It hasn’t been easy weathering the storm of a pandemic, however the one factor that has proved itself time and again is that the local community want to support independent businesses. We are therefore very excited to introduce The Ethical Emporium – a new business hub for creative independent brands, housed in our rent-a-shelf space in the former retail area at The Zero Waste Company.

This initiative will bring together local designer-makers and brands in an affordable venture, allowing flexible rental space on a weekly basis for a flat fee, with all product sales going to the maker. We hope to showcase a variety of items including homeware, toiletries, gifts and clothing.

Launching early April, The Ethical Emporium will become a must-go for local shoppers to find unique and beautiful locally made items!

For more information or to enquire about becoming a stockist email: info@thezerowastecompany.com

Family fun takes centre stage at Trinity this April, with light-hearted engaging daytime events for little ones and early evening activities aimed at young adults and avid readers alike with our NEW author-led talks’ The Open Page with…’ series. Ben Aaronovitch joins us on the 7th to talk about the ‘Peter Grant/Rivers of London’ series and discuss the latest book in the saga with actor and fan Patrick Warner. Tickets are only £8+, including a Q&A and book signing! 

Storytime, our FREE weekly family get together, opens April on Friday the 1st. The weekend rocks with the Kids funfest that is SPLAT (ages 3-6); we then roll into I Spy With My Little Eye on Tuesday 5th and the wonderfully sweet The Hogmoor Trail on Thursday 7th. There’s more, so much more! We click our Ruby Slippers with glee as The Wizard of Oz lands at Trinity for two shows on the 16th, and we close the month with Comedy Club 4 Kids. 

Gigs, gigs, gigs! Coldplace, the renowned Coldplay tribute act kick off our listings on the 2nd, swiftly followed by three nights of music. Starting with Flanders & Swann, including all the classics, The Hippopotamus (Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud), The Gnu, The Gas Man Cometh on the 8th and Strictly Dan and Band without Boundaries moving into the spotlight on Saturday the 9th. Why not wind down with us on the 10th and join us for our sublime Sunday sessions –The Breathing Room Presents.

Do not forget our theatrical and cinema programme, which bursts with brilliance this Spring. Highlights include Watson: The Final Problem on the 24th and NT LIVE: returns with Henry V (Kit Harington in the lead role) beaming onto our screen on the 21st April!

For full listings, membership deals and announcements, please visit: trinitytheatre.net or call our box office on 01892 678 678. #MoreThanATheatre

·      Easter fun with Queen Victoria’s hidden egg trail and ‘Hunt for Easter Island’ panto storytelling

A royal theme will be running throughout the events programme at Penshurst Place and Gardens this year, marking Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee year.

The historic home and listed gardens are open to visitors at weekends throughout March, with the bright spring bulbs making a cheerful and very welcome entrance, heralding the start of the warmer weather. Penshurst Place will then open daily from 2^nd April for the 2022 season.

April sees the return of the Tremendous Tulips at Penshurst, when literally thousands of tulips make a bold entrance. From the gloriously yellow ‘Jewel of Spring’ in the Italian Garden, to the bright polka red varieties in the long grass of the Nut Garden and the formal boxed white tulips in the Paved Garden, the grounds feature a fabulous display of flowers, producing a delicate mix of scents and styles. 

On Sunday 10^th April, the Queens from Tudor Legacies will be back in the gardens at Penshurst Place to talk with visitors and share tales about life as one of Henry VIII’s wives. Their authentic period costumes and engaging stories help to bring history to life, while putting in context the wonderful backdrop of the Grade I listed gardens that were laid out during the Tudor period and have remained largely unchanged since.

Easter at Penshurst Place is always a fun and special time, and this year is no exception with the addition of an exciting new egg hunt trail and the return of panto-style storytelling from the ever-popular team from Aardvark.

Continuing with the ‘fit for a queen’ theming, the new Queen Victoria Easter Egg Hunt trail will run throughout Easter weekend and the school holidays, running daily between 10am and 5pm from 2^nd April to 18^th April. Cleverly concealed in the Penshurst Place gardens are several large Victorian eggs, each containing a secret.  Participants will need to find the eggs and make a note of the secret they discover hidden within each on an accompanying trail sheet. Once all have been discovered and the trail sheet completed, the mystery will be solved.

Queen Victoria is credited with popularising the Easter Egg hunt, having enjoyed egg hunts organised by her mother when she was a child, living at Kensington Palace. Subsequently, she and Prince Albert continued the tradition with their own children and, as a result, the activity grew in fashion and became the hugely popular activity that youngsters have enjoyed at Easter ever since. 

Penshurst Place and Gardens is open between 10am and 5pm at weekends in March. It will open daily on 2^nd April 2022 until 30^th October 2022.  For more information and ticket prices visit www.penshursplace.com.

Longtime resident, Pat, 94, still scooting around town and to Pembury in her electric trolley, has sent me the ¨Town Crier¨, which released volumes of precious memories of our family´s 23 formative years in Tunbridge Wells.

When we were a young family living in rural Sussex, we often went shopping in what the children called ¨Tumbinge Wells¨ In  1977 we bought a 3&1/2 story townhouse next to Calverley Grounds, the 5 children´s chief play area. They created  dramas on the bandstand, collected beech nuts to roast as ice cream topping, built miniature houses with nature’s bits and pieces. On the day of first snow in 1979, they rode all on one sled, which event was photographed and appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror. 

Education from elementary through university, and for us parents, teaching assignments, filled the next 20 years. My first job in TW came when Wegelin School of Russian Ballet needed a French O-level teacher. The students´annual ballet performance was of high quality, part of TW´s performing arts. A number of theatre, opera and orchestral productions from which we walked home in delight, are alive in every family member´s memory.  My husband, however, relied on the train for his teaching job in London, his bike locked in the guard car. When there were rail strikes, early morning carpools took over.

Californians are impressed to learn that in ¨Royal Tunbridge Wells¨, a generation before climate change became a topic,  Claremont School pupils drew up and delivered a protest to Weeks Department Store for having abandoned paper bags for plastic ones, ( the excuse being that rain caused the bag´s  printing to stain customers´ clothes ).  They are equally impressed to hear that 50 years before Covid-19 the local library sterilized return books if a reader had suffered an infectious illness. 

Do events like the Council of Voluntary Services annual luncheon, the Women’s World Day of Prayer, St. Augustine´s Christmas dinner, Age Concern´s lunches, WI´s bake sales still bring members of the community together?  Here I am in San Luis Obispo, CA, 11 miles from the mighty Pacific,  splendid trails leading to the hills flanking the town (among them  9 extinct volcanoes), and I am dreaming of spring in Kent: snowdrops, daffodils, wood anemones, primroses, budding trees on the Common, the verges, the footpaths, blossoms in hedgerows which I pray are undisturbed by development.

While the ¨Town Crier¨ assures us that the Wellington Rocks are intact, the urban environment changes inevitably. Upon my last visit to TW, I was remorseful that Noakes was no longer there. Where else could I buy a teapot lid or pastoral designed linen tea towels? Long disappeared are the Art store and Music Centre by the train station, the Irish Linen Store on the High Street. In the Pantiles, at dusk, can you still catch a glimpse of Beau Nash at dusk?

 I cherish the memories and friendships that represent Tunbridge Wells, a town to respect and love. 

Your old friend, 

Genevieve Czech

As demand for the beer grew, hops, being the crucial ingredient meant of more workers were required.  In addition to domestic supply, some beer went to Chatham dockyard for the navy and some was exported.

In 1844 the first section of the Medway Valley railway line, running between Paddock Wood and Maidstone was completed.  Its main purpose was to transport hops and fruit.

At harvest time, trains specifically ran to bring hop pickers down from London’s East End.  Not that the visitors were always particularly welcomed by the local population.  In anticipation of their arrival, iron grills would be set up in the windows of some local shops. Pubs would sometimes segregate them.

Growing hops is not without its challenges. Amongst other things, mildews and red spider mites were blights that hop growers had to contend with.

Families of pickers regarded this as their holiday in the countryside. It created happy memories so that later, many who had worked in the hop gardens as children moved to Kent as adults. Many pickers, particularly those coming in their own vehicles, brought furniture and cooking utensils with them.  Accommodation was in primitive wooden or brick hopper huts which skirted the hop gardens. There were often outside brick ovens and spits to cook on. Picking could go on from dawn to dusk. The boredom was counter balanced by the camaraderie.

The hop bines grew up strings attached to high poles held taut by wirework. Men on stilts would hook the bines down.  The pickers would work seated around hop bins which were made of canvass and supported with wooden frames.

Oasts were used for drying hops which was something of an art form given that overdrying could ruin a day’s crop. The freshly picked hops would be laid and raked onto a drying floor with a furnace stoked below.  Once the drying was successfully completed the hops were cooled on a platform below the cowls which aerated them. Once cooled they were then swept into an enormous sack or hop pocket with the grower’s name on it and pressed in often by a manually operated press.

Eventually the whole process became largely mechanised with machines stripping the bines. Most of the workforce was reduced to picking out any chaff and odd leaves which had eluded the machine’s path into the rubbish pile.

By the late 20^th century many small growers had been squeezed out by a quota system which meant the amount of hops they could sell became fewer and fewer each year.   It was the larger enterprises that survived.

 Written by Peregrine