1900s-1945
Among the treasures that occasionally find their way to the archive is a small, well-worn notebook, lent to us by a lady from Chiddingstone Causeway. Its pages record, in the day-to-day handwriting of an ordinary working man, more than three decades of local life between 1904 and 1939. For years the diary's author was a mystery, and the story of how he was finally identified is almost as interesting as the diary itself.
The notebook had come to our lender by way of Dolly Lee, who was born Florence Hostler and spent many years of her life at Charcott. Dolly died the year before this article was written, and the diary passed on with her memories. It was Graham Eade who pointed the society towards his father Les, and Les was able to confirm what the pages had begun to suggest: the writer was Fred Eade, his uncle. Les had lived in Chiddingstone Causeway or Charcott all his life, and the family connection settled the question. Confirmation had earlier come from an unexpected quarter — the Free Press of May 24th, 1912, which carried a report matching an entry in the book and identified the diarist as F. Eade.
Cricket runs through the early pages like a bright thread. The writer noted his bowling successes in 1904 with evident pride, and the best of them came on May 13th, 1912, when Penshurst Causeway took on Leigh. The Causeway side scored 109, and Leigh were bundled out for just twenty nine. Fred took eight wickets for three runs, and the haul included a hat trick — the kind of afternoon a village bowler never forgets. A member of the Brooker family also did damage that day, bowling five of the visitors out. Athletic feats of another sort appear too: on August 3rd, 1908, at Penshurst, S. Burkett threw a cricket ball a remarkable 101 yards.
Work, when Fred mentions it, points strongly to the Dukes cricket ball factory, and it seems almost certain that this was where he earned his living. The firm's social life features in the diary, notably a big dinner given to the employees by Mr W H Duke. It was held at the Iron Room and marked Duke's 51st birthday, with no fewer than 160 employees sitting down to eat. But the factory's story was not always so convivial. In April 1914 trouble came to a head: ballmakers' strikers visited the firm on April 18th and again on the 20th, and on April 21st the firm's own workers came out on strike. The dispute lasted some weeks, with the men returning to work on May 13th, 1914 — exactly two years, as it happens, after that famous match against Leigh.
The outbreak of the First World War changed the course of the diary. Fred joined the Royal Engineers in October 1914 and served in Italy during the war, an often-overlooked front where British troops supported the Italian army. His return home is recorded with typical precision: he left Italy on February 17th and arrived at Southampton on February 25th, and came out of the army on March 24th, 1919 — but not unscathed, for he was discharged suffering from septic poison. His demobilisation was processed at Wimbledon. Civilian life resumed quickly: he started work again on July 1st, 1919, and the Peace celebrations followed on July 19th of that year, a moment of relief and rejoicing after five long years.
Weather, as ever in a rural diary, gets close attention. There was a severe snow storm at the end of April 1908, and the summer of that year was warm enough for Fred to read outside at ten o'clock at night in June. Hail stones measuring 1¾ inches fell on May 25th, 1922. Most dramatic of all was the Christmas of 1927, when snow drifts reached twenty feet — depths hard to imagine in the lanes today.
The diary also catches neighbours and events that would otherwise be forgotten. In 1908 two members of the Draper family emigrated to New Zealand from Southborough. In 1926 Mrs Glover, known locally as Slappy May, fell out of a train near Penshurst Station; her death was instant. The Larkins suffered a big fire which destroyed five stacks, a serious loss in a farming community. The Streatfield family, who lived at Chiddingstone Castle, appear as part of the local landscape.
Fred took note too of the church life of the Causeway. The Bishop of Rochester consecrated the Causeway churchyard on December 13th, in the year recorded as 1907, and the first burial there took place in August 1909. Fred himself had a hand in the churchyard's history: in 1912 he dug a grave for Mr Everest, one of those quiet services rendered in every village.
The diary ends in 1939, on the fifteenth small page, as another war gathered on the horizon. Its final entries carry a sombre tone: nine names of the dead are written there, among them Uncle Cis Atkinson. It is a fitting, if poignant, close to a record kept by a man who noticed everything around him — the weather, the cricket, the factory, the war, and the people of his community.
We are grateful to the lady who lent the notebook, and to the Eade family for helping to put a name to the hand that wrote it. Fred Eade's diary gives the archive exactly what local history needs: the ordinary days of an extraordinary span of years, set down as they happened.