Lectures

10th January 2018: Members’ Evening

Cilla Deeks and Jill Wyld gave us an illustrated talk on fires in Wye from the photographic archive. After a series of catastrophic fires Wye obtained its own fire engine in 1908 but before this help had to be summoned from Ashford and Chilham by telegram or bicycle. On 26 October 1889 renovations were being carried out at the Star Brewery on Church Street. A discarded match caused a fire which quickly spread to Clarabut’s drapers shop and the King Head. A telegram was sent to Ashford Fire Brigade at 6.40 but they didn’t arrive until 7.45. The hoses couldn’t reach the river – new ones were ordered by train but these didn’t work and burst, the Chilham Castle fire engine came to help but the fire took hours to get under control and the damage exceeded £10,000. The site was bought by Mr Taylor in 1923 for a second garage and houses were built there in the 1980s. Another catastrophic fire was at Olantigh Towers on 11 December 1903. It began as a chimney fire in the dining room. Servants escaped in nightclothes and Mr Earl Drax had to climb down the ivy carrying his wife’s portrait and her jewellery. A fire engine was summoned by bicycle and the horse drawn Ashford steam fire engine pumped water from the lake. The residential block was gutted and the roof collapsed. The picture gallery was saved by an iron door. The house was rebuilt on a smaller scale in 1911. There were also a couple of notable farm fires in this period. On 18 August 1904 17 stacks of corn burned for two days and two nights at Coldharbour Farm, destroying the Dutch barn. At Spring Grove Farm Mr Amos’s oasts caught fire – the round oast was saved but the square one burnt down. The last large fire of the era was at the hop pickers’ huts opposite Wye station. The new manual horse drawn fire engine at Wye was kept beside Taylors Yard on Bridge Street and the horses were kept at the New Flying Horse. A mechanised engine was bought in 1938.

This talk was followed by a display and short talk about John Moat's finds at the Palmstead plant nursery site on Harville Road, Wye by Maureen De Saxe. Maureen showed us maps of the area and explained that the finds turning up at Palmstead range in date from the prehistoric to the Victorian. There is a broken Neolithic flint axe head and a mystery black glass object, which the finds officer in Maidstone is keen to see. Roman coins have been found – there is a known villa site near the river. Military finds - buttons, bullets and bottles, etc. – are connected to when the area contained billeted soldiers in the 18th century (this is shown on Hasted’s map in 1798). Later the area housed Victorian hop pickers and evidence of family life has been found, such as small children’s toys, marbles and pottery. Fragments of printing blocks have been found all over the site so was there a print works here too?

Ellie Morris