FREE ICE SKATING!

Tuesday 14^th February @ Dymchurch Primary School

Wednesday 15^th February @ Lydd Primary School

10am – 4pm on both days, no booking needed, skates provided.

Please spread the word! All the children centres, local schools, community groups, church groups, KCC wardens know about this event but please feel free to circulate around all your contacts

ice-skating-poster-final

Regards

Emily

Emily Ghassempour

Community Liaison Officer

Community Engagement

T: 01303 853212

Shepway District Council, Civic Centre

Castle Hill Avenue, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 2QY

E: emily.ghassempour@shepway.gov.uk

Operation Nightingale comes to Folkestone: A group of injured soldiers learn the skills of archaeology at Folkestone Roman villa as part of their physical rehabilitation.

Eight soldiers from 1st Battalion The Rifles (1 RIFLES) took part in the excavation of the Iron Age settlement and Roman villa at East Wear bay, Folkestone, for five days from Monday 24^th October.   All of the soldiers had been injured on active service in Afghanistan. They helped in the excavation as part of Operation Nightingale, a new initiative being developed by the army to use archaeology as therapy for recovering soldiers.

It is hoped the project will help to facilitate a return to the regiment for successful participants or provide a focus or hobby for those that may leave, as well as providing a sense of worth and purpose for the participants through learning new skills and building on team-working and social skills.

The excavation at East Wear Bay is taking place as part of a three year community archaeology project, ‘A Town Unearthed: Folkestone Before 1500’. The project is a partnership between Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Canterbury Christ Church University and the Folkestone People’s History Centre and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, with additional contributions by Folkestone Town Council, Kent Archaeological Society, Kent County Council,  Shepway District Council, East Folkestone Change Together and the Tory Family Foundation.

The dig, which is being directed by Keith Parfitt of Canterbury Archaeological Trust, has uncovered new evidence about the Roman occupation of the site, but also significant evidence of a large Iron Age settlement that existed there before the Roman period, and which seems to have been a major focus of power and trade in the 1^st centuries BC and AD.

Corporal Steven Winterton of 1 RIFLES has already spent four days at the site, as part of the development of Op Nightingale. His finds included a small Roman intaglio gem, probably a setting from a finger-ring. Corporal Winterton said, “I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far. It’s been brilliant. I’ve always had an interest in archaeology and this week has rekindled that. The project has been a great help in lifting the day-to-day burdens following my injury. It gives all of us participating in the project the chance to acquire new skills to help develop our future careers.”

Rifleman Jake Watts who was at the Folkestone Roman Villa dig last week said “I didn’t know what to expect when we were told we would be doing archaeology but I went into it with an open mind and I have enjoyed it, especially the precise work”

Rifleman Watts and the others have previously been digging in the spill from badger sets on Salisbury Plain where they found Iron Age material. Rifleman Ashley Meredith said “To be honest when I came into it I thought it would be quite boring but when we were told what we were looking for and about the things that we had found – pottery bones, flint tools - I started to become interested.”

Operation Nightingale is the brainchild of Sergeant Diarmaid Walshe of 1 RIFLES. Sergeant Walshe, who is also a qualified archaeologist, said, “These soldiers have all endured a lot during operational tours. Due to the complex nature of their physical and mental injuries sustained in Afghanistan, the Army is looking at new and innovative ways to promote recovery. It is my belief that archaeology is the perfect way to achieve this, whilst enhancing their rehabilitation process. We are investing time and resources to aid these soldiers, with a firm belief that fieldwork and recording will aid their recovery.”

More than 500 soldiers from 1 RIFLES have deployed to Afghanistan where they have had considerable success in ensuring that local people can live and work in a safe environment.

The excavations at the villa dig continue. Recent discoveries include the remains of a pre-Roman road or path constructed of small stones that possibly led down to the beach. The dig continues for seven days a week and the site can be visited in any day between 10.0 am. and 4.00 pm.

For further information on A Town Unearthed contact Hannah Lewis on 01303-850614 or visit the website: www.atownunearthed.co.uk

Adventures in Regeneration: Folkestone’s New Tide” by Nick Ewbank. NEA Publishing. 2011. Illustrations. pp134.

On presenting Roger De Haan with a medal for Arts Philanthropy in 2008, Prince Charles said “Most philanthropists will content themselves with supporting a handful of carefully selected institutions. Roger De Haan is a bit different: he is attempting to regenerate an entire town”. So while attention inevitably focuses on De Haan’s plans for the development of the seafront and his charitable support for the Creative Quarter in Tontine Street and the Old High Street, Nick Ewbank’s book, “Adventures in Regeneration: Folkestone New tide”, rightly moves beyond that to include the Folkestone Academy, the Sidney De Haan Research Centre, the University Centre Folkestone, Kent Adult Education, as well as the Folkestone Triennial and other festivals,  showing that Prince Charles was not exaggerating.

But what also can be included, though they are beyond the scope of Ewbank’s book, is the funding given to help the renewal of Folkestone Rugby Club pitch and clubroom, the £7million Cheriton Road Sports Ground project which will include a new pavilion, sports hall, two cricket pitches and two hockey surfaces as well as a “MUGA” (multi use games area) and support for the Folkestone Youth Project, a charitable endeavour based in former warehouse premises on the Folkestone seafront. De Haan has also supported the development of recreation areas in locations across Folkestone and Shepway, often working together with schools, residents groups and local residents. So De Haan’s project covers education, health sports and youth work as well as regeneration through the arts. However as Nick Ewbank was initially brought in to revive the fading Metropole Arts Centre, that is where the story begins.

The heady sixties days, with exhibitions in the gallery of Roy Lichtenstein, Epstein, Turner, Picasso and Yoko Ono, were well over, and Arts Council England, feeling the centre had lost direction, had withdrawn its funding. Initially De Haan gave support but rapidly concluded, after seeking advice, that the Arts Council had been right. However he agreed to take over as head of the board and Nick Ewbank was employed to “review options for expanding the Arts Centre, obtain funding and manage the project”.

Nick Ewbank had a background in regeneration through the arts and fairly soon proposals to update the Metropole as a major arts centre or build another gallery gave way to his vision for the creation of an arts quarter in run down East Folkestone. With permission from the Heritage Lottery Fund, £50,000 left over from a terminated consultation was used to pay for a report on the idea. However not a person to sit around De Haan said they should get on with it before the consultation was completed. Nick Ewbank suggested persuading the shop owners to allow artists and creative businesses into their premises at low rents, but pointed out that if this succeeded in lifting the area rents would inevitably rise - the “Hoxton Effect”. “That’s easy, Nick”, De Haan said, “We’ll buy the buildings and then we can control the rents for the long term”.

Some will be unhappy with Ewbank’s descriptions of East Folkestone but at the same time the embryo Go Folkestone, which would become one of the Creative Quarter’s main backers, had sent out a leaflet which asked “Is Folkestone dying?” in an attempt to bring people’s attention to the state of the town and try and reverse its decline.  And the facts are there:  “The Folkestone Harvey Central ward where the Old Town is situated [was in 2003] the worst in Kent for health deprivation and the worst in the South East of England for unemployment, putting it into the bottom 0.4%. most deprived parts of the UK. A startling 34% of the working-age population was in long-term unemployment and had no formal qualifications”. Many locals considered the area dangerous and never ventured beyond Rendezvous Street.

If the external appearance of the area was bad what was revealed internally when the renovation of the first buildings purchased started was worse. Years of shoddy repairs and papering over the cracks were revealed.  Robert Green, now director of property and operations for the Creative Foundation, and his team of builders found fungus, rising damp, a bakery with four inches of grease around the cooker, supporting walls and chimney breasts taken out without support, a beam rooted at both ends so the ceiling had dropped six inches, a floor so sloping that you could have skied down it and the a top of a door sliced off at a 20 degree angle so that it could be shut after the side of the property had slumped. One of the jobs of Niamh Sullivan, the second person to join the Creative Foundation team, was to go round emptying the buckets from all the leaking roofs. Slums would not be too a harsh word to apply. In one property seven people were living in a two bedroomed flat with the grandfather sleeping in the corridor. The Creative Foundation has had an almost overwhelming task putting right these years of neglect and of course gutting and rebuilding a property takes far longer than building from scratch.

Early on it was realised that if the Creative Foundation sought capital funding from the public sector to buy and renovate sufficient properties to turn the area round they would have a very long wait.  Again the solution came from the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, which agreed to purchase the buildings, finance their renovation and then hand them over to the Creative Foundation on 125 year leases at a peppercorn rent. The Creative Foundation now has 84 properties spread over 60 different addresses. As the project progresses, the money accumulating from rents will be used to fund further arts programmes and festivals in the town.

In this short article it has only been possible to cover the first fifty pages of the book that describe the genesis of the Creative Quarter. The rest covers education, the seafront development, the development of Quarterhouse – the performing art centre and the programme of festivals and exhibitions, including the Triennial.  There is no room to write of the groundbreaking work of The Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health or the Folkestone Academy, which, replacing the Channel School - the fifth worst performing secondary school in the country - had last year 676 applications for 240 places and is worthy of an article in its own right. The book is full of facts, figures and personalities. It is an utterly engaging read for anyone who has an interest in Folkestone or urban regeneration as a whole.

Some complain of the time that the regeneration is taking but it is difficult to halt and turn round 50 years of decline in a few years. There is no magic wand. As Lord Radnor says “People nowadays demand instant gratification but it does take time. In Folkestone now it’s really building up a head of steam. Over the next five to ten years we’ll see the rewards of a lot of hard work and the joined-up vision will prove to be the correct model”

So Folkestone is lucky to have a man who is going to see the job through however long it takes. As Nick Ewbank says, though Roger De Haan is by his own admission ““a man in a tearing hurry”, he is also one whose greatest insight is to take the long view.

“Adventures in Regeneration: Folkestone’s New tide” by Nick Ewbank. NEA Publishing. 2011. Illustrations. pp134. £14.95. Obtainable from Waterstones and the Triennial visitor’s centre or free download from http://www.nickewbank.co.uk

This article is from the December issue of Go Folkestone Magazine, free copies of which can be found at cafes, restaurants and retail outlets around the town. If you would like an electronic copy of the magazine e-mail Nick Spurrier at Spurrier@btconnect.com

Please find attached a flyer for a concert to be given by the locally well-known Shepway Singers (directed by Dr Berkeley Hill) in the newly-named St Michael’s Methodist-Anglican Church Centre (formerly Hythe Methodist Church) on Friday 30 September at 7.30pm. This will be a celebratory concert to mark the occasion of the relocation of the St Michael’s Church congregation to join the Hythe Methodists; (an inaugural joint service will be held on Sunday 2 October at 11.00).

Following press revelations about the re-introduction of the Folkestone Air Show, it can be revealed that plans are indeed being made for this to happen.

The idea was born out of the success of neighbouring air shows at Margate and Eastbourne, which have proven to give a great boost to the local economy from tourism and business investment. With Folkestone now regarded as the place to visit and recently voted in the top ten UK destinations by the CSMA, the time seems ripe for the Folkestone Air Show to return.

Final plans have yet to be ratified and much work needs to be done. However, the idea has wings and it looks like we will see the first air show in some 9 years, with first events taking place in 2012 around the time of the 2012 Jubilee celebrations (final date to be announced soon).

It is planned to build on the success of the 2012 event to enable a full air show to be mounted in 2013, which will be every bit as good and comparable to similar shows in the southeast. A lot of research has been done and still needs to be done to ensure its success so that it will become an annual event, worthy of the tens of thousands of visitors expected to attend.

It is stressed that no council funding from tax payers will be made, with the final cost to be met purely from sponsorship, local business involvement and donations. However both the 2012 and 2013 events have the full support of Shepway Council who will work with the event teams to ensure these events go ahead smoothly, safely and successfully.

Further information on the 2012 Jubilee Air Show can be obtained from John Barber Folkestone Town Centre Management.

Planning of the proposed 2013 event is already at an advanced stage and those wishing to be involved by way of corporate or individual sponsorship are invited to indicate their interest and in due course will be sent a sponsorship pack.

The theme of the 2013 Shepway Air Show will be REACH FOR THE SKY, invoking memories of the role this region played in the Battle of Britain, as well as demonstrating the huge opportunities for business to invest in this emerging region.

For the 2013 there will be various Business Conventions, Art exhibitions and Entertainment provided, culminating in a weekend of ground events and air displays from the top RAF and private display teams.

Enquiries for the 2013 air show can initially be made to Project Lead Jan Holben jan.holben@hotmail.co.uk There will be a Folkestone Air Show website soon where information about both air shows, details of sponsorship packages and posters can be downloaded.

Over two weeks in July, 383 primary Folkestone school children and secondary school students, together with 59 teaching staff visited the excavation site of the Roman Villa on East Cliff in Folkestone as part of the project A Town Unearthed: Folkestone before 1500. Organised by Marion Green, education officer of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust and helped by volunteers Yvonne Hutchcraft, Pat Cocks, Roma Mortimer, David Paton, Daniel Harris and Iain Nielson, groups of children and students were shown round the site, told of its history and saw and handled some of the many finds

It was clear that they enjoyed the visits and finding out about the villa, of which one student said “I didn’t know it was all here” another was surprised to learn “that a Roman house is under the grass.” and another commented “we are walking on history”. One enthusiast said “I’m coming back in the holidays”. Others learnt that “archaeology isn’t just about finding big things”, “that the Romans had under floor heating” and “the Romans used a rib bone to scrape the oil off them in a bath”. One teacher felt that the “children were highly motivated, interested in what they were seeing and enjoyed listening to the history of the villa.”

Marion Green said “”I am very pleased with the way the school visits have gone at East Cliff. We have a good team of local volunteers supporting the education work, who were quick to learn and not afraid to get stuck in with classes of children. Teachers were appreciative, many of them clearly benefitting from the experience along with the children who had lots of questions!”

Helping on site during July were ten work experience students from Folkestone, Canterbury, Ashford, Ramsgate and Dartford as well as some students from the University of Kent and Edinburgh University. Hattie Grylls, an Archaeology student at Edinburgh university, said “This my first practical experience of digging. It has certainly lived up to my expectations. I found it quite thrilling discovering and uncovering things but I am also looking forward to sorting and washing some on the finds”. It was also a new experience for David Swann, a student at Norton Knatchbull School, Ashford who hopes to study ancient history at University and perhaps have a career in archaeology.

Also as part of a Town Unearthed and as a contribution to the Folkestone Triennial Fringe, a mosaic, using re-cycled glass chippings and a few fragments of Roman pottery and tile, has been mounted on the side of a brick building near the Roman Villa. Organised by Yvonne Hutchcraft with the help of Annie Begley, the initial layout was taken from a section of Roman flooring uncovered in a previous excavation, while the final design was the result of a competition run through local Primary Schools. Children were asked to create designs depicting roman and/or modern day to day living. The winners were Thea Jones from Morehall, Kayla Ostridge from St Mary’s, Ethan Blackie, Liam Wetherell, Aleena Liby, Tahlia Fagan, Rebecca Inglelbrecht and Elena Philpott from Stella Maris, Thomas Cloke, Phoebe Dellison and Cameron Stranage from Sandgate, Jarid Farnworth and Eleanor Priestly from Elham and Chloe Wilson from Castle Hill.

Further events have been organised to involve children. On Saturday 30th July and Saturday 6th August from 2.00 - 3.30pm, as part of the BBC ‘Hands on History’ project, 53 children aged 7-12 years and their families or carers took part in practical and interactive archaeology workshops at the Roman Villa site.

The involvement of children and school students in a wide range of activities, including classroom visits, is a key component of A Town Unearthed: Folkestone before 1500, which is a three year project of community archaeology in Folkestone, organised by Canterbury Christ Church University, the Folkestone People’s History Centre and Canterbury Archaeological Trust. It is funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust with additional contributions by Folkestone Town Council, Kent Archaeological Society, Kent County Council, Shepway District Council (East Folkestone Change together) and the Tory Family Foundation.

The villa site at Wear Bay Road is open for visitors from 10.00 am – 4.00 pm, seven days a week. If you wish to get involved as a volunteer please come to the site or contact Hannah Lewis on 01303-850614. www.atownunearthed.co.uk