1900

Why not a Kent amateur soccer league says fan.

F0LKEST0NE Football Club which was low on funds was organising a series of money-raising events. Including a smoking concert, and Mr C Jenner suggested that In the next season the club should be run on amateur lines and that an amateur league should be formed In Kent. This proposal, however, didn’t prove popular. Better, more comfortable carriages were coming into use on the railway services from London to Boulogne and Calais via Folkestone and Dover respectively. Eighty men of the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Buffs East Kent Rifles Regiment were being selected to join a Special Service Company to go to join British troops already fighting In the Boer War in South Africa. And 100 Buff reservists joined at Canterbury to go out with the next draft of reinforcements. The South Eastern & Chatham Railway company promised to keep the jobs open of any staff in volunteer corps who called for active service and to allow married soldiers half pay In their absence, presumably to help their families left at home without a breadwinner. Meanwhile a force of some 6,000 British troops was fighting Its way towards Ladysmith to relieve the beseiged garrison town and other soldiers were making their way towards other beseiged garrisons.

1925

Tributes to 12-times mayor the late Stephen Penfold.

GALE force winds in the New Year ripped off the canvas tops of several service buses In the town. And at Tolputt’s timber yard In Tram Road a stack of timber collapsed against a concrete wall causing 35ft of It to fall onto the footpath. Fortunately no one was hurt. The Impressive excavation of the newly found Roman villa at East Cliff, the only Roman seaside villa in Kent, earned high praise in a national publication “The Year's Work in Classical Studies, 1923-24It did credit to Mr S.E. Winbolt and his team who carried out the work, said the writer. The town was still seeing a surplus of buses on some routes but few on others as rival buses vied for passengers on busy roads and more prosecutions of drivers and conductors for loitering' at bus stops resulted. One case Illustrated the dilemma facing the police in enforcing the law. One conductor fined a modest sum for loitering was reported to be third in a line of buses at a stop which could cause an obstruction. He had only two passengers on board, neither of whom got on the bus at that particular stop. It was not his first offence. Folkestone's soccer side was drawn against Chatham, away, in the draw for the Kent Senior Cup. The team had already beaten Chatham on their home ground and drawn the return match at Folkestone.

1950

Father of five who sold 2 radios on HP is jailed.

HYTHE father of five children was jailed three months for selling a radio he had bought on hire purchase from a Folkestone shop. The family were due to pay for it at the rate of six shillings and sixpence a week (about 32p) but paid only the Initial payment of about 14 shillings (70p.) The man sold it for £6 to pay the rent when threatened with eviction and admitted doing the same with a second set, obtaining £5 to buy food. A General Election was in the offing and Mrs Ray Ward Bateson was adopted as Liberal candidate for the constituency and the adoption of Brigadier HR Mackeson as Tory candidate and Mr Moss Murray as Labour candidate was due to follow. Herald columnist Townsman was looking back over past elections and noted how few voters turned out to vote in 1868 - under 2,000. That year financier Baron Mayer de Rothschild (Radical candidate) defeated his Unionist rival by 747 votes after a rowdy affair. Nine years earlier he had been returned unopposed but there were the usual hustings and the Hythe Town Band turned out to play. The 66 starters from Glasgow In the 1950 Monte Carlo Rally arrived safely in Folkestone en route for France. After checking In the driver of a £6,500 Rolls-Royce opted for travel by air from Lympne to Le Touquet and rejoined fellow competitors at Boulogne. Was that elitism or did he fear the sea crossing might be too rough!

1975

Good - and bad news for local workers in January.

LOCAL boat-builders Foreland Marine clinched orders for no less than 32 vessels at the International Boat Show, enough to keep the business ticking over nicely for three months. Local residents would be sleeping more soundly In their beds predicted the Herald with the arrival at the port of minesweeper HMS Kellington to search out and make safe any wartime mines still lurking In local fishing waters. A Kent fisheries officer had stepped In to pinpoint where more mines might be found. This followed a series of sinister ‘finds’ In the trawls of local fishermen. But at first an under secretary of State for defence had ruled out a sweep of the Channel as ‘'Impractical.'' At the New Inn, Etchinghill there was a degree of sadness and celebration when mine hosts Bill ‘Son’ to his regulars - and Rene Marden retired, ending an 84-year family link with the pub. Rene's grandfather George Butler was licensee 41 years, his son and daughter in law, Mr & Mrs Ernest Butler, were mine hosts from 1932, and Bill Marden, from Cheriton, and Rene married in 1942 and soon afterwards took over the pub. Traditionally a poor time for Jobs, the first three weeks of the New Year saw 150 workers laid off in Shepway - including 82 part-timers at Portex, 30 at Debenhams, 23 at Martin Walters (in addition to 20 more at Dover) and Lympne preparatory school Mr CFO Bull announced his school was to close.