Flights over Dover

I decided to face this sad and difficult theme of World War One in Dover in the exhibition title, taking aerial pictures of views and sites in Dover, which were important in WW I. Of course, Dover seems to look different these days, but the structure of the town hasn’t changed much in 100 years. In the other

Drawing and Stitching workshops

Hand crafted bunting specific to WW1 for each museum or Heritage site was produced in a series of workshops. Marcia Teusink led a  drawing workshop which was followed up by Rosie James’s  stitch workshop, based on those drawings. These were held at each of the partner venues. Dover Museum: The first workshop was about slowing down our perception

Bakers, Makers & Brewers Fair / Then and Now

White Mill was owned and run by the Stanley family between 1860 and 1957, it was a home and rural business producing flour and animal feed. When the Mill closed in 1957 it sat empty until the late 1970s when a young Millwright Vincent Pargetar rescued it and with a group of volunteers turned into

Channel Firing

Early in 2014, Clare Smith and Joanna Jones, the founders and guiding spirits behind Dover Arts Development, invited me to respond to the 1914-18 anniversary, as part of the DMAG ‘Joined up’ project, linking up with Dover Museum.  At that point, my thought and ideas were concentrated, as many of ours were, on the road

The Journey to War

Áine Belton has created a reading and activity book based on the research she gathered from the Dover Transport Museum’s three WW1 exhibits. Áine’s interest is in creating a resource that will engage children with the history of WW1 transport and the town of Dover during the First World War. ‘The Journey to War’ book

They Also Shall Return

Cut into the side of the white cliffs and surrounded by farmland, lies St Margarets-at-Cliffe. It is a beautiful place with magnificent views out to sea. During the First World War this small village was surrounded by airfields, 500 soldiers moved in and due to the risk of bombing was subjected to regular blackouts. Everyone

Heaps and Lines and Hearts and Mines

Louisa Love’s project in conjunction with Aylesham Heritage Centre has explored the early history of coal mining in East Kent, from the establishment of the collieries following initial Channel Tunnel borings in 1890, to the tunnelling processes carried out by miners during WW1 and the development of the associated coalfield landscapes and communities. Through ongoing

The Friendly Army

The Friendly Army consists of six sited sculptures that trace the historical connections of the East Kent Railway to the First World War and mark the thresholds and crossings between the remaining line and its surrounding landscape. The sculptural pioneers guard and survey the tracks, visually re-establish the former links with the East Kent collieries,

Blackberry Tonic

Following the discovery of the National Blackberry Collection around Deal in the Kent Messenger (07/09/1918), the simple collective act of picking blackberries has revealed the resilience of Home Front communities during World War One inside and around the town’s built landscape. As the war continued, local landmarks such as the Town Hall transformed to co-exist

It will be all over

We were initially taken with the idea of recording the stories associated with the objects and ephemera in the Museum but we were also really interested in the untold stories that the Museum archivist’s had told us. The little details of the lives of the soldiers but also the families and that of Sandwich it’s

The Battle of Le Cateau

The Western Heights is a beautiful and terrible place. Silent, brooding, thought provoking and rugged; resonating with layers of history. It was a locus of military activity in World War 1; it was a significant through point for troops going out to France. Thinking about this traffic, evident in the graffiti and remnants around the Drop

Major General Ivor Maxse and Legacy of Wilfred ‘Billie’ Nevill

Major General Ivor Maxse In 1914 The East Surreys and the East Kents were regiments that now form part of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment. They were incorporated into the 18th (Eastern) Division, established in September 1914 by Kitchener for the British Army. Through research for the Western Heights in Dover, I began to