‘Loose Threads’ Your local history magazine Number 11 Featuring ... * Coronation Year, 1911 * Jane Austen’s Loose cousins * Church choirmaster’s life, love and legacy * Loose Village Mill * A wartime evacuee’s story * King George V Playing Field * Guides and Brownies * ‘My favourite village’ * ‘Last orders’ at local pubs * Firefighters remembered * Fascinating finds in Well Street * Loose Water Tower * Nancy Illingworth * Boughton Monchelsea, East Farleigh, Linton, Tovil * Memories, archive photos, family stories .... and much more The Journal of the Loose Area History Society £4 ¶/RRVH7KUHDGV· No. 11 Published in 2011 by the Loose Area History Society www.looseareahistorysociety.webeden.co.uk From the editor ... Contents ««««««««««««««««««««««« «««««««««««««««««««««««««« Our society is one of several organizations that take an 2 Nancy Illingworth: Artist at Loose DFWLYHLQWHUHVWLQWKH/RRVH9DOOH\·VORFDOKLVWRU\DQG heritage and their projects deserve your support. 4 The Road to Loose Arguably the most important is Loose Church Heritage 5 Boughton MoncheOVHD¶P\IDYRXULWHYLOODJH· *URXS·V DSSHDO WR UDLVH IRU XUJHQW UHSDLUV WR WKH 7 oak shingles are nearly 80 7KHHYDFXHHZKRGLGQ·WJRKRPH VSLUHRI$OO6DLQWV·&KXUFK,WV years old and are in a very poor condition. Many have 10 -DQH$XVWHQ·V/RRVHFRXVLQV already fallen off. Please be generous when asked to contribute. 11 Last Orders Loose Parish Council has won a £10,000 Lottery Award to 13 /RRVHFKRLUPDVWHU·VOLIHORYHDQGOHJDF\ remove silt from the millpond at The Brooks and create a woodland and coppice at the top of Brooks Field, which is 16 Tithe Map clues to times past being transformed into a wildlife meadow. We will watch progress in this historic and picturesque area with interest. 17 Keeping Loose wheels turning /RRVH $PHQLWLHV $VVRFLDWLRQ·V SURJUDPPH LQFOXGHV 18 Loose Water Tower publishing an updated editLRQ RI 5RJHU 7KRUQEXUJK·V 1978 ERRNOHW¶([SORULQJ/RRVH9LOODJH·² long overdue and eagerly 19 Your Picture Gallery awaited! 22 Firefighters remembered Alas, there is some bad news. The Kent Fire Service 23 Museum at The Godlands has closed after 48 years. ¶%R\VZLOOEHER\V· /HW·V hope its fascinating collection of vintage fire-fighting 27 East Farleigh and Loose revisited equipment and memorabilia will soon find a new home. 29 FaPLO\·VIDscinating finds in Well Street As we went to press the Valley Conservation Society, the LAHS and other interested parties were being consulted on 30 Dissenters rest in peace in Tovil proposals to create a papermaking heritage centre at Hayle Mill. This was a planning condition agreed to by the P J 31 Kirkdale Cottages in 1911 Livesey Group when it obtained permission to redevelop the site. The condition has not yet been complied with! 33 &HOHEUDWLQJFRWWDJHV·KLVWRU\ 34 Poultry Farm to playing field Paul Tritton, Editor Khanspur 36 ¶/LQWRQDV:DV· 2 Salts Avenue, Loose, Maidstone, Kent ME15 0AY Tel. 01622 741198 39 /LQWRQ·V model dairy farm Email: [email protected] 39 Loose Guides and Brownies 7KHGHDGOLQHIRU¶/RRVH7KUHDGV·LV0D\ 40 Village Mill revealed ¶/RRVH 7KUHDGV· LV RQ VDOH DW $TXDULXV :RRO 6KRS &R[KHDWK ; 42 Boughton Monchelsea Post Office; Loose Post Office; /XFN\·V 6LG&RXOWHU·VPHPRULHVRIROG/RRVH Newsagents (Boughton Parade); The Victory pub at East Farleigh DQGDWWKH/RRVH$UHD+LVWRU\6RFLHW\·VPHHWLQJV7RRUGHUE\PDLO 44 ¶Bourbon· conman of Woodlawn within the UK please send the editor a cheque for £5.50, payable to the Loose Area History Society. Email the editor for details of 45 Questions & Answers overseas rates. &RSLHV RI ¶/RRVH 7KUHDGV· 1RV - 10 are still available. For details see our website or contact the editor. 49 History Society News Printed by Scarbutts Printers, Winsor Works, London Road, West Malling, ME19 5AN. Tel.: 01732 870066. www.scarbutts.com Nancy Illingworth Artist at Loose My mother, Nancy Illingworth (1914 - 2000) was as a member of the selection committee for the born in Salford, the daughter of Jane ('Ginnie') and annual exhibition at the Museum, and for at least Thomas Hooson (writes Susan Watts). She learned one year as chairperson. She appreciated her tailoring and cutting from her father, who had a local reputation and at the same time regretted tailoring business on Regents Road, Salford. that she had not earlier ventured forth into the At Manchester Art School she London art scene; the suggestion to do so came specialized in painting, and in fabric and dress too late in her career. design. She married James (Jim) Illingworth in Both my parents were keen gardeners 1938. Before moving to Loose she taught at the and plant collectors. Among my mother's best School of Art in Sutton Coldfield. known paintings were those inspired by the In 1960 my parents moved to The garden at The Limes, the view of Loose village and Limes, a mid-16th century house, originally a filbert farm, on Old church from her window, and Kentish farms and oast houses. Loose Hill. The top floor of the cottage next door was converted Visits to the north of England resulted in a series of into a studio, where she continued to paint and host a weekly paintings of nonconformist chapels and during a week in Cornwall painting class. This group held an informal annual exhibition of she painted derelict tin mines. Most of my mother's paintings were paintings for a number of years, which was open to family and oils, on board. Her personal favourites were her abstracts, friends. watercolours, or gouache on paper. Later, week-long annual exhibitions of her paintings were We have some of our favourite paintings here in Egypt. open to the public, and many of them were for sale. My mother Others are in the USA and we know that her paintings have also continued to paint after my father's death in 1985, turning the found homes in France, Austria, Canada, Australia, and Ghana. Many former dining room into a studio. She taught me, and later my other paintings are in her son's house in Reading. Others may still husband, how to look at objects and scenes with a painterly eye. be in the Maidstone Art Gallery and in the doctors' surgery in My mother was also active in the Maidstone Art Society, Stockett Lane, Coxheath. 2 Two local scenes by Nancy Illingworth: Above: ‘Loose Church,’ from a Christmas card published by the Friends of All Saints' Church in 1998. Right: ‘Old Loose Hill – Entering Loose,’ 1978. Below: The Limes in 1975 at the time the Illingworth family lived there. The Limes (featured on previous page in one of Nancy’s sketches) 'Art has been her world for as long as she can remember. is now known as Lime Tree House and has a date stone of 1582 She studied in Manchester and later, when her two children [Susan on its back wall. and Anthony] were small she managed to paint fairly frequently. Her style is very free and she paints with large brushes, her palette of oils in her left hand. She goes to all the London art exhibitions Between 1971 and 1995 Nancy held many exhibitions of her as she says a painter must not remain isolated. "It's like trying to Kentish landscapes and flower paintings at her studio. Interviewed write without reading literature" is her verdict. in 1971 she said: 'I find that if I sell at between £12 and £20, people 'The lovely 16th century house at Loose has been her will buy them. They are no use to me hoarded in the studio. The home for 12 years. Views are breathtaking and she admits to liking object I am painting must come alive on the canvas. It must give the it best to paint when the village is covered in snow. Both home and viewer the same sort of feeling as if he is looking at the original. It garden reflect her love of beauty. She has painted the walls of two is no use expecting to be able to paint without a great deal of hard rooms in the warm rich colours she chooses for her paintings’. work. There must be talent, of course, but experience counts for everything'. ‘I bought one of Nancy's paintings Reviewing Nancy's first shortly after I returned to live in exhibition, Jessie Orrin of the Maidstone in 1982 (writes Julia 'Kent Messenger' wrote: 'While Page) but, after a 35 year absence, the male artist is regarded as the I didn't get to know her socially. specialist of nude paintings, last However, both my sister Angela week I met a woman famed for and my mother knew of her her studies of the female form. sufficiently well to purchase two She uses rich, warm shades, such or three paintings. as tones of reds and yellows, for ‘There used to be art the flowing textured flesh. exhibitions at County Hall and Sometimes the nude is sitting, at she would show there. Nancy others reclining, and one is simply was a very pleasant woman and standing, green-coloured and only recently widowed when I enigmatic, staring at the world went to her house to pay for the from her canvas. picture I bought. It is a small ‘Mostly her models are landscape of the countryside in the Weald, looking towards art students. They pose, naked and alive, watching their form Cranbrook’. transposed to the canvas for posterity. That the nude on the canvas is equally alive is a tribute to Nancy Illingworth's art. 'She is a painter with a varied range. She specialises not ‘Hilary and I knew Nancy and her husband, Jim, fairly well as they only in nudes but flower paintings and abstracts. She says one type were neighbours (writes Roger Thornburgh). She produced many of subject does not sell better than another.