Memories of Shoreham
Here we have some of the memories and stories that people have of their time in Shoreham. Some of these are extracts from the publications that are available on our 'Publications' page, here....
Charles Wesley, a leader of the Methodist movement, preaches to a hostile congregation at Shoreham Church in 1744....
“The wild beasts began roaring and storming, blaspheming, ringing the bells and turning the church into a bear garden. I spoke for half an hour… the rioters followed us to [the vicar] Mr Perronet’s house raging… Charles Perronet [the vicar’s son] hung over me to intercept the blows.” Quoted in “Shoreham: A Village in Kent” by Malcolm White and Joy Saynor
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Robin Wood remembers swimming in the river after the war....
“In the late Forties they used to dam the river up. Where the Manor Drain today goes under the river, in those days it was in a pipe on the river bed, so if you built up bricks on it you could raise the water. In the area [near Water House] they now call the Green, it was deep enough to swim – you could dive in. All the village used to swim there. But that all stopped when polio came along – it wasn’t safe to swim there any more.”
“In the late Forties they used to dam the river up. Where the Manor Drain today goes under the river, in those days it was in a pipe on the river bed, so if you built up bricks on it you could raise the water. In the area [near Water House] they now call the Green, it was deep enough to swim – you could dive in. All the village used to swim there. But that all stopped when polio came along – it wasn’t safe to swim there any more.”
From Historical Society Publication No 41, “The Shoreham We Knew”
C. W. Barnett, a ten-year-old evacuee to Shoreham in 1939....
“The local school found it quite impossible to accommodate all of us. The village children went to the small village school as usual, and as many vaccies as possible were also crammed in. This left as many as eighty with no classroom or teacher. The problem was partly resolved by splitting the group into two parts, one for morning sessions, the other for afternoons… The shelter on the Rec became our classroom, measuring 6 feet by 15 feet and open along one side… Whenever it rained, the classes had to be cancelled, and because I was allocated to the morning group, I would have the whole day off if there had been an overnight shower.” |
From Historical Society Publication No 22, “Vaccy”
Muriel Smith, a kitchen maid at Shoreham House in the early 1930s....
“By now it was coming up to Christmas… All the food was prepared in the house. Everything went well until Mr Driscoll [the chef] started to drink on Christmas Eve and it all went wrong! The butler gave him a glass of whisky before lunch, and it didn’t stop at one, so by the time we had to start preparing the evening meal he had had too many… He started to throw things about and very near went berserk. We were frightened and left the kitchen and ran to our rooms… How we managed to get the meal on time I don’t know… Lady Gregory didn’t know about it until after Christmas, as the chef had already had his orders for Christmas. So what he told her I never did know but he was very quiet after that.”
From Historical Society Publication No 4 “Muriel Smith: A Shoreham Life”
From Historical Society Publication No 4 “Muriel Smith: A Shoreham Life”
Raymond Cornwell, a Shoreham schoolboy during the Second World War....
“In 1944 and 1945 came the flying bombs. One night my father saw a V-1 (a “doodlebug”) coming in very low, straight in the direction of our house. “Get into the shelter!” he yelled at me. Then it dived towards the river near the centre of the village and exploded… No one was hurt, but Meadow Cottage was lost… The same thing happened yet again on a Sunday along Filston Lane. My parents often invited an airman from the barrage-balloon site on Filston Lane over for lunch, and on this occasion I went to meet him… We got as far as Hopgarden Cottages when a V-1 hit a balloon cable and dived down towards the earth. The sergeant threw me over the hedge and lay across me until the flying bomb exploded.”
From Historical Society Publication No. 39 “My Wartime Boyhood”
From Historical Society Publication No. 39 “My Wartime Boyhood”
Rose Wootton, born in Shoreham in 1918....
Before the Great War it had been customary for the village girls to go into service as maids in the big houses… and this
is what happened to my mother in the early 1900s. On her
first day she was sweeping the stair carpet on hands and knees when she found something lumpy under the edge of
the carpet and took out a silver coin. She went to the head housekeeper and handed it to her. Back home, she told her mother about this and her mother was incensed. She had recognised this… as a test commonly performed on new
staff to check their honesty. The Cheeseman family were known to be respectable, Granny said… it was an insult to
test out a daughter of theirs in that way.”
is what happened to my mother in the early 1900s. On her
first day she was sweeping the stair carpet on hands and knees when she found something lumpy under the edge of
the carpet and took out a silver coin. She went to the head housekeeper and handed it to her. Back home, she told her mother about this and her mother was incensed. She had recognised this… as a test commonly performed on new
staff to check their honesty. The Cheeseman family were known to be respectable, Granny said… it was an insult to
test out a daughter of theirs in that way.”
From Historical Society Publication No 34 “A Shoreham Childhood”
F. W. Thomas, a soldier from Shoreham, describes the First World War....
“I am very lucky to be alive… The shells came down round our trench like hail, and they also had a maxim gun playing on us all the morning. So the officer in charge, the only one left in my company out of five, passed it down, ‘Every man for himself, make a run for it.’ So we did and as soon as we had got out of the trench I saw some of my company in front of me killed and I had luck getting away with a wound in my shoulder… I am getting on splendidly [in hospital] and I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t send us back as soon as we are able to do our work.”
From the Parish Magazine, September 1914
Charles Cook, a servant to the Mildmays at Shoreham Place between the wars....
“One day I had to take a message to the head gardener and as I approached the lupins I saw a man in a funny-shaped hat painting the scene. I asked the gardener who it was and he said it was somebody called Churchill from Chartwell… Apparently he had been several years before, but he came and went unannounced and never came into the house…
When I came back to the house I tried to sneak a look at the painting and got the frostiest glare that immediately sent me on my way.”
Read more about the Mildmays in Historical Society Publication No 29, “The Mildmay Family and Shoreham”
When I came back to the house I tried to sneak a look at the painting and got the frostiest glare that immediately sent me on my way.”
Read more about the Mildmays in Historical Society Publication No 29, “The Mildmay Family and Shoreham”
Samuel Palmer, artist, on eating and drinking in Shoreham in 1834....
“I seldom take animal food and know when I do that I am exceeding my year’s supply, so that the sweet in the mouth turns sour on the conscience – and therefore I prefer bread and butter and apples washed down with a draught of my only luxury, weak green tea… Know then that you may now have from Mr Waring’s the rich farmer at Chelsfield as much of the best possible cyder undiluted and unadulterated as you please at one shilling per gallon.” From a letter to his friend George Richmond, October 1834 |
Margaret D’Eye, a villager during the bombing of 1940....
“We have had a time. Poor Shoreham at last has actually had it pretty bad, all the cottages nearest the butchers and the opposite side where the Readers live have all been caught. The cottages this side of the road have completely gone, and the others just walls. A miracle no one was killed… The blast blew open the doors, and through the open window it looked as if the garden was on fire. Right through the village incendiary bombs were dropping and flares made it brighter than day… [The shelter] was soon full of people from the cottages where the bombs had fallen. Most suffering from shock, but quite plucky.”
Read more accounts of wartime Shoreham in Historical Society Publication No 19, “Shoreham Remembers 1939-1945”, and in our book “Shoreham at War”
Bob Hallier, son of the chauffeur to Sir Herbert and Lady Cohen at the Highfield estate in the 1930s....
“Grass cutting and corn harvesting were particularly exciting. First a strip had to be cut with scythes around the headlands to allow in the cutting equipment. The cutter, or reaper and binder, worked clockwise around the field towards the centre. All the men had guns kept handy and the closer the cutter came to the centre the more the tension mounted. Jack, sitting high on the cutter, would spot a movement and sound an alarm, and then a rabbit would break cover and make for the hedges running the gauntlet of the guns. There could be a dozen or more rabbits trapped in the field. At the end of the day, the ‘bag’ would be shared around and it would be rabbit pie for supper for all.”
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From Historical Society Publication No 31, “A Childhood at Highfield”