Everywhere means something to someone

Last night I read the excellent ‘Everywhere means something to someone’ guide book created by Strange Cargo and I got excited and intrigued about places to visit in Northfleet and Gravesend. To make this alternative guide book people are asked to nominate a place that they would recommend to a friend. Alongside the picture is a story, or a piece of history, or a recommendation, ‘the kind of information that once shared with others will make these locations richer and more interesting’. I ended up with a long list of places to visit, some wonderful stories and a recipe to try and make – Watercress soup. I also love the title (so much so that I pinched it for this blog post) It’s a useful motto for my explorations.

Today was a desk day – I found a Pete Tong playlist (he’s a local boy) and went on a Wikipedia tour of Gravesham, through history and geography.  I had a look at some Kent Online news articles and picked up a chair. I found one in the street and decided to bring it home – in some way it’s going to become a focal point for me in residence in my flat. 

Flotsam and Jetsam thoughts from today

Lots of churches in Gravesham are dedicated to female saints; St Mary, St Mary Magdalene, St Katherine, Our Lady of Meadows, St Mildred, St Margaret. Some of them are local, really old saints. Did I just notice the women’s names more because I’m interested in women’s stories which are often not told as much, or are there more than the usual number of churches named after female saints?

There’s some other women I want to find out more about Elizabeth Knight – a suffragette, Daphne Oram an electronic and concrete music pioneer, and Sherena, Kayley and Elise Terry who have become TikTok stars during lockdown.

The Saxon shore, long distance walk follows the ancient shoreline as it was 1,500 years ago. Lots of the marshes were not there, this is a landscape always changing. Daily with tides, over decades with mining and over centuries with alluvial silt.

Gravesham is mainly built on chalk. I picked up a piece of chalk on my Wapping river visit and plan to use it in some way, so finding out that it’s the main rock of Gravesham feels like the connections are growing. Chalk is between 99 and 65 million years old and is made of crushed plankton, I’m sort of imagining it like seashells. I’ve got a book on pebbles I’m going to revisit. The timescale that geology operates on fascinates me, and gives me a strange sense of vertigo at the same time.

The Thames, or London River as the merchant seamen call it, is fully marine at Gravesend. the plants and creatures who live in it here are all sea creatures, North Sea creatures. It’s kind of interesting to me about boundaries – when is the river an estuary, when is it river and when is it sea. How does it change with the tides? And what happens to the creatures who live in it? They must be very good at adapting to changing conditions. Maybe there’s something to learn from them.

The village of Dood was abandoned after the Black Death – to read of the impact of one pandemic on Gravesham while in the middle of another felt like time became a bit blurry.

There’s something about mutual aid or care emerging. From their website I learned that the Anglo Saxon Society is a friendly society that has ill health and unemployment insurance for its members. It owns property that it rents, with priority to members. The Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara has provided over 65,000 free hot meals during the pandemic, they also stepped up and supported stranded lorry drivers with hot meals. I helped set up a local mutual aid group at the start of Covid, there’s something about resilience and interconnected independence that is built within and with these systems of care.

There’s a long radical history here. Gavelkind, ensured the equal distribution of inheritance among children, bought by some of the earliest Jute settlers from middle Europe / what is now Germany in the 5th century. Through the rebellions and revolts that fermented here – the peasants revolt, Wyatt’s rebellion and Cades rebellion. Kent has adopted the motto ‘Invicta’ – undefeated. There’s layers of pride in here to unravel.

There’s a long history of people living here – and of people arriving here. Julius Ceaser wrote that ‘Of all these (British tribes), by far the most civilised are they who dwell in Kent, which is entirely a maritime region’ – referring to the Cantii, Iron Age Celts who lived in the area before the Romans arrived. Vigo village populated by people who had lost everything in the Blitz. The Sikh community who have flourished here since the 1950s.

There are ancient healing springs – favoured by the celts and the romans at Springhead and the high speed rail link excavations revealed loads. I’d really like to sit an ancient healing spring now.

Rosherville Gardens sounds amazing. It made me wonder about people travelling less far for pleasure, in part because of Covid. Also because we may have to change our travel behaviour to meet the challenge of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. Gravesham Council declared a climate emergency in June 2019 and are working towards net zero carbon by 2030. Will homegrown pleasure gardens be revived?

There are tunnels all over – from smugglers and chalk mining and war efforts. I wonder if I can get into any. What would I learn from this underneath world?

It’s easy to get caught up in the history – which is important and amazing and there's so much of it in Gravesham. It doesn’t feel healthy to have that as the only source of pride. I’m looking forward to speaking to people in Gravesham now – to connect to the living, breathing messy reality.

A new development of affordable housing will begin to built in Gravesend during this month, 15 years after it was first proposed.

I REALLY want a pint in all of the pubs I’ve read about.

I was going to watch The Long Memory, a film shot in Gravesend tonight. It was released on my birthday in 1953 – another point of connection. But the TV is giving up the ghost and tonight it just wouldn’t play. So another time.