I spent today at the Centre’s study day entitled ‘How the Great War changed Kent, 1914–1928’ which took place at Old Sessions House. Even though the number of participants was small, those who came seemed to have an enjoyable and interesting time, and were very actively engaged in various discussions throughout the day. Being a medievalist, much of this was outside my area of knowledge but it was interesting to see how thematically there were considerable crossovers. Dr Martin Watts started the day off by giving us his observations on the role of Kent and its people during the Great War, because in some senses the county was not far behind the front line. This was particularly the case for the coastal towns such as the embarkation ports of Folkestone, Dover and Richborough; and the Royal Naval dockyards of Chatham, Sheerness, and Dover again, but also R.N. air stations at Westgate and Eastchurch. Also not far from the coast were the airfields of Lympne and Dymchurch, and probably Jellands Field – if anyone knows where this was please would they get in touch – and even the garrisons at Canterbury and Maidstone were really not that much further away, especially as there were air raids throughout Kent. This change to total war and its implications for the civilian population must have become abundantly clear on 2^nd April 1916 when 105 workers were killed at Faversham, but because it was a Sunday there were no women among the casualties – they were at home cooking the Sunday dinner. Yet any other day would have resulted in casualties of both sexes because women had become a vital part of the war effort, working as nurses, a ‘good’ female occupation, but also in the factories, on the land, and generally filling the boots vacated by the men.

Unveiling the war memorial in Canterbury

(www.roll-of-honour.com)

However once the war ended things changed, as had been agreed with the unions who wanted the jobs back for their members. Furthermore the economic problems, including high unemployment that had surfaced in the years prior to 1914, to a degree resurfaced in the economic downturn of 1920/1, thereby preventing social reform because there just wasn’t the money to implement the changes needed. So Martin considers that in many ways the war delayed the overhauling of society and this is most evident with respect to women’s opportunities. For a start 750,000 women were made redundant by 1919 and domestic service remained the largest sector with demand outstripping supply, although this was no longer in the great houses but as single maids in middle class households, often in London. Furthermore the end of the war also brought the formalisation of the marriage bar in teaching, nursing and the civil service, which I remember my grandmother and mother mentioning, the former meeting this after the Great War, the latter after WWII.

Nevertheless by the early 1930s there were stirrings in the countryside, and among the documents Martin provided for his workshop were those relating to the tithe disputes from this period. These disputes were particularly vitriolic in Kent, being in large part a consequence of the agricultural acts which saw the break-up of many large estates and the formation of small farms whose owners had taken out mortgages which became unviable when wartime support was withdrawn. Among the most vocal of these protestors was the Reverend Kedward of Westwell and so far as I know there is still memorial to this important social movement just off the A20 near the road to Hothfield. For those interested in this movement, which included the burning of effigies of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr John Bulaitis will be giving a lecture entitled ‘‘The Battle of the Ducks’ and other episodes from the ‘Kentish Tithe War’, 1930–36’ on Friday 2 October at 7.30pm at Old Sessions House. This Fourth Nightingale Memorial Lecture is a joint event between the Centre, Brook Agricultural Museum and Wye Historical Society and is open to all.

After lunch Dr David Budgen explored the experiences of Kentish children during the Great War. As he explained perhaps one of the most significant aspects of this was the work of the county’s boy scouts who took on various civil duties from guarding roads and reservoirs to putting out fires and looking for spies. Scouts and others also appear to have spent much of their spare time collecting, whether it was wool from hedges or conkers to make starch, while others were let off school or took time off to help bring in the potato harvest and undertake other farm work. Other disruptions to their education came from the commandeering of schools, staff shortages as male teachers went off to war and even bombing raids. The worst raid being on Folkestone when 27 children were killed, although even that had a lighter side in that one youngster remembered how she had been given sweets from a bomb-damaged shop. David also mentioned the relationships that were established between children and soldiers, either when old boys came back from the trenches to their old school to talk about their experiences, or through exchanges of letters.

For his workshop, David drew on his doctoral research by providing participants with materials from boys’ fiction, including several extracts from Chums and Lt.-Col. F.S. Brereton’s With Allenby in Palestine. A Story of the Latest Crusade. Like Martin’s documents, these too provoked considerable discussion, particularly the use of certain words such as ‘crusade’, and how the general tone of much of this material was intended to feed into the idea of adventure, of honour and courage, and, indeed, sacrifice. A classic example of this is Rowland Walker’s Oscar Danby V.C. (1916) that might even be seen as invoking an Our Lady of Pity-like posture of Christ’s broken body where ‘the Scotch laddie’s head lay across the breast of his brave leader’, even though in this case the brave leader was also dead.

Such ideas of sacrifice and its commemoration was considered in the third lecture and workshop when Drs Andrew Palmer and Sally Minogue explored memorialisation through war memorials and poetry. Starting with the war memorial in Canterbury’s Buttermarket, they went on to discuss the Cenotaph in Whitehall and various memorials in continental Europe. The two poets they focused on were Wilfrid Owen and Ivor Gurney, and, as well as looking at a couple of finished poems, they explored the process of composition with the participants. This was a very fruitful approach and provoked a lively discussion among the group.

To round off the day, Martin asked participants to ‘show and tell’ about any artefacts they had brought along. A number of people did so and among the objects was a permit book, which had belonged to the owner’s grandmother, thereby letting her go in and out of Dover because the port came under the Defence of the Realm Act. Three of the other objects were a next of kin memorial plaque, made of gun metal, brought by a granddaughter; an identity disc that had belonged to a naval service survivor, and an evocative Verdun memento. By this time it was 5pm and time to draw the study day to a close, although when I left just after there were still people talking, which would seem to indicate that the day had been a success.