Folkestone festival and abandoned funfair

[editor]

Still working on this one, but here's some new photos from Folkestone.
It's a strange town and much nicer that I thought - it's got a proper beach and fabulously evocative abandoned funfair (the next section will show the posh hotels and lovely coastal walk)

Folkestone photos

Folkestone festival and beach

Folkestone abandoned funfair

 

[HackneyE9]

Great photos. Didn't think I'd ever been to Folkestone, but then your other snaps of the derelict harbour train station got me wondering....I think my great teenage inter-railing trip of 1991, ie pre-Eurostar days, may well have involved the now defunct Folkestone/Boulougne crossing.

Makes you wonder if closing down all these seaside attractions isn't a bit shortsighted - with global warming, not to mention aviation terrorism, the great British seaside holiday could be making a comeback.

 

[portman]

Interesting selection of photos, particularly of the abandoned funfair. Seems that English seaside resorts with their mix of life alongside decay always throw up opportunites for some fairly poignant images...

 

[Brixton Hatter]

Seems that English seaside resorts with their mix of life alongside decay always throw up opportunites for some fairly poignant images...

agreed. i love quirky old seaside towns and their old fashioned cafes & amusements etc. there's a lot of towns around the country, be it kent or cornwall, that are like this. it's kinda nice that in some places the old fashioned english seaside resort still exists...though many places have seen better days. give it 50 years and i reckon the seafronts will all be full up with starbucks, tesco express and ben&jerry's shops...

 

[Kenny Vermouth]

I live about 20 miles away and it's certainly better than most of the seaside towns in Kent.

 

[Andy the Don]

The Editor should visit Broadstairs in Kent. A lovely seaside town with a sandy beach & a faded oppulance. My father & his parents used to go on holiday to Briadstairs, pre-war, after my grandfather got made print foreman. Broadstairs was posher than Margate where they used to holiday previously.

 

[zoltan]

Durres/m Albania has a beachfront taht looks like its been through an uclear war - the entire fornt is ditted with bunkers & rught in the middle of it is the remians of a funfair, complete with dodgem cars, all rotting away.Ill try and post a pic or two if I can find them.Theres nothing as sad as a broken down funfair.


Think the place was trashed during the early '90s when the Italians invaded Durres and occupied it to stop any more would be escapees from boarding ships to get out of the place.

 

[axon]

The funfair is abandoned! I remember going on that very rollercoaster as a kid. It was vey scary and almost (very nearly) made me cry.

 

[Streathamite]

The Editor should visit Broadstairs in Kent. A lovely seaside town with a sandy beach & a faded oppulance. My father & his parents used to go on holiday to Briadstairs, pre-war, after my grandfather got made print foreman. Broadstairs was posher than Margate where they used to holiday previously.

lovely old place, innit?

 

[behemoth]

Folkestone Old High Street (I think) is a lovely narrow winding lane on a steep hill and devoid of the usual chain stores. Is the funfair still set to become flats, hotels, casinos etc?

There ia a pub in Broadstairs where you can pay over the odds to take your drink on the beach in a plastic cup. Tartar Frigate or something.

The nicest seaside town in Kent is Whitstable, or maybe Dungeness.

 

[Dirty Martini]

Nice photos. I like Folkestone, my brother's been living there for a few months. There are some nice pubs, particularly the two at the top of the Baile, can't remember their names. And The Leas is great too.

I like the beach too -- clean, wide, and there's some shade at the back under the arches.

Folkestone Old High Street (I think) is a lovely narrow winding lane on a steep hill and devoid of the usual chain stores. Is the funfair still set to become flats, hotels, casinos etc?

It's a nice street but a lot of the shops there seem to be barely surviving. I get the impression that Folkestone as a whole is hanging on for the oft-promised redevelopment of the Harbour. Isn't there a dispute between the owner of Saga, who wants to redevelop, and the bloke that owns large parts of the seafront?

 

[Dirty Martini]

Anyone in Folkestone for longer than a day could get a 4.50 Explorer ticket, get on the bus to Elham (about 40 mins) and explore the beautiful Elham Valley too.

 

[Biddlybee]

really like this one

 

[ViolentPanda]

Folkestone Old High Street (I think) is a lovely narrow winding lane on a steep hill and devoid of the usual chain stores.

Not quite. IIRC there's a "Milletts" about 2/3rds of the way up on the left hand side.

 

[Dirty Martini]

Not quite. IIRC there's a "Milletts" about 2/3rds of the way up on the left hand side.

Is there? Am I thinking of the same street, the one with the tattiest Shepherd Neame pub in Kent, the Earl Grey?

 

[zoooo]

Great pictures.
There is little in the world that I love more than an abandoned funfair.

 

[editor]

Great pictures.
There is little in the world that I love more than an abandoned funfair.

Here's another one for you in Coney Island, NYC.

The 1926 Thunderbolt ride featured in the Woody Allen film 'Annie Hall,' but was sadly demolished in November, 2000

<editor wishes he'd taken more pictures at the time>

 

[8ball]

There's something so sad about abandoned funfairs, like when you see a shoe in the gutter.

 

[mauvais]

This strikes me as the 'stand-out' shot:

 

[Dhimmi]

Ah the old Rotunda, one of Jimmy Godden's schemes where he buys up amusement parks along the southcoast, runs them into the ground and then tries to turn them into property developments. He's succeeded in F'stone, is almost there in Ramsgate on the Pleasurama site (after a mysterious fire), working on it in Margate in Dreamland (after a mysterious fire), and is part of the consortium which owns the derelict pier in Brighton. You know the one which had a mysterious fire.
He's got planning permission for the rotunda site in league with Roger de Haan, the founder of SAGA. You can see the scheme at http://www.folkestoneharbour.com/ and get an idea of what locals think at http://www.joylandbooks.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4626&sid=e8feb2e5a99ab10b1dda218a78d1b833

Good pics but telling a sad story really...

Have a butchers at what he's managed at the once mighty Dreamland in Margate... http://artsandelbows.blogspot.com/2006/06/all-new-now-open.html

 

[RaverDrew]

Brings back memories from when I was a kid

My aunt had a place in Broadstairs and I used to spend most of the summer there. Lovely sandy beach, old-fashioned seaside town. A crappy cinema that showed films a year after I'd already seen them in London Wicked old school Italian ice-cream parlour, and Bleak House, the place is Dickens town after all.

My favourite place was a seafood resteraunt right next to the beach called the mad chef, run by some mad old chef who liked his drink and used to join the customers at their tables insisting that they have another drink on the house and get pissed with him.

The place was a shadow of it's summer self last time I went back there a few
years ago in the winter, with a lot of the local kids I had befriended over the years unemployed and all having massive smack habits.

Tragic to see that fairground at Folkestone. I used to love the rides and go-carts there.

My highlight of the summer was always going to Margate to the Bem-Bom Brothers/dreamland to ride on the legendary Mary Rose, scenic railway and the looping star. I hope it's all still there when my kids are old enough to appreciate it.

 

[editor]

Ah the old Rotunda, one of Jimmy Godden's schemes where he buys up amusement parks along the southcoast, runs them into the ground and then tries to turn them into property developments. He's succeeded in F'stone, is almost there in Ramsgate on the Pleasurama site (after a mysterious fire), working on it in Margate in Dreamland (after a mysterious fire), and is part of the consortium which owns the derelict pier in Brighton. You know the one which had a mysterious fire.

Fuck. I didn't realise it was the same oh-so unfortunate chap. Is that catalogue of accidents really true?

It was amazing how the pier at Brighton managed to catch on fire twice when it wasn't even connected to the mainland.



More about the fella here: http://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/news.htm

 

[PacificOcean]

Fuck. I didn't realise it was the same oh-so unfortunate chap. Is that catalogue of accidents really true?

It was amazing how the pier at Brighton managed to catch on fire twice when it wasn't even connected to the mainland.



More about the fella here: http://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/news.htm

And didn't that bloke get arrested for knocking down the scenic railway in Margate even though it was listed (the oldest in the country or the world, one of the two!) - I think that was last year. I wonder if he got done for it?

 

[editor]

I was told by a Folkestone resident that he managed to knock down the other dome at the funfair just a few hours before a preservation order was about to take effect.

 

[editor]

(Thread details sent to Private Eye)

 

[boohoo]

Fuck. I didn't realise it was the same oh-so unfortunate chap. Is that catalogue of accidents really true?

It was amazing how the pier at Brighton managed to catch on fire twice when it wasn't even connected to the mainland.

All these mystery fires are rather depressing. Reminds me of a thread I started a while back....

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=127793

 

[PacificOcean]

I was told by a Folkestone resident that he managed to knock down the other dome at the funfair just a few hours before a preservation order was about to take effect.

Blimey, you could just picture this bloke cackling evilly,twirling his moustache while tying some young lady to train tracks!

 

[PacificOcean]

Fuck. I didn't realise it was the same oh-so unfortunate chap. Is that catalogue of accidents really true?

It was amazing how the pier at Brighton managed to catch on fire twice when it wasn't even connected to the mainland.



More about the fella here: http://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/news.htm

One thing I don't understand about this is why buy a pier and burn it down? Surely he won't own anything then apart from a bit of sea?

 

[Dhimmi]

Fuck. I didn't realise it was the same oh-so unfortunate chap. Is that catalogue of accidents really true?

I'm afraid it is true. Pleasurama was originally Ramsgate railway station, converted into a funpark when a new station was built. Not the most beautiful of buildings but important in a local history way. It was razed to the ground and it's been planned to build housing there. The residents of Wellington Crescent on the clifftop above have been fighting it tooth and nail because it's proposed to be higher than the cliff.
In Margate the fire was in Marine Crescent, originally a 18th row of houses all converted to arcades, cafes etc now. He owned one large lump of it which burned down giving instant possible road access to the Dreamland site behind, should one be needed. Lo and behold he's applied to develop it mainly to housing. Luckily locals have managed to get a preservation order on the wooden scenic railway in the middle of the site.
With both of these and Rotunda at F'stone the pattern has been identical. Running the amusements into the ground, claiming the site isn't viable as amusements and then applying to develop it.

It was amazing how the pier at Brighton managed to catch on fire twice when it wasn't even connected to the mainland.

More about the fella here: http://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/news.htm

Yes most perculiar. Rumour has it he can't get insurance for any of his property any more. The joyland books site is very good and is the cyber home of the save dreamland campaigners. Thankfully they're as bloody minded as Godden is and there's a chance they're actually save it eventually.

 

[Giles]

One thing I don't understand about this is why buy a pier and burn it down? Surely he won't own anything then apart from a bit of sea?

I was about to ask that question!

I mean, I can see the (criminal) motivation for buying an old building that you are then supposed to preserve, and then burning it so you can then re-use the site for something more profitable.

But why destroy any hope of rebuilding the West Pier? Unless, of course, he also owns the OTHER pier, and doesn't want the competition!!!!????

He doesn't, does he?

I think that, for listed buildings etc, if you own them, and they burn down, you should just have to re-instate them as was. Having a law like this would simply remove the motivation to burn stuff down in the first place.

Giles..