A special guest was James Winbolt, the great-grandson of S.E. Winbolt who first excavated the Roman Villa in 1924. Winbolt’s grandson, who was unable to attend, said in a telephone interview: “I am a great admirer of my grandfather as an archaeologist and classicist. I know he was immensely proud of the Folkestone Roman villa excavation, especially the hypocaust [part of the Roman underfloor heating system] which was more intact than most that are found.”

Entitled ‘Earth and Vision: Images of Archaeology and Landscape Folkestone 1538-2012′, the exhibition will run from Monday 16 April to Sunday 13 May, and is the first of three  being put on by a Town Unearthed all of which will centre  on archaeology and the history of Folkestone.

Curated by Bryan Hawkins, senior lecturer, media, art and design, Canterbury Christ Church University, it brings together images and artefacts from the archaeological and historical record of Folkestone including the archaeological excavations in 2010 &2011 as well as material from S. E. Winbolt’s 1924 Villa excavation.  It also features archive material from the Folkestone Library collection, Canterbury Archaeological Trust and the work of local artists and volunteers.

Bryan Hawkins said “I hope this exhibition will encourage people to consider not only the connections between archaeology and art but also their own relationship with the landscape and the earth beneath us which contains much of our history.”

‘A Town Unearthed: Folkestone Before 1500′ is a three year project of community archaeology in Folkestone, organised by Canterbury Christ Church University, the Folkestone People’s History Centre and Canterbury Archaeological Trust. It is funded by a £298,700 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and further support from the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, Folkestone Town Council, Kent Archaeological Society and Shepway District Council.

In addition to two years excavation at the Roman villa on Folkestone’s East Cliff, under the supervision of Canterbury Archaeological Trust, which last year attracted 7,500 visitors, volunteers for A Town Unearthed have also been involved in digging test pits in The Bayle and Wear Bay Road, a research group and talks to schools and community groups about the project. Over the last few months a dedicated group of volunteers have been sorting and analysing the thousands of finds from the villa excavations.

Dr.Lesley Hardy of Canterbury Christ Church University, director of the project, said “We have designed this exhibition to look at archaeology in what we believe is a new and exciting way, using artefacts, stories and images from the villa digs as well as the work of artists. Along with two other exhibitions, it will showcase the work that has been done by many volunteers over the last two years, demonstrating a deepening interest of local people in their heritage”

The exhibition brings together images and artefacts from the archaeological and historical record of Folkestone including the Archaeological excavations in 2010 &2011 as well as material from S. E. Winbolt’s 1924 Villa excavation. It also features archive material from the Folkestone Library collection, Canterbury Archaeological Trust and the work of local artists and volunteers.

Curated by Bryan Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Media, Art and Design, Canterbury Christ Church University, this is the first of three exhibitions being put on by ‘A Town Unearthed: Folkestone Before 1500′, a three year project of community archaeology in Folkestone, organised by Canterbury Christ Church University, the Folkestone People’s History Centre and Canterbury Archaeological Trust. It is funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust with additional contributions by Folkestone Town Council, Kent Archaeological Society, Kent County Council and Shepway District Council.

Some Events

• Winbolt and a window on archaeology in 1920s Folkestone, a Magic Lantern show and talk by Ian Coulson.Thursday 19th April, 6pm-7.30pm

• Earth and Vision: Curator’s talk and tour by Bryan Hawkins, Curator. Thursday 26th April, 6pm –7.30pm

• Storytelling and craft workshop for all the family Explore the exhibition and make your own ideas come to life, listen to stories and create your own artefacts. A fun and creative session to share time with your family. Saturday 21st April, 1-4pm

For further Details contact: A Town Unearthed: 01303-850614 or E-Mail: townunearthed@canterbury.ac.uk

The Sandgate Men’s Club was founded in February 1895 and called St Paul’s Working Menʼs Club with the Reverent E V Eustace Bryan as President. In 1914 the club moved to the Chichester Memorial Hall under the auspice of C H Master a lavish contributor to the Hall’s building fund. In 1933 it changed its name to its current title.

The Trustees of the Chichester Memorial Hall are proud of this lasting association, as is the Club, so it was with immense pleasure that the on-going relationship was secured with the agreement of a further 15 year lease.

Chair of the Chichester Hall Memorial Hall Trust, Jan Holben signs the new lease with the Club’s Trustees Mssrs McNaughton, Lugg and Chilvers (photograph Sue Cowell)

Gordon Wyatt, the Club’s Secretary said, “The Club offers continuity in a world that is constantly changing. Many of our Members have been coming here for years although we always welcome new Members who can enjoy the two full size competition billiard tables as well as the other events that are organised.”

David Cowell the Hall’s Treasurer said that the Trustees and people of Sandgate have worked hard to raise funds to refurbish the building and grow the number of hires particularly children’s parties. He continued that he was delighted that the 15 year lease with the Men’s Club had been finalised.

Contacts:

David Cowell 020 3239 5828/david@davidcowell.net

Dates 20^th & 21^st April 7.30pm

Tickets £11.00/ £10.00 concessions

Dickens’ work brought to life in a daring production celebrating the 200^th anniversary of Dickens’ Birth Year

What larks! What characters! Coming to the Tower Theatre is a new production of Great Expectations as part of a nationwide tour by the Baroque Theatre Company.

The Baroque Theatre Company distils Charles Dickens’ story and presents its essence in unforgettable personalities in this adaptation by Hugh Leonard.

The role of Pip, who holds the whole tale together, is taken by two actors, young (Charlie Hobbs) and rather older (Michael Longhi). The fact that he never quite grows up and at the end is still rather puzzled by what is going on is what makes him attractive.

Made up of bits and pieces that don’t quite match and are placed at odd angles, Becky Athawes’ set is an image of the world that he can’t quite understand. A chair can become a tombstone, and pair of chairs makes a stagecoach bowling along. In a daring but successful piece of production, sudden darkness is even made to represent the blaze at Miss Havisham’s house.

Lloyd Morris’s Magwitch has force, Alan Booty makes Jaggers impenetrably mysterious, and Mark Drake has the physique and manner for a gangling Joe. Aislinn De’Ath artfully keeps her distance as that tease Estella. Adam Morley’s direction is vivid and fast moving, confidently relying on our imaginations and our memories of the original novel.

Baroque Theatre Company is a touring company founded by Claire Bibby.  Its cast and crew is an energetic team of creative individuals committed to engaging audiences with vibrant and captivating entertainment.  Their goal is to generate a “renaissance” in local theatre, performing a wide range of genres from revitalised classics to exciting new writing, from comedy to drama.

The company is based in Norwich and is proud to have the opportunity to contribute to East Anglia’s rich and flourishing base for arts and culture. Their ethos is to build the company on a repertory style, whereby a core team of actors and crew remain associated with the company.  The company launched with a highly successful East Anglian tour in summer 2010, followed by a Comedy Triple Bill production touring in 2011, playing to full houses and attracting excellent reviews.

There will be a mixture of material, including adult fiction and non-fiction, children’s books and some DVDs/CDs. The Folkestone Library Users Group meets regularly to discuss all issues connected with Folkestone Library and organises some activities. If you would like to become involved please contact Nick Spurrier at Spurrier@btconnect.com.

Thursday 26 April 2012 at 2.30pm. “Ghastly Good Taste: highs and lows of British interior design” Matthew Williams takes a light-hearted look at the enormous changes in taste and design that have impacted our homes and lives over the last hundred years.

Meetings are held at The Tower Theatre, North Road, Shorncliffe. Visitors are welcome at £5. Info: e-mail folkestone@nadfaskentarea.org.uk or telephone 01303 239530 or visit our website: www.nadfaskentarea.org.uk

Are people really going to remain interested in this genre and the period involved? They certainly seem set to be, and with the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic sinking, and another Julian Fellowes television version of that story almost upon us, the interest in early twentieth century drama seems certain to continue. It’s also significant that the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1 is now only two years distant.

So what makes “Terrors and Longings” a different novel and worth a read? It’s another love story, yes, but with essential differences. The love interest revolves around a young infantry officer and two women. The women are both strong, determined characters who are bent on making real contributions to the war effort. They are three-dimensional figures, who never allow their emotive responses to detract from the work they do so faithfully. Extraordinary circumstances in the story also mean that the fates of the three central characters become and remain closely entwined, despite the male character’s preoccupations on the battlefields. These circumstances, where the action moves swiftly between the terrors of the trenches and the longings expressed in the love scenes, add to the novel’s suspense value.

But there are also other dimensions making this story refreshingly different. Undocumented oral history, in the sense that no other WW1 soldiers remain living, means that we have to rely on succeeding generations’ recall of experiences as relayed to them by their predecessors. The author of this book, now seventy-one, retains very clear memories of his father’s orally related experiences in the trenches of the Western Front. Such memories became the motivating force behind the book actually being written. Furthermore, we hear much nowadays about the post-traumatic stress syndrome associated with war. The scale of such stress in WW1 was huge. It is faithfully dealt with in this novel, one of the female characters becoming a star nurse in a hospital for traumatised troops.

The author is also keenly interested in WW1 history. Before writing the novel he read very widely and researched the background accurately, visiting many of the places dealt with. Having said that, he’s also written a moving love story where the central characters’ emotional reactions are played out against terrible wartime experiences. These two characteristics of the book make for a compelling and worthwhile read.

(see: www. Authors Online for details of book cover design and synopsis. Check out: author Hutchings, Robert. Amazon also currently feature the book).

More details can be found here>>>>tamalpa_postcard_email

From my first meeting him in his office in Tontine Street, it is plain that Josh De Haan is absorbed in and enthused by his work, by what is happening in Folkestone and his contribution to the town’s regeneration.  This focus on work is something he has inherited as he says “My car journey back to the King’s School on Sunday evenings with my father was usually a lecture on what was happening at Saga or the state of the economy, when I would perhaps rather have talked about rugby.”  Others would confirm this handed down capacity for hard work “If you asked my wife I think she would say that I am cut from the same cloth as dad.  Unfortunately (and she would say unfortunately) there is a workaholic side to me but I don’t think that is a bad thing although I should probably spend a bit more time with my four children.”

His hard work has certainly paid off in Folkestone with the opening of Rocksalt and the Smokehouse on the Stade in partnership with Mark Sargeant and the reconstruction now taking place of the old Pipers club building in Tontine Street, which will house the Headquarters of his Internet Company - View and his other businesses - businesses which will by that time, including the restaurants, be employing nearly seventy people in Folkestone.

The journey to Tontine Street started after he studied marketing at Newcastle University. From the start Sidney De Haan felt that Josh, his eldest grandson, should move into Saga, perhaps eventually managing it. This was not however the view of Roger De Haan who “did not think anyone should have the divine right to take over Saga. Eventually my father did offer me a job but I had to start at the bottom so I worked in telesales for a year on a salary of £7500, which was hard and an eye opener. I slowly moved up but I knew very early on that I was not particularly comfortable working for the family firm. I wanted to break out, go and do something on my own.”

“After leaving Saga I worked for a small publishing company in London in charge of their marketing which is where I became interested in the potential of the internet. At the time there did not seem to be anything that catered for the London market, though by the time I started the dot.com boom years had arrived.”  But Josh and his partner, brother Ben,  survived the eventual shakeout with the well respected View Group - an online entertainment guide to London, covering restaurants, pubs, bars and nightclubs, deriving income from advertising, ticket sales and reservations.  With a “What’s On” guide, reviews of current cinema releases and forums where users can discuss current issues affecting the UK capital or interact with others, it has expanded to take in all major UK cities and New Zealand, where Ben De Haan runs a franchise.

At present there are separate sites for each city but, as Josh says, “the endgame for us, in the terms of the city guides, is to have a one stop portal that covers the whole country as opposed to individual web sites for each city or town. The idea would be to have an entertainments guide all under the one portal (www.view.co.uk) where people could access information for their town or city maybe to include Folkestone one day.”

The business was first based in Sandgate but then moved to Ashford where, as Josh continues, “I was ready to buy a rather soulless stainless steel office building in Eureka Park. I thought Ashford, with the high speed rail link, was the next big thing but my father, after meeting me there, started to persuade me that Folkestone might be a better option. In the end he convinced me and, via Shearway Industrial park, we settled here. Moving to this part of the town has been brilliant. It is edgier and the town offers my staff so much more. You can see the changes happening and it is ever so exciting. I am banging the drum for Folkestone with all my friends and family to try and persuade them to do similar things”.

With the Rocksalt and the Smokehouse up and running, Josh’s attention has turned to the renovation of the Pipers building. He is frank about his talks with Shepway planners, “We would have liked a modern building but being in a conservation area the local council and English Heritage were quite tough on what we could do. So we have been forced to keep the façade against my and the architect’s wishes. Doing this has increased the cost of the build significantly and I think most developers, with any sense, would probably have walked away. So it will be a modern building, though the façade of the first floor and above will be kept with an additional office floor and terrace. Though the ground floor is classed as retail, we are seeking to change that to commercial/office space so there will an entrance hall with two offices on either side” Though he does not say this, without doubt he could have bought a plot of land, say at Shearway industrial park, and built new offices for far less than it will cost him to convert the Pipers building but, by absorbing the extra costs, he has chosen to contribute in this way to Tontine Street’s regeneration.

View, the restaurants and other companies - Rocksalt Recruitment, an agency that will provide high quality staff for the hospitality industry and an estate agents price comparison website - will take the top two floors while the remainder of the building except one ground floor unit will be leased out. Josh continues “This unit will become an incubator space where we will provide a desk, super high speed internet access, a telephone and other facilities, including mentoring and advice,  for people who are thinking about setting up businesses and want a base to work through their ideas in an environment that is positive and forward thinking. From the ground floor an embryo business might then move upstairs, continuing with mentors who might be my marketing or IT guys or I am certain I can call in favours to bring in other people I know who will   help. I really want it to be a positive dynamic place, a hub for enterprise in Folkestone.”

Josh’s fresh ideas and enthusiasm for Folkestone and its regeneration permeate the whole interview. With regard to Tontine Street he says “What this area needs is people who have got money to spend in the town.  The knock on effect of that is that I think there should be a change of tack in which some shops are turned into business spaces, the employees becoming consumers in the shops, restaurants and cafes. We have business meetings which bring people into the town and reintroduce them to the area. They are all incredibly impressed with what is going on, often saying things like “We haven’t been to Folkestone for years. Hasn’t it changed?”  When they’ve been here once, they often come back and talk to their friends and colleagues about what is happening. There is a lot in Folkestone to be upbeat about and we have to make sure people find out about it”

This is one of the articles in the latest issue of Go Folkestone magazine, which can be seen at http://www.gofolkestone.org.uk/magazine

Further details are below, please could you circulate through newsletters, notice boards etc. the deadline is May 4th 2012 and they are looking to film at the end of May.

Are you single, lacking confidence and want to find love?

Would you like a jaw dropping makeover to help restore your confidence? Do you want to become desirable to the opposite sex? Help is at hand! A brand NEW Channel 4 series wants to help you find out where you’re going wrong and give you a makeover inside and out to help put it right.

This prime time series aims to be an intelligent, sensitive and fun approach to confidence building and navigating the world of modern dating.

We’re looking for women aged between 25 - 55 who would like to be made over to help them win at the dating game. If this sounds like you, or SOMEONE YOU KNOW, then contact us at datingmakeover@ricochet.co.uk with your name and contact number, call us on 01273 224817 or text us on 07582 037939.

Kind regards,

Hannah Lucey
KENT FILM OFFICE
01622 696822

www.kent.gov.uk/filmoffice