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 From the Folkestone Herald Published 18 November 1999 Roll the credits A FORMER member of the once popular Arthur Brough Players at the Leas Pavilion theatre which used to draw large audiences, Julie Deller tells of some of her experiences in this month’s edition of Bygone Kent, which has been a ‘must buy’ for hundreds of local history enthusiasts for 20 years. Julie joined the Players in 1951 when every summer there would be ‘Full House’ notices up outside the tiny theatre. But despite pleas from various quarters to get him to persuade directors to enlarge the auditorium to accommodate a bigger audience Arthur, says, Julie, knew from personal experience this would not be justified in the winter months. Arthur Brough also opened a rep, in the Palace, at Maidstone, in 1953, Coronation year, the idea being to interchange productions with the Leas Pavilion, with an increased number of actors. Plays, she said, were good, tried and tested, with good casts; Heather Chasen the leading lady and Douglas Rye leading man. Heather went on to play later in The Severed Head in London’s West End and in The Navy Lark with the BBC. A number of actors launched their careers at the Leas Pavilion. Alistair Sim played there, as did David Tomlinson, a Folkestone boy, and Peter Barkworth who has made the town his home and is active in the Metropole Arts programmes. But television was beginning to capture audiences, which could result in half-empty ‘houses.’ However, the theatre received a boost in 1952 when the BBC televised the play “Over the Garden Wall” from the Leas Pavilion. It was quite a family affair, as Arthur Brough’s partner Elizabeth Addyman had written the play. Julie Deller recalls her modest contribution was to roll the credits at the end - using a rather makeshift affair she describes as being like a small mangle! She also recalls the contribution made to productions by local man Peter Walter, who had been honoured for his bravado in the war in driving a tank into enemy lines. He took leading roles season after season and but for family and loyalty to the Broughs, would surely have gone on to greater things in London. He was, says Julie, “a brilliant player of comedy and farce.” It was Peter’s brother who founded the well known Walters shoe shops, with branches in Ashford, Dover, Deal, Folkestone and Maidstone.
Pegden family Bill Warman, 87, of Garden Road, was quick to respond to my appeal in Memories on behalf of the Pegden family for more information about an old picture of a dinner celebration in the town. That was in the Herald of October 28. Mr Warman, a retired seaman who was serving on the hospital ship Maid of Kent when it was bombed and destroyed at Dieppe in the Second World War, was pretty certain it was a dinner of the Fisherman’s Lodge of the Buffaloes’ friendly society, probably at the Sailors’ Bethel, or of the annual dinner of the St Peter’s Club at the Bethel, he told Mrs Muriel Drury, of Elham. The photograph was shown to me by Mrs Olive Rogers, daughter of the late Wilfred Pegden senior. Born in 1901, the year his young fisherman dad, William, 37, was lost overboard from the fishing boat Shamrock in the Channel, Wilfred was seated second from the left in the dinner group. 
SAILORS’ Bethel Mystery: Was the old dinner picture taken at the Bethel, and if not where? That’s what three Herald readers ask!
Mrs Drury, one of two nieces of Wilfred, that I met recently, says that Alan Taylor in a recent talk to Folkestone Local History Society on Old Folkestone showed a similar picture taken in the old Bethel decked with flags in the same way. A man positively identified in the dinner picture was Bill Grist. He is seated next to the lady in white.
Surprise But Alan Taylor told me this week he wasn’t sure whether Bill Warman was right. One group of the Buffaloes, he said used to meet at the Oddfellows’ Club in St Michaels St and another at the Oddfellows Inn at the Stade. And he didn’t think any of those in the picture looked like fishermen. Mrs Drury who is Mrs Rogers’ cousin, said another Herald reader had a lovely surprise when she saw the Memories feature. 
SURPRISE for Herald reader who spotted her Grandma Featherbe in this picture.
In the bathing cabins group picture Mrs Drury had shown me, a Mrs Conlin had been delighted to recognise the older lady, in a deckchair, as her grandmother, Mrs Violet Featherbe. And, said Mrs Drury, the man with a white cap, also sat in a deckchair, had been identified as deckchair attendant Mr Tumber. Alan Taylor identified the three men with flat caps as Pegdens, the two men at the back and the man on the left in the front row. He believed one was called ‘Hussy.’ Incidentally Mrs Drury was telling me that Wilfred Pegden senior, who was her mother’s brother, had the nickname Air Raid’ Pegden - nothing to do with war, but the fact that in his younger days he was always reluctant to have his hair cut! Finally, if you missed Alan's first book on Folkestone in Old Photographs written in collaboration with Eamonn Rooney and Charles Whitney I see Ottakar’s have a hardback reprint on sale at £7.99.
My Three Angels, 1954 with Julie Deller as Madame Parole, with Peter Walker, Peter Whitbreas and Bill Waddy, at the old Lease Pavillion Theatre.
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