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EXTRACTS FROM THE BI-MONTHLY NEWS LETTER - 129 April - My 2006
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EXTRACTS FROM THE BI-MONTHLY NEWS LETTER -
129 April - May 2006 SOCIETY EVENTS The series of Winter Talks at 7.30. p.m. on Tuesday evenings at the United Reform Church Hall continues to attract full houses but draws to a close in April with the following: On 11th April John Vigar, an old friend of ours will give a talk entitled “Curious Kent”. On 25th April Chris McCooey will round off the series with “Kent Scandals” which promises to be Sensational, Salacious and Sad! The Annual General Meeting will take place at the Town Hall at 7 p.m. on 9th May. The agenda is enclosed herewith as well as the minutes of the 2005 meeting. Please also note that our Autumn Lunch will take place on Saturday 4th November (not our usual date in October). Dr. John Allingham will speak about the medical services in Hythe and full details will be published later. To help us look forward to Summer, Doug Amans has been persuaded to organise an evening trip to Hole Park, Rolvenden on 28th June. This is a beautiful, 15 acre, prize winning garden set in lovely parkland and our tour will be conducted by the owner. The price of £19.00 per head includes transport, admission, a buffet supper at The Six Bells, Woodchurch, and gratuities. To reserve seats you should send a cheque, payable to D.H.Amans, to 4, The Maltings, High St., Hythe, CT21 5AB. The bus leaves Red Lion Square, Hythe at 5 p.m. and Lydd at 5.30 p.m. TOWN EVENTS There will be a Town Meeting on 27th April in the Town Hall at 7 p.m. If you wish to raise an issue it would be good to mention it to the Council beforehand. The annual public ceremony to inaugurate the new Mayor of Hythe will also be at the Town Hall at 12 noon on 4th May. FRIENDS OF ST. LEONARDS’ CONCERTS On 27th May Eleanor Percy, violin, and Irina Lyakhovskaya, from the Trinity School of Music, will perform in the Young Professionals Series. The concert will be in the Church at 7.30. p.m. Tickets, priced at £7 each, can be bought at Brandon’s Music Shop or at the door. HCS AWARDS Please contact any Committee member before 20th April if you would like to nominate a new or restored Hythe building or amenity for this year’s HCS Award which will be presented at the AGM. SUBSCRIPTIONS All members are reminded that subscriptions for the year 2006/2007 are now due. Please assist your Newsletter deliverer, who has the onerous task of collecting them, by having the money ready when they call. The subscription remains at £6 per year per household. Members who receive their Newsletter by post should send their subscription, with an additional £1 to help with the cost of postage, direct to the Treasurer. GIFT AID The Committee wish to thank all those members who completed their Gift Aid Declaration forms as requested in NL 128. Anyone who has still not returned them to the Treasurer is encouraged to do so now as it can make a significant difference to our income at no cost to our members. INFORMATION WANTED Mr Simon Turnill e-mails HTC from Sydney with a request: he is putting together a web site about St Mary's Bay in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and looking for information about the Sands Motel and the School Journey Centre in particular. The site is at www.stmarysbay.org.uk He hopes to add to it contemporary photos, news items, and reminiscences. In the 60’s and 70’s Mr Turnill’s father was "resident headmaster" at the School Journey Centre – can anyone tell us what, and where, this was? We will pass on anything you have. Mr Colin Markham is still trying to trace the twins, Dorothy and Christine Michell (or Michell-Smith) of Whitewalls in Cannongate Road, who would have been at St Augustine’s RC School in the mid to late 50’s. Does anyone remember them? BIM’S OAK Those who knew Bim Wilson would approve the choice of English Oak as the tree most appropriate to stand in tribute to him and the north meadow of Eaton Lands as the place where it should be planted. (see NL123) The tree is one of six that were planted there by Hythe Town Council in early March the others being a beech, two hornbeams, a whitebeam and a lime tree. HCS joined forces with HTC to provide the Oak and a dedication ceremony, led by our Chairman, John Holman and the Mayor, Wendy Harris, was held on 17th March. In spite of a very cold north-east wind over 30 stalwart people attended. Accompanied by her daughter, son-in-law and baby grandson, Mrs Pat Wilson bravely wielded the ceremonial spade and, to conclude, the tree was stylishly watered by the Town Sergeant. For more information and pictures, click here and scroll to “Bim’s Oak”.. PLANNING MATTERS HYTHE DEVELOPMENTS to which we have formally objected this month include an application to build 8 flats and two attached houses on the site of 1, Blackhouse Hill on the grounds that road access would be dangerous and one at Sutherland House, Stade Street to replace an existing garage with a 3-storey town house which we consider inappropriate for this location. KCC EXPERTISE DEMONSTRATED It is good to see that the traffic island has gone in at last opposite Waitrose. We suggested this to KCC when the Store was being built. It probably could have been done more cheaply then, of course, but the Experts said it was not needed. And when they pedestrianised the High Street, we suggested a simple RED-GREEN Traffic Light at Douglas Avenue so that emergency vehicles could access the High Street at any time. The Experts preferred a barrier and people are still arguing over who should operate it! These are the same Experts who reversed the traffic flow on the High Street so that it emerges on to the A259 at a difficult T Junction instead of, as formerly, at a safe roundabout. We now await with much interest but little hope, their solution to the Stade Street traffic jam and parking problem, when the new Surgery opens. LYDD AIRPORT EXTENSION The Lydd Airport Action Group (LAAG) has recently held a public meeting at which a Nuclear Safety Consultant, John Large, has expressed concerns that both the Dungeness power stations are vulnerable to aircraft crash damage, especially with the increased size of aircraft that Lydd Airport wishes to use. The original design safety case was based on aircraft weighing between 2.3 and 5.7 tonnes. In comparison the Boeing 737 weighs around 70 tonnes. The Group now seems to be using this information as part of their current opinion that regional airports should not be located so close to nuclear power stations, even when such installations are being de-commissioned. The risk of damage would of course be increased should the Government’s Energy Review lead to a new nuclear build programme and Dungeness C is built. LAAG has also reported that SEERA (South East England Regional Assembly) has deleted its earlier reference to the Lydd Airport development and is now supporting the expansion of Manston as a regional airport. Plans have been approved for a three storey 75 bedroom hotel at Lydd Golf Club, which adjoins the airport It will have a range of facilities including a health club, swimming pool, conference and meeting rooms which it is hoped will be used by local residents as well as visitors to the club and airport. According to the local press the proposal was originally submitted in April last year but building work is not expected to start until early 2007. It seems that this construction of a hotel with facilities that the locals can use is part of the airport’s “hearts and minds” policy to get local residents on side as far as their extension plans are concerned. IT’S OFFICIAL! There is NO water shortage here - there is only an excess of users! 800 new houses and uncounted flats will shortly be built in Hythe, and Folkestone Water Company has told Planners it can supply them. So they want us to clean our teeth in a cup of water to make up! Don't be taken in! We shall know that there is a real shortage when the Company refuses to meet the demands of the unelected Regional Assembly which (at the Government's behest) is wishing this building explosion on us with no provision for improvements to the infrastructure and services. SOCIAL HISTORY MEDIEVAL ETHNIC CLEANSING A throwaway comment in NL126 – that all Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 – attracted the attention of an historically knowledgeable reader and a literary reader. The expulsion was ordered without pity or even explanation by King Edward I. Jews allegedly had a bad reputation for grasping money-lending, desecration of the Host, and even ritual murder of Christian children – witness Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, written about 100 years later, of the child murdered in the Lincoln ghetto, who continues to sing to the Virgin Mary after his throat is cut. Yet the actual removal process was astonishingly well-conducted: 1,335 Jews are recorded as leaving England via the Cinque Ports, some very probably from Hythe Stade, paying their own passage to France but travelling, it seems, without undue harassment. The King’s Order of 1290 still exists: “To bailiffs, barons, and sailors of Cinque Ports. Safe conduct for the Jews quitting the realm with their wives and children and goods, in-cluding……... Jews of York.” Nevertheless, if infinitely more humane than the 20th century “final solution”, the expulsion must have been traumatic for those involved: “Imagine that you see the wretched strangers Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage, Plodding to th’ ports for transportation…” These lines appear in the manuscript of the incomplete and never performed play ‘Sir Thomas More’ in which Shakespeare collaborated and they are thought to be in his own hand – the only autograph we have. He had probably never seen a Jew, but it seems appropriate that in this sole surviving sample of his writing he shows himself empathising with persecuted humanity, feeling and expressing its pain. Interestingly 2006 is the 350th anniversary of the “resettlement” of Jews in England which followed the decision of Cromwell’s Council of State on 25th June 1656 to permit Jews to meet for private worship and numerous celebrations are planned. “GARMANY CALLING…….. GARMANY CALLING……” Lord Haw Haw’s mocking tones reached England with the information that the recently completed Shorncliffe Army Church was to be bombed that night; he was out in his timing, for the attempt was allegedly made two nights later, and it was unsuccessful. The garrison church of St Mark, the largest such church in the UK, was built in 1941 – an astonishing feat at that time of severe shortage of builders and building materials, yet it shows no sign of the prevailing scarcities, and its size and provocative location on a cliff top – visible from German-occupied France and a marker for every enemy bomber – was a statement of defiance. In 1998 the moving final Service (described in NL85) took place at 11.00am on the 11th day of November – a significant moment to close a soldiers’ church. In August 2001 the Folkestone and Hythe Operatic and Dramatic Society bought the building from the MOD and named it the Tower Theatre. The intention is to transform it into a modern theatre with facilities also for concerts, exhibitions, sport, even wedding receptions. Its great advantages over the Society’s present home, the Little Theatre in Sandgate, will be the up-to-date stage, disabled access, regulation toilets and kitchen, and adequate on-site parking. Architects have been appointed, designs prepared, seating bought (a bargain through É-Bay!), and fund-raising begun. The Planning Application is in, the Builders are ready to go, and Developers are already circling the Little Theatre on Sandgate. The target is to hold the opening night as a Hythe Festival Event on Saturday 8th July 2006 – a FHODS Concert Party ‘SONGS FROM THE SHOWS’ with a Cash Bar (canapés served) and a Guided Tour thrown in. We will be providing full details of this and all other Festival Events (from 1st to 9th July) in the June Newsletter. ANOTHER TOURIST! Almost on the tail, as it were, of our “Autumn Osprey” (NL128), Dr. Woodward spotted another unusual visitor by the canal. Although called the Common Gull it is mainly distinguished by the fact that it is rather uncommon! Other features include green feet and, in Winter, a streaked head. Our commonest gull is the Blackheaded. They stay at their breeding colonies in Summer but are on the canal at other times. They have bright red feet and a spot behind the eye in Winter. Other familiar gulls are the Greater & Lesser Blackbacks – pink and yellow feet respectively – but they are usually too shy for the canal, though they can often be seen on the cricket pitch. The Herring Gull, of course, is always with us! HYTHE ST. LEONARD’S C.E. JUNIOR SCHOOL is soon to be combined with the County Primary School on the latter’s Cinque Ports Avenue site. The old building in St Leonard’s Road may disappear, though we would like to see it remain as did the similar School in Sandgate, which was satisfactorily converted into dwellings. All will depend on raising enough money from the sale of the site to pay for the merger. In the 1960’s the Reverend Desmond Sampson as Parish Curate lived in the Schoolmaster’s House at the North corner, and he tells how his family could eat their breakfast and hear every word spoken in Assembly next door, and join in the hymns. It is pleasing that this School still has its Assemblies and Hymns, though there is difficulty nowadays in some of our Schools to find a piano-playing teacher. The history of the National School in Hythe was told by Miss Denise Rayner in Bygone Kent (Feb 2000) as part of her research into the career of Edward Palmer – Headmaster who led an interesting life of typically Victorian energy and social commitment. The first School was established in the High Street just East of Sun Lane in 1814. The pupils (only boys) were taught on the Madras System (see NL 128) and had to be ‘neatly dressed, clean washed and combed’ and parents paid 1d a week. (No mention here of wearing shoes – that was often a requirement, and sometimes an insurmountable one for poorer families.) Two years later a Girls’ Department was added, and in 1844 the whole School moved into the disused Poor House on Stade Street, just opposite Oaklands. It was there for six years, during which the present School was built, ‘in a healthy position facing The Green’. It was opened on 2nd December 1851 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, top hats and crinolines being much in evidence. The Headmaster and energetic fund-raiser for the removal was the said Edward Palmer. The weekly charge was now 4d and there were separate classrooms for 160 Boys (who it seems had sole use of the ‘commodious playground and gymnasium’), 160 girls and 160 infants – 480 in all (the maximum today might be just 240 children!). The St Leonard’s Road building has remained in use ever since, except for a short period in 1940 when many children were evacuated to Wales. However some remained, and for them the School re-opened part-time and, by 1942, full-time again. The design of the building, and the quality of the ecclesiastical detailing (gift of Mr W Deedes MP) were much praised in the Press. The Report on the National Schools movement in The Builder is worth quoting for its style and its sentiments: ‘The poorer classes have the opportunity of developing any innate aptitude which would else be withered or perverted through want of proper training, and the more favoured class can …show their benevolence and their desire to remove the slur upon the ignorance of the ‘bold peasantry’ and the toiling ..population of our towns…The children are furnished with weapons that will never tarnish to fight the ‘Battle of Life’ instead of growing in ignorance, to live perchance upon the charity of the generous or swell the list of criminals.’ Enter Reception in St Leonard’s School today and you are greeted by a studious murmur from nearby classrooms (once it would have been the sing-song chant of times tables, a more familiar sound to some of us). Dominating the area is the Memorial to the boys (and two staff) killed in the first World War. These 81 names also appear on other Tablets in Hythe, but seeing them here, in the place the dead boys all knew in their shared childhood, is to be reminded again of how many lives were lost from one small town (much smaller then than now) – virtually a whole generation. We hope this Memorial Board will be moved into the new building, and that our children will be taught to understand and respect its significance. We are on the Web: www.hythe-kent.com/civic You can e-mail us: hythecivicsociety@waitrose.com Secretary Miss Christine Sterling 5, Arthur Road, Hythe, CT21 6DX 0774 576 82343 Treasurer Malcolm Thomson 86, Seabrook Road, Hythe, CT21 5QA 01303 260642 Editor Christopher Melchers Lucy’s, Lucy’s Hill, Hythe, CT21 5ES 01303 267073 Membership & NL Distribution Alan Whipp 9, North Road, Hythe, CT21 5DS 01303 266479 |
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