Published 11 December 2003

BELOW: A flashback to th'j days of leisurely travel by coaches, it: this case drawn by four horses. In this photo a coach stands outside the former Kings Arms Hotel, on the comer of Sandgate Road and Guildhall Street, later the site of the Queen’s Hotel - built in the stiid-1880s - and then Burtons. Opposite is the old Folkestone Town Hall.
ALTHOUGH he left Folkestone back in 1952 Walter ‘Wally’ Friend, of Frome, Somerset, still thinks fondly of his old home town and is an ardent fan of the Memories page in the Herald, he says.

He didn’t particularly enjoy his school days, but he was particularly struck by a photograph I featured recently of a group of his fellow classmates at the old Dover Road School, which he attended from early 1945 to Easter 1951.

That postwar photo was brought in by Herald reader Ray Hogben, of Densole.

“As an old boy my eyes lit up when, while reading1 through the names of boys under the photograph, I saw the name Brian Burville.”

He said he thought if his old classmate was in that photo he must be too, “as we were both in the same class,” said Mr Friend, a regular visitor to Hythe.

“Getting out my magnifying glass I took a really good look and, yes, there I am, I thought to myself. But I’ve never seen that photo before and cannot remember it being taken, but do recognise many of the boys and could name many, even after 56 years!

“I was already nine years old when I started there in early 1945, before the war was over, having just come back from being evacuated up north, so this was not my first experience of school life.”

Most of the staff teaching there then
were elderly, having been recalled from retirement, he thought, owing to the war.

“However, things were about to change, when all the young men returned from the war, and not necessarily for the better, as most of them turned out to be as mad as hatters, having spent years chasing the Jerries or the Japs, all over the place.

“Unfortunately they seemed to look upon us as the new enemy!” One had suffered a head wound, he said, and soon left.

Another, a Welshman, named Cullimore (1945-50), who had served in the RAF, was apt to fly into a temper and he remembered how he “grabbed hold of one boy and threw him right across the classroom.

Terrified
“We were terrified of him. Is it any wonder that many boys left school hardly able to read and write?

“We just couldn’t believe our good fortune when he decided he wanted to return to Wales. I never heard boys cheer so loud as when he left! I thought the roof would come off!”

But there were some kind teachers, added Wally, such as Mr S. Moore and Mr N. Clark.

“I moved away from Folkestone in 1952, so all those boys are just as I remember them, with their young, shiny faces.

“I probably wouldn’t recognise any of them now though, but I do still keep in touch with one, Mr T Lee, who was stand-
ing next to me in that photo.

“I should imagine that he’ll be just as gobsmacked as I was when I send him that photo for him to see, on the strictest understanding that he returns it to me, as I shall treasure it always.”

“I cannot remember Mr Blunt, but do remember Mr Moore, or Sam, as we used to call him. He was 70 then, but in those days that was not unusual,” he goes on.

“At that time Dover Road School was a very tough school. We used to have all the fishmarket boys and they could be a real problem at times, and fights with masters was not uncommon. I witnessed it myself,” writes Wally.
His particular reason for writing, he said, was to trace a copy of a book about the school - The Story of a School, Dover Road, 1835-1958, published by the school in 1958 and printed by one-time owners of the Herald, F.J. Parsons (Kent Newspapers) Ltd.

“The writer was headmaster Mr A.W. Parks, who, as I remember only too well, was very keen on the use of the cane. He was not a very likeable person,” he said.

Well illustrated with photographs, the book has been mentioned in these columns several times and, happily, because the Herald still has an original copy, I was able to get a copy made and sent off to him.
Teacher threw boy across classroom!
 

Appeal fund opened to help widow of elderly fisherman QrtQTHE MAYOR, George Peden opened a -Li7UOfund in aid of the widow and family of Folkestone's oldest fisherman, John William Taylor, who was lost overboard while sailing with three other men in the smack Little Blucher. When Mr Taylor went to sea on that fateful day he left his wife in possession of seven pence, it was reported. Sandgate Council approved plans for a new private school, to be called Pretoria House Schools, in Coolinge Road. A century ago Herald writer Felix was remarking on the peculiar practice of local residents by the sea in the neighbourhood of Sandgate who used to dispense with the clothes line in the garden and spread out their bed linen and other items, even their 'bloomers' on the shingle to bleach and dry in the sunshine, presenting quite an unusual sight for visitors! But suppose all the frontagers at Sandgate - now rejoicing in electric street lighting — were to do the same (!) commented Felix who also referred to the vexed Question of dirt thrown up by the old horse-rawn trams — dirt which sometimes, in bad weather, ended up scattered over the seats under the sea wall.

Bitten by boar, farm worker dies after operation on leg »f QOQTHE CINQUE Ports Flying Club had a J-^7fcOnew pilot instructor. Major HG. Travers D.S.O., from Walmer, who served in the Royal Naval Air Service in December 1915 after recovery from a wound sustained fighting in France in December 1914. He served in Eastbourne and Dover with the RNAS before posting again to France and, in January 1918 was given command of No. 211 Wing of the Naval Service with the rank of major. Leaving the service in September 1919 he later became a test pilot with the Blackburn aircraft manufacturing firm and a worked as a temporary pilot instructor with the Bristol and Wessex Flying Club. When Ashford Fire Brigade laid claim to being the oldest in the country at 100 years old Hythe firemen countered this by producing documents showing a pedigree going back to 1802, making it 126 years old. But it was said Rochester had a fire brigade back in 1727. The Hythe Brigade president, Cllr J Ashdown, whose father had also been a Hythe fireman, recalled that when he entered the Hythe brigade in 1884 all firemen turned up for work wearing top hats! Newington farm hand Frederick Marsh was bitten by a boar, driving pigs out of a field. His leg turned septic and he died after an operation.

Hythe’s Korean War hero awarded military cross t* QCO LIEUTENANT Guy Frederick Temple, ^«/90 25, of the 1st Battalion the Gloucestershire Regiment, errulated his father. Major General B. Temple, living Hythe, when he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in the Korean War. Lt Temple was taken prisoner shortly after the Imjin River battle incident for which he was decorated, but was repatriated in October. He was the only son of Major General and Mrs B Temple. His father gained the MC and bar in the First World War. A Town Council sub-committee carried out ari inspection of the Warren with a view to drawing up a plan to make the most of it as a local amenity. A British Fleet Royal Auxiliary officer from Hythe, Chief Officer J.D. Fisher, son of Mrs M. Fisher, of London Road, was one of two men who dived into the sea off Greece to rescue one of the crew of three fishermen forced to abandon their boat during a fierce storm and received a letter of thanks from the men, two of whom had reached life belts thrown into the sea from the Auxiliary tanker Rowanol on which Mr Fisher was serving.

£3,000 repair bill for Co-op, after £600 smash and grab «f Q7JJ SMASH and grab raiders did not wait I Ofor the New Year sales to snatch their haul of bargains - they shattered a huge plate glass window and helped themselves to about £600 worth of goods on Boxing Day. Damage to the Co-operative Furnishing and Electrical Goods store, in Rendezvous Street was estimated at about £3,000, possibly more. The over-the-top clumsy thieves actually damaged more goods than they managed to get away with. TV sets, radios and music centres were smashed and many other goods damaged. A St Mary's Bay resident was calling on MP Albert Costain to honour a pledge she said he had made to keep a close eye on coastal protection, claiming the work being done fell well short of wli.">t was required and put the coastline in danger of flooding if there was another bad winter stc-m. Lydd resident, Mrs M.A. Maddieson succoeded in persuading constituency MP Mr Albert Costain to back her campaign to get government protection for a Second World War 'monument' at Greatstone. This is the experimental "Great Wall" listening mirror, one of a chain of such devices built to detect incoming raids bv enemy aircraft.