Historical Records Society

Founded 1932 Registered Charity No. 1148803

Custodian s of the Town’s Archive

Quarterly Newsletter

Spring 2017 Issue No. 5

Welcome Contents Society News HBHRS Volunteering opportunities 2 Heritage Centre Collecting the coke – 1950s memories 3 Policing in the 1920s 4 Pocahontas and 6 “From the tower of Power” 7 W. A. Holness, Watchmaker 9 Image Gallery 10 Society Contacts 11 Society Publications 11 Events and dates for your diary 12

David Birch Memorial Event

Further to the update in the previous newsletter, I am pleased to advise that progress continues . The On the evening of Friday 7th July, we will be holding above image represents a mock up of the HBHRS an event in memory of society stalwart, David Heritage Centre at 81 Central Parade, complete Birch. We anticipate that the evening will include with signage. The blue walls and timberwork will an address of appreciation for David, along with a be painted cream and maroon, but the image gives couple of sound recordings of David, recounting an impression of the overall look of this exciting some of his early m emories of the town. This will step forward in the Society’s history. be followed by a slide presentation of Herne Bay as it has appeare d at various times during David’ s Grand Opening lifetime. st Saturday 1 July is the day that we will be opening Tickets are available now for this event and we the Heritage Centre. We are fortunate that the would like to see as many of our members and Lord Mayor of , Cllr. Rosemary Doyle friends as possible i n attendance. The evening will cut a ceremonial ribbon at 12 noon. This starts at 7:00pm for a 7:30pm start at Herne Bay landmark event will be supported by a display of Junior School, Kings Road. some of our collection in the Heritage Centre, Please contact Colleen or alternatively, tickets are with the opportunity to participate in a short available at Bundle of Books, 6 Bank Street. The costumed walk along the central part of the cost is £7 per ticket, to include light refreshments. seafront. We hope to see you there.

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HBHRS Volunteering Opportunities • Maps • Property files Mike Bundock and Margaret Burns • Estate Agents sale particulars At the time of compiling this newsletter, there is a • Street Directories small band of Society volunteers hard at work • Natural History materials busy getting the premises of our new Heritage Centre ready for its Grand Opening on 1 st July. Areas where we are looking for help include work Painting, cleaning, preparing new displays are just a on our collections including: few of the jobs that they are undertaking and the • Society is very grateful to them for their ongoing Sorting boxes of both paper and objects dedication and commitment. • Cataloguing • Scanning images All this activity and preparation heralds the • Photographing images and objects beginning of a very exciting new era in the history of the Herne Bay Historical Records Society. For many years members have wanted better access to the extensive resources that have been acquired over the years, a centre where local history can be meaningfully studied and a venue where the Society can collect and share memories, ephemera and local history artefacts with the public. We are now on the verge of realising this long-awaited ambition but this cannot be successfully fulfilled without the whole- hearted support of all of our members.

It is intended to try and open the Heritage Centre to the public from July for at least two sessions per week. There will be many interesting and Our collections may not be quite like this at present, valuable projects to be undertaken on the but with your help they can be! collections for volunteers whilst we are open and we hope to provide enquirers with answers to Once our Heritage Centre is open, we hope to their queries on a wide range of local history. In have a range of material available for consultation. addition, when the centre is not open there will We are therefore appealing for help in making be the opportunity to work on sorting the main items available for inspection, including: collections which will help familiarise volunteers • The preparation of history files with what is available and perhaps encourage • research on specific subjects of interest. Compilation of display boards • Preparing material for presentations If you are interested in volunteering in ANY capacity to help support our new Heritage Centre The society has a small number of ongoing please contact a member of the committee. research projects and we are looking for additional individuals to get involved. Our current Please remember that we need the support of all projects are listed below, but suggestions for of you to make sure that this becomes a additional subjects would be most welcome: successful and permanent facility helping to • Shops in the town increase and develop the growing interest in the • Cinemas, theatres and entertainment town’s local history for future generations. • The names on the town War Memorial As a reminder, our collections include: No previous experience is necessary, all you really • Photographs need is an interest in the history of the town. • Postcards However, should you have skills to offer, such as • Newspapers familiarity with the use of computers and scanners • Prints this would be really helpful. • Engravings • Why not come along to our opening Paintings st • Books event at 81 Central Parade on 1 July • Manuscripts and find out more? 2

Collecting the coke on a Saturday the Gas Works, immediately to the right was a row of brick buildings, blackened with soot. In morning – A 1950s memory one of them was a man at a window - in his little Sylvia McKean office, who took our money. Sadly I can’t Reading Mick Hills’ account of Gas production in remember how much we paid, perhaps a shilling, Herne Bay from the mid-1800s to mid-20 th and in return he gave us a ticket indicating the century (HBHRS Newsletter Winter 2017 Issue grade and quantity of coke we required. No 4) has prompted me to write down my We made our way over pipes and hoses littering memories of one of my Saturday morning tasks as the ground, hissing and bubbling, spewing out a youngster. steam and smoke. Also on the ground were patches of oil and water, and all around the noise and grime of the Gas Works. The whole place reeked of sulphur (which we kids knew as the bad egg smell), and other foul odours. I can’t describe exactly the set-up to the left of us, but I seem to recall there was much corrugated iron, metal catwalks leading to and from various items of machinery, and a furnace or two complete with chimneys. As we turned the corner, just before Gasholder

No.3, there were huge mountains of coke and We moved to a newly built house in Beaumont coal graded into different shapes and sizes. In the Street Herne Bay in November 1949. Our house middle was a large set of weighing scales and I had open fires which heated the water, so fuel remember close by a rather sullen looking man, was very important. Not far around the corner in covered in coal dust – I suppose to me then he Sea Street was the Gas Works – a large site was a bit scary. The staff never seemed friendly spreading just past Greenhill Bridge Road to us kids – but I suppose why should they? They westwards to the edge of Westbrook Farm. As must have realised it was not a place for children. Mick has well described, its purpose was to We girls didn’t hang around for long anyway, but I extract gas from coal – the by-product of which suspect some of the more adventurous boys made was coke. Coke burned on open fires very well nuisances of themselves! and was cheaper than coal, so off we - my sister and I, were dispatched to buy a sack of coke from We handed him the sack and ticket and he the Gas Works every Saturday morning. weighed out the coke which he put in our barrow, and made our way back over the hissing pipes and My dad even made a special sturdy barrow for the hoses and other obstacles to the main gates. job. Now my dad was a fine mechanic, people With our dog sitting atop the sack of coke, and came from all over to have their car and the steep Sea Street kerbs we struggled to push motorboat engines fixed – East Buses were our barrow home. Sometimes we would walk his speciality, but carpentry was not his best skill. back on the south side of the road with fewer The barrow was heavy and cumbersome, with a high kerbs, past the row of ancient Georgina thick piece of wood around the interior rim which Cottages – long since demolished, before we made the full sack of coke once it had settled, crossed over to Beaumont Street. How many very difficult to extract. It lacked the years we did this I’m not sure, but it must have sophistication of a third front guiding wheel, so stopped in 1957 when Mick informs us that the having just two central wheels did not make for Gas Works ceased producing gas. the best balance. Added to this we always took our dog, I don’t really know why, but we just did I don’t know if this practice was carried on what we were told. elsewhere, but my husband who spent his childhood in Glasgow, recalls that all the kids from As we entered the gates of the Gas Works – in his area used to go to the slagheap inside their the region of where the Ambulance Station now local Gas Works to dig out any spare coke to stands, we entered a different world. One in take home. Although after accidents involving which in hindsight we should have never have boys climbing to the top of the heap, this practice been. But we were not alone. Loads of other did not last long. In a more organised way, the children, mainly boys, trundled along pushing coke was bagged up for people to collect at the barrows, pushchairs and a variety of carts to get gates, at a small cost. their family’s coke supplies for the week. Inside

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Did the Gas Works have an impact on the As Sergeant-in-charge, Jack Worrall was surrounding area? One feature which everyone responsible for not just the urban district of living around it could not ignore was the Gas Herne Bay but also a wide rural area which Works hooter. If my memory is right it went off encompassed , , Reculver, , at 12 noon lunchtime start, and again at 1.00pm – Herne and . At Herne Bay he had to call all the workers back. People’s lives were another sergeant - Sergeant George Luckhurst - punctuated by it. Going to nearby Hampton to assist him and three constables plus PC Horace Primary school I went home to lunch, and if I was Fry as Lock-up Keeper. A police constable was still at home at 1.00 o’clock when the hooter stationed at Beltinge (PC Frank Earl) with another went off, I had to run up the road back to school at Swalecliffe (PC Philip Drayner) whilst the Herne pretty smartly! Also the filter beds which lay from and Hoath rural sub-district was under the the Gas Holder towards Westbrook Farm were control of Sergeant Pollington based at Sturry and full of thick slimy oil. One day our cat came home with police constables stationed at both Hoath covered in it – he was ill for months, but (PC Thomas Holmes) and Herne (PC H. fortunately my Mum nursed him back to health. I Edwards). fear other animals were not so lucky. I’m slightly embarrassed at including the photograph of me and my barrow outside our house in Beaumont Street (taken about 1954), it’s not exactly one of Herne Bay’s finest, but nevertheless this, together with my memories is all a small part of Herne Bay’s social history – or should I say Industrial Archaeology?

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Policing in Herne Bay in the 1920s John Fishpool On 16th October 1924 my maternal grandfather – Sergeant John Thomas (‘Jack’) Worrall - was posted to Herne Bay to take over as Sergeant-in- charge and moved into accommodation at the police station in Gordon Road with his unmarried sister-in-law, Annie Frost, as housekeeper for the family. Jack (as he was normally known) had joined the Kent County Constabulary at the age of 19 in November 1900 and had served as a Constable at Sergeant Worrall of the Kent County Constabulary Sittingbourne, Sheerness and Rainham before The police station was a large red-brick late attaining the rank of Sergeant in 1914 with Victorian building which had been erected in 1895. subsequent service at Higham and Chatham. His In the 1920s it had a central office with living schoolmistress wife – Edith – had passed away, accommodation on either side of it for the tragically and suddenly, as a result of lobar Sergeant-in-charge and Lock-up Keeper, together pneumonia at Chatham in December 1923 at the with their respective families. It was still age of only 37, leaving her widowed husband to customary for unmarried officers to live-in at the bring up their three young children – my mother police station - in the 1920s their accommodation then aged 6, her brother aged 8 and an elder comprised four separate small bedrooms with a sister aged just 10. Obviously, the Medway held communal kitchen and bathroom. To the rear of unhappy memories for Jack and he had the office area at the police station were the cells. understandably applied for a transfer to get away Mrs. Fry, the Lock-up Keeper’s wife, cooked the from that area. meals for the prisoners and also acted in the capacity of official Police Matron if any females In 1924, Herne Bay, with a population of some were held in custody in the cells. 12,000, was part of the St. Augustine’s Division (renamed from its original title of Home Division It had always been a requirement that police only a few months previously). This division was officers should be free from debt and the centred on Canterbury and was under the borrowing of money was strictly forbidden. In command of Superintendent George Ford. 1901 the Chief Constable had issued an order 4 requiring Sergeants and Corporals to submit Recounting memories of his early police career to monthly reports certifying that the Constables in the author in 1992, Norman Fowler gave a their sub-divisions were free from debt and, in description of a typical tour of night duty in Herne 1924, a further ruling was made that all sergeants Bay during the late 1920s. He would set off from and constables would in future be required to the Police Station in Gordon Road and go out into personally sign a monthly statement to that effect! the town, checking all the shop premises in the High Street/Mortimer Street area, progressing to the top of Beltinge Hill and returning to the town centre before going out to Hampton. Then it would be a return to the Police Station for a brief refreshment break before going out along Sea Street to the Gasworks, back through the town to the top of Beltinge Hill again and then one final check of the town centre before returning to the Police Station and his welcome bed in the single quarters - and all of these patrols would be made on foot! If a burglary occurred during the hours of darkness you would be roused from your sleep and summoned to appear in full uniform before Herne Bay Police Station in Gordon Road circa 1928 – the duty sergeant to recount your movements the author’s mother can be seen with PC & Mrs. Fry during your tour of duty and to report as to whether you had seen anything suspicious. At this time, all police officers were expected to live in the midst of the community which they A telephone link was maintained from the Herne policed – they were not permitted to ‘commute’. Bay police station (Herne Bay 8) with the Moreover, in the interests of mobility and divisional headquarters in Kirby Lane, Canterbury transfers at short notice within the county, home (Canterbury 69). My mother recounts how she ownership was not encouraged. Purpose-built always looked forward to the regular visits made police houses did not appear in Kent until circa to Herne Bay by Superintendent Ford. He was a 1950 and, accordingly, up until that date it was kindly, father-like figure and, whilst he was normal practice for married officers to live in conducting his official business with my rented accommodation - properties which had grandfather in the police station office, he would been acquired by the County and which bore always instruct his chauffeur to take my mother distinctive brass 'K.C. Constabulary' plates in and her sister for a drive around the town in his order to identify their occupants as being police car. All the superintendents had been provided officers. with ‘Model T’ Ford cars in 1923 and, in an age when the sight of a motor car was still something One of the young constables who served at of a novelty, the prospect of a ride in one to a Herne Bay under my grandfather in the 1920s was young nine or ten-year-old schoolgirl was very Norman Fowler, who later rose through the exciting indeed. ranks to reach the senior appointment of Deputy Chief Constable of Kent by the 1960s. He was to receive an OBE in 1953 (whilst Assistant Chief Constable in charge of the seven divisions which comprised the East Kent District) in recognition of the sterling work performed by the county constabulary during the major flood disaster which hit the Kent coast on the night of 31st January/1st February 1953 and its aftermath. Later, in 1961, he would receive the Queen’s Police Medal for outstanding police service. Other officers who served at Herne Bay under Sergeant Worrall were Sergeant Hardy, PCs Baker, An extract from the 1932 OS map showing the plan Dryden, Grimes, Groombridge, Page of the police Station and surrounding buildings. (/Hoath), Pearman, Read (Herne), Seymour, Strutt, Sutton and Walker and Detective Sergeant Isaac and Detective Constable To be continued... Marshal.

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Pocahontas and the Reculver pe rmitting licence to go to , and here connection Hunt`s name is mentioned. Hunt married a Canterbury girl, Elizabeth Valerie Martin BA Edwardes, and had two daughters. The marriage was unhappy and after his wife`s adultery with a John Taylor, Hunt was exchanged 8 years later years with the vicar of All Saint`s, in Old Heathfield, . Life here was not satisfactory either and Hunt was accused of neglecting his congregation and having an affair with his servant, Thomasina Plumber. (The previous vicar of All Saint`s who had b een unpopular also proved to be equally so in Reculver). When the Church Authorities heard of Hunt`s behaviour they did not know of an appropriate punishment but Archbishop Richard Bancroft decided to send him to the New World. He was appointed Chaplain t o the , and was among the 68 pass engers along with Richard Hakluyt jnr, an d army captain, , who sailed in December 1606 aboard the ``, arriving in April 1607. Hunt was in poor health, and during the long voyage there was trouble with the passengers and crew.

Pocahontas and Thomas Hunt 2017 marks the 400 th anniversary of the death of Princess Pocahontas. The story is well known that she died on the way home, after a year`s visit to with her husband John Rolfe and son Thomas and is buried somewhere in St James`s churchyard, . The anniv ersary has been commemorated in Jamestown, Virginia; Gravesend, Heathfield, Sussex; and the village of Hoath in the parish of Reculver. What is not so well known is that there is a connection with Reculver. Hunt’s name on the passenger list Upon arrival first at the southern edge of , they travelled on to a newly formed settlement named Jamestown, and joined other colonists in the Fort. Hunt se t about forming a Church with services being held in the open air before a wooden chapel was built. Here he became a reformed character becoming known for his virtue and good works. He was a peacemaker forming a friendship with the 12 year old young Pocah ontas, the favourite of 26 children St. Mary’s Church, Reculver of the Chief, Powhatan. Pocahontas was a lively From 1594 until 1602 the vicar of St. Mary`s intelligent girl who was fascinated with the Reculver was . He was born in newcomers, and became a mediator in the Hoath in 1568, one of two sons of a yeoman frequent hostilities between the colonists and her farmer. He studied theology at Magdalen College father`s tribe, including her interv ention in saving Oxford where he met distingui shed marine the life of John Smith. She became a Christian and historian Richard Hakluyt who had a Patent issued took the name Rebecca.

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Hunt`s new church, which also contained the “From Your Tower of Power...... ” library he had built up, unfortunately burnt down. This was a great blow to him and possibly Pete Watson contributed to his death from Swamp Fever a few months later at the age of 40. Pocahontas later married aged 18 in 1614 an English tobacco farmer, John Rolfe who had arrived in Jamestown in 1610, and they had a son, Thomas a year later. Rolfe brought her to England in 1616, where she took to London life and became very popular at Court. They visited Rolfe`s brother`s estate in Norfolk and it was here that Rolfe decided to leave Thomas to be brought up when Pocahontas became ill probably with consumption, fearing that the voyage home would be too much for the little boy.

Radio 390 on Red Sands Forts Officially located as ‘8 nautical miles off the coast of Herne Bay’; that makes us the nearest neighbour of the Maunsell Forts known as Shivering Sands, but the full history of these forts is not my purpose in this article. Herne Bay’s proximity to Radio City, which broadcast pop Hunt Memorial, Gravesend music from Shivering Sands between 1965 & 1967, is my excuse to commemorate the Thomas when grown-up returned to the land of stations in general, on this, the 50 th anniversary of his birth, married and left many descendants. the enforced closure of all but one, and the end of an era. Notes Sources:- various websites which are not always It is a novelty for me to be writing about history reliable as dates vary. that I actually LIVED! I first became aware of the pirate stations in summer of 1966, at the age of “Hoath and Herne” edit. By K. H. McIntosh & H. 15, and I certainly remember reading the shocking Gough. Page 19 `The Cure of Souls at Hoath`. report of the rivalry between the stations, “Love and Hate in Jamestown” by David A. Price. resulting in the death by shooting, of the owner of In 2015, the Smithsonian Forensic anthropologists Radio City, Reg Calvert. From that moment, the confirmed that remains they had found in a church government resolved to close down the stations, in Jamestown belonged to Robert Hunt. to the dismay and anger of millions of teenagers. Hunt has a Feast Day in the Liturgical Calendar of Radio City started its new career as an offshore the Episcopal Church (USA). radio station when, in May 1964, David “Screaming Lord” Sutch, decided to raid the fort All Saint`s Church, Heathfield, has a permanent as a publicity stunt. When he arrived with his band display of reproduction documents relating to of pirates, he was persuaded that it would be a Robert Hunt mainly in Jamestown. great idea to stay on the forts, have transmitting A full-sized replica of the `Susan Constant` is equipment set up there, and broadcasting pop moored at Jamestown. A similar replica was on music all day, under the name “Radio Sutch”. The show at Quex Park some years ago. A glass-case ‘crew’ soon got bored with this, and lowered the model is in the Museum of London. Skull & Crossbones flag in September. However, the idea of broadcasting from wartime forts -----ooooo----- caught on, and other stations such as Radio 7

& , had begun broadcasting successfully, as a “local” and a “sweet music” station respectively. Sutch ‘sold’ the Radio Sutch enterprise to his manager Reg Calvert for £5,000, and Calvert completely renovated the studios, living accommodation & broadcasting equipment, and commenced testing of his new station, Radio City “Your Tower of Power”, with its catchy jingles, “It sounds fine, on 299”, and others. It was one of several ‘top forty’ music stations dotted around the area, including my favourites & Radio London (Big L). As a teenager I couldn’t keep my radio dial in the same place more than a few minutes, tuning back and forth between one and another. It was so exciting being in at the beginning of the “Swinging Sixties”, Sutch and pirate p als in 1964 caring nothing about fashion, but everything about Britain’s most successful pirate, Radio London, the pop pirate stations, and pop music. was first to close down on that day, after a day of nostalgic music, messages from pop stars and disc jockeys, and closing with its theme tune, and the last words by DJ Paul Kaye, “Big L time is 3 o’clock, and Radio London is now closing down.” Only Radio Caroline, the first and the last, was to carry on illegally, and at midnight DJ Johnnie Walker proclaimed “Caroline belongs to you....and she loves you”, and bravely battling against lack of suppl ies, fuel and advertising revenue, continued into 1968, with the words, “Let no man ever forget Monday, August the fourteenth, nineteen hundred, and sixty -seven”.

Radio City in 1965 Of course, all good things come to an end, and at the end of the brilliant summer of 1967, we all knew that the stations were going to be made illegal. Radio City had already been closed do wn (on the 8 th February), in a court case brought by the Postmaster-General, which ruled that the fort-based stations were operating within the 3 - mile limit (and using measurements taken at very low tide to ensure prosecution). Radio 390, also visible from Herne Bay, to the left of Radio City, was also prosecuted using the same dubious methods, and closed down on 28 th July, just eighteen days before the Marine Offences The public information sheet advising the public of Act, outlawing ALL pirate radio stations, became the Act that affected Pirate Radio . law on 14 th August.

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W. A. Holness, Watchmaker was closed from 1942 to 1946, as he was then away for nearly four years in North Africa and Dick Holness Italy, serving i n the Eighth Army as an instru ment No. 26 Mortimer Street, which became No. 108 mechanic. My mother and my older brother also when the street was re-numbered, was the home left for part of that time, evacuated to Fleet in of my family from about 1860 to 1976. It is Hampshire where my mother’s father lived. On probably one of the oldest properties in the my father’s demob and return, the business street. resumed, and my brot her and I (I was born in 1947) were brought up in the house behind and above the shop.

I believe that my great-grandfather, William Alfred Holness, recorded as a bricklayer, built the premises together with its attached neighbour, the other half of the building. There is no sign of him ever being wealthy enough to buy such a place The business next door was Lanes in those days, and I can only assume he built the entire structure owned by Joe and Pe arl Sandercock, and in this and sold the western half to pay for it. He is 1974 photograph you can just see its front door. shown as living there in the 1861 census, and was Opposite was (and still is) the Rose Inn, where I there until about 1890 when one of his six remember seeing the beer being delivered by children, my grandfather, also William Alfred, steam lorry from Shepherd Neame. started his ‘Watch & Cloc k Maker’ business. Next door up the street was the Fine Fare How he in turn could afford to buy the house Supermarket. I remember this being built, a from his father is a mystery to me! Presumably traumatic time during which a protective shield this is when the shop front was added, although was placed over o ur single storey rear extension we can find no record of it. He lived here for the to protect the corrugated iron roof from bricks rest of his life, bringing up five children, of whom dropped by the builders. my father was the youngest. My grandfather remained in the business until his death in 1935, The shop closed in 1974 because of my father’s ill - and among his duties was the regular winding and health, and was sold short ly afterwards to become maintenance of the clock in the Herne Bay Clock a greengrocers. The shop was then extended Tower for which in 1909 he was paid the princely back to fill the space that was our sitting -room. sum of £5 per year. The front door has been moved from its original position, but under the paint I think it’s the same On his death, the building was left to his eldest door, going back to 1890. Today the shop is an daughter, my Auntie Win, but my father Wallace opticians, while two flats have recently been Alfred Holness carried on the business and rented created from our ol d accommodation above, the house and shop from her, eventually owning it reached by a door off the street that is actually in following her death. Another of my aunts, the ‘Lanes’ half of the building. Lanes is long gone, Kat hleen, whom I never knew, was the mother of a clothing shop currently occupying the original HBHRS member Valerie Birch. shop, with Spearings stationers in the old Lanes From early in WWII until he was called up, my extension attached to the w est side of the fathe r was in the local Home Guard . The shop building. 9

Picture Gallery

These two views are taken from a souvenir book “The Royal Album of Herne Bay Views” printed in Germany by Louis Glaser of Leipzig & Charles Frey of Frankfurt during the last decade of the nineteenth century. At first glance, the illustrations appear to be photographs, but they are in fact lithographs based upon photographs, often with liberties taken with the details. Although much of what you see here is true to life, readers may wish to see what embellishments they can spot in the images.

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Society Contacts Postal address = Heritage Centre, 81 Central Parade, Herne Bay, Kent CT6 5JQ Website www.hbhrs.org Email [email protected] Officers President John Fishpool 01227 366863 Chairman Mike Bundock 01227 362105 Vice Chairman Colleen Ashwin-Kean 01227 365014 Secretary Pete Watson 07783 386477 Membership Secretary Sybil Kent 01227 637446 Publicity Officer Margaret Burns 01227 369365 Treasurer John Fishpool (as above) Curator & Archivist Mike Bundock (as above) Events Co-ordinator Colleen Ashwin-Kean (as above) Publications/merchandise John Fishpool (as above) Committee Members Margaret Wood and Tony Smith (co-opted) Membership The Society welcomes applications for membership. The subscription for 2017/2018 is £15 per year (renewable 1st October each year). Please contact the Membership Secretary, Mrs Sybil Kent (contact details above) for further details. Members are able to participate in a number of activities, including attending our popular winter lecture series, assisting in the sorting of our extensive collection in preparation for cataloguing and research work towards our ongoing projects. Our Publications The Society has produced a number of publications and these are available for purchase by members and the general public. Our books are available from the Herne Bay Seaside Museum, 12 William Street, A Bundle of Books, 6 Bank Street and Demelza Bookshop, 165 Mortimer Street. Alternatively, books can be purchased directly from the Society via John Fishpool (contact details above). We are able to post books worldwide and we would be pleased to quote postage and packing costs. Titles currently available: HBP 1 – Herne Bay’s Piers by Harold Gough. HBP 2 – Herne Bay’s Hotels and Public Houses by John Fishpool. HBP 3 – Mills & Milling in the Herne Bay Area by Harold Gough. HBP 4 – Schools and Colleges in the Herne Bay Area by John Fishpool and Pauline Turner. HBP 5 – A Town at War – Herne Bay in the Second World War by John Fishpool. HBP 6 – Victorian Herne Bay by Mike Bundock. HBP 7 – Smuggling in and Around the Herne Bay Area by Harold Gough and John Fishpool. HBP 8 – Public Houses in the Herne Bay Area by John Fishpool. HBP 9 – Will Scott & Herne Bay by Kay Steventon and Judith Ford. HBP 10 – The Kings Hall Herne Bay – Celebrating 100 Years by Mike Bundock. HBP 11 – Herne Bay Then & Now: A Pictorial History Celebrating 180 Years. HBP 12 – Herne Bay in the Great War 1914-1918 by John Fishpool, HBP 13 – Digging up the Past by John Fishpool, HBP 14 – Herne Bay - an Illustrated Chronology 1760 - 2009 by Mike Bundock, The cover price of each title is £7.50, except for Nos. 11 and 14 which are £12.00. We have several new titles in the course of compilation, so we are hoping to expand this list over the course of the next year or so. Ideas for new titles are always welcome.

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Events and dates for your diary Herne Bay Historical Records Society We hold a series of ten winter lecture style meetings between October and April. These meetings are held in the hall of the United Church, situated next to the Fire Station in Herne Bay High Street. Doors open at 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start. These meetings are free to members, and visitor s are welcome for donation of £2 per head per meeting. Meeting dates for 2017/2018 are listed below . Further details are available from our Events Co -ordinator. 2017 5th October AGM 19 th October Auction Life , Cliona Kilroy, (Director of Canterbury Auction Galleries) 2nd November The Films of John Clague, RIBA , Frank Oliver 16 th November Monumental Lions, including those on the Menin Gate, James Brazier 7th December The Studd Hill Horse, and what came after, Alan Porter 2018 1st February Sea Bathing at Herne Bay, Mike Bundock 15 th February What’s in a name, John Fishpool 1st March TBA 15 th March Are you being served? Margaret Burns 5th April Members Evening

Other Society and general events of i nterest 1st July HBHRS Heritage Centre official opening – 12 noon. 7th July David Birch Memorial evening 12 th August HBHRS History Day (at the Heritage Centre) 12 th August Herne Bay Carnival 18 th November HBHRS Wit & Wisdom fundraising evening

Back by popular demand! We are pleased to advise that we have published a calendar for 2018. This will feature period images of the town, displayed one page per month, with a cover and a back page illustrated with thumbnail images of the content. Calendars will be sold in a protective self-seal polythene bag, p riced at £7.50 each.

Copies will be available at the HBHRS Heritage Centre from 1 st July.

We are appreciative of the support of Messrs Girlings Solicitors with the cost of printing this calendar.

The HBHRS is grateful to Philip Gambrill of PG & Co. for his contribution towards the cost of printing this newsletter .

Chartered Accountants an d Statutory Auditors Town Hall Chambers, 148 High Street, Herne Bay 01227 362887

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