Party like it’s 1311…
Hawkhurst fete last Saturday. It was started by this guy, Edward II, in 1311, who gave the land to the Abbots of Battle for a yearly fair. Same field. So that’s cool.
Have I ever described what the typical village fete is like? They’re of a pattern.
You take a cricket ground or other communal field and all around the edges are tents selling stuff. Food (cupcakes, fudge, honey, burgers), crafts, tat, art. Local charities. Fairground games.
In the middle is a display area, usually roped off with bales of hay to sit on. The entertainments vary depending on the size of the site. Hawks or horses or antique tractors. A brass band.
The little village ones usually have a fun dog show, with categories like The Waggiest Tail and the Fastest Sausage Eater.
Hawkhurst fete is on the small side, but it forever has a warm spot in my heart. In 2021, it was the first local fete to get permission after the long months of lockdown. I couldn’t believe it – people were hugging and shaking hands and not masking and standing close to each other. It was like a dream.
I have to tell you, it got really weird here. Man, I wish I’d kept a diary.
June 19, 2023 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 13
PWRR is not the sound tigers make
Last weekend it was a military show, and this was the military band that went with it. PWRR is the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment nicknamed The Tigers. Yes, Wales’s. I know it sounds awful. The band was very good, though they didn’t seem all that fierce.
This is where my black and white blog does everyone wrong. They still have those jaunty red coats our boys so loved to pick out in the woods. This just looks a muddle.
Pretty ordinary show, but these themed events are often repetitious. That’s part of the appeal in a way.
Okay. Right. Dead Pool tomorrow. You know what to do.
June 15, 2023 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 3
Guess
A complete door from a padded cell, dating from 1910. It came from Kent County Lunatic Asylum, founded in 1833, at Oakwood Hospital. The cell was used to keep patients in seclusion who were at risk of harming themselves or others.
The use of padded cells and straitjackets declined following the introduction of psychotropic drugs in the 1960s. However, those in Oakwood remained in place until the hospital’s closure in 1994, as it was cheaper than removing them.
Speaking of loonies, Carl wins the dick with Silvio Berlusconi. And he won it the old fashioned way – he picked Berlusconi two months ago. Y’all know what that means!
June 13, 2023 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 1
Victorian munificence
This is the Maidstone Museum. Sadly, it doesn’t look like this any more. Somebody’s stuck a modern glass facade on it. Imagine vandalizing these fine Dutch gables.
It’s a really great museum, though. I hit town very early for my appointment (they often cancel trains and I’m a nervous traveller) so I got to spend more than an hour here.
The core of it is this Elizabethan house, Chillington Manor, and you enter through a collection that is probably some of the original period furnishings. Elaborate sideboards and chip carved boxes and chairs. Brown furniture. The main dining hall has a motion sensor that disconcertingly plays a pavane when you go in. I walked through that room a bunch of times and I was mighty sick of crumhorn by the end.
It was one of these ancient houses that has been added to over and over again, so there are unexpected rooms and half-height floors and cubbyholes everywhere. I got lost multiple ties and still didn’t see it all.
It was an odd, muddled collection like an old-fashioned town museum, but with world class objects. Wikipedia says it better:
The Museum is recognised as having the largest mixed collections in the county and one of the most important in the south-east of England, outside London. Whilst its origins are typical of a regional museum created through Victorian munificence, the work of collectors, staff and benefactors over almost 150 years has created a comprehensive collection of worldwide significance.
There was a section on dinosaurs, an Egyptian wing (with mummy!), a large natural history collection (read: stuffed animals), one of the most important Japanese collections in the country that I somehow managed to miss completely, glass, ceramics, art, a Hall of Frocks and The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum.
I could entertain you for weeks with what I saw but, you’ll be relieved to hear, conditions were dark and most of my pictures suffered from camera shake. I can only hope to bore you for a few days.
June 8, 2023 — 5:52 pm
Comments: 6
Well, that’s…something
If you can’t read it, it says “1868 – last publicly hanged woman in Britain.”
She wasn’t executed on that exact spot – this is on the path in the mall. The old Maidstone Gaol is about a thousand feet away. It’s been a jail for over 200 years; what’s left of it is currently a sex offenders unit. Reggie Kray married his girlfriend there in 1997.
Frances Kidder married the man who fathered her child and then found he already had a daughter. She was not pleased. Neighbors said she could be heard beating Louisa of a night.
One day, they were visiting relatives in New Romney and Frances and Louisa went for a walk. Frances came back alone and said Louisa fell in a ditch or something, whatever.
At her trial, her mother, father, husband and sister gave evidence how much Frances hated Louisa (which probably says something about how the family felt about Frances). She was hanged in front of the jail at noon on 2 April 1868. She was twenty-five. Her husband was already living with her sister by then and they both were in the crowd.
People, eh?
It was Maidstone day today. I went all by myself on the train like a big girl and had my fingerprints taken in aid of my citizenship application. It was all very pleasant, but I’m whacked. I’ll know if I succeeded in six months.
June 7, 2023 — 6:07 pm
Comments: 3
And then there was the Pearly Queen
Not exactly livestock. The pearlies are a charitable organization. Victorian street sweeper and colorful urchin Henry Croft was the first. He sewed pearl buttons to his clothes to raise attention to his fundraising for the local hospital.
When he died in 1930, he was followed by a procession of 400 pearly kings and queens. They raise money for lots of charitable organizations, traditionally hospitals.
I remembered pearlies in Mary Poppins, but on reflection, I think they’re just cockneys with ornamental buttons. They’re not quite buttony enough for royalty.
This lady seemed to enjoy having her picture taken, but she didn’t hit us up for any money.
May 30, 2023 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 2
Nouveau as all get out
Check this out. It’s Mr and Mrs Kipling’s invitation to George V’s coronation in 1911. It’s a cracking thing. From the May monthly newsletter of The Keep, which is the East Sussex record archive.
I wanted to link to a bigger version for you, but I haven’t yet found it in their Kipling papers. I haven’t looked very hard.
The Keep is in a place called Falmer (if you play Skyrim you’ll know why that tickles me) near Brighton.
it’s kind of miserable to visit in person. You have to get a reader’s ticket in advance and you have to know exactly what you want to see – no browsing the collection. Staff can be rude.
But it’s fun to browse online. At least, it is if you live in Sussex. They have quite a lot of their papers digitized and searchable. Periodically, I do a search of the name of our house + the name of our parish to see what turns up. There was a man of that name in this (very small) parish in the 1820s, so that’s probably our guy.
Nothing new has turned up for a while, though. I have a feeling the gub’ment scanning money has dried up.
May 10, 2023 — 7:52 pm
Comments: 6
Too soon?
Charles has already said he isn’t going to have a hands-off approach to current events like his mother did. He intends to be an activist king, and Net Zero is his passion.
This is very bad news for the monarchy, though he clearly doesn’t know it yet. It’s on shaky ground with a lot of people as it is.
Can you imagine a whole country huddling in the dark in the cold eating bugs while a man in a jeweled hat sitting on a gold chair in a marble palace harangues them for their selfishness?
May 9, 2023 — 6:01 pm
Comments: 9
Ominous
In case you missed it, the Grim Reaper walked past the doorway during the coronation Saturday. I haven’t read an official explanation, but it’s surely a non-ghostly member of the cathedral staff who put his hood up at an inopportune moment.
Yes, I watched. I wasn’t going to, but my cousin from Alabama called to tell me she got up at 4am to watch (who knew I had a monarchist in the family?) and that shamed me into it.
I was astonished at how much Jesus there was in the ceremony. So many prayers. If I had to guess, I’d say most of the sermonizing was from the Reformation – all that emphasis on upholding Protestantism.
Penny Mordaunt held that sword straight up for two freaking hours and looked good doing it. Mad respect. It’s a shame she’s a WEF stooge.
Anyway, it was a heck of a spectacle and I’m glad I watched. Brits do spectacle. I had hoped to find pictures of the Barons of the Cinque Ports at the do, just to round the week out, but nobody’s published any yet.
Tomorrow – back to work!
May 8, 2023 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 7
Shithouse for sale
Today, I had coffee with a woman who has a Grade II listed outhouse in her back yard. It lost its seat years ago and has been a garden shed since forever, but it was once and for a very long time the privy that served the whole street. (!!!)
That’s not it in the picture, though. That’s a modern shed that you can buy fully assembled for $3,044 (the kit is a little cheaper).
Anyway, we fell to talking. All of us live or have lived in very old houses. So, naturally, we began to discuss ghosts.
Not me. I’m as psychic as a potato. I live in a 500 year old house and I haven’t experienced so much as a cold spot.
They weren’t exciting stories – footsteps in an empty house, being poked in the ribs by a Nothing There – but I felt cheated that I don’t seem to have that sense. It’s like being color blind. Or, I dunno – maybe they’re nuts.
Any psychics out there?
p.s. Why do outhouses have moons carved in them. Nobody knows for sure.
p.p.s. RIP Dame Edna. New Dead Pool Friday.
April 24, 2023 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 10