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

ANN FUREDI

An old print (above) is in no doubt about the name. Nor is Historic England (right) in a 2002 listing

I didn’t grow up in Faversham and so I was puzzled when one of the town guides referred to the Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School sports fields as the “Shooting Meadows”. Naturally, I asked why he called it that, and received a brief but marvellous local history lesson.

It was English law from 1252 that all men between the ages of 15 and 60 were required to practise archery. In 1363 it became obligatory on holidays, Sundays, and feast days to practise the longbow. That, the story goes, is how we beat the French at Agincourt!

The men of Faversham practised in the fields now known as the Shooting Meadows (pictured, in 1895, above), and the footpath that goes from the St Mary of Charity along past the Old Grammar School then sharp right to Abbey Fields has historically been known as the Shooting Meadow Path.

This is one of the things about historic place names: they lead us from where we are back into our past.

Now, Swale Council has decided that the path will, henceforth, be known as Queen Matilda’s Path.

While there may be lots of reasons why an unnamed path in Faversham might be named after King Stephen’s queen, there are good reasons for it not to be this one.

Perhaps the most obvious reason is that it has a name. People who have grown up locally, talk of their childhood scampering around in the Shooting Meadows and along the Shooting Meadow Path, which they often refer to as “the Shoots”. (Arthur Percival, in his magisterial Faversham Streets and Places, tells us that the “oo” of Shoots is pronounced as in “puts”, not “boots”.)

The official postal address of the Old Grammar School Charity is: The Shooting Meadow, Abbey Place, Faversham ME13 7BG. Historic England displayed with the address and legend, The Shooting Meadows/The Masonic Hall, since 2002.

The trustees of the Old Grammar School have objected to the point where Swale Council is refusing to engage further. The trustees are appealing to the Local Government Ombudsman, have established a petition and considering a legal challenge.

I strongly believe this is the kind of high-handed historical illiteracy that we should stand together to oppose in defence of our history. And, when I wrote to Faversham Town Council to ask what could be done, I was shocked and saddened to learn that it agreed with the change.

The town council’s first reason for agreeing with Swale is questionable. Officials say it is part of an initiative to raise the profile of Faversham women hidden from history. Speaking as a woman, I don’t think any of us will feel our self-esteem will be raised by this. And, in any case, the new housing developments around town will be more than sufficient for many such memorials. without wiping out the historic memory of the town’s menfolk.

But the second justification is simply mind-numbingly bonkers! Under pressure from the Old Grammar School Trustees, Swale has decided that the Shooting Meadow Path is open to “deliberate misinterpretation” and, I have been told, the council “will not entertain any reference to ‘shooting’ in the proximity of a school”.

It is hard to quantify the amount of risk that students have faced since the first grammar school was founded on the site in the 1527 … or how much it will be reduced by changing the name. I suspect not one jot.

It would be interesting to research how the name Shooters Hill in London places residents at risk. As the ever-insightful Dorothy Percival has remarked: “What can we expect to see changed next – Ticklebelly Alley, Smack Alley? The mind boggles …” Indeed it does.

Please sign the petition (see below) and look out for details of how the Faversham Society will support the resistance.

Councillors will be hearing from the Faversham Society shortly with a request that they respect our history and respect the name of the Shooting Meadow Path.

Favershamsociety.org/shooting-meadows-path-petition

CONTACT ANN

Mapping our historic coast

LEIGH ALLISON

The Fleur Museum team is helping to map a century of change along some of the country’s most vulnerable coastlines.

Coasts in Mind, a citizen science project from the Museum of London Archaeology, will take three years and has been made possible by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Lloyd’s Register Foundation.

The coast from the Isle of Sheppey and Sittingbourne through Faversham to Whitstable, has played a pivotal role on the national and international stage throughout the ages. The saltmarshes and mudflats of the Swale estuary are a site of special scientific interest and support a high diversity of plants and invertebrates as well as overwintering and breeding birds.

The local project team will be working with communities to collect oral histories, old photographs, postcards and diaries that highlight changes to cultural practices and livelihoods built around the coastal environment as well as the historic and natural landscape.

Team members will be delivering a series of free training, creative, memory and wellbeing events to explore the region’s compelling tapestry of stories ranging from the prehistoric use of the waterways and Roman occupation to sailing barges serving local industry, war time defences and shellfish collecting.

Coasts in Mind will celebrate local knowledge and memory, helping to illustrate important changes, sea level rise, increasing tidal action and worsening storms. These collected stories and images will be used to create an online archive with community groups that will be made available for the public, policy-makers and researchers.

Fleur team members hope that you, too, will be keen to join in. It’s still at the planning stage, but if you are interested in getting involved, then please get in touch with me at the address below.

membership@favershamsociety.org

Time to name names in press pictures of the 20th century

CHRISTINE RAYNER

Here are four photographs that are a mystery to me. I’m sure a reader can help me identify them. They all came to me via files rescued from the late lamented Faversham Times, which I edited for more than 30 years, when it made its fateful move from 7 West Street. All images will be donated to the Faversham Society and I hope to curate an exhibition of them shortly.

What’s going on in the images above? I can tell you a little more about the first two. The girls lining up for the cameraman are entrants in the Miss Faversham competition of, we believe, 1971 or 1972. They are in long frocks – very much the fashion of that era – and look at the hairstyles! Remember them? They are posing before facing the judges and eager audience of family and friends in the audience. The second photo is the winner. Who can name names? I can put a rough date on them upon it because these are before the Times was bought in 1974 by the Parrett & Neves company, which owned the title until the 1990s.

These are some of hundreds of press photographs saved from the office when it closed. You’ll be seeing more of them.

Warships on the creek

LEIGH ALLISON

Pollock’s shipyard on the creek was one of Faversham’s most important industries employing more than 100 people for most of its existence from 1918 to 1970.

In the Second World War it played a vital part building a wide range of small vessels for the government but there were frequent tensions with the Admiralty and plenty of other problems to tax Marshall Pollock, the young managing director.

War brought change, including women working in the yard, and considerable profit, but by 1960 the firm was struggling to stay in business.

The Faversham Society is privileged to announce that Henry Cleary has agreed to give a talk, On the Maritime Front line: The role of Pollock’s Shipyard in the Second World War, at Faversham Guildhall at 7pm on Tuesday, 11 February.

Henry, who recently gave a talk at Chatham Historic Dockyard, has been researching the shipyard using the Faversham Society archives and the remarkable archive of Pollock’s papers held by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and only now being made accessible.

Tickets must be booked, either via our website or at the Visitor Information Centre at 12 Market Place. They are free to Faversham Society members and cost £5 for non-members.

Jacobean treasure in the attic

PAUL MOORBATH

The Faversham Society attic contained yet another treasure which is now on display in our museum. We have a Book of Common Prayer published in 1685 during the short reign of King James II and it has some connections with Faversham.

At the front of the prayer-book there is a fine engraving of King James II (left). This portrait would have been approved by the king himself. It was published and sold by someone you have probably heard of – Thomas Guy. He prospered selling religious books such as this and gave a large sum for the founding of a hospital in London – Guy’s Hospital.

The book’s pages are not numbered. Near the end of the prayer-book is a page headed James R and filled by a command stating:

“Our will and pleasure is that it [the Book of Common Prayer] be forth-with printed and published to be used …within Our Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.”

Berwick-upon-Tweed was mentioned separately because it had changed hands 13 times during the medieval wars and for the last time in 1482 when it finally came under English control but it remained semi-independent.

It was “of England but not within England” after a treaty of 1502. It was mentioned separately in royal proclamations etc and this practice continued until the passing of the Wales and Berwick-upon-Tweed Act in 1746. Scotland was still an independent country until the Act of Union created the United Kingdom in 1707 so is not mentioned.

There is a paradox for James, a Catholic, who became king in 1685 and therefore head of the Protestant Church of England. He was also authorising a Protestant prayer-book which is in English, not Latin as required for use in Catholic churches.

This state of affairs lasted only three years and led to his deposition by parliament, his escape for France, recapture by fishermen off Sheppey in December, 1688, and detention in Faversham.

King James was held prisoner in Henry Hatch’s house, which was on the site of the present town hall and Visitor Information Centre, and after a few days he was moved to the house of the Mayor of Faversham, Thomas Southouse in Court Street – where Shepherd Neame’s chief executive now has his office – because it provided more secure accommodation.

An account of King James’s capture is found in Edward Jacob’s history of Faversham.

There is another connection with Faversham. There is a page containing “A form of prayer with thanksgiving to be used yearly upon the Fifth day of November; for the happy deliverance of the King … from the most traiterous and bloudy [sic] intended massacre by gun-powder.”

By law, the nation was required to attend thanksgiving in church and there were to be prayers and celebrations to be held on 5 November commemorating the deliverance of King James I from the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and this remained law until 1859. From this we derive Bonfire Night festivities. The gunpowder had been purchased illegally so its source is not documented but Faversham would have been the most convenient and likely source for supply to Guy Fawkes in London.

My boomerang book

PETER QUINCE

The Christmas present definitely had the feel of a book, a hardback book, even better. The thought of reading a good book always excites me, and one especially chosen to appeal to my taste in reading … well, that was particularly appealing. So, I slowly, carefully, with great ceremony unwrapped the present, wishing to make the moment last; delayed gratification.

Once the wrapping paper was removed, I glanced at the front cover and the title. The Mile End Murder, it said. The cover design and the title were vaguely familiar. Have I read this before? When I read the back-cover blurb I knew that I had.

“Do you like it?” the giver (who must remain anonymous) asked, smiling sweetly.

“Oh, I like it very much. Just the kind of subject that appeals to me: Victorian crime in the East End of London, where I was brought up.” (But not in Victorian times). I felt compelled to add: “But I’ve already read it.”

“Oh,” the crestfallen lady replied. “That’s a pity. I came across it in the Fleur Bookshop and bought it because I just knew its subject matter would appeal to you.”

She was right. I had donated this pristine volume to the bookshop two months before, after clearing out some of the books in my study. A boomerang book.

A second wrapped Christmas present also had the feel of another book. I unwrapped it gingerly, peeping at the title when I had removed the relevant section of holly tree paper: Hidden Hands: the Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers. Immense relief. I had never seen this book before in my life.

By the time I got to the third wrapped present – yes, another book – I also brought a sigh of relief: The Chalice of Magdalene: the Search for the Cup that Held the Blood of Christ. No, never seen it before. No more boomerang books.

The Mile End Murder will soon be finding its way back to the Fleur Bookshop. I hope I don’t see it again – but I’m a little worried because it’s my birthday in March!