‘Help us keep our garden looking bloomin’ brilliant’
Charity needs more volunteers to blossom
There are fears for a community-run garden as the space becomes overgrown because volunteers have dwindled. Before the pandemic, Shepway Chariots used to host clubs and events for the community in their half acre of green space, tended to by residents, after being transformed from a neglected area in 2017.
But now the charity’s founder fears all the good work will go to waste, and is calling on people to help restore the garden, in Hampshire Drive.
Nikki Gough said: “Before we were there it was a site for fly-tipping and the anti-social behaviour was beyond belief. Since we have been there we have stamped it out. We have come so far.”
Government guidance states you can leave home to provide charitable or voluntary services, while following social distancing guidelines.
However Miss Gough, a mum
of four, says some people haven’t felt comfortable visiting the garden during lockdown. Others have moved away or their free time has been taken up by pressures caused by Covid-19.
Currently just Miss Gough, a teaching assistant, and her partner Ian are tending the space, but she admits it’s exhausting. She said: “If people are able to help it would mean so very much. Even if it’s just on a weekend and spending a couple of hours.
“We are just asking for the community to lend a helping hand and in return you can grown your own fruit and veg, get out and about.” Gardening, she added, is also good for mental health.
Shepway Chariots encourages local residents and families to learn how to grow, tend and harvest their own fresh fruit and vegetables.
Before the pandemic, the chariots hosted a free children’s gardening club on Saturday mornings, which they hope to restart. They’ve also put on free Christmas dinners for the elderly, using produce grown in the garden, and Halloween events. In 2019, the charity was recognised for its service to the local community by the KM Group. The project has been awarded grants by local councils and organisations in the past. However, funding has fallen as Miss Gough cannot apply for grants because many applications need a deadline for the project, which she cannot give due to the lack of volunteers. Are you interested in helping? Email nrgough81@gmail.com.
A pilot scheme has been launched in an area of Maidstone to help elderly residents on a range of issues, from loneliness to learning a new skill. Kent County Council (KCC) has set up a new social service for people, aged over 65, who are feeling low or need practical help, such as having prescriptions delivered.
Specially trained staff, called community connectors, will provide free confidential support, find solutions for problems and link callers with relevant groups and organisations.
As well as improving health and wellbeing, helping with practical support and tackling loneliness, the service can help elderly residents find new activities or get more involved in their communities, or improve their self-confidence and independence.
Initially, the pilot scheme has been offered to older residents in Shepway in Maidstone as well as Sheerness, Folkestone
and Ramsgate. It is set to run for 12 weeks.
KCC’s cabinet member for public health, Cllr Clair Bell (Con), said: “The service aims to reduce isolation and loneliness to the target groups and reintroduce people to their local communities.”
Her announcement came during a virtual panel of KCC’s adult social care committee last week.
Amid the pandemic, one-toone appointments will take place via telephone or video call. Face-to-face sessions will be allowed when Covid restrictions
ease.
The KCC-led project will be funded from a European Union (EU) grant pot of around £647,000 for cross-border projects, such as health and the environment. Residents can make referrals by going online at www.tinyurl. com/elderlyKM
No-one knows exactly what happened to the village of Chart that today falls within the parish of Wateringbury. Mentioned as a manor in the Domesday Book, it was clearly once an important place with a right to hold a market every Tuesday granted by Royal Charter in 1310 and a three-day fair to celebrate St John the Baptist’s day.
It seems to have existed in an area now covered by woodland near to Pizien Well.
By 1657 the community had shrunk to around 12 houses and all trace has since disappeared. Some have suggested the homes were deliberately razed in an attempt to cleanse an outbreak of disease. Two fields in the area known as Lower Chart and Greater Chart field are now the only clue to Chart’s existence.
Probably, Chart would be entirely forgotten if it weren’t for the survival of a curious wooden mace, known as the Dumb Borsholder of Chart,
3ft 5ins long and fitted with a wicked-looking iron spike at one end, which hangs in Wateringbury Church. A borsholder was an ancient office dating from Anglo
Saxon times, ‘borh’ meaning a surety and ‘alder’, a head or chief, though the mace itself - though certainly old - is believed to be more recent. The borsholder was elected by other members of the community to represent them at meetings of the Hundred Court, which in Chart’s case were held at Twyford Bridge in Yalding. The borsholder was paid a penny a year by the other households and the mace was his symbol of office. The mace - with its 4ins spike - may have also doubled as a weapon, because the borsholder was also expected to act as a kind of village constable, maintaining order within his community. Thomas Clampard, a blacksmith, was the last holder of the office, though it is likely it had already become only a ceremonial post. He died in 1748 and is buried in Wateringbury churchyard.
The office of borsholder was not unique to Chart. Records from the Maidstone Assizes of May 12, 1587, show that the Wateringbury borsholder Richard Collyson found himself up before the justice John Leveson. Collyson, described as husbandman and ‘le Bossalder’ of Wateringbury, was charged with “negligent escape” in that the justice had committed one George Hubberb to Collyson’s custody, but on the same day Collyson negligently allowed the suspect to escape.