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Some of you may be wondering what’s been happening with Chart Mills.  Apart from a couple of guided walks, it was closed for most of last summer.

I’m pleased to report that following some internal restoration work, it will be reopening on Saturday 13 June, from 2pm to 4pm.

We are hoping to be able to open on Saturdays until September and we will also be introducing guided walks down to Chart Mills on the first Sunday of the month. Look out for booking details soon.

Edward Jacob, in his 1774 History of Faversham, writes that gunpowder production began “in the reign of Elizabeth I, if not before her time”.

The earliest named gunpowder-makers are in the 1573 Faversham muster list : Wylliam Tomlyn, Thomas Gyll Gunpowder makers, Wylliam Byrde his servaunte.

Chart Mills is probably one of the oldest in the world and at its peak, covered an area stretching from Ospringe to Stonebridge Pond and employing 300 people.

It was an incorporating mill, mixing all the ingredients together; a report from 1897 says that the mills were working day and night. By this time, large numbers of women workers were employed, mainly in packaging up the cartridges. The same report notes the works themselves, with their almost idyllic setting of winding waterways and leafy glades, are more akin to a beautiful private park than one’s idea of an industrial centre.

Manufacturing ended in 1934 when the business moved to Scotland and the site fell into disrepair. It was restored in 1967 by Faversham Society volunteers who undertook major works, repairing the building, removing the undergrowth and restoring the mills. The roof was repaired in 2011 however the interior had grown a bit tired. It has now been freshened up, with new lighting, exhibits from the Fleur de Lis Museum in new displays and children’s activities in place.

It will be reopened by Sheila Breeze, whose late husband John dedicated many hours in tracing the stories of all the gunpowder workers in Faversham. You can look for your relatives in the Gunpowder Workers Database.

Back in 1976, they were lucky to have so many dedicated volunteers and it’s still the same story now. An amazing team, all new to Faversham, have been helping with this restoration. Thank you, Penny, Tony, Bob, Rob, Ian and Tessa for your enthusiasm, good humour and hard work!

So, do make sure that you come along sometime over the summer and take a look at this remarkable survivor of Faversham’s gunpowder history.

If you can offer a couple of hours in a Saturday afternoon, we’d love more stewards. Please get in touch at volunteer@favershamsociety.org

Wendy Tait Mayfield entertained us at our May talk with a fascinating history of Graveney, from prehistoric times right up to the 20st century.

We learnt there could have been a now-lost Roman settlement in what is now Graveney. This was an important Saxon village, with evidence of the Normans and the Domesday book and witch trials in the 17th century.

Wendy also told us about the 1830 Swing Riots when William and Henry Packman, two of her ancestors, were convicted of arson at a barn at Blean and hanged. The jury had made a recommendation for mercy, but the judge wanted to make examples of the young men, aged 20 and 18.

Wendy then mentioned the 1838 Battle of Bossenden Wood, which took place at nearby Hernhill, and is sometimes referred to as the last battle on British soil. 

However, she said, the actual last battle was the Battle of Graveney Marsh in 1940. Fighting took place between the crew of a downed German Junkers Ju88A-1 bomber and soldiers from the London Irish Rifles, stationed on the coast and billeted at the Sportsman pub. (See Newsletter 558, October 2010, for a full report)

RAF fighter pilots had shot down the plane over Faversham, and it was captured despite the Germans trying to destroy classified equipment onboard. 

The aircraft was taken to Farnborough where it was said to have “provided highly valuable information”. Captain John Cantopher, leading the soldiers, was subsequently awarded the George Medal for “conspicuous gallantry in carrying out hazardous work in a very brave manner”.

Make sure you sign up for the last in this first season of talks, to be held at the Assembly Rooms, at 7.30pm on Thursday, 11 June.

This is the Faversham Oyster Maps 1599-1608 by Jason Mazzocchi, who will discuss the charts of Faversham Creek and the Swale. They are drawn by hand in pen and ink on parchment and are coloured with water paints. They are all similar and were made about 1620. Jason, the editor of Archaeologia Cantiana, is a PhD student at Canterbury Christ Church University with a focus on Faversham and the Cinque Ports in early modern Kent.

You can register here or at the Visitor Information Centre at 12 Market Place. Tickets are free for Faversham Society members, and £5 for non-members.

Thank you to everyone who came forward with offers of help. It is really much appreciated. We now have Suzanne Miles helping with membership admin. Suzanne is continuing a family tradition as her mum Pauline was the membership secretary for many years.

We also have an admin assistant, Christine Chaffin, who will be taking on some of the other admin roles, especially around volunteer communication.

A couple of other people have also offered help, and we will be looking for the right places to put their skills to work. Faversham people are so generous with their time!

Faversham’s geographical location on the coast of the Thames estuary and the characteristics of the landscape in which it sits underlie the historical and architectural features for which it is renowned and that have been the main focus of the Faversham Society since its creation in the 1960s.

In recognition of that, the society’s board of trustees decided at its meeting on 28 April to increase its focus on natural heritage across the full range of its activities.

Our charitable objects include educating and informing the public in the geography and natural history of Faversham and the surrounding area, as well as securing the preservation, protection, development and improvement of features of public interest including natural assets such as the creek, the Westbrook, coastal marshes and the wildlife at Oare Marshes that visitors travel from far and wide to see. The Swale, an import area for migratory birds, is part of a serial natural World Heritage nomination being prepared by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the British government.

Faversham sits at the confluence of two large designated protected areas: the chalk formation of the Kent Downs National Landscape and the Swale with its quadruple protected status as an internationally important Ramsar site (named after a 1971 treaty on wetlands conservation), a site of special scientific interest, a marine conservation zone and a special protection area.

The two are connected by a series of chalk streams that flow from the Downs along this stretch of the coast. There are only 200-300 chalk streams in the world, so they are often referred to as England’s rainforests. One of them, the Westbrook, once drove the watermills that were at the heart of Faversham’s thriving gunpowder industry.

One of the characteristics of chalk streams is that they provide a steady flow of pure water at a constant temperature all year round, which would have been extremely attractive to early settlers. During the Roman occupation of Britain, probably every spring along this stretch of the north Kent coast was the site of a villa and an associated farm that exploited the same fertile soil that attracts fruit farmers today.

Later, coastal clay deposits and locally sourced chalk provided the raw materials for brickmaking and the famous Kent stock bricks that were made here. Traces of the brickfields and chalk quarries are still visible in the contours of Faversham today.

It’s unlikely that brickmakers would have prospered in north Kent without the nearby Swale and the access it provided to Victorian London via sailing barges following the same coastal shipping channels used by seafarers for millennia.

During the 16th and 17th centuries Faversham was one of the most important ports in England for wool exports to mainland Europe. In earlier centuries, its value as a port and centre of shipbuilding in southeast England – supported by the copious supply of timber from nearby forests and woodland – was reflected in its status as a Cinque Port.

In terms of the services they provide to humans, salt marshes are the most valuable ecosystem in the world after coral reefs and tropical rainforests. In the Swale, work is under way to restore the seagrass beds that once carpeted the Thames Estuary and that are home to a recovering population of short-snouted sea horses.

Efforts are also under way to restore native oyster colonies, which provided a bountiful source of food to the people of north Kent for thousands of years and a resource for the Faversham Oyster Fishery Company, reputedly the oldest recorded business in the world. The coastal landscape of north Kent provides habitat, too, for the critically endangered European eel, the most illegally traded animal in the world and – in past centuries – another perennial source of food for communities. There is no other fish as deeply engrained in English and wider European culture as the eel.

Eels provide food for a wide range of other animals, including marine mammals: seals are a common sight in the Swale and porpoises an occasional visitor sometimes seen even in Faversham’s tidal basin. A less appreciated resident is the mosquito, which was the vector for malaria (“marsh ague”) in north Kent well into the 20th century. Because of malaria, until the 19th century the life expectancy of people living in the marshes was substantially lower than for people living on higher ground.

As in so many other places in the UK and around the world, Faversham’s natural environment is under extreme threat: sea levels are rising as the result of climate change, chalk streams are drying up due to over-abstraction and other pressures, and water quality is low in freshwater and marine environments because of pollution from pesticides and fertilisers, run-off from roads, discharges of partially treated (and occasionally untreated) sewage from wastewater treatment works, and other sources.

Such pressures – and others – not only affect wildlife but also domestic water supplies and companies such as Shepherd Neame, which depend on a reliable supply of pure water from the chalk aquifer as the main raw material for brewing.

In recognition of this rich natural heritage, the society’s new website (currently under development) will incorporate information on the town’s natural environment; the guided walks programme will focus on the wildlife and landscape of Faversham as well as its history and architecture; this article will be followed by others looking in greater detail at individual facets of the town’s natural history; and we will seek opportunities to add this new dimension to other areas of the society’s activity.

The 110th commemoration of the great explosion at Uplees aroused considerable interest in a traumatic event that is indelibly printed on the history of this town.

A talk on 25 March by Dr Martin Watts was oversubscribed and as a consequence, a repeat talk was arranged earlier. More than 100 people attended.

Dr Watts emphasised the root cause of the explosion lay in the unfettered wartime demand for munitions when safety concerns for storage and stockpiling became less stringent. Indeed, a few days before the disastrous explosion, attention had already been drawn to this lapse of precaution by the government inspector for munitions but he had concluded that overall standards were satisfactory.

Great acts of bravery took place, such as removing sacks of TNT to a safer location but little could mitigate the terrible loss of 108 men and boys in the worst disaster in the explosives industry. Vulnerability of attack from the Continent spelt the end of the industry in Faversham, which was eventually moved to Scotland.

On 28 March, an act of remembrance for those who died was held at the mass grave in Love Lane Cemetery, where more than 70 of the victims are interred. A brief explanation of the disaster took place and then the children and teachers of Bysing Wood primary school read the names of all those who perished.

The children had made wreaths which were placed on the grave at each reading of 10 names. The Faversham Mission Brass played a selection of hymns from the era followed by a rendition of the Last Post. Two minutes of quiet reflection were ended by the playing of the Reveille.

I am indebted to the Bysing Wood children and teachers and the Faversham Mission Brass for creating such a moving and memorable tribute.

The Fleur Bookshop is an invaluable repository of books, of course, but not only books. People, too. Volunteers, customers and visitors connected to the Faversham Society circulate around the premises. But, of course, unlike books, people are not donated, or shouldn’t be. Anyway, we couldn’t fit them on the shelves.

Over my years volunteering in the bookshop, I have developed an awareness that customers come here primarily to obtain a bargain or two; to soak up the undoubtedly creative atmosphere of the shop; and, not least, to engage in bookish conversation. Many’s the time I have been delighted, occasionally entranced, by the learning, eccentricity (which I view as a positive) and sheer enthusiasm of our book-hungry visitors.

One recent visit to the shop stands out as being highly impressive, and gives those of us who despair of the young reading anything but little screens hope for the future. After all, if we don’t sell at least some books to story-hungry children, what hope do we have of the future?

I mentioned in a previous article the true story of a 14-year-old girl who came into the bookshop and bought copies of Shakespeare’s plays and told me she read them for pleasure. For pleasure? Shakespeare? I thought only playgoers and academics did that.

Well, this recent visit by a boy of about nine and his mother was even more impressive. They browsed for a considerable time. Then the son came to the desk and plonked down, with a decisive air, eight books, some young adult novels and a few non-fiction titles. “These should keep me going for a while,” he said. “You’re obviously a keen reader,” I replied. “Oh,” he said, rolling his eyes, “if it was up to me I wouldn’t bother with school. I’d stay at home and read all day.” (As an ex-English teacher, I was amused but also chastened by this.) “All day?” I replied. “Well, I need to eat, sleep and wash, of course.”

I was astonished by this boy’s intelligence, way beyond his tender years. If his mother had allowed him time, I think he’d have selected a hundred books and devoured them in a week.

He went on to berate his friends who did little else but gawp at phones and live inside social media. He covered his face with his hands and exclaimed: “Oh my God, they’re all wasting their time when they could be reading books like these.”

More was to come. “I’ve written a novel – and I’ve done all the artwork and the cover design myself,” he added proudly. “You’ve written a novel?”  “Yes, and I’m working on a second one.”

I, too, have written novels and done illustrations and cover designs and artwork for volumes of essays. My latest volume is for sale in the VIC (unashamed plug). But then I’m many decades older than this young Dickens-in-the-making.

“I hope you and your mum can visit us again,” I ventured. “We live in the West Country. We’re just camping in the area for a week. Not ‘glamping’, mind you. You might as well stay in a hotel if you want to do that. We do real camping. You know, basic things: stay in a little tent, with torches, keep it simple. It’s great fun.”

“Do you read in your tent?’ I asked. “Of course. I’ll read this pile of books while we’re here.” I hope I wasn’t being nosey, but I was genuinely interested.

Having finished browsing, the boy’s mother came to the desk with a few volumes of her own. She was clearly well used to her son’s precocity. Just as well. I’ve never come across such a creative, animated, enthusiastic but utterly pleasant boy of primary school age. I’m sure there’s a future novelist germinating within that young mind. I sincerely hope so. Reading among the young is clearly still alive.

We are opening the museum garden as part of Open Gardens and need some extra stewards to sit in the sunshine and chat to people about it.

Information will be made available for you and other people around to ask, so it’s not difficult to do. If you can spare a couple of hours on Sunday, 28 June, between 10am and 4pm, then please let us know on the address below.

fleurmuseum@favershamsociety.org