Bygone Kent

12/03/2024

A film premieres this week focusing on a 100-year-old paddle steamer which played a key role in rescuing troops in the Second World War.

01/03/2024

BBC News - Charles Dickens' pocket watch for auction

The open-faced key-wind watch dates from 1836 and is going up for sale in Chichester.

01/03/2024

Glass-smashers and peaceful protesters: the suffragettes’ campaign fell into two camps bygonekent.org.uk

29/02/2024

It’s not an old hut — it’s a piece of Olympic history: The Finnish ambassador has joined a campaign to save a sauna near bygonekent.org.uk

29/02/2024

The other architect of New Delhi: India’s capital was not just the work of Lutyens bygonekent.org.uk

29/02/2024

A true rival to Conan Doyle? A doctor invented the crime genre howcatchem and used the device prolifically bygonekent.org.uk

29/02/2024

Cold war invasion: US airmen arrived in their thousands at in the 1950s as nuclear catastrophe loomed. They brought prosperity ... and disaster ’s bygonekent.org.uk

29/02/2024

Queen of : an earl’s daughter married a son of George III — twice. But both unions were void, and she set up home in fashionable Kent bygonekent.org.uk

28/02/2024

The new issue of Bygone Kent has just hit the streets. Kindly subscribe here bygonekent.org.uk

10/01/2024

Who remembers gypsy tart in their school dinners? (Your Bygone Kent co-publisher shudders at the mere mention of it.)

Is this Kentish - ahem - delicacy still served in Kent schools today? Its ingredients, sugar and evaporated milk, make us think it unlikely.

Unless you know better?

(PS the editor loves it.)

29/12/2023

Included in the current issue is the index for 2023. It’s absolutely indispensable for Kent history researchers bygonekent.org.uk/

28/12/2023

Slaughtered by the Zulus: Kent newspapers fumed against ill-judged expedition bygonekent.org.uk/

28/12/2023

Magnificent mad dash: thousands turned out for the Kent stage of the 1911 flying challenge bygonekent.org.uk/

27/12/2023

Back in the days when young reporters dressed properly, Crispin Whiting — now associate editor of Bygone Kent — interviewed the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore in Faversham.

The lecture was organised by Colin Bourner (centre), a photographer with the Faversham News.

Crispin recalls: "Sir Patrick also played the xylophone, and asked us to get hold of one, He was not impressed by the one we borrowed and let us know in no uncertain terms.

"I have no recollection why I was wearing a wing-collared shirt, evening scarf and my best chalk-stripe suit. It was about 1980 and I was earning £42 a week so charity shops were almost certainly involved."

27/12/2023

1769 charted: a map for the wealthy of Kent to survey their possessions. bygonekent.org.uk/

27/12/2023

Please take Mr Darwin instead: why distinguished botanist missed historic sea voyage to the . bygonekent.org.uk/

26/12/2023

Dickens girls tainted by scandal: one daughter was an artist and -Raphaelite model, the other a curate’s live-in companion bygonekent.org.uk/

26/12/2023

The January-February edition of Bygone Kent is out now. Kindly buy it (or, better still, subscribe to it) here bygonekent.org.uk/

25/12/2023

Merry Christmas to all our readers. Here's an unusual view of Kit's Coty House - rather out of proportion - that reminds us that we should visit it in the new year.

22/11/2023

08/11/2023

A town pier has been removed for restoration works after it collapsed on a river bank.

08/11/2023

Maidstone Museums is investigating a skull reputedly found at a local prehistoric site, to uncover more information about the person. The story of how and why this research is being undertaken and the results that emerge will be included in the museum’s exciting new archaeology gallery, ‘Lives In Our Landscape’, due to open in early summer next year.

As part of the investigations, the skull was CT-scanned at Maidstone Hospital, part of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW NHS). The scan was undertaken after patient hours had closed in the Nuclear Medicine department, generously accommodated by the medical team who gave their time voluntarily.

The skull moved slowly through the scanner, which recorded the surface at very high resolution. The data will be used by FaceLab, at Liverpool John Moores University, to recreate the appearance of this person. Visitors to the new gallery will be able to look into the face of someone who lived perhaps around 6000 years ago.

Read the full article here: https://news.maidstone.gov.uk/home/news/2024/november/mystery-skull-undergoes-scan

31/10/2023

A final glimpse of Everest heroes: with a telephoto lens John Noel spotted Mallory and Irvine as they plodded towards the summit in 1924. His photographs record a lost pioneering age, preserved by his daughter
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