Rock Gardens and Cascade, Madeira Walk

Summary

Rock gardens and cascade designed in 1892-1893 by the Borough Engineer, W A McIntosh Valon with James Pulham and Son.

Reasons for Designation

The Rock Gardens and Cascade, Madeira Walk, Ramsgate is listed 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.

Historic interest:

* this 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 several houses grouped around Albion Gardens, including the Memorial to the Great War, and with the former National Westminster Bank, Harbour Parade (all listed at Grade II).

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 around 1791-1798 and Nelson Crescent of around 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 1867-9. 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 around 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. Their manufacturing methods also enabled the firm to produce stone-like terracotta.

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

The land occupied by Albion Place Gardens, known as Crow Hill and later as Mount Albion, was open, unenclosed cliff top until the late C18. In 1789, the development of the East Cliff began, with Albion House, on the east corner of the gardens, being built that year by a Mr Simmons, an alderman of Canterbury. Further houses were gradually added to form the present L-shaped terraces, six properties being available by 1792. The desirability of Albion Place was confirmed by the frequent visits of Princess Victoria, who stayed at Albion House in 1830, and of Jane Austen, who mentions the address in her novel Mansfield Park. Albion Place remained unenclosed until the early C19 when a plan of 1822 (Collard and Hurst) shows the gardens, which were referred to as being open to the public in 1840 (Mirams 1984). A cliff-top walk along the south side of the gardens provided the link between Ramsgate's East and West Cliffs until 1891 when, following the passing of the Improvement Act of 1878, the Corporation began construction (under the direction of the Borough Engineer, Valon) of the present main road, Madeira Walk. The Walk, with its massive retaining walls of Pulhamite rockwork was begun in 1893. The project required the demolition of part of the former Royal Albion Hotel. It also included the Royal Parade ascent to the west cliff, the arched retaining wall and the warehouses along the north side of the harbour. 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). Completed and opened in April 1895, Madeira Walk was designed to take both pedestrian and vehicle traffic and, supplemented in 1901 by a tram route. The gardens were replanted in 1984 to celebrate the centenary of the granting of the Charter of Incorporation of Ramsgate by Queen Victoria in 1884; they remain in the care of the local council.

Details

Rock gardens and cascade designed in 1892-1893 by the Borough Engineer, W A McIntosh Valon with James Pulham and Son.

MATERIALS and PLAN: Pulhamite of varied colours in imitation of geological strata, overlaying a base of mixed masonry hardcore, with terracotta embellishments. The Pulhamite forms the sides of an artificial gorge, through which the roadway of Madeira Walk follows a sinuous route as it climbs uphill for a distance of approximately 180metres. The Pulhamite rockwork is arranged at either side of the road and varies in height from approximately 1 to 4m.

EXTERIOR: the northern range begins at the junction of Madeira Walk, Harbour Parade and Albion Place with a cylindrical terracotta capped pier bearing coats of arms (the Cinque Ports, Ramsgate etc.). From here a mid-C20, concrete balustrade (replacing the terracotta original) follows up along the south side of Albion Place for approximately 70m, with Pulhamite rock formations stepping down beneath it to connect with the Madeira Walk roadside. Where Albion Gardens begins at the end of this run there is a second capped pier and a dog-legged stair gives access back down to Madeira Walk. The final section of balustrade after the stair is missing, due to damage. Grottos containing benches sit either side at the base of the stair on Madeira Walk. To the near centre of the northern range is a cascade which flows from Albion Gardens under a short bridge, also of Pulhamite, down to a pond by Madeira Walk. Behind the cascade, and towards the end of Madeira Walk, further small outcrops of Pulhamite shelter seating areas. The War Memorial, which stands to the south-east of the cascade, was erected in 1920 and designed by Gilbert Bayes and is separately listed (LE 1085348).

The southern range also has large boulder formations of differently-coloured strata, including some genuine sandstone boulders, as well as short tunnel and archway openings, along with a stair, providing pedestrian and vehicular access to the rear courtyards of the Harbour Parade properties which lie behind. The inner faces of the tunnel, archway and the courtyard side of the range are similarly constructed in Pulhamite. The western end of the southern side abuts the Portland stone side wall of Number 52, Harbour Parade at ground floor level. A small outlier of rock sits at the top of Kent Steps. The Pulhamite structures were designed to incorporate planting troughs and both ranges contain various bedding plants and shrubs.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 04/05/2020

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

171885

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Newman, J, The Buildings of England. Kent: North-East and East, (2013), 505
Madeira Walk in Thanet Advertiser, (20 July 1895), 8

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