Catch up on all the latest history news from across Kent with Finn Macdiarmid.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Kent Chronicles, where we turn back time on all of Kent's history,
00:24from the Mesolithic era to the Industrial Revolution and everything in between.
00:28I'm Finn McDermid, and join me as we turn back time and discuss all things history.
00:34But first, the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham annually holds their Build, Demolish and Diffuse event
00:39to promote the history of the military branch, all the way from the 13th century to the modern day,
00:44with the earliest known involvement of the engineers being to breach the walls of Rochester Castle.
00:49I went down to find out more, and a warning for this piece. It contains weapons and the sounds of gunfire.
00:58Whether it's the First World War or sieges on castles, the Royal Engineers have had a key part
01:11to play in Kent's and the country's military history. But models and records can only tell
01:16you so much. So, at the Royal Engineers Museum, they hosted their annual Build, Demolish and
01:21Diffuse event, showing off exactly what the service have done throughout history. And it
01:25all kicked off with a bang.
01:28I'm here as a weapons technician, if you will, demonstrating the use of rifles and machine
01:34guns historically.
01:36This is the standard infantry rifle of the First World War. This is a Lee-Enfield, and
01:42it's a .303 calibre. This one comes out in 1907, and it takes us through both World Wars.
01:49This is a Vickers, Sons and Maxim machine gun, which is the early version of the Vickers that
01:54sees us through World War I, and into World War II and beyond.
01:58After his demonstration, he handed over to an engineer from the Napoleonic War.
02:05And engineering in warfare can actually be traced back even further, to right here in
02:09Medway, in the 13th century at Rochester Castle, which visitors to the museum could hear
02:14about from a sapper who helped to break through its walls.
02:17In 1215, good King John was fighting the barons over this issue of them wanting to challenge
02:26his power, and at that point he was besieging Rochester Castle. And I'm representing one of
02:32the sappers who burrowed under the southeast corner and caused it to collapse, giving it,
02:40once it was rebuilt, the rounded profile that you'll see if you go and visit the castle today.
02:47Since then, the Royal Engineers service has evolved, but in order to show visitors the engineering
02:51of the last century, they had to find a way of fitting the tanks through the museum's doors.
02:55Well, they're one-sixth scale, and they're mainly 24 volts. They run two 350-watt motors. They've
03:07various weights. The King Tiger, which you've seen running, is 160 kilos.
03:16The models aren't cheap either, costing thousands. But Nigel says once he caught the bug, he fell
03:21in love with the hobby.
03:22Well, whether it's a sixth scale model tank, or one of the ones here in the museum's grounds,
03:27it doesn't really matter which one you prefer. The event is all about getting people involved
03:31in Kent's military history, big or small. Finn McDermid for KMTV in Medway.
03:39Now two former workers at St Augustine's Mental Hospital in Chartam have written a new book
03:44detailing what life was like inside of the asylum in the early 1970s. Now, a quick warning to
03:50anyone watching, we will be showing images of the interior of the hospital and of the
03:55patients. So if that is of a potentially distressing nature, then please, maybe, just we can skip
04:03that one. But anyways, I'm now joined by Robert Hayward. He's one of the book's authors. Thank
04:09you so much for coming down and joining me, Robert.
04:09And I suppose we should start at the beginning. How did you find yourself at St Augustine's
04:16as a young man?
04:17By pure chance, as it happens, at the time I was unemployed, but I knew somebody who worked
04:25at the hospital. In those days, you could virtually fetch up and get a job on the very same day.
04:31I mean, I think we had to fill in a form, and a week or two later, we had an interview and
04:37that was it. Both myself and one of the other people who was involved in this were employed
04:42on the same day. We started on, I think, the 1st of January.
04:44And what about your experiences working there made you want to write Asylum Years?
04:50It goes back to some work I'd done on mental health policy. And I'd started to write a book
05:02with somebody else and gathered a lot of information. But it never went anywhere. So in the back of
05:09my mind, I had these thoughts that from 50 years ago, these things stay with you. And if
05:16you picture this, three old men, all in our late 60s, sitting in a sunny garden, socially
05:25distanced in COVID days, reminiscing over a glass or two of wine. And we realised that
05:32there was a story to be told. Obviously, we were thinking back to what were probably our
05:39youth, our glory days. You know, I was 19, Andrew was similar age, Graham was the same age
05:45as me. And we realised there was a story to be told. But it wasn't the story that, in a sense,
05:51was the one that people were familiar with. Firstly, we realised that we were the last
05:59of a group of people who saw, who were there to witness the end of the Asylum Era. We're
06:06talking about 50 years ago, of course. So most of the patients and staff that we knew there,
06:11who were older than us, would have long since passed away. So there are relatively few of
06:17us left to kind of record what happened in those times. Yes, there are accounts. There's
06:23a great account by people who use mental health services called Testimony, which is held by
06:29the British Museum. And there are other books and other accounts. But none of them really put
06:34the patient at the centre of events and make them human, I suppose. They were basically a rather
06:44anonymous, faceless collective of people. So one of the things we wanted to do was to try and portray
06:50them in a more sympathetic light, to put them in the centre of the stories and help make people realise
06:56that there were thousands of people who passed through these institutions and thousands at Saint
07:01Augustine's. And we wanted people to realise that these were human beings who were separated,
07:08segregated from society and discriminated against and they lost their rights and so on and so forth.
07:14Absolutely. I believe I read that when you and some of the other staff first took your positions,
07:19there were still inmates being brought to Saint Augustine's under Victorian legislation that
07:23classified them as lunatics and some of them weren't actually had any medical mental illness
07:29and instead could have done something like conceiving out of wedlock and things like that.
07:34What was the perspective of that like, a kind of a shift in the era? That's not entirely accurate
07:39in the sense that there were people already there under the 1930 Lunacy Act. But we were working in
07:47in those days under the 1959 Mental Health Act, which gave people more freedoms, if you like. And
07:54certainly unlike the Lunacy Act where you were condemned for the rest of your life virtually,
08:00the 1959 Act put some restrictions on things like detention and so on. But yes, there were people there,
08:11in the book we've said that there were women there, for example, who had illegitimate children.
08:19And because they were seen as promiscuous and a danger to society's values, they were put into
08:25mental institutions. And that happened not just at Saint Augustine's, it happened in every one of the
08:29mental health, mental hospitals, the institutions across the United Kingdom. And there were women there who
08:38had had relationships with, for example, with people who were higher up in society and had become
08:46pregnant. And they were, again, they were put into the asylum because of the shame and the stigma
08:53attached to those things. So there was a lot of that. But there was also people there that even when
09:00we were there, you know, we felt that they had no need to be there. You know, there was one person in one of
09:07the local papers I read about, who I didn't know him personally, who'd been admitted as an eight-year-old,
09:13who was a bit simple-minded, apparently, and had been caught throwing stones and masturbating.
09:19He spent the next 80 years in the asylum. Just seems wrong in some ways.
09:27Absolutely. And as someone who's worked in healthcare, how have you seen the methods of
09:33caring for those with mental illnesses change over the years? And how do you view it in the modern day?
09:40Well, that's actually quite a difficult question to answer, because on the surface,
09:44one would assume that things had changed dramatically. And mental health professionals
09:49would point to the various changes in the legislation that supports those changes,
09:54and the move from the institution to the community as being beneficial and a much better way of
10:01dealing with people with long-term enduring mental health problems.
10:06My view is that's not the case. But if you were to look at what happens now in society,
10:11their coercion, segregation and so on continues, and people would continue to be discriminated against.
10:18The language used in mental health has changed marginally. But if you dig deeper, you'll find
10:25that that's not really the case, that people with long-term mental health problems certainly
10:31are seen as different or other, separate from the rest of society. And it's treated as such.
10:37And that's where I think that there's a failing in our mental health services. And we try and address
10:43that in the final section of our book. It comes under the section called Epilogue. And when we look
10:50at mental health issues, very superficially it's worth saying, but we look very briefly at mental
10:56health practice and care today, and look at the way that policy has evolved. And it's quite clear
11:04that there are failings in the mental health system, which are not just failings of policy,
11:10they're not just failings of practice, but it's to do with the way that society as a whole perceives
11:15people with enduring problems.
11:18I see. Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for. Thank you so much for joining us, Robert,
11:22and good luck with everything to do with your book.
11:24Okay, thank you very much.
11:26Now it's time for a history question to test your knowledge that I like to call Trivia Through Time.
11:31We'll have this just before the break.
11:32What animal had the oldest fossil of its kind, dating back 54 million years, found in Herne Bay?
11:51Well, that's all we have time for. A short break now. See you after the break.
15:17Hello and welcome back to Kent Chronicles Live here on KMTV.
15:25Now, if you missed it, it's your Trivia Through Time answer.
15:28Let's have a look at what the question was.
15:30What animal had the oldest fossil of its kind, dating back 54 million years, found in Herne Bay?
15:40There's a hint if you understand the song playing behind this.
15:44The answer? The horse.
15:45It was originally found in Stud Hills Cliff in 1838 and was forgotten until being rediscovered several years ago.
15:51And the person who found it, Alan Porter, claims that you could say Herne Bay is the birthplace of the horse.
15:56Now, don't forget, you can keep up to date with all your latest stories across Kent by logging on to our website.
16:02That's kmtv.co.uk.
16:05But I like to take some time to visit some of our older history stories that we've done around this time in previous years.
16:11And since we're right in the middle of spring, let's take a look at the history behind the daffodils at Hiva Castle.
16:16Tommaso DiMidio reported this on the 24th of March, all the way back in 2022.
16:33Did you know the UK grows more daffodils than the rest of the world put together?
16:38And did you know that there are around 25,000 registered varieties of this beautiful flower?
16:43Well, these are just a couple of fun facts myself and other visitors learned last week while touring the gardens at Hiva Castle.
16:52But what makes daffodils so special and why are they celebrated this time of the year by one of the most famous attractions in the county?
17:01It's just something that, you know, people just seem to love daffodils.
17:05And look at the, you know, the golden yellow flowers that we've got here.
17:11You can't help but be uplifted by what you see.
17:14On a sunny day, it really puts a smile on your face.
17:17And I think that's really why they're so popular.
17:20The yellow ones, there's a beautiful one called Carlton.
17:23And then we kind of go to the kind of the yellows and whites.
17:26There's one called Ice Folly.
17:28And then you have the small little kind of a last sissi ones called Jetfire.
17:32And others are kind of orange and white and a bit twisted middle.
17:37Now, although a special week dedicated specifically to daffodils is now over here at Hiva Castle,
17:44with spring now underway, visitors will still be able to admire nearly 60,000 flowers.
17:50Narcissus figured in Greek mythology 2,000 years ago.
17:56It's a bulb that you can put in the ground and it will keep coming back as a flower for several years
18:03without having to bother about lifting them, planting them, lifting them, planting them.
18:09You put them there and they'll keep coming back year after year.
18:12New varieties are added every year to the council's collection
18:15in order to explore how gardeners can extend their season.
18:20For example, there's one called Pheasant Eye,
18:22which is white with a red centre and which will be in flower well into May.
18:27There's no easy way of planting, so we have to technically dig 8,500 holes
18:32and put the daffodil in and cover it.
18:35So that's probably the most difficult time.
18:37Once they're in, they really kind of look after themselves for many, many years.
18:41We've got some here that we know probably were around a few hundred years ago.
18:47So with some daffodils believed to have outlived their owners by now,
18:51it's fair to say these beautiful flowers carry a lot of history,
18:55just like Ivor Castle does.
18:57Tommaso Di Middio for KMTV.
19:01Now Mark Ayers was searching for shark teeth
19:03when he ended up finding some Cold War era ammunition
19:06at Beltinge Beach near Hearn Bay on Sunday afternoon.
19:09Luckily, the round wasn't live,
19:12but the blue tip of it could indicate it was an incendiary round
19:15designed to ignite with fire on impact.
19:17Mark called the police once he found the ammo.
19:20The beach was cordoned off and a bomb disposal team was called in.
19:23The round was eventually found to be harmless in the end.
19:26It was actually training ammunition from a fighter aeroplane,
19:28so it was completely inactive.
19:30But if anyone else finds anything they suspect could be a bomb,
19:34authorities do advise don't pick it up and call police straight away.
19:37Now a hero pilot who flew in the Battle of Britain from Gravesend
19:42has been given his own commemorative stamp.
19:45Mahinda Singh Pooji, who passed away in 2010, aged 92,
19:50joins Dame Vera Lynn and nine other brave men and women in the set,
19:55honouring the courage of individuals who helped shape Britain's war effort.
19:59He moved to Britain and joined the RAF as a 22-year-old
20:01after spotting an advert in an Indian newspaper appealing for pilots.
20:05He met Churchill, Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II
20:08thanks to his military achievements during the Second World War
20:11and has a statue honouring him in Gravesend.
20:14Now on the 8th of May, the country will celebrate 80 years
20:17since the victory in Europe Day
20:19and honouring those who put their lives on the line to win the Second World War.
20:23Here in Kent, Canterbury Cathedral will hold a special service.
20:26Whilst in Maidstone, there will be groups of re-enactors
20:28holding a flag raising service in Jubilee Square
20:31with a home front exhibition and military vehicles outside the town hall.
20:36And across the Medway towns,
20:37searchlights that would have once been looking for the Luftwaffe
20:40will now be lighting the skies to honour our soldiers.
20:43Wherever you are in Kent, there's plenty of events, all for VE Day.
20:47Now last week, the Kent and East Sussex Railway
20:50had some nostalgic engines on their tracks,
20:52some of their smaller models,
20:54all to celebrate the unique characteristics of diminutive engines,
20:57which in history are often overlooked
20:59compared to their larger counterparts.
21:01Well, I'm joined now by Robin Coombs from Kent and East Sussex Railway
21:05to talk more about the event and the engines themselves.
21:08Thank you so much for joining me, Robin.
21:10Good evening.
21:11Good evening.
21:13Now, first of all, could you tell us a bit about these engines specifically?
21:16Was it always the plan to have the dwarves of the steam gala centred around them?
21:20Well, absolutely.
21:23So many railway galas focus on the big express locomotives like Flying Scotsman,
21:29but we wanted to show a different side of the railway,
21:32a very important side of the railway,
21:34celebrating the small but mighty locomotives that worked in industry,
21:39often overshadowed by their bigger cousins.
21:43And what we did, we focused on a particular theme
21:47with maritime connections.
21:49So it celebrated three aspects of Britain's heritage,
21:53the sea, industry and railways.
21:56And each of these engines have their own particular stories.
21:59Willie worked in the national shipyard in Chepstow,
22:03helping with shipbuilding during the First World War.
22:06And there's a contrast to that.
22:08Marcia was at a shipbreaking yard in Scotland.
22:12Judy was working in Parr, shifting China clay.
22:18Noel spent time in New Haven harbour.
22:23And Hastings had two particular lives
22:26connected to the Massachusetts ship canal
22:28and to Immingham docks.
22:31That's amazing.
22:32Is it common for ships, especially the named ones,
22:35to have these kind of backstories to them?
22:37And how did you kind of tell their stories at the event?
22:41Well, we told them by sort of making announcements.
22:45We have guides on the train.
22:47We published a brochure giving an idea of their history.
22:51And I think it's digging into it each time.
22:56And certainly future events will concentrate far more on the history.
23:02I see.
23:03And when did the idea for the gala first begin?
23:07What was that process like?
23:09Well, the idea has probably been around for a year,
23:12but we needed the right locomotives to actually make it happen.
23:16We've got several of our own,
23:18making sure that they were in steam at the appropriate time.
23:22We had two guest engines.
23:24And already a lot of enthusiasts,
23:27a lot of history buffs,
23:29all saying, will we run it again?
23:31Which we will do next year.
23:33And we've already had several offers of small locomotives.
23:37In fact, one from Belgium.
23:39People want to showcase these
23:41because there isn't a place they're often forgotten about.
23:44They're the unsung heroes.
23:46And why is that?
23:47Why are they so often forgotten?
23:50And also, as a general rule,
23:52what is the purpose of a smaller locomotive
23:54compared to the larger engines?
23:57It's very simple.
23:58A large express engine will pull passengers
24:01up the East Coast main line or to Scotland,
24:05whereas these engines will just shift one or two wagons,
24:09moving just ship parts
24:11or for small products, materials.
24:16They're the unsung hero.
24:18Almost you can think of them as a forklift truck.
24:21I see.
24:22They would be busy all day long
24:23in quarries, in mines, and in docks.
24:29Right.
24:30And this might be asking you to sort of pick a favourite child,
24:33but if you had to have a favourite of the smaller engines,
24:36which would you pick and why?
24:38Oh, no question.
24:39It would be Judy because I saw Judy in steam in the 1960s
24:46with very fond memories.
24:48And to see it back in 2025 is quite amazing
24:51that we can actually preserve and keep this heritage
24:55and keep the story of steam alive,
24:58particularly for each generation.
25:00So we're acting as custodians for history.
25:03That's a lovely phrase.
25:06And how did the event go itself?
25:08I'm aware the railway has now taken the title
25:10for Best Family Experience in Kent
25:13in the Muddy Stilettos Award.
25:14So do you think that the event might have contributed to that?
25:18Well, the voting was over the last week or so,
25:21so the voting had actually closed before that announcement,
25:25which we're absolutely delighted.
25:26But we've won a series of awards and just really shows
25:30that we touch a resonance with the public
25:34and particularly families, enthusiasts,
25:36who want to enjoy what we've got to offer.
25:39There are very few opportunities to actually enjoy
25:42something that's real.
25:45You can smell steam, you can travel behind it,
25:47exactly the same experience and sounds and sights
25:50as it would have been in the 1920s, the 1940s or the 1960s.
25:55And where else can you do that?
25:57You can't any longer travel on Concorde or a T-clipper,
26:02but on one of our trains,
26:03you can absorb yourself in nostalgia.
26:08Amazing.
26:09Well, I'm really sorry, Robin,
26:10but that's all the time we have for now.
26:12Thank you so much for joining us.
26:14Well, it looks like that was one for the history books
26:18in a good way.
26:19And you've been watching Kent Chronicles live here on KMTV.
26:23But don't forget, there's always history happening around us.
26:25And if you have a story that you think we should be covering,
26:27then please don't hesitate to get in touch.
26:30And if you happen to be more interested in the present
26:32than the past, that's OK.
26:33We have other special programmes in Victor Sport,
26:36Made in Kent, Kent on Climate, Kent Film Club,
26:38The Kent Politics Show and Based in Kent.
26:40You can watch those throughout the week
26:41or catch up with them on our website.
26:42But from me, for now, goodbye.