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You shall go to the ball!

LEIGH ALLISON

This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and the Faversham Society is celebrating with a costumed ball in full Regency style.

Austen, who was born on 16 December, 1775, and remains one of the most respected authors in English literature, had many connections to Kent and frequently visited family at Godmersham and Goodnestone Parks. She also visited Ospringe.

 We shall be holding a Regency Ball on Saturday, 15 November, in the fabulous Assembly Rooms in Preston Street to really get into the authentic atmosphere. The original rooms were built in 1830 but destroyed by fire in 1848 and swiftly rebuilt.

The evening will include music from the Rose Gold String Trio together with guided instruction in Regency ballroom dancing and some time for a bit of freestyling too! Canapés and nibbles will be provided and drinks will be available to buy throughout the evening.

We hope our guests choose to enter the spirit of the evening by wearing Regency costume, but encourage you to wear your finery. Prizes will be awarded to the best-dressed guests.

Tickets are on sale now at a reduced price until 30 September and available exclusively to Faversham Society members. So please don’t delay to book to avoid disappointment. We’ve prepared some FAQs to give you some more information.

How much are tickets?
Early bird advance tickets are £20 each, available exclusively to Faversham Society members, via the society’s website, or the Visitor Information Centre. Remaining tickets, at £25, will go on general release on 1 October for non-members too.

What’s included in the price?
Your ticket gains entry to a wonderful evening of fun, music and dancing, including music and guided instruction in regency ballroom dancing from Dove’s Vagaries, as well as performances by Rose Gold String Trio. A selection of canapés and nibbles will also be provided and included in the price.

What are the event timings?
Doors will open at 7pm, with plenty of time to mingle with your fellow ball-goers, before the guided dancing begins at 8.15pm. Two formal dance sessions will be held before the event ends at 10.30pm.

What if I don’t know any Regency dances?
Dove’s Vagaries will be teaching us all the best Regency moves in two guided sessions, giving everyone a chance to try their hand(s) – and legs – at the style of dance that Jane Austen’s heroes and heroines needed to master!

Will there be a bar?
A bar serving wine, beer, cider, non-alcoholic options and soft drinks will be available on the evening, accepting cash and contactless card payments. We do not permit guests to bring their own alcohol.

Will food be served?
A selection of vegetarian and non-vegetarian canapés will be served during the evening, and nibbles, such as crisps and nuts will be available. If you have any allergies or intolerances, we will try to accommodate you. Please contact us at the email address below.

Do I have to wear a costume?
We hope many guests choose to enter the spirit of the evening by wearing Regency costume, but encourage you to wear whatever finery you will feel most comfortable in. Your presence is more important than your presentation! That said, we will be handing out a prize for best-dressed guest on the evening …

What else do I need to know?
In Regency style, each guest will be announced as they enter the ballroom – so have a think about how you would like to be introduced! If you require any additional information ahead of the event, please contact us.

membership@favershamsociety.org

Society says no to Duchy plans

ANN FUREDI

I want to explain something that I know will please some members, while annoying others.

Those of you watching the developments regarding the Duchy of Cornwall’s proposed development for southeast Faversham will see that we have now submitted out official response in opposition to the plan.

The decision was taken at the July meeting, which discussed a proposal from our newly formed planning committee. As you will be aware, it has taken a while to resolve various tensions and nuances. In particular, the society board wanted to hold fast to our position of opposing developments on farmland and greenfield sites, which the membership meeting last October clearly wanted to maintain.

At the same time, we recognise that the government’s position means builders will “break ground” around us and many of consider that, if this land is to fall to developers, then the duchy is probably the “least-bad option”.

Some members have said that by formally opposing this development, we risk excluding ourselves from engagement with the duchy if it is to succeed and so lose future influence. It’s a risk – but one that, after several discussions with the Duchy of Cornwall team, I believe to be small.

I would go so far as to say that the duchy’s representatives understand our position and at a round-table discussion they were quite open that they consider their challenge to be how to move from being considered the “least-bad option” to a positive community benefit.

This is important to the duchy as it wants to be seen not as merely housing developers, but as a champion for fair growth and community integration. (Yes, I know, but let’s judge them in all things, from their claims to their design, on delivery not words.)

In our submission, we acknowledge the duchy’s efforts to design a sustainable southeast Faversham development but we note with concern the potential impacts on infrastructure, transport, community building, affordability of housing, protection of green land for future generations, food supply chains, water supply and local chalk streams. We have urged the duchy to achieve 20% biodiversity net gain within the development site, rather than relying on land across the M2, and to collaborate with the Kent Downs National Landscape.

The duchy team is planning another flotilla of engagement events, and I’d urge you to attend and discuss your views whatever they are.

Meanwhile, we will continue to throw our support behind Faversham Town Council’s attempt to strike down the decision to build on the marsh at Ham Farm.

Enjoy the fading days of summer and be sure to check out the fabulous events we have planned for the rest of the year.

How to ward off witches

THE EDITOR

Squat-shaped bottles, with a bearded face, and buried upside-down containing human finger nails or urine, are the most immediately recognisable “magical” object concealed within ancient buildings. These are witch bottles, designed to trap evil or ward off witchcraft.

Witch bottles are often found buried in the inverted position either beneath the hearth or under the main threshold of 16th and 17th-century buildings. They sometimes also contain bent pins and nails.

Their association with the ritual protection of the house is clear – but was the intent of their maker to function as a decoy to divert evil influences? To act as a spirit trap or to work as a counter-witchcraft measure, designed to fend off the possibility of psychic attack or bewitchment?

Archaeologist Wayne Perkins will be giving an illustrated talk, Witch bottles – Decoys, Spirit Traps or Counter-Witchcraft Measure, in Faversham Guildhall, at 7.30pm on Thursday, 9 October.

It will act as both an introduction to the current understanding of their uses, as well as outlining several ways in which they were deployed over time. Many of the examples illustrated in the talk have been found in Kent.

Wayne is an archaeologist with more than 20 years of experience who has worked in England, for France’s premier scientific organisation, L’Institut Nationale des Récherches Archéologiques Préventives and for a number of companies. He now works in and around the City of London and has been published in archaeological journals.

He has a fascination with medieval graffiti and concealed objects recovered from ancient buildings has culminated in his book, A Consensus of Symbols: Patterns in Ritual Building Protection, due out this year. Wayne’s previous talk about the Faversham Witches sold out, so please book early – via the website or at the Visitor Information Centre, 12 Market Place. Tickets are free for Faversham Society members and £5 for non-members.

We’ve got one of those too!

DOROTHY PERCIVAL

The Society of Antiquaries has an exhibition about the history of Magna Carta to commemorate 800 years since Henry III sealed the definitive version in 1225 – not the first 1215 version sealed by his father, King John, which we celebrated in 2015.

I had a quick look to assess the scope of what the society has on display in its headquarters off the courtyard of the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. Not a massive room, but with every item beautifully presented and requiring close attention.

I couldn’t resist, of course, slipping in to a conversation with one of the attendants that I lived in a town where we have our own later version.

She was very interested as was one of the distinguished staff who had put the exhibition together. “Do tell the people in Faversham that they would find it well worth a visit,” she told me.

The free Magna Carta exhibition is open Wednesday to Friday until 19 September.

Our smart new look

LEIGH ALLISON

We hope you have all noticed that building work on the Fleur de Lis bookshop and museum has been completed and both have a smart facelift.

The bookshop has a loyal band of customers and, as Peter Quince so eloquently tells us, is a source of all kinds of knowledge. The museum, too, is continuing to grow with popular, free, educational visits for schools and has plans to put even more of the society’s collection out on display.

Both are great assets to the town, but looking after old buildings is very costly, so we thank you all for your support.

HEATHER WOOTTON

The Fleur de Lis Museum’s favourite marionette puppet, portraying the notorious Alice Arden – executed for the murder of her husband Thomas in Abbey Street – has gone away for six months to appear in an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia.

She is one of a troupe of marionettes owned by the Puppet Guild which toured the southeast area (with appropriate scenery) in the 1940s and 1950s providing a selection of different plays for groups, mostly in village halls. The photograph (above left) shows the marionette being checked on arrival at the university in Norwich by Catherine the conservator. She was assessed as being in good condition.

Alice will be displayed in the exhibition entitled Eyewitness which runs from 20 September to 15 February in the Sainsbury Centre.

The exhibition considers how violent stage and screen narratives can invite questions about our own morality, cultural codes and religious beliefs.

CHRISTINE RAYNER

A phone call on Christmas Eve in 1964 proved a turning point for information about Faversham’s long history and for archaeologist Brian Philp.

The call was from Stuart Rigold of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments to say he had a problem. Permission to excavate land north of the town, in search of evidence of Faversham Abbey, had expired and he needed urgent help to carry out the archaeological dig to a strict deadline. The site was due to be developed for the new grammar school and there were only a few weeks left before the bulldozers moved in.

Brian, now in his nineties, returned to Faversham last month to donate evidence of the dig to the Faversham Society archive and to talk to selected members about the hugely important operation he oversaw 60 years ago.

Brian Philp’s book and several artefacts he has donated to the society

After agreeing to Mr Rigold’s request, Brian was told to get a team together and start on 1 January. To get an idea of the importance of the site off Abbey Street, he looked at a copy of Victoria County Histories (a national project set up in 1899 to record the history of every county in England) and discovered that “Faversham Abbey was important”. In the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (a ninth-century collection of manuscripts, written in Old English) he noted that in 1170 King Stephen was buried at Faversham and that there had been a Cluniac order on the site.

“It looked like it was going to be a good bet,” Brian said. He got together a team of archaeologists and some machinery and was offered the use of No 79 Abbey Street for the men to live in. He was also allowed to take six men from the local labour exchange, to perform the heavy digging. They were paid six shillings an hour.

Conditions were difficult. It did not get light till almost 8am, there was heavy snow and strong winds. Work began in the former Well Orchard, behind Abbey Street, complete with chickens and rows of fruit trees. After some digging, the team found chalk foundations of early buildings and the remains of a refectory and cloister. It was obviously on a very large scale. A “good scattering of artefacts” were found on the site, Brian said.

On the last agreed day of the dig, Mr Rigold turned up and was astonished how much work had been done in two weeks. But it was clear the job was not complete. They had not found evidence of the church, which Brian believed was in the adjoining orchard, where work was due to start within two weeks, preparing the site of the new school.

Brian struck a deal with Mr Rigold to stay for another three weeks to look for evidence of the church and it was agreed funding for the next phase could be provided.

As excavations continued, it became clear they were dealing with an extremely large building. The foundations were 86ft wide, with a 28ft aisle. There was evidence of a central tower and a stone boundary wall, the bottom 3ft of which was monastic in design. There was also a fine doorway.

History recounts that King Stephen decreed in 1137 that an abbey would be built to provide a mausoleum for English kings. “This would have become the Windsor of the southeast,” Brian said. Building the abbey was a lengthy process. Work began in 1137 and even by 1210 it was not complete. By this time King Stephen was dead and his line had expired. Faversham was no longer the home of English royalty.

Records show that Parliament sat in Faversham on several occasions before the dissolution of the monasteries, ordered by King Henry VIII in 1539. The abbey was destroyed and it is said the people of the town ransacked the church after the monks had left.

Once the initial 1965 archaeological dig was complete, Brian again saw Mr Rigold and asked for a further three weeks to complete the job before building work began. Mr Rigold asked: “But where is the king’s tomb?” and Brian agreed to have a go at finding it.

Excavations of the abbey began and it was soon clear they were dealing with a very large building indeed. The unearthed foundations stretched for 364ft – longer than Canterbury’s main church (before it became the cathedral). It would have been one of the largest in the kingdom.

Many more days of shovelling snow and earth revealed seven chapels on the site and when they found evidence of what would have been the high altar they discovered two vast pits “full of crumbling mortar, including some fine, highly decorated plaster” Brian said. One large piece of masonry taken out of the ground – “the base of a column with a scalloped edge and traces of gold and red paint” – was handed over to the Faversham Society and should be in the archives, he added. This would have been the end of a royal tomb.

During the dig, decorated tiled floors were discovered – the earliest of their kind in the country. On the final day of digging, the developers’ bulldozers started taking out the apple trees in the orchard adjoining Well Orchard. To protect the site as a national monument, Brian had the area of excavation fenced.

After weeks of bitter winter weather, the sun came out on the last day of the dig and Brian had a photograph taken of the site.

Having finished the job he had been commissioned to do, Brian returned to an earlier site at Reculver. Then on 23 February he received yet another message from Mr Rigold, saying that a Roman villa had been unearthed on the field next to the abbey site. Contractors were told to stay off the site for 10 days, to allow more archaeological investigations and Brian was given authority to get digging straight away.

They quickly unearthed six rooms, a verandah, a passageway, side wings and a mosaic floor. Suddenly, he needed more hands to help the digging!

Brian approached Andrew Reed, headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, and was allocated sixth-formers to perform the digging. Girls from William Gibbs School were also sent to help.

After 10 days, the villa remains were unearthed and it became clear there was yet another treasure beneath it – a Belgic farmstead, with evidence of pottery in ditches. Brian and his team were given another six days to complete the work, which was checked by the chairman of the county education committee, with an interested spectator, David Bruce, the American ambassador.

Bruce was so appalled that the county council was proposing to build over such important historic sites that he protested to the authorities, who agreed to move the new school to an adjoining piece of land. The abbey remains are under the school sports pitches, on the other side of the Shooting Meadows path.

Brian’s findings on the abbey site were published in report form in 1968 and the book Excavations at Faversham, 1965, the same year

Faversham on film

DOROTHY PERCIVAL

A resident has been walking round Faversham and other east Kent towns simply filming discreetly the passing scene as he goes along. The result is delightful to watch. Just the everyday scene as it is lived with no pretensions.

The ambles through the market are particularly appealing. The results are wonderful local and social history. Alongside everyday activities it is a record of clothing fashions, market goods, the buildings, shop ownership, the advertising, pet ownership, bicycles, pushchairs and all the paraphernalia of this place and times.

I have urged him to consider making the films available for the Faversham Society archives. Just imagine if we had that sort of record of a century ago rather than the shaky little clips of significant events that were available then.

I know the society has one or two early films made by prominent figures in the town, like the wedding of Dr Sidney Alexander’s daughter. They are few, though, and don’t reflect that fascination of a film showing what is in one sense routine daily life and at the same astonishingly alluring. I do urge you to take a look on YouTube.

LINDA THOMAS

Hopping mornings. That’s what my Great Uncle Albert called them when dew laid on the ground and summer was nearly spent.

As a child, this always puzzled me until he told me about the time when he was a boy and when his extended family all went to Kent to pick the hops. He explained how each family had their own hut and what fun it was to experience the freedom of the countryside.

Whenever he took me out in his car with his father, then quite old, he always went to Yalding, with its rows and rows of tall poles and lines, with binds of thick green foliage. On the binds grew green buds, hops for making beer.

At the time, I never asked how they got there and what happened but I have now researched the subject and found answers to the questions I should have asked.

Kent’s soil was suitable for hops and the county became the earliest centre for growing them. Tradition has it that the first hop garden was created near Canterbury in 1520. Hop cultivation continued to spread across Kent, to a point where in the middle of the 17th century extra labour was needed to supplement the local workers. Gypsies, often travelling from Ireland, provided much of the extra workforce. They moved from farm to farm throughout the summer, harvesting hops, fruit and vegetables. The workers were also needed in spring to “train” or “twiddle” the young plants to encourage them to climb.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the demand for hops in the production of beer grew and greater numbers of temporary workers were needed. This demand was met by people, often women and children, leaving London in early September for the Kent countryside and hoping to find work in the many farms. In the early days of this exodus, people would travel by wagon or even walk from the capital, but with the spread of the railway, train companies ran hop-picker specials from London to Kent.

Initially, living conditions were squalid, with workers housed without real sanitation in tents, and farm outbuildings. Such unhygienic conditions caused health problems, including outbreaks of cholera and other infectious diseases. The ‘Society for Employment and Improved Lodgings for Hop Pickers was formed in 1866 after campaigns led by two priests, John Young Stratton and the Joseph James Kendon, and conditions gradually improved.

By 1874, bylaws covering hop pickers’ accommodation was adopted under the 1874 Sanitary Acts Amendment Act. Rows or blocks of brick-built “hoppers’ huts”, each measuring about 80 square feet, began to spring up alongside the hop gardens.

Huts usually had an earth floor and were lit by candles or paraffin lamps. Furniture was usually comprised beds of brushwood and straw. As the century progressed, sanitation improved with shared earth closet lavatories and water via a standpipe.

Cooking was usually done on an open fire, but cookhouses were built on some sites. Towards the end of the 19th century, a hospital for the treatment of hop-pickers was established by Father Richard Wilson, a priest from the East End of London, in Five Oak Green, near Tonbridge.

Pickers were paid based upon how much they picked and was a set amount for each bushel – a measure equivalent to eight gallons. Pay was low, but experienced pickers could make the same or even more than they could earn in London. On some farms, however, pickers were required to stay the full harvest term and some pay was held back until the work was done. Much of the work continued to be carried out by women and children and unemployed men, who saw hop-picking as an escape from the city. For the children, it also meant no school for most of the month.

The community was also involved in the harvest and schools closed for the duration. First-hand accounts of their experiences are held at the Fleur de Lis Museum.

One resident noted that it was an exciting time as a child. However, for many – and especially for older people – the work in damp autumnal weather was hard: their hands, clothes and sack aprons became wet and smelly as they pulled down the slimy hop binds.

The hours were long with often a 6am start for adults and children. The children’s job was to sort the leaves from the hops but they were also allowed to play.

It is interesting to note how locals of Faversham and its surrounding villages felt about this sudden influx. One resident noted that they always locked up their chickens, for fear of eggs being stolen. Local children referred to the visitors as “the London bug-squashers”. Incomers were often joined at the weekend by families from London who liked a drink and a singsong and would throng to the local pubs, who did a roaring trade.

By 1937, most working people received a paid holiday and whole extended families would board a train to Kent and spend their holiday picking hops, returning year after year to the same farm. However, by the 1950s, with increased mechanisation and English hops being replaced by imports, fewer workers were needed.

Faversham still celebrates with its hop festival every year on the last weekend of August. I am told that the whisper of hops appears in hedgerows as a reminder of times past, of hopping mornings, of the hopping holiday and the hop-picking legacy.

Hop Picking in Faversham, Faversham Papers No 69 is available from the Visitor Information Centre at 12 Market Place.
Editor’s note: I recommend George Orwell’s essay, based on his hop-picking experiences in and near Wateringbury in 1931

Through the window to Wonderland

PETER QUINCE

An unusual event occurred in the Fleur Bookshop one Wednesday morning a little while ago when the picture window – two great slabs of glass – was being replaced. It proved to be intriguing.

The bookshop opened as usual; it was a sunny day and the glaziers were busy on the pavement and just inside the windows where a fine marble slab normally supports books on display. We judged that the glaziers would not get in the way and, besides, they had an important job to do. Clearly some customers were curious, but others browsed as if nothing unusual was happening. It was all working well.

We had to remove the window display of books on the themes of gardening and travel, appropriate summer reading. It looked strange to see that long piece of marble, which reminds me of a butcher’s slab [Editor’s note: I recall the shop as a greengrocery. Perhaps it was a butchery before that?], devoid of artfully arranged books and strategically placed pot plants. Normality would soon be restored, but the interim hours proved interesting.

Once the old windows were removed, there was perhaps half an hour when the frontage lacked glass except a small area in the door. This had the effect of amplifying all the sounds of Preston Street immediately outside the bookshop, as if they had been connected to loudspeaker. I could hear, with almost alarming clarity, the conversations of passers-by, crying babies, barking dogs, chattering gulls and the revving of cars and lorries almost as if they were happening inside the bookshop. The entire space seemed to have expanded and it felt as if half of Faversham had invited itself in!

Then the glaziers emerged from their van with two replacements, which they carried with giant “suckers”, for want of a better word, and fixed the panes in position. I was in awe of their expertise and the swift way in which they carried out the work. But this unusual event led me to consider other things relating to glass and, for that matter, books.

For some reason Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which describes reality being turned upside down and inside out, flashed through my mind. But this was not down a rabbit hole but in Preston Street. Carroll was a respected mathematician and academic as well as the writer of that celebrated fantasy.

When I stood before the glassless frame, I fantasised that I could step out into another world far beyond Faversham, into some mythical domain.

And here’s the connection. Not only can shop premises allow us into another, wider world either side of the glass, where life passes in all its colourful eccentricity, but books can too, fiction and non-fiction.

They allow us, indeed encourage us, to peer through a great metaphorical window and invent our own reality: to leap over the barrier, as it were, where the book display is kept … and into the unknown.

All those amplified conversations, all that laughter and crying of children, all that mewing of gulls, all the sounds of passing vehicles, made me realise that what I write resonates far beyond these four walls, way beyond the muffling, insulating glass.

I searched for a copy of Carroll’s Alice but, alas, I couldn’t find one in the bookshop. My wife found me her vintage (1958) paperback at home, and I marvelled at Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations. Perhaps a future donation might include Alice’s adventures.

When the team of glaziers went, their job accomplished, we began to replace the display books on the marble slab behind the new panes of glass and carried on as if nothing had happened. But it had. Now the sounds reaching us from Preston Street are muted once again – but the picture window is beautifully clean if not quite magical.