Day 1/10: Part 2: A tour of Blue Town and Sheerness Jo Eden
Outside Bluetown Heritage Centre I meet Jo Eden, a local artist who's been my guide from the start of this. Jo's been so amazing over the past year, sharing the ups and downs of the pandemic over Zoom with me and Kyra and Lucy from Ideas Test. She take me straight to a part of Sheppey still a part of the EU (in theory anyway!) as it was never returned by the Dutch after they won it ages ago. The UK government has never asked for it back, which is telling. The betrayal of Sheppey by the mainland, the siege mentality, the vulnerability. People look after each other but even that's changing now, people say it's not like it was.
We walk back along the wall (which I later hear is home to 10,000 scorpions that jumped off a ship a while back) and stop at one of the now bricked-up archways. We look down the road - Jo's seen pictures of the road filled with cyclists on their way to the dockyards. We talk about nostalgia and industry and about how these jobs were horrible but the camaraderie between the workers really made it feel worthwhile. The road is lined with parked cars now. We talk about using the photos to bring back old ideas of travelling around the island instead.
Jo tells me that behind that wall is where the tallest/oldest iron girder skyscraper was built. You wouldn't know it. It's not like Chatham dockyard, which had as devastating an effect on the town when it closed because that was preserved. This dockyard is commercial. It's now owned by Peel Ports who ship cars onto the island, which are then driven in those big transporters onto the mainland. Peel Ports don't have a great relationship with local people. They have lots of heritage in there but no will to share it. People like Jo keep trying. Hopefully someone will come into post soon who cares and it'll all change just like that.
We walk back over the bit of water and Jo tells me it's actually a moat, dug originally to protect the dockyard! Just over the other side we find this old bit of wall made from London brick – Jo tells me about the clay here and how they made the bricks here from the clay mixed with the rubbish – straw and manure and shipped down from London for which they'd get returned beautiful bricks. Here it is again, this up and down the water history. The big Tescos turns out to have pretty recently been a victorian bowling green, aquarium, pavilion, lido – all the things basically that people like to come and visit or help people to have a a special feeling about a place. In other places this would've been preserved but not here. Jo says this was in itself a form of victorian gentrification - individuals would decide “there's money to be made here – i'm going to build this and that and make some money out of it”. This is new to me. I'm glad it's not my generation who invented gentrification.
We stop off at the new Tourist Information centre where we meet the station manager as it's also the home of community radio station Sheppey FM. She hands me some leaflets and Jo grabs me a brand new map of the island. I love tourist information centres. As a local or someone who know a place well it's funny to see what the leaflets are and what they say about this place you know. Is it really the same place? We go though the churchyard and up to an absolutely beautiful building shrouded in hoarding. Plants are growing up and through its roof. Apparently a developer bought the land a few years ago. Jo says this building is an important part of Sheppey history because it's connected to the difficulty the island had in building a functioning sanitation system, what with it being under the water table and made of clay.
Back up the high street and looking down one of the alleyways we see (out of nowhere) a windmill! It was saved and done up by a local insurance firm (though they weren't allowed to put the sails back on). The high street is banging. Maybe I've been in Thamesmead too long where there's no shops to speak of. There's a tattoo place, a hair place, a butchers! There's a co-op – Jo tells me there's a big co-operative history here and this is the first one! The high street's more quiet now because of the big Tesco and out of town Morrisons too. During the first bit of Covid it was closed to cars to allow pedestrians to give each other space as they passed but the shopkeepers fought for it to be reopened. They argued no people were coming in if they couldn't drive down and pop in.
We go to Rose Street Cottage, which is the stuff of legend. Built by dockworkers for dockworkers this is one of only three remaining. The council bought it and Sheppey Promenade a charity of local people have been sorting it out and getting people through the door since 2015. When they were given the keys they found stuff everywhere including a bag of photographs. They could've easily got chucked away but luckily someone looked inside before they slung it. They were all taken by Lillian mason who was a photographer in the 1920s who had a studio in Sheerness with her sister. The photos are of people who've come to be recorded alone, with loved ones, on special occasions. There's theatrical troupes and photos from carnival too.
Just along from this is a display she's proud of that many people worked on together about Women in world war one (I'm sticking with the capital letters I've subconsciously gone with there). They did all the research and published a book together on what they'd discovered – it's for sale downstairs.
Downstairs there's a photo of Mrs Kicks, a seamstress who lived here and would've sewn sails in the docks. As we move round there's other things like art installations, projects, a new bit at the back where you can get cake and that. It's a really special place. It's got the feeling of home, obviously because it was one. I spend my time working in these national museums that are sold as these historical places but they're just institutions with no soul. I can feel a creative spirit here.
We go to wetherspoons for some food and plan what to do over the next few weekends. Jo tells me about sound mirrors and the creative journals project she took part in as part of the Estuary Festival – the journals are incredible – watch them here: https://www.estuaryfestival.com/water-replies-films.html
Jo gives me a lift to where I'm staying. It's down an unmade round off the main road that runs through the middle of Sheppey and she knows exactly which road it is.
