Ramsgate Town Council expects to take over the current fire station building in Effingham Street from next February – and will be holding a public meeting to discuss options for community use of the site.
Kent Fire and Rescue Service will be moving out of the station which has been their home in Ramsgate since 1905, to the new purpose built site at Newington Road.
KFRS say the station is no longer fit for purpose and are now near to completing the £8million site at the former Ramsgate Swimming Pool.
The new station, scheduled to be operational in January, will be a whole-time fire station which means six to eight firefighters will be there round the clock. It will also be the base for a fire engine which is crewed by on-call firefighters when they are needed to attend an incident. There will be training on the site for firefighters.
Ramsgate Town Council become the new owner of the Effingham Street building after paying around £350,000.
The authority has been asking for expressions of interest for community use at the building and will hold a meeting on Monday, January 7 to discuss options.
The meeting will be held at Custom House in Harbour Parade and will start at 7pm.
could part of this site be the home of a Ramsgate Museum –Ramsgate lost it’s small museum with the fire at Ramsgate Library a few years ago. Ramsgate’s greatest asset I#s our History & heritage — we in TCDT have just laid a Town Trail of Blue Plaques to highlight this asset — a Town Museum would be an amazing follow up to our trail, booklet & website on the subject. I have a totally unique collection of over 5,000 Old Ramsgate photos and I know that we could draw together Museum Items from the people of Ramsgate.
I fully agree with you Ralph. I also think it should have a live in caretaker to look after security as upkeep.
One of the options could be to allocate space for an archive and I think it could attract some funding.The archive would need to be curated and made available not only to residents, but also enquirers after information on Ramsgate. This means a digital archive accessible to all.The County archives were moved from Whitfield to Maidstone to a splendid building, but in the process East Kent lost out in yet another centralisation of ‘local’ Govt functions, so if we want to tell our story about our past, we cannot just leave it to Maidstone, because it will not happen, no matter how well laid out it may be.
In general small museums struggle to exist and nowadays it is not enough to restore an artefact, put it on display and expect a paying public to turn up any more.
I will write up an article on how the future of museums and heritage in general may have to have a narrative or a story in future. Ramsgate has a compelling story, which it has not yet, been given a chance to tell to a wider audience.
As for a live in caretaker,that I am afraid, is unlikely to happen, because it would not only be expensive,but it would cut the space available for community activities and that is what this consultation is all about.
It’s a nice idea. Perhaps planting a young sycamore tree just near to No. 22, to replace the original one on the corner of the fire station, would bring memories back for many locals. It was chopped down in the 1980s, much to my dismay.
I must correct you that there will be only 4 whole time operational fire fighters on duty at any time at the new station…not 6 to 8. The second pump will be made up of part time personnel responding by pager from home.