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From the chair

Ann Furedi

Every now and then my autocorrect tries to change my name from, Ann, to “annoying”. Friends have observed that this is rather fitting since, as some people learn more about my personal opinions, they find me increasingly annoying.

I don’t set out to be provocative, but I am opinionated, political (with a small “p”: I’m unaligned with any party) and, having published and debated in public, I am associated with views that are “Marmite”: some love them, some hate them.

It can sometimes feel schizophrenic when you have strong views about many things going on in the world, but are employed or elected to represent the views of an organisation. Fortunately, I’ve had a lifetime of practice, having worked in communications throughout my career. But in any case and, since I have had the privilege of chairing the Faversham Society, I cannot think of an occasion where there has been a difference between the Faversham Society’s “position” and what I personally think.

And, naturally, there is a process.

Normally, if I’m asked to comment on behalf of the society, it’s a matter of explaining a decision that has been agreed by the board (for example the southeast Faversham development, or the Shooting Meadows Path controversy). When it’s something new or less clear or I don’t know the Faversham Society’s view might be, I might contact the board members who have been involved. For example, I’ve provided a comment welcoming the council’s plans for improving facilities at Oare Gunpowder Works, after checking with board members working in that area.

Sometimes, as on the day of that demonstration on 6 September, I may be recognised by a journalist who asks me what I think of what’s going on. And then I use my judgement. I make it clear that I am not representing a Faversham committee position (how could I be, I’m commenting on a happening event in real-time!) and I say what I think to be a true, honest and reasonable comment.

On the occasion of the clash between the Raise the Flag contingent and Faversham Against Racism, I did just that. Just as the local vicar did, and just as my local GP did. Rather bizarrely, to my
 mind, I seem to have upset a number of people as much by what I didn’t say, as what I did.

I didn’t say the people wrapped in flags were outsiders, or fascists – I said that, while there were obviously a few people bent on trouble, for the most part it was a shocking illustration of the two sides of our town. On one side were people who have influence and are consulted, and on the other side people who feel they have no voice. The line-up seemed to represent a socioeconomic divide. I did not think it was a controversial observation, it seems as obvious as saying the post box is red.

Later I posted an exploration of these points on my personal Facebook page. And so the fuse was lit …

The discussion is still in full flow hundreds of comments later, some suggesting that my opinions have stirred up “discord and disharmony” and “bring the Faversham Society into disrepute”. I am still waiting for someone to explain what I’ve said that is disreputable. I described what I saw and said that we need to demonstrate a bit more tolerance and understanding of people with whom we don’t agree.

Here’s the thing. I am our society’s chair, but I am also an individual with views on many things outside the Faversham Society’s remit.

When it comes to social media, the Faversham Society’s posts expresses our policies, views and events.

My personal social media represents the me that is me. You may find you agree with me – you may not. And that’s OK! The Faversham Society contains individuals of all political hues and none. Part of the joy of our events and of volunteering is the opportunity to talk with people with whom we agree on some things but not on others. Long may the debates and disagreements thrive.

Full talks programme

LEIGH ALLISON

Our new talks programme is proving really popular, and the September and October talks are already sold out. They are in the guildhall where the capacity is limited.

The remaining talks are to be held in the Assembly Rooms.

So, if there is a talk you would like to come along to, please make sure you book in advance to be sure of getting in.

You can book online on the address below or in person at the Visitor Information Centre.

All talks are FREE for Faversham Society members. There is a wide-ranging selection of topics and the programme runs right up until June 2026, so do make sure you use this membership perk.

www.favershamsociety.org/live-events

Celebrating Jane

LEIGH ALLISON

This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, the author of some of the best-known novels in English literature. Austen had many connections with Kent and often spent time living with her brother in the county. She is known to have visited Canterbury Cathedral.

In her illustrated talk, Dr Susan Civale, reader in romanticism at Canterbury Christ Church University, will reveal more about Miss Austen.

Book now for the talk on in the Assembly Rooms at 7.30pm on Thursday 13 November but please be quick – it is already more than 50 per cent booked.

Don’t forget our fabulous Regency Ball is in the Assembly Rooms on Saturday, 15 November.

So far, ticket sales have been limited to Faversham Society members at a discounted rate, but there has already been a lot of interest in this event!

From 1 October, tickets will go on sale to non-members, so if you would like to join us for what is likely to be an authentic extravaganza, please book now to avoid disappointment.

www.favershamsociety.org/live-events

Fleur garden help

The Fleur de Lis garden was designed and planted to reflect Edward Jacob’s 18th-century book relating to plants found in Faversham. It has become a wildlife haven and a lovely quiet place for our visitors to enjoy.

However, we need some help to maintain it and get it ready for 2026.

If you have some time to spare and would be interested in helping, then please contact us at the address below.

volunteer@favershamsociety.org

Fashion’s history goes on the catwalk

These items from the costume attic are now making a statement in the Fleur Museum – from fashions worn at the time of Jane Austen (left) through to Queen Alexandra (top right). We are also displaying items from New Look to Laura Ashley, via Mary Quant and her miniskirt. Ladies – how many of these do you remember wearing?

CATHERINE LEE

As the shadows lengthen, our thoughts turn to things that go bump in the night. According to Psychology Today, “Human beings are frightened and fascinated by the unknown” and we tend to agree – judging by the success of our Frightful Faversham guided walks in past years.

So, we’re delighted to be able to announce that our ghoulish guide has been hard at work adding new stories of the unexplained and the paranormal to his repertoire, to run alongside some standard Faversham tales.

Given the age of many of Faversham’s buildings, it would be rather strange if some of them didn’t have a mysterious resident or two! We can’t guarantee that they will be up for socialising on the night you join us – but we’re sure you’ll return home having learnt a thing or two.

Booking is via the “Events” page on the society’s website.

For the first time this year, we’re offering youth groups to arrange a customised ghost walk. So if you are – or you know – a group might be interested, contact favershamtownwalks@gmail.com

MARY RANSOM

The Faversham Society calendars for 2026 are ringing the changes.The design features “then and now” images of the town, which we hope will prove to popular.

They are on sale from the Visitor Information Centre at 12 Market Place, priced at £6, which represents excellent value for money and would make ideal Christmas presents.

Calendars will also be available from our website at the address below (plus £2 postage) so there’s no excuse if you are not local! Thank you for your continued support of the society.

favershamsociety.org/store

Faversham’s lost treasure: Where is it?

PAT ROSS

Following the withdrawal of protection from Rome in 410AD when the Roman Empire collapsed, Faversham – like the rest of Britain – entered into the Dark Ages, a term first used in the 14th century by scholars to span the period from the fifth to the 10th century.

Written evidence was scarce and the scholars felt, that this, compared with the Roman and Greek civilisations, was a period of ignorance and decline.

Many modern historians now reject this view, however, because of evidence to the contrary. Faversham has such evidence – but it has now been lost.

The evidence we had was thanks to a Victorian grocer, William Gibbs (1788-1870), a keen amateur archaeologist. In retirement, he lived at 9 East Street, where he kept his large and magnificent collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts, comprising Kentish jewellery and other objects attesting to their superiority in design and craftsmanship.

Another name in this connection is Bryan Faussett (1720-76), who, like Gibbs, was interested in finding out more about this period of English history. He had an advantage over Gibbs, though, because he was a clergyman, latterly having the perpetual curacy at Nackington, near Canterbury, and was therefore able to indulge in his hobby. Faussett excavated as many as 750 Anglo-Saxon burial sites in east Kent – and by the time of his death had acquired what has been described as a stupendous collection of seventh-century jewellery and artefacts.

The Anglo-Saxons were pagans who converted to Christianity. It was their custom to bury items in the grave – jewellery, tools and weapons – that might be useful in the afterlife. Tweezers, pottery and keys were sometimes buried, too.

In his journals, Faussett recorded meticulously every item found in graves – and not just “the bling”. Upon his death his collection remained with his family until 1844, when his grandson exhibited it to a group of archaeologists in Canterbury. A decade later the family offered to sell the entire collection to the British Museum. The museum trustees declined but said they would take it only as a donation.

This caused an outcry but Joseph Mayer, a goldsmith and antiquary, stepped in and bought the whole collection, which now held by the World Museum in Liverpool.

The British Museum may have regretted its decision, because one particular item Faussett discovered was a brooch found in a tumulus on the North Downs above the village of Kingston, five miles south of Canterbury, in 1771. The brooch, 8cm in diameter, is the largest and most outstanding example of an Anglo-Saxon composite brooch ever found, widely recognised for its detailed workmanship. It was made between 600 and 625 from two plates of gold, bound together by a strip of gold filigree and inlaid with blue glass, white shell, pearl and garnet.

Where the Kingston Brooch was manufactured is even more interesting. The Liverpool musem, where it is on display, says merely that it was made in Britain. Kingston parish councillors have no doubt, however; they say the brooch demonstrates the high level of skill of the craftsmen around Faversham. So not found here, but made here!

The British Museum’s decision illustrates the attitude of many institutions at the time and the uphill struggle for native archaeology to be appreciated and valued. It was not until as late as 1843 that a campaign was launched to get its importance recognised.

However, in the 1850s, when the Faversham treasure was discovered during the railway construction and brickearth excavation, there was no question of anyone meticulously recording anything.

The railway was coming and there could be no hold-up. The track went over a large field of 20 acres, known as the Kings Field and covered an area from the Mall and Preston Street to the east, along the A2 to St Ann’s Road to the west, and down South Road as far as Stone Street and Cross Lane.

Railway and brickfield workers, after the shock of digging up skeletons, were allowed to plunder the graves, discard anything they did not want or considered insignificant, and sell what they considered valuable to the highest bidder who would be hovering around watching them work.

Fights would break out among the workers as to who found what. The graves, if excavated properly, would have revealed so many facts about the lives of the people who used to live here. What we are left with is the bling. So, what happened to it all?

To be continued …

PETER QUINCE

The six most polished, controlled and elegant social comedies to be found in English literature were written by a woman whose all-too-brief life remains something of an enigma.

Where better to begin than one of the most quoted openings of any English novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Ah, yes, I remember it! All those years ago in my youth, when I was far from in possession of a good fortune and not exactly looking for a wife. And, I recall, I was daunted by the thought of reading a novel, in this case Pride and Prejudice, which I had been led to believe was “difficult”.

It’s true that Jane Austen isn’t an easy holiday read, but as with other iconic novelists, particularly early 19th-century ones, the complexity of the language, if approached with commitment and persistence, is no real barrier to enjoyment. She wrote with great subtlety and precision in a style that some might see as stiff and starchy, but her understanding of human relationships, of manners, of truth, of the Regency culture in which she found herself, was second to none.

I have had the good fortune to visit several places closely associated with Austen, who wrote all those timeless novels before her death aged 41 in 1817 from Addison’s disease.

I recall visiting Lyme Regis many years ago, after having read Persuasion. Strolling down the high street, taking the sea air – so poignantly conveyed in that novel – I came across a blue plaque recording where she and her family stayed there in 1804. At the time Austen was approaching 30 years of age, which was certainly before the publication of her main works.

My wife and I went down to the seafront and the Cobb, which provides a prominent location for characters to promenade; it also serves as a backdrop for a dramatic scene in the novel. This horseshoe-shaped man-made wall encloses the harbour and plays a key role in Persuasion, especially in Chapter 12, where Louise Musgrave falls on the lower steps and suffers a head injury. The lower steps are known locally as “Granny’s Teeth”, I discovered, although I’m not sure whether Jane was aware of that.

Austen described her raw material, curiously, as “three or four families in a country village”. All her novels, from Sense and Sensibility (1811) to Northanger Abbey (1818), a skit on the contemporary Gothic novel, were published anonymously.

During a later trip west, my wife and I visited Bath, where Austen’s family moved in 1801; they left after the death of her father, arriving in Southampton in 1806. In Bath I recall our visit to a house in an impressive Georgian terrace where, evidently, Austen had lived for a while. While there we enjoyed a very Austen-like cream tea! I can visualise ladies and gentlemen in their Regency finery strolling that terrace and imagine Jane among them silently and surreptitiously observing the speech, manners and attitudes of the people around her, which no doubt served as the raw material for the fiction to come.

On another occasion we visited Winchester, a lovely Hampshire city, strolled the streets and made our way towards the cathedral. There, in College Street, very close to the cathedral, we spied another blue plaque informing us that Jane stayed there after she had become very ill and where she was cared for by her sister Cassandra. She died there and is buried in the cathedral.

Like the Brontës and George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), female writers of the 19th century were compelled by the male-dominated, not to say sometimes misogynistic, attitudes to disguise themselves with a male pseudonym. They felt compelled to be secretive for fear of incurring the wrath of those who, after all, considered themselves the only gender to justify the writing of fiction or anything else. I’m sure that Jane would have had something acerbic, incisive and witty to say about that.

My reading earlier this year of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette were immensely enjoyable and demonstrated the strength of early 19th-century English fiction composed by women.

Austen observed speech and manners with wit, insight and precision, and revealed her characters’ absurdities in relation to high standards of integrity and truth. She wrote about the nuances of social interaction among the landed gentry in contrast, let’s say, to Dickens, who came a generation later and featured many prominent working-class and destitute characters in his novels. Her cool judgment, ironic detachment and refined sentiments give her work a unique depth and compelling charm.

In Emma (1815), Austen said: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” How true that is today, more than two centuries later!

Congratulations, Miss Austen, on your 250th birthday, and may your literature continue to live and thrive.