7. Paul Wilkinson & Griselda Cann Mussett, Beowulf in Kent, Faversham: The Faversham Society, 1998
8. Billy Bragg, personal communication, 2016
9. Henry T.A. Turmine (“Native of Minster”), Rambles in the Island of Sheppy; containing many interesting and amusing incidents that cannot be found in any history or description hitherto published, London: A. K. Newman and Co., 1843
10. This was the verdict of Sir Charles Igglesden, in the Sheppey volume (Vol. 28) of his series, “A Saunter Through Kent, with Pen and Pencil”, reviewed in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 9 June 1934, p. 17. Original quotation, Igglesden p. 10
11. Father Paul Hennessy SS, “With Faith in Mind”, Sheerness Times Guardian, July 15 1983, p. 4
12. From “An Island That is All the World”, in Douglas Oliver, Three Variations on the Theme of Harm: Selected Poetry and Prose, London: Paladin, 1990, p. 66
13. Iain Sinclair, Downriver, London: Paladin, 1991, p. 400–1. For Sinclair’s source here—“I have no religion at all. I have only tentative belief that the good persists in time” — see Douglas Oliver’s “An island That is All the World”, in Three Variations on the Theme of Harm, p. 88
14. This phrase is noted by Claire Wallace, a sociologist who researched on Sheppey in the early Eighties. See Claire Wallace, For Richer For Poorer: Growing Up in and out of Work, London: Tavistock, 1987, p. 14
15. “The confirmation of the surrender of Buonaparte…”, Hull Packet, 25 July 1815, p. 3
16. “Friday, April 16, 1941”, Sligo Journal, 16 April 1841, p. 2
17. Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, p. 150
18. “Jeremy Clarkson Dubs Isle of Sheppey a Huge Caravan Site”, Guardian, 12 January 2012
19. R.E. Pahl, Divisions of Labour, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984, p. 189
20. Mertens, Uwe Johnson: Le Scripteur de Mur, pp. 55, 65 & 47
21. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun, New York: Vintage International, 2001, p. 171
22. Uwe Johnson letter to Joachim and Ingelore Menzhausen, 2 September 1978, Inselgeschichten, p. 104
9. Shellness: A Point with Three Warnings
1. “Melancholy Catastrophe, Kentish Mercury, 14 December 1844, p. 1
2. Ron Wood of Leysdown, cited from Sue Nicholson, “The Isle of Sheppey: What Lies ahead for the Holiday Island”, BBC News, 28 September 2012. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-19715522
3. Charles Igglesden, A Saunter Through Kent with Pen and Pencil, Vol. XXVIII, Kent, Ashford, 1934, p. 96.
4. “120 More Acres for Swale nature reserve”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 1 April 1977, p. 1
5. “Natural History: Flamingo in the Isle of Sheppey”, Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 23 August 1873, p. 3. I owe my knowledge of this rare bird to E.H. Gillham & R..C. Homes, The Birds of the North Kent Marshes, London: Collings, 1950, p. 159
6. “Flamingo in the Isle of Sheppey”, The Field: The County Gentleman’s Newspaper, 16 August 1873, p. 190
7. “Elmley”, Kentish Gazette, 19 August 1873, p. 3
8. F.W. Smalley, “William Bernhard Tegetmeier”, British Birds, Vol. VI., No. 8, 1913, p. 249
9. W.B. Tegetmeier, “The Destruction of Rare Birds”, The Field, 23 August 1873, p. 205
10. Anniversaries I, p. 428
11. Seamus Heaney, in conversation with the author, “Night Waves”, BBC Radio Three, 16 September 1998
12. Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain, London: S.Birt et. A., 1748, vol. I. p. 153
13. “Agriculture. The Farming of Kent. [From a Prize essay by Mr G. Buckland], Isle of Sheppy”, Canterbury Journal, Kentish Times and Farmer’s Gazette, 21 February 1846, p. 1
14. John R. Stilgoe, Shallow Water Dictionary: A Grounding in Estuary English, Cambridge, Mass.: Exact Change, 1990
15. “Sheerness”, The Times, 27 August 1938, p. 6. An article making use of the same Kent Herald report appeared under the heading “Sheerness” in the London Standard, 27 August 1839, p. 1
16. We may register a certain pattern here. The English papers would note how many of Sheppey’s agricultural labourers fled for a better life in America, often assisted by children who had already made the journey, and their departure would be reported in Irish papers, thereby informing those who might travel to Kent to replace them. See, for example, Sligo Champion, 3 November 1851, p. 3
17. See, for example, “Southampton Bridge”, Hampshire Advertiser, 6 June 1840, p. 2
18. Robert Macfarlane, The Lost Words, London: Penguin, 2017
19. Danny Boyle, “Kent Youth Tsar Paris Brown Stands Down”, KentOnline, 9 April 2013
20. Anniversaries II, p. 430
21. Maugham, Of Human Bondage, p. 90
22. “The Rev. Peter Blagdon-Gamlen”, The Times, 26 April 2004
23. 45 See his letter about “Protestant” removal of “idolatrous” items from St Wulframs in Friskney, where “Romanistic priests” had been accused of “Setting themselves up as ‘little Hitlers’” (“Church ‘Dictators’”, Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian, 11 December 1943, p. 8), in Grantham Journal, 23 December 1943, p. 2. Also his letter, “Corpus Christie”, Grantham Journal, 26 June 1942, p. 6. For the one against the “Stab-in-the-back” exercised by the apparently anti-Catholic Church Union over this controversy, see “Confession to a Pillow”’, Skegness Standard, 15 December 1943, p. 4
24. “Above All Else, He was Sincere”, Evesham Standard & West Midland Observer, 22 January 1954, p. 3
25. “Move against MPs Who Oppose Death Penalty”, Birmingham Daily Post, 21 October 1957, p. 25
26. “Vicar Urges Church to run Football Pools”, Birmingham Daily Post, 14 September 1959, p. 3
27. “No Curate for ‘High’ Church”, Birmingham Daily Post, 5 January 1961, p. 18
28. “Vicar Urges Trade Union for Clergy”, Birmingham Daily Post, 16 May 1961, p. 5
29. “This Man of God Preaches a Dangerous Gospel”, The People, 25 November 1962, p. 16
30. “Vicar: ‘Stem Flow of Immigrants’”, Acton Gazette, 16 May 1968, p. 1
31. “Vicar Agrees with Every Word”, Acton Gazette, 30 May 1968, p. 4
32. “Prophet, Pastor, Pilgrim”, Birmingham Daily Post, 11 April 1968, p. 25
33. “Provost on ‘Lesson’ of Dr King”, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 29 April 1968, p. 8
34. “Sheppey Vicar in Propaganda Shock”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 11 July 1975, p. 1
35. “Letter from R.E. Hargrave of Minster”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 18 July 1975, p. 4
36. Max Frisch, From the Berlin Journal, tr. Wieland Hoban, London 2017, p. 115.
37. Anniversaries, II, pp. 831–2
38. “Ukip councillor’s...”, BBC News, 5 April 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-47824367. See also https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/news/kent-ukip-councillor-has-miracle-escape-from-sri-lanka-bombing-203692/
10. Coincidence on England’s Baltic Shore
1. Pawel Starzac, “Unsettled Ground: Revisiting the Lost Sites of the Yugoslav Wars”, The Calvert Journal, 24 March 2016. http://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/5761/landscape-memory-yugoslav-war-camps. See also: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/pawel-starzec-makeshift
2. Bernd Neumann, “Neues über Uwe Johnson: Besichtigung der Stätten seiner Jugend in Mecklenburg — Begegnung mit Augenzeugen der Anfange eines Schriftstellers in der DDR: Landfahrt in ein mythisches Wasserreich”, Die Zeit, 12 August 1988
3. Anniversaries IV, p. 1303
4. A Saunter Through Kent, with Pen and Pencil, “The Isle of Sheppey”, p. 17
5. “Notice to Mariners. Buoyage of the East Swale”, Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 15 February 1827, p. 1
6. “Model Motor Tours. Week-Ends in England. XVII — The Isle of Sheppey”, Pall Mall Gazette, 12 July 1913, p. 5
7. Lorna Bradbury, “A Writer’s Life: Nicola Barker”, Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2004
8. “The £100,00
0 Prize”, Irish Independent, 6 May 2000, p. 39
9. As Barker once told the Scotsman, “What’s disastrous about me as a writer is that my work doesn’t say I am like you . . . I’m not writing books that reach out to people. My books make people feel like someone has thrown a porcupine fish at them, they’ve caught it, and gone arrrgggh! Then they go, “look at his funny little face”. “Interview: Nicola Barker, Author”, Scotsman, 9 May 2010
10. Jimmy Hobbs Jnr., “Kent Cobs”, The Stage, 3 September 1964, p. 5
11. “Harris, Roderick Harry and Harris, Paul Jones: murder of Eric Percival Nichols and aggravated burglary…” National Archives (NA), DPP 2/5617
12. Herman Melville, “The Encantadas” [1854], in Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories, London: Penguin, 1972, pp. 182–3
13. “Bomb Land Delay”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 11 July 1975, p. 3
14. “The End of Stan’s Dream Home”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 20 January 1978, p. 10
15. Anniversaries IV, p. 1609
16. “Hitler in Motor Smash”, Derry Journal, 16 August 1933, p. 5
17. “Girl in Boat Shot Dead by Midland Plane”, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 16 August 1933, p. 1
18. Anniversaries I, p. 428
19. “Girls in Rowing Boat Fired on by Plane”, Belfast Telegraph, 16 August 1933, p. 4
20. “Misadventure Verdict on Shot Girl”, Leeds Mercury, 18 August, 1933, p. 1
21. “The Sheppey Aeroplane Shooting Fatality”, Dover Express, 25 August 1933, p. 14
22. “Firing at Island Goes On: Protests from All over Country”, Daily Herald, 17 August 1933, p. 9
23. A Saunter Through Kent, with Pen and Pencil, “The Isle of Sheppey”, p. 96
11. Leysdown: The “On-Sea” Scenario
1. Michael McGillen, “Historical Passages and Scenes of Transport in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage”, The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, Vol. 93, 2018, Issue 2, pp. 130–54.
2. Colonel Stephens: A Celebration: A Brief Outline of the Life of Holman Fred Stephens and His Light Railways, Tenterden: Kent & East Sussex Railway, nd., p. 1. For a report of the opening see “Light Railway at Sheppey”, St James’s Gazette, 1 August 1901, p. 8. By October, the South Eastern and Chatham and Dover Railway Company would announce that they would not be running trains as far as Leysdown between 31 October and 1 April, explaining that there were “only a coastguard station and a few houses” in the village of Leysdown. It was anticipated however, that this would change: “it is thought that the new line will be the means of developing this part of Sheppey Isle”. “Sheerness”, Canterbury Journal, Kentish Times and Farmers’ Gazette, 12 October 1901, p. 8
3. “This Morning’s News”, London Daily News, 16 January 1901, p. 5
4. “Sheerness”, Canterbury Journal, 12 October 1901, p. 8
5. Arthur Mee, The King’s England: Kent: The Gateway of England and its Great Possessions, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936. p. 7
6. Georgina M. Taylor, “Ground for Common Action”: Violet McNaughton’s Agrarian Feminism and the Origins of the Farm Women’s Movement in Canada, doctoral dissertation, Carleton University (Ottawa), 1997
7. Michel Welton, “Violet McNaughton: The Mighty Mite Reformer from Saskatchewan”, Counterpunch, 28 March 2018. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/28/violet-mcnaughton-the-mighty-mite-reformer-from-saskatchewan/
8. “Leysdown Chalets Over-Rated”, East Kent Gazette, 28 February 1958, p. 6
9. “Hell Broke Loose”, East Kent Gazette, 22 July 1960, p. 1
10. “Pen and Hinks”, East Kent Gazette, 27 April 1962, p. 4
11. Sheerness Times Guardian, 31 December 1971
12. “When Betting Office was like ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’”, East Kent Gazette, 22 October 1964, p. 5
13. Sinclair, Downriver, p. 398
14. Ibid., 397
15. Jonathan Meades, “Last Resort” [1991], Museum Without Walls, London: Unbound, 2012, pp. 264–5
16. Tim Moore, “Iceland’s Wild Westfjords”, Financial Times, 8 February 2020
17. Monstrous events do occasionally confirm Leysdown’s reputation as a sink of human degradation — as in the case of the “body on the beach”, discovered by a metal detectorist on the sands just north of Leysdown in August 2013. This victim was not killed by an aerial machine-gunner, nor by an accident at sea such as the nationally lamented “Leysdown tragedy” of 4 August 1912, when an accompanying adult and eight boy scouts from Southwark drowned after a squall overturned the sailing cutter bringing them round Warden Point for their summer camp at Leysdown. Gary Pocock, who was thirty-four years old and from Dagenham, had been taken out drinking, lured to the beach and then savagely beaten with baseball bats by three men who claimed that he had been molesting a teenage girl. Pocock was left on the beach north of Leysdown with fatal head injuries and, as the BBC chose to put it, “Stripped from the waist down”.
18. Anniversaries I, p. 408.
19. Rosanna Greenstreet, “Q&A: Eddie Marsan”, Guardian, 2 August 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/02/eddie-marsan-interview
20. Andy Gray, “Leysdown Holiday inspired Isle of Sheppey’s Place in Pop Music History”, Kent Online, 22 February 2015. www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/news/kent-beach-inspiration-for-holiday-32168/
21. See the comments on the Leysdown page of Trevor Edwards’ Sheppey website: http://www.pbase.com/luckytrev/leysdown&page=all. See also R.E. Pahl, Divisions of Labour, London: Blackwell, 1984, p. 179
22. “Variety Ousts Bingo on Kent Coast”, The Stage and Television Today, 17 July 1962, p. 5
23. W. Somerset Maugham, Sheppey: A Play in Three Acts, London: Heinemann, 1933, p. 17
24. Ibid., p. 22
25. Ibid., pp. 60 & 74
26. Ibid., p. 72
27. Ibid., p. 99
28. Ibid., p. 112
29. Divisions of Labour, p. 167
30. Ibid., footnote 4, p. 154
31. Dennis Hardy & Colin Ward, Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape, London and New York: Mansell, 1984, p. vii
32. Ibid., pp. 116–20
33. East London Observer, 21 September 1901, p. 2
34. Daily Express, 5 August 1903, quoted in Arcadia for All, 132
35. London Evening Standard, 5 June 1903, p. 12
36. Morning Leader, 20 June, 1903. Cited in Divisions of Labour, p. 179
37. “The Success of Minster-on-Sea”, East London Observer, 28 May 1904, p. 6
38. “The Manor of Leysdown”, London Daily News, 17 April 1903, p. 4
39. “Shellness-on-Sea and Leysdown Estate, Isle of Sheppey, Kent”, Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 25 July 1903, p. 4
40. “A New Seaside Resort”, Surrey Comet, 29 August 1903, p. 8
41. Divisions of Labour, p. 179
42. “Leysdown”, Sheerness Times, 1 August 1903
43. “A New Seaside Resort: Important Land Sale”, Surrey Comet, 29 August 1903, p. 8
44. “Land Sale — Shellness-on-Sea”, Hendon & Finchley Times, 9 December 1904, p. 7
45. “Leysdown”
46. “Land Sale of Shellness-on-Sea and Leysdown Estate”, Sheerness Times, 29 August 1903
47. “Land Sale on the Minster Cliffs Estate”, Sheerness Times and General Advertiser, 18 July 1908
48. “The “Finding” of Whitstable”, Canterbury Journal, Kentish Times and Farmers” Gazette, 14 October 1911, p. 3
49. The King’s England, p. 317
50. Post-war local guide book, quoted in Arcadia for All, p. 134
51. Sheila M. Judge, “The Manor of Borstal Hall”, reproduced from a copy of Scapeia dated 2000, The Sheppey History Page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/269052736530087/permalink/1111947778907241/)
52. Adrian Waller, interview with George Ramuz, Sheerness Times Guardian, 16 June 1961
53. Arcadia for All, p. 136
54. “Flexible Planning” (editorial), Sheerness Times Guardian, 3 December 1971, p. 4
> 55. Arcadia for All, p. 134
12. Rolls Without Royce: Leysdown Aloft.
1. “A Ballooning Adventurer”, Western Daily Press, 6 April 1909, p. 9
2. “Missing Balloonist”, Yorkshire Evening Post, 14 April 1909, p. 4. See also “The Danger of Inexperience”, The Field, 24 April 1909, p. 60
3. “Missing Balloon”, London Daily News, 16 April 1909, p. 5
4. “Lost Aeronaut”, Leicester Daily Post, 22April 1909, p. 2
5. “The Missing Balloonist”, Woolwich Gazette, 30 April 1909, p. 3
6. “Hydroplane on the Thames”, Derby Daily Telegraph, 6 April 1909, p. 2. Also “Trial of M. Bellamy’s Hydroplane”, Belfast News-Letter, 21 January 1907
7. “An Exciting Descent: French Balloonist’s Adventure in Buckinghamshire”, Leominster News, 9 April 1909, p. 3
8. “Trial of M. Bellamy’s Hydroplane”, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 21 January 1907, p. 8
9. “Aero Club’s New Ground”, Eastern Daily Press, 23 April 1909, p. 5
10. “Art of Flying”, Daily Telegraph and Courier, 8 April 1909, p. 5
11. “Early British Flights”, Flight, 21 February 1929, pp 132–3
12. The King’s England
13. “Art of Flying”, Daily Telegraph and Courier, 8 April 1909, p. 5
14. “Flights from the Isle of Sheppey”, Daily Telegraph & Courier, 8 April 1909, p. 5
15. Divisions of Labour, p. 179
16. “Muscular Aviatics”, Belfast Telegraph, 4 May 1909, p. 4
17. H. Massac Buist, “Aeroplaning in England: suitability of Shellbeach”, Morning Post, 18 May 1909, p. 4
18. David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1991, p. 3
19. “Flying at the Aero Club’s Grounds, Shellbeach”, Flight, 6 November 1909, p. 703
20. “Shellbeach Still Expanding”, Flight, 14 August 1909, p. 493
21. “Getting Ready at Shellbeach”, Flight, 15 May 1909, p. 275
22. “Britain and the Airship”, Nottingham Evening Post, 11 March 1909, p. 5
23. “Women’s National Health Association”, Irish Times, 23 April 1909, p. 9
24. “Aero Club Flight Grounds at Shellbeach”, Flight, 6 March 1909, p. 135. Towards the end of June that year, the Unionist MP for Yarmouth, Sir Arthur Fell, would ask the First Lord of the Admiralty for reassurance that he would not dispose of coastguard stations on government land around the east coast, without at first establishing that “they cannot possibly be required in the near future for the erection of garages for dirigibles or aeroplanes, and that the buildings would not be of advantage for the accommodation of men in charge of them”. “Our London Letter”, Belfast News-Letter, 26 June 1909, p. 5
The Sea View Has Me Again Page 66