Day 5/10 Queenborough with Graham Benham

Graham who shared his stories of being a postman on the island has agreed to show me round Queenborough. He grew up here and is a fan of local history. So the kings and creams, mayors, memorials and wars are knitted together with the places he lived as a child (the old post office and therefore the only place on the street with the a telephone), the place he played with his mates (a bombsite which is now a row of shops), the place he went for a drink whilst out with his mates (the old well of Queenborough castle).

What makes our personal histories different from the history of kings and queens? When do their histories become our histories? How can we really get to now a place when places exist in different ways to us all? 

Graham learned to play the guitar in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Queenborough. He also had a spooky encounter with a 6 ft 8 vicar wearing a black cloak that flapped threateningly in the wind. The graveyard is also home to a massive memorial to Thomas Greet, the mayor who wanted to get rid of the oyster farms. Oyster farming was seen as a poor man's thing and making the well to do look down on Queenborough so he told the people of Queenborough to no longer farm the oysters and to make sure he built a massive house to watch over the fields. People starved to death. The survivors pooled together all they had to show how much they hated him.

Another mayor lived in this house. He was a thatcher and his house had a thatched roof. One day the queen visited by surprise and he was so shocked he fell off the roof and ripped his trousers. Once the queen had left, he wrote to her asking if she could compensate him for his trousers. She wrote back saying instead she'd offer him a caged elephant. So he built this park at the bottom of Queenborough where the boat would come in with the elephant on board. 

Peeved the caged elephant hadn't turned up yet, he gave the letter to someone else to read and they broke the news that the queen had actually offered a cash equivalent. Not caged elephant. Doh. Unbelievably there's no sculptural rendition of this caged elephant but there is a mine in the corner to recognise the minesweepers who left Queenborough harbour to lead the boats on D-Day.

We go up Naylor's Alley – Graham's searched and searched but he doesn't know why it's got this name. The unknown is a beguiling thing. How do you know when you really know? 

Next to the guildhall is another alleyway. A 15 year old girl called Emma Cobbins was killed here by a sailor. She refused his “advances”. What's nice though is that he was tried, found guilty and then hanged body was used as a deterrent to warn other sailors. No victim blaming here - refreshing.

We walk across the sand to see the Graham's painting on the sea wall. He worked with groups from the local schools, church and rowing club to design and paint these scenes to create this viaduct-inspired collection. The middle school-ers worked out how to spell out Queenborough in semaphore. Queenborough castle is depicted with the walls angled before it was found out it was round. I guess history's always being rewritten, facts re-presented. We talk about augmented reality, digital layers to inspire the kids, Graham held up Hogarth's etching of the street on his phone. Graham wonders about vibrations in the sea wall and whether historians of the future will be able to harness the echos of sounds from long ago to recreate the scenes that made the sounds in the first place.