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Home , Our English Coasts, The Awakening Conscience, William Holman Hunt

January 2021 Volume 1, Issue 7 Inside this issue

The Swing Riots and the Pre-Raphaelites………………………. 1—6

Rolvenden shops remembered from Rolvenden History the early 1950s………………………...6—8 Special points of interest

• 1152 Henry of Anjou lands in to claim the English Group throne after the death of King Stephen in accordance with the Treaty of Wallingford. • 1315-1322 millions die in the The Swing Riots and the Pre-Raphaelites Great Famine—bad weather conditions thought to be caused by the Little Ice Age. Having read Peter Southgate’s excellent article about the railways through Rolvenden, my thoughts became focussed on the Pre Raphaelites, the Industrial • 1 January 1502, Portuguese explorers landed at Guanabara Revolution, and the impact on Kent in these changes in society. Bay on the coast of South America and named it Rio de In my last article I quoted the British Dictionary stating that History was a Janeiro (River of January). continuous narrative and I added that it also recorded human endeavour; • 4 January 1642 Charles I attempts to arrest five however, on reflection, I would like to amend this statement to say that members of Parliament as he historians’ main preoccupations are the documentation of human conflict, feared they were trying to seize agitation, reform and revolution! We do not seem particularly interested to power and impeach his catholic wife—they were forewarned by record everyday events but select life challenging occasions, focussing on a one of the ladies in Henrietta particular fashionable impression and embellishing that impression to a fixed Maria’s household and fact. escaped. • 30 January 1649 Charles I is Now in the twenty-first century, the World Wide Web gives us access to instant executed. global information, and we can record every single incident we choose to • 1 January 1651 Charles II is crowned King of Scotland. (whether life changing or trivial) and I’m not sure this surfeit of information is ever going to help with the recording of our human narrative. I never thought • 1 January 1660 Samuel Pepys starts his diary. that I would be concerned with the presentation of truth or ‘fake news’ but that does seem to be the current quandary! This aside I would like to steer the • 1 January 1788 the first edition of The Times is published. Rolvenden time machine from the sixteenth century, to another time of agitation • 1 January 1801 the Act of Union - but still in the relative calm of what is currently accepted as ‘known truths’ - to creates the United Kingdom. the nineteenth century. • 10 January 1840 a uniform rate of one penny for postage In 1779 a group of English textile workers in Manchester rebelled against the established. introduction of machinery which threatened their skilled craft. This was the first • 30 January 1858 Britain’s first of many Luddite riots that took place involving mainly weavers and textile permanent symphony orchestra was founded by workers. It was supposedly named after a young apprentice who took matters Charles Hallé and was based in into his own hands and destroyed textile apparatus. This reaction against the Manchester. introduction of machinery spread into agriculture, and the agricultural workers in • 17 January 1881 William the southern counties took matters into their own hands and their own rebellion Armstrong’s house becomes took place through the ‘Swing Riots’. the first to use electric light. Water powered electricity.

Poor harvests, low wages and high unemployment between 1829 and 1830 led to hunger amongst poor agricultural workers and their families, To add to their troubles the Agricultural Revolution had introduced new technology such as threshing machines which further dispensed with the need to employ farm workers. This situation resulted in protests that started in Kent and later spread to surrounding counties. In the northern parts of England the Luddites and Chartists held sway, hoping to change working conditions and to effect electoral reform whilst in the southern counties the Swing Riots took place.

They were called the ‘Swing Riots’ after a mysterious Captain Swing. This made up name symbolised the anger of the poor labourers in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine age when human labour was used. Threatening letters were sent to farmers and landowners which demanded that their wages be increased and told the farmers to stop using threshing machines. As a result of this anger from the workers some farm buildings and hayricks were set alight. Swing apparently put his name to a threatening letter to a farmer in Dover in October 1830 stating, ‘You are advised that if you don’t put away your threshing machine against Monday next, you shall have a SWING’ (on the gallows). The first actual riot attributed to Captain Swing occurred on 28th August 1830 with the destruction of a threshing machine in Lower Hardes near Canterbury. Riots escalated with fires in north-west Kent reaching into neighbouring Surrey. Wrecking of more threshing machines occurred in East Kent around Dover, Sandwich and Canterbury. Late in October 1830 wages meetings accompanied by radical agitation against rents and tithes occurred around Maidstone. In early November it was recorded that wage meetings and further machine breaking took place in West Kent reaching into the Sussex Weald. Finally, in mid- November there were further rounds of fires, tithe riots and machine breaking in East Kent.

At first magistrates tried to be lenient with those arrested. In Canterbury, Sir Edward Knatchbull imposed a mere three day prison sentence on seven of the machine breakers but as the actions persisted sentences became more severe and on Christmas eve 1830, William Packman (twenty years of age), Henry Packman (eighteen years of age) and John Dyke were hanged for arson to a barn belonging to William Wraight of Blean. They were hanged at Penenden Heath Maidstone, despite pleas for clemency being made to Mr. Justice Bosanquet. Altogether nineteen people were executed, 505 people were transported to Australia and 644 people were placed in prison.

The troubles did not end there! Two years later in 1832 a man called John Tom (a maltster from Truro) turned up in Canterbury posing as a Sir William Courtenay. He fooled many people as to his true identity and managed to win votes in a parliamentary election. After a conviction for perjury he was deemed insane and detained at Barming Asylum in 1833. After his release he settled in Boughton and set about convincing the locals he could rescue them from their poverty. As a consequence of the Swing Riots and the Poor Law of 1834 feelings were raw and Courtenay quickly convinced the locals to protest. On May 29th 1838 (Oakapple Day) Courtenay led his followers on a march around the local countryside waving a flag and a traditional symbol of protest (bread on a pole). The local landowners became concerned and a warrant for Courtenay’s arrest was issued. When a constable and his assistant attempted to arrest Courtenay, Courtenay shot the assistant (Nicholas Mears) dead. The army was called in to intervene.

In Bossenden Woods on 31 May 1838 a group of around forty agricultural labourers were confronted by the army and quickly subdued but not before Courtenay killed Lieutenant Bennet of the 45th Infantry Regiment. Courtenay and ten of his followers were subsequently killed in the melee. Around thirty of Courtenay’s followers were arrested, ten stood trial at Maidstone Assizes whilst the grand jury discharged the others. Two men (Thomas Mears and William

2 Price) were charged with the murder of Nicholas Mears and nine others were charged with the murder of Lieutenant Bennett.

This was truly an ‘Age of Revolution’. The French Revolution had occurred at the end of the eighteenth century with all its horror and intrigue; it had been followed by the rise of Napoleon and many had taken part in the war against him. Europe had been destabilised. Fears of insurrection were high. Some reforms were undertaken in Britain — the abolition of Slavery in 1833, the Reform Act of 1832, where the vote had been given to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers and householders who paid an annual rent of £10, but categorically no votes for women! Countries around the world were breaking away from Empires to create their own independent states (Greece, Bolivia, Belgium...) The revolution in mechanisation was unfolding with the building of the railways, and Hargreaves ‘Spinning Jenny’ in the textile industry. Transport, factories, agriculture and social reform were evolving at a breakneck speed and so it was not surprising that the arts responded to this age of change by being caught up in this emotional maelstrom . Some artists embraced the changes (Wright of Derby, Turner), others wanted a return to an age that they considered to be of calm and order, developing from this whirlpool of changing ideals the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed.

This Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a social reform rebellion amidst the heat of social uprisings across Europe. The establishment of the group came at a time when England was experiencing mass industrialisation and significant political and social upheaval. Initially they hoped to develop their ideals through a journal called ‘’ but this was a dismal failure and due to the diverse and strong personalities they in fact became a loosely knit group of artists who banded together in 1848 to reflect on the society they themselves in and as a reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy. They purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works. The Pre-Raphaelites took their inspiration from the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they considered these artworks to be a direct, and uncomplicated depiction of nature, in fact they wished to turn away from industrialisation back to an ideal ‘Golden Age’. These young artists reacted against what they considered to be a mechanistic approach to art. The Brotherhood believed the classical poses and elegant compositions of in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art (hence their name). They singled out Sir , who was the founder of the , and they labelled him ‘Sir Sloshua’.

The original members of the Brotherhood were a group of painters, poets and critics, namely (painter), (painter), (painter), (writer and critic), (painter), (critic), and (sculptor). The one artist who should have belonged, Ford Maddox Brown, was opposed by Hunt on the grounds that he was too old and too steeped in the very academic conventions they wished to overthrow, but was finally allowed to join. Never can such a momentous artistic movement have had such an unpromising beginning!

Through the winter and spring of 1848/49 the Brotherhood held regular meetings to discuss their ideas, the progress of their paintings and occasionally to sketch together. By the summer of 1849 their first public manifesto took place closely followed by an exhibition of works by Millais, Hunt and Collinson at the Academy and by Rossetti a month earlier at the Free Exhibition. The pictures were all signed ‘PRB’ and generally received good reviews.

The magazine ‘The Germ’ that followed, was a total failure, it was intended to be good publicity for the Brotherhood but after four issues the critics turned on the Brotherhood with venom. Following the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition of works in 1850, comments from The Times stated ‘Mr Millais’s principal picture is to 3 speak plainly, revolting.’ Millais’ painting, ‘Christ in the House of His Parents’, bore the brunt of the attacks. Charles Dickens, the celebrated author, wrote, ‘The figure of the young Christ is a hideous wry-necked, blubbering, red headed boy, in a bed gown and his Mother as a woman, so hideous in her ugliness that she would stand out from the rest of the company as a monster’. Dickens’s attack was particularly savage as Millais had used Dickens’s sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, as the model for Mary! The Brotherhood’s was attacked as backward-looking and its extreme devotion to detail ‘Christ in the House of his Parents’, John Millais was condemned as ugly and jarring to the eye.

None of the other Pre-Raphaelites fared much better! Hunt and Collinson came in for attack with comments such as ‘uncouthness, abruptness and singularity as the counters for which they play for fame (Athenaeum). These vicious attacks on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood came as an unpleasant jolt, neither Rossetti, Millais nor Hunt sold any of their pictures. Rossetti vowed never to exhibit in public again - he later recanted! Recriminations broke out with Millais’s parents accusing Rossetti of leaking the secret of the PRB and of bringing their son into disrepute. Hunt was plunged into financial ‘ 1852 (Strayed sheep)’, William Holman Hunt trouble, Collinson resigned from the Brotherhood and Woolner emigrated to Australia. It was only through the kindness of two Academicians who were sympathetic to the Brotherhood ( and Augustus Leopold Egg) that Hunt was able to continue painting.

Despite all this controversy, the leading art critic of the day, , stoutly defended Pre-Raphaelite art and the members of the group managed to gain support and patrons. By 1854 most members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had gone their separate ways, but their style had a wide influence and they gained many followers. In the late 1850’s Rossetti became associated with the young painters Edward Burne–Jones and and moved closer to a more sensual, mystical and romantic phase with his painting. Millais, the most technically gifted painter, achieved academic success, became the first artist to be created a baronet by Queen Victoria in 1885 and Hunt alone pursued his ‘’, Ford Maddox Brown same style throughout most of his career and remained true to the Pre-Raphaelite principles.

Having spoken at great length about the rebellious times of the early nineteenth century and considered the artistic responses to the upheavals of the time, I would like to offer several images for contemplation of these 4 times. Firstly, a picture that started the whole Pre- Raphaelite dialogue, ‘Christ in the House of his Parents’ (1850) by Millais. What seems to have angered the critics was that Millais dared to depict the Holy Family as ordinary people with a complete honesty and realism that had been lost in the reverent images from the Mannerist period of painting.

Secondly ‘’ by William Holman Hunt (1853). This was the first Victorian picture to grapple with the thorny problem of prostitution. The kept woman is stricken by remorse and starts up whilst the man continues to play the piano. (The Athenaeum wrote this painting was drawn from a ’dark and repulsive side of domestic life’.)

Thirdly, two works of art by Ford Maddox Brown. The first picture ‘Work’ (1852) was intended to be a homily to the virtues of work , the composition symbolised the different classes of Victorian society working heroically together. Brown first had the idea for ‘The Last of England’ (1855) when he said goodbye to Woolner who was emigrating to Australia and it shows the grim ‘The Awakening Conscience’, William Holman determination of the emigrants.

‘The Bower Garden’ by Rossetti (1850) was started at Knole Park in Sevenoaks by Rossetti but half way through his outdoor work a deer came and tore off a branch when he was half way through his preliminary work. Rossetti flounced off leaving his paints and easel to be collected. He finally finished the painting in 1872 during his more aesthetic period of artworks.

Fifthly ‘Strayed Sheep’ by Holman Hunt (1852) which was painted at Fairlight, near Hastings . Hunt was at this time attempting to paint away from his studio, ’I purpose after this to paint an out of door picture with a foreground and background, abjuring altogether brown foliage, smoky clouds and dark corners painting the whole out of doors direct on the canvas itself, with every detail I can see and with the brightness of the day itself.’

And lastly ‘The Travelling Companions’ by Augustus Leopold Egg (1862) which shows two ladies travelling together on a train through France. I included this image as a ‘thank you’ to Egg for supporting the Pre-Raphaelite ideals at a time when things were going against them and also as a ‘train link’ to Holman Fred Stephens who Peter Southgate mentioned in his article. Egg together with his friend ,Charles Dickens, set up the Guild of Literature and Art, a philanthropic organisation that intended to provide welfare payments to struggling artists. I would have loved to have overheard a conversation between Egg and Dickens on the merits or otherwise of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

What a train journey that would have been!

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Article by Bruno Del Tufo.

References

The Pre Raphaelites by Christppher Wood (Book Club Associates) The culturetrip.com Wikipedia.org/preraphaelitebrotherhood Geofframbler.blog Nature.com/articles/d41586 Independent,co.uk/arts-entertainment Britannica.com/art

‘Travelling Companions’, (1862) Augustus Leopold Egg

Rolvenden Shops—remembered from the early 1950s

My earliest memory of entrepreneurial activity in Rolvenden hung on the garden gate of King Post, at the time the home of Joan and Colonel Peter White, our neighbours across the street when we lived in West House. My little friend, their youngest son, Matthew, a little older than me, was aware that my hair style in those days involved elastic bands, always snapping, always in short supply. Matthew’s sign, laboriously hand written and directed at me, read ‘Elastic Bands Two for a Penny, Six for Sixpence’ (some inventive arithmetic). He had leant over the garden gate to pin the sign to it, and from his position was satisfied that it read as it should. Seen from the other side of the gate it was upside down! But it was the thought that counted and I handed over my pocket money. I remember the episode as proof of the thoughtfulness, rather than profiteering, of supply side economics!

Along the Streyte from King Post came the sweet shop run by Mrs Collins (?) where you learned that 1d purchased one Trebor Chew, but that the smaller chews were a farthing each. The little ones tasted just as disgustingly of fake lemon or strawberry and could be made to last, so perhaps were the more prudent purchase. There were also gob stoppers, every suck revealing another alarming colour, if anyone wanted to see. Other delights on offer were sherbert fountains, liquorice in its various forms, twists, boot laces, pipes, and packets of sweet cigarettes - a smoking theme. And here Walls ice cream was on offer, including birthday cakes – a special treat when I was six and my father was away in Canada. A sign on the pavement advertised Walls products. “Excuse me but I think you must have dropped something” – my mother would have said this to anyone sitting at the open window of a car stopped for ice cream and throwing the wrapping onto the kerb, even if there hadn’t been a national anti-litter campaign under way. But her ‘interference’ did draw attention to the fact that the English were undoubted litter louts, even within reach of a litter basket. Apart from this, a Lyons (the competition) sign outside Phillips’, and the Hovis sign outside the bakery, there was no advertising in the village, and the names of the shops themselves were discreet, and hand-painted. Paint colours were muted – brown, grey, dark green - with the result that attention focused on the distinguishing features of houses and gardens. My mother fretted for days about getting the right shade of soft turquoise for the doors and windows of Coveneys.

6 The fish shop was supplied with a fresh catch (how often? daily?) by a van that came from Rye Bay. Fish, quite a variety including scallops, with their coral, on the half shell, were displayed in the window on a large sloping marble slab. To carry away, fish was wrapped in multiple layers of newspaper.

Next, the Saddlers, the window of what otherwise looked like another in the line of cottages was stuffed full of yokes, bridles and other paraphernalia, the sign that working horses had only recently been replaced by tractors in the fields. (Was this also the cobbler?) On up the street to Phillips’s, whose sign above the door was an unforgotten lesson in abbreviation: CIGS, TOBS, SWEETS, PAT MED. Both of them were friendly and patient: Mrs Phillips was short and stout, Mr Phillips was tall and thin, and both wore overalls, his brown, hers flowery. Here were more sweets, the wall behind the counter being covered with large jars: Sharps’ toffees, sherbert lemons, sugared almonds, jelly babies, Murray mints, etc. etc. to be weighed out. Often enough a ‘quarter’ (of a pound) of one of these would be destined for a drawer in my father’s studio desk, treats to be doled out sparingly. Sometimes I would be dispatched to Phillips’s for the Three Nuns Empire tobacco that he, no sweet eater, smoked in his pipe.

Before we got a fridge (not a family for gadgets) things were kept cold in an outside ‘safe’ near the backdoor. If my mother hadn’t made a fruit pie, or treacle tart, or junket, to follow the Sunday roast, she might open a jar of her wonderful bottled fruit and I would be sent up the street with a linen cloth in the shopping basket. Mrs Phillips would wrap a block of ice cream (‘Neopolitan’) in the cloth and instruct me to walk home quickly! But Phillips’s was also the newsagent, and most intriguing for me were the piles of newspapers and magazines, initiating a lifelong fascination with journalism and news reporting. Newspapers were, of course, delivered in those days. I went to boarding school and, when asked what I missed most about being at home, reportedly said the early morning thud of The Times on the doormat through the letterbox. Years later when my mother wanted to put an announcement of my engagement in the paper, she was told “you must know that everyone here reads The Telegraph”. Sure enough I was reconnected with people I hadn’t seen since early school days at Mickledene.

Across the road was Tunbridge’s Cornex Garage – what was the origin of that name? Before we had our own car (a ‘Baby Austin’ acquired from one of my aunts for £25) and my parents learned to drive, Jimmy Chandler on a few rare occasions drove us to Wrotham. Such expeditions were a magical novelty back then. Next down the road was The Star. I cannot now say to which tranche of the rural English class system this pub then appealed, but it was not to gypsies. The handmade sign in its window ‘No Gypsies Served’, was a sign, to a child, that something was wrong. Gypsies came to our door quite regularly, and my mother, always ready to chat, bought their wooden clothes pegs and elegant baskets made from hazel twigs, sometimes filled with primroses or violets.

Playfoots – unlike the other shops this Victorian building with tall windows on the street seemed to have been purpose built as a shop (?). Outside were wooden crates and sacks of vegetables, the carrots and potatoes still earthy, the green ones seasonal and looking local, the several kinds of apple surely local – part of the memory, is that things came into, and then went out of, season. Mr Playfoot presided, sometimes Mrs. Playfoot, always Miss Godard. She was a Shakespeare enthusiast, ever up for a chat about the theatre. Every year she looked forward to few days in Stratford with her good friend Mrs. Hook.

Open sacks and barrels of nuts and suchlike stood around on the wooden floor, with the wooden (Victorian?) counter running along the left side of the shop with some products on shelves behind, but many goods, such as dried fruits and sugar, needed to be weighed out and deftly wrapped up in packages of blue ‘sugar paper’. There were no ready-made paper bags so fruit and vegetables, after weighing, went straight into your own basket. Generally there was little prepackaging – at Christmas, dates and dried figs, which must have come part of the way in bulk by camel, were exceptions. Biscuits and other dry goods were stored in big tins or cartons and measured out on the large red scales, with brass weights, to order.

7 The legendary old lady could not still have been at the window of Waterloo House in our day, though we liked to think that once in a while we caught a glimpse of her. She was said to have grown old there, living in a reverie, with the Streyte offering little to compensate for the excitement of her childhood when she had travelled in a laden cart with her father who had been a quartermaster for Wellington’s army that defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

One life-changing morning (I have baked our own bread, wherever feasible, ever since) when I was six or seven we had to get up early (perhaps 5am?) to watch, and ‘help’ a little with various batches of dough as they were kneaded, proved, baked, and extracted from the large brick ovens, deep recesses into the wall. Imagine the warm and delectable smells. But this was local bread not Hovis even though outside the bakery was the village’s only free standing sign (apart from the Bull’s inn sign): ‘Teas with Hovis. The Rule of the Road.’ and there were weekly home deliveries. The bakery window also displayed some eye catching little cakes, meringues and more – tea time desirables, but I don’t think they were made in the village (?). The post office was in the same building as the bakery. I had a Post Office Savings Account, a money box with a little key, and eventually Premium Bonds: financial training which must have done me some good.

Terrys, a very local butcher in Rolvenden, did their own slaughtering in those days. Entire carcasses, and various cuts of meat, hung in the shop, only dripping a bit onto the sawdust that covered the floor quite thickly. Meat was butchered to the customer’s order, on the long, well-scrubbed, wooden counter which had become concave after years of attack from Mr. Terry’s fearsome array of implements. The joints were tied up with string (pulled down from a ball suspended from the high ceiling). Mrs. Terry stood (all day?) at a high wooden desk, keeping the books, hand writing receipts. Sage grew abundantly in the Coveneys garden and the Terry’s young apprentice came regularly for a large bunch of an essential ingredient for their sausage. Eventually, as happens, after the Terry’s day, the sausages were branded as 'Korkers' and became famous beyond the village, the business expanded...presumably preservatives, and who knows what else, were added, and they no longer tasted the same. Or perhaps I mean they now always tasted the same – generalized sausage – enterprising, but standardization had arrived.

Down the Benenden road, opposite the cricket pitch, was the Bridge Pottery, run by Dorothy Watson (Watsie to everyone) a dynamo of organized creative production (as one would now say) and in a building that looked more provisional (more like a studio?) than the quiet solidity of Rolvenden’s other buildings. There you could acquire the bowls, plates, egg cups, and mugs - characteristic ‘Watsie’ shapes and colours - that were part of every meal at our house. A few have endured. At the time it was the place for us children to have lessons in how to make ‘coil’ and ‘slab’ pots, to paint, fire and glaze. Curious as to how the Bridge Pottery fits in to the story of England’s periodic craft revivals. I look forward to William Barham’s book.

Across the Benenden road from Terry’s, the forge seemed to be in constant use – I am remembering the early 50s – how many were work horses? The thump of the bellows and the sure movements of the smith and his helper were as fascinating as the smell of burnt hoof and the piercing ring as the molten metal was hammered out.

Beyond Forge Cottage, and between West House (where we lived before moving to Coveneys in 1954 (?) and East House was Timpson’s, a double enterprise. Mrs Timpson’s haberdashery was piled from floor to ceiling with absolutely everything needed for sewing, mending, knitting, embroidery. Always willing to help match colours, or identify the right button, she dispensed patient instructions to the novice. A constant stream of customers for Mr Timpson’s barbering had to squeeze through a narrow passage between the high counter and a wall of wool in skeins and balls. On Sundays the Timpsons left their business and walked down to their vegetable allotment opposite Coveneys where they worked just as hard.

Charlotte Townsend-Gault

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