We’re a fountain of knowledge about park’s water feature
The fountain in South Park, Maidstone, has recently been restored by the borough council and the Friends of South Park. The Friends have long used a photo of the original fountain, constructed in 1930 when the park opened, on their membership application form.
The image featured two sisters, Dorothy and Ena Gibbins, who were born in Alma Cottage in Loose and lived most of their lives in the area.
The original picture was handed to a park keeper at South Park by a dog walker after they had a conversation about the fountain.
The dog walker had seen the photograph at a jumble sale and recognised it as having been taken in the park, in Armstrong Road, and bought it. We know the pair were daughters of Edward Gibbins, who was a coachman for George Marsham, who owned Hayle Place in the early 1900s.
Ena Gibbins was born on August 9, 1906, and lived until 1990. She worked in the electrical department for Maidstone Corporation before the department became part of Seeboard. She was the secretary to the council engineer, a Mr P Fletcher. As such, she sat on the council’s electrical float in the Maidstone carnival parade of 1937. Dorothy was born on June 10, 1899, and died before her sister, but we don’t know the exact date. Dorothy’s husband went off to war and never came back. After that, the two sisters always lived together and often took holidays abroad with one another. They lived in several locations on the south side of Maidstone: in Holtye Crescent, in one of the cottages opposite the Swan public house in Loose Road, also in Loose Road in the last house before the BT telephone exchange near Loose Primary School.
They did move away to Whitfield near Dover briefly in the 1960s, but didn’t like it and soon returned to Maidstone, spending their last years in a house in Old Tovil Road.
In addition to the fountain, South Park, which was bought and donated to Maidstone to restrict the spread of quarrying, also boasts an ornamental urn - a copy of one in the Vatican.