East Kent WWW1 locations

[Hazel Basford]

The East Kent WFA has a project to record WW1 sites etc in the East Kent area as a 25th anniversary effort. The area we are proposing to cover is East of the Medway to Maidstone and then roughly south to the County boundary.

It has long been a 'bee in my bonnet' that when war is mentioned in the context of Kent people are talking about the Second World War (Battle of Britain, Hellfire Corner - little wonder really!) but the involvement by and effect on the people of Kent in/of the First World War is overlooked.

People on this list will know differently - the County then was bombed, bombarded, stuffed with hospitals, looking after thousands of refugees, constantly preparing for enemy invasion and the more I find out about it the more I have the impression of large swathes of the area being one large army camp.

I would be grateful for any references to locations of -

- (probably not hospitals, as we already have a very full list)

- (probably not airfields, as we have one of the leading WW1 avaiation historians on the case)

- training and embarkations camps

- special memorials (we do not intend to list every village memorial but any of particular interest (eg Lutyens memorial at Rolvenden, the Knowlton memorial, the Canterbury memorial unveiled by Haig)

- graves of particular interest (we already have three of men whose bodies were brought back from France and there are several Belgian soldiers buried here)

- buildings put up or used for specific purpose (even if they do not still exist)

- units based here

- defence sites

just about anything really!

At this stage we are not intending to produce a history of East Kent in WW1 but hope it will be a research resource, giving links to sources, publications etc.

Hazel Basford

[Graeme Fisher]

hazel

Do you want a list of the locations of Territorials' drill halls in the area?

Graeme

[mebu]

Presumably you know of Richborough, the camp and port? In addition to thousands of troops, many civilians worked there, including ladies sorting returned scrap metals etc.......several buildings still remain, still much else to see there, Peter.