Forthcoming Events

Saturday 30 September:- Open Meeting - in the Mayfield Memorial Hall - to mark the Mayfield History Society’s 30th Anniversary. Doors open at 18:30 for a Local History Exhibition with images of the Elizabethan Mayfield Cannon salvaged off Gravesend only last year, forged at the Mayfield Gun Foundry of Sir Thomas Gresham, together with copies of the original Patents for Cannon production only just discovered at the Lewes Record Office. Followed at 19:30 by Archive Films about Sussex and Sussex Life by Tim Cornish. WHS members will be made welcome.

Saturday 1 October:- Our autumn visit will be to Chatham Dockyard, leaving The Greyhound at 09:00. After coffee/tea, we have a 1½ hour conducted tour ‘In the Footsteps of Nelson’; this will set the background for our meeting on 2 Nov when Heather Woodward will be talking about Nelson. After lunch and private exploration, we join the Kingswear Castle for a cruise along the Medway. We will return to Wadhurst by 18:30. RR

Saturday 8 Oct:- East Grinstead Local History Fair is taking place in the Meridian Hall, East Grinstead from 10:00 to 16:30. Last year’s fair was an eye opener about what other societies have achieved - well worth a visit.

Wednesday Oct 19:- at 14:00 Dr Ian Beavis will be leading a walk round Tunbridge Wells Common, starting from the Fir Tree Road carpark. If wet, the visit will be round the Museum.

Monday Oct 24:- Dr. Ann Kneif (a historian and also a guide at Leeds Castle in Kent) will be giving a presentation and talk on Leeds Castle in Bells Yew Green Village Hall at 19:30. Tickets are £3 each (to include tea and biscuits afterwards) and can be obtained from Frant Village Stores or at the door. Further information is available from Sue Petrie (01892 542 894 or e-mail).

Notes on Society Meetings

Wednesday 1 June:- Putting Batemans to Bed
Our talk by June Laycock centred on what in most households might be called spring-cleaning. The normal household, having got the house dirtier in the winter than in the summer, does its spring-cleaning in the spring whilst the National Trust having put the house to good use in the more clement seasons of the year has to do its spring-cleaning between November and March.

But the use to which it is put consists of 75000 visitors and this puts much pressure on the fabric of the house and its contents. Together with many interesting and amusing tales and readings about the Kipling family, June told us about the hows and whys of putting the house to bed.

Every item in the house has its own specialised treatment to prepare it for the next season and these treatments need their own implements. These include pony hair and hogs hair brushes together with badger hair shaving brushes for the books. The furniture is polished (once a year only), moved to the middle of the room, covered with acid free tissue and then its own special cover; all the while the cleaners are wearing cotton gloves. Chairs are lifted by the legs only so as not to put stress on the backs.

It is not moth that is a problem with the carpets but the woolly bear, the larva of the carpet beetle. Accordingly carpets are hoovered on both sides, then rolled and put in a cupboard. Squeezed cotton wool dipped in mild detergent cleans porcelain; any gilding is not touched at all. The problems for the books include silver fish and woodworm. Members of NADFAS clean all the books; these must not be taken off the shelf by the spine but carefully lifted down, brushed page by page, and replaced on the shelf making sure that the back edge does not touch the back of the shelf. The books still smell smoky, 70 years after Kipling’s death.

If any real problems occur, the services of the senior National Trust conservators are available for advice or practical assistance. And then there’s still the garden and the mill to put to bed as well!      Jeremy Oldershaw

Wednesday 6 July:- Military Aviation in Northern France
Kicking off Wadhurst’s week of celebration and remembrance - 60 years after the end of World War II and 90 years after the Battle of Aubers Ridge - the Society exploited the links built with Aubers by the Twinning Association and invited Jocelyn Leclerq to cross the Channel and give us the benefit of his encyclopædic knowledge of the exploits of the Royal Flying Corps and the RAF over the fields of northern France in both World Wars.

Fascinated by the subject since his childhood, Joss has become one of the few acknowledged experts in this field, both through extensive reading and by serious research with a small group of friends. Speaking in impeccable English, he enthralled the largest audience we have had to date with a mixture of battle history and personal details about some of the pilots involved across both wars.

He began his talk with an aerial photo of Aubers on 21 March 1915, just before the battle that led to our twinning, and mentioned some of the British airmen who lost their lives in the skies of the Weppes: Albert Ball, Mick Mannock, William Rhodes-Moorhouse VC.

Moving on to the Second World War, he briefly mentioned the deployment of early British mobile radar units to northern France in 1939 - and their hasty withdrawal with the collapse of France in 1940. He then gave us a fascinating insight into the air battles over the Weppes area in 1940 and later during the war.

Joss did not limit his talk to British airmen but explored in detail the career of some of the Polish airmen, who fought with us: Jozef Bondar, flying a Spitfire, was finally shot down on his way to Commines; Joss was instrumental in constructing a memorial to him in Aubers. He also did some remarkable detective work over the fate of Sgt Bramble, who was shot down on 21 July 1941. His talk concluded with some details of the ‘Easter bombing’ of a railway marshalling yard at Lomme on the night of 9/10 April 1944, when 168 Halifax bombers, 22 Stirlings and 40 Lancasters dropped more than 2000 bombs on the area, killing some 500 local inhabitants.

All in all a remarkable performance from a remarkable man: an evening to remember.       MJH

Sunday 31 July:- Mad Jack - by foot
The History Society was grateful to be part of the wider life of Wadhurst in July. The month began with our part in the 60/90 celebrations through Joss Leclercq’s informative talk and ended with a kind invitation from Wadhurst Footpaths Society to join its members on a tour of the follies which Mad Jack Fuller had erected around his Rose Hill estate in the early 19th Century. After Geoff Hutchinson’s celebration with us of Mad Jack earlier in the year, it was good to see the follies at first hand, brought to life by Paul Eldridge’s excellent guidance during a five mile ramble. The forecast had predicted a dry afternoon, but it did not entirely start that way for the twenty three walkers, some in optimistic shorts and T shirts.

We began near Brightling Needle itself, which may well have been a tribute to Wellington and Waterloo, like similar obelisks in Phoenix Park and in the Border Country. We then walked over to the first of Mad Jack’s buildings, the Coadestone summerhouse which he had put up in 1803. A little further on we had our first sight of the Rotunda Temple, its Grecian style prominent in the middle of Brightling Park. The Temple was a feature of one of Turner’s paintings when he had been on one of his visits to Jack. The next stop was at Brightling’s beautiful church, adjacent to Rose Hill itself, and the huge mausoleum pyramid which Jack Fuller had negotiated from the vicar in the corner of the churchyard.

Clearing skies brought a lovely walk through the Sussex countryside to the Tower and then to the Sugar Loaf. The Tower may have been Jack’s means of checking progress on the repair of Bodiam Castle which he had bought in 1828. The Sugar Loaf may have been his instant response to a need to win a wager that the tower of Dallington Church could be seen from his home. It could not, but the rapidly erected Sugar Loaf was a convincing substitute.

It was a fascinating and exhilarating afternoon. Thank you to the members of our excellent Footpaths Society, and to Paul Eldridge in particular, for their thoughtfulness in including us in their programme.       DJ

Sunday 7 August SUMMER BARBECUE:- by kind invitation of Malcolm and Marion Williams at Walland. The sun shone, the company good, the food excellent, what more could one ask for…? Our thanks to Marion and Malcolm for their welcome, to John Lamplugh for the pig and the hours spent cooking it, to the people who brought, erected and dismantled marquees and furniture, to those who gave raffle prizes or brought produce for sale or prepared food, and to all those ‘on duty’ on the day. Finally, our thanks to all who bought tickets in support!     RR

The Society’s Progress

As we approach the second anniversary of the meeting that led to the setting up of the Wadhurst History Society, we can see a very successful society: with 158 subscriptions, representing 231 members, five working groups looking at many aspects of our history, very well attended meetings and outings, and finances that are extremely healthy. For Christmas we plan to produce a modest book on Victorian Wadhurst; members will, on this occasion, get one copy per household free. Copies will also be on sale to the general public and members to use as Christmas presents.

As members will be aware, we are also considering setting the Society up as a charity; this would give us one substantial benefit - the recovery of income tax on subscriptions from all those members who so agree, adding 28% to our subscription revenue. There are other lesser benefits - not least in our standing in the wider local history community.
Discussions with officials in the Charity Commission suggest that charitable status is likely to be fully acceptable to the Commission; our constitution will, however, need amendment. The Commission offers a draft constitution, which your committee believe will prove fully acceptable; it is - inevitably – long and highly legalistic but, if it is accepted by members at the Annual General Meeting in December, charity status should follow almost automatically.

The main change is that the Society has to be run by an elected group of Trustees, rather than a simple committee as at present; the duties of the Trustees are not seen as particularly onerous – and the draft constitution allows the Trustees to delegate the daily running of the Society to a management committee, which we suggest should be organised on the same lines as the present committee, with the Trustees ex officio members of that committee and reserving unto themselves the major policy and financial decisions of the charity.

The draft constitution will be available to members at the November meeting and on the History Society website; as it runs to eight sides of A4 fine type, we do not plan to circulate copies to every member of the Society but, of course, any member who cannot see a copy at the November meeting or access the text on the website, is welcome to ask any committee member for a copy.

There will also be revised rules for the day to day running of the Society; these too will be available in November for discussion at the AGM.