Daily Herald, Thursday 9 June, 1932.

GARDEN AT THAMES GATEWAY.

GRAVESEND FORT REOPENED. MAYOR LEADS GALA PROCESSION.

From Our Special Corespondent GRAVESEND. Wednesday.

FAMOUS Old New Tavern Fort, which has stood sentinel here at the romantic gateway of the Thames since before the Armada, was opened and blessed to-day as a public pleasure garden.

So there comes to a peaceful end the history of a fortress built when Henry VIII was king, that bustled with armed men in the tumultuous days of the Stuarts, and which was later commanded by General Gordon.

On the battlements, where men once started to their post as the Audacious sailed up the estuary, children were playing today.

The deep moat in now a cool glen, fragrant with flowers, where you may walk in the shade of trees and where goldfish dream and dart in a softly-flowing stream.

The occasion chosen for opening the fort as a garden was the Mayoral tercentenary of Gravesend.

The Earl of Darnley declaring the new Tavern Fort gardens open during the celebrations of the tercentenary of Gravesend's Mayoral Charter.

300 YEARS OF MAYORS.

In 1632 Gravesend's first Mayor, one Thomas Young was appointed, and ever since they have followed in unbroken succession till the present Mayor, Councillor Edgar Aldridge.

It was a day of gale in Gravesend. There was a fair on the promenade, the streets were gay with flags and streamers. In the new gardens there was music, singing and athletic displays.

During the morning commemorative medals were distributed to Gravesend schoolchildren and for an hour before mid-day the bells of St. George s Church pealed over the town.

At the Town Hall there was a Mayor's luncheon, attended by Sir Kingsley Wood, the Postmaster-General. Major Albery, M.P. for Gravesend, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Mayors of Rochester, Chatham, and Gillingham.

After the lunch the Mayor of Gravesend was presented with a silver model of one of the last ships ever to ply on the country s most historic ferry, Long Ferry between Gravesend and London.

Times change, and the Long Ferry has not put out from the wharves for many years. But Gravesend is beginning to see itself as the starting-point of a new ferry, of which the old ferrymen never dreamed—an air "ferry" to London, with Gravesend itself as a great new air port, the terminal point of services from the Continent.

Mr. H. M. Brown, the Town Clerk of Gravesend, told those assembled at the luncheon that plans for equipping the town as an air port were fast progressing.

After the lunch the company marched in procession, with the Town band playing, to the new gardens, where 3,000 people welcomed them.

During the evening the band of the 2nd Batt of the Gloucester Regiment played the Gravesend amateur players gave a concert, the Health and Strength League a display, and, at 10 o'clock, the day's holiday-making ended for thousands of people at a fireworks display, the star turn of which was a representation of old Gravesend.