Lost cities / archaeology / ancient history

Came here to post something different. I think people are mostly fascinated by sites like Pompeii and Herculaneum, or Mayan cities, and so on. One of the things that are interesting about them is the aspect of force majeure, e.g. by nature through volcanic eruption, or the mystery of the 'Mayan disappearance' (when they didn't really disappear, being still around, but had to reconfigure their way of living, probably because of unsustainable population increase and consequent high-capacity agriculture that was made impossible by prolonged drought).

Quite often, however, things simply disappeared because people decided to make different use of the land, e.g. where cities were rebuilt and rebuilt, often with the old foundations left in the ground, where castles were razed by a victorious power, and so forth. Needless to say, that all still goes on. An interesting change in land use was with the Victorian Rosherville Gardens in Gravesend. I'd never heard of these until recently. They were Victorian pleasure gardens fed day-trippers from London by steamboat which eventually became unviable (in several stages, mainly through the expansion of possible destinations for Londoners via the railways, but also partly through the horrible SS Princess Alice disaster) and were destroyed, the land subsequently being put to industrial use. Part of the site is still in industrial use, but quite a lot of it now isn't. Some local campaigners have called for part of any new use of the site to make use of the few remaining features, mainly the 'central feature' of the Italian Garden, apparently still buried underground, the bear pit, which has been partly excavated, a 'hermit cave', the land entrance, and the river entrance. A full list of what survives, albeit in damaged form:

Whilst the Rosherville Gardens site has changed dramatically since its inception, a few traces of its splendid past survive amongst the dystopian industrial landscape of Northfleet. In the cliffs close to the W. T. Henley air raid shelters is a Grade II-listed clifftop entrance and tunnelled stairway which would have connected Rosherville ontop to the gardens below. The arched stucco-effect tunnelway has the appearance of something from Alice in Wonderland! Some of the original handrails survive although heavily corroded. Underneath the earth piled over the W. T. Henley workshop site is an original bear pit and Italian Garden central feature. There is also a hermit cave in a chalk grotto – I’m not sure if this exists above ground today or is buried, although it could be two archways we found embedded into the base of the cliff. By the Thameside is also a draw-dock and quay which served as the river entrance to the gardens, complete with a massive ‘enigmatic cavern’ where shops and ticket offices were based for arriving visitors. On this dock site is also a Second World War mine-watching post to observe parachute mines dropped from German planes down the Thames. All these structures are listed, and efforts are going into the unearthing and preservation of the hidden Rosherville remains.

http://www.beyondthepoint.co.uk/property/rosherville-gardens/

Here's some other material on all this--the first one is in classical local campaigner mode, with a lot of anger directed at the agency responsible (I make no judgement as to whether that anger is justified or not), but informative nonetheless:

https://sites.google.com/site/riverthamesheritageopportunity/rosherville-gardens-bear-pit

Some features are now listed:

https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101396395-cliff-top-entrance-comprising-platform-terrace-walls-tunnel-and-stairs-to-the-former-rosherville-gardens-gravesham-northfleet-north-ward

Here's a little video showing some of the model that was made of the Gardens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaKiuR5oi8M

The 'central feature' and the bear pit simply seem to have been buried under additional soil piled on top when the land was developed for industrial use.

Here's someone doing an exploratory walk through the former land entrance tunnel cut into the cliffs surrounding the site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEYO-2fIHYo

Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosherville_Gardens

A news article from 2012:

https://www.gravesendreporter.co.uk/news/unearthing-a-victorian-day-trippers-theme-park-in-northfleet-1-1666490

Another short history:

http://www.discovergravesham.co.uk/northfleet/rosherville-gardens.html

Anyway, an interesting little piece of history, and I hope that something with a local history resonance will be achieved in any future development of the site.