I am pleased to say that the Old Boy Reporter, after a long absence, has returned to Folkestone. He is busy talking to people in the Creative Quarter and will shortly be doing a series of articles on what has happened while he has been away.

In the meantime he has sent in this short piece on the closure of the Leas Lift. I have left it unedited as he made it clear that he wanted no alterations at all, having been irritated in the past by changes made to his articles by Shane Record editor of The Other Three Quarters, which he used to write for regularly.

The Closure of the Leas Lift

With little to do and not much stirring in the old brainbox in weather that reminded me of the time I was a young subaltern stationed in Ismailia, I ambled down to the Leas Lift last week to witness its closure, there were about a dozen of us, mostly elderly, and almost as many police. It is difficult to imagine why the police were there. Were they expecting hoards of us to rush the lift in a futile attempt to keep it open or were they perhaps frightened of us attacking representatives of the Radnor Estate or Shepway District Council? Well, officers of the latter and councillors were in short supply and though I accosted a young man, armed with a clip board, whose demeanour, dress and clipped accent betrayed him as a possible employee of the Radnor Estate, and asked him why he was there, he refused to tell me.

Meanwhile the police looked hot and bored and when, at the top of the lift, in my usual loud voice I gave vent to my anger at the behaviour of the council, a young policewoman perked up and eyed me as if to say “Hello Hello Hello, with any luck we’ve got a trouble maker ‘ere.” Not wanting to renew my acquaintance with the inside of a police cell since the unfortunate incident of the ballet dancer and the stirrup pump at the end of the war, I beat a hasty retreat to the bottom of the lift, where there were more police who however did nothing to stop me going into the building to witness the last descent. This had been somewhat delayed as one of the operators had omitted to fully close a valve and a man had to abseil down to the side of the carriage to adjust it, adding a touch of excitement to this rather muted closing ceremony.

However at last the carriage arrived and to begin with it seemed, to our great chagrin, to be empty. But eventually two rather shy young men were winkled out to be interviewed by the Meridian Television people and have their photographs taken. They were, like me and many others in the town, genuinely upset at the closure of this last remaining piece of Victorian Folkestone’s seafront, an indication of its stirring past.

It is becoming increasingly difficult not to lose patience with that shower of a council, who seem to care little for the glorious history of our town. The majority call themselves conservatives but apparently have absolutely no knowledge of the meaning of the word. I would like to remind them that according to the Oxford English Dictionary a conservative is “characterised by a tendency to preserve or keep intact and unchanged.” Perhaps they should start living up to their name.

Mr Nick Spurrier has kindly agreed to supply this link to his excellent article on the history of the Leas Lift.

http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/0811/engineering-heritage-0811.cfm