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RUSTHALL LETTERS
December 2011
Hello,
It shows a building which features on Tunbridge Ware & which is known to collectors as Hurst Wood Cottage. However, in Colbran it is described as a ‘Tudor Style farmhouse' in the vicinity of Toad Rock.
Do you have any idea where it was or what it was actually called? Best regards, Howard Rockley
July 2011
I moved to Asher Reeds when I was six in 1968 – well my mum and dad moved and were good enough to take me (and my 2 brothers) with them! I was in the Rusthall Cub Scouts which used to be held in St Pauls church hall which was opposite what was then the Morning Star Pub. We used to play on the common opposite and buy 10p of chips in Rod’s fish and chip shop on the way home – there was another chip shop opposite the Methodist (I think) church hall which is now a Chinese take away and has been for a few years. When I graduated to the Rusthall Scouts I cycled to the parades which were held at Toad Rock in the big house opposite the Toad Rock Retreat. The pictures of the area – Deny Bottom etc immediately took me back – the painting of the corner of Upper Street and Apsley Street where they become a footpath and the light is particularly evocative - I could feel the bumps in the sandy stoney path as I rode my bike along it. In those days there was an off licence shop very near what is shown in one of the photos of the area as Jude Hanbury ‘Toad Rock Cottage’. There was also a corner shop opposite the Toad Rock Retreat. I used to spend a lot of my weekends and holidays at Jockey Farm in Nellington Lane with Dave and Andy Rustbridge, in those days Mr Harris was still alive and I can remember him with a roll-up cigarette always in his mouth. At the time I think the milk round he used to do was just coming to an end but I can remember the milk being pasteurised at the farm. There used to be a fantastic allotment opposite the farm with loads of vegetables and fruit being grown – I think it is overgrown now. I left the area in 1980 when I was 18 to join the Royal Navy. I’m currently living in Norway but will return to the UK next year. A waffle and ramble I know but I just had to write something and send it in!!! Thanks for stirring up many happy memories
Richard Marshall writes
The current sponsor (Gleeds) will no longer be sponsoring the team as of the end of this season, and I wondered if you might be able to offer some publicity on your website to assist our plight. Without a sponsor for the next season the team will not have a football kit to play in. Ideally a local business from the Rusthall area would be the perfect sponsor. The total amount to sponsor for the season is around £800. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
Kind regards
Former Rusthall resident Mick Bean writes:
Rusthall when I was a little boy stopped where the raspberry/blackberry bushes and stinging nettles started. A barbed wire fence marked the boundary between village life and nature. Nellington Lane ran alongside the field before turning sharply right, down past the cemetery and onward to the more outlying villages. Little could I have known then that this wonderful field full of grasses, bushes, trees and wildlife would one day become yet another concrete slab helping house the 1970s population explosion. Nellington lane survives but is no longer the winding country road, more a short cut for speeding taxis carrying fares from middle class housing estates to the busy commuter belt railway station in the local town. The lane, once lined with green hedges and buttercups, now show scars of skidding car tyres and wing mirror damage along an oily polluted hedgerow. Pheasants no longer roam the lane safely; bird’s nests that once littered the nearby trees have gone and bird song has been replaced by the never ending drone of the motor-car. The first thing I noticed as a young boy when walking past the Church hall into the village was the smell of fresh baked bread from the bakery near the Morning Star pub. The rickety old green van with its back doors open displayed rows upon rows of cakes, loaves and bread rolls on wooded slats ready for the morning delivery. I could walk the length of the high street and never see traffic. The 81 bus turned around at the end of the village where the fields began before making its way back to TW. Most of the locals used the bus service; cars were a rarity and only used by the wealthy few. The bus route back to town would take you past the marl pit then onto Sandy bank (top of Bretland Road) before reaching the Toad Rock bus stop. By that time the bus would usually be full before continuing on past Dingly Dell, the Spa Hotel and onward down Major York’s road to the Pantiles. As well as the bread van you could well see the coal lorry, milk floats, one man dust carts, the fish van, the rag-and-bone man, the swill-man (collecting spud for his pigs) and once every few months a man of the road (tramp) would walk through the village singing and whistling with cap in hand hoping for a few pennies from the more well off folk in the village. A twice a year visitor to the village would be the knife sharpener-man, he would up-end his bicycle in the middle of the road and spin the rear wheel which had a sharpening stone attached. He charged one shilling (1/-) for all the knives you could carry to him and one and a tanner (1/6) for sharpening garden tools like shears or mowers.
Over to you lot...............
Pat has lived in the US (New Jersey) since 1961. She frequently comes back home to visit including a trip planned later this year. She was married @St. Paul's Church in 1954, and remembers being on Rusthall Common the day WW II started in 1939. She has many fond memories of growing up in Denny Bottom. I have been fortunate to visit many times since I was a baby. My father grew up in Tunbridge Wells (Camden Rd. , and later Dunstan Rd.) I remember Happy Valley, the working man's club (St. Paul St.?), and of course walks w/my grandfather to the Toad Rock. Some of the shops might have changed a bit, but it all looks pretty much the same otherwise. As a kid I liked the 'Paper Shop' as it was called to buy a copy of the "Beano" comic book, and eat some 'Penguins'. lol Rusthall, and the English countryside of Kent & Sussex are simply some of the most beautiful places ever put on Earth.
Cheers
From: Diana Gibb
A few years ago I travelled to Rusthall and was so pleased to identify the shop, It is the One Stop shop and the alleyway next to it still looked the same as it was in the photo all those years ago. If I can find out how to send copies of said photos to you on the computer I will do so, I'm not very computer literate but try very hard! I stumbled across your site by accident and I must say I'm very impressed with it, thanks for all your hard work on it.
From: Susie Spragg
I was born in the White House, in Harmony Street in January 1950. The house is between The Scouts Headquarters (now private residence I think), which was next to the demolished houses behind Morfetts shop. I remember the houses there, as they abutted our garden wall and I would climb up and look down into their decaying back yards. Old man Morfett(he was a real old lech) was keen to get planning permission to build on the land there.
From: Beth Mooney
From: Beth Mooney
From: Franklin
From: Eileen Thompson
From: Brigitte Baxter-Steiz
From: Fiona Graves
From: Francis Huddy
I used to live in Bretland Road, just near the beginning at the bus stop in Rusthall Road, and remember going all over Rusthall, playing cricket up at the cricket pitch and even at the playing fields down in Ashley Park. Why did they extend the cricket pitch and then never use it? They must've done that in about 1985. It left the pavilion stranded, right out in the middle of the field. We used to play cricket (just 4 of us) on that field every day after school in the early 1980s, just beside the pavilion. One day, the groundsman came along and was so incensed that we were playing cricket on his beloved pitch that he actually drove his car onto the pitch and ran over our wicket! Well, we knew it was owned by the council so we had every right to play cricket there (the police said the same). Another strange thing on the website is your story 'Two Rusthall Ghosts'. Well, I can remember walking home from school one day, with a friend, from Southborough (St Gregory's) through Hurst Woods (in about 1981). This is really spooky because there was no-one around, just the two of us, and we actually heard this really eerie, shrieking noise of a heavy horse approaching at speed yet there was nothing there! We even started running away, assuming the horse was right behind us ready to run us over. I remember that to this day and to read of the account of the ghost is rather strange. I must say that I am not remotely a believer in anything paranormal, yet this is the only such experience in my entire life. Anyway, the website is superb. The old pictures of Toad Rock and Rusthall in the past are a delight. Many thanks,
Mr Francis Huddy
From: "A.J.Fermer" My Grandmother - who lived in Ripley, Surrey - was out of favour with my dad because he never knew his father and had Gran's surname. I know the street was below Toad Rock and I think the church was at the end of it. You climbed out of the street to the council houses. We were there for a year. In the 60's I visited Georgina and Liz and Arthur, they were all still there. I do not know if any relatives are there now, the named have passed on. I remember, on visits after the war, playing around the pub while the family drank there. My father was brought up by his Grandmother Fermer until about age 10 when uncle Frank and Georgina took him in. He always said his Gran was 'cheated' out of a property, a pig farm in the area - but who knows. The houses were very small and close up to , what seemed to me, to be a steep cliff (a tiny backyard and next to no front garden). I have nothing of real use for your site- but I must say it is very good. If I ever get to come back to UK I will call in to the pub.
Arthur John Fermer.
From: Anne Dean Kadis
Together Sally Haines and Anne Whale and I played there for hours. One day Sally and I were playing in the sand by Toad Rock and a photographer asked us to pose for a picture. He claimed he was taking pictures for postcards. We were very excited and ran home to tell our families, but figured nothing much would become of it. My family returned to the states. Several years later the Haines family found the actual postcard of us at Toad Rock in the local shops. We later found ourselves on calendars and tea towels!!! If anyone is interested, I will try to locate a scanner to send a copy of the postcard to add to the historical pictures of Toad Rock. I plan to visit Rusthall this coming July 2002, with my husband and two children. We will climb on the rocks at Toad Rock, and will search for my initials that I carved in to the rocks. We will stop by the local pub and would love to meet the person responsible for this charming web site. Anyone interested in reaching me can email me at 'toanniebananie@yahhoo.com"
From: Mick Bean
Going down the "spa lake " collecting golf balls (never pinching them) wash them in vinegar overnight and sell them back to the golfers next day !! The "water rock " where we would try and climb without slipping down, on cold winter nights light a "Yoggie" in one of the caves to keep warm and whistle like an owl, frightening the folk who lived nearby. Lay on top of the "chair" rock and look at the stars high above ..... I could go on but I hope I have rekindled some memories for old Rustonians. Mick Bean
From: M Pinson
Do you or any of your friends know what happened to the house Dornden mentioned in this article ? In the 1881 & 1901 censuses it was occupied by James Harrison and his daughters. James Harrison was co-founder of the T & J Harrison Shipping Line of Liverpool and retired to Rusthall, dying in 1891. |
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