Sun shelter and rock gardens and pools, Winterstoke Gardens

Winterstoke Gardens is a landscaped municipal park on the cliff top to the east of Ramsgate, built between 1920 and 1923 to designs by Sir John Burnet and Partners and Pulham and Sons. The work was a gift to the borough from Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills, who owned the nearby house East Court.

The design exploits the sloping terrain to create a unified composition. At its centre is a circular fountain pool, in front of which stands a bowed, segmental sun shelter in neoclassical style. The shelter is flanked by extensive Pulhamite rockeries extending approximately 103 metres to the east and 122 metres to the west along the northern side of the cliff top path, enclosing planting troughs and containing flights of stairs at midway points.

The sun shelter itself sits behind a roughly rectangular lawn with one curved side. Its walls are of cement, smoothly rendered in imitation of ashlar. The south-facing elevation is bowed and features a segmental colonnade of five bays divided by paired baseless Tuscan columns supporting a full entablature. The two lateral bays were originally glazed. Above rises a parapet with a metal balustrade, higher at the centre, which supports a shield carved in low relief showing a ram ridden by a child, apparently by Gilbert Bayes. At either end are rectangular pylons with moulded bases and doorways, the right one now blocked.

The extensive rockeries flanking the shelter are built of Pulhamite cement rockwork over hardcore, with iron railings. The terrain slopes from north to south, with the land north of the shelter and at higher level containing the circular fountain pool with flagged surround. Low walling includes a curved bench on the northern side of the pool.

The shield on the parapet's central section bears an inscription recording the gardens' dedication: "WINTERSTOKE GARDENS / THESE GARDENS / WERE LAID OUT AND PRESENTED / TO THE BOROUGH OF RAMSGATE / BY / DAME / JANET STANCOMB-WILLS D.B.E. / IN / THE YEAR 1920 / AND OPENED TO THE PUBLIC / IN THE YEAR 1923 / UNDER THE MAYORALTY OF / ARTHUR W LARKIN ESQ. J.P. C.C."

The shelter's interior features a shallow barrel vault ceiling following the building's curve. The rear wall of the colonnade contains a continuous bench with moulded edge, with arched niches in the centre and on either side wall. The central niche originally held a fountain and a sculpture of a ram jumping over a gate, also believed carved by Gilbert Bayes, which was removed around 1970.

Additional features include an outcrop of Pulhamite with benches approximately 40 and 45 metres north-east of the shelter, and a five-sided pool with a fountain spout in the shape of a lion's mask, positioned 60 metres south-west. An urn stands behind the pool facing west, with a concrete bench to its rear. Both the pool and urn have been filled in.