It’s just over an hour from London by high-speed train, but the isle of Thanet in East Kent feels very distant from the capital. This is marginal country: a flat and watery Saxon landscape so visually distinct from the Kentish hills and orchards it borders that it might be a part of East Anglia, or Jutland, eroded and washed ashore, far from home. Though the Wantsum Channel, the narrow waterway which once separated the isle from the British mainland, has long since silted up, the sense of apartness — of a “Planet Thanet” somehow removed from the affairs of the rest of the country — endures.
Viewed on a clear day from the chalk cliffs of Ramsgate, the matching white cliffs of France’s Cap Blanc Nez, our isle’s separated geological twin, shimmer on the horizon. In 1940 newsreels, Goering was famously shown peering at a defiant Britain from over there, no doubt picking out the town’s landmarks — the tall church spires that guided ships into harbour, the gaps and folds between the dazzling cliffs — through his binoculars. Heavily bombed in World War Two, and the marshalling point for the Little Ships of the Dunkirk evacuation, Ramsgate and Thanet’s proximity to continental Europe, source of both threat and promise, has shaped the region from the beginning of Britain’s recorded history. Perched on the edge of England, surrounded on three sides by the North Sea, the Isle of Thanet is simultaneously both marginal and central to our island’s story. Wherever it was finished, the first draft of the nation’s history was always written here.
Joined to Ramsgate by the village of Pegwell — a series of flint-walled cottages perched precariously on chalk cliffs concealing tunnels that lead to long-disused smugglers’ caves — sweeps the broad expanse of Pegwell Bay. For thousands of years the bay’s sombre mudflats, quaking bogs and salt marshes, patrolled by long-legged wading birds and basking seals, have served as the first beachhead for migrants and adventurers, missionaries and invaders making their way to this island.
It was here, in 2017, that archaeologists discovered the expeditionary fort built by Julius Caesar in 54 BC to defend his newly-landed legions from the hostile Celtic tribesmen, and here that the legions of Claudius returned in 43 AD, this time to stay. Here, too, were the great oyster beds of Ritupiae, singled out by Roman gourmets like the poet Juvenal for special praise, part of the network of trade and empire linking this lonely shoreline to the great hub of Mediterranean civilisation.
On the other side of the bay, the great flint fort of Richborough, built half a millennium of Roman rule after Caesar splashed ashore, failed to dissuade Saxon raiders from seizing the island for their own.
According to legend, the Jutish brothers Hengist and Horsa, summoned by the Romano-British king Vortigern as mercenaries, first came ashore right here, beginning the process that carved out Saxon England from Celtic Britain. A wooden longship, a gift of the Danish government, commemorates this turning point, its dragon-headed prow looking fiercely out across the North Sea towards its distant homeland.
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SubscribeEnjoyable and perceptive. This is proving to be an excellent series. Keep them coming.
Fine article. Nice change from the doom & gloom of war on the horizon.
Precisely. ” this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England !”
Thanet and Ramsgate has so much to offer but this article is brimming with tedious stereotypes. Manston isn’t a local micro culture war, this is incorrect.
Manston is a threat to our environment, health, well being, tourist economy and many other factors. The campaign for Judicial Review has national and global reach as people of every political persuasion, and from all geographies, scratch their heads and wonder why only the UK government would OPEN a new airport given the Paris Agreement, Covid and the seeming meltdown of the aviation industry in front of our eyes.
More than this, they wonder why a Government would think doing so at 300 feet over parts of Ramsgate is a good idea, despite their experts in the planning inspectorate also recommending a resounding no. Going from a few military or commercial flights a week to the monstrous volumes needed to turn a profit is hardly continuation of our aviation heritage. Our past and our future are not, and cannot be, the same.
Planes low enough for the sound to be over 100Db, low enough you can wave at the pilot and make your house shake. Low enough to wake up your children. Low enough for aviation fumes to fall upon us as jet engines scream over our heads every 15 minutes if the flight volumes in the DCO application are to be believed.
Hardly a micro culture war n’est pas?
Sad but 100% true
A splendid account of this charming little Thanet town.
Its Regency architecture makes it a real gem, a sort of seaside mini-Bath! Although brick and stucco, its bow fronted house in Liverpool Lawn and Spencer Square are a delight, as are both the four storied Royal Crescent and nearby Nelson
Crescent.
The fact that Caesar landed nearby on his two “smash and grab” raids, adds yet another attraction.
.
Fact: More Georgian houses in Ramsgate than Bath!
Thank you.
I very much enjoyed the evocative description of ‘gaps and folds of dazzling cliffs’ and the romance of smugglers’ caves and seals. As Aris clearly connects with the beauty of our town, it’s sad he doesn’t feel fully ‘integrated’ as this is most definitely not the experience of all. There’s an enviable sense of community and a rich mix of people who’ve been here for generations and those who’ve recently arrived, not just from London. Lazy labels and the assumptions they carry are never helpful and ‘DfL’, with its xenophobic undertone, is particularly divisive. It doesn’t reflect the way people rub along in Ramsgate – a snapshot of the harbour pubs, Friday market or supermarket queue would reveal a healthy combination of ancient and modern Thanetians in all their guises. A cargo airport at Manston would see 5 planes an hour coming into land less than 1000feet overhead, day and night, making houses shake. Knowing what this would do to a unique royal harbour, let alone its seals and bird life, people have risen in opposition, to back one resident’s judicial review. Those people include pensioners who once worked in the harbour, construction workers worried about the polluting impact on their kids and small businesses in the harbour, aware their patrons won’t be back for that beer or coffee when they’re deafened every 15 minutes. Please keep writing about the town’s history – eyes and ears fully open!
Whilst I enjoyed the history aspect of the article I’m a little taken aback at some of the comments within it, and the assumptions they make. As a person that moved here several years ago you could class me as a dfl, what decisive language! This is my home, where I love, the place I don’t want to leave. Where I mix with everyone down here, am on the Town Council (Labour controlled since May 2019)to try and improve the area for all and am busy fighting a cargo hub that will be less than a mile away from a Georgian seaside location, with more traffic to it than East Midlands Airport!
Am I alone in doing so? Are all people that worry about the climate, their children’s schooling being interrupted 5 times an hour, noise pollution etc all because a company headed up by a struck off solicitor, who ran the airport into failure two times before, from London? As a Councillor, who got elected on promising to fight the threat, that’s a resounding no.
Ramsgate is a beautiful, warm, charming town with a strong community feel. Volunteer groups help garden, litter pick, hand out food parcels. New people into the area, join in and feel welcome. By all means, anyone reading this join us, stay in our many hotels, enjoy the sandy beaches, we’d welcome you wherever you come from. There’s a lot on offer.
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Very interesting article, I’ve lived in Thanet all my life, and it has changed, some good some bad. It would be nice to have manston back to create jobs, and to push up wages, as although in the rich South Thanet is a deprived area with real poverty. The dfls, in some ways help in other hinder, houses are being built to service people from London, pushing pricing out of the means of local people. We have drug problems,crime, anti social behaviour, like any area, to few police to deal with it. But that’s the same as most places.
Sadly, as the Planning Inspectorate pointed out after their exhaustive research, the job forecast is overblown as cargo is largely automated. The area undoubtedly needs employment, but this is a false wrecker’s light.
Not quite Ramsgate I know, but Pegwell Bay was once a base for SRN-4 hovercraft that roared back and forth across the Channel.
The route crossed the Goodwin Sands, so at lowish tides we would zoom along over dry land, the nearest ships way off in the distance.
Happy Days!
Fantastic article, Aris.
I really enjoy this series on British towns and this article in particular. It is very well written. Now I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos on Ramsgate & Thanet and would love to visit.
Come on down, the water’s lovely!
Excellent writer, this guy.
I lived in Ramsgate for a few lovely years. as a visitor from Luton said “it’s something different”. The sea the light and the very different micro climate, (Thanet is one of the few places that grow brussle sprouts on account of the climate) make it a magical place. However as a local friend said, it is almost impossible to earn a living there.
Ramsgate has a serious problem. It is all but impossible to trade with tye rest of the economy on account if the transport layout.. A one hour drive from Ramsgate gets you 60 miles to the traffic jams on the M20 and the M25. From there it is another hour in a traffic jam to get to the Dartford crossing or Sevenoaks. Heading south west the road effectively stops at Folkestone. (The road from Folkestone to Eastbourne is a winding single carriage country lane full of sharp bends that take expensive time to negotiate). Trade and links with the South coast are simply not possible on the existing London centred transport network. Trade with Essex and the Midlands is equally constrained. Especially when you have to drive past your competitors to get to a customer. They, of course are ahead of you. The only competitive edge you can use is to be cheap. That means cheap labour and low property costs. Both of which contribute to poverty not riches.
Like most seaside towns it is isolated at the end of a dead-end road surrounded on three sides by fish. The improved railway link will simply allow more DFL’s to buy second homes causing more social division between London money and local earnings.
The only real cure is investment in new infrastructure to allow trade around the coast instead of towards London. But it won’t happen because no one has the vision. In another half a century, there will still be poverty, drugs, deprivation alongside London riches. We can chalk that one up to the failed public sector who do not have the imagination to do anything apart from what was done before and simply repeat the failures of their previous incumbents.
https://www.crowdjustice.co…
I’m interested in the romantic reference to ‘trees along the seafront being bent by the wind’ – there are a few palms in pots by the beach (which get removed in winter) but otherwise Ramsgate’s seafront is regrettably treeless.
Went to a pawn brokers/second hand shop in Ramsgate.
Stocked with bongs and massive knives, says it all about Ramsgate
But you would probably find the same goods in any such establishment anywhere in the land.
Would it be any ‘better’ in say, salubrious Hull?
Nothing ‘says it all’ about Ramsgate or anywhere else
There’s a pawnbroker shop in Hammersmith, Chelsea end, that sells flick knives and drug paraphernalia. I guess that says it all about that area of West London, non?