The Winterstoke sun shelter and rock gardens are located on Victoria Parade,

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside resort, seaside town in the district of Thanet District, Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to t ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, United Kingdom. Overlooking the sea, the ornamental gardens were laid out and presented to the Borough of Ramsgate by Dame

Janet Stancomb-Wills Dame Janet Stancomb Graham Stancomb-Wills, DBE (25 January 1854 – 22 August 1932) was the first woman mayor of Ramsgate in Kent, an office which she held from 1923–24, and she was also the first person to receive, in 1922, the Freedom of the ...

in 1920 and opened to the public in June 1923 by the Mayor of Ramsgate (Alderman A. W. Larkin). They are maintained by

Thanet District Council Thanet may refer to: *Isle of Thanet, a former island, now a peninsula, at the most easterly point of Kent, England *Thanet District, a local government district containing the island *Thanet College, former name of East Kent College *Thanet Canal, ...

and were Grade II listed on 4 February 1988. The site is listed on the Ramsgate Society`s ''Buildings at risk register''. The gardens were designed by the architects Sir John Burnet & Partners, and constructed by Pulham and Son. The main feature of the gardens, is a semi-circular shaped colonnade carved into the

pulhamite Pulhamite was a patented anthropic rock material invented by James Pulham (1820–1898) of the firm James Pulham and Son of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. It was widely used for rock gardens and grottos. Overview Pulhamite, which usually looked ...

recess. Inside the shelter, and now lost, were two pieces of sculpture work by Mr. Gilbert Bayes. They represented children playing with the "Ram" of Ramsgate.''The Advertiser and Echo'', 16 June 1923 On the upper terrace, approached by broad flights of steps, the gardens proper are reached. In the centre, and immediately over the shelter, is a circular pool enclosed on the north side by a semi-circular Roman seat.

References

{{coord, 51.339, 1.4327, format=dms, type:landmark, display=title Gardens in the United Kingdom