in the future begs some interesting questions.

While on the subject here is the links to the pictures of the books that wen on our shelves on Saturday http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-russians-in-bookshop.html