Thanks And Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Kent Libraries and Archives - Folkestone Library and also to the archive of the Folkestone Herald. For articles from the Folkestone Observer, my thanks go to the Kent Messenger Group. Southeastern Gazette articles are from UKPress Online, and Kentish Gazette articles are from the British Newspaper Archive. See links below.

Paul Skelton`s great site for research on pubs in Kent is also linked

Other sites which may be of interest are the Folkestone and District Local History Society, the Kent History Forum, Christine Warren`s fascinating site, Folkestone Then And Now, and Step Short, where I originally found the photo of the bomb-damaged former Langton`s Brewery, links also below.


Welcome

Welcome to Even More Tales From The Tap Room.

Core dates and information on licensees tenure are taken from Martin Easdown and Eamonn Rooney`s two fine books on the pubs of Folkestone, Tales From The Tap Room and More Tales From The Tap Room - unfortunately now out of print. Dates for the tenure of licensees are taken from the very limited editions called Bastions Of The Bar and More Bastions Of The Bar, which were given free to very early purchasers of the books.

Easiest navigation of the site is by clicking on the PAGE of the pub you are looking for and following the links to the different sub-pages. Using the LABELS is, I`m afraid, not at all user-friendly.

Contrast Note

Whilst the above-mentioned books and supplements represent an enormous amount of research over many years, it is almost inevitable that further research will throw up some differences to the published works. Where these have been found, I have noted them. This is not intended to detract in any way from previous research, but merely to indicate that (possible) new information is available.

Contribute

If you have any anecdotes or photographs of the pubs featured in this Blog and would like to share them, please mail me at: jancpedersen@googlemail.com.

If you`ve enjoyed your visit here, why not buy me a pint, using the button at the end of the "Labels" section?


Search This Blog

Saturday, 18 October 2014

Valiant Sailor 1935 - 1949



Folkestone Express 12-1-1935

Local News

The death occurred yesterday with tragic suddenness of Mr. John Hawkins, of Haseldene, Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone.

Mr. Hawkins, who was 64, was walking back to Mr. A.C. Aird`s farm at the Valiant Sailor, after having been home for breakfast, when he suddenly collapsed at the side of the road.

Passengers in a passing bus on its way to Folkestone saw Mr. Hawkins stagger and fall, and after the bus had been stopped passengers went to his assistance. He was unconscious and an ambulance was summoned, but on arrival at the Royal Victoria Hospital it was found that Mr. Hawkins was already dead.

The deceased was head cowman to Mr. A.C. Aird, who told the Folkestone Herald yesterday afternoon that he could not speak too highly of him. “He had been employed on the farm since 1895”, Mr. Aird said, “and the only occasion on which he had been absent from work during the whole of the time was a few days last year when he had influenza. He was a most conscientious worker, and I shall miss him very much”.

Mr. Hawkins leaves a widow, a daughter, and two sons, one of whom is in the Royal Navy.

The facts of his death have been reported to the Folkestone Coroner (Mr. G.W. Haines) who will decide whether an inquest is necessary.

Folkestone Express 19-1-1935

Local News

On Friday Mr. John Hawkins, of Haseldene, Capel le Ferne, died with tragic suddenness.

Mr. Hawkins, who was 64 years of age, was in the employ of Mr. A.C. Aird, of the Valiant Sailor, as head cowman, had been home to have his breakfast. He was walking back to his work, and when on the main Folkestone-Dover road he collapsed. The passengers on a bus coming from Dover to Folkestone saw him lying in the road, and they went to his assistance. He was found to be unconscious, and he was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where on examination life was pronounced to be extinct.

Mr. Hawkins had been employed on the farm for forty years and was held in high esteem not only by Mr. Aird and his fellow workmen, but by everyone with whom he came in contact.

He leaves a widow, a daughter and two sons with whom the deepest sympathy will be felt in their sad and tragic bereavement.

The facts were communicated to the Folkestone Coroner (Mr. W.G. Haines), who did not deem an inquest to be necessary.

Folkestone Herald 6-8-1938



Local News

Television has come to Folkestone, and for the next week any member of the public who cares to visit the Tea Rooms of the Valiant Sailor is invited by Messrs. Bobby and Co., Ltd., to witness a free demonstration. These demonstrations will commence at 9 each evening, from tonight until the end of next week, excluding to­morrow.

For months Mr. S.W. Gittins, Radio Manager for Messrs. Bobby, with Mr. J. Sweatman, has been ex­perimenting in television reception at the top of Dover Hill, and on Thurs­day afternoon the results of his work were demonstrated to a little group of people in the Tea Rooms of the Valiant Sailor.

The B.B.C. television programme was received on two Pye teleceivers, and the audience were able to sit back in their seats, as they would at a cinema, and see an excellent per­formance of J.B. Priestley’s play, “Laburnum Grove”. Reception throughout was constant, the picture being unfading and of good strength. There was some local interference, caused by the tempor­al nature of the aerial, but Mr. Gittins expressed his great satisfaction with the results obtained. Mr. W.H. Storey, Radio Manager of Messrs. Pye, said he was amazed at the results obtained.

Unfortunately the aerial is on the wrong side of the road to obtain per­fect results. The aerial, pointing direct to the transmitting station, must also point down the hill, and the disturbance caused by cars runn­ing up with their engines racing causes considerable interference at times.

A carrier wave, too, which Mr. Gittins announced, probably came from Hawkinge Aerodrome, also interfered with the picture, though only very occasionally. During the afternoon Mr. Gittins gave a brief resume of the progress made in television, its evolution and development, and made an interesting statement about the possibilities of reception in Folkestone.
“If we were 200 yards back off the road”, he said, “or on the other side of the road, this interference would be reduced by 95 per cent. Forty to fifty per cent, of the residents of Folkestone, apart from those living in low-lying parts of the town, should be m a position to get television results. People living in the high parts of Saltwood, Hythe, and Folkestone, especially those on the Crete Road, at the western end of the Leas, in Earls Avenue, and in districts moderately quiet and high-lying, could be equipped with television and could expect first class results”.

This was a local history-making occasion on Thursday afternoon, for this was the first satisfactory public demonstration of television to be given in Folkestone, There may be seen in the near future a small plate on the wall of the tea rooms of the Valiant Sailor, stating that good television reception was shown to the public for the first time in the town there. It may be possible, it was an­nounced, for the public of Folkestone to see the last Test Match televised.

Those present at the demonstration included Mr. Herbert Bobby and Mr. Wilfred Bobby. Messrs. Bobby and Co. are willing to give advice to any person as to the possibility of reception in his locality.

Folkestone Herald 16-3-1946


Adjourned Licensing Sessions

A number of applications were granted at the Folkestone adjourned annual licensing ses­sions at the Town Hall on Wednesday. The Mayor (Alderman W. Hollands) presided, with Mr. R.G. Wood and Alderman J.W. Stainer.

Mr. B. H. Bonniface, repre­senting Mr. W Eyres, licensee of the Valiant Sailor Inn, applied for a music and dancing licence in respect of the pavilion there. Mr. Bonniface said that when Mr. Aird was licensee it was quite a fashionable thing in Folkestone for people to go to the Valiant Sailor and have strawberry teas there in the summer months. The Pavilion had been inspected by the Borough Engineer and the chief of the fire service, and Mr. Eyres was prepared to carry out their recommendations, one of which referred to the exit. Continuing, Mr. Bonniface said there was a permanent military camp adjoining the premises. The soldiers were there for three or four weeks, and the Commanding Officer of the establishment was anxious to keep the young trainees under his own eye as much as possible. Mr. Eyres had been asked if the men could use his pavilion for dancing and as a place where they could bring their lady friends. Mr. Eyres, also, was anxious in the summer to provide teas in the pavilion and to arrange tea dances there. It was not intended to have a bar in the pavilion, although there was nothing to prevent the licensee from doing so. The Magistrates granted the licence from 2 p.m. until 1 a.m.

Folkestone Herald 22-6-1946

Local News

Windows and door in the vicinity of the Valiant Sailor, Dover Hill, when a heavy explosion occurred on the cliff at the top od Dover Hill on Wednesday afternoon. The explosion, which in the words of Mr. William Eyres, of the Valiant Sailor, sounded “just like a bomb going off”, occurred when troops from a nearby Royal Artillery unti were engaged in clearing barbed wire. “My wife and I were hanging curtains in the tea pavilion”, Mr. Eyres told a Herald reporter, “when suddenly a terrific bang made us duck just as we used to during the war. The door was blown off its hinges and several windows were blown in”. The front window of a house 200 yards away from thescene of the explosion was smashed.
 
 
 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment