When L’Arche Kent were looking for a home for this machine, I remembered:
Back in November 1979, there were a few hand-powered machines on a shelf at L’Arche. Four years before, I had scrounged the shuttle for one of them from a reluctant salesman at the Singer shop in Canterbury. He could not sell me one, as fittings had changed since 1914, but we got that machine working again after he rather exasperatedly let me take the shuttle from a broken machine outside the shop door. Back then Singer’s offered £10 part-exchange on old machines for new, but destroyed the old one. Obviously there was no commission coming my transaction!
So, in November 1979 Janet and I were visiting Little Ewell together, and she asked Sue Dolan if she could buy a machine for her own use. Sue told her to help herself to whichever she liked; the community did not need a treadle machine and three hand-powered.
Over to the workshop in the dark, and which machine did we choose?
No prize for guessing! But there was another reason for choosing it, though it was not the best of the three. This was a German machine, made around the time of the Great War, which belonged to a Mrs Day of Dover. In 1940 her daughter was a pupil at Miss Kennet’s private school out at Temple Ewell where she was when the German bomb fell on the house, killing her mother. All that was salvaged was the sewing machine; its case was beyond repair, the base badly damaged.
Miss Kennet was an early supporter of L’Arche Kent. We knew her as ‘Ken’. She had taken in the shell-shocked ‘Daisy’ – as we called Miss Day, and had looked after her ever since. In her turn Daisy cared for Ken up in Canon’s Cottage in Barfrestone Village, after they retired from the school. It was a privilege to be invited for afternoon tea.
The school house served as a base for a changing group of Assistants until it was sold and 20 The Glen Shepherdswell, at walking distance from Barfrestone, was bought. But that’s another story or two: this one is about a relic from the earliest friends of the community. A story about The Glen was told last June, see :
MMB