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Gallery

The Horace Grensted scrapbooks (all 17 of them) have been examined and we have arranged to purchase copies of the photograph of pupils at the Wesley Methodist School which was in East Street in the 1880s. This will form part of a future journal together with other details we have studied.

The Crown Quay Cache

We received a phone call from some employees of Jewson, Builders’ Merchant, who occupy the site in Crown Quay Lane, which used to be the barge building yard of Charles Burley, brick makers of Sittingbourne and barge owner. That business was sold to Wills & Packham also into bricks and barges.

In the roof space of the main barge-building shed, the Jewson employees had found four large boxes of documents. Inside were Apprentices’ Indentures, Company Minutes, land transfer records, lists of vehicles owned and even a parchment which was dated 1595 and appears to be in Latin. We went to examine the contents of the boxes and were granted permission to make a simple catalogue of what was there. Application was made to the Board of Directors of Jewson & Co. for all the documents to be donated to the Sittingbourne Heritage Museum and that was granted. They are now with us and are awaiting further detailed examination.

We will have more to report in the future of other exciting gifts the museum has received further revealing aspects of local history.

Peter J. Morgan  (Chairman)

Inns and Pubs - book

The local history study group spent months researching this book. We are only having a hundred produced to begin with. This gives us a chance to add to and change later editions, so if you have already read it and discovered a mistake or have an anecdote to add please let us know.

One thing which struck me was the role of the Rev George Simpson in developing Sittingbourne when the railway arrived. He was the vicar of Bobbing, and a large landowner. He did very well by selling what had been agricultural land for building. No less than eleven pubs, as well as numerous houses, were built on the plots of land he sold near the station. Generally these pubs were erected with a couple of houses beside them in the plot. It was a time when Berry Street, Station Street, Cross Street and Pembury Street were being laid out running from the High Street north towards the station.  Clearly the Rev Simpson had no objections to alcohol!

Another interesting discovery was the extent to which in Victorian times, the pubs of Milton served as boarding houses for young single men from further afield who worked as casual labour in the neighbouring brickfields and on the creek. The landlady would have cooked them hearty breakfasts and teas and done their washing for extra money.

In our group we had several members with family connections to pubs and they were able to add those invaluable personal touches to our history. So we know of the landlord who played the bugle, the parrot who imitated the customers, the regular who came straight to the bar from emptying the cess-pits accompanied by his own special smell!

Helen Allinson

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