75 replies to this topic

[Charles Fair]

Hello Pals,

As some of you may know I am one of a number of people in East Kent working to save something of the Harbour Station at Folkestone.  This was the route through which many millions of men embarked for the Western Front.

Please find attached a photo of the canteen in the Harbour Station.  You can see the granite of the harbour wall on the right of the picture.  This canteen was free for soldiers, sailors and the Red Cross.  

If you look carefully at the photo you can just see a book on the table.  This is one of the vistors books that were signed by many of the men who benefited from the canteen.  Remarkably, these visitors books have come to light in the East Kent Archives at Whitfield in Dover where they were catalogued many years ago, but where they have not so far come to the wider attention of Great War historians.

According to the index at the Archives "This canteen was staffed by local volunteers and amongst the most devoted were the Misses Margaret Ann and Florence Augusta Jeffery".  Both sisters were awarded the OBE, the Queen Elisabeth Medal (Belgium) and the Medal of Gratitude (France)

I had a close look at the visitors' books yesterday and was blown away by what I found.

These 8 volumes start on 9 June 1915 and finish on 29 October 1919.  Totalling 3,518 pages, they cover 1,604 days of the Great War.  A conservative estimate, based on 12 names per page is a staggering 42,000 names.  Many pages have 13 or more names so the actual total is probably somewhat higher.

The books are a wonderful roll call of those who passed through this spot in the Great War and include men and women from all over the British Empire.  A number of men from the French, Belgian and Serbian armies are also included.  Date of visit, rank, name and corps or unit are almost always included.  A few men have also written their regimental number.  This is a fantastic resource for people researching individual units.  It would be particularly useful for those people researching an ancestor with definitive proof of when they passed through this particular spot.  This is particularly true for the many men whose service records do not survive in The National Archives.

Many famous people of the day left a record of their passage.  Politicians include: Andrew Bonar Law, Lord Derby (Under Secretary of State for War), David Lloyd George, William Hughes (PM of Australia) and Winston Churchill.  Representatives of the Royal Families of Belgium, Rumania, Spain and Serbia are to be found as is the occasional writer such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Senior soldiers and sailors include General Sir William Robertson, General Sir Henry Wilson and Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes.  A number of VC winners are also included.

The index goes on to say "The albums were carefully bound after the war and were finally presented to the Borough of Folkestone in 1920 in order to provide a permanent reminder of all the serving men and women who used the Harbour during 1914 to 1919."

In many years of researching the Great War I have not had the privilege of looking at such an unknown and almost forgotten source that is not already known to fellow researchers.  I thought I would flag this up so that others are aware and can hopefully get in to see the books.

I have had strong interest in running a short story on this from some of the genealogical mags as well as the local press.  There should be something in the next WFA bulletin.

The books really do deserve to be digitised and indexed properly.  One issue that does need to be resolved is that they do not allow cameras in the Archive.  I need to negotiate with the Head Archivist in order to take any photos.  

I will have to go away and think about the way forward, but would of course be grateful for any thoughts.

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[Genehunter]

Hello Charles:

What a wonderful discovery.  I was very interested in your post and particularly you saying that it would be a good resource for people to find service numbers for men whose records didn't survive.

Wish I could offer some ideas about how to digitise!

Please keep us posted about these visitor books.

G

[ian turner]

Charles,

Wonderful!  Seek and ye shall find....

It may well prove an invaluable resource for fellow WW1 researchers and family history enquirers.

I look forward to (seeing) hearing more!

Ian

[tombowcock]

Hi Charles,

This is a wonderful discovery indeed !

I would think that the most important thing now is to identify the best way to preserve the record for posterity, whilst still allowing access. The thought of many people flipping through the pages must concern the archivist as to the robustness of the original documents. The obvious solution is a one off exercise to digitise the volumes and preserve the originals for posterity.

This leaves one with several choices:-

a) Have it digitised proffessionally and make available for the benefit of the museum
Get somebody like Ancestry.com interested
c) Do it yourself (as this would be cheaper than option a)

Whatever happens as you rightly say this resource could be extremely useful for researchers.

I wish you well in the venture to both preserve and make available this unique resource.

Best Wishes

James

[geoff501]

Get somebody like Ancestry.com interested

What!

[geoff501]

What!

I'll try to be a bit more constructive, try these folks:

http://www.midlandshistoricaldata.org/index.html

A bit out of their area (although Midlanders would have passed though). I have several facsimile books of theirs, all scanned to the highest professional standard and very reasonably priced. (the profit goes back to scanning more historical material, rather than foreign bank accounts!) Won't solve the indexing problem, which is likely to be the expensive part if it is to be done properly, but if enough CDs get distributed  (they will at their retail pricing) you could alway get volunteers to do some indexing.

(can't complain too much, on my first visit to the so-called Pension records, my first search, second chap in the list was one of my non-comms. Was starting to lose all hope of finding anything on him.  Damit I can complain, it deserved to be professionally indexed)

[Myrtle]

Charles
What a terrific find. It would be excellent for this book to be copied but with 42,000 names, or more, in non alphabetical order, it would take quite some time to search for a particular person.
Myrtle

[jay dubaya]

What a remarkable find, and just to echo what Ian has said above.

cheers, Jon

[Sue Light]

A wonderful find Charles, and proof that there must still be so much material gathering dust in archives, much of it uncatalogued.  I feel that East Kent Archives should be lobbied to 'do something' with these books, as they certainly appear to come into the category of national records rather than local records.  But the current lack of camera permission suggests that they might take some dragging into the 21st century over other things.

Sue

[tom compton]

hello charles what a great find and so many questions to ask any photos of the two sisters who help to run the canteen? .i see the books started in june 1915 my granddad sailed in july so he may be in the book .this can only help the fight to save folkestone station if only we could get this story in the big news papers this is the sort of thing the daily mail might be interested in.tom

[stiletto_33853]

Charles,
A great find indeed, lets hope that all these signatures can be preserved and at some date made available for viewing.

Andy

[welshdoc]

How about the imperial war museum? they must have the facilities.

[Charles Fair]

There may be a short article on the canteen and visitors books in the next edition of the BBC History Magazine.  There will definitely be a short piece in the next WFA Bulletin.

Meanwhile - on Christmas Eve I managed to get onto the further part of the station that is normally closed to the public.  We found the exact location of the canteen.  Here is a 'now' comparison with the photo in my initial post.  The canteen occupied the fore and middle distance.  We could get an exact match with the number of rows of granite blocks on the right hand side of the picture.

It was very strange to be standing on the exact spot where so many men had passed through.

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[Charles Fair]

This time from the far end, looking back.  The partition wall that stood at the back of the canteen (i.e behind the counter) was clearly removed sometime ago, though there were some fixings embedded in the granite which suggest where it was.

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[Charles Fair]

Here is the entrance to the canteen taken from the edge of the platform.  (To clarify where it was, this part of the platform is halfway along the pier at the point where there is a slight bend in the pier.  It is not the part of the station with the canopies and signal box, but is a couple of hundred yards beyond that.)

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[SteveGarnett]

Charles,

I had hoped to send this as a PM but was unable to because of all the messages I suspect you have received so I will put it on here instead. Apologies for the excited tone! I have not been on the forum recently and having returned home to Canterbury for Christmas, your posts on Folkestone Harbour and the Vistor's Book have astounded me. I would very much like to offer myself to your efforts both to preserve the harbour and the books. Both are national treasures, the re-discovery of this book being hugely significant.

I understand that you are probably well ahead in your campaign to preserve the harbour and the books, upcoming publications and all but I would wish to add my name to anything that could be done. What are Michael Howard's thoughts? Could a grant be found for the digitisation of these books? As you have made clear, these books and the harbour are hugely significant in our national story.

Again, I would be very keen to support you in your efforts. The idea of somebody seeing their ancestor's writing and its attachement to a very particular time and place, is an incredibly exciting prospect, without even considering the other many historical values of such a source.


Kind regards,

Steve Garnett

[chrisharley9]

Some years ago when having a trip on the paddle steamer Waverley I disemarbarked at the far end of the pier & had to walk all the way up the pier up to the railway station - wonderfull to know I was walking in my grandad's footsteps

Chris

[tom compton]

hello charles .thanks for putting yourself out over chritsmas and taking the photos i cant get over how narrow it is. must have been very crowded.is the sliding door and partition original .tom

[linden]

In the autumn there was a conference in Belfast for archivists , and the scanning machines on display were very impressive .
It would be wonderful if one was available for projects like this - something to be shared around various projects ?  
Initially , those who know the month that their ancestor went to France should be able to find the signature , if there is one .
Is it likely a film company could use the station as a location ?   It might help with preservation .
Thank you so much for all the pictures and information .
Success in the New Year !
Linden

[geoff501]

In the autumn there was a conference in Belfast for archivists , and the scanning machines on display were very impressive .
It would be wonderful if one was available for projects like this - something to be shared around various projects ?

Perhaps one of these clever machines:
http://www.bookeyeusa.com/
Which is, I believe, used by the people at the link I posted earlier. They would scan it for free, but would need to sell CD copies to recover costs. So it would depend on the owner of the data whether this was a possibility?

[Gavin Robinson]

You can get good enough images with a fairly ordinary digital camera, so that scanner might not be necessary. The big thing is the amount of labour needed to transcribe all those names, but that could still probably be done by volunteers for nothing (I expect lots of people on the GWF would help). The experience of service records on Ancestry suggests that getting commercial companies involved might not be the best way to go about it.

[linden]

Hi Geoff .
yes, I think I saw one like that , but there were also machines that turned the pages , and it seemed fast .

[Charles Fair]

i cant get over how narrow it is. must have been very crowded.is the sliding door and partition original .tom

Yes it is narrow - only 6 feet wide or so.  I believe that the door and partition are original.  All the glass window panes are gone, and the many layers of paintwork are peeling.  the door shows many years of rust on the fixtures and fittings.

[Charles Fair]

You can get good enough images with a fairly ordinary digital camera, so that scanner might not be necessary. The big thing is the amount of labour needed to transcribe all those names, but that could still probably be done by volunteers for nothing (I expect lots of people on the GWF would help). The experience of service records on Ancestry suggests that getting commercial companies involved might not be the best way to go about it.

Absolutely agree with you Gavin on all points.

Kent County Council actually run the Archive.  At the moment they have to send everything up to Canterbury to get it copied/photographed etc. at a price.  They are some way behind the NA in how they run things, and don't appear to be that experienced with digital cameras.

I use a digital SLR and have used it for thousands of pages of war diary and medal roll.  It gives very high quality images (at far less risk of damage to doucuments when compared with the old days when it was photocopy or nothing).  Give me 3 days and I could digitally photograph the lot.

As you say, transcription and indexing is the issue - as with census returns deciphering surnames from poor handwriting is not easy.

Transcription of the corps/unit is slightly easier as these are at least known.  We would need one field for the unit 'as written' (e.g. "Lond. Irish Rifles) and a number of fields with the 'clean' unit names (i.e. Corps/Regiment: "London Regiment", Battalion/Unit "18th" and Alternative Unit Name "London Irish Rifles").

Each record in the transcribed database should be linked to the image of the relevant page.  Ideally, there should be some way of feeding back corrections and additions.  If it is transcribed as "Bloggs" but a unit historian or family researcher confirms that it was actually "Bleggs" and his number was 1234 then that info should ideally be captured.  That might suggest a web based database rather than a CD-Rom solution.

What I need to do is go and talk to the Head Archivist about what might be possible and suggest working with them to explore ways of making them accessible.  A partnership with an organisation like the people Geoff mentioned or Archive CD Books would seem sensible.  (With what I have seen on indexing with the MIC Index and the current Ancestry project on WO363/364 I would rather keep Ancestry out of it - so long as people like us who actually understand the records are involved for quality control.)   Given that KCC actually hold the books (and that KCC is always cutting budgets) I suspect that they will only be receptive to terms like 'digital scanning at no cost to you' and 'sharing the revenues for any product produced'.

I know a few people in the local history community around here, including links with the two universities in Canterbury so exploring the grants available would seem sensible too.

[Charles Fair]

Steve - thanks for your support.  As per my earlier post re the books that needs some discussion re the way forward.  Fortunately its not a pressing issue, and I would like to get it done right rather than quickly and badly.

Re the Harbour Station, the main thing needed is publicity.  Are you registered to vote in the UK?  If so, you could write to / email your MP (This page contains their contact details: MP contact details).  Six elements of the Harbour Station, pier and viaduct have been reviewed by English Heritage with a view to listing.  English Heritage has made its recommendations to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport but these recommendations are not yet known.  The Department is likely to make a ruling in the next few weeks.  As the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is currently deliberating, letters from MPs to the appropriate Minister (Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MBE MP) would help sway the decision.  In addition, it would help to have the issue raised during Parliamentary Questions.

Also, do you have any contacts in the local media in the Canterbury area?

many thanks

Charles