a couple of mysteries and a few old photos

Do you know where in Thanet?

Then there is this, in amongst the photos I took around 10 years ago, a lift motor somewhere in Thanet I think, but I can't remember where. Anyone know?

 with this one, where was it taken from?

Summer is back

A few evening walk photos

The pubs are to open in 10 days, 874 new virus cases and 171 deaths today, link to gov number site

Michael's Bookshop where I work remains closed, at the moment - "granny has just died, can you arrange to come round and make an offer for her books?" has very little appeal, even if Boris said it was OK, which he hasn't so far.

Quarter day tomorrow, aka midsummers day, which is the day a lot of business rents should be paid 

The Answer to yesterday's mystery photo and some out and about Ramsgate Harbour photos from today

Ramsgate Post office

link to today's photos

A mystery photo. A few Ramsgate photos old and new, posible ramble

Which Thanet Post Office?

Went for a walk earlier, https://photos.app.goo.gl/fXSYoLocDnXUzavu5out and about in Ramsgate today

I'm still partly focused on the Pleasurama conundrum, something like:- Anything is better than the mess, but what about the issues with the design that were put on the back burner when building stopped last time.

I’ve started drafting this for local councillors and any ideas on improving it before I send it off would help

"The main issues with the Parasuraman development are.

1 The cliff wall, it has a long history of collapses involving tons of concrete rubble and chalk.

2 Problems related to stuff going over the top of the cliff, the largest item in recent years was a car.

3 The site is an environment agency designated “high risk” RIZ flood zone (big storms and high tides could wash out the whole thing because the foundations are on sand and not pile bored) The flood risk assessment the Environment Agency wanted never happened.

4 The height and roof treatment. Attempts to get a definitive roof height relative to the cliff never happened, attempts to get more attractive roofing materials never happened.

5 Cliff wall maintenance costs are to be met out of our council tax.

The planning consent passed under the Ezekiel administration without proper notification of local groups and local people and without opportunity to object. While the Planning and design statement says the development will be well below the cliff top, the various planning sheets are for a development that is very high relative to the cliff.

Assurances were made by the council that some of the issues would be addressed by TDC building control, subsequently TDC said building control would be done by an outside agency.

Assurances were made by TDC that regular cliff safety inspections would occur.

Obviously while I don’t want to see the site remain in the horrible mess it has been for the last 20 years, I am concerned that the flats are safe for people to live in, insurable, look as attractive as possible especially from Wellington Crescent and Gardens and ongoing  costs to TDC are manageable.  

These issues were being addressed when work stopped on the site about ten years ago, since then some local people and groups have assumed the planning consent had expired, some assumed the plans were something that came out of the Ezekiel  administration and related to some sort of property scam – so they would never actually be built. Now with the development having restarted I assume the council has some role and responsibilities relating to the development. I also assume the council has an official point of view on the development as it is on Ramsgate’s main leisure site and will have a considerable impact on the future prosperity of Ramsgate.

I also appreciate that a major property development that started under an administration where the council leader was sent to prison for property fraud, is an area that may be difficult for some members of the council to address.

I am not interested in recriminations, don’t have much time to pursue the issue, but I am interested to know if the council should be doing anything or are doing anything to ensure the development is as good as it can be."

Pleasurama what do you think of the view?

 In all of the Pleasurama development's planning documents these are the only two artist's impressions of what the finished development will look like from Wellington Crescent. I wondered what people think about this.

 Some of you will remember Pleasurama on Ramsgate seafront.

Before it was a funfair it was a railway station

In 1846 the South Eastern Railway was extend from Canterbury to Ramsgate, blue line + little bit of of yellow line. The first Ramsgate Old Town Station was at the on Margate Road near the top of Chatham Street.

In 1860 the London Chatham and Dover Railway was extended from Herne Bay to Ramsgate red line and through the tunnel pink line to The Sands Station.

In 1926 the  South Eastern Railway and the London Chatham and Dover Railway amalgamated the two competing railways were no longer competing the existing Ramsgate stations were replaced, the tunnel and line to Margate were closed.

In 1997 the amusements, funfair and arcade closed

 In 1998 it burnt down

Back around 20 years ago planning permission was granted to build fats on the site and serious building has just started

I did a fair amount of writing to the council about this, the two links below are to a couple of the old websites I wrote about this before my days of blogging and not very well done, but they give you some idea.

How high was Pleasurama going to be in 2007

Pleasurama 2004

On to coronavirus, there seems to be a growing awareness in the media that all is not well with the UK's mortality figures.

BBC article on excess death

Ramsgate photos, history and a post about why I'm not posting much.

Sorry about not posting much, it's the time you see, up until coronavirus I was pretending to work in Michael's Bookshop - here in Ramsgate. A lot of the time that was mostly about just being there, and inbetween customers I would fill in the gaps, writing this blog, replying to comments - where the posts were linked to Facebook groups.

I am used to bookselling and haven't had a holiday since the mid 1980s, haven't had the spare time to do major bits of DIY and decorating. To be honest there is only one aspect of bookselling that I don't enjoy very much and that is using the computer.

The following pictures and maps are from the 1809 Thanet guide.

This was published during the Napoleonic Wars although it doesn't mention them at all.

 Margate 1809

 Ramsgate 1909

 Broadstairs 1809

The only indication that we were at war is the soldier in the picture of Ramsgate.

I am still answering local history questions that come to me by email and ones where I am tagged on Facebook. here is one from today.

Michelle J Coombs "Hi we live in spencer walk and have you got any history on it please as we heard our house was a napoleonic storage place"


Barry James "You could ask Historic England and Michael Child who runs the bookshop in King Street."

Michael Child Start with the large scale 1849 map, follow the link, most of those buildings around rental houses for officers training in ramsgate forr the napoleonic wars were for stabling their horses

Michelle J Coombs "Michael Child I’ve found where we live on the map but how do I find the history"

Michael Child "As far as the history of one building in Ramsgate goes the first street directory is going to be 1880s and with the napoleonic wars finishing in 1815, you probably won't. There is very little written on Ramsgate's part apart that it was an officer training and disembarcation point for troops. Even if you approach the problem with a good grounding in english history and architecture around 1800 you soon start to realise there isn't much to go on. Ramsgate and Margate libraries (closed at the moment) have some local papers from that period on microfiche, it takes about an hour to do each paper. If you have a lot of time and money to put in and don't expect much out, you may get something. There are also plenty of online firms that claim to produce house histories (mostly made up) Ramsgate rate books are in the county archive £45 per hour for an archivist's time. When we get the bookshop back open and the libraries are back open you can look at stuff, but for the time being it's buy before you try."

Just now I am pretty much lost for words looking at the news recently.

Coronavirus where the UK gov, media and opposition have failed us so badly so the UK has pretty much the worst death rate in the world.

The police and policing is just another example where the UK gov, media and opposition have failed us so badly. Running an independent shop gives a pretty thorough insight and on the whole gov, media and police drop bits of sand in the oil of smooth day to day running.

I don't think there is any solution apart from the police having to live in the communities they police

 As you can see Ramsgate Sands Lifeguard Station in now up so hopefully we will get lifeguards soon.

With Pleasurama and the development, I still wonder, does anyone know how high it will be relative to the cliff, will we be able to see over the top of it from Wellington Gardens?

Here is the link to today's photos

if that wasn't enough

link to some from the other day

the world gone mad and Pleasurama in Ramsgate

Last time work started on Ramsgate's Pleasurama site it was pretty obvious that something strange was going on. Building was going on, but in a very strange and random way. To me it looked like steps to bend the planning laws to stop the planning consent from expiring. This time it’s totally different and looks to me like serious developers starting on a construction project.

This Ramsgate photo was taken in 1957, you may recognise the brick pillar, top right,

this picture from 2010 shows what happened when it sprouted a small tree. So what are the 1950s firemen in the black and white photo doing? You guessed – or perhaps you didn’t, they are digging through the rubble where the cliff had just collapsed to see if anyone is buried in it.

The main issue with the cliff facade behind the site is that it isn't a support structure, although it looks like one.

Good for a funfair, but not so good to live under perhaps.

A few out and about photos here is the link

I have been trying to come up with ways of getting Michael’s Bookshop, where I normally work in Ramsgate, open again. The main problem is the UK seems to have blown it, the statistics apart from excess deaths per capita are easy to manipulate, there are various articles about this, here is a link to the Financial Timesfree to read article 

I don’t think the problem is particularly the government, neither the opposition nor the media seem to have grasped the problem, which is that we have used up the time and the money that could have contained the virus. Most days there are more deaths in the UK than the rest of Europe put together.  

The key to the issue would be giving up civil liberties to save lives and the economy, here is a link to a BBC article about the situation in Taiwan 

One thing that surprised me was that the virus would live for much longer on plastic than it would on paper.

Cilip, the UK's library and information association, gives guidance on its website about the possible coronavirus risks to handling books for staff and the public.

Quoting Public Health England advice, it says “the risk of picking up a paper hardback book handled by someone with the virus is negligible after 24 hours.  A book covered in plastic has a negligible risk after 72 hours.”

We can sort of see a way forward by insisting our customers wear masks and disposable gloves, but for us to put on PPE to look through people’s books in their houses and cars is a limiting factor and not something we would be allowed to do at the moment anyway.

The biggest problem for us is that our main customers are either individuals of families visiting the bookshop as a social event, rather like people who are interested in food and drink go to various venues