Lectures

2nd February 2022: Ashford’s Hidden Treasures

Many of you will know the Radio 4 series the History of the World in 100 Objects: the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, talking one week about a stone chopping tool from Tanzania and the next about a solar-powered lamp and charger from China, each object more fascinating than the last. That series was the inspiration for a much more humble endeavour called Ashford’s Hidden Treasures. This National Lottery Heritage Fund project was run in 2021 by my company Funder Films CIC and involved talking to curators and archivists of museums and archives in the Borough of Ashford about their favourite objects, recording interviews on Zoom and then putting the films up on Facebook. In this way I pieced together a sort of sketchy history of the Borough in 26 objects.

We had a 40,000-year-old handaxe - could it really be that old? A couple of locomotives. Ellen Terry's beetlewing dress from Smallhythe Place. A picture of kindertransport children from Woodchurch Museum. A section of an Airship Chain from Godmersham Heritage Centre. The Kentish pole wagon from Brook Agricultural Museum. An Ancient Briton from Wye College… too many to list here. Not all the objects are currently in the Borough. In an attempt to link the local with the national, we decided that we would also look at objects that originated in Ashford but were now in national museums. The locomotives, for example, are at the National Railway Museums in York and Darlington, while the Crundale Buckle is in the British Museum. Some of the documents are with Kent Archives in Maidstone - the Earl of Thanet’s ledger (1706-12) is a personal favourite of mine.

At the end of the project Wye Historical Society kindly gave me a platform to mull over which had been the most well-received films on Facebook. I titled the talk Ashford's Hidden Treasures - The Top 10 Hits. Delving into the figures - I felt like one of those statisticians that populate our tv screens at election times - I discovered that the films had technically all been 'seen' by about 7000 people. Generally, however about 700 watched for more than 15 seconds and between 60 and 200 people watched them right the way through. So much for modern attention spans!

I also discovered that my audience tended to be over the age of 65 and that men seem to be drawn to films about trains! The Tenterden Tapestry fared badly because it came out on the same day that England played Germany in the Euros. The most popular films? The model Eurostar from the Ashford International Model Railway Education Centre was third - perhaps because the education centre has just opened. Sir John Fogge’s 15th-century tilting helmet was second. And number one? Well… the painting of Wye Racecourse of course! This was extremely fitting because this was the object suggested by Wye Historical Society and Maureen de Saxe, the archivist, was the interviewee.

If you'd like to watch the films, you can do so by visiting the Ashford Borough Council website: https://www.ashford.gov.uk/your-community/history-and-heritage/ashford-s-hidden-treasures.

Jasper Bouverie