Book Review from The Journal of Kent History March 2017
Cranbrook Journal No. 27
Date: 2016. Publisher: Cranbrook & District Local History Society ISSN: 0953-4210. The first article (by Tony Singleton) in the latest issue of the Cranbrook Journal concerns the business of tanning in Cranbrook. The process of converting animal skins into leather is described, a process which seems to have been decidedly malodorous. Details are given of tanning in Cranbrook in the seventeenth century and into the early decades of the eighteenth. The trade died out in the Cranbrook area until about 1800, when a new tanyard was established. Such details as are known are given of these ventures.
There follow articles on the evolution of the landscape in and around Frittenden (by Phil Betts), enhanced by an extract from Hasted’s map of the Hundred of Cranbrook, and two paintings by John Preston Neale and dating from about 1830, and on the royal arms in St Dunstan's Church, by John Ford. Andrew Deuchar contributes ‘a sort of defence’ of his great, great, great grandfather, the Revd Daniel Williams Davies, who was Master of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Cranbrook between 1812 and 1850, and also Curate and later Vicar of Cranbrook. The ‘defence’ ends with this faint praise: ‘None of these things excuse Daniel Davies for his blindness, his traditionalism, or his blindness, and I accept his status as dinosaur. But he was a man of his time...’
ln 1866 another clerical headmaster of the Grammar School died of a stroke aged 48. Peter Allen gives a brief account of the Revd. John Allan’s much more successful tenure of office in Cranbrook and was much mourned in Cranbrook after his untimely demise. There is a photograph of the church yard in Cranbrook at the time of John Allan’s interment. There seem to be between two and three hundred people present
and, on the other side of the churchyard wall, there is washing line full of drying
clothes. Peter Allen also contributes an account of Sir Victor Horsley, who died on active service in what is now Iraq during the Great War. He had been at school in Cranbrook in the 1860s and 1870s, and became a surgeon at University College
Hospital. He was knighted in 1902. As an officer in the Territorial Army he joined up in 1914 and died of heat stroke in July 1916.
David Kelly writes about Douglas Carr, who was at school in Cranbrook for a couple
of years in the 1880s. His claim to fame was as a medium-paced bowler. He played from time to time for Kent and in 1909 in one test for England against Australia. He fought in the Great War, and after it probably returned to his former profession as a prep school master. He died in 1950.
This issue closes with brief accounts of the acquisition in 2015 by the museum of Frederick Hardy's The Little Chimney Sweep, donated by George Bednar; the doings of the museum generally; and work being done on the archives of the Cranbrook & District Local History Society. The Society is to be congratulated on producing another good annual issue of its Journal.
Peter Rowe
Cranbrook Journal No. 27
Date: 2016. Publisher: Cranbrook & District Local History Society ISSN: 0953-4210. The first article (by Tony Singleton) in the latest issue of the Cranbrook Journal concerns the business of tanning in Cranbrook. The process of converting animal skins into leather is described, a process which seems to have been decidedly malodorous. Details are given of tanning in Cranbrook in the seventeenth century and into the early decades of the eighteenth. The trade died out in the Cranbrook area until about 1800, when a new tanyard was established. Such details as are known are given of these ventures.
There follow articles on the evolution of the landscape in and around Frittenden (by Phil Betts), enhanced by an extract from Hasted’s map of the Hundred of Cranbrook, and two paintings by John Preston Neale and dating from about 1830, and on the royal arms in St Dunstan's Church, by John Ford. Andrew Deuchar contributes ‘a sort of defence’ of his great, great, great grandfather, the Revd Daniel Williams Davies, who was Master of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Cranbrook between 1812 and 1850, and also Curate and later Vicar of Cranbrook. The ‘defence’ ends with this faint praise: ‘None of these things excuse Daniel Davies for his blindness, his traditionalism, or his blindness, and I accept his status as dinosaur. But he was a man of his time...’
ln 1866 another clerical headmaster of the Grammar School died of a stroke aged 48. Peter Allen gives a brief account of the Revd. John Allan’s much more successful tenure of office in Cranbrook and was much mourned in Cranbrook after his untimely demise. There is a photograph of the church yard in Cranbrook at the time of John Allan’s interment. There seem to be between two and three hundred people present
and, on the other side of the churchyard wall, there is washing line full of drying
clothes. Peter Allen also contributes an account of Sir Victor Horsley, who died on active service in what is now Iraq during the Great War. He had been at school in Cranbrook in the 1860s and 1870s, and became a surgeon at University College
Hospital. He was knighted in 1902. As an officer in the Territorial Army he joined up in 1914 and died of heat stroke in July 1916.
David Kelly writes about Douglas Carr, who was at school in Cranbrook for a couple
of years in the 1880s. His claim to fame was as a medium-paced bowler. He played from time to time for Kent and in 1909 in one test for England against Australia. He fought in the Great War, and after it probably returned to his former profession as a prep school master. He died in 1950.
This issue closes with brief accounts of the acquisition in 2015 by the museum of Frederick Hardy's The Little Chimney Sweep, donated by George Bednar; the doings of the museum generally; and work being done on the archives of the Cranbrook & District Local History Society. The Society is to be congratulated on producing another good annual issue of its Journal.
Peter Rowe
