From famous faces to vandalism cases
This week we continue our review of the year. Only, as this is Memories, we’re looking back half a century, to the events of 1969...
now they sought to dissuade the Roskill Commission from choosing Essex because they calculated the flight paths would go over many Kent towns with the stacking area above Margate “making 500,000 Kent people suffer.”
Summer saw Kent’s seaside towns of Folkestone and
Dover besieged by motorcycle gangs “in fancy dress.” There were fights with local youths, motorcycles and scooters were vandalised and coffee bars smashed up.
In Maidstone we were more concerned with electing the Maidstone Town Carnival Queen Nicola Back was chosen.
The Kent County Show at
Detling was as popular as ever especially the new donkey class introduced for the first time. In Westerham, Sir Robert Menzies, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, unveiled a bronze sculpture of Sir Winston Churchill designed by Oscar Nemon. The white marble plinth was the gift of President Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia. Among the 2,000 people attending the ceremony were many members of the Churchill family including Sir Winston’s grandson, also named Winston Churchill.
That summer there was a wave of vandalism across schools in Kent; many culprits were identified and some found to be as young as six. Buildings in Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and Chatham suffered. In Maidstone, Shepway Court Primary was obliged to return a day late after the summer holidays while staff cleared up the mess. Our correspondent blamed a lack of parental authority and seemed to place the blame firmly on working mums. John Baker White said:
“If both parents are out at work all day, or if the mother is doing part-time evening work in a restaurant, supermarket or office-cleaning, the standard of discipline at the home must fall.”
In September, the Royal Commission on Local Government proposed a major overhaul of the way Kent was run. Instead of Kent County Council sitting atop the then 14 district and borough authorities, the chairman Lord RedcliffeMaud advocated the county be divided into just two unitary authorities - one each for east and west Kent.
The idea was greatly opposed by Kent’s farming community who argued that the preponderance of urban dwellers would swamp the views and interests of the rural areas. Paddock Wood fruit grower Stanley Blow said the unitary authorities would consider the countryside “a mere adjunct to the urban area, convenient for amenities, but forgetting its real value of food production.”
In October the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Rev Ian White-Thomson, held at party in the cathedral grounds. Among those attending were many stars of stage and screen, including Sam Kydd, Corin Redgrave, Edward Fox, Clive Morton, Fanny Rowe, Norah Nicholson, John Moffat, Kenneth Fortescue and Peter Jeffery. Most would be unknown to today’s audiences, but thanks to endless re-runs of Dad’s Army, readers should at least recognise John Le Mesurier.
In November an accident saw a lorry plough into the front of two shops in Maidstone’s King Street. Sadly when the lorry was removed, the front of the building collapsed. There were no injuries.
The old Aylesford Paper Mill (which has been sold this year and is destined be turned into warehousing) in 1969 was at its peak. The Reed Paper Group site covered 500 acres, employed 7,500 people, used 8,000 tons of coal a week and 700,000 gallons of water from the River Medway every hour.
In return it produced 350,000 tons of paper every year. The raw material of wood pulp arrived in barges from Scandinavia, North America and Canada and was added to China clay from Cornwell.
By December, people were beginning to look ahead to the New Year’s sales and an opportunity for some new white goods. Haynes Bros, the radio and electrical showroom in King Street, Maidstone, was offering a new washing machine that “did everything except the ironing.” The Bendix was the “only automatic that washes, tumble dries and airs all in one cabinet.” The price was £189, which according to the Bank of England after allowing for inflation would be the equivalent of £3,055 today!