A reader calling herself Dame Janet has emailed yet another entry in my Richard Eastcliff Award For A Grand Design For Ramsgate competition, and pretty comprehensive it is too. She writes:Restoration of Ramsgate Seafront
1. Royal Victoria Pavilion
To be restored as an entertainment venue with restaurant, and roof garden with café. Small lock-up seaside shops round base as originally
2. Maritime Museum
To be modernised and rearranged to include Tourist Information Centre and two rooms upstairs for a Ramsgate Museum
3. Former Pleasurama site
Exterior of building to be same shape and in the spirit of the original Harbour Station . To be redeveloped as a leisure centre and swimming pool for all residents and visitors to enjoy with full length glass walls on seaward side
4. Marina Restaurant
To be refurbished as holiday apartments with cafe underneath
5. Marina Road
Cliff face arches and road arches to be all restored and re-faced in red brick to match Royal parade on other side of harbour
6. Site of old Marina swimming pool
To become a supervised skateboard park and roller rink
Sounds splendid, Dame Janet, and if put into practice would furnish Ramsgate with more front than Dolly Parton.
Send your Grand Design for Ramsgate by midnight on Thursday 31st May to:
richardeastcliff@yahoo.co.uk
3 comments:
And any unused but otherwise useful - and formerly publicly owned/dedicated - spaces to be provided on cheap/free short-term lets as galleries, studios or exhibition spaces... The Customs House, Albion House, any spare arches down by the harbour, any shop unoccupied for over 6 months, etc etc.
It is encouraging to read some ideas.
As the Dunkirk 60 year memorial approached there were suggestions to TDC:
(1) That the car parks (Neros etc)could be used as the largest outdoor memorial service in UK. With the Little Ships of East kent Maritime Trust standing off. To enable behicle bound and wheelchair bound vetarans access to a "Drive in" memorial service.
(2) That sites used as emergency hospice and emergency surgery sites in Thanet should have a service of blessing said over them as part of the memorial service (the former Neros building). As it appears that no service of thanksgiving or blessing has occurred on those sites
(3) A C of E approved psychic research organisation had agreedto conduct the first ever internet live research for increased activity at times of memorial with access to view research equipment and procedure available to public by donation to East kent MacMillan Nurse Appeal.
(4) An exhibition featuring little known aspects of the Second World War .. radar decelptions and technology to include recognition of the Jewish radar expert who went on the ill fated Dieppe raid to steal Nazi radar secrets thus enabling the success of D Day
(5) Public recognition of the spirit of Dunkirk exhibited by the Southall Sikh community who sent food to feed the starving families of Kent miners in the 84 strike .. stranded on Thatcher's beach and strafed by police and bailiffs but yet the spirit of Dunkirk won through. Well done the Sikh community of London.
Needless to say recognising a Jew and Sikhs did not sit too well with certain factions of TDC ....
We had also conducted research hoping we could be the first place to acknowledge the humanitarian role of the great German boxer Max Schmeling. Portrayed as the Hitler model of Aryan supremacy Max took a terrible beating from the mixed race American Joe Louis. yet when in old age Joe in USA was in poverty and suffering dementia it was Max Schmeling and Muhammad Ali who paid for his care.
Max had in fact refused a gift of an SS dagger in the 30s and risked Hitler's wrath by staying loyal to his Jewish manager in 1930s Nazi Germany.
At the Battle of Crete (which the German authorities deny Scmeling fought in as a Luftawffe paratrooper) there is reason to believe that he was a model of humanitarianism after the battle to British soldiers which included the TA Artillery unit from Broadstairs.
This was an opportunity to make a statement. To be first (long before Psychic Detectives or Yvette Fielding haunted) to media portray psychic research. To put right all the years without a service where so many of our brave servicemen died.
But there is a dead hand in Thanet.
They would rather give a grant of about 120 grand per year to East Kent Maritime Trust to run museums which attract little or no visitors and allegedly, after some 20 years of such generous TDC funding .. werepicked up as in breach of fire precautions for visitors.
Still keep the ideas flowing. Best of Luck.
We need to do something as there were no little ships here this year. So what can we have a memorial service for in 2007?
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