Shoreham and the Dark Continent

On the west wall of St. Peter and St. Paul, Shoreham hangs a long forgotten Royal Academician. From a rural Kentish background of church and hills, the homecoming in 1875 of the vicar's son, Lt. Verney Lovett Cameron, RN., from deepest Africa, Cameron, a descendant of the Cameron of Lochiel who fought against the Young Pretender at Culloden in 1746, had been sent to Africa at the head of a small expedition organized by the Royal Geographical Society, to make contact with Dr. Livingstone. Finding the doctor already dead, the group pressed on across Africa, and in doing so, became the first Europeans to complete the crossing of the continent.

But the expedition lacked one essential in the days of Empire - the Union flag. Each man sacrificed a portion of his clothing in the requisite color so that one could be roughly sewn together. The tattered remnant brought home by Lt. Cameron hung for almost a century in his father's church, before being taken down by a later vicar who placed it in a wall cavity in an unknown part of the building. If it has not already rotted away, perhaps one day it may be retrieved.

Lt. Cameron died a few years later in a riding accident; his grave can be seen on the northeast side of the churchyard.

Joy Saynor.