Terracing, balustrades and arcades to Royal Parade, Ramsgate, Kent

Summary

A piece of urban planning on three levels, providing an ascending roadway from Ramsgate harbour to Nelson Crescent. The structure is comprised of a series of brick arches supporting a roadway, with retaining walls along the face of West Cliff. It was built in 1893-1895 to the designs of the borough engineer, W A Mcintosh Valon with Pulham and Sons.

Description

MATERIALS and PLAN: red brick laid in English bond with terracotta and stone dressings and Pulhamite cement render over a hardcore base. The Pulhamite render is in a variety of colours and emulates different strata of rock. At the lower level of the harbour side, a series of arches support the roadway, Royal Parade, as it rises from north-east to south west. These arches face onto Military Road and house warehouses of one and two storeys. At the middle level a further series of brick arches run along the northern side of the roadway called Royal Parade, and have infill of Pulhamite rockwork which includes planting troughs and seating areas.

EXTERIOR: the front facing onto Military Road has a series of 28 bays to its eastern end which follow the curve of the road and the harbour wall. The eight bays at the far right are divided by wide pilaster buttresses which rise the full height of the wall and terminate in piers which form part of the balustrade beside the road. Buttresses and piers both have raised panels at their centre. Bays at this end have a central doorway, flanked by windows, all with segmental arched heads and projecting keystones. The balustrade has vase-shaped balusters and alternate piers support a cast iron lampstand with globe lamp. As the road rises the bays become taller and the pilaster buttresses are replaced by semi-circular relieving arches with moulded edges, between which are circular panels with moulded surrounds which take the form of keyed occuli. The centre of each panel and the keystones of the relieving arches are of terracotta and show the arms of Ramsgate and Kent. Doors and windows are set in recessed walling and have round-arched heads. At the western end the arches encompass two floors, with central double doors to each storey and the upper floor approached by flights of metal steps. At the further western end the retaining wall is built of stock brick and abutted by buildings including the former Smack Boys’ Home (Grade II), the Sailors’ Church and former Sailors’ Home (Grade II) and the flight of steps known as Jacob’s Ladder (Grade II).

The retaining wall to the northern side of Royal Parade starts at its eastern end with a flight of steps which turns the corner into Sion Hill. This has a balustrade of the type seen on the south side of Royal Parade with vase balusters and brick piers. The wall and balustrade are divided by a dentilled cornice. To the left of this is a series of thirty, large niches with segmental heads. Individual arches are filled by Pulhamite rockwork and this overlaps with the arched brick frames, so that the brick piers appear to emerge from the rock in some cases. The eleventh and twelfth arches from the right support a flight of steps, which causes the top of the wall to rise at a diagonal, after which the balustrade is replaced by later-C20 metal railings. A dogleg staircase with wrought iron railings occupies the thirteenth bay from right.

The arches and Pulhamite infill revert to plain walling at left, divided by pilaster buttresses, and there is a bronze plaque in a shaped frame which records the completion of the work in 1895 and the names of the mayor and councillors at the time, as well as the borough engineer and designer of the work, W A Macintosh Valon.

INTERIORS: at the lower level, facing onto Military Road, are a series of warehouses, of one and two storey height, accessed by the arched doorways which face the road. The majority have now been converted to retail premises.

History

From the mid-C18 Ramsgate became increasingly popular as a seaside resort, its expansion being accelerated by road improvements and faster sea passage offered by hoys, packets and steamers. An assembly room, warm water baths, subscription libraries and places of worship were joined by new streets such as Effingham Street and speculative crescents and squares on the East and West Cliffs such as Albion Place of about 1791-8 and Nelson Crescent of about 1800-1805. During the Napoleonic Wars Ramsgate became a busy garrison town and a major port of embarkation. Ramsgate’s importance in the 1820s is attested by its patronage by the British and European royal families and the creation of a separate parish by Act of Parliament, served by the large Church of St George (1824-1827). The harbour is the only one in the British Isles which has the designation ‘Royal’, granted by George IV.

The arrival of the South Eastern Railway’s branch line in 1846 opened up Ramsgate to mass tourism and popular culture, bringing a range of inexpensive, lively resort facilities intended for the sorts of middle- and working-class holidaymakers depicted in WP Frith’s painting ‘Ramsgate Sands’ of 1854 (Royal Collection). Wealthier visitors were accommodated at a respectable distance from the town in developments such as EW Pugin’s Granville Hotel of 1867-1869. Competition with other Kentish resorts stimulated a series of large-scale improvements in the late-C19 and early-C20 including the construction of Royal Parade and landscaped stairs and pathways at the eastern and western ends of the seafront to join the upper promenades to the Undercliff walks. New schools, hospitals and services were also built. The thriving town attracted diverse faith communities; Moses Montefiore founded a synagogue and a religious college at East Cliff Lodge, while AWN Pugin St Augustine’s Church and the Grange as part of an intended Catholic community on the West Cliff.

In 1940 the harbour was the point of return for many of the small boats involved in the evacuation from Dunkirk and war-time precautions included the digging of extensive air raid shelter tunnels in the chalk beneath the town. Ramsgate remained a popular holiday destination until the advent of cheap foreign travel in the post-war decades. Falling visitor numbers were exacerbated by the decline of the town’s small trades and industries, fishing and boat-building. However, a ferry and hovercraft port and the large marina created in the inner harbour in the 1970s have continued to bring life to the area.

Rock gardens first seem to have appeared in England from the C17 as a suitable setting for exotic plants. The influential landscape designers Humphry Repton (1752-1818) and John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) both promoted the idea of naturalistic rock formations in a landscape and this coincided with the importation of new species of plants into England from mountainous areas.

From the 1840s a number of companies began experimenting with cements to cover a base of hard core in imitation of large-scale rock formations. James Pulham and Son of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire were amongst several such makers, and also specialised in terracotta ornaments. The longevity of their company which lasted from about 1845 to 1945 under the leadership of three generations of Pulham, all named James, marked them out, as did the quality of their products. Their work and patrons included relatively modest suburban villas as well as bankers, ship and railway owners and the royal family. Work at Sandringham, Windsor and Buckingham Palace earned the company a royal warrant in 1895. ‘Durability Guaranteed’ was one of the company’s claims, and this has largely proved to be true. Whether real stone or artificial, an aim of designers was to replicate the appearance of genuine rock formations with geological strata. Pulhams' was noted for this and from the 1880s they experimented with different colours and textures of cement. The structure of their designs was a core of over-burnt bricks, waste stone and slag, or other industrial waste that was locally available. Overhangs were of real slate or sandstone and the whole structure was finished with two coats of render, between 6mm and 15mm thick.

The various constructions of rockwork at Ramsgate, realised by Ramsgate Corporation from the 1890s, with the last work on Winterstoke Chine in 1936, form one of the largest groupings of their designs and provide a good cross-section of their work and the compositional possibilities offered by different locations and gradients.

The Royal Parade Arches and Pulhamite cliff face, which extend up from the harbour area to Nelson Crescent, were built between 1893 and 1895 to the designs of the borough engineer, W A McIntosh Valon. Early photographs show the site as a chalk cliff face, rising from behind the dockside area. In the process of construction, the grassed area and the original roadway in front of Nelson Crescent were used to allow space for the additional roadway and a further thoroughfare, Military Road, was extended to the west along the undercliff. The large-scale project also included Madeira Walk which formed an ascent to the East Cliff. The cost of the whole project was close to £60,000 and the waterfall was nicknamed 'ratepayers' tears' as a consequence (see SOURCES, Thanet Advertiser).

Reasons for Listing

The terracing, balustrades and arcades to Royal Parade, Ramsgate are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* they are comparable in interest to other designated examples of Pulhamite structures and representative of the Pulhams' innovative design and construction of garden and park structures;
* designed by the borough engineer, W A Mcintosh Valon with Pulham and Sons.

Historic interest:

* the structure forms part of an important grouping of Pulhamite structures which are spaced along the seafront at Ramsgate and which were built in the period between 1893 and 1936.

Group value:

* with numerous harbourside and clifftop buildings in Ramsgate, including 1-18 Nelson Crescent, the former Smack Boys’ Home, the Sailors’ Church and former Sailors’ Home and the cliff face staircase known as Jacob’s Ladder (all Grade II).

External Links

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