As Tom explains, “my interest in this important work stems from my life experiences in the British Army when I served on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and, most recently, as the military assistant to the Chief of the Defence Staff.” It was only a few months ago that Tom received a round of applause in the House of Commons for an emotional speech concerning the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. In that speech Tom told MPs, as events in Afghanistan unfolded, like many veterans, he had to “struggle through anger, grief and rage”.

The Founder and Co-Director of the Lifestyle Health Foundation is local Tonbridge resident, Dr Neil Bindemann. Neil experienced an acquired mind injury when he underwent urgent neurosurgery in 2015 and was subsequently given the news, he would be living with a brain tumour. “For me, setting up the Lifestyle Health Foundation is about recognising the tremendous value of learning through lived experiences, and I am thrilled to have Tom’s support. I look forward to our ‘In Conversation with….’ live webinar in the April”. 

The webinar which you can register to attend by going to www.lifestylehealth.org.uk, is to take place in the evening of Friday 22^nd April. It is hoped that Foundation Co-Director and ex-BBC Radio 4 news presenter, Diana Speed, will join the conversation.

Read more about the Lifestyle Health Foundation at www.lifestylehealth.org.uk’

·      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

Helen sings the alto chorus part in major choral works to performance standard. She and the Choral Society are currently working on the theatrical Requiem by Guiseppe Verdi for a concert at the RTW Assembly Hall Theatre on 10 April. The Requiem Mass – from the composer of operas such as Rigoletto, La Traviata and Aida – is often regarded as more operatic than religious in style, better suited to concert hall than church. It is a challenge for all members of the Choir to perfect; but for Helen, it is even more difficult.

“As everyone else collects their scores at the first rehearsal of a new work, I think how easy it is for them. I have to source my own music in Braille.”

Braille is a tactile means of reading for the blind in the form of raised dots in patterns that represent letters of the alphabet. Not only the pitch of each note, but sharps, flats, rests and other details are represented by sets of letters. Helen’s fingers move over the thick cream sheets of her score as rapidly as the sighted read the written word, feeling words with her left hand and music with her right.

 “Go to page 193,” announces Music Director Robyn Sevastos at rehearsal, but the page numbers in Helen’s score don’t match. She can’t watch the conductor for the signs to start singing, and for the beat, which keeps the choir singing in time and together.

“I need to remember the sound and patterns of the whole work, she said.

She also relies on her acute hearing, and “my counting has to be spot on, too.”

 “The upside is that when I sing, I am not blind at all, I’m just the same as everyone else. Singing gives me a wonderful sense of freedom, like being able to run without fear of knocking into everything.”

After graduating in English from St Hilda’s College, Oxford, Helen went to into teaching – at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, and later at TWGGS (Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar School, where she was introduced to the RTW Choral Society by members of staff. Later, she studied for a Diploma in Theology and was ordained, serving at St John’s Church in Amherst Road, Tunbridge Wells, where the Choral Society has long rehearsed. She worked in other parishes for 35 years, before returning to Tunbridge Wells on retirement, and rejoining RTWCS.

Helen will be singing with RTWCS in Verdi’s Requiem in the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, on Sunday 10 April at 3pm. Tickets £13–25, children & students £8-£14, including booking fee. To book, visit https://rtwcs.org.uk, buy from Assembly Hall Theatre box office, tel: 01892 530613