Granville Marina

Granville Marina, East Cliff

Purpose-built photographer's studio and part of a terrace of houses with shops on the ground floor, currently used as a restaurant and houses. Built in 1877 and designed by architect J T Wimperis in Old English style. The building forms an L-plan with number 1 projecting seawards, originally positioned to conceal the Ramsgate Sands railway terminus.

Exterior

Number 1 is rendered with some timber framing and a slate roof with gablets, terracotta ridge tiles and three cemented chimneystacks. The building is two storeys with attics and has irregular fenestration of two windows to the south east and four windows to the north east. The south east elevation facing the sea features a central tall cemented chimneystack with ribbed decoration flanked by sash windows, cambered to the first floor. Octagonal corner turrets with conical tiled roofs punctuate the corners. The shop front has a flat arch topped by late twentieth-century triple steel shutters. The north east elevation contains three windows to the main part and a fourth window in an elaborate corner turret. Three flat-roofed dormers with sashes with vertical glazing bars are positioned along this elevation. Ground and first floor windows are end cambered casements, larger on the ground floor with circular designs to the transoms. A projecting two-storey timber-framed porch occupies the centre, featuring a five-light sash window to the first floor and a doorcase with circular designs to the fanlight below. An octagonal-shaped corner turret contains timber-framed arches with plastered infill and a conical tiled roof. The upper floors have three sash windows, while the ground floor features taller windows and a central doorcase with circular patterns to the fanlights.

Numbers 2, 3 and 4 are of painted brick with some ornamental tile-hanging and tiled roofs with hips to the front. Each is two storeys with attics and one window per house. Each property has a projecting hipped roof supported on pierced wooden brackets and a balcony with turned balusters forming part of full-height projections. The second floor features a central French window flanked by sidelights. The first floor of number 2 retains original tile-hanging of plain and curved tiles in the original courses. Numbers 3 and 4 have twentieth-century weatherboarding on the first floor replacing the original tile-hanging. A projecting five-light bay with sash windows extends across the first floors. The first floor of numbers 3 and 4 and the second floor of number 4 incorporate twentieth-century alterations. Ground floors have triple divisions with large central arches and circular patterns to the fanlights.

Interior

Original staircases to the rear of the former shops survive.

History

These properties form part of Granville Marina, a scheme conceived by Edmund Davis, owner of the Granville Hotel, to link the hotel to East Cliff, which lies 70 feet below. The scheme was prompted by the 1863 construction of Ramsgate Sands Station by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway directly on the sands. The ambitious development combined the strengthening of sea defences with beach-level pleasure gardens and shops for the hotel's guests. Numbers 1-4 were built as shops with living accommodation above. Number 1 was specifically built as a photographer's studio and positioned to conceal the railway terminus building. Other shops included perfumers, coiffeurs, toy shops, pastrycooks, confectioners and tobacconists, numbering twenty units in total. Numbers 1-4 represent the most complete surviving section of the terrace; numbers 10, 11, 12 and 12A have been substantially altered and the remainder were rebuilt as flats during the later twentieth century. Ramsgate Sands Station closed in 1926.