Day 9/10: Part 2: Queenborough Market, Rushenden and Queenborough Guildhall Museum
I get out the sea, dry off and dash to the station to get the bus to Queenborough. Queenborough Market is a new weekly market “showcasing local businesses, food and drink, and crafts on Queenborough Quay... running every Saturday from 10.00am until 3.00pm during the summer season, the market aims to showcase the wide variety of produce and crafts from across the island and the local area, boosting visitors to Queenborough and driving increased spend in local businesses. The market has been organised by Queenborough Harbour Trust, a not-for-profit, community-interest company that aims to develop and improve the harbour facilities alongside promoting the area to visitors and securing additional benefits for the local community.” https://www.visit-swale.co.uk/visit-swale-blog/new-queenborough-harbour-market-showcasing-local-businesses-to-launch-june-5th/
IT'S NOT AT THE HARBOUR, IT'S AT THE CREEK! WAIT, QUAY! Phew! Luckily I've been here before so I take the route via the creek (which I think is called the quay) on my way to the harbour and find the market by mistake. It's dead nice there are craft stalls and food and the Fairy door people are here. CHECK OUT THIS MAP OF ALL THE DOORS!!!!
Susie goes along the beach looking for sea glass. It might look like a ship or a bird, whatever, she takes it home, puts it in a bucket of water and then (TIP!!!) wipes some of the sea glass with baby oil to get a smooth look or leaves it for a rougher look. I ask how she twists the wire so well as I've tried this before and totally failed and she gives me another top tip: SEARCH FOR MATT'S CRAZY ART WIRE WRAP JEWELLERY ON YOUTUBE. This is my kind of artist – sharing and caring. I pick out the best looking sea glass necklace to wear for eternity. A family member sat at the back bags it up for me.
While I'm here I really want to visit Sheppey Rocks' display for Queenborough and Rushenden in Bloom after speaking to Carol Sheridan on Zoom a few weeks ago. The details say go down Rushenden Road and it's opposite a grey building, which feels a bit vague as it's quite a long looking road on the map but I trust it and lo and behold HERE IT IS!!!
The kids from the primary school got involved, people were dropping off wellies and rocks at Carol's home and she was going to pick them up too...Check out the previous post for more backstory... It's so good seeing it IN REAL LIFE! And what a great use of this bit of land in this quite inhospitable industrial area. GOOD FOR THEM.
On the way back to the bus-train it turns out that Lin from Queenborough Guildhall Museum did email me yesterday to say she'd give me a 1 on 1 tour BUT IT WENT TO MY JUNK!!! Luckily Lin's come down anyway so I dash down to see her (freaking out the helpful person at the bus stop who was telling me where to wait for the return bus-train back to Sheerness).
Queenborough Guildhall Museum https://www.queenboroughguildhallmuseum.co.uk/ was started by Lin in 1996 to preserve the history of Queenborough, particularly the role the town played in the second world war, when it was the home of over 100 minesweeping vessels. She spoke to the council and they agreed to give her the robing room for the new museum along with spare display boards and surplus cabinets. I'm sure it was A LOT MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT! Lin is impressive. I don't meet many people like her working in the national museums in London. She knows how to get things done even though as she put it she knew nothing about museums when she started. She's since won a national museum award for her achievements. People used to bring things in to fill the museum, now they come in and ask Lin if she has information on particular historical topics. Lin's made sure she's digitised the information she has so that she can email it out to people and this is so different to the way that people (including myself) perceive museums as places where things are kept, locked away.
We go and visit the cell, where Lin tells me about the schoolchildren who visit and how they react when they have a go inside. Lin tells me about the Wheels of Time scheme https://wheelsoftime.uk/ and the impact it's had on the number of young visitors she gets (10x!). We talk about young people and museums and I bring up the issue of who is going to run places like this in a few years time, thinking it should be the youth but Lin says it's down to the 30-40 year olds who are settled and have time to make a difference and she is SO RIGHT! It really makes me think about the civic role of different age groups and how there's so much emphasis on young people, older people do the bulk of the volunteering and those in their 30s and 40s seem to cruise through. Obviously earning a wage and child rearing are a big deal for this age group but maybe if more volunteering roles were chucked their way they'd respond positively?
We go upstairs into the council chambers and see the massive portrait of Mayor Greet (who stopped the oyster farming leading to the starvation of many of his citizens – his family visited from Australia and Lin was worried about telling them what a rotter he was!), the treaty written by the Dutch to officially “hand back” Queenborough in the 1970s and the cat-o-nine-tails. Lin tells me about the DVD she made with Colin to show people who were unable to climb the stairs (before they got the chair lift) what it's like up here. Lin found sea shanties written to popular tunes by the mine sweepers and gave them to the local school choir to sing over the footage and the Imperial War Museum were so impressed they commissioned her and Colin to make another video for them.
We talk about twinning and how good it would be if the Imperial War Museum could twin with them. We look at the letters from 1796/1826 that Lin found in a cupboard and meticulously typed up and the people who came and spent hours reading through them all. This place in some ways is more like a Resource Centre than a museum, which I mean as a complement – it's actually of use to people, it's current not stuck in the past. We go back downstairs and Lin shows me the photo albums of the different classes of minesweeper (tun class, King Arthur class, tree class, MMS) that she's now knowledgeable about after a man from Europe (was it Holland?) sent her lots of photos / helped identify the photos she was given.
Meeting Lin is massively humbling and inspiring. She is having a massive impact on the present day and future of the town by capturing its history before it fades away.
I wave goodbye to Lin and go and celebrate with a gypsy tart from Bosun's at the harbourside.
