Saturday 20 February 2010

A few pictures of Margate, the light fantastic and tombstones of modern art.

I find that every time I look at Margate I am somewhat lost for words, experiencing regeneration through art first hand is something that is becoming increasingly interesting and expensive, that perhaps one could say that county funding has moved from religion to art.

Click here for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id13.htm

I am also becoming more interested in government at county level, they have a great deal to live up to in historical terms.

In the days before local government as we know it, Kent was governed locally by the parishes so it was essentially the clergy through churchwardens that governed us ran such education as there was for ordinary people and farmed the poor.

The standards of the time were very different to today? Fortunately archbishop Wake kept a private notebook with information about the Kent clergy here are some excerpts.

Patten of Whitstable kept a mistress and did not pay his debts; Bourn of Ash was "allied to the sons of Eli" ; Roberts of Queenborough, ale-house sot and debtor, "so impudent as nothing is like him"; Bate of Chilham, "proudest and stiffest man" in the diocese, allowing corpses to lie unburied for want of fees; Burroughs of Kingston, "most horribly covetous" ; Ansell of Stowting and Cade of Sellindge, Jacobites and taven-brawlers; Edward Dering of Charing who fought his own sister at the Swan Inn and threw her "head-cloaths" into the fire; Hobbs of Dover, who amassed pluralities; Isles of New Romney a notorious sot and Jacobite; Nicholls of Fordwich who preached that George was a Foreigner, a Lutheran, and a Beggar-"a wicked, swearing. Lying, Drunken man".

7 comments:

  1. Your photos are like you've never been to Margate before, you have haven't you. I mean you comment on it enough.

    and not only do you have a flare for banal complaining but you also manage to emulate this in your choice of views of your photographs. I guess they help you to validate your flaccid views and opinions.

    Tomb stones of art they may be, yet their lament I guess will prove more meaningful to more people than your own idle jottings or of the one liner left on your own inevitable grave stone.

    chin chin

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a shame you didn't get to the Old Town and take some pictures there. There's more and more going on there - new shops, studios, galleries etc. Go have a mooch - I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anons, the scenes that Michael have photographed here are what everyone will be seeing on there way to the ministry of silly walks around silted up boating pools that we're told is "art"...

    It's a shame that so many of the spaces meant for trees near Margate station have been concreted over.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 20.06 I do go to Margate and photograph it as often as can and I used to work there, one of the main reasons for my photographs is one of historical record, so I prefer to do this early in the morning, before there are lots of people and vehicles in the way of the buildings that I want to record.

    Obviously as it is dark in the mornings in the winter I mostly do this in the summer the links take you to my last 3 blog posts on days that I photographed Margate, you should find them linked to about 1,000 photographs of Margate that I have taken in the last few months.

    http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/go-to-margate-to-see-turner.html

    http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/08/brew-up-in-margate-and-few-hundred.html

    http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/08/pictures-of-northdown-road-cliftonville.html

    As far as choice of views go, I don’t edit them the whole lot goes up, yesterdays photographs were the result of a quick delivery of children to a party by train, there simply wasn’t time for more than a few quick snaps along the prom in the 5 mins before the party started.

    As far as my flare for the banal goes, are you perhaps suggesting that I somehow modified Wake’s Latin in translation, at the same time he describes the vicar of Margate as; “vir probus, doctus, diligens; concionator bonus” a conscientious studious hardworking jolly good chap, something that may placate you a bit.

    Anyway the pictures I thought showed that part of Margate in a pretty good light and didn’t dwell on the dereliction overly.

    23.59 I assure you I will again when I get the time.

    Both of you can always send me some more upbeat pictures of Margate, I assure you I will publish them with any upbeat comments you may wish to make.

    Peter we have lost some trees in Ramsgate on harbour parade, I think it may be something to do with using the wrong varieties in the salt-sprayed air.

    I will endeavour to expand on the silly walk thing later on, important now as we are told that any shortfall in funding for this type of thing will now come out of our council tax.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Peter Silly walk it may be but I for one wish I could do it. I dont do Jealousy but I do wish I could still walk. still more than enough time for the morose when I read anon comments. I for one like your pictures Michael whether your comments are flaccid I suggest is a personal thing and all the time people remain anonymous so do their views.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wish you could too Don, glad you liked the pictures, I did wonder about flaccid myself I always consider my views to be fairly firm.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks! This helped a bunch! I've read a few
    rather confusing blogs lately, this cleared up a lot confusion I had.

    ReplyDelete

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.