Step Short, Folkestone School for Girls and The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment (living history group) will be on Folkestone’s Leas on Sunday 9th June 2013 to recreate life in the town during the dark days of WW1. This FREE event is for all the family; there will be games for children, with prizes.

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

Over the next few months, Step Short members will be offered a range of exclusive benefits and offers. Take a look at the Events page where you can find out about discounts to the acclaimed play, The Trench, and also fantastic savings on admission prices to this year’s War and Peace Revival in July. Another great benefit will be the free info packs to members for the Living History event, Frontline Folkestone,  on the 9th June.

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

With the country, perhaps much of the world, gearing itself for the Centennial of the First World War in 2014, Step Short has already begun the countdown. Over the coming year, we will be announcing details of the important events that we shall be unveiling in August 2014, but why not take a look at what is on offer in the near future.  Do please support us if you can and, remember, by becoming a member of Step Short you will be ensuring that you will have a special welcome to our events, as well as providing much needed support for our projects.

The poetry of the Great War provided a means of expression of the horrors and fears experienced by a generation for whom stoicism and stiff upper lip values frowned upon explicit feelings of doubt and depression. But, in addition to the core of well known war poets, Owen, Sassoon, Brooke, there were a host of poets whose audience perhaps extended no further than themselves, their families or, at most, to readers of local newspapers, to whom the author had sent his work.

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

The weather during WW1 could be as troublesome as the enemy but, as seen in a film clip from the IWM Collections, even snow could be used as a ‘training opportunity’. Click here to see the clip.

The weather during WW1 could be as troublesome as the enemy but, as seen in a film clip from the IWM Collections, even snow could be used as a ‘training opportunity’. Click here to see the clip.

Ephemera from the Great War can be found in unusual places. This is a story of something that literally resonates with history:

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

There has always been a debate about how many people traveled from and to Folkestone during the Great War. It has been claimed that it was the principal route to France and Flanders. The other route was from Southampton to Havre or Dieppe. Today, we are adding another book to our Library page. British Railways and the Great War by Edwin Pratt provides a detailed analysis.

‘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)

This week the Prime Minister announced plans to mark the Centenary of the Great War. Plans are being made throughout the country, and abroad, to mark this most significant event in modern times. It is with pride that we learn from Andrew Murrison MP, the government’s Special Representative for centenary plans, that Folkestone will be one of three sites to mark the outbreak of that war. The other sites are Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey and the CWGC cemetery at St Symphorien, Mons in Belgium. The choice of Folkestone is in recognition that, from here, millions of men and women embarked on the troop ships that would take them to the front lines. For many, it was the last time they stood on British soil. Step Short will work unstintingly to ensure that the choice of our town as a focus for Commemoration in 2014-2018 is justified. Please be part of our plans: all financial and practical support will be very welcome. As a Registered Charity all donations go into our projects.

Ford Madox Ford, author of the popular TV series, Parade’s End went to school in Folkestone. He attended Praetorius House in Coolinge Lane and met there, among others, his future wife, Elsie Martindale. In his book, Between St Dennis and St George, Ford recalled his days at the school and walking along The Leas.

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.