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

This year’s town celebration, Open Faversham, took the form of a mega-exhibition filling St Mary of Charity Church with stalls and displays from around 30 voluntary groups that work for the preservation of the environment around the town.

It was an extraordinary showcase of the volunteer activity taken on by people who probably don’t even think of themselves as “volunteers” but as people who are following an interest, or helping with something that needs to be done. After all, “volunteer” sometimes seems a bit blue-rinse and tea-cups, rather than people in waders hoiking duckweed out of the streams.

But it all comes down to the same thing - doing things that need to be done by someone and are of benefit to us as a community and a place.

The “place’” element is important. The theme, From the Source of the Westbrook to the Sea, intentionally reminded us of how essential the chalk streams and marshes have been to the town. In effect water has shaped everything that is Faversham about Faversham.

The team who put this together, under the direction of Harold Goodwin and Matthew Hatchwell, managed to bring together groups as diverse as the Gunpowder WI and the St Mary’s Hassocks Guild, with bat-spotters, water quality testers and railway historians.

The diversity of the town shines through in what we are composed from - our natural and social history.

Next year, we’re told Open Faversham is to be a forward-looking theme: Faversham’s Future. No date yet but be sure not to miss it.

Did you see The Tudors with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman? It’s on channel5.com. Did you notice the Faversham connection?

This episode about Tudor England was about how two families, one wealthy and one poor, were affected by the Spanish Armada.

The rich family included a merchant who had two ships used in the Armada. The poor family were Margaret and William Browne. He was a gunner’s man and served on Hazarde, the ship that Faversham donated as a limb of the Cinque Ports.

William lost a limb during the battle but survived and was given a beggar’s licence when he got back home. He became a master gunner and died seven years later, fighting in Belgium, leaving Margaret with three children to care for.

Our September talk included the launch of the new book by Glyn Harper, featuring another one of Faversham’s extraordinary figures from the past.

Glyn described the incredible story of Mary English, a Faversham dockworker’s daughter born at the end of the 18th century, who went to Colombia in 1823 to set up a business there.

Readings from Mary’s letters, which are held in the British Library, brought her voice back to life. She was a very determined woman, who overcame adversity, tragedy and heartbreak.

Her success was remarkable and it was a real eye-opener that a woman could lead such an independent life, 200 years ago. Mary became friends with Simón Bolívar, the liberator of South America from the Spanish, and knew Manuela Sáenz, his tempestuous lover and head of intelligence.

Glyn’s new book, based on these real people and real events, includes a new theory that suggests that Mary English played a far greater role in Colombian politics than was previously thought. It’s on sale at the Visitor Information Centre, price £9.99.

Join us on Saturday 10 October at the Faversham Assembly Rooms for our Regency Ball. It will be a wonderful evening of fun, music and dancing. There will also be a live musical performance to enjoy and a selection of delicious canapes will also be provided.

Dove’s Vagaries will be teaching us all the best Regency moves in two guided dance sessions during the evening, giving everyone a chance to try their hand at the style of dance that Jane Austen’s heroes and heroines needed to master!

A bar serving wine, beer, cider, non-alcoholic options and soft drinks will be available on the evening, accepting both cash and contactless card payments.

We hope lots of our guests choose to enter the spirit of the evening by wearing costume of the era, but encourage you to wear whatever finery in which you will feel most comfortable. Your presence is more important than your presentation!

Tickets are £20 for Faversham Society members, bring your friends for £25. It’s a hilarious night out!

Book online at www.favershamsociety.org

The Fleur de Lis museum was shut briefly for building works. It is now open except for the entrance gallery.

• Apologies to everyone who was looking forward to Alison Weir’s talk in October. This has been cancelled.
• Our new book, the Invisible Women of Faversham, will be launched on Wednesday, 14 October. This event is sold out, so our thanks go to everyone who is supporting us. The book will be on sale, priced £15, at the Visitor Information Centre, 12 Market Place, from 15 October.
• More than 200 people have visited Chart Mills since they reopened in June. They close for the winter on Saturday, 26 September, and this is your last chance to see the new displays until they reopen next Easter. They open 2pm to 4pm on Saturdays.
• Dr Nigel Morgan has updated his Faversham Paper about the history of Arden’s House and Arden’s Cottage with some additional research. The new version is available as a free download from our website. Nigel also has an article in the September, edition of the Faversham Life online magazine. All the Faversham Papers we have so far digitised are now available as free downloads.

Do you know what’s tragic about these Faversham images from the early 20th century? It’s not just that all the subjects — even the baby — are gone. It’s that we don’t know who they are.

They are among a huge collection bequeathed to the Faversham Society. Our curators have managed to identify many of the people, but these images are among 100 or more that baffle them.

Look at the girl dressed as an angel, the mother with her children, the dressed-up girl with her gigantic hat, the slightly gloomy wedding party, the sad seated lady, and the Edwardian bicyclist and her sparkling machine. Look, too, at the large lad with — we presume — his family. He appears in several other shots and is notable for his size. All are a mystery.

Go to the wardrobe, find that shoebox of old photos. Now, write their names on the back when you still remember them! Future generations will thank you.

This handbill, held in the Ephemera collection of the Faversham Society archive, throws some fascinating light on an aspect of community life in the 1890s.

It was issued in the name of the town clerk, Francis Giraud, and advertises a forthcoming series of six weekly lectures (for “about One Hour Each”) on the subject of home nursing, to be held at the Drill Hall in Preston Street, at the instigation of the council’s Technical Instruction Committee. Admission will be by ticket only, at a charge of 1d for a single lecture or 3d for the course of six, rising to 6d for one lecture and 1s 6d for the whole course for those wanting a reserved seat.

Among the advertised weekly topics for study are “the care of infectious diseases” and “accidents and how to treat them”. Particular scenarios to be explored include “what to do if a dress catches fire” and “how to restore apparently drowned people”. Practical demonstrations are to include how to change bed sheets and how to make gruel.

Among the advertised weekly topics for study are “the care of infectious diseases” and “accidents and how to treat them”. Particular scenarios to be explored include “what to do if a dress catches fire” and “how to restore apparently drowned people”. Practical demonstrations are to include how to change bed sheets and how to make gruel.

We are told that the lecturer, Mrs Truman, is a member both of the Royal British Nurses Association and of the National Health Society.

The handbill prompts so many observations and questions: that the Drill Hall is so-called at this date reminds us that this building, designed and constructed as Faversham’s Assembly Rooms, has actually spent much more of its lifetime being used for military and associated purposes than for the social ones for which it was intended.

The handbill raises questions about how well attended the classes were and about those who took advantage of them, as well as about the other types of “technical instruction” that the council might have offered. Answers to these questions can only be found by venturing beyond study of the handbill itself to other sources.

Interestingly, it would appear that home nursing was the topic of the moment in 1893, when the handbill was circulated and the Faversham lectures were held. That year in New York, nursing graduates were first sent to teach home nursing to immigrant families in the city’s Lower East Side. And in Britain, the same year saw the publication of the fourth edition of E. Margery Homersham’s book, Home Nursing (first published 1888), written at the request of the National Health Society.

Importance of diet

Thus, Truman’s lectures in Faversham and this volume — held at the Wellcome Collection — were promoted by the same organisation. This link is reinforced by the book’s list of contents, where there is a notable overlap in subject matter with the Faversham lectures, reflecting both the status of medical knowledge at the time of publication as well as the National Health Society’s key philosophies and messages. These included the importance of cleanliness, fresh air and diet. The desired characteristics of the ideal nurse, Homersham stated, were: “unselfishness, gentleness, scrupulous cleanliness, punctuality, tidiness, cheerfulness, good temper, firmness and self-reliance”.

The Faversham lectures got off to an excellent start: the first session, on “what to do till the doctor comes” attracted some 200 attendees, most of whom took season tickets for the whole course, according to the Faversham News. At the final lecture, the Mayor (Alderman E. Smith) gave a brief speech alluding to the success of the series and said that the council was pleased with the result.

Basic training

As a consequence, the exercise was repeated later in the year, when the curriculum was extended to eight weeks, with each session run twice to cater for the demand. This, time, the course culminated in an examination for those interested in submitting to it: five ladies received certificates.

In the succeeding months, others courses followed: cooking, cottage gardening and dressmaking.

The Home Nursing handbill provides a fascinating insight into one aspect of our town’s history. It is also a reminder that the younger of those women who received their basic training courtesy of the town council in the 1890s may have been among the recruits to Faversham’s VAD hospitals 20 years later.

An original M. R. James manuscript goes on display next month as Canterbury celebrates 320 years of the modern ghost story.

City of Ghosts features rare literary archives, live performances of James’s work, folklore, writers and academics at St Gregory’s Centre for Music, Canterbury, on 3 October.

It has been created by T. W. Burgess, co-writer of this year’s Paramount horror feature Passenger, and author of Early Haunts, a graphic novel exploring some of history’s most famous ghost stories. The original manuscript of Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad (1904) will be on display.

The Apparition of Mrs Veal, published anonymously in 1706, is widely regarded as the first modern English ghost story. It is set in Canterbury.

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), son of an Anglican clergyman, was born in Goodnestone, Dover, and became a medievalist scholar and author who served as provost of King’s College, Cambridge, as well as writing tales of the supernatural.

For tickets, go to the address below and search for Canterbury.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

A woman came into the bookshop last week asking if we had any Ordnance Survey maps. “Yes, we have — quite a lot,” I said. “You’ll find them in a big box down there under the central table.”

The woman was delighted. She crouched down and began to riffle through the collection of maps. I offered her a chair but she said she was happy on hands and knees. Other customers came, browsed, bought books and went. I sorted some books out on shelves. Another volunteer received donations. That’s how it goes at the Fleur Bookshop: books in and books out.

The woman continued kneeling down, sorting through our substantial box of OS maps. I was not entirely surprised at her avid interest; I am something of a cartophile myself. I find maps fascinating and possess a small collection of OS maps and atlases. Whenever someone I meet mentions a place they’ve been to, or the village where they live, I have a powerful, almost irresistible impulse to look it up on an appropriate map.

I’m not interested in electronic versions of maps, which induce laziness, in my view. I want to spread a paper page (or several pages) out before me and pinpoint a place in its wider context. That, it seems to me, is the only way to really understand location — see the bigger picture and then if necessary zoom in on it. Screens are akin to wearing blinkers; what is peripheral is largely ignored.

The woman continued flicking through our box of OS maps.

When I taught at St Edmund’s School in Canterbury, I knew a colleague who led Outward Bound trips for pupils during the school holidays. He would first teach his pupils the theoretical skills of orienteering and then, on a week-long trip away to Snowdonia or the Lake District, put these skills into practice along with the pupils.

Once, at high altitude in misty conditions in the Welsh mountains, he and his group came across a number of adults who looked distinctly lost. He went over and offered to help. Evidently, they were trying to find their way using smartphones, which clearly did not work. He directed them to the nearest village. Back at school I remember him telling me that if you are hiking in a remote area, you need good, foldable paper OS maps, not electronic devices. That, he insisted, was not “old-fashioned” but practical, indeed essential, like wearing appropriate clothing.

The woman, on her knees, was by no means finished sifting through our OS collection.

Maps are also known as charts and the most famous one of those we have in Faversham is the Great Charter, better known as the Magna Carta. It contains no diagrams or drawings of an area but is a list of liberties to which the English barons forced King John to assent in 1215. Perhaps we should have a few 21st-century Magna Cartas. Liberty, I feel, is in great peril in some places.

The Mappa Mundi, on the other hand, was a 13th-century symbolic map of the world which is circular and shows Asia at the top with Europe and Africa below and Jerusalem at the centre, reflecting Christian religious rather than geographical belief. It was bequeathed to Hereford Cathedral, where it was used as an altarpiece. Of course, for centuries we have been used to viewing world maps with Europe at the centre, reflecting the global domination of these nations over many centuries of exploration and dominion.

That dominion has diminished but the world map has remained the same. View the globe from the other side and you see predominantly ocean.

The woman in the bookshop, her knees and back probably aching now, was still poring meticulously over our maps. I didn’t know we had quite so many! Donors sometimes say, as they bring them in: “Do you want them … they’re not really relevant any more in this age of smartphones and satnavs, are they?”

Well, I welcome all maps and atlases, because with large-format paper maps, in books or folded sheets, one gets a different “feel” for geography and orientation. Paper maps, I would suggest, are still as relevant as their digital counterparts and, at least for some of us, much more user-friendly. I’m immediately drawn to books with lots of maps inside.

At last the map-browsing woman came over to the desk with half a dozen in her hand and said: “I’ll have these, please.” She had found what she wanted!