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The grapes pub on crown road, then became a petrol station, now houses

There’s a bunker type building on Valenciennes road it was next door to were I lived

As a "mod" in the 60's well remember the key street junction on our way to and from the coast on our scooter's. On a nice Sunday evening the traffic on the A2 was a nightmare. Our next stop would have been at the central pub along the top road, famous for a coach stop.

Well, that is an interesting watch. Thank you for sharing.

I can remember this house as a ruin in the early/mid seventies. It was burnt out and dangerous but did`nt stop a gang of lads playing inside. Rumour had it that a pair of witches lived inside, but they were just a couple of old ladies. I remember the garden was very overgrown and the house surrounded by trees - very spooky to look at!. One of the old ladies died and moved to a small cottage behind the main house. The main house had become unlivable as it was falling apart. I was an bird egg collector at the time and the remaining old lady gave me permission to look in her garden. Thanks for the video,it brought back many memories.

Norman and Freda Hartley were there in the 1970’s. My grandparents! The pub was haunted - so many spooky things happened. 😊

And every January trip to London finished with going to the London Palladium to see the Pantomime to see Tommy Steele, Englebert Humperdinck, Cliff Richard & The Shadows and Jimmy Tarbuck. One trip my dad even called in an old favour and got us VIP tickets to the premiere of Thunderbirds The Movie. A real life size Fab 1 drove past us and The band of the Royal Marines played the TB theme as we went in. We only had a circle seat. All the stalls was reserved for celebrities. Oh what an exciting day that was. I still have my model of the studio built Zero X model used in the movie. I was one lucky little boy!

The entrance of these shelters remind me of the old subway at Sittingbourne station that I used to use with my parents either coming back from London or going to Sheerness by train. Anyone else remember it? After buying your ticket from the ticket office (with its own open fireplace) you step onto platform 1 and the subway was to the right of the door. It had advert posters on the steps and once inside the subway it looked a bit like a bomb shelter. You came out of the subway onto Platforms two and three. My favourite memory is going to London on steam trains with my parents in the very early to mid 1960’s. Always a treat when we got a cubicle on the train all to our own. Those slam door corridor carriages were so much fun. They always gave me the choice of taking the bridge or the subway and I usually chose the subway unless The Golden Arrow was due in, then I would choose the bridge of course for a great view (my dad lifted me up to see through the bridge windows. Ah, happy days. They filled in the subway in the late 60’s I always wonder if it was all filled in or is beneath the rails a subway still intact with just the ends filled in? Mmm, I wonder if the old adverts still there. From the days when every railway station was named ‘Bovril’.

Anyone remember the 'Arethusa' sweetshop by St. Peters church? In the early sixties it had a milk vending machine outside.

I remember Cockleshell Walk so well as a young boy. Walking to school hand in hand with grandad. There was even the traces of a small stream that my grandad later showed me running underground under the mill before it reappeared above ground via a small sluice near the Bowaters train track. I used to look down and see the water which at times in those ran quite fast before it disappeared back under the ground on its way to the Creek. Sadly within a few years it had dried up completely. My grandad told me that there was a Bourne which people used to sit by - which he told me was how Sittingbourne got its name. But that may have been an urban myth. One funny story was that when my nan & grandad lived in Lloyd Street in the house next to the band hall. People in the mill could see their washing line. So on Mondays when nan did the washing she would hang all her undies on the line but cover them up with tea towels so men couldn’t see her bras and bloomers. I used to sit there watching her laughing my head off! No washing machine tho. A washtub, carbolic soap, washboard and a huge metal and wood wringer and I used to turn the handle to squeeze the moisture out of her bloomers and my grandad’s huge pants! Billy Smart could have turned his pants into a circus big top.

I like the music 🎶

Those old carnivals in Sittingbourne seemed to go on for ages…. The number of bands, majorette groups, businesses and charity floats. Who remembers the Outspan car which was basically an orange with wheels. My dad once lost his car in the Pentagon multi level car park in Chatham. He just forget where and on which level he parked it. He found it eventually having spent ages looking for it. I told him if we bought the Outspan car he wouldn’t lose that in Chatham.

1962-64. My grandad would, at 8.30am Monday to Friday walk me from his home 81 Charlotte Street up to the end of the road, turn left down Jubilee Street to the arches at the bottom. We always walked near on the railway track wall side of Jubilee Street because on the Mill side I once saw a rat and it frightened me so always chose the other side of. The road. I remember the rifle range. Under the bridge out onto Laburnham and down towards Ufton Lane school, passing the Fleur De Lis pub and the Salvation Army hall and cross the Zebra crossing and up Ufton Lane. At 3pm he was back, walking me round the corner to the bus stop near Lea’s Toyland. A carton of milk from the Milk Machine that stood by the bus stop. And when the 58 bus arrived I boarded aged 5, grandad would pay the driver and off I went on my own back to Borden. The bus dropped me off at Hartman’s Corner and I walked up the road to my house, let myself in and the only thing I could do was put on the TV and wait for the music entitled Southern Rhapsody which heralded my children’s tv and Gerry Anderson series. At Christmas I got all of the Gerry Anderson toys which I’ve kept, and all of their boxes and festive tags from loved ones. I have them in cabinets in my recording studio in Cambridgeshire to remind me every day of where I came from - and the people who loved me.

I also remember The Milton Arms pub that was roughly near where Pizza Hut is now. In those days it was a bit creepy at night walking under the old bridge that carried the trains across the road at the back of the pub. Mill Street had been demolished but lots of brick rubble and overgrown grass and there was an old Victorian style lamp which when it was dark and the steam from the steam pipes and smoke from trains in the early evenings of winter, the smoke and steam from trains made that whole scene look like a Jack The Ripper movie set. If I had £1 for every time my grandad took me there during the day to walk to Milton Creek where he used to work, I’d be a millionaire by now, Rodney!’ But such happy days! After dad was sent back home for a few days after Dunkirk he went to find his wife, my mum, who was living with her parents during the war. He couldn’t find them at home and eventually found the three of them in The Milton Arms. Purchased by grandad, Dad told me that it was the best pint of beer that he had ever drank. Of course at that time Mill Street and The Wall were still very much lived in.

I remember the big old post office and the old fire station with its rescue tower. In the week the Victor Value supermarket opened I watched a fire engine race out onto the road, it’s bells blaring, then going into the post office for my grandad to get his pension then to Victor Values. I used to stand outside and watch delivery drivers unload food which meant putting items on a conveyer belt to the left of the shop which took items upstairs to be stored above the main sales area. In those days they had staff on the door to hand customers a wire basket and explain how a supermarket works. My dad moaned in the early days saying prices should be cheaper because he was doing the shopkeeper’s job. True! He was used to just saying what he wanted and having everything brought to him.

Your photo of the Christmas lights going up reminded me that every year as a boy, dad would drive me right through town from Ufton Lane to the Odeon to see the lights. They were amazing with what I thought was a giant walking stick up every lamppost. It was of course a sugar cane. But I thought they were walking sticks for Santa if he twisted his ankle on his delivery.

We must have stood together to watch those carnivals. I always stood there. You could see more and the young farmers water pistols couldn’t reach us. What a mess they made with their straw and cow poo on the road! ( cue Fast Show Jazz Club). NICE!

After Wraights closed they built a shopping area that featured one of the first video libraries. I used to go there for my VHS films. I used it until I had a house burglary and the VCR was stolen. When. I went to get a new one at Curry’s on the corner of the Forum opposite Seeboard the guy in Curry’s showed me a brand new machine that he told me was the best VCR in the shop. How proud I was stepping out onto the street with my new Betamax!!!!! All true, I promise. ‘Are you laughing, Muttley?’

Glad to see bomb shelters are still in Bell Road. Are the trees with named plaques still in Remembrance Avenue? I went to Ufton Lane Infant School 1962-64. They had one of those shelters. Do you remember the horse drinking trough at the end of Chalkwell Road. I used to stand looking at those gun holes at the bottom of Borden Lane whilst I waited for the 58 bus back to Borden after another day at Barrow Grove school. That’s “Barrow” not ‘Byker’ Never saw Ant and Dec at my school. But I did meet the Southern TV Day By Day crime reporter Peter Clark at Borden Fete. He was trying to win one of my dad’s pigs by bowling for it. He didn’t win it.

@DreamBelieveShine 0 seconds ago At the bottom of Charlotte Street was a row of shops and one was a butchers shop Me and Grandad often walked there. He never had a fridge just a ‘meat safe’ to keep the flies off the meat. Lovely! The butcher had a shop and a walk in freezer next door. The shop had sawdust on the floor. Grandad told me it was to soak up the blood of people who tried to leave the shop without paying! Not that such an image would mentally scar a five year old in any way!!!! The butcher’s name was ‘Horace’ (true). A portly jovial man frequently seen with a big chopper in his hand. Just to add weight to the nightmare that would accompany what my grandad had placed in my brain. Horace would chop off Grandad’s chops and Sunday roast and then showed them to him asking, ‘How are they, Frank? And my grandad would say ‘lovely’. Then we would pay for it all (thank God) and leave alive and well and stroll home. By the time we got back, the newspaper in which my Grandads dinners were placed were soaked in blood. But not our blood - because we had paid for our dinner. Meanwhile,, down the road a muffled scream was heard as Horace the killer claimed his next victim. I assumed at the time that cows, sheep and pigs always tried to leave the shop without paying.

My grandad lived in Charlotte Street two doors away from The Forresters Arms, in which my mum worked as a barmaid, my nan worked as its cleaner and I sang in there for money on some Saturday nights. The landlord’s name? Johnnie Wond! TRUE! I know it sounds like an actor’s name you would read on a film poster in a 1970’s Soho cinema. But that was his real name! Honest! My dad always parked in that little cul de sac beside the pub which is now a road to a new housing estate where the mill used to be,

My mum told me she was coming out of work in the war on the night a bomb hit Pullens garage. In fact she told me almost every time we drove past it. Which was often, because my dad bought bottles of Calor gas from a shop near Ufton Lane opposite the Covent. Parrafin and Calor gas in the boot of his car transported across Sittingbourne and Borden on top of a tank of petrol. What could possibly go wrong? One lit East Kent Gazzette on the back seat and we would both be up there with Neil and Buzz on the moon. That’s if a Vauxhall Viva Mk 1 could ever make it through Earth’s atmosphere without its plastic seats melting.

I remember the old siren outside the old fire station. We used to go to a barbers near Holy Trinity church and the barber (Bill) was a volunteer fireman. If the siren sounded he would throw everyone out lock the shop and run off down the road towards the fire station. I pity the poor bloke with half a haircut!!!! He used to ask men in front of me if they ‘wanted something for the weekend’ and out of embarrassment I guess, my dad would always say, ‘yes! A lawnmower or a bottle of shampoo for his car. Of course I knew what they bought….. packets of chewing gum…. Well that’s what they looked like to me.

Peter Morgan started a Community Service club at Westlands when I was there. I went and leaned sign language and helped at the Deaf & bling]d club held in the Labour Club in Park Road.on alternative Fridays and on the other Fridays did an old lady’s garden in Borden Lane. One day she asked me to clear a rough patch and dig it. I was digging and found a concrete slab I moved it and found a set of concrete steps. When she brought out my orange squash she said, ‘Oh, you’ve found our old air raid shelter. Seal it back up. I assume it is still there.

For ‘Bling’ emplacements the word, ‘Billet’. Blooming predictive text!!!!

Ah, Key Street. I remember it well. The landlord of The Key would often stand outside by the traffic lights if he wasn’t busy. A few years before I was born my dad said he had a ‘bad pint’ in there once so preferred to use The Billet instead. One day dad entered a raffle in The Biing a posh looking glass bottle and said to me, ‘Want this?’ And Insaid to him… ‘It’s a whisky decanter!’ He said, ‘Is it. I didn’t know what it was but I won it. Just why a ten year old boy would want a whisky decanter or indeed why a father would want to give his young child a whisky decanter beats me…. But he clearly didn’t want it. Perhaps he thought I could decant my Lego in it.

I have a true and very funny story about The Odeon, Westlands School, Richard Burton and me. The story began in the week The Odeon reopened as the Bingo Hall/Classic cinema. They had just converted the old Restaurant cafe into the smallest Classic screen in which they were showing the movie ‘Where Eagles Dare’ which contained a scene that I then recreated at Westlands School to the extent where, quite on my own without Clint Eastwood and his machine gun with an endless supply of bullets help, managed to stop a school governors meeting. As the original founder of your museum would know (because he taught there) westlands was a bit like the castle in Where Eagles Dare in the sixties, - minus the nazis and flimsy looking helicopter of course. If you want to know more…. Get in touch!

Ah, Hulburds. My mum always said it was too expensive for her. But its cafe did in my opinion serve the best baked potatoes in the town in their restaurant. Used to go in there before walking across the road to the Odeon for a matinee. The Odeon had a restaurant which they later converted to the smallest Classic screen but before they converted it, The Odeon was a lovely art deco type building. Its huge foyer had a particular lovely old smell. The tickets were served in the centre kiosk and the tickets were ejected from an old metal dispenser via slots. They you had the choice of stalls, circle and dress circle. Ah, lovely days. I believe they still have some old equipment inside that fantastic cinema.

My dad used to take his steers and calves here on Mondays. In fact, my dad’s boss, Jim Mair, is in one of the photos you feature, along with the auctioneers I also remember. The deals that went on here! I remember one day when my dad forgot to log the cattle’s ear numbers so he asked one of the lorry drivers to lean over a gate and read them. However as his face was near the top of the steer’s head it reared up and their heads clashed and it knocked the lorry driver out. It cut the man’s head open over his eyes and the boss made my dad drive the lorry home because the lorry driver was still concussed. I found it hilarious - but my dad kept saying to me, ‘stop laughing Dave!’ But to a 8 year old it was funny!!!

Very informative. Thank you. Do you know the names of the other gentlemen in the photo of the Baptist elders?

Very interesting and informative! Thankyou

One final comment. I visited your museum a few years back and at the time had a large photo of Bowaters mill workers on display. I found my mum on that photo. It was lovely to see her again. Even though I know she didn’t like working in the mill. My dad used to tell me ‘I took her away from all that and gave her fresh air.’ At which point a hand would swiftly come out of nowhere and take his flat cap clean off his head with one swoop. Closely followed by a stare that would kill a bear at 50 paces! Poor ol’ dad. Hahaha.

If ever you cover a Borden film, get in touch with me…. ‘There are millions of stories to share… each one a gem that highlights the past.. For example. The old black and white 17th century beamed house that overlooks Borden Church? My house over 40 years ago. I have a nightmare story to tell about the house that could have resulted inside the house. I was just inches from death - aged only 23. The house has a rich and chequered history! As does The Maypole, Barrow House and The Forge and The Village Fete. We could have a channel for just Borden alone. Don’t even get me started about Bredgar! Another old ‘haunt’ of mine! - Marty Hopkirk.

My grandad. Frank Edward Carroll was an Irishman who came over with his brother. to England during the potato blight famine when there was no work there. They both served in WW1_ My grandad was hit by shrapnel in his legs and ended up at…. Guess where! That’s right the war hospital in Bell Road. Whilst there he met my nan Edith Brunger and once he had recovered got a job on Sittingbourne Docks. They married and on May 12 1919 my nan gave birth to my mum. 22 years later my mum worked in the mill herself making thick cardboard containers to hold fuel for ammunitions. She hated it but by that time had married my dad (who endured both Dunkirk and D Day) and when the war ended they moved to Borden and I arrived! Thank you for keep connecting with my life journey.

When they pulled down Cross Street and built the car park you had to take a ticket which lifted the barrier and let you in but when you went out a man would put your ticket into a machine and you had to pay him for how long you were in there. One of the old drinkers in The Cstle knew me and dad and so every Saturday dad got to park his car in there for free. My mum used to get her ‘perm’ in town on a Saturday and my dad’s only job was to go to Rooks and get cream cakes for tea. But one day he put them on the roof whilst he put a canister of paraffin he bought from Tetts in the boot and drove off with them on the roof. Gawd knows where they went but my mum was livid!!!! He never heard the end of it!

My dad was a stockman in Borden, George Waters. A jovial big man who some readers from Borden may remember. If you go into The Maypole you’ll see a big wooden spoon upon which is a brass plaque that reads ‘George & Edie - Bonnie & Clyde’. That’s my dad and mum. They were the ones who ‘put me on the stage and I never looked back.

I remember there was a huge advertisement hoarding board near the car park after they pulled the first houses down. One Saturday it had a huge face of Billy Graham on it advertising one of his rallies… as dad locked his car I pointed to this huge face and said ‘who’s that?’ And my dad said ‘Billy Graham.’ And I said ‘it says he’s got a rally soon. And my dad said ‘yeah, it’s in Monte Carlo. And like an idiot, I believed him! I sang that night thinking he was Paddy Hopkirk’s navigator.

I used to call the last landlord of The Castle, ‘’Me ol’ pal and beauty’ because that is what he would call most people he didn’t know the name of. A lovely old chap. A run down sort of place but always a pretty good crowd on a Saturday (as Billy Joel sings in ‘Piano Man’ ) and my microphone smelled like a beer in some pubs too! Happy days.

Remember Cross Street very well. And ‘The Castle’ pub. As a boy landlords would smuggle me in to sing on a table with people requesting songs for me to sing, throwing coins into my grandad’s cap when I did so. That must make me a ‘poor man’s juke box’. But I got a lot of money every weekend for doing so and never needed a paper round. Of course this was the early 1960’s - would never get away with it now. But I later went into working men’s clubs and earned lots more!!! Only sing and perform to raise money for charities these days.

Always very interesting to watch your films well done

The sign outside that said “no visitors cars beyond this point” is exactly like the one that was at King George’s. I wonder if it might be one in the same🤔

We would walk to the creek past where Grandad and nanny used to live on the way. They had a house during the war on The Wall. But by 1963 all that was left of their old house on the wall was a blue door and rubble. Because my grandad worked at Bowaters the train drivers knew him and one day they let me go to Kemsley sitting in the workers carriage. Funny enough we boarded it where the SKLR trains leave today but on the way back we went over the road bridge and around the mill and we walked back to Lloyd Street. Such a happy day!

After grandad retired he would take me down the tram road to see the back of the station. Much bigger in those days and Sittingbourne had its own turntable. Great fun. Happy days!

I remember Lloyd Street very well. My grandad an nan were the last two people to leave before the street was demolished. My grandad Frank Carroll worked on The Wall docks until December 1960. As a boy I used to sit in grandad’s house which was next door to the band room and I used to hear them practicing next door and watched the little trains from his living room window and thought I had my own Ivor The Engine for real. They moved to 81 Charlotte street when they demolished LloydStreet.

the pub cellers were the remains of the oldest hospital and saints chapel in the area, dating from just after Becketts death in 1170, it was supposed to be protected by English heritage. There are still a few articles with dark photos in the old papers showing the cellers, thats why it was built raised up. Sittingbourne council should have been arrested for allowing it to be demolished.

Excellent video. Thank you

🇬🇧 My Mum was awarded a certificate in 1953 , Elizabeth II Coronation, for best front garden, in Barrow Grove . I still have the certificate, also one thanking all children for their fortitude during WWII. Great video. Thank you

Very interesting your time well spent

I always think that air raid sirens should have been kept in place. It's like landlines being disconnected. What happenes if satellites are brought down ? Ps. I used to live in Trotts Hall Gardens and I remember Mum telling me about the air raid shelters there. Thank you for all your research on the subject

Thank you for this lovely video