A printable PDF version of this newsletter can be downloaded from HERE

At a marathon four-hour meeting on 10 March, Swale Council voted 11-5 to back the 2,500-home Duchy of Cornwall development to the southeast of Faversham.

It was no surprise, given the government’s pressure for councils to meet housing targets, and – while the Faversham Society has persistently argued against building on farmland – most of us would probably concede that this development is the least-worst option.

Naturally, opinions differ about what it will all look like (“is it too twee?”), and cynicism is understandable since all developers promise to provide necessary infrastructure but forget the pledges once ground is broken. Understandably, a large part of the very long planning meeting was taken up with wrangling about how “guarantees” could in fact guarantee investment in schools and healthcare.

But it was hard not to feel the bigger picture was being missed. The extent of building in Faversham is an expansion of the town not seen since Victorian times.

However, this development is happening and there are clear positives: the construction is not planned to be on a flood plain and the timescale, and phasing, might allow the developers to learn and to be held accountable while they are still on site.

The first phase, planned for 2027-28 will be at the Brenley Corner end of the site, includes 261 homes, 35 per cent of which are claimed to be “affordable”, along with part of a local centre, green space, walking and cycling links.

This is part of a bigger proposition of a further 2,239 homes, a primary school, nursery provision, healthcare services, homes for older people, employment land, an hotel, a new cricket pitch, a football training area, a water recycling centre all created during a build-out likely to last for 15 to 20 years.

The duchy decision to build, not farm, means we will lose 340 acres of farmland (much of it categorised as “BVM”, best and most versatile) and gain 2,500 homes. This is in addition to more than 800 new homes, beginning in 2020. Further applications are in various stages of negotiation to add a further 500 on farmland at Ham Marshes and Abbeyfields.

As the Kent Current news site (see link below) points out, it is not just one more housing estate; it represents a vast extension of our town on to the south side of the A2.

In the Victorian era our town grew town grew because of the local industries: gunpowder, brewing and maritime trade through the creek, brickmaking and agriculture. Terraces along the backstreets were built as homes for those working. Now, a huge challenge will be to create jobs for those who move here, not to mention the health and social services that are even now inadequate for the town.

How we integrate is more than a matter of transport links, although that is a massive issue: it’s a fair old walk into town and back, especially if you’re elderly or have small children. The problems when public transport is neglected are deeply felt by the residents of the new Faversham Lakes development, near Oare.

But there is more to a community that all this. One speaker at the Swale meeting suggested that something that could not be captured in the detailed plans was “spirit of place”. And truly, this is what we, as the Faversham Society, need to think about and influence in this and the other developments on the periphery.

“Spirit of place” refers to more than just its physical setting, in the sense of the houses and roads. It refers to the character and atmosphere of a place; the meaning that people associate with a particular location. It embodies the history, memory, culture landscape of human experience. In short, it’s the identity or essence that makes one place feel different to another.

Faversham town resonates with spirit of place. It’s why we cherish our homes here and why others want to move here. Our task must be to ensure that Southeast Faversham becomes absorbed in our spirit of place from the moment work begins.

https://www.kentcurrent.news/huge-expansion-of-faversham-gets-go-ahead/

Open Faversham is taking a different form this year, with two big events:

5-6 June: Thomas Becket Weekend.

A chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket in St Mary of Charity Church, Faversham, was once the site of an impressive scheme of medieval wall paintings that stretched across all three walls. Discovered beneath whitewash during Victorian renovations, they were later obscured by a large Victorian organ installed in the 1870s.

At 7.30pm on 5 June, Dr Angela Websdale will give an illustrated talk about the Thomas Becket chapel now obscured by the organ and on the Saturday there will be visit to Canterbury Cathedral to see where Becket was martyred.

16-19 September: From the Source of the Westbrook to the Sea.

This exhibition celebrates the contemporary, cultural, built, industrial and natural heritage of our waterway. Faversham Creek and the chalk streams that run through the town define its topography and account for the ancient settlements that grew into Faversham. The route of the Westbrook from just below Painters Forstal to Stonebridge Pond, Faversham Creek to the Swale will be displayed in maps down the aisle.

If you would like to organise an event or activity linked with either of this year’s Open Faversham themes, or to be part of the September exhibition please contact us. See the website below.

www.openfaversham.info

We’re gearing up for another busy season of Walking with History, with five coach parties confirmed for the first few months alone. These all draw valuable tourism to our wonderful town, allowing the guides to share their love and enthusiasm for our history and heritage, and bringing our cafes, pubs and shops great benefit too.

Don’t forget that, as a Faversham Society member, you can join any public walk at no cost. So, for newer members, or those for whom it’s been a while since you last took a walk with us, here’s a reminder of what we offer: a regular, Walking with History guided tour of Faversham each Saturday morning (with the sole exception of Hop Festival weekend) between 5 April and 31 October.

Just be at the Visitor Information Centre (VIC), 12 Market Place, with your membership card ready for a 10.30am departure. Our route will take in Faversham’s most iconic buildings and sites, together with their history. In addition, look out for our programme of special walks over the spring and summer – more details to follow in next month’s newsletter.

Whether you’re interested in our gunpowder history, or in Victorian Faversham, or our Creekside heritage – there’s something for you in the pipeline. And if you’d like to join us on a commemorative walk at Uplees to remember the victims of the 1916 explosion disaster, linking with the special exhibition in the museum, then meet at the Harty Ferry car park at 11am on 6 April, Easter Monday.

Keep an eye on the Walking with History page on the Faversham Society website, the A-board at the VIC, and on our Facebook page for updates as the season progresses.

And finally – just a reminder that we offer tours for private groups of 10-plus, which can be arranged at a time and date to suit you, subject to guide availability. So, if you have a special date coming up – have you considered a bespoke guided walk as part of the celebration? We were asked to do that recently for a 60th birthday and everyone had a wonderful time with us before departing for lunch. We can’t promise to summon the ghosts of past residents, but we’ll do our best!

Andy Ward, the Kent Archaeological Society curator, will be hosting a relaxed finds handling and identification session at the Fleur de Lis museum between 11am and 3pm on 10 and 17 April.

You will be able to get hands-on with a range of archaeological finds from the recent Front Brents excavations in Faversham, as well as other objects discovered in the area. It’s a great chance to see real artefacts up close, learn how archaeologists identify different types of finds, and hear more about what they can tell us about Faversham’s past. It is open to all ages.

You’re also welcome to bring along any objects you have found that you would like help in identifying.

Drop in, ask questions, and discover a bit more about the archaeology beneath our feet!

Typewriters need TLC

Children love to use our old typewriters when they visit the Fleur de Lis museum. A few of them are now in need of care and attention. Is anyone able to help us to renovate, maintain or repair them? Please contact us at the address below.

fleurmuseum@favershamsociety.org

Guy Tassell (1876-1950) was one of a long line of Faversham solicitors and town clerks. He was also sub-captain of Faversham Volunteers Fire Brigade called to the appalling disaster at Uplees on 2 April, 1916. Here is the report, which starts with a covering letter, that he submitted three weeks later. It has been provided by his great-grand-daughter, Liz Vinson. I have left it with the punctation of 110 years ago.

As requested by you I have the pleasure to submit the following report re attendance at Fire at the Explosives Loading Co. Ltd Works.

We received the call at 1p.m. on Sunday the 2nd inst and the Norwich Engine arrived on the scene at 1.35 and the Kent Engine at 1.45. At the latter time a very violent explosion occurred and we considered it inadvisable to attempt to get the Engines close up to the Fire before conferring with somebody in authority and as there were several injured in the vicinity I told off the Firemen for Ambulance and Rescue Work.

About 2p.m. I met Mr. [William] Bethell, the Manager of the Cotton Powder Co. who expressed fears as to the safety of the Magazine nearest the Engine & Power House which contained T.N.T. and we therefore agreed with him to damp down the building by means of buckets (at this time the 3rd explosion went) and this work was carried out, Mr Bethell being on the roof of the Magazine and the water handed to him by C. Officer Goode of the Norwich and two firemen.

About 3p.m. I met Mr. [George] Evett[s, manager of the Explosives Loading Company] and we arranged to get our Engine into position and to subdue the Fire at the Stores and adjoining buildings.

This work was carried out in the usual manner and the fire was extinguished by 7.30p.m. [The report follows.]

I was informed on the telephone by Police at 1.22 of serious fire at E.L.C. Works and that all assistance available was required. Whilst on the telephone big explosions occurred shaking buildings badly but not damaging them or breaking any glass. The brigade’s Fire Bells were rung at once and American Petrol Engine was attached to Motor and left the town at 1.35.

Owing to the traffic and the noise of the numerous Motors on the road from the town to the Factory I neither heard nor saw nor felt any of the concussion of the second explosion which I understand took place at about 1.50. At a few minutes after 2 as we were approaching the Factory from higher ground looking down on to it and at about half a mile from it I saw the third explosion.

My impression was that from a black building a thick sheet of flame shot into the air to a height about 5 to 10 times the height of the building. The sides of the body of flame appeared to me to incline outwards i.e. at an angle of say 80 degrees with the ground. At the top of the flames there immediately appeared a great mass of smoke coloured by the flames underneath which drifted away slightly to the Westward.

At this distance my impression was that I saw the flame and the smoke 3 or 5 seconds before I heard the report. Practically at the same instant of time as I heard the report the concussion reached us. This was so great that it checked momentarily the speed of the large motor lorry that was pulling our engine in which there were 50 soldiers and at least a dozen firemen. The arrest of the progress of the lorry caused it to kick-back against the Fire Engine and threw a fireman and myself standing on the back of the Engine violently backwards.

The strength of the concussion very much astonished me.

We arrived at the turning off the main gate of the Cotton Powder Company’s premises just as the first wounded were being driven off to the hospitals in Motors. We were directed Westwards to the south west corner of the iron fence guarding the Explosive Loading Company’s premises. There the mud was found to be so thick that neither the Motor Lorry nor the Engine could get any further. We were stranded 500 yards from the scene of the fire unable to move. We spent some short time getting our Engine out of the track.

Whilst this was being done I heard another Brigade was taking a supply of fire buckets of which we unfortunately had none with us to enable certain Employees of the E.L. Company to soak a Magazine that was in danger of explosion by fire or combustion. I have no personal knowledge of what was done in connection with this magazine. After helping various people in getting their cars which were sent for the wounded into positions I returned to the original position and went with my Brigade across the ground down to the fire.

I found as I had already been told that there was no chance of putting out any of the buildings which were all thoroughly alight and those of whom I enquired could give me no help at the present to get an Engine down to the dikes even if the Engine could then have been much use.

We therefore assisted in the task of removing bodies from the dike on the west side of the E.L. Company’s premises. The soldiers who had arrived long before us were at this time just able to get to the hot ground where the fire had burnt down and bodies were being extricated some of them in a terrible condition and badly burnt and unrecognisable. The Members of my Brigade assisted some poor fellows out of the dike and I set about making arrangements to get our own Engine down to the spot so as to put out if possible the burning buildings before nightfall and to prevent the flames being any guide to hostile air-craft at night.

I found it was impossible to bring the Engine across the ploughed fields the mud being much too thick and heavy or across the meadows. There was no help available the soldiers all being too busily engaged searching for wounded and dead and injured. With some of my men I went off to see if we could bring the Engine round on one of the Cotton Powder Company’s trollies on their light railway line which came close to the point necessary and halfway across the C.P. Company’s premises I was met by a mixed Detachment from the Naval Depot at Chatham consisting of two Officers some Warrant Officers and 60 or 70 A.B’s [able-bodied seamen] from “The Pembroke” and the Royal Naval Air Service. On my explaining my difficulties these men with their customary quick-ness and handiness at once volunteered to get my Engine to the point I wanted it and with the greatest difficulties they eventually did this pulling the Engine across the fields and meadows to the point where I wanted it.

I cannot attempt to sufficiently praise the readiness and willingness with which every one of the Sailors gave the assistance that was asked of them. By the time we were in position and had got our hose connected and the Engine started the majority of the dead had been removed and the majority of the wooden buildings had collapsed to the ground where the timbers were burning furiously and from the time of our first arrival up to the starting of our Engine Mines had been exploding at intervals. We started on the fire from the North East corner clearing the red hot timbers out of the way and putting out all flames and as far as possible thoroughly soaking the ground and the mud which had been thrown up by the explosions and which had become caked and very warm. Some of my men were in some danger for half an hour at one point where a collection of fuses in a burnt down store the flames of which they were endeavouring to put out kept exploding. Luckily no-one was even hurt. During the next 4 hours we worked across the area wherever we found flames putting them out as we went and seeing many horrible sights and recovering at times limbs and bits of clothing all of which were placed on the east bank of the dike. I noticed particularly that in several cases men’s legs were to all appearance uninjured whereas the explosion had stripped them of the legs of their trousers. Most of the men that I saw rescued came from the dike at the Eastern boundary. I was told by an Army Officer that before we got to work when they were starting their rescue operations as soon as the fire permitted it he had seen several men badly burnt and in such agonies that had he had his revolver on he would have undoubtedly shot them as they begged him to do.

I did not see anything of this kind myself. I have since seen men injured and now recovering who have stated to me that they remember nothing from the moment when the explosion occurred until they found themselves being pulled out of the dike.

Their brains apparently were stopped short by the shock as they were running or walking towards the building in which the T.N.T. and Nitrate of Ammonia exploded at the moment when the detonation took place and these men stated to me that they did not see the explosion or hear it though they were facing the building at a distance of 30 to 50 feet when it went up.

We continued putting out fires which continually broke out after they had apparently been soaked to the limit until 8.30p.m. when owing to an expectation of the arrival of hostile air-craft that night we returned to Faversham leaving another Brigade to deal with any small fires which might start burning again.

At about 5.30p.m. we blew to pieces with hoses a large store of anthracite which was burning furiously at the extreme end of the Factory and were glad to be able to do so as this removed a possible source of danger to the Magazines further South West. At about 7.30p.m. there was another fierce fire adjoining the Boiler House which consisted of apparently burning explosive to start with judging from the fumes that came off and subsequently a small coal store which got well alight. We saturated this to a depth of 1 foot of water but I was told next morning that the water having soaked away this coal burst out again from some point of contact that was hot in the neighbourhood and had to be quenched again in the early hours of the morning. I heard many tales of heroism as having occurred during the first part of the fire but unfortunately owing to our call being at the time of the first explosion and of the long delay in getting to the Works owing to the difficulties of the road etc I was not a personal witness to any of this.

Apart from the dreadful scenes which we all witnessed the one outstanding remembrance in my mind was the cheerful willingness of the Naval Brigade and the invaluable help they gave first with my Engine afterwards in removing the dead and in fact in every sphere in which they could be of any use.

(signed) G.T.

28.4.1916.

For all the years it has been up and running, the Faversham Society second-hand bookshop has been a huge success. It moved from tiny premises in Gatefield Lane a few years ago: that shop has now morphed from books to bread. And good luck to it.

I have very fond memories of the Gatefield Lane incarnation; it was deeply and evocatively Dickensian. Occasionally customers would say: “Surely this place hasn’t changed since Dickens’s day.” I would proudly agree.

Those were the days when we took only cash, not cards, and the storeroom/office out the back was … well, minuscule. But it had a character of its own, as the current bookshop has developed a character of its own.

There’s no doubt that the Fleur Bookshop, with its devoted (I won’t say eccentric) team of volunteers, has put Faversham on the bibliophilic map, and not only Faversham but much further afield. I have met visitors from Europe, Canada, the United States, Australasia and South America, but none yet from Antarctica: all no doubt in search of a good read.

And where better to come and browse and buy attractive volumes, to quote several visitors I have spoken with over recent years, than “the best second-hand bookshop I have ever come across”. That’s some compliment!

Our books are often of such good quality that some bibliophiles have convinced themselves into thinking that we sell new books. Well, many of the donations, for which we are eternally grateful, are virtually new, read once and then passed on in almost pristine condition.

This is a rather lengthy preamble to the proposal I intend to make, which is: the Fleur Bookshop, tremendous success that it undoubtedly is, should build on its success and expand not only county-wide, not only nationally, but globally! Imagine a branch of the Fleur Bookshop in Sydney (“Strewth, look at all these wonderful tomes, Bill, and all imported from a quaint little town called Faversham”) But why stop at the cosmopolitan capital of New South Wales?

Let’s have a branch in New York (hard-boiled crime fiction?);  Rome (the ancient history section should prosper); a quaint Greek island, say Kefalonia (I’d volunteer); Paris (sometime literary capital of the world).

(I recall visiting Paris some years ago and finding one of the most famous second-hand bookshops, Shakespeare & Co, frequented in the first half of the 20th-century by such writers as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce and Henry Miller, who could, if they wished, relax on one of several chaise longues and tinkle an upright piano. The Fleur’s Paris branch could easier do something similar.)

The entire enterprise could be called Fleur Bookshops International with the original renamed “The Fleur in Faversham, Headquarters of the Global Books Corporation”.

Let's go for it - and put me down for the branch in Kefalonia.

Sissinghurst in the spring is always worth a visit, with its beautiful formal gardens, vegetable garden and wider estate grounds. We leave Faversham at 10am, allowing five hours to explore the house and gardens, returning to Faversham at 5pm. There is a restaurant on site, plant shop and second-hand bookshop.

Visit to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, by train, 13 to 17 August, £805

Enjoy a four-night break visiting the Lytham St Annes during its world-famous 1940s event. It is on the Fylde coast, just a few miles from Blackpool – but could not be more different. It boasts independent shops, cafés, historic windmill, large sandy beach and pier and fantastic transport links. The town puts on many events over the year but one of the biggest by far is the 1940s weekend where most of the town, visitors and shops dress up and join in to the party atmosphere!

We journey by train from Faversham and taxis will be provided across London and to our hotel in St Anne’s on the Sea, a short distance from Lytham. We shall be staying at the recently refurbished Travelodge in St Anne’s and just a two-minute walk to the town shops, restaurants, beach and pier.

Awaydays organises group holidays and day trips from Faversham. We take only small groups (eight people maximum) to many places in Europe. Many who come on our trips are solo travellers. Each trip is accompanied by an Awaydays representative and the holidays include transport from Faversham.

We also run day trips to gardens, tourist attractions, stately homes, wildlife tours and boat trips taking a small minibus from Faversham.

Contact us on Awaydaystravel.wixsite.com/awaydays | Or you can email awaydaystravel@outlook.com to join the mailing list | Or call Rachel on 07856 080993