Introduction

Author: Esther Hamilton

The hamlet of Chilmington Green, which can be seen from the wooded highpoint of Coleman’s Kitchen Wood, hides a unique piece of rural heritage, gateposts fashioned from original Second World War gas canisters!

Famous locally, these landmarks were visited and photographed in 2025 by Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group members Margaret and Angus Willson while performing fieldwalking survey for the project, who also wrote a history of how they came to be a part of the landscape.
Further below, Hilary Goodyear and Sarah Selling, also Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group members, discovered further evidence of the material legacy of the Second World War for our project (and why one should take care magnet fishing).

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Chilmington Green Gateposts

Field-walking, photography and text
by Angus and Margaret Willson.
Local knowledge provided by Ian Wolverson.

An easy walk around the hamlet of Chilmington Green reveals a distinctive rural feature with an interesting story of re-purposing.

Towards the end of the second world war various forces, such as the USAF, had made facilities in and around Chilmington Green.
The short-lived airfield offers a fascinating insight to the preparations for allied landings and liberation of France.

Six years after the end of the war, Mr Dan Pullen started farming the surrounding area, cleared the fields of scrap metal and needed to re-establish stock-proof boundaries. It also required gates suitable for moving a dairy herd around.

He removed a discarded pile of large, metal gas canisters. These would have been used on or near the airfield for oxy-acetylene welding. The canisters were painted green, which mostly survives, and then mounted in concrete.

The most visible gateposts are set on the footpath between Coleman’s Kitchen Wood and the hamlet where it crosses the north end of Bartlett Lane. The modern gate is making good use of the farm gatepost. The other canister is deep in the hedgerow.

Further down the hill of Bartlett Lane, and opposite Chilmington Green Farm, there is a metal cylinder right by the old farm buildings.

Dis-used farm Buildings

With a reminder of the former dairy-farming, there are two metal cylinders at the end of the dis-used slurry or silage pit wall.

Greensand Way

Further still down Bartlett Lane there is a signpost to the Greensand Way national footpath which crosses between large fields right across to the road called Long Length. Another pair of cylinders provides a gateway to these fields.

About 100 metres further along this footpath, with a ditch alongside, there are two cylinders which have not kept their upright position. One is by the ditch and the other is in hedgerow, but they do show the concrete footings.

Chilmington Green Lane

Following these in sequence it is necessary to turn around and walk to Chilmington Green Lane. There is a single cylinder on the footpath next to Little Netters.

Further along the lane there are two more cylinders and a gate. In due course, this may become the entrance to the planned cricket ground.

Finally, another fifty metres along there is a pair of cylinders and a gate covered in barbed-wire and buried in hedgerow. With the hedge in full leaf these would be very hard to find.

Memorial

Let’s hope these distinctive gateposts can remain part of the special landscape of Chilmington Green.
As the housing development takes shape the re-purposed gas cylinders are a nod to the historic environment of the second world war airfield, a good example of post-war “make do and mend”, and the more recent dairy farming in the area.
It has been suggested the two cylinders dislodged from their original footings could be relocated to a future memorial site. This would, perhaps, re-establish a link with their original purpose. Alternatively, they could be used to feature the proposed road entrance which will cross the current field as the future Discovery Park (or Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Park).

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Singleton Lake’s Unexploded Ordinance

Authors: Hilary Goodyear and Sarah Selling

In June 2017, magnet fishers at Singleton Lake could add to the around 60 cases of unexploded ordinances found per year across the UK, after they pulled up an unexploded bomb. The father and son duo’s Sunday activity lead to the Army’s bomb disposal team being called out to perform a controlled denotation of what was identified as an anti-tank warhead.

Sources:

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/fisherman-finds-unexploded-war-shell-126827

Authors: Ian Wolverson, Esther Hamilton

You may have read elsewhere on our project website on the key military personnel of airfields such as RAF Ashford – the construction squadrons that made it and other Advanced Landing Grounds possible.
Performing what may be seen as not such glamourous roles as RAF Ashford’s RCAF and USAAF pilots, these soldiers were still putting their lives on the line.
Just after midnight, on the 22nd of May 1944, 15 RAF personnel from the 5003 unit were killed after a Luftwaffe bomber aircraft dropped an extremely powerful bomb near their tented field kitchen.
Speaking to researcher Ian Wolverson, Harold Alexander, who served with the 5013rd squadron, witnessed the event:

“…the most vivid memory of the time of my Service – we were dispersed around a field in tents when our Camp was bombed by one lone plane. The bomb landed right in our Field Kitchen resulting in the death of fourteen of our pals and sixteen injured. It was a terrible sight – remains of tents hanging in the trees; our tent had shrapnel holes through the top half – lucky for the four of us, we were on our way back to Camp from a local dance. It was near Ashford, Kent. We were told the next day that the plane was brought down off Dungeness.’”
Harold Alexander had been camping out in a tent on the eastern slopes of Coleman’s Kitchen Wood, and had a clear line of sight of the bombing. A report by George Law, another interviewee, detailed that the bomb was dropped by a Heinkel III (one later seen dropping into the sea off Dungeness that same night), perhaps as a result of the jettisoning a torpedo on the unsuspecting cooks of the 5003rd.

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Excavations at Brisley Farm in the early 2000s uncovered Iron Age warrior burials. During these excavations, three plain china War Department mugs, and 16 copper-alloy military buttons (four from RAF tunics) were discovered by archaeologists while excavating the bomb crater, dating to the time of the devastating bombing. [i][ii]

Ian Wolverson was instrumental in setting up a permanent memorial at the site of the event, which was unveiled in May 2017, which includes the 500s squadron badge that, fittingly for a constructor’s squadron, contains a Roman surveying tool, a theodolite.

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[i] Barber, L. (2013) ‘The Post-Roman Pottery from Brisley Farm’, in Stevenson, J. (2013) Living by the Sword: The Archaeology of Brisley Farm, Ashford, Kent. pp.290

[ii] Raemen, E. (2013) ‘Post-Roman Metalwork’, , in Stevenson, J. (2013) Living by the Sword: The Archaeology of Brisley Farm, Ashford, Kent. pp.

Author: Ian Wolverson

Eric Aldwinckle was born in Oxford England and after attending Folkestone Grammar school he moved with his family to Canada, at the age of 15.
Upon his father’s death, the young Eric became the principal support of his family.
Unable to attend art school, he was influenced by many contemporary painters, and in 1928 he became a commercial artist, teaching part-time at the Ontario College of Art.

Early in the war he designed some of Canada’s most forceful war posters, enlisting in 1942 to the RCAF.
For a time, he served as a camouflage specialist in Halifax, but in February 1943 he was commissioned as an official war artist. and the late summer of 1943 he spent several weeks at RAF Ashford, while covering RCAF operations in Coastal Command and the 2nd Tactical Air Force.
Upon his release from service in October 1945, he resumed his career as a commercial artist and art teacher and went on to design many of Canada’s coins and banknotes, as well as the official Seal of Canada, used during the reign of the late Elizabeth the II.
The photograph below of Aldwinckle at work, was taken at RAF Ashford and the result of this session ‘Mustangs in Readiness’ is shown at the bottom of the page.

Author: Esther Hamilton

Less famous than other Kentish Airfields such as RAF Biggin Hill (of 1940’s Battle of Britain), RAF Ashford was, a hub of activity for a few short years in the final years of the Second World War. One of the new Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) built after 1942, it was a key part of the linear constellation of airfields, made up of (to name but a few) those at Woodchurch, Staplehurst, High Halden, Kingsnorth and Lashenden that dotted the Kentish landscape between Biggin Hill and the continent.[i]

Opened for use on the 13^th of April 1943, the site was first occupied by the 65^th and 122^nd and their Spitfires but was last used by the USAAF’s 406^th Flight Group, in July 1944 before the airfield’s land was derequisitioned. What did the local population think about this? We can tell from popular media of the time, such as this Guiness advert, that rural communities feared yet expected that their property would be seized for use by the military.

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[i] Brooks, R. J. (1998) Kent Airfields in the Second World War.

At Chilmington, Singleton Manor, once home to the famous Elizabeth Quinton Strouts, military men were permitted full use of the property, and even decades later, their used tins of boot polish and match boxes were being uncovered beneath the manor’s floorboards.

We may hear later on in the project, after collecting local oral histories, about how RAF Ashford’s presence affected the small local communities of the village of Great Chart and the hamlet of Chilmington.

But what was life like for the men that found themselves as this newly built airstrip? Although brief, RAF Ashford’s existence was more than as a strategic spot on the map: it was a place where men shaved in the mud, brewed coffee in makeshift cafes, and lived out their war service in one damp tent and boot polish tin at a time.

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RCAF

The 414^th RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) Squadron, who were at Ashford from August to October 1943 (alongside the 430^th), and its Squadron Leader, ‘Herb’ Peters, feature heavily in the photographic evidence of life at RAF Ashford for the RCAF.

From his photo archive, shared with us by his daughter Esther Jones, we can see just how minimal the living conditions were for most men: most were using tented accommodation, with many daily tasks performed outdoors.

However isolated the airstrip may have felt, being  situated in the middle of swathes of uninhabited agricultural land at that time, RAF Ashford was still an entirely functional airbase, with modern communications – which meant the occasional letter from home!

The flying men of the RCAF, however dapper they appear wearing shirtsleeves and ties even while camping, were still not immune to the risks involved in their regular operations flying into France: we can see here the evidence of an unfortunate (although reportedly not lethal) crash landing at Ashford by the 414^th.

Taken at other ALGs, photos in the Imperial War Museum archive show what may have felt a bizarre, surreal experience of flying, maintaining or supplying the cutting-edge aeronautic engineering of fighter planes, while living in the most basic of lodgings.

Among the duties taken up by personnel at RAF Ashford was the repetitive and exhausting task of manually laying out Sommerfeld tracking.
Illustrated by British-born Canadian war artist, Eric Aldwinckle, one of the RCAF personnel at the airbase, this job that would become in setting up the necessary infrastructure for Allied air forces to land further into Europe, was such a familiar sight that it appears in multiple paintings.

Although Aldwinckle did produce paintings on a number of subjects while at RAF Ashford, such as Mustangs at Readiness (above), one can imagine how familiar a sight it must have been to see personnel rolling out of the landing track at the airbase, especially considering that this task is one of the few duties he illustrated as they were being performed.  These ‘magic carpets’

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USAAF

USAAF were the second main users of the Airfield, camping out there between April to the end of July 1944, represented by the 406th Group of 512th, 513th, and 514th Squadrons [Photo: 512 colour photo][i]

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[i] Delve, K. (2005) Military Airfields of Southern Britain – Southern England

Of the Flying Group, our research has uncovered more documentary evidence on the 512^th than the other squadrons from the USAAF at Ashford:

What were the Americans’ first impressions of Ashford/?
In “The Official History of the 512^th”, published in 1981 as an abridged version of the original 512^th Fighter squadron history, it is reported that the 512^th arrived at RAF Ashford, following an advanced party, on the 6^th of April 1944, remarking that “we were taken out to our airdrome which was throbbing with mud”, and that the “Squadron area is a large square surrounded on all sides by a natural hedge and trees. The tents are dispersed around this hedge”.

The pilots, in this report, awaited the delivery of their Mustangs, which, on arrival, they immediately began to undertake training missions. 307 hours of training in formation flying and dive bombing were completed just by the 512nd from RAF Ashford across its 17 planes.

Further into May, the 512^th are reported here to have completed nineteen total non-training operations flying to and from France and Germany, escorting larger bombers or, in one case, bombing a railway bridge, glibly referred to by the Squadron as “geography lessons.”
Being mere weeks from D-Day, it would be at Ashford that the final details of this Flight Group’s part in the operation were ironed out by its own Intelligence Officers, with more instruction given by the 303^rd Wing.

On the 24^th of May, the squadron made a trial movement en masse to a nearby Advanced Landing Ground, at Brenzett, practising relocating a whole squadron to the ALGs they hoped to be built in Europe, which was an apparently successful dry run.

In their “Official History”, June was reportedly “a month of intensified activity”.

From the 514^th we have an annotated and illustrated booklet featuring much of the daily life of the American airmen at Ashford, which show that camping life was entirely liveable despite the “throbbing” mudscape, if one eventually found a good position in which to shave (above), and or created a pop-up ‘speakeasy’, such as their mobile, corrugated iron “Boogie Woogie, Coffee Shoppe and Lounge”.

Issues regarding transporting personnel across the wide plane on which the two landing strips of RAF Ashford were mapped appears to have been solved by use of military vehicles outside their approved passenger numbers (below).

The Remembrance Tree

It should be remarked on, however, that for some men at RAF Ashford, this was not a site merely of camping and camaraderie: this was a site where men would see their comrades take to the air and never return.

In 2014, Bernie Sledzik, USAAF 514^th, from Altoona, Pennsylvania, visited the site of the airfield at RAF Ashford and was able to identify an oak tree that had operated as a site to remember fallen friends, and where he himself had been found weeping, believing his close friend, missing after a completed mission, had died.
Lieutenant E. Springer, Bernie’s friend, had, in fact, been safely harboured by the French resistance for several weeks after a safe landing in France, and would return to fight with the 514^th.

After the RCAF had left RAF Ashford, Squadron Leader Herb Peters would die, at age 25, in 1943. Bernie would go on to fly 67 missions over Europe. The tree still stands in its original location.

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RAF Ashford and D-Day

It should be remembered that the raison d’être of RAF Ashford, its temporary nature, its ability to be constructed then deconstructed, and the continuous practising of rolling out and rolling up Sommerfeld tracking by those stationed there, was to train Allied forces ahead of the invasion of occupied Europe, which would begin on D-Day.

Before being shot down over Luxembourg (alive but with heavily singed eyebrows), a then 19-year-old Malcolm McLane, of New Hampshire, flew 73 combat missions, many out of RAF Ashford, from whence he flew out for D-Day (6^th of June 1944).

For McLane, like many others, even the smallest of memories from that day: the clatter of mess tins, your single egg at breakfast, are burned to memory.
In an interview with his local paper in Concord, New Hampshire in 2004, McLane wrote on the frenetic atmosphere of that mission, watching the invasion from afar after a pre-dawn take-off at 3am.[i]

“It’s three o’clock, Tuesday morning, June 6, 1944. Someone is shaking you in your blanket roll, but you’re too sleepy to get up, for you didn’t get to bed until midnight and it was after one before the talking quieted down and you got to sleep. Then the bright light goes on in your face, and you remember what you were told in that three-hour-long, secret briefing last night: “Today is D-Day!” You tumble out as best you can, put on extra socks and heavy shoes from force of habit, for someday you may have to walk back. There’s some hot coffee and an egg in the mess tent, then you pile into jeeps and trucks and hurry to the line, where the ground crews have already been warming up the planes. Malcolm McLane in Army Air Force. There’s your Mae West to put on, your helmet and goggles and chute to put in the plane, before you pack into the squadron briefing tent and get courses and instructions regarding your mission. There’s no comment on the weather, as there usually is, for it’s obviously terrible. Ordinarily the mission would be scratched, but there’s no canceling this one. Fifteen minutes before start-engine time, you’re in your plane checking everything and getting buckled in. It’s still dark, for the sun isn’t due to rise for over an hour and there won’t be much twilight with this solid overcast and misty rain with its low ceiling and visibility. Belly tanks cause some trouble as you taxi out, but there’s no waiting for stragglers. Those who can make it are off the ground and circling over the field, trying to get into formation. It’s no easy thing, and many wander home alone. Once you’ve set course, you must climb up through the overcast on instruments. The formation breaks up even more, and when you break out on top, headed into a full moon and a clear sky, you find yourself alone on your element leader’s wing. The rest have popped up through the blanket of clouds on their own and are doing their best to find the patrol area separately. Navigation is a matter of compass headings and timing, for there are no landmarks here over this ocean of white. To the east the sky gets lighter all the time. After an hour occasional breaks appear below, and the two of you spiral down to reconnoitre. It’s France all right, but where? A radio call and a fix, and soon you’re given a heading to target. Below the clouds it’s murky again, but the light behind you is getting pinker and the fleecy clouds at the bottom of the overcast are a lovely soft red. Below, ships begin to appear, their guns flashing in the darkness, while the rising sun brings out their forms gradually and makes the water a deep red. The air is still misty and the visibility poor, but this only adds to the sun’s reddish glare. For another hour you patrol back and forth over the beachhead-to-be as the big guns pound away. And then when you’re about to leave – your gas is getting low – a little fleet of boats leaves the great fleet offshore, passes the outermost ring of destroyers and heads for the beaches. As you head back across the channel to England, the scattered small wakes of the landing craft move toward the shore. In another few minutes the invasion will have begun. More planes will relieve you, and many more ships will follow those first boats, but that hour before H-hour will be a never-forgotten memory of this war, whose other details I will willingly forget. My part was nil, for there was no opposition from the air, but our mission was carried out and the beachhead won.”

D-Day, or, its success, would mark the beginning of the end of RAF Ashford as an airfield – the 512^th Squadron was reportedly among the first flying groups to reach the Normandy beaches on the 6^th of June, and by the 5^th of July (one hopes these American pilots had not celebrated too much the previous day), they were ordered to proceed in moving wholesale to a new base in France with all their equipment, such was the success of the Allied advance.

Further, the well-practised swift (but no doubt laborious) installation of Sommerfeld tracking would become instrumental in constructing not only new ALGs in the continent, but in laying road networks at speeds to match the rate of advance.

Eventually, the 406^th’s mobile Boogie Woogie Lounge would reach Germany, then renamed the “Kaffee Haus und Lounge”.

From the earthy delights of shaving outside a tent, to the task of flying dawn patrols into the unknown, the lives of men who passed through RAF Ashford left almost no trace on the landscape, but they can be remembered by a single tree.

[i] Brooks, R. J. (1998) Kent Airfields in the Second World War
[ii] Delve, K. (2005) Military Airfields of Southern Britain – Southern England [iii] Copyright (c) Concord Monitor, 2004

Introduction:

During the launch of the Chilmington Green Archaeology Project while visiting St Mary’s Church, Great Chart, AOC’s Becky Haslam discovered a small graphite drawing in the entranceway of the church. Realising it depicted what appeared to be a Second World War tank, Becky and the Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group have investigated how a tank came to be graffitied in that spot: were tanks more a part of the landscape around St Mary’s than elsewhere during wartime?

Clues in Hothfield Common

Authors: Hilary Goodyear and Sarah Selling, Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group

A First World War Mark IV tank has stood in St George’s Square in Ashford Kent since 1919, but our St Mary’s tank graffito bears a much closer resemblance to World War II tanks.

We know that the British army had troops stationed and training using tanks at Hothfield Common, having commandeered both the common and Manor during the Second World War, and it appears likely that it was that generation of tanks that inspired the graffito.

Hothfield Common was commandeered by the army for training and as use as a Prisoner of War camp. It was still remembered in 2008 for being a place where one could find tanks parked in the woods, and residents could still find bullet casings in gardens and fields at that time.[i] 

Corporal Arthur Bridge was based at Hothfield Camp. He was in the 9^th Battalion Worcestershire regiment, and one of a total of 1,200 infantry that were stationed on the Common. Arthur was impressed by the Nissen hut accommodation, the bathing arrangements and the Mess Hall…but not the toilets.

“For a long period in 1945 I was an 18-year-old Corporal in 9th Btn the Worcestershire Regiment on Hothfield Common. The 9th Worcestershire was situated on the left-hand side of the road and on the right-hand side was a battalion of the Royal Warwickshires. So, you had two battalions, approx. 1,200 infantry soldiers, camped there. I say camped, but from a Worcestershire point of view it was a fine posting. The Nissen Huts were in good condition and all paths and in-camp roadways immaculate. There was a very good bath area, a fine Mess Hall and always plenty of hot water. The only drawback was the toilets!!! They consisted of pits, planks and canvas. I suppose they may had [sic] been but I never remember them being emptied. Things must have grown very well there for years after! I remember my time at Hothfield fondly. The countryside was lovely. Ashford in those days was a pleasant market town.”[ii]

Derek Allen of Hothfield also recalled exchanging with the camp cook some rabbits he had caught using his ferrets for other items. He also saw tanks on exercise around the various tank traps and hollows which are still evident on the Common.

“There are other training trenches still very clearly defined, including a grenade range.”[iii]

So, we can say that tanks likely were a noticeable and common sight in the local landscape, even for civilians, during wartime. But who drew the graffito? Someone local? A service man? A prisoner of war?

The St Mary’s tank graffito is at an unusual position on the wall: too high to be drawn by a small adult or child if standing on the church flagstones, yet too low down to be drawn by an adult if they had drawn it, as the position otherwise suggests, while standing on the entranceway’s benches. Could this have been drawn by a local child inspired by what they had seen nearby at Hothfield, while waiting to attend a service at St Mary’s? Or a particularly tall serviceman?

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[i]https://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/content/articles/2008/08/20/hothfield_history_feature.shtml

[ii] https://erenow.org/ww/kent-at-war-1939-to-1945/4.php

[iii] https://www.hothfieldmemories.org.uk/

Author: Esther Hamilton with the Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group

There was some debate regarding the bookishness of the average Tommy (going by the fear that the novel-reading Edwardian middle classes had of the growing “multitude” of working-class readers encroaching on their literary turf). Yet thanks to the existence of compulsory education up to the age of 11, the British soldiery of the First World War were among the most literate forces of the conflict[i][ii].

As we have read in our introduction to Elizabeth Quinton Strouts, this new, widespread literacy, joined with the technical sophistication of the Post Office, allowed the Friends of Great Chart to join forces and send their goodwill in the form of much-needed rations and letters to those serving from Great Chart and Chilmington even at the height of the conflict.
As early as 1914, the Friends had also funded a ‘Roll of Honour’ [BH1] [BH2] display for the village church, proudly listing those serving during the first, and more hopeful, year of the war.

Almost no letters sent to the frontlines survive but below is a selection of the archive of letters that were returned addressed to Elizabeth Quinton Strouts, and the Friends of Great Chart. Local researcher Ian Wolverson has provided these letters to the Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group for study, following on from work he conducted for the centenary memorial project ‘Great Chart Remembers’ in 2014.

Offering a unique insight into the lives of local men thrust into the frontlines of a global conflict, these letters range from heartwarming Christmas wishes, to reflections on the emotional numbness endured by those fighting the War to End All Wars.

To read more about the hamlet of Chilmington and its families as they were in 1911, explore our blog on ‘Chilmington at Peace’ here on this site.

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[i] Masterman, C.F.C. (1909) The Condition of England

[ii] Vincent, D. (1993) Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750-1914

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Featured in Chilmington at Peace

Victor Barton

In November 1918, just weeks after the armistice, the young Victor Barton wrote to Mrs Strouts from France to thank her for the most recent package, that had been sent while war still raged. He noted that, although the fighting had officially ended, he and his comrades had not quite realised it, being that they remained “under almost [their] usual conditions and above all [their] rations are very poor”.

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Claude Barton

We also have a letter in the Elizabeth Quinton Strouts archive from Claude Barton. A much cheerier note, Claude here writes on Boxing Day, thanking the Friends of Great Chart for his package, received on Christmas Morning, 1918, in Felixstowe, where he and his comrades were served by their officers for the holiday dinner.

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Henry Finnis

Two Finnises of Chilmington Green, Alfred and Henry, served as Privates during the conflict. Henry sent Mrs Strouts and the Friends a Christmas Card in December of 1918, after the end of fighting.

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George Light

As you may remember from Chilmington at Peace, George Light wrote to Mrs Strouts in 1917 while recuperating from injuries sustained while in one of the most dangerous regiments to fight in during the conflict: the front line, infantry regiment of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey regiment, from whose ranks 32% of its soldiery never returned. 
He writes that he was wounded on the 29^th of January and although “badly wounded in my right leg [,] also slightly in my left leg and back [,] I have no bones broken”.

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John Shorter

Although Olive Shorter’s brother, Charles, would die in 1917, she would, thanks to the charity of the Friends of Great Chart, know that her nephew would be a regular recipient of letters of support and additional rations during his time serving for his country, a rare luxury.

“thank you very much for all you have done for me both here in England and in France”.

In September 1918, during a brief stint in France, John Shorter was badly gassed, injuring his hands and eyes, forcing him to a military hospital in Nottingham, where he nonetheless had a letter dictated to be sent to Elizabeth Quinton Strouts to assure her that he was “feeling a little better”.

Once peace had been declared, John sent another letter in unsteady handwriting,  of thanks to the Friends of Great Chart, stating that he could “not thank the Good Folks of Gr[ea]t Chart enough for what they have done for me in this Great War”.

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George Kemp

Writing from much further afield, and our only professional soldier from Chilmington, George Kemp wrote a letter, dated to the 13^th of January 1917 informing the Friends that he had received a Christmas cake sent from Great Chart at his station in Mesopotamia, writing that it was “in good eatable [sic] condition”.

He also notes that “One can hardly realise the goodness and feeling you must have for us boys is felt, by us when these little packaged gifts arrive, sometimes on the open desert land, sometimes on the river boats”, signing off with “wishing you the best of luck and a speedy, victorious end to the war”.

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William Chittenden

William Chittenden served in the Prince of Wales Dragoon Guards and the Corps of Dragoons as a Trooper, which would have involved supporting mounted operations at the start of the war (well-suited to a professional groom such as Chittenden), moving to the more deadly trench raids as the war progressed and it became evident that mounted cavalry was no match for the machine gun.

Writing shortly after the armistice, in 1918, Chittenden dryly writes:

“I am looking forward to a better Christmas than I had last year”.

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Great Chart

The Friends of Great Chart, an outfit helmed by Elizabeth Quinton Strouts, would spend the entire war tirelessly writing to all men who served from Great Chart.

Author: Ian Wolverson, Esther Hamilton (ed.)

W G Bennett

The archive’s most voracious writer, Private W G Bennet, who had lived at The Swan pub in Great Chart, wrote in 1916, amid some of the worst fighting of the western front, that his Dear Lady was “the best friend that I had ever known”. Fighting as part of the frontline 1st Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) in France, Bennet speaks wistfully on the subject of the Friends having a party on Show Day.  

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The Tutts: Frederick and Thomas

Fred had lived with his parents, sister and younger brother at 2 Stone Cottages, Chilmington Green, moving in after the 1911 census.  He was one of 57,470 casualties on 1st July, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, which remains the worst day in British military history.  His battalion suffered 58 fatalities that day on their attack on Lapree Wood, near Mametz.

Frederick’s younger brother, Thomas, serving in the 1st and 2nd Buffs, sent a harrowing letter following his brother’s death, noting that:

“Of course it upset me rather to hear of my brother, but I am thankful to know he died whilst fighting. It is good to know that although it is hard to lose time.  Probably my mother and father and those at home felt it the most for we do not take a great deal of notice of such things”.

Elizabeth Quinton Strouts had a habit of annotating in red ink letters sent by those who had since passed. 87 days after his brother’s death, Thomas would be killed at the Somme, during an attack on the heavily fortified Quadrilateral at Bouteaux Wood.   Artillery fire was missing to allow three of the ‘new’ tanks through.  The tanks all failed to arrive, and as a result a 200-meter gap was left exposed, and 59 men were lost, with 130 wounded.

Both Tutts are memorialised at the Thiepval Cemetery monument, as their bodies were never recovered.

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Sidney Bates

Rifleman Sidney Bates, 13th (Service) Battalion, Rifle Brigade (Formerly Rifleman, R/19934, 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps) wrote by far the most well received of all the letters from the servicemen.  Consistently showing great concern for friends lost and the effect those losses must have had on their families, noting the tragedy that was the Tutts losing two sons. 

He was wounded in 1917, writing ‘The Friends of Great Chart’ a poem whilst in hospital, which Quinton Strouts used as her 1917 Christmas card to the all the men.

‘…the previous one was one of those fine tins of Army & Navy marmalade and you might be interested to hear that when we went ‘over the top’ the other day I took it in my haversack. and some more chaps and myself shared it on the steps of a dug-out from where Fritz had been driven only an hour or two previously.’

He became a POW in April 1918, and after the war became a monk.

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Robert Day

Private Robert Day 4th Battalion Grenedier Guards, previously a gardener, was probably the most popular villager amongst the servicemen from Great Chart.  His first injuries in June 1916 were very serious, requiring operations and treatment from seven different hospitals before his return to France in December 1916.

The following letters are just two from a general outpouring of shock and grief from so many of his friends in the village. You can also read Sidney Bates remarking on the loss to the village in his above letters and see mention below in those of Samuel Brunger.

William Luckhurst

Signaller William Henry Luckhurst, wrote of the losses of friends, also becoming the Secretary of the Great Chart branch of The British Legion following the war. 

The Luckhurst and Day families would later intermarry between the wars.

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William Harding

Private William Ernest Harding, (The Weald of Kent) Battalion, and

The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) (Territorial Force). Formerly Private, 1757, The Buffs

(East Kent Regiment).

Samuel Brunger

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Serving as a Coproral in the 1/5^th Battalion, Suffolk Reigment, Samuel Brunger’s letter tells of his sorrow on hearing of the death of Robert Day.

“Only a week ago I received the news of poor Bob Days death. It has me into a fit of melancholy such as I have never experienced before.  One of my best chums in Chart

If revenge is sweet or bitter I will endeavour to exact that revenge”

As the red annotations bely, he would not survive the war, this being his last letter sent by Brunger before his own death on a hill outside the gates of Jerusalem.

Below are more annotations by Mrs Strouts, including a note regarding his place of burial.

Samuel’s family, the Brungers, supplied the war effort with eight serving men in total, two of whom, one being Samuel, lost their lives.

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Edward Rickson

Coporal Edward Rickson, 2/5th (Weald of Kent) Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) was famed for this photograph, which made the national press, as well as his letter expressing his emotions on entering Lille days after the Armistice on15th November 1918.

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George Hughes

The only serviceman with a Commonwealth Gravestone at St Mary’s, Great Chart, Corporal George Hughes was a professional soldier, who served in India on the Northwest frontier from 1910 – 1915, then in France from 1917 – 1919, until invalided back to UK, dying of his war injuries in 1920. 
Five Hughes brothers served during this conflict, their father also previously having been a soldier for 21 years, their maternal uncle for 18, with George’s grandfather serving in Crimea. In total this Great Chart family gave 138 years of military service.

Authors: Esther Hamilton

[F]or the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs

Eliot, G. (1874) Middlemarch

Much of what we know of the personal experience of war lived by those that served from Chilmington and Great Chart in the First World War comes directly to us in their own words. These soldiers’ voices, written in their own hand in over 900 letters from the Western Front, and even as far afield as India, were sent directly to Elizabeth Quinton Strouts, of Great Chart.

Elizabeth Quinton Strouts moved into Singleton Manor in 1906. In 1915 she masterminded the organisation of the Great Chart Sailors And Soldiers War Fund, which mobilised those on the Home Front in funding the sending of letters and parcels to local men on the front lines. The soldiers’ gratitude towards the charity of Quinton Strouts and the Fund is palpable, with many letters addressing her as ‘Dear Lady’, and one soldier, Private W G Bennett, calling her ‘the best friend that I have ever known’.
Although Quinton Strouts wrote directly to over 100 soldiers over the course of the war, only one of her letters remains intact, from October 1918, and was discovered in 2014. We do, however, have her annotations marking the deaths of those on whose letters she marked their passing using red ink.

In 1921, after the unveiling of the Great Chart war memorial, an anonymous ex serviceman wrote to the Kentish Express to thank Quinton Strout, ‘who by [her] energy and untiring zeal in everything connected to the Servicemen have gained the gratitude and respect of each, and in doing so, have, like those sleeping quietly on foreign soil, also gained a place in the history of Chart.’[i]

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[i] Kentish Express, 13^th August 1921