A printable PDF version of this newsletter can be downloaded from HERE
As part of Open Faversham, the Old Grammar School will be open on 18 and 24 August.
Miss Faithfull, who lectured at the Institute, is brought into the light by Griselda Mussett on 20 August
Open Faversham 2024
Open Faversham 2024 runs from 17 to 25 August. The Friends of St Mary of Charity, the Faversham Society and Faversham Town Council have come together to showcase Faversham’s cultural, natural and built heritage.
A brochure listing all the events is being delivered to every door in Faversham and can be found on the Open Faversham website, where most bookings should be made.
This, however, will be news month at the Fleur de Lis Museum in Preston Street, where children can pick up their junior reporter’s notebook, enter the “press room” and uncover the clues to the trail around the museum.
From the chair
Ann Furedi
Several dozen volunteers enjoyed Pimm’s and strawberries in the Fleur Museum Garden on 12 July while meeting each other and the mayor, Josh Rowlands, who dropped by to thank us all for helping to making Faversham the special town it is. He spoke of the significance of our history and heritage and the importance of introducing new generations to a sense of place and of time.
For me, at a time when there is so much generational discord (to the point where, sometimes, even the words we use have different meanings) this was a powerful reminder of an important observation.
In the 18th century, the German writer Goethe wrote: “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” His comment has been subject to many interpretations, but for me it means that we need to understand and appreciate where we come from before we can fly away to be who we will become.
I believe this is as important for us as adults as it is for our children.
I grew up as part of a not-well-educated Sixties generation for whom all things historical happened at the same time: “In the past”. But, living here, I was as awestruck and fascinated as a child, seeing the Magna Carta for the first time and, more recently, the Catherine Parr prayer book in the museum. I confess that I only knew of Queen Catherine from historical fiction (Shardlake, I admit it!). But to see a copy … here … in Faversham … A document relevant not just to the faith I was raised in, but I’m told, the first book to have a woman’s name on the title page. That is quite wonderful.
It seems a little old-fashioned to be stressing the importance of who we once were, and how we lived, on our children. But it is important. English history and heritage tends to be undervalued these days. Indeed, the life of small towns and the importance of what we represent is often forgotten in the churn of news and politics of big international events. Because of this, I think the perspectives our archaeologists, archivists and historians, and our museums, our visitor information centre and even a shop that sells actual (second-hand) books, are an amazing resource to live with.
After the mayor had spoken, someone asked him quietly, privately – not in a way to make a political point – if he was concerned that Faversham “as we know it now” might not survive the extent of development that we may need to accept.
Josh shrugged. He couldn’t predict what would happen but he knew that Faversham would most certainly survive because it always had. After all, that is why the Faversham Society exists.
Over the coming period, we need to keep that in mind. And we will need to keep in mind that although we may have different opinions on this or that development, on the importance of more or not so many affordable homes to buy or rent, or this or that approach to food security or water pollution: our core belief is the same.
Our roots in our town’s history and heritage allow us to be stable and inventive, to preserve and innovate.
So, if you think that strawberries and Pimm’s in a Georgian garden, with a mayor who sports a traditional chain of office and has a day-job at the local food bank, is a good metaphor for the Faversham Society, I’d be inclined to agree.
CONTACT ANN
Join our Wiki editathon
Jane Secker
Wikipedia is one of the 10 most visited websites in the world. How many times have you looked something up on Wikipedia to wonder how the information got there and how we know it’s accurate?
Now is your chance to find out how the magic happens! In the Faversham Society’s third Wikipedia “editathon” session – at the Umbrella Centre in Court Street on 20 August from 2pm-4pm and 21 August from 10am to noon – you get to create an editor account, learn about the Wikipedia community guidelines and join the growing number of volunteer editors.
Our goal is to improve the information on Wikipedia about Faversham, its people and environment, and that’s why we need you! In these sessions you will learn how to edit Wikipedia and then to spend the second session adding unique content such as images or information about notable people from the town to the world’s largest encylopedia. If you can only make one session that’s fine too but this is the third time we’ve run training in conjunction with Wikimedia, who are really keen to make cultural heritage content openly available.
See the Open Faversham website for booking details.
Monkeys in West Street
Moyra Haslett & Emily Mullender
Over the last year, we have been sorting out the newspaper archive at the Fleur de Lis Museum. Our remit is to recommend to the Museum committee newspapers for removal, including those in poor condition and those not relevant to Faversham. The remaining collection will be re-boxed and the computer archive updated.
The collection consists of local, national and a few international newspapers. They represent not just news events of the past 200 years but also the lived experience of Faversham residents, who through the newspapers they bought, read, kept and donated to the museum, highlight what was important to them at that time.
The national newspapers in the archive tend to focus on major historical events such as the sinking of the Titanic (in The Daily Graphic, 1912) and the first photographs of earth from space (in The Times, 1969). There are multiple newspapers commemorating the coronation and death of every monarch since Queen Victoria.
The local newspapers start in 1794 with the Kentish Gazette, which features requests for footmen and has an advertisement for a new landlord for the Ship Inn in Market Place, Faversham. In later papers, it was interesting to see how the Uplees explosion of April, 1916, was reported locally, despite rumours of a hush-up.
Other local newspapers trace the development of town politics, new roads, welfare issues and festivals. Along the way we have had some unusual stories, mostly from the 1960s. We read how Mrs X was attacked by her two pet monkeys in her sitting room. Her neighbour, a previous monkey-keeper himself went to her aid and subdued the animals, then called for an ambulance. We were pleased to note that Mrs X was safely discharged from hospital.
Crime stories feature largely throughout the decades. An intriguing story relates to a farmer who was burgled by a local gang who claimed they were Scotland Yard detectives looking for the money from the Great Train Robbery of 1963. The victim had nothing to do with the Great Train Robbery and the real police apprehended the thieves shortly afterwards.
Alongside the written articles we have chuckled over some interesting adverts – top hats or corsets anyone? – while wondering how people survived some of the medicines of the day. Thomas Holloway’s pills from 1865 promised “a full flow of spirits” and an “immensely invigorated” body. One to try!
Our exploration of the newspaper archive has enriched our knowledge of Faversham and we hope visitors in the forthcoming news exhibition will enjoy reading and handling the archived newspapers as much as we have.
We need a mapmaker
The Editor
For the past couple of years we have been producing new books relating to the history of Faversham and they’ve been very well received by locals and visitors alike.
We have some exciting new projects lined up for 2025 and need help from someone who can draw up digital maps.
Can you help? Please contact us at the address below
membership@favershamsociety.org
Beautiful bodice for a Victorian in half-mourning
Jennifer Shipman
What’s more than a blouse but lighter in weight and warmth than a jacket? A bodice. And this month we received a wonderful apple green silk example as a donation. There are indeed a few treasures out there, and this is one, which is a donation from the John Coulter estate. See below.
Tightly fitting and with 12 baleen ribs stitched to the inside and a wide fabric belt to give it and its wearer a shapely figure. It extends slightly over the hips and is deeply pointed in the front, a style that at the time was called a cuirass bodice. Baleen is, I should add, taken from a whale.
The silk is slightly faded now, except under the pleats running from neck to waist and inside where it is it is a richer lime green, but that is to be expected with its age.
The machine-made black lace, which shows no sign of age covers the arms from shoulder to elbow and runs down front and back in a V. It also covers up some marks from previous stitching. The bust darts have been moved and possibly let out. Could the garment have been altered, possibly for someone else, then the black lace added for “half mourning”?
This bodice is from the later Victorian age – an era marked by strict mourning etiquette. A widow would be expected to wear full black in plain materials for two years after her husband died, for example, with lesser periods marking the deaths of other family members. Half-mourning allowed other fabrics such as silk and velvet and other colours, such as lavender, grey or green with black trimmings.
The standing collar in this example is high as for day wear, and the lace accentuates the width of shoulder and narrowness of waist, aided by the braid bows on shoulder and arms. Quite clearly comfort was not essential for women at this time, but fit was everything.
From 1883 sleeves were close-fitting with a seam back and front, as seen here, and frequently shorter than previously, to above the wrist. All these little details help us to date the garment from 1880 to about 1900. Without the skirt it is impossible to get closer than this.
Although this bodice fastens at the front, the separate skirt would have fastened at the side, possibly of the same fabric and colour. The bustle had begun to shrink from 1887 and had disappeared entirely by 1890, but by the end of Victoria’s reign long trailing skirts returned. As they received harder wear than the bodice it paid to have more than one skirt, maybe black in this case.
At this time white or coloured stockings would have been worn, shoes, with a small Louis heel could be dyed to match your outfit. Leather handbags were first produced commercially in 1885, often containing sections for needles, scissors and thread in addition to the usual mirror. Designed by a man, do you think? But there was no need to carry money as everything was charged to your husband!
We have some of these account books, which you may view them on the counter in the Childs drapery store on the first floor of the Fleur de Lis Museum.
Lasting legacy of Coulter, the comma king
Stephen Rayner
John helped to preserve the records of Chase House, a fine property at the top of Preston Street, which have now passed to the society
The Victorian bodice mentioned on the previous page is just one of the donations to the Faversham Society from the estate of John Coulter, who died in June. The provenance of the garment is unclear. Perhaps it belonged to his great grandmother. There is no one to tell us now – he had no family.
John, who trained as a reporter on the East Kent Gazette and Faversham Times before becoming a sub-editor with The Times of London, was a man of many parts. His fierce accuracy helped me immeasurably in my role as editor of the Faversham Society newsletter and books, and as co-publisher of Bygone Kent local history magazine.
He was a leading light in the Faversham Footpaths group, a former president of the Elizabethans, a trustee of the Faversham Club and the Faversham Municipal Charities, and had served as both a town and district councillor where his forensic attention to detail, helped by his law degree and honed at the sub-editors’ bench, brought sighs of relief to supporters and dismay to wrongdoers.
His death leaves bereft those who relied upon his wisdom and knowledge of Faversham – and that includes me.
A memorial service will be held at St Mary of Charity Parish Church at noon on 5 September. All are welcome.
John was brought up in Roman Road by his parents Edward and Marjorie Coulter. His father, known as Ted, joined Shepherd Neame at the age of 14 in 1923 and worked there more than 60 years, rising to company secretary. He was a man of slight figure and booming voice. Like his son, he was precise and genteel in his manner, and determined to keep record of everything he did. Like John, he was a man to be relied upon. He left an extensive archive, as did his wife, and John kept it, adding his own.
John was executor for the Black sisters – Lavinia and Doris, who lived in Chase House, a fine double-fronted Georgian property at the top of Preston Street, where their father once ran a garage and a radio relay business. John inherited their extensive photographic collection.
I have the honour to be John’s executor, and am arranging with the society’s curator, Heather Wootton, for the gradual handover of his and the Black sisters’ archive to the society. Shepherd Neame documents will go to the brewery’s collection.
John, a true Favershamian, was a reserved chap who will be remembered for his gentle, quiet and modest outlook. He spoke only when he had something to say, a rare virtue that few attempt or achieve. He was, however, always on the side of correctness in everything — etiquette, history and English punctuation, particularly the comma. One of his colleagues on The Times business section referred to him as Lord Coulter of the Holy Comma.
His assiduous checking during the editing process of Faversham books occasionally discovered that “accepted” earlier histories got it wrong. His death has left a void in the town but his spirit of inquiry and the recording of the truth will continue.
Strasbourg the book capital? Huh. I know where it should be
Peter Quince
L’Oiseau Rare, in Strasbourg, a ‘small, cosy hangout in a half-timbered yellow house from the 1600s’, is handsome enough, but it’s no Fleur Bookshop, is it?
Strasbourg, the home of the 15th-century printing-press pioneer Johannes Gutenberg, has been declared by Unesco the World Book Capital for 2024. Why was Faversham overlooked? I can’t understand it. I know we’re not a big town, and as far as I know we never had a Gutenberg to grace our streets, although we hosted plenty of other illustrious individuals, but come on … the Fleur Bookshop is unique. It should by rights be on the bibliophilic world map!
I get the impression that people come from all over the world simply to have the chance to browse in the Fleur and go away and say “I was there”, and then cross it off their bucket list.
Strasbourg has its charms. It boasts comic shops, indie book emporiums, historical libraries and antiquarian specialists. But I bet it doesn’t have the ambience of the Fleur Bookshop with its team of dedicated, I hesitate to say eccentric, volunteers; its sweet little garden behind delightful (and very French) french doors; its prime position on the seething pedestrian thoroughfare of Preston Street; and its veritable daily cornucopia of donations.
OK, Strasbourg boasts Librairie La Jument Verte, an antiquarian bookshop near the cathedral, where some of Europe’s earliest print shops once operated; but in the Fleur we don’t need print shops; we have an endless throughput of crusty volumes that are not only old – some perhaps not as old as Gutenberg himself – but smell old. We have potential customers come in and take a whiff of those vintage volumes before scanning the title or reading a word, rather like detection dogs at an airport.
I can sympathise. I, too, swoon over the unmistakable odour of old books; it’s connecting with earlier generations. The Fleur caters for all tastes: we have virtually new hardbacks that are odourless, as you would expect, and ancient volumes that must have been in somebody’s attic propping up the rafters when Victoria came to the throne.
Curiously, the “homiest” bookshop in Strasbourg turns out to be the L’Oiseau Rare (the Rare Bird), described as a “small, cosy hangout in a half-timbered yellow house from the 1600s”.
What a coincidence! The Fleur Bookshop is the “homiest”, small, cosy hangout in this part of Kent, similarly housed in a centuries-old building but, alas, not painted in the sunflower colour of its Strasbourg equivalent.
Rare birds gather at the Fleur, too, in the form of knowledgeable volunteers and, sometimes, even more knowledgeable customers. It is clear to me that Faversham’s literati gravitate towards the Fleur as the place to go for intelligent, bookish conversation, never mind the allure of the celebrated city in eastern France. Books, of course, speak an international language, effortlessly cross boundaries and bring people of diverse cultures and dodgy reading habits together.
In the Fleur we boast a wide range of thrillers and crime fiction; in Strasbourg Librairie-Café La Tache Noire (the Black Stain) is described as a “shrine for worshippers of crime novels from China, India, Iceland, Mexico, Belgium, France” and, for all I know, Timbuktu. We display crime novels from almost every country in the known world; and a few from the cosmic regions (that’s sci-fi). I’m not sure that the Fleur can be described as a “shrine”, although it attracts so many book worshippers and I sometimes mischievously spout sermons (and nonsense) from the pulpit (the desk).
Moving away from Strasbourg to Paris for a moment, I recall a trip to France some years ago when, strolling the streets of the city near Notre Dame, I stumbled across one of the most celebrated bookshops in the world, Shakespeare and Company, frequented back in the early 20th century by James Joyce, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway and other illustrious authors. I wandered in and, mounting the stairs, passed a wall of photographs of a veritable pantheon of the last century’s great writers. One upstairs room boasted a chaise longue, another had an upright piano in it. The Fleur Bookshop, alas, has no chaise longue, no upright piano, no upstairs rooms and, as far as I know, has not been graced by any great authors.
Never mind Unesco’s World Book Capital: Faversham’s unique position as a bibliophilic heaven ensures that no other place can touch it for the magic of reading, the instant creation of those alternative worlds we find within the pages of a book. The Fleur just happens to be the centre of a linguistic universe. I should know, I work there.