With over 50 girls from FSG dressed in period costumes you will see Nurses, War Poets, WAACS (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps), Soldiers’ Rest Camp and Recruitment Office. There will be displays of photographs and articles PLUS live themed music in the afternoon, provided by the Music Department of FSG.

So, come and join us on The Leas, between the Metropole and the Bandstand from 10.30 – 15.00 on Sunday 9th June. Check our Events page for updates

So why not click on our Membership/Shop page and Join TODAY??!!

The following is such a poem.

Private Charles Davies from Winnipeg, who had served in the 12 Canadian Field Ambulance, wrote the following lines which appeared in a Canadian newspaper in 1919.

SHORNCLIFFE CAMP

Folkestone, though Queen of the Southern Coast,

I’m loath to leave your grassy warren;

Those steep white cliffs that beacon like a genial host

Receding from my eyes night dim with tears.

What soothing hours and happy days so dear does memory recall;

The walk along the Leas, the leafy undercliff, and Oh, that changing sea,

When the rich red sunset sparkles on thy face,

Such are my thoughts of thee picture of grace.

Garden of England! Men of Kent!

Think of your heritage; the flowers sweet scent,

That wooded glade at Seabrook, primrose clad;

The glimpse of moving picture shore to make you glad.

Those verdant meads of Shorncliffe Plain,

Bright green as emeralds after rain.

Deep down in mist of blue lies sleeping Sandgate town,

Whose twinkling lights shine like some fairy’s crown.

St. Martin’s spire, neath which brave Plimsol sleeps,

Whose noble work the British sailor reaps;

The bugle blasts and all war’s grim array,

Much as it did in Moore’s fair distant day.

Not even the mists of Passchendaele and its blood strewn duckboard track

Can blot from out my memory the charm of Radnor Park,

Who would not fight for thee, dear land,

For every flower and Kentish maid’s fair hand.

Who cares for the muddy trenches and the shrapnel’s piercing scream,

The waves of poison and all the ghastly scene?

There are those away in the Golden West dearer than Nelson’s name-

Mothers and wives and sisters; it’s for them we play the game.

Taken from Coast of Conflict by Michael & Martin George

An Italian former piano restorer – Massimo Piemontese (of Quintessential at 65 The Old High Street, Folkestone) – came across this 1880s Gors & Kallmann piano at the back of a house clearance second-hand shop opposite the Folkestone Library in Grace Hill, in June 2012. It had a £150 price tag. The outside was damaged, stained, marked and discoloured but he opened it up and noticed the excellent condition of its interior, and the quality of its sound. He put down a deposit but was soon overtaken by other priorities. Knowing I was looking for a new piano for my gallery he came and told me about it. We went to see it together and I immediately bought him out, paid the remaining balance and arranged delivery. Massimo helped me sand down and repair the exterior and prepare it for painting, which I did, keeping the undamaged original wood around the keys.

I contacted Chris Pearson – a professional piano tuner from Hythe and told him what I knew about the piano I had acquired. He became very excited and told me the following story:

“I know the exact piano you have very well. I first started tuning it in the seventies when it belonged to the Burlington Hotel. At the time there were people who drank at the bar in their late eighties who told me all about its history. The piano had belonged to the Leas Pavilion over a hundred years ago, but during the First World War it was put on the Folkestone Bandstand on the Leas.”

When he came to tune it, Chris explained that after its spell on the Bandstand, the Leas Pavilion no longer wanted it given that it was a German piano and Britain was at war with Germany. The Burlington adopted it until the 1990s, when it acquired a grand piano. Chris was then unaware of what happened to it until he was asked to tune a piano at Trinity House, an old people’s home in Manor Road, Folkestone where it stayed until a few years ago. It then ended up in the hands of music teacher in Hythe.

“She didn’t want to get rid of it,” explained Chris, “but it took up so much space in her cottage she needed a smaller piano. And now it is back in a public place in Folkestone. When I first tuned it, I opened it up and I found all this sheet music with First World War songs. To think who would have listened to it and stood around it!” He shook his head. “If only this piano could talk…”

              Story and Photos by Shane Record

‘Eventually the number of persons embarking or landing at Folkestone between August 5th, 1914, and June 28th, 1919, was over ten and a half million, the exact figures being :

British officers and men and Allied officers and men . . . 9,271,726

Civilians engaged in Red Cross and other War-work . , . 1,233,177

German prisoners of war . . . … . . 2,010

Total………….10,506,913′

The figure for Southampton is just over 8 million, though more material was shipped from there. Pratt’s book, in two volumes contains a mass of information, and includes some interesting accounts of Folkestone during the war, for instance:

‘Folkestone assumed the aspect of a cosmopolitan city. There were to be seen in the town, on the Leas, or passing along the Lower Sandgate Road, British, Dominion, Colonial, American, French, Russian or Serbian troops, together with contingents of Indians, Chinese, Kaffirs, West Indians and Fijians.’

(with thanks to Nick Spurrier for bringing this book to our attention)

The building still exists, and is still a School, occupied by The Folkestone School for Girls. It is likely that, some years later, when Ford became a soldier in the First World War, he would have returned to Folkestone for the sea crossing to France and the Western Front.