Allen Grove Local History Fund

President’s legacy has supported local history for 24 years

By Paul Tritton

Five local history projects received grants in 2018 from our Allen Grove Local History Fund. Every year the society awards more than £3,000, apportioned among individuals, groups, organisations and students, to help cover the cost of research, publications, exhibitions and other projects focused on Kent’s history and heritage.

The successful applicants in 2018 were:

Eleanor Bliss, who received £250 towards publishing a biography of Margaret Agnes Babington OBE, who became steward to George Bell, Dean of Canterbury, in 1928. In 1927 Bell founded the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, the first organisation of its kind in the world. Miss Babington made a considerable contribution to its success, staging plays and concerts and enticing illustrious people such as John Masefield, Sir Adrian Boult, Gustav Holst, Dorothy L Sayers, Dame Myra Hess, Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw to the cathedral.

‘Miss Babs’, a Tenterden vicar’s daughter, was a “fundraiser extraordinaire and an incredible force,” said Eleanor. “She cajoled deans and bishops into getting things done! Hers was a life worth recording for posterity.”

Folkestone and District Local History Society: £500 to help publish The Folkestone Pulpit, a brief history of the town’s churches that existed in 1875.

The book will publicise the early histories of churches that were thought to have been lost, and help local historians with their research into their churches.

Kent Gardens Trust: £750 towards a book on five properties in Kent on which Humphry Repton, the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, worked (Bayham, Cobham, Kippington, Montreal and Vinters) and five others with which he is associated.

Wealden Iron Research Group:

£1,500 will help fund Adventures in Iron by Brian Awty, a book tracing the development of blast furnace technology from Belgium in the mid-fifteenth century to north Normandy and the Weald of south-east England, from where it spread into Kent after 1550.

Woodchurch Ancestry Group:

£325 to cover printing and publicising a collection of illustrated articles on the history of Woodchurch, including medical care in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, First World War recipes and smuggling.

The grants are made from the legacy of Allen Grove, one of Kent’s most eminent historians of his generation who was Hon. Curator of the KAS for 26 years (and its President in 1987/88), Curator of Maidstone Museum from 1948 to 1975 and Chairman of the Kent History Federation for eight years.

When Allen Grove died in 1990 he left £26,000 from the proceeds of the sale of his house to the KAS, with instructions that the society should invest the legacy and distribute the interest in ways that would promote the enjoyment of Kent’s local history (including that of the London Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham, which were once part of the county).

The first grants were made 24 years ago, in 1994, mainly to support the publication of books and booklets but also for displays in heritage centres, for oral history projects, & for establishing archives and research centres.

Application forms for 2019’s grants should be submitted by 31 March 2019 & can be downloaded from http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/ grants/ or obtained by email from allengroveadmin@kentarchaeology. org.uk or by post from the KAS.

Humphrey Repton in Kent

By Kent Gardens Trust

As part of a country-wide celebration of the work of the 19th-century landscape gardener Humphrey Repton, the Kent

Gardens Trust research team have produced a beautifully illustrated book describing Repton’s five commissions in Kent, with a short introduction to his life and artistic principles. Humphrey Repton in Kent is a companion volume to Capability Brown in Kent. It is 140 pages long and will interest not only garden historians but for anyone keen to know more about the social history of the county and the lives of the leading figures of the time. The research has revealed fascinating and hitherto unknown contemporary letters and drawings and has made extensive use of Repton’s famous Red Books.

Copies are available through ww.kentgardenstrust.org.uk and all good bookshops, priced £10 (Kent Garden Trust members £8), postage and packaging £3.50 extra. Kent Garden Trust members may obtain a discount code by contacting the Secretary, Lynn Phillips at lynn. phillips@kentgardenstrust.org.uk

Alternatively, a cheque for the appropriate amount may be forwarded to Lynn Phillips at Yew Cottage, Station Road, Eynsford, Kent DA4 0ER.

The Urgent Miss Babington

By Eleanor Bliss

Who would have thought that a few lines from a story in 1917 would start me off on a research project which has now culminated, seven years later, in me writing a book? It was the last thing on my mind when I signed up with my husband, Andrew, in 2011, to join a Tenterden Church Group visiting the Somme battlefields. Rev. Keith Fazzani told us about the life and death of Humfrey Babington, a young man who is listed on the St Mildred’s Church World War 1 War Memorial. The Babington family made an impression on me. The father was Rev J A Babington, vicar of St Mildred’s Church Tenterden from 1907 until he retired in 1924.

An older brother was a poet, and daughter Margaret stayed with her father throughout his ministry in Tenterden and later in Canterbury.

I began to research Margaret, little suspecting where her life story would take me. A valuable source of information was the archived Parish Magazines, written by

Rev Babington and his daughter. Margaret played a significant part in the history of Tenterden – indeed I found references to her being involved in 36 different groups, as secretary, treasurer or leader! She was a founding member of both the

Mother’s Union and WI in Tenterden. She worked tirelessly throughout the first war setting up and supporting the War Hospital Supply Depot at Homewood; she organised the National Egg Collection scheme in the town and surrounding villages; she raised vast amounts of money for various local charities and good causes – all a rehearsal for what she achieved when she moved to Canterbury in 1924. She lived in the Cathedral Precincts with her father. In 1928 Margaret was appointed the Secretary, Steward and Treasurer of The Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, and is credited with raising over a hundred thousand pounds for various cathedral projects. This is the equivalent of £1.65 million in today’s money. In 1937 she was awarded the OBE ‘for services to the cathedral’. She wrote a bestseller

• The Romance of Canterbury Cathedral. She was the driving force, along with Dean George Bell, behind the first Canterbury Festivals. Queen Elizabeth II sent a message of condolence to her family and friends when she died, and she was honoured by having two memorial plaques placed in Canterbury – one in the Cathedral and one in the Cloisters.

  However, this is only a part of her story. There is so much more…

  With the help of a grant from the Allen Grove Fund organised by KAS and a very helpful publisher – Ed Adams of Canterley Publishing

• I now find that I have written a ‘proper book’ with an ISBN! I am pleased to report that I have had some encouraging comments from various people who have already bought it from me.

Copies are available at £10. Postage is £1.50 for UK orders. Phone 01233 770082 or email eleanorbliss1@gmail.com

Profits will all go to St Mildred’s Church, Tenterden, where this project all started.

I have enjoyed researching and writing this book. I hope that you enjoy reading it.