Friday 15 July 2016

Straightening Out the Church of St George the Martyr in Ramsgate and The Captain Swing Riots in Kent

Yesterday evening I attended a prize giving event at Church of St George the Martyr here in Ramsgate, sitting near the back on the side balcony unable to see the event, with most of the view in front of me being the view of the opposite balcony – closed because of the roof leaking there – I sat and sketched.


I doubt that there would be much noticeable difference between a Ramsgate prize giving in 1830 and one now, children played the piano some sung, occasionally the lists of prizes were read out, children collected their prizes. An eminently suitable background to sketching the church, I am always a little concerned about doing this during god bothering events – struck by a thunderbolt – upset the vicar type of kidney.


The Church of St George the Martyr has been straightened out after the Father Christmas incident, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/ramsgate-st-george-father-christmas-and.html  


I supposed – sitting there – that St George’s Church opened in about 1830 and sketching the features it occurred to me that it really is one of the more attractive Georgian churches in England.


Having done two blog posts of 1830s directories this week and written a leaflet for Margate Tourist information office with most of the illustrations copied from an 1820 guide to Margate, my mind is somewhat focused on Georgian Thanet  


At this time most of the population of Kent were agricultural workers living in poverty and at times when the rents went up, or the price of bread went up there were riots, rick burnings. The central character in this being Captain Swing, a sort of fictional leader, as a bookseller I imagine I would have sold the pamphlets.


What sort of pamphlet? Best not try to explain so I have put an example below.






















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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.