Sentinel hythe 3 in a5v2

Hythe Issue 3

Your magazine November 2016

Flying North

by Catherine Robinson

This newsletter is compiled and edited by David Cowell who is totally responsible for content.

If you do not wish to receive these newsletters please email UNSUBSCRIBE to him at david@davidcowell.net

Exhibition title: "Migration and Change" Artist: Catherine Robinson Exhibition dates: 8 October - 11 November 2016 Gallery location: Green Chair Gallery online only Catherine graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University, with a Fine Art degree in which she specialised in printmaking. As Artist in Residence following her degree, she was commissioned to make a print of the encounter between Saint Augustine and King Ethelbert, which now hangs in the university chapel. She uses a range of printmaking techniques including etching, collagraph, drypoint, woodcut and monoprint.

Support your local Farmers' Markets

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Art and Craft Market

Great range of bread, pies, biscuits, fruit & veg, meat, eggs, cheese and charcuterie, fish, cakes and quiches, preserves and chutneys and confectionery (stall holders may vary between markets).

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Shop Local. www.sandgatebusiness.org.uk

Sandgate Library is open Monday to Saturday 9:30am - 1:00pm (closed Wednesday) For more information call 01303 248563 (mornings only) Sandgate Library, James Morris Court, Sandgate High St. CT20 3RR

Did you know that...

November is the eleventh and penultimate month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of four months with the length of 30 days. November was the ninth month of the ancient Roman calendar. November retained its name (from the Latin novem meaning "nine") when January and February

were added to the Roman calendar.

November is a month of late-spring/ early-summer in the Southern Hemisphere and late-autumn/earlywinter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Therefore, November in the Southern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent of May in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa.

The Leonids meteor shower typically reaches its peak around November 17.

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The Historic Houses Association (HHA) represents over 1,640 of the UK's privately and charitably owned historic houses, castles and gardens. These are listed buildings or designated gardens, usually Grade I or II*, and are often outstanding. Many are considered to be iconic symbols of Britain's unique heritage.

Around 500 of these properties open their doors to visitors for days out, special tours, school visits, film locations, weddings and events, or as memorable places to stay. 24 million people a year visit HHA Member properties and there are over 45,000 Friends of the HHA. Members range from iconic stately homes such as Blenheim Palace, Highclere Castle, Castle Howard, Knebworth House, Longleat and Burghley House, to more intimate houses such as Traquair in Scotland, Treowen in Wales and Belle Isle in Northern Ireland. Most are still private family homes.

The Association was established in 1973 to help owners conserve these wonderful places in the interests of the nation and carries out important lobbying, advisory and marketing work on behalf of Member properties.

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From your County Councillor Hythe’s Kent County Councillor, Martin Whybrow, urges all residents to have their say on the District Council’s Local Plan.

The importance of Shepway District Council’s Local Plan (‘Places and Policies Local Plan, Preferred Options’ to give it is full title) cannot be under-estimated. It is a statutory document that will shape the local area for the next decade. The latest version has recently been published and there is a consultation until 11th November. I would urge all local residents to review and comment on it. It is vital that locals have their say.

It can be downloaded from the District Council’s website here.

The document can also be accessed at the council’s offices and at local libraries. And there are a number of exhibitions during the consultation period across the district. The main way to respond is via a consultation portal on the council’s main website.

Among highlights are approximately 140 sites put forward for residential development. Those in Hythe include Prince’s Parade, the Hythe Swimming Pool site, the meadow off Station Road, Saltwood Care Centre, the Smiths Medical Campus, and the former Foxwood School and St Saviour’s Hospital sites. So some contentious sites here, to say the least!

There are also more general policies related to development, including fitting in with existing buildings; accessibility to public transport/mix of housing types; and private external space (HB5), plus protecting the local character (something that it could well be argued hasn’t been taken into account nearly enough with many of the recent developments in and around Hythe).

There are also sections on the local economy, community (including open spaces), transport, the local environment, climate change, health and wellbeing and the historic environment.

Main aims of the document are to allocate enough land for future developments to meet residential, employment and community needs, and to set the development 5

continued over

management policies that will be used to assess planning applications and guide future development.

While a substantial read, the document is clearly laid out (although, as usual, it could be argued that the navigation of the council’s website leaves a fair bit to be desired!) and there are explanations for all sites and policies.

If you are going to comment on the site policies you will find it useful to read the SHLAA assessment forms which are available on the supporting documents tab on the website and also the sustainability appraisal.

We will have to live with, and be directed by, the final version of the Local Plan so now is the time to make sure you put forward your views before it becomes set in stone.

To advertise in three The Sentinels with circa 2300 targetted readers and growing please email me at:

No job too small

david@davidcowell.net

Please call to discuss your needs

for a rate card.

Thank you.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

FOLKESTONE QUAKERS MEET IN SANDGATE We gather at

ST. PAUL’S CHURCH HALL on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Sundays of the month at 10.30am Anyone is welcome to join us.

A Quaker Meeting for Worship is very simple and may be just what you need. It is a coming together in silence in which we ponder the deep issues of life without the constraints of pre-fixed beliefs. Anyone can share a heartfelt thought in the meeting. We don’t answer it or discuss it - we just receive it. In some meetings no-one speaks at all. The meeting ends with handshake and chat over coffee or tea.

We also hold house discussion groups and monthly social coffee chats.

Quakers have always been prepared to speak out on social issues and act on their convictions, resulting in the practical and social action that we have been known for over the years. www.eastkentquakers.org.uk

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Re p e sc rfo he rm d u l an ed ce

Saturday, 25th February 2017 7:30pm St Leonard's Church, Hythe

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Saturday 25th February 2017 7:30pm [tickets £15] Darius Brubeck Quartet Prices (unless otherwise stated) Evening and afternoon concerts £10 Lunchtime concerts £ 6 [L] Ploughman's meal available in Church after concert

Tickets available from Brandon Music Shop, 55 High Street, Hythe CT21 5AD (01303 264429), online www.friendsofstleonardshythe.org or at the Church prior to each concert

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Start: November 2, 2016 End: November 5, 2016 Cost: £11.00, Concessions £10.00 and Children U14 £6.00 Organizer: Folkestone-Hythe,Operatic and Dramatic Society Phone: 01303 223925 Website: www.towertheatrefolkestone.co.uk

If you have any photographs of the area either current or past do send them to me by email and I will feature them in future editions.

I am delighted to inform you that three electronic editions of The Sentinel are now published. With the latest Hythe addition we now produce two Sandgate, one Hythe and one Newington version each month.

If you just have prints do drop them round to Clyme House (see back page) and I will scan.

If you would like to receive a copy of any please email me at: david@davidcowell.net and put the name of the version you require ie The Sentinel Hythe or The Sentinel Sandgate/Hythe etc in the subject line.

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New York, 1959. Max Bialystock was once the king of Broadway, but now all his shows close on opening night.

Things turn around when he's visited by the neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, who proposes a scheme tailor-made for producers who can only make flops: raise far more money than you need, then make sure the show is despised.

No one will be interested in it, so you can pocket the surplus. To this end, they produce a musical called Springtime for Hitler written by escaped Nazi Franz Liebken. Then they get the insanely flamboyant Roger De Bris to direct. Finally, they hire as a lead actress the loopy Swedish bombshell Ulla (whose last name has over 15 syllables).

Wednesday 26th October 7 for 7.30

1st November 2016

Where The Tin Tabernacle, Portland Road, Hythe, CT 21 6FL. Parking in council car parks (including at Aldi) is free after 6 pm, and there are often spaces alongside the canal. Full disabled access.

When 7.30 on the first Tuesday of the month, from October to July. Doors open 7.00. ' Entry ÂŁ5 on the door, or ÂŁ3 for Hythe Cinema Card holders.

Preceded by a presentation from film pilot Will Samuelson

New season programme of films 1st November 2016

7th February 2017

Taxi Tehran

Pride

6th December 2016

7th March 2017

Whale Rider

Raise the Red Lantern

3rd January 2017

4th April 2017

Manon des Sources 13

Timbuktu

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In the early 1900s Charles Igglesden, the founder of the Kentish Express newspaper, travelled around Kent and recorded his journey in 26 volumes called Saunters Through Kent with Pen and Pencil. This is the third extract of his visit to Hythe taken from volume XXIV. You see so many of the old-world roofs below and the shingle and the sea in the distance. But perhaps the most glorious view is the one you obtain when entering the place by what is known as Hythe Hill, on the Ashford road. It might be a town in the Riviera that you see just below you, the Downs being miniatures of the Alpes Maritime.

There are many villas dotted about, but you only get a glimpse of their walls through a wealth of trees growing greener than they do in the South of France. As you go down the hill, woodland fringes one side of the road and across the way is undulating meadow land, where earthwork fortifications lurked centuries ago and are still visible owing to the peculiar formation of the ground.

Straight in front of you is the Channel, sparkling in the sun, and you get a glimpse of the snow-white surf lapping the beach when the weather is line, and lashing it with fury when the gales blow strong. And outside the bay, which extends from Dungeness to Folkestone cliffs, are the mighty ocean liners or the Channel boats, and, closer in, the fishing smacks trawling for fish not a mile out.

Looking down at the lower part of Hythe, a flat piece of land extending from the foot of the hills, across the canal, the many modern buildings that flank South Road and the parade and so out to the edge of the beach, it is easy to visualise, in imagination, how far the sea must have receded. Not so many years ago, as time flies, the waves would dash against the foot of the hills at the back of the town just as they do at the present time against the cliifs between Dover and St. Margaret’s Bay, for in those days the whole of the flat country, including Romney Marsh, was a part of the Channel. Presently, as we know, Lympne was left high and dry, but the sea came up nearly as far as the spot which is now the High Street of Hythe, and at its edge the original town was built. A natural harbour was formed by a belt of sandbank and mud out at sea, and a big strip of water, extending a mile towards Sandgate and a quarter of a mile wide, became a haven. Water covered all the level land seaward of the town. Then, by degrees, this harbour became silted up and the sea receded, the land was reclaimed during the last century, and to-day, on 17

the site of the old harbour, we find a wide promenade, grassland used as cricket and recreation grounds, many houses with gardens, quite fertile where soil abounds, but there is not much of it seaward of the Canal. Yet through tons of beach flowers grow plentifully, thanks to the mud of the old harbour underground.

The large garden at Oaklands, belonging to Dr. Randall Davis, is a case in point.

Looking at the large green lawn and surrounding flower beds, you can scarcely realise that just below the surface is a mass of beach; but the explanation is that in many places there are also stratas of mud of considerable depth, and Dr. Davis has a theory that a wide and powerful river once flowed through this bit of land and deposited soil on the seashore, as fast-running rivers will always do.

Two streams still run through Hythe, one from Newington and the other from Saltwood, while springs rise out of the ground in the churchyard. One of these streams is harnessed by a water-mill lying snug behind the town. Beyond it are the hills of Saltwood and the golf links, and in between them trickles a narrow stream, but with water of the purest. It tunnels the high road leading to the railway station, and then, flanked on one side by a row of willows and on the other side by sloping gardens, it broadens out into a lagoon-like millhead. Down rushes the water and turns a waterwheel for the grinding of corn. Many centuries ago a mill stood here, but the one you see to-day-built of brick and weather-boarding and hip-roofed at one spot -cannot be more than two hundred years old. As an ancient sentinel of the past, however, there stands the hollowed trunk of what once a monarch tree, now in its death throes, enveloped with ivy as its shroud.

But let us go back to the harbour during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the port existed and there were two landing places in the harbour, one called the Stade and one the Haven. We have Stade Street to-day, and it was probably the extreme western end of the harbour. Hasted tells us that there was a modern bridge at each end of the street. This would have been before the canal was made. The harbour, which was finally blocked up in 1634, must have been an important one in many ways, for here landed the European pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Thomas a’ Beckett at Canterbury. As one of the Cinque Ports, Hythe contributed five vessels, and each would be manned by armed sailors as well as marines. Can’t you imagine the tense anxiety with which this old town heard of the approach of the Spanish Armada? The hurry and scurry on other occasions, of threatened invasion by a French fleet-all the able-bodied men hurrying to the ships in harbour, the distracted women and children hiding in their houses or, far more likely, seeking refuge in the wooded hills behind. For rape and capture, and grim murder, as well as pillage, were rife in those days, when no town with a seaboard was safe day or night.

Fishing was always the main industry of Hythe, and, judging from the records of the 18

period, the inhabitants were a dirty lot. It is described in old records as “a place of streets full of filth and garbage,” and, in addition, “the most immoral of the Cinque Ports.” Later on, the streets became cleaner, but there was a continuance of immorality owing to the presence of so many soldiers in the locality.

There is still a road known as Barrack Hill, close to the School of Musketry, and on its slopes barracks were once built and enlarged during the Crimean War, and here was quartered the Foreign Legion, a company of soldiers recruited from the scum of many European countries. Close by were erected mud huts for wives and children!

The Waggon Train Barracks stood on the triangular piece of ground south of the Canal, between the Duke’s Head and Scanlon Bridge, and they were demolished in 1839. In Stade Street is a row of little houses, built of stone and whitewashed - all that remains of the old barracks. For these were used as officers’ quarters. And even to-day they give a picturesque touch to a street which is otherwise little villadom, for front gardens, decked with old-world flowers, run down to the road, and even' the old wooden palings refuse to leave us and give place to the formal fences of to-day.

Adjoining the barrack cottages in Stade Street is a quaint, solid, stone building, with a gabled front on which is carved the date 1801, with the first figure of peculiar design. It was the military gaol, but is now used as a mortuary, and here the bodies of wrecked sailors have frequently lain. For the bit of Channel off Hythe and Sandgate has always been a treacherous spot, especially to small sailing vessels at the mercy of a southwesterly gale. And at such times the parade on the sea front has badly suffered.

On three occasions the sea broke through the defences - one a hundred years ago and twice in 1877. It appears that one of the inundations took place in January and the other - the more serious one-on February 3rd, They were the result of tremendous gales and the heavy seas which battered the whole of the coast of Kent, but Hythe and Seabrook suffered the most. In the first instance huge waves forced their way over the beach, but in the second case the inundation occurred in a remarkable way. Gaining from previous experience, the authorities had banked up the beach in front of the promenade during a terrific gale, and this barricade withstood all attacks during the day. In the evening the wind dropped, the sea became calm, all fear of danger was dispelled, and the inhabitants went to rest feeling perfectly secure. In a report published by the Kentish Express, we gather that at midnight the sea rose gradually and so gently that scarcely anyone was aware that it was flowing over the banks of the beach and flooding hundreds of acres between Hythe and Seabrook. By the time morning broke all communication was cut off from the Marine Parade at Hythe, and persons were ferried across from Stade Street, which was flooded to a great depth, while all the basements were full 19

of water. The houses on the parade suffered in a similar degree. The sea had come in from a breach in front of the Seabrook Estate Company’s land and also through the west channel adjoining the Stade. However, the water did not flow over the Canal bank, and, consequently, it was confined to the land on the south side of the towing-path. Eventually it was decided to make a gap in the towing-path to let the water into the Canal, and this prevented the High Street from being flooded.

Going back to the position of Hythe as a military town, apart from the old barracks on the hill, now demolished, the present Small Arms School has for many years been a prominent feature of a soldier’s training. Indeed, there is no infantry officer in the British Army who does not know Hythe, as for many years every officer and many non-commissioned officers received their musketry training here. To-day, owing to the change in weapons of war, it is styled the Small Arms School, but it was erected in 1802 as permanent barracks for troops, and they dug the Military Canal from Seabrook to Appledore. Afterwards the Royal Staff Corps was formed, but this was disbanded, and among the troops who subsequently occupied the building was a detachment of the 29th Foot, the transport in which they were conveyed being wrecked at Dymchurch in May, 1842. Thirteen years afterwards, on August 7th, 1853, the Corps of Instructors in Musketry was inaugurated, and Hythe became its headquarters, and up to the present time it has been occupied by a staff of experts to instruct officers and non-commissioned officers in the use of the rifle and machine-gun. In 1861 it was named the School of Musketry. The ranges are on the beach flanking the Dymchurch road.

There is no doubt about the antiquity of Hythe when you approach its High Street, rounding a corner that is so dangerous that it becomes perfectly safe, for not even a drunken driver would think of quickly turning at right angles with the stone wall of the old malt house facing him. From one end of the street to the other it is narrow and winding, and the most sanguine advocate of broadening it would give up the task in despair. Not only are the principal houses and shops packed close together, but by-streets run out towards the sea, backing each other and forming a mass of buildings. And on the northern side are strange little alleys, passages leading to the terraced roads above, passages between walls of ancient stonework-always that wondrous material hewn from the famous stone quarries on the hill.

It is not so very long ago when Hythe High Street presented an old-world appearance, but the shopkeeper has come into his own and built palatial premises, while the banks, not knowing what else to do with their money, have erected handsome modern offices. Then there are the tradesmen who, with the desire of being up-to-date, have had the fronts of shops modernised by the building of a flat, tall wall obscuring the sloping roofs and hiding many an end beam which projected over the narrow footway not more than fifty years ago. Flat fronts are everywhere, for even the Red Lion, very red indeed, and standing in a large square at the bottom of the hill, is modernised in this way, although it cannot hide the older part of the structure in the background.

I can remember the street before the days of flat fronts, when the projecting beams 20

were still visible. To-day they have nearly all disappeared, although if you uneased the fascia of the Rose and Crown you would find them still there, and in many places besides. Another hostelry' is the Oak Inn in the High Street, with a quaint front and hipped roof, with wondrous carved figures of the lion and unicorn.

What is most remarkable is the medley of buildings, so different in size, in colouring, in the material of which they are built, and the style of architecture, and cosy indeed look those tiny structures standing snug between the bigger ones on either side.

The block that looks the oldest and brings to mind the appearance of the street fifty or sixty years ago extends from the corner of Marine Walk Street to the business premises of a dyer and nearly opposite the Town Hall. You see the sloping roofs running into each other as they did in olden days.

More modest are many of the buildings towards the Seabrook end of the street, and the King’s Head did not always boast of its pretentious front which we see to-day.

Not far away are three cottages standing rather lonely and apparently out of place with the surrounding commercial enterprises.

Just across the road is a large building, now converted into a shop, apparently old.

Not long ago an ancient building which stood here was pulled to pieces, and it was found necessary to erect a new front, but much of the interior timber, and even some of the projecting beams, have been preserved. Not far from the Congregational Church is the second ancient almshouse of Hythe, St. John’s, built at the same time as St. Bartholomew’s. The date which you can see, 1802, records the year in which it was restored. The almshouses themselves, which are for the accommodation of old people, are modestly built in stone, and run back a very short distance.

Here and there you see the Flemish style of architecture in the hipped roof, and one of these houses is at the corner of Theatre Street, once a private house but now converted into two shops below. The other is nearly opposite Bank Street, with an ordinary dormer projecting from an extraordinary roof, and now appropriately used as an artists’ material emporium. When some tea-rooms in the High Street were opened up recently several superb beams were found, and no doubt other similar discoveries would be made in many roofs.

The shop now occupied by Mr. Britcher and known as the Bon Marche must have been an important residence years ago, judging from the interior decoration. A short time since a beautiful oak Carved Jaceobean mantelpiece was taken from one of the rooms and sold to America, but there still remains some good panelling and 21

Adam decorative work.

Other buildings which were once private residences have been converted into business premises, and you find them in all places. For instance, the conspicuous flat front of the fishmonger’s shop belonging to Mr. E. W. Fullager hides an ancient building with old-fashioned dormers projecting from the tall, sloping roof. Appropriately called Propeller House is a building now used for business purposes but once a private residence, and here was born Sir Francis Pettit Smith in the year 1808. It was he who invented the steam screw propeller. He died in 1874, but his memory is kept green in the town of his birth, for an inscription on a stone in front of the house records his fame.

Two well-groomed buildings, with fat red-brick fronts, are the two important hostelries - the Swan and the White Hart - standing not far from each other in the middle of the High Street. On a stone let into the front of the Swan it is stated: “From London Bridge, 71 miles by Rochester. From Ashford, I2 miles.” Royalty visited this hostelry on more than one occasion a hundred years ago, and Mine Host supplied thirty pairs of post-horses when the King of Prussia visited the town in 1814. Later on, the Empress of Russia stayed here, and the bedroom she occupied can still be seen. The White Hart, next to the Town Hall, was in the sixteenth century a famous coaching house, and the Town Hall was actually built on the site of the yard. The old stables and coach houses are preserved, as well as the ostler’s bell and an old jack used for lifting the wheels of the coaches. The front of the White Hart is of comparative modern times, dating probably to the Georgian period, when so many houses in Hythe were re-fronted.

The two most picturesque buildings which survived past centuries until a short time ago were a school and a tiny building known as the Smugglers’ Retreat. The former, which stood on the spot which is now an open yard between an antique shop and a milliner’s shop in the High Street, had two very fine gables over the projecting storey, but it was pulled down about eighty years ago. The Smugglers’ Retreat was a small building, no bigger than a cottage, heavily covered in ivy which ran up to the top of a small chimney and enclosed a look-out dormer window in the centre of the roof. Tradition has it that smugglers occupied the house and from the window signalled to their comrades at sea, but I fear me that this can be only tradition, for the window is in a very prominent position and well within the sight of Excisemen as well as smugglers. A few years ago an endeavour was made to restore the old place, but immediately the builders commenced to look at the beams their frailty showed that reconstruction, or even restoration, was impossible. To the sorrow of the Hythe people, their little treasure had to come down, and we now see the large business premises of Mr. Strachan erected on the site. The only known hiding-place of the former smugglers is a cellar under a modern shop and known as The Smugglers’ Kitchen.

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Early in the 19th century smuggling was at its height, but there is no record of Hythe being concerned in any of the tragedies of the day. Yet the old houses of the place were known to be infested with dealers in contraband, and one night a party of Revenue officers raided the town. In one cellar, we are told, “six barrels of Hollands were discovered, but the occupant of the house said he knew nothing about it. Two men were arrested and placed in a room under the Town Hall, but they escaped,” and the man in charge of the prison that night was discharged the next day. Later, members of the Aldington gang were brought to Hythe when captured, but it was considered wiser to transfer them to Maidstone for safer custody.

Standing in the centre of the High Street is the Town Hall, which was rebuilt in 1794 on the same site as an older one which had been erected during Charles the Second’s reign. It cannot in any way be described as a beautiful building. Its yellowish plastered front is supported by four plain stone columns, and the only other feature is the projecting clock with the arms of the borough painted upon the drum-like frame. Not so many years ago the open space below the Council Chamber was used as a corn market every Thursday, but it was discontinued and a general market for vegetables introduced, while flower-stalls gave a patch of colour, and the business carried on made the place bright and merry, even if noisy.

In the “Kentish Gazette” of March, 1805, it is related how one of the labourers working on the Military Canal, having quarrelled with his wife, brought her with a cord round her neck to Hythe, where he tied her to a post in the market-place and put her up for sale. The big drummer of the 4th Foot, a mulatto, bought her and led her away. “She was not more than twenty years of age,” adds the writer, “and of a likely figure.”

Nothing could exceed the dinginess of the entrance to the Council Chamber to-day.

Even the steps by which you mount into the Council Chamber have been enclosed in boarding, and one can almost imagine that the mayors and aldermen and councillors of the borough are creeping in by a back door to carry on their deliberations above. Or it might be the entrance to a mausoleum. There is a quaint inscription on a stone in the wall of the passage that leads to the church and passes under the Town Hall: “All Persons are requested to unite their endeavours to keep this Place clean and to prevent Boys or others dirting the same.”

The Council Chamber above is a plain apartment when compared with similar rooms in other town halls, and at one end is the raised chair in which one would have expected the Mayor always to sit, but I am told that this is not the case, for the only official who occupies this high position is the Recorder during police proceedings.

The next edition of the Hythe Sentinel will include the last extract from Charles Igglesden's account of his visit and, as a thank you to your support, all four parts will be available in .pdf format and twenty in a booklet free of charge on a first come first served basis. It is great to walk the town with the document as a guide.

23

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