Conserving Heritage – in Kent and Canterbury

The new academic year is a time of transition. Consequently, I’ll start by bring news of those among the CCCU Kent History Postgraduates who have completed or almost completed their doctoral journeys before mentioning those who are starting a new chapter in their doctoral research with MEMS at the University of Kent. This will provide a useful introduction to the Nightingale Lecture before finally bringing to your attention what I and others believe is of critical concern regarding one of Canterbury’s iconic medieval buildings.

On a windy late September day last week, it was excellent to catch up with three new Doctors of Philosophy and a Master of Arts by research graduate. Thus, we have Dr Kaye Sowden who investigated the community of Pluckley, with special reference to the Dering family in early modern Kent; Dr Tracey Dessoy whose thesis covers an examination of women’s lives in Canterbury and its hinterland during the High Middle Ages, especially those among the knightly families, and Dr Alison Norton’s research concerning castles and their place within the medieval landscape. Joining them at the CCCU graduation was Victoria Stevens, whose MA thesis centred on the inventory of the library which had belonged to the Hammond family at their mansion house at Nonington until its dispersal at the beginning of the 20^th century – congratulations everyone! Moreover, it also gives me great pleasure to record my congratulations to Maureen Mcleod who passed her PhD viva last week with modest corrections. As regular readers may remember, Maureen has been investigating the formation, development, destruction and afterlife of the deer parks and chases of Tonbridge from the post Conquest period up to the late 17^th century. Well done everyone and it is also good to be able to mention that among the Kent History Postgraduates, Grace Conium will be completing her post viva corrections shortly, while others are busy writing up before submission, including Jane Richardson, Abi Kingsnorth and Lizzie Burton.

For others from the Kent History Postgraduates group a new chapter is beginning elsewhere, and it is great that joining me at Kent MEMS to complete their doctoral studies are Christine Brandl, Michael Bryne, Kieron Hoyle, Peter Joyce and Jason Mazzocchi, and similarly Carrie Woollard will be moving with Dr Lyndsey Buster to the University of York. As Kent and York have considerable expertise in the fields of medieval and early modern studies and sizeable research communities of staff and students, this is an excellent development.

Now to this week and so far as well as a Lossenham wills group meeting, a trustees meeting for Brook Rural Museum, a meeting with Martin Crowther, Stuart Bligh and Kieron Hoyle about organising a Cinque Ports conference in early summer 2026 and a meeting of the Thomas More sub-committee, I’m delighted to say that it was a highly successful Michael Nightingale Memorial Lecture yesterday (Tuesday) evening. My thanks to Dr Suzanna Ivanic of Kent MEMS for booking the lecture theatre and wine reception and to Dr Ryan Perry, also of Kent MEMS who helped with the AV set up, and I am very grateful that the Lord Mayor of Canterbury Cllr Keji Moses and the Lady Mayoress Mrs Carol Reed were able to attend. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress have been great supporters of such history and heritage outreach events in the past and it is brilliant that this has now included a Nightingale Lecture at Kent.

The audience of over forty people comprised the Lord and Lady Mayoress, trustees from both Brook Rural Museum and CAMEMS, staff from Kent MEMS, established and new Kent MEMS postgraduates, including those who have transferred from CCCU, and members of the public. Having opened the proceedings by welcoming everyone, it is good to be able to record that, Michael Byrne, Peter Joyce and Jason Mazzocchi have received funding from the Oxus Foundation for their doctoral studies in 2025/26, that Jane Richardson has received funding from the CKHH Ian Coulson Fund, that CAMEMS has provided a MA bursary at Kent for Irene Lopez Huicochea and that several Kent MEMS postgraduates are continuing to receive funding through CHASE and other academic avenues. Securing any funding for postgraduate research, especially for those studying part-time, is extremely challenging. Even though the university sector does provide some and Kent MEMS has been very successful in a highly competitive field, it does mean financial support from (charitable) organisations such as CAMEMS, Oxus, and the Coulson Fund is extraordinarily valuable in ensuring that high quality postgraduate research by students from diverse backgrounds and circumstances can continue.

I then called on John Nightingale, as chairman of Brook Rural Museum, to say something about his father Michael Nightingale, who was instrumental first as a student at Wye College in the 1940s and then in the months before his death, in bringing the Museum into being and then ensuring its long-term survival. For the wonderful collection of agricultural equipment, implements and tools from Kent’s horse-drawn era of farming needed a new home when it faced the threat of being broken up, and it again faced an uncertain future until the foundation of the Wye Rural Museum Trust with the collection housed in the magnificent late 14^th-century aisled barn at Brook and the neighbouring early round oast house. These form part of a now highly unusual surviving manorial complex of barn, church and manor house. Moreover, as John said, the Trust and Museum have not stood still and in recent years have secured Heritage Lottery and other funding for a series of projects, which have heavily involved Philippa Mesiano among others, who successfully completed her PhD at Kent MEMS several years ago. For the Museum’s website, please see: https://brookruralmuseum.org.uk/ 

Taking this on board and the connections already between the Museum and Kent MEMS, as well as CAMEMS, and then bridging to this annual series of lectures previously held under the Centre for Kent History and Heritage at CCCU, it seems highly appropriate this year that the speaker was Victoria Stevens, a member of the Kent History Postgraduates group and, as already noted, a recent CCCU Masters graduate. Consequently, it gave me great pleasure to introduce Victoria who has worked in heritage collections for about 30 years and amongst other posts, is currently the Subject Lead for Books and Library Materials at the prestigious West Dean College, a nationally leading educational establishment in conservation and restoration in a wide range of fields. Thus, her title was supremely appropriate for the lecture being ‘Conserving Intangibility: the significance of change in heritage collections’.

Victoria began by saying that she has a love-hate relationship with library and archive conservation and she explored why she feels this way and why it matters that conservators, while potentially seeking invisibility for their work, need to realise and in a sense acknowledge that the less than perfect is part of that building, object or other thing’s journey. She illustrated this potential conundrum by showing us iconic buildings such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then different approaches taken in respect of what to do about war damage at Ypres Cloth Hall after WWI and Coventry Cathedral after WWII. Developing this thought-provoking approach, she next asked her audience to consider which they thought was more appropriate – restoration or conservation, with potential grey areas between these poles – illustrating this with a 1895 horse-drawn Bristol tram where one side has been restored to how it would have looked when new and the other side stabilised but looking as it did when it was discovered. Continuing in some ways this theme, she explored the role of repair as part of the creation/production process of objects, providing ideas about how in some senses this can be seen as a palimpsest but also an integral part of that object’s early journey.

Having given us these ideas to mull over, Victoria explored 4 objects from what she sees as the Museum’s wonderful collection, which are well illustrated and discussed on the online catalogue (because of her busy schedule, Victoria hasn’t yet had a chance to visit the Museum in person). As she commented, in their carefully conserved condition each of these conjured for her the patterns of rural Kentish life where people made practical decisions about their tools and other objects, in terms of how to give them a long and productive life through individualistic repairs, as well as offering evidence of use and innovation. Her chosen objects were a hop scuppet, a grain scoop, a half-bushel shovel and a Windsor chair, which had been used by Mrs Rose Daveson, a hop picker. This was a fascinating insight into how a professional conservator and instructor envisages the best way to look after and display such objects, both for the sake of the object and what it can impart to a range of audiences, which is equally the purpose of a museum.

Victoria then considered conservation as a human response before giving us a few examples of how it is vital for the conservator to look very carefully at all aspects of an object because often it is only then that evidence of use becomes visible and understandable, vital aspects of that object’s journey of which conservation is only a part. Consequently, as a final comment Victoria said that the key words for her are caution, collaboration – asking others is well worthwhile, communication and acceptance, for at the end it is important to accept that for some parts of our heritage it is changeable and transitory.

This lecture drew highly appreciative applause and after a short Q&A session (plenty of people came over afterwards to ask questions), I asked John Manley, the treasurer of CAMEMS, to give a vote of thanks. If you would like to find out more about CAMEMS, please see the website: https://www.camems.org.uk/community/camems-20688/home/ 

Then having thanked all for coming and mentioned the retiring collection again, to be split between the Museum and CAMEMS, I drew the Nightingale Lecture 2025 to a close.

For this week, as I said at the start, there is another historic building with which I’m involved, the iconic St Thomas’ or Eastbridge Hospital in Canterbury High Street. This short piece has been written by Stewart Ross, a fellow Eastbridge trustee. “Maintaining England’s rich inheritance of medieval buildings is never easy. It is especially taxing in a small and not particularly prosperous city like Canterbury, which has so many of them. And when a famous old building stands not just beside the river that runs through the city but actually spans it, the difficulties are compounded still further. This is the case with the late 12^th-century pilgrim hospital, now known as the Eastbridge Hospital.

Almost since its foundation soon after the time of the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170, the structure has been moving. This is partly the result of the scouring action of the water flowing by its northern wall, and partly because its foundations, such as they were, were inadequate to the bear the weight of the superstructure above them. Columns lean alarmingly from the vertical and arches are stretched and cracked. The riverside wall shoring up one side of the building looks like a piece of ill-assembled Lego, with stones askew, bricks falling out and the mortar long washed away.

The site can, of course, be repaired and put in a condition fit to welcome tourists and inmates for another thousand years. The problem is that faced by hundreds of ancient buildings up and down the country: money. The trust’s fast-dwindling funds are hardly sufficient to meet current needs, let alone medium and long-term ones. The trustees have done their best, refurbishing the building’s almshouses and converting them into flats for tourists and pilgrims. But this is not enough.

The Eastbridge Hospital Trust will shortly be starting an appeal to raise enough to carry out current needs and meet the matching funds required by the Lottery. If the appeal is successful, the Trust will apply for the Hospital to incorporated as part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage site, a fitting accolade for a unique feature of Canterbury’s rich and diverse built heritage.”

And I’ll be back again with another KCHH blog in the second full week of October because I shall bring you a report on Kieron Hoyle’s talk at the Dover Maison Dieu entitled ‘Tudor Victualling, the Harbour and the Maison Dieu’. There are still tickets available, see the Maison Dieu website: https://www.maisondieudover.org.uk/  Before then the Kent MEMS seminar programme will have begun and if you are interested in attending and becoming a Friend of MEMS, please contact Dr Suzanna Ivanic at [email protected]  

Other events that may also be of interest: an FCAT lecture on Thursday 25 September at 7pm at CCCU, LG16, Laud Building, Ground Floor. Isabelle Diggle will speak on, ‘From Roman Forts to Viking Mints: Treasures that Changed the Rules’. The Brook Rural Museum’s Harvest Festival (TN25 5PF) is on Saturday 4 October, 2pm to 5pm, entry £5, children under 14 go free with lots of activities for people to enjoy. Then the 2^nd CHAS lecture of the autumn is on Wednesday 8 October: https://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/meetings-2 with the Canterbury HA branch lecture on the following evening: https://www.history.org.uk/branches/resource/1172/canterbury-branch-programme?srsltid=AfmBOoqcKSlEM7M_49tV_LCks8qcCaPKDGx4d-65O3wAdh8dV-PxEdQX all of which look very interesting and provide an extremely varied set of events, do go along if you are able, the organisers will be delighted to see you.

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