Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Burning De Margate (Another Time)

Investigators of the fire sifting through wreckage of a building listed in Kent to today discover early the cause of a severe flame. The property four-storey in one terrace Georgian in the street of Cecil, Margate, is a shield blackened and charred after the flame that engulfed soon after the midnight.

In the height of the drama, around 70 firefighters were in the scene. The fire became in the third and rooms wooden floors of the club previous conservative before spreading in the space of the roof and to an adjacent building. Eight peoples had been evacuated.

The local Iris Johnston of the said council member each effort must be made to restore 'old the building charming' previous its glory. The manager Andrew McPherson of the manager of the fire station of Margate, that was in the load of the operation firefighting, said that the building was good alight when the first group arrived. 'It was a difficult work because the roof had pulled down thus that he was not safe to fight of inside,' it said. 'The groups had made an excellent work to stop the propagation to an adjacent building and no-one was wounded happily.'

Mr. Eastcliff would put a funny commentary here but unhappyly my English not thus good.

Estale to read in line full history in Kent here

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so so sad.Years ago this was my family home and buisness and now it has been empty for years tha grants that were given i understand have been spent{certainly not on the building)and yet another fine building is in ruins.I hope they get to the bottom of this and catch whoever did it....Insurance and Money spring to mind...

Anonymous said...

Meant to say It is Hawley Square not Cecil

Michael Child said...

Mr Ceaucescu you seem to be well informed I am beginning to wonder what proportion of major fires in Margate involve listed buildings. People coming in the shop today are also talking about a major accident between a car and a motorbike on the Margate Road today; I hope the Thanet chapter are all OK.

Peter C said...

Talking of listed buildings, I see in this weeks Thanet Times that the Dreamland cinema is now a grade 2 listed building...

Anonymous said...

Peter,

The listing is a grade two star for Dreamland cinema. It was previously g2 listed but it now has a star -matching that of the Scenic Railway. Thanet Extra has a definitive story, I'm told.

Nick, Whits

Anonymous said...

An other fire in margate! wonder who owned this building and exactly what insurance was in place.
I see from the photo's that it was already under repair.

And the result of the investigation into the fire? Well let me guess!

Anonymous said...

Well, the word on the slightly singed street is that the owner had been refused an application to convert to flats. That he didn't know what to do with the place and had left it languishing empty. Hmm, sound familiar?

Anonymous said...

According to ukplanning website, if this fire was at 49-50 Hawley Square, it had permission to convert into two flats.

Anonymous said...

Michael, according to the news reports I read the accident (near the Star Pub) was a car only and the driver was cut out of the wreckage and taken to the QEQM. The two events did havoc to local public transport.

Anonymous said...

Another tragic fire destroying our heritage. A building that had stood for 200 years gone in a few hours.

Listed buildings in Margate are hot properties. So hot they tend to catch fire.

If the building had permission for convert into two flats, that wouldn't be much of a deal for a developer. The building is massve. "I heard he was at a loss as to what to do with the property".

With an empty plot and insurance money in the bank you could probably squeeze-in 10 flats.

The front and rear facades seem to be intact. Including the beautiful entrance.

I hope the conservation team can enforce the protection of our built heritage through the restoration of the building to it's former glory.

If restoration was enforced this could be an example to make developers and speculators want to protect their buildings from fire in the future.

The the extreme costs of rebuilding period properties with winding Georgian staircases and handrails, panelling, leadwork for the roof would be too much of a risk.

Until now fires are seen as a stroke of luck. Like the two terraces on the seafront. Why have they not yet been rebuilt? How can their distruction by fire be seen as convenient access to the seafront for the plot behind?

I really cant see why the seafront terrace shouldn't be rebuilt according to historic photos.

As for hawley square, if insurance won't pay for the restoration, the developer should, or the council should take over the site for immediate restoration and then recoup the cash from the owner. I think he might have some other properties he can auction off to pay for the damage.

Anonymous said...

The developer was previously caught out stripping out panelling etc without permission. He had submitted drawings by a none architect architect to remove a fireplace and install a plasma telly! Nice!

Anonymous said...

yes.and i wonder if this will be fully investigated or as usually happens,front page story for a week then no investigation GRRRRR