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Memories of Kent

Where I Was Born

My Beginning, at Sole Street near Cobham Kent. (9th March 1946 - 2nd January 1951) I was born on Saturday March 9th 1946 at 3.29pm at Temperley, The Street, Sole Street, Kent. I was delivered at home by the local midwife and our doctor and family friend, Maxwell Landau with my Nanna, mother's mother, in attendance. There were many telegrams of congratulation including those from my father's parents, his younger brother Tony, Auntie Bell his mother's sister and husband Uncle Harry, mother's sister Rita and husband Rene, half-sisters Joy, Betty, Peggy, Norma and half-brother Bill, their respective husbands and wives and several friends and work colleagues. My first real memories are of my mother taking me out in my pram the following year in the snows of March 1947. Our small hamlet of Sole Street was completely cut off by the snow drifts that were in excess of five feet deep in places. To this day I can remember my mother struggling to push my big pram along the lanes and due to... Read more

Station Road, Meopham

My parents moved into Station Rd in 1963, as a newly married couple. There was a terrace of new houses built in Station Rd in 1962/63 & theirs was the furthest house down the road, the end of the terrace, I think No.28? I was born there in 1965.
I used to go to playgroup at the old Scout Hut at the other end of the village & remember one very embarrassing event when I was about 4..... My mum was collecting me from playgroup & the bus was just at the bus stop as we came round the corner of the drive. My mum didn't want us to miss the bus, & ran to catch it, dragging me across the road behind her...but she couldn't understand why I was holding back so hard, until she went to lift me up onto the bus & realised that my knicker elastic had broken & my knickers were around my ankles (as they had been since half way across the road!!),... Read more

National Sea Training College at Gravesend

The Thames From Pilot Station c1965
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I spent the academic year 1987/88 in Kent training to become a Careers Adviser on a post-graduate course run by Kent College for the Careers Service.

During my course I had to visit businesses, universities, schools and colleges all around the county (and beyond) but the visit that sticks in my memory more than any other is the day I visited the National Sea Training College at Gravesend.

Along with a handful of other students I spent a well organised day in Gravesend carefully taking notes from the instructors in Seamanship, Engineering and Catering. We watched Physical Education drills and inspected the premises and interviewed some of the college's young students. However, what we were really looking forward to was the final activity offered on our one day inspection - this was to be a practical experience of going out on the water in one of the college boats.

However, it was late afternoon and we were mystified to be told by the Seamanship... Read more

The Tilbury Ferry

The Tilbury Ferry 1961
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As the daughter of a Tilbury docker who married a girl from Gravesend, the ferry between Tilbury and Gravesend forms one of my earliest and strongest childhood memories. Every Saturday my sister and I would make the journey with my mum across the Thames to visit her mother (my Nanna Smith). I can still recall the pontoon, how the level changed with the tide and my fear of the murky water that lurked below. Those little ferries called Edith, Elizabeth and Mary that bobbed between Tilbury and Gravesend formed part of my psyche and I have fallen overboard hundreds and hundreds of times in my dreams. My mum's explanation that the varnished wooden slatted seats that we sat on were actually life rafts, didn't give me comfort. Mostly we travelled on the upper deck but if it was raining we would go downstairs and look our of the misty portholes and the 'humm' of the engines would make me nauseous. ... Read more

My First Glimpse of Gravesend.

I arrived in Gravesend in 1958 on the back of my boyfriend's motorbike, we had travelled from Colchester in Essex. My father, who was in the army, had been posted to Gravesend so we all had to move. We crossed the river Thames on the Tilbury to Gravesend Ferry and so landed and rode off the ferry and up the High Street to find the house where my parents had moved into.

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