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| Lyminge Newsletter - Community Matters |  |
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LYMINGE ASSOCIATION NEWS Tuesday 23rd September 2008 at 7.30 p.m. in the Lyminge Village Hall Club room
A Memorial bench
The format of this month's article is a little different. Mr Roy Collins contacted me to tell me his memories of Lyminge between the wars. I went to see him and spent a pleasant time whilst he and his wife reminisced. Roy was born in 1915 and, apart from wartime, has mostly lived in the village. This will be an historical journey around Lyminge starting at the Station, which of course was the hub of the village life. It was a hive of activity because most of the village trader's goods arrived by train. The station master was Mr Noble who lived in Station Road. There were two cottages at the station. The station porter lived in number 1 and the plate layer (i.e. railway maintenance man) lived at number 2. Mr Collins' remembers his sister saying she viewed the arrival of King George V and Lord Kitchener, by train, at Lyminge Station from Sawyers the ironmonger's shop in Station Road during WW I. These notable visitors then rode on horseback to Beachborough House where they inspected the Canadian troops billeted there. It is interesting to note that although the traders have changed the same building has been used as a hardware shop for nearly a century. Other traders that Mr Collins recollects when he was young include Mr Brocklesby the barber and Mr Poulson the chemist in Station Road. Mr Fisher lived in Well Cottages at the end of Mayfield Road and made chestnut hurdles in Well Field. Fred Hopton was landlord at the Coach and Horses whilst Mr Ripley was across the road at the forge. Tommy Hogben the milkman lived at Bedingfield Farm along the High Street. At the end of the High Street was a small sweet shop run by Mrs Rickwood. Nearby were two old ladies who lived in the old Methodist chapel that was situated between the farm and the forge. Roy recollects that they were rather frightening in appearance because of their long hair and enormous hats. They were nicknamed 'Angels' by the village children. At the Churches, Rev. Rutty was the incumbent at the Parish Church whilst Rev. Clifton was the Methodist minister. When Mr Collins was young, he attended the village school [now Church Mews]. Mr Marsh was the head whilst his wife was one of the teachers. Miss Gaskell taught the infants. The final teacher was Miss Wyatt who was a country dancing expert. She taught her pupils these dances and they won several competitions at Maidstone. Mr Collins in particular remembers 'Rufty Tufty' that I have found dates back to at least 1651 when it first appeared in Playford's English Dancing Master. Below is a transcription of the tune:
Besides the country dancing, Roy remembers that the older boys at school were taught gardening and the school had its own garden in Mayfield Road. He also recalls how good the teaching was. He describes it as, "All drummed in but it worked." For Roy it certainly did work, as he passed the exams and went to the Wlliam Harvey Grammar School. This ends this month's article but it is not the end of Mr Collins' recollections. They will have to wait until next time including the promised horses with leather horseshoes and the famous railway developer living in the village as well as the village lamplighter who studied the stars. Finally, here is a new question: Q11 What was Lyminge's involvement in the 1830 'Captain Swing' agricultural riots? Can you answer this latest question or any of the others? If you can, contact me through the editor or the www.lyminge.org.uk/forums. Alistair Bailey Letters to the Editor Hearty congratulations to the thieves who stripped the lead off the church roof! We sincerely hope that the few hundred pounds you have earned from your labours will bring you much happiness, not only in the short term but for many years to come. It was a shame you had to leave in such a hurry when the police arrived, had you stuck around we would have been able to let you know what was going to happen as a result of your visit. As it is, we shall have to rely on the fact that someone may pass this on to you. Lyminge church is 1,000 years old, give or take a year or two, and because of its great age, requires a constant programme of maintenance. Last year the Architect made his five-yearly report on the state of the building and, together with earthquake damage repairs which meant that the insurance excess was pushed up to £1,000, the cost of essential repairs amounted to £34,950 Your handiwork has brought this figure up to £155,000+VAT These essential repairs are only emergency 'patch-up' repairs. They are not restorative repairs. The restorative repairs are things like the prohibitively expensive repair work needed to keep the tower open for the next few years; the restoration of the stained glass window above the altar; the repairs needed to restore the rotting timbers in the roof (you were very lucky not to have fallen through it); the death-watch beetle damage; the crumbling stonework; etc., etc., etc. To restore the church properly would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. You may have been under the impression that the damage you did to the roof and to the organ and those areas inside the church which were soaked by rain coming in through the gaping holes you made, would be covered by the Church's Insurance Company. Indeed the roof was insured for £15,000. However, it may interest you to know that the few hundred pounds you received for the stolen lead in no way reflects the £120,000 cost of replacing it. You may have also been under the impression that the Diocese of Canterbury would foot the bill. In actual fact the Diocese does not contribute a penny to this or any other Parish Church. Nor does it pay for the Vicar's wages, the cost of heating, electric or any other running cost. Conversely, this Church and every other Church in the Diocese is expected to pay the Diocese a yearly lump sum of money which, in Lyminge's case is £38,826. Neither does the Church receive money from English Heritage (which demands that any repair work to the grade one listed building should conform to the highest, and most expensive, standards), or any other government body. You may well ask how this money is raised each year. The answer to that is simple; it isn't. The only income the Parish Church receives is from the Summer Fete, Saint Nicholas' Fair, the weekly collection from the (on average) 50-strong congregation, most of who are retired and living on a pension, and a few donations from church and non-church members. The amount of money raised from these sources each year falls short of the required sum by a considerable amount. And on top of all this, the Church Council is expected to pay for all maintenance and repairs to the building. This is not a sustainable situation and it is heading to an inevitable outcome. The Church will close. Your activities last Wednesday have ensured this will happen in the very near future. Oh well done you! Very soon the church door will be locked for the last time and the building will be handed over to a decommissioning agency, the churchyard will be closed for burials and interments and handed over to Shepway District Council. If Lyminge is to follow a similar fate to that of other decommissioned parish churches, and it most probably will, the decommissioning agency will employ an Architect to gain planning permission to convert the building to two or three residential units and to build a couple of new houses on the church car park. The agency will then sell the building and land to a developer and, in the meantime, Shepway District council will remove the older and unstable headstones and walls from the churchyard and clear it for mowing so that it loses its character and looks the same as every other municipal cemetery in the district. Please don't think that this could never occur. It will. We don't suppose for one minute that you care about this church or any other hapless church you have visited. We, however, do care and what is more, we have no intention of letting the inevitable happen if we can possibly help it. It is not about 'ownership', religion or denomination. It is about a very old, a very beautiful and very vulnerable Old Lady and we can no longer expect a small number of people to bear the burden of maintaining the most architecturally and historically important building in the parish. This letter has not been written by the Church Council or any other member of the Church, we don't happen to be members of the Church, we are just residents of this parish though we understand all too well that, unless the building continues to function as a place of worship, it will be lost forever. We also understand that short term injections of cash are not going to resolve the enormous problems of maintaining and restoring the church and churchyard. To that end a few of us have already arranged with the Treasurer of the PCC for a small amount of money to be debited from our accounts each month to go towards the maintenance and repair of the building. It is not much - about the price of a bottle of wine per month - we don't earn much but we don't miss it. We have done some sums and worked out, that if enough wage-earning residents in the parish who cared about the church building did the same, there would be sufficient annual income to begin to address the real problems of maintaining and restoring the building for the future. We hope, from the bottom of our hearts that some good may come of the mischief you made. You may have stolen the lead off the roof but you will not steal the church! PS We would respectfully suggest that you get a proper job and start contributing to society. Name and address withheld
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