Helen Allinson, John Hull,

Peggy Jackson, Joy Lazzeri,

I recalled this at the Annual General Meeting on 26th April 07 and paid tribute to those founding stalwarts many of whom are still members of the present Management Committee. It is a joy and a privilege to be chairman of such a cohesive and constructive group of people who are bound together by a common desire to preserve and promote the history of Sittingbourne and district. The design of the displays is not the work of one person but of individual teams within the workforce. We decided to give each room to one person or to one team to build exhibitions and the necessary display units using the artefacts and materials we had been given by a wide range of people. When it was completed our visitors were surprised and pleased to see that all the themes came together to make a comprehensive story of the town.

There is an advantage to being a small museum; you can see the whole history of human occupation of this corner of Kent over at least the past five thousand years, from the Bronze Age to the present day, showing the marks that residents have left behind. That enables us to give visiting school parties a sense of time and continuity; an appreciation of what our forebears struggled to achieve and what we have inherited from them.

After the brief formal business of the AGM, receiving reports and electing people to the Management Committee, I gave an illustrated talk on the life and work of Mr. Don Sattin, barge builder and skipper. Don had donated to the museum his entire collection of historic photographs of barges being build, operating under sail and, in the end, being left to the elements at the finish of their useful life. I had interviewed Don about each of the photographs and made notes on all that he told me. I then typed this up into a script. The photographs were transferred onto a CD so that I could make a PowerPoint presentation of it. All of that information now resides in the museum so that anyone in the future could give the same illustrated talk. My hope is that it can be repeated in, say, 50 or 100 years time. We have in the museum other recorded interviews with people who have lived and worked in the area. We feel that this Oral History will be a precious heritage to leave to future generations of local historians (provided that the electronic recordings are still playable!).

Peter Morgan, Chairman