EXTRACTS FROM
BI-MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
No 152 February and March 2010.
Click on any heading to go to that section:
| SOCIETY EVENTS | FRIENDS OF ST. LEONARDS CHURCH | TOWN AND AROUND |
| PLANNING MATTERS | SOCIAL HISTORY | APOLOGIES |
Our Winter evening talks continue on 9th February with a talk by Ian
Small on “The History and Work of The Commonwealth War Graves Commission”. On
23rd February HCS member, Dr John Woodward will tell us about the History of
Photography. “The Life of a Japanese Woman” is the subject of Leslie Gould’s
talk on 9th March and Tony Mount calls his presentation on 23rd March
”They Dare to be Doctors”. All these talks are at Hythe Bay C of E Primary
School at 7.30. p.m.
Subscriptions for 2010/11 are unchanged from this year and will be
collected by your Newsletter deliverer in early April. We have made arrangements
with our bank to accept standing orders at no cost to you or the Society and
enclose herewith an appropriate form. Please seriously consider helping us by
completing the form and giving it to your deliverer. This system is completely
safe and can be cancelled by you at any time and HCS will save a
significant amount of (voluntary!) administration work. Thank-you!
Full details of our Autumn Lunch will be published in the next
Newsletter.
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FRIENDS OF ST. LEONARDS CHURCH
The first event in the 2010 programme of concerts will be a lunchtime piano
recital given by a young Japanese pianist, Miyuki Kato, who will perform an
appealing programme of music by Beethoven, Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky
and Chopin on Thursday 18th February at 12 noon. Tickets at £5 will be
available from Brandon’s Music Shop, 55 High Street, Hythe or can be obtained at
the church door (admission free for those under 18 in full-time education).
In complete contrast, St Leonard’s Church will be hosting a concert by the BBC
Singers, conducted by Nicholas Cleobury, and also featuring the Onyx Brass and
Stephen Disley (organ) on Friday 26th March at 7.30pm, in a programme of
music by Jonathan Dove, Tarik O'Regan and Timothy Jackson. This concert
celebrates the 10th anniversary of the John Armitage Memorial Trust (JAM),
founded in 2000 to nurture, promote and perform new music in the UK, and will be
recorded by the BBC for broadcast on Radio 3. Tickets will be £15 (centre) and
£10 (transept), and available from Brandon’s Music Shop and JAM.
Jianing Kong, sixth prizewinner in the 2009 Leeds International Piano
Competition, performs music by Schubert, Debussy and Prokofiev in the Church on
Saturday 10th April at 7.30pm. Tickets at £7 will be available from
Brandon’s Music Shop or at the church door (admission free for those under 18 in
full-time education).
For more information about the Friends of St Leonard’s Church please
contact the secretary Mrs Gill Roffey:
telephone 01303 263739 or
e-mail 
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Hythe
resident and HCS member Murray Andersen has recently published an autobiography
of his experiences as a pilot during WW2 and his equally exciting job as a civil
airline pilot in India, Burma and Nepal during the following 20 years. During
the war he flew dangerous photo-reconnaissance missions and later transported
Resistance and Intelligence Agents to and from Occupied France during moon
periods. Intriguingly titled “SAINT PRAFTU”, it is available from the
Hythe Bookshop; Waterstones, Folkestone and Amazon.
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SDC has postponed further consideration of the Lydd Airport applications until 3rd March 2010 (Not the 10th March as previously published.)
SOCIAL HISTORY
In NL140 we published part of the reminiscences of Bert Coe recorded in 1986,
when he was 82, and transcribed in 2005 by Mr. & Mrs. Burgess. Here is another
extract from this valuable document. We left Bert on Marine Parade at the old
cottages where the Stade Court Hotel now stands. He continues:
“The end house was worthy of note; a Mr. and Mrs. Crump and their son Richard,
who was a school pal of mine, lived there. They were the custodians, if that is
the right word, of Hythe bathing establishment, long since gone, now occupied by
Admiralty Court. They were slipper baths - you could have a bath with a towel
and soap and everything for four pence. When their need was coming to an end it
was turned into a restaurant and it was occupied by Mrs. Farmer, first Lady
Mayor of Hythe and she ran dances there, she had a teashop, she had stalls built
in for the sale of various things and she improved it no end. But the Crump
family were still the custodians. They also were the custodians of the bathing
machines which belonged to the town. You couldn't undress on the beach in those
days, you had to pay four pence to be in a little hut to undress and dress
again. There were big family ones on wheels pulled down by horses on to the
beach. There were also boats and deck chairs and the Crump family managed the
lot somehow or another. And on top of that she had a stall in the front garden
of her little cottage where she used to serve chocolates and ice-cream and all
sorts of things - for coppers. People were really industrious in those days.
And then next door to the bathing establishment was a narrow passageway between
the next house and a man and his son named Twin used to busy themselves making
rustic arches, fences, chairs - you could hire the chairs to go and sit on the
seafront - they used to make them in there and it was only about 6 feet wide; it
went right down to South Road.. Next to that was a most original building of the
day and I was sorry to see it go - Neptune Cottage, a round house, beautifully
built and its surrounding wall even better built….. it was on the corner that
leads down between Moyle Tower and the former Neptune Cottage. [now the Sailing
Club – Ed.] They had a lovely garden there in spite of the sea. People used to
grow things, Tamarisk and Euonymus were the things that always survived the salt
weather and still do.
Then we come to a place that's in the market today [1986], and in the news today
- Moyle Tower. That had a chequered career and was a place of great importance
in those days. It was built in the last century, I think about 1860, by a very
wealthy family named Porter. They occupied all the ground opposite [at the back]
stretching from South Road to what is now known as Tower Gardens, formerly known
as Beachy Walk (and incidentally it is a right of way). That was their private
gardens, full of fruit trees and beautiful flowers. They kept three gardeners,
besides a coachman, a pair of horses and a coach. They were extremely wealthy.
There were wonderful stained glass windows in their ballroom facing North. I
know, because I've been in there when they used to invite us nippers to a party
at Christmas - that's a long while ago! We were privileged to use those gardens
on Sunday evenings when the original Hythe Excelsior Band used to play there on
the lawns. Bandmaster Griffiths, two sons, George and Wally. George played the
cornet, Wally the clarinet. Three Dowle brothers, all long since gone of course,
the eldest one went on to become bandmaster of the Cameron Highlanders. The
other two were twins, Graham and Leslie, one played the euphonium and the other
the cornet. They were my age, but long since gone. There is one man in Hythe
still alive who as a boy played in that band, his name is Pilcher, he played
clarinet and he lives in Ormonde Road.
The Porters were a wonderful family apparently with money unlimited and they
used to do a lot of good in Hythe and good was left by them because that place
has always been used for some good purpose even to the Vietnamese children who
were received in this country homeless and helpless. And it's nice to feel that
though that family is long since gone they could be responsible for what has
happened in our lifetime. The place should never have been allowed to get like
it is now. In the 1914-18 war it was requisitioned by the military and a most
important thing took place there which to me is doubly important. The first
battalion of the Kent Cyclists was formed there. A lot of local boys were in it.
They had the old grey bicycles with a rifle strapped to the frame. The over
flush (there were so many of them) occupied Douglas House, which is the end
house in Douglas Avenue and it overlooked what is now the Children's Home, well
it is a home in a sense, it deals with illness [Child Welfare Clinic]. And there
was a YMCA there called the Mercer's Hut provided by funds from the Mercer's
Company in London, and there, they had baths for four pence, but you had to take
your own towel and soap. But you could get a hot bath there and a hot bath was
unknown to ordinary people in those days. You didn't have a bath in the house,
you had a tin bath hanging on the wall outside the back door. That was brought
into the house in the front of the fire and the whole family went in it one
after the other! That's all there was to it and it was the same for us kids so I
do know all about it. Anyway, this Kent Cyclists battalion was posted to India,
and a remarkable thing happened. One of them died there, a man named Potter who
had lived next door to us in Chapel Street, his father was a painter on
Mackeson's building staff. And one day in recent years, I was giving such a talk
as this to a group of elderly people, and I mentioned this fact and a voice in
the background piped up and said, "that was my brother". And it was Mrs. Nash
who kept the paper shop and still does for all I know, in Park Road - and it was
her brother Bob. And she confirmed there and then that what I was saying was
absolutely true - he died and was the only one who did not come back.
Then we proceed along all those tall houses that stand there that should never
have been built so close to the sea, as I have already said. They were occupied
and some owned by wealthy families who used to come down in the summer months
and bring their children with them from college and university. And together
with them used to come thousands upon thousands of Jewish children to spend a
fortnight in Hythe on the beaches. And it was marvellous, the good Hythe did in
a roundabout way to so many. We mooch along the parade and we come to what to me
is a very important house, No.52, formerly called The Lookout. It was built and
was occupied as the summer residence for the then Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports, Earl Brassey. They had a binnacle on the lawn and they used to sail round
in a wonderful great steam yacht from Dover Harbour and anchor in the bay, it
glistened with brass and copper. White enamel I should think it was, and it used
to shine in the sun. And they used to row them ashore and they used to spend
half of their summer holidays in that house. In Dover Harbour - and they may
still be there, I don't know - were two tugs, one called The Lord Brassey and
the other called The Lady Duncannon which was his wife's own title and they were
a noted item in the build up of the channel and Dover in particular.
When we move along, we come to what was generally known as Saltwood Gardens -
why, I don't know. It is where the swimming pool is now built. Now the correct
name for that is Jubilee Gardens and it was laid out to commemorate the diamond
jubilee of Queen Victoria, beautiful lawns, shrubberies, flowers, seats for the
nursemaids and elderly people to sit on and enjoy the quiet, because there was
nothing rough in those days - even the sea was calm! And in the front was a
redbrick shelter with conveniences and seating and it was a great illustration,
and I have often pointed it out to builders, of how the salt atmosphere could
wear away, especially red bricks. And it powdered the bricks of that wall to
such an extent that it fell down, and it has been replaced by another one as a
matter of fact. That swimming pool should never, never, have been built there,
because that is public property, those gardens, Saltwood Gardens.
And we move on to Beaconsfield Terrace and the Imperial Hotel, which for my
purposes go together and in the front of that where the fort was, Twiss Fort,
where Twiss Road gets its name, or the other way round. And where the immense
groyne had been built, and that has been built in my lifetime, on the west side
of that, you will notice if you walk along there, the beach has been built up,
mountains of it, and the parade goes round in a semicircle with iron railings
around it and steps in the middle, down into this beach. Now, under that beach
stretching out some 200 yards, I suppose, is a rock pier, and that is where the
collier barges, Rochester colliers, or Rochester barges, used to deliver the
coal for Hythe, and Stickells, who were the haulage people in those days (horses
and carts, the old tip carts), they used to drive onto this semi-circular area
and men used to unload those barges with baskets - huge wooden baskets -
carrying about a couple of hundredweight of coal at a time, and march up that
pier, up those steps and into these tip carts. [Editor’s Note:
In reading this
transcript I am sure that it is not too fanciful to say that one can all but
hear Bert’s voice. Please share any information or pictures that you may have on
topics covered. Please use my address below or e-mail to HCS
– all original material will be returned without delay]
The Hythe Reporter of 1909
has been reviewed for interesting articles and one
that leaps out is a report of the AGM of our predecessor Hythe Preservation
Society which includes a lot of information about the refurbishment of “Parade
Gardens” believed to be the name by which Bert’s “Saltwood Gardens” were then
known. Among other things his friend Mrs Porter contributed £15.00 (about
£500.00 in today’s values!) towards the cost of fencing the gardens and planting
Tamarisk shrubs on the bank!
The papers seem to reflect an era of relative prosperity for Hythe. For example
no less than 350 houses had been built in the 15 year period then ending,
notably in the area south of the Canal and on the “Sandling Estate” development
in Hillcrest and Brockhill Roads. This was accompanied by a rapid growth in the
population – portrayed as an immense benefit to local tradesmen, professionals
and schools. King Edward V11 bestowed knighthoods on the actor Sir H. Beerbohm
Tree and the eminent parliamentary journalist Henry Lucy. Tree was mentioned
because his first stage role was in Hythe in the 1870’s when, due to an error in
the telegram announcing his arrival time, the first night’s performance was
cancelled. Although he actually arrived in good time the Town Hall was closed
and he was fined £5.00 which he thought a very poor beginning to his career!
It was also reported that Henry Lucy had a mountain named after him by Ernest
Shackleton as a “thank-you” for the publicity and fund-raising for his
expedition to the South Pole, during which the peak was first discovered.
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In NL151 we referred to Mrs Orrell as having served in the R.A.F. In fact it was her late husband who did so and we apologise for the error.
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Alan Joyce, |
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