I'm teaching at Canterbury again this year and have been researching potential project sites combining coastal landscapes, transportation systems and technological obsolescence. Whilst trawling the area, I came across the arcane fragment of home movie footage embedded above of the former Hoverport at Pegwell Bay, near Ramsgate.
As well as being a sort of Super 8 version of Martin Parr's Boring Postcards, the footage is notable for an eerie lack of people, as if in anticipation of the port's future demise. A vacant and overgrown concrete apron is now the only remaining sign of Ramsgate International Hoverport which closed in 1982. Google earth reveals the ruins as a strange prosthetic attachment sticking out of the curve of the bay.
As well as being a sort of Super 8 version of Martin Parr's Boring Postcards, the footage is notable for an eerie lack of people, as if in anticipation of the port's future demise. A vacant and overgrown concrete apron is now the only remaining sign of Ramsgate International Hoverport which closed in 1982. Google earth reveals the ruins as a strange prosthetic attachment sticking out of the curve of the bay.
Aside from the various buildings - now long gone - the port consisted of a large flat concrete shoreline, a sort of artificial beach onto the which the craft slid up before settling down on its billowing black shirts, like a large hen on a nest of eggs. In period photographs the hovercraft themselves still appear incredibly modern, alien objects in the late '60s landscape, especially compared to the Austin Maxis and Mini Clubmans that would have motored gently on and off them. Given the relative size of the hovercraft to the surrounding houses they look as if they could have just carried on past the port and inland, hoovering up the potato fields of Thanet as they went.
The word Hoverport suggests something faintly incredible too, as if tit were the ground itself that rose up and transported you somewhere exotic. Rather than Calais. The operators seemed to be aware of the ambiguous half boat/half plane character of their craft too, referring to "flights" instead of sailings and dressing the crew up as natty BOAC flight attendants. Fittingly enough high aviation fuel costs in the 1970's - combined with a susceptibility to bad weather - killed off most commercial hovercraft services. Wikipedia's entry on them concludes that "except for the Solent Ryde to Southsea crossing, hovercraft disappeared from the coastline of Britain", as if they were a species of rare bird.
Appropriately enough, the former Hoverport at Pegwell Bay is now a nature reserve. It sits on a particularly sleepy stretch of the Isle of Thanet coast, just below the plateau of Manston Airport, another, almost, failed bit of infrastructure. For those of you of a hauntological bent there are more photographs and information available here, and here. From the last of these sites I have borrowed the lovely image below. There are also photographs of the port at various stages of dereliction here.
Appropriately enough, the former Hoverport at Pegwell Bay is now a nature reserve. It sits on a particularly sleepy stretch of the Isle of Thanet coast, just below the plateau of Manston Airport, another, almost, failed bit of infrastructure. For those of you of a hauntological bent there are more photographs and information available here, and here. From the last of these sites I have borrowed the lovely image below. There are also photographs of the port at various stages of dereliction here.
