arts INDEX
Tunbridge Wells – its history at your fi ngertips
How much do you know about Tunbridge Wells
before, during or after either of the world wars? As we commemorate 100 years since the start of one, and 75 since the outbreak of the second, there’s never been a better opportunity to brush up your local knowledge
Words Vicky Hales-Dutton
Wells in the First World War, a 250-page, fully-illustrated account of life in Tunbridge Wells between 1914-18. According to John Cunningham, the
T
Group’s Chairman and Editor, the book has been researched and written by a team of no less than 16, using sources such as local newspapers, hospital records and minutes of council and committee meetings. “We also unearthed a few surprises, including the detailed diary of a local woman, Lady Matthews, found by one of our researchers in the Imperial War Museum but unknown in Tunbridge Wells,” he says. One of the researchers is Ann Bates, a member of the History Group and author of one of the group’s 12 publications, the fascinating and fact-fi lled Tunbridge Wells in the Second World War and the Years of Austerity 1939-1953. Ann knows all about hardship. Tunbridge Wells born and bred, she was seven when the Second Word War broke out. She has vivid memories of nights in the family’s air raid shelter, children collecting souvenirs from crashed planes, seamstresses repairing stockings in the windows of local department store Waymarks and prisoners of war at work on local farms. Some aspects of wartime life remain
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he Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society’s Local History Group is a good place to start. In early November it will publish Tunbridge
really only improved after the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.” Ann’s passion for local history started
Bread rationing was introduced in 1946 and potatoes followed in 1947
rationed until 1953) and saves paper bags and string, resentful of today’s throwaway society. “We never saw an orange or a banana and our clothes were drab cast- offs,” she recalls. According to Ann, the post-war years
with her. She seldom eats sweets (sugar was
were even worse. Bread rationing was introduced in 1946 and potatoes followed in 1947, while severe fl ooding that year and a freezing winter in 1948 just made life more grim. “We had no central heating and because of coal rationing we were allowed just six inches of bathwater! Things
when she retired from her career as a fl orist in 1997 and set about researching her family tree, her Civic Society book following in 2009. “Family history merges into local and social history. It all needs to be written down before it’s lost,” she says, fi rmly. Ann also belongs to the recently- formed Friends of Hawkenbury Cemetery (the borough cemetery for Tunbridge Wells) and is helping to record monumental inscriptions on graves up to 1911. The Friends offi cially launch at 2.30pm on 7th June at the chapel in the Tunbridge Wells cemetery. • Tunbridge Wells in the Second World War and the Years of Austerity 1939-1945 is available from Waterstones and all good bookshops, priced £9.95. For more details of the Civic Society
and its History Group publications, visit
www.thecivicsociety.org
Ann Bates
www.indexmagazine.co.uk getting married? –
www.planningyourwedding.co.uk
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