History

The Wanderer Returns To Staple

Page 3

My Aunt Gwen ran a small library at the rear of the old wooden village hall, which was replaced in 1998.� Now a mobile library stops for fifteen minutes, once a week.� The new brick hall is still not enveloped by ribbon development along Mill Road, which recalls a windmill towards Summerfield, which burned down in June 1914.

Shatterling had a small infants school whose land was conveyed in 1875.� Staple School is also closed.� This red brick and slate roof school opened in 1867 with a combined chimney and bell tower.� Frank Barr taught my mother there.� When he announced the Great War had broken out, mother ran home to tell her parents, but they already knew, such was the bush telegraph in pre-wireless days!

The roughly rectangular school with detached WC block was enlarged in 1910.� It educated 100 children on 1910, but by closure in 1969 this had fallen to below 30.� The last head teachers were Mabel (Sally) Waterhouse and finally Olive Govier.� Many relics awaited buyers, including a weighing machine for the pupils, an attendance board, a plate warmer, a teacher's desk, rounders poles, 140 coatpegs and plenty of chalk.

Two graphic designers, Ned and Chrissy Sherring, bought the school for �2,500 and worked on it from 1972-74, respecting its character.� When it was put on the market in 1995 at an inflationary �165,00 , features such as the barrel vaulted roof trusses and stone corbels, also a surviving porcelain hand basin with taps were singled out.� The old school looks strange without its surrounding tarmac, but it resurfaced at Tilmanstone Cricket Club's car park!

In my time, we had two bus services passing along Lower Road.� The 14A to Canterbury ran from the Black Pig, the more frequent 76 to Deal from the Three Tuns.� To economise, the East Kent Road Car Co. extended the Deal route to Wingham.� To feed into the main Deal to Canterbury Route via Shatterling.� In 1971 the single fares to Deal were 15p, to Canterbury 14p, compared with 70p today.� The present diversion of 7 to 8 services via Staple from Ash/Wingham has lasted for over twenty years, so Staple is luckier than Goodenstone, who have said farewell to Stagecoach.

Staple station was three-quarters-of-a-mile north of the village, on Durlock Road.� The East Kent Light Railway fell back on farm produce and passengers when the coalfields failed to reach their potential (Wingham Colliery closed in 1914).� The lone ran from March 1912, coupling on a passenger coach from October 1916.� Staple was the busiest intermediate station, earning itself a brick station outbuilding with two offices separated by a booking office and passenger shelter.� There was also a corrugated iron shed used by C.W. Darley, Vegetable Merchants, later by a basketware maker.� There were two platforms, one for goods, a passing loop, windpump and water tank for the engines, and a dismounted old carriage used for offices.

Two to three trains a day took thirty five minutes to reach Shepherdswell, where a preserved line still operated the first part of the route.� After nationalisation, the line fell into sad neglect, passenger services going in November 1948, and freight from 25th July 1950.� The line was dismantled in 1954 and a poultry farm took over the site.� Telegraph poles still mark the route, but the sight of trains picking up speed on the straight through hop fields towards Wingham is now a distant memory.

My grandfather attended the Chapel Lane Baptist Church in Barnsole, but it became a private house many years ago and lost its ecclesiastical appearance.� A smaller chapel on the main road at the west end of Shatterling is still recognisable but much enlarged to the rear.�������������������������

Continued on next page............

BUS TIMES� �� POST-CODES� �� MAPS� �� BLACK PIG� �� THREE TUNS� �� FROG & ORANGE� �� LOCAL BUSINESSES ��LAYHAM'S GARDEN CENTRE �� SUMMERFIELD NURSERIES �� STAPLE HISTORY �� VILLAGE CHURCH �� BARNSOLE VINEYARD��� STAPLE VINEYARD� � OLD PHOTO'S� � PICTURE TOUR� � GUESTBOOK� �� �STAPLE-FORUM� ��NEWS & UPDATES� �� LINKS� �� LOCAL COMMUNITY