Wednesday 24 September 2008

The House of the Rising Sun Ramsgate again

Gerald has transcribed more of the documents relating to the Rising Sun in Ramsgate click here to read and view the originals.

When Gerald came into the shop with them we both speculated as to whether people are interested in this sort of thing, so we are both curious to know what people think, do you want more?

12 comments:

  1. Micheal,

    A very interesting primary source of the period and for those with an interest in local history.

    However as a legal document it is also very specialist, what would help is somebody knowledgable (hint) to extract some of the more easily digestable information and provide some commentary.

    As an Historian you are probably muttering under your breath 'heathen', However maybe more people would find it of interest.

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  2. Yes RVM is right I think.

    Am I right that he set it up so if he died then his widow's new man could not cop any of it ?

    What would make it interesting to me is the translation summary plus some context. 1813 was a couple of years before Waterloo etc. What implications did that have for Ramsgate at the time ? Good for brewers ?

    History, speaking generally, raises questions with me that never seem to get answers.

    The Margate Lifeboat crew rowing feat of 19th century. The crew were rowing for about twenty hours non stop seeking the stricken vessel. The cox let them have a short break to treat nose bleeds for the effort. Quick dab of salt ater lads and back to it.

    Those blokes were hard as nails.

    But I wonder what they ate. They were not eating rubbish to be that strong.

    Your transcribing skills are pretty awesome Gerald I think if you could dumb it down for us then people would be interested.

    I never knew that about bleaching spots.

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  3. It was also six years before the Unlawful Drilling Act which is so relevant locally now. But there must have been a similar problem back then for them to legislate ?

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  4. RVM: I'll create a summary when I get a chance. Apparently, the lawyers at the time were paid by the line, so it wasn't in their interest to be particularly brief!

    Rick: I'll right a few paragraphs later about what the 'dower rights' section was all about.

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  5. Michael, slightly off thread, but I worked part time in the Riser, as it was locally known, from 1975 to 1979. It was a good pub from the staff and customer point of view, but a horrible building to work in.

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  6. Ken

    Was that when Alma was landlady. Before that she would have been barmaid for Jim Lilley at Cliftonville. My memory is going ... the pub in Cliftonville where Big Henry sang. Was it Belle Vue.

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  7. Again straying from thread.

    A few years back there was a travelling Royal British Legion tour from Yorkshire who spent a night at Ramsgate RBL.

    Amongst them was a man who was in a War of Roses Society of some sort (a leading light was Robert Hardy an expert on the long bow)

    This guy was also an amateur boxing coach. But his two passions actually shared common ground. The research into boxing headgear was studying the energy at impact of an arrow from a longbow and what protection of the time best dissipated the energy.

    Learning from history.

    I wonder if Michael, Gerald and Tony Beachcomber could get together with the ideas to replace the failed EKMT ?

    Oh yes I came across the Werner Bartells stuff John williams sent me a few years ago so will post it to you Michael.

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  8. Anon 2054, Yes Alma (sadly departed this earth now) was Landlady, Ken her husband was the Landlord, their son Don & daughter Dena, correct It was the Belle View.

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  9. Looking at these comments I am very much aware that both on my websites and in my publications there is a sorry lack of modern Thanet history and pictures, I wonder if some of you would like contribute some material, anecdotal will do for publication. There are a lot of people who would like to see something about the Thanet they remember in their youth.

    One of the problems with the pictures for publication is that those taken after WW2 are copyright, so I can’t use modern postcards without some risk.

    As far as the ancient source documents go, it looks as though there is enough interest here to continue publishing them as Gerald transcribes them, I for one have already learnt quite a lot. What is a shame is that with the expected closure of our museums the documents the have are not being put on the web, just photographing them wouldn’t be expensive or take very long.

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  10. (1) I am sending you the Werner Bartells mystery.

    (2) One thing I was keen to try to do was to get a Remembrance Service at the former Neros site. (re its role in Dunkirk evacuation and servicemen who died in Ramsgate) My ideas for England's unique drive in Remembrance Service (so car bound ex services could attend and make virtuous use of the car parks) fell on deaf ears. But at the time (years before Most Haunted etc) the idea of a paranormal overnight vigil on the Dunkirk evacuation hospice facility live on web (which would have been the first) even done by a C of E approved group, did not sit well with local veterans or TDC. The idea was to conduct a vigil with charity fundraising by people paying to see what the researchers were doing then next day hold a Remembrance Service there. Imagine the Lifeboat and EKMT little ships standing off. Military band. Bit of vision and doing a respectful thing. No takers.

    So the fact remains I think that the Dunkirk evacuation emergency aid sites have never been blessed. I think this includes Dreamland. But it would need research.

    A bit of history which might merit addressing.

    (3) Yes Ken I worked part time in the early 70s with Alma in Cliftonville for Jim Lilley. Jim never appeared to do anything because he seemed to me to be a recruiting genius (apart from me)He had staff like Alma who were excellent. There was "Alma's bar" at the back and Alma's rules there which included keeping the glasses used by the chip shop lads completely separate for washing and re-use exclusive to the oily chip shop environ. She would not even wash them in with the other glasses. Heck of a nice lady. I think Jim was right behind them getting their own pub. RIP

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  11. Rick,

    Going back several posts: "Dower rights and trusts".

    The 'dower right' was a wife's right to a lifetime interest in one third of her husbands property on his death to pay for the upkeep of herself and their children. It only related to property that the husband owned outright and not interests in trust etc. After her death, the property concerned would pass as specified in her husband's will - typically to their children.

    A problem was that dower rights could come into existance at any time that her husband held land during their marriage. Selling the land didn't necessarily extingush the dower right - so someone could (potentially) buy land that later became subject to dower if the previous owner died and left a widow. Holding the land in trust (by a solicitor for example) for the benefit of the real owner got around the problem of dower.

    The rather puzzling text at the start of the release, which talks about levying fines, concerns John and Mary Abbott going to court to extinguish Mary's dower right so he can sell the pub.

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  12. Thanks Gerald.

    Beware of buying property from an old man with a young wife ?

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.