History on Fire

Oh dear Oh dear!At least it looks repairable and assume no one was hurt Woo.

 

Blimey,

Thats not good, looks like they got it under control before too much damage though.

Repaired worse than that.

 

Haven't been through Strood for a while - what a shame! Such a lovely building. I'd been wondering what would happen to it as it has been empty for a while ... something fishy about this.

 

Woo, have you read 'The Invisible Woman' by Claire Tomalin? If not, I recommend it. It's about Dickens and the young mistress he kept hidden from his adoring public. He installed her in a house in South London while his family was tucked away at Gad's Hill. He was a troubled soul by this stage, who used to walk up and down the A2 through the dead of night, (obviously the A2 was a little different in those days!) so I imagine the Crispin Crispianus came in quite handy for the odd snifter. Tomalin suggests that Dickens died -ahem - whilst busy with his mistress in London, and that a coachman was bribed to get his body back down to Gad's Hill so that a statement could be issued saying that he died in the bosom of family, rather than that of his mistress! The mistress, Ellen Ternan, once lived just up the road from me near the Watt's Almshouses. After Dicken's death, she shaved ten years off her age and simply started her life again with a young husband.

 

Only looks like the roof went up, no soot above the upper windows. Could have been a rat chewing thru the electrical cables.

Roof structure doesn't look that old, but the jettied first floor(although not very pronounced) suggests the cladding could be covering a timber framed structure.

 

You mean like Hastings Pier?

 

Well, maybe. The pub seemed to go bust pretty much overnight. One day it was open, (albeit in a rather run-down state) and the next everyone had cleared out and the place was boarded up. It just seems rather convenient that it's now been gutted. Probably just my suspicious mind. No shortage. after all, of people in Medway who enjoy torching things. It's practically a local tradition, especially around Guy Fawkes Night. Or maybe Ziggy's right and it's just some rat chewing through a wire.