Lost glories of Ramsgate: A walk through time taking in Marina …
Ten years ago, if you walked along a certain stretch of sandy beach at Ramsgate[1], you could have been forgiven for thinking the town was at its lowest ebb.
For all the growing interest in cafes and restaurants around its pretty nearby harbour and marina and the impressive, imposing architecture which surrounded it, a key chunk of the town was missing.
Where once tourists flocked in their thousands to watch shows, swim, ride rollercoasters, and eat and drink looking over its golden shores, there was, frankly, nothing along its prime beachfront location to do.
A sprawling Victorian pavilion stood empty. An area where once a laughter-filled pleasure palace stood had long since been demolished – in its place a deserted building site.
The crashing of waves was almost drowned out by the tuts from locals wondering where it had all gone wrong.
But today things have changed. If you haven’t already, rediscovering this stretch of Ramsgate allows you to see a revival which – while not to everyone’s taste and far from complete – has breathed new life into the area.
While the town still has its challenges, it can now once again compete with the likes of near neighbours Margate[2] and Broadstairs.
The walk spans from the enormous split-level Royal Victoria Pavilion pub – better known simply as the town’s Wetherspoon’s[3] – past 100-year-old lifts, a multi-million pound development, an intriguing network of underground tunnels rich in local history and along to the car parks which line the front but once played host to restaurants and outdoor pools. Which is where we start our stroll.
You will be walking through an area once alive with industry and entertainment – a scene of train crashes, a lost pier, mysterious fires and one of the most unusual wartime retreats for an entire town.
And it will answer a key question which has perplexed many over the years – namely why is Ramsgate’s main railway station, upon which it relies for its steady stream of day-trippers – just so far away from the town’s most popular areas?
We start our walk back through time by parking in the car park at the far end of Marina Esplanade. It is reached by a steep slope – Marina Road – which comes off the cliff-top Victoria Parade. No sooner have you parked, you are walking on a historic site.
Because the unprepossessing car park which sits there today was once one of Thanet’s foremost attractions.
It was here the Marina Bathing Pool complex was sited and opened in 1935. An outside swimming pool and boating lake, complete with selection of ascending height diving boards, Alongside it sat a sprawling cafe.
Thousands would flock to enjoy the water during weekends.
But, like so many such destinations in the county, the boom of cheap foreign package holidays saw holidaymakers scrap UK seaside jaunts for Spain and Greece and the guaranteed sunshine they offered.
The lido, like its counterpart in neighbouring Margate, fell out of favour and eventually closed – due, primarily, to structural issues.
Local historian Nick Evans explains: “The problem was cracks in the concrete. The concrete they used relied on a steel framework to hold it all together. Back in the 1930s it was quite a new technique for all sorts of buildings, but over time they found the metal started to rot or to rust and it permeated into the concrete. It caused what's known in the business as concrete cancer, which is not something you want.”
The faults were serious and discovered by the end of the 1975 season. It affected both the drainage and refilling of the pools. Thanet council got a quote to fix the problem – it came to £63,000. That’s the equivalent of in excess of £780,000 today.
“The council baulked at the price,” explains Nick, “and they realised, at the same time, the holiday market as a whole was changing fast. People were going abroad for guaranteed sunshine so they decided not to repair the pool and closed it down. It was demolished in the years that followed.”
The pool itself has long since been filled in. Today it’s a nondescript car park with no indication as to what it once was.
All that, and we’ve barely left the car.
While you buy your parking ticket, a look out to sea will reveal where the wooden Ramsgate Pier once stood – jutting out to sea for some 550ft.
It proved a popular stop-off point for the paddle steamers[4] bringing passengers along the Kent coast from London.
A huge hit when it opened in 1881, it included a rollercoaster and even a theatre. But a storm in 1897 brought the rollercoaster’s life to a premature end. Indeed, the pier itself didn’t have a long shelf life. Closed on safety grounds in 1914, any hopes of a revival were literally blown to smithereens when a mine exploded beneath it in 1918, during the First World War.
The remains were demolished in 1930. Look carefully and you can still see the remains of its footings stretching out into the sea.
Before we stroll on, it’s worth being alert to what lies above the cliff which looms over you.
Before taking the road down to the car parks by the sea, there is the grand facade of what was the Granville Hotel overlooking the sea on Victoria Parade. Designed by Edward Welby Pugin – son of the famed architect Augustus Pugin – it was built in 1867. Today it is primarily residential flats.
And during the town’s heyday of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it played host to many of the most notable figures of the time. Inside were spas and baths, a marble skating ring, theatre and ballroom. This was five-star living of a different era.
Why mention it? Well, the hotel wanted to extend the opportunities for its visitors outside of its walls and so constructed a string of buildings at the foot of the cliffs. These included tearooms, shops and restaurants in an “old English” style – all nestling beneath where the road down the cliff was cut.
Collectively, it was known – as it is today – as Granville Marina. There were gardens and it provided the perfect link to what used to lie just a few hundred yards down the coastal path. More of that in a moment.
A cliff lift, built in 1905, would help transport folk down from East Cliff – close to where the bathing pool once stood. However, it closed in 1970. No trace of it remains today.
At its heart – just where the road bends – was a large music hall venue. Originally called The Establishment, when first opened in 1877, and originally boasting stained glass windows. It would go to be known as the Marina Theatre and Hippodrome. It would eventually house a cinema.
But many will still remember its transformation, in the 1960s, into a popular nightspot.
It morphed into the Supreme Ballroom, then Nero’s and eventually, by the early 1990s, First Impressions. A big draw was its light-up dancefloor. By the end of that decade, however, it was pulled down.
And guess what’s there now? Yep, a car park. Some of the site was also used for a modern apartment block which stands there today.
It now sits alongside the few remaining original Granville Marina buildings – many of which are now Grade II-listed and private homes. The corner is L-shaped in order to offer a little protection for what once lurked beyond.
Walk a little further along and you come to the Ramsgate Tunnels and the core as to why this stretch of beach was once so vital to the town. Today what remains is a hugely popular tourist attraction in itself.
Because while you stand by its entrance, you are also standing on what was once a thriving railway station.
Passengers would be able to disembark at Ramsgate Harbour (as the station was known) right on the seafront and find themselves just feet from the sandy beach.
Opened in 1863, as the train line from London was extended from Herne Bay[5], the route took a steep decline through the cliff tunnel before emerging into the daylight.
Emma Boast is general manager at Ramsgate Tunnels – a site dedicated to the history of the track and its war-time use. She explains: “In its heyday, the station itself and the sidings stretched from close to where Nero’s nightclub used to be all the way down to the old lift by the roundabout [close to the Wetherspoon pub].”
Just before the entrance to the tunnels, are a set of colourful steps – known as the Augusta Steps. They were originally built in 1850 and stretched across the sidings. But they collapsed in 1947 before being rebuilt. Head up them, and you come out opposite the Granville Hotel.
The railway tracks down and upline were in constant use.
Due to the sharp slope, there were two notable incidents when trains failed to stop in time.
On one occasion, in 1891, a train smashed through the wall at the end of the line. The wall trapped several people under the rubble – one of whom was killed. Another had to have his foot amputated.
And in 1915, brake failure was blamed for a train which again over-shot the mark and into the wall. This time, fortunately, the train was empty and the train operators able to leap off.
It also used to play host to a very exclusive daily rail service.
Nick Evans explains: “The Granville Hotel was meant to be the last word in comfort and style of the late Victorian era. The owners ran a daily train service out of London, direct to Ramsgate, stopping only at Westgate.
“It was known as the Granville Express and it ran from 3pm from Charing Cross. The selling point was you could be in Ramsgate in two hours.
“In fact, rumour has it that there was indeed a specific stairway cut into the cliff so hotel guests could walk up the stairs and directly into the hotel.”
A VIP staircase, some might say.
However, the railway station didn’t last long and by 1926 it was closed as part of a realignment on the track from London. It also saw the closure of the town centre Ramsgate Town station. The Town station site – close to the junction of Station Approach Road and Margate Road and close to the old flour mills – has long since been covered with housing and flats.
In their place, was created Dumpton Park and the Ramsgate station which operates today.
Emma Boast adds: “People really don't appreciate how big Ramsgate Harbour station was. It brought lots of holidaymakers down right to the beach. We have a model of the station in the tunnel entrance and it really gives a sense of the scale.”
Today, the main station is over a mile away from the harbour – a strange situation given the town’s reliance then, as now, on day-trippers.
The reason, explains Emma, was probably due to space. She explains: “At the time of the rationalisation of the rail network and the decision to relocate the station, the town had started to build up. So you've already got an established town there, so I think it was simply that was where there was space and where the line could go both on the Ashford line to London and the North Kent line.”
But no sooner had the Harbour station closed was the land earmarked for leisure purposes.
Sold to a company called Thanet Amusements, it was turned into what was first called Pleasureland where rollercoasters and other rides proved a major draw for day-trippers and holidaymakers. Housed under much of the original station buildings, attractions included the likes of a petting zoo and even a ballroom.
Like its neighbour, Margate, it knew the pulling power of seaside amusements.
From 1926 to 1930 it operated as Pleasureland before it played on the station’s grand, castle-like exterior and renamed itself Merrie England. By 1933 it was owned by Ramsgate Olympia boasting what was claimed to be the longest bar in the country.
The site was a huge success, rivalling the popularity of nearby Dreamland – albeit somewhat held back by the train station being so far away.
An attempt to resolve this was a bid to reopen the rail line through the tunnels by the owners of Merrie England. But this was rejected by rail chiefs on grounds of cost.
However, in its place, was developed an electric railway designed by the same man who had created the rolling stock for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
The passengers-only service ran people from Hereson Road in the town – a five-minute walk from Dumpton Park railway station – and took them straight into the amusement park. A clever business move, especially as rival resort Margate’s station was just a few hundred yards from the Main Sands.
The narrow-gauge service launched in 1936 and ran during the summer months – each train setting off when there were enough passengers on board – but was mothballed during the war.
During which time, of course, the tunnels the trains used to operate through became part of the labyrinth in which thousands of residents took shelter during the aerial bombardment. Some were so comforted by the protection it gave them, they lived there for the duration of the conflict.
The exhibition at Ramsgate Tunnels today provides an excellent insight into just what life was like for the townsfolk during the time of conflict. It pulls in tens of thousands of visitors a year.
Merrie England would reopen post-war and continue until 1965 when it would transform into Pleasurama after coming under new owners. Coincidentally, at some point in the early 1970s, a swimming pool at the site was turned into a training pool for dolphins. Its then-owners also had a dolphinarium in London as well as providing the creatures for a hotel in Margate[6].
But Pleasurama swould come to a sticky end. As numbers heading to the site – still housed in the original train station buildings – started to dwindle with the decline in holidaymakers, it changed hands again in 1996. Jimmy Godden[7], once owner of Dreamland in Margate and the Rotunda in Folkestone[8], was only in charge for two years, during which time he had ideas of turning it into a shopping centre – before a huge blaze would forever change the history of the seafront.
The Pleasurama site was completely destroyed in a night of flame and smoke on May 25 1998.
By the time the site was made safe, it was just a pile of rubble.
There then followed years of discussion and plans as to what to do next. To cut a very long story short, it lay dormant for more than 20 years – the site surrounded by unwelcoming hoardings which dominated the stretch of beach.
For many of those years – the Ramsgate Tunnels only opened in 2014 – there was little to pull in the punters on this historic stretch.
However, work began on the Royal Sands multi-million pound development[9] in 2020. On the site of the former Pleasurama site would be high-end apartments.
It may not have been to everyone’s taste – many harked back to reviving its previous use as a pleasure palace – but the undeniably impressive buildings which have sprung up have breathed new life into what a whole generation had come to know as merely a building site. By the time work is complete, it should also play host to a string of shops and restaurants facing onto the promenade. Few doubt when that finally materialises, this stretch of the beach will rarely be quiet again.
Just at the end of the development is the East Cliff Lift – a beautiful Edwardian construction which took people from the cliff to the beach. It has, however, been closed since 2021 and there is no sign of a revival just yet due to the costs involved in necessary repairs.
And finally, as we reach the end of the walk, we reach the Royal Victoria Pavilion.
Built in 1903 it was once the heartbeat of the seafront – and so popular it inspired the continued investment in the world of entertainment when the nearby railway station moved out.
Originally a concert hall and assembly rooms, legend has it that it was built in a matter of weeks – a remarkable achievement if true. Today its grandeur cannot be ignored.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the history of this stretch, it waited a long time to be brought back into life.
Following its golden era as a concert venue, it became a nightclub and then a casino. During these periods, much of the original features inside were modernised in a way rather unbecoming to an original design drawn from the Queen’s Theatre at the Palace of Versailles.
By 2008 – 10 years after Pleasurama burned to the ground – it was shut and boarded up. Thus ending almost all signs of entertainment along the once flourishing stretch.
But as Ramsgate began to flourish again, so pub giant Wetherspoon saw an opportunity. It sank £5 million into the building and, in 2017, opened its biggest ever branch.
And, while Wetherspoon is not everyone’s cup of tea (or should that be beer) there are far worst places to spend a balmy summer’s afternoon than sat on its huge outside terrace.
With a cut-price pint, you can ponder the history you’ve just walked through and how very different everything once was. And raise a glass to the town’s on-going rejuvenation – it deserves it.
References
- ^ Ramsgate (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ near neighbours Margate (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ Wetherspoon’s (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ stop-off point for the paddle steamers (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ Herne Bay (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ hotel in Margate (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ Jimmy Godden (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ Folkestone (www.kentonline.co.uk)
- ^ began on the Royal Sands multi-million pound development (www.kentonline.co.uk)