Special Feature


Maidstone


Two walking tours have been devised to explore the landmarks around the county town. Each stop allows the walker to learn something about the ordinariness of the lives of soldiers, conscripts and volunteers before the war. Te trails are presented by lotery-funded Kent In WW1.


Blue trail This trail, which is just under two miles long and takes about two hours, starts at the Brickmaker’s Arms in Perryfield Street, where Ernest Dalton, aged just 15, enlisted claiming to be more than three years older. He was discovered to be under age and sent home in 1916. Other addresses include Peel Street, home to Henry Charles Price


8 Mid Kent Living


(45), of the Lincolnshire Regiment, who is commemorated in Arras. He was killed a few months short of the armistice. A few doors down, William John served on the Western Front and saw the war’s final weeks as a prisoner of war. He was demobbed in 1919. Further along Peel Street lived Ethel Brooker, daughter of a greengrocer, who was a nursing carer for the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD). Further on, James Street remembers the shortage of coal, which became scarce and expensive once 190,000 miners had joined up. Meat shortages and rationing are explained in Fisher Street, home to Frederick Baker’s butcher’s.


Burgundy trail Allow around three hours for this walk, which starts at Lockmeadow, the site of the


livestock and food market in the years before WWI. Across the river at All Saints’ Church, we learn of bell-ringer Leonard Startup’s death, aged 33, in action in 1917 and the role of John Gibb, from Knightrider Street, as medical officer and surgeon at Hayle Place, Maidstone. Church Street was home to air mechanic Hubert Arthur, who served in the Royal Naval Air Service. During the autumn of 1914, the West Kent Yeomanry was billeted at the school in Union Street, while children were helping to harvest crops. Tailor Henry Taylor worked in Week Street. He was promoted to captain after being awarded the Military Cross in Macedonia. Te walk continues to the war memorial, and the home of milkman Victor Startup, son of Leonard. Victor survived the war as a frontline stretcher-bearer and a prisoner.


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