Quested, Rosemary. The Isle of Thanet Farming Community

Extracts from
R.K.I. Quested, The Isle of Thanet Farming Community. An agrarian history of easternmost Kent: outlines from early times to 1993

[From early times to 1066]

p 1 [Thanet’s geography]

The Isle of Thanet is some eight miles long from East to West and five miles wide from North to South at its widest, about 45 square miles in extent and 55 metres (181 feet) above sea level at its highest points ... The island forms a plateau, interspersed with now dry valleys. ... In places on the uplands the chalk comes too near the surface, leaving only a thin cover of earth, but most of the plateau is very fertile... . For a long time Thanet has been a famous agricultural place. Its dryness has been an advantage as often as not ... .
Thanet became an island sometime between 8,000 and 5,000 BC ... when sea levels rose at the end of the last glaciation and covered the low lands now under the Southern parts of the North Sea and the Straits of Dover. At that time there was probably a deep and fairly narrow salt water channel where the Stour and Wantsum now flow through the marshes ... . The island in those times was larger, as the sea has eaten away our Northern and Eastern shoreline ... .

p 2 [Neolithic agriculture]

During all the millenia of prehistory ... our island was inhabited by people of whose customs, tongues and descent little definite is known. Archaeological opinion tends to believe that ... cultural change may have occurred as much or more through local initiative and new ideas spread through trading contacts as through invasions and migration. ... As far as is known, the early people settled near the shores of Thanet, and on the downland slopes ... .
Farming has been generally considered to have started in Britain in the fourth millenium BC ... but only fragmentary traces of this Neolithic agriculture have been found in Thanet ... .

p 3 [Iron Age]

Late Bronze – early Iron Age remains ... are dominated by cow and ox bones, indicating the people were cattle breeders, but until Roman times farming small fields seems to have been the norm.
The use of iron came to Thanet around 600 BC, when like most of Britain it was probably inhabited by Celtic tribes, linguistic ancestors of modern Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic speakers... . The oldest plough marks in Thanet date from about 50 BC in the “Belgic” Iron Age at a Lord of the Manor (a Thanet place name) site... .

p 4 [Visit of Pytheas]

The first civilized, learned man known to have sighted Thanet was Pytheas, a geographer and astronomer from the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), who circumnavigated Britain ... around 325 BC. ... He described “Al-bion” (Britain) as mostly flat, overgrown with forests, thickly populated; the people tall and not so yellow-haired as the Celts on the Continent. They lived in humble houses thatched with reeds, grew corn and stored the ears in roofed granges, and used chariots. There were many kings and potentates amongst them, but they were usually at peace. Pytheas reported rounding “Kantion Corner” (the Kent promontory), from whence the Continent was visible ...; this is the first reference to the name of a people from which derive the names of both Kent and Canterbury. ...
Agriculture and living standards must have been expanded under Roman rule, for at least 14 certain Romano-British villa-type sites and 37 homesteads had been discovered by 1993. ... Cats, dogs, and a full range of farm animals were kept, with extensive use of horses.

p 5 [First broccoli]

[It is believed] that the Romans probably introduced ... Alexander broccoli to Thanet.

p 6 [Jutes replace Romans]

Around 410 the Roman legions left, and the Jutes, a grouping among the Anglo-Saxon peoples, became masters of Thanet. The villa system and the Celtic language of the ancient Britons vanished, and all our old place-names in Thanet are of Anglo-Saxon origin. ... recent research suggests that the conquest of Eastern England took place between 410 and 441, and that for the Romano-Britons it was catastrophic. The disappearance of the Celtic names ... seems to confirm this, and to hint at a mass slaughter of the peaceful civilized population by the fierce Jutish tribesmen. The population seems to have fallen steeply ... .

[Middle Ages: 1066–1485]

p 17 [The Conqueror]

In 1066 William the Conqueror’s invasion army by-passed Thanet, marching from Dover to Canterbury. ... According to some writers Thanet was ... amongst the districts which the Conqueror ordered to be devastated in the autumn of 1085 to discourage the threatened invasion by King Cnut of Denmark. Domesday Book (1086) descriptions [do not] ... support a devastation in 1085.

pp 24/5 [Feudal system]

With the growth of population, the more rapid circulation of money and general prosperity in the late 12th and 13th centuries, serfdom became less necessary to the lords of the manor, and the financial advantage of leasing land for money more obvious. ...
By the 14th century the free personal status of the men of Kent seems to have become fairly well-established; a legal decision of 1293 declared that villeinage did not exist there. Sub-tenants of the manorial tenants remained obligated to their lords for services and payments in kind at the start of this period, but these were increasingly commuted to payments in cash.

pp 30/1 [Population]

Despite the demands of the monks, the population must have greatly increased between 1086 and the first half of the 14th century if the Domesday record is anywhere near accurate. ... a tax register of 1334-1335 ... listed in the Hundred of Ringslow 685 heads of households able to pay tax ... there would have been roughly 5–7,000 people in Thanet and Stonar together at that time, a rise of at least ... threefold since 1086.

pp 32/3 [Evolution of names]

It is interesting to see the evolution of names in this period. ... in the 12th century by-names were used in Thanet as well as patronymics. In the 13th century a number of people used the by-names de Taneto, de Tanet, de Thaneto, de Thanet, but many still had only a personal name and a patronymic. Some women bore such names as Godelifa and Waltrina amongst the now commoner Margery and Joan, etc, whilst some men were called Eilweker or the Norman Hamo as well as the already more usual Thomas, John, Henry, Richard, Reginald, etc. The register of 1334-35 shows a distinct further development, with a return to more precisely differentiated by-names, such as Elizabeth de Wode, Martin de Ramsgat, John de Brokessende, and some surnames of a modern type which are current in Thanet today: Johnson, Jordon, Phylepot, Kempe, Coleman, Smyth, Saket, etc, ...

[Plague]

Thanet’s prosperity seems to have held well into the second quarter of the 14th century.
Yet conditions seem to have been gradually becoming less favourable. A great drought hit Thanet ... in 1325-26 ... and the climate may have become colder after 1300. A series of animal plagues began in 1327, with recurrences at intervals till nearly the end of the century. The war with France added an economic strain: the mint at Canterbury was closed in 1324 for lack of silver. In 1348 came the Black Death, a combination of pneumonic, bubonic and septicaemic plague strains, which struck at a population in many parts of England known to have been already weakened by starvation, due mainly to adverse weather.

p34 [Peasants’ Revolt]

In 1362 the extensive rights of jurisdiction of the Abbot of St Augustine’s at Minster were reconfirmed. ... labour services were in force there in 1381 and the regime was evidently felt to be onerous, particularly the continuing obligation to send representatives to the court at Canterbury. This led the men of the Thanet estates to take part in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, otherwise known as the Peasants’ Revolt. Triggered off by the arrival of Wat and his men at Canterbury on 10 June 1381, the Thanet revolt broke out at St Lawrence and St John’s on 13 June. At the latter it was led by the local curate, probably wretchedly paid. ... A proclamation in the name of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler ordered that labour services should not be performed nor distraints made, and called on the people to destroy the Manston house of William de Medmenham (a local coroner who evidently acted as representative for St Augustine’s), and if possible behead him. The same day a crowd some 200 strong attacked the house, burnt “the books and muniments” and “took away and burnt the rolls” to the value of 20 marks.

[Early modern times; 1485–1700]

p 40 [Difficulty of travelling]

The first year of this first Tudor king [Henry VII], (1485-86) may have seen the end of Thanet as a real island, for ... an Act that year permitted a bridge to be built over the Wantsum at Sarre. Yet in many ways island conditions prevailed for much longer, for the one small wooden bridge did not much ease the difficult journey to Canterbury and London over un-made roads, and until 1757 the only other crossing points were the ferries over the Stour at Stonar and below Minster and Monkton. ... Until the latter half of the 18th century sea transport remained almost as good a way of reaching Thanet as land, and only with the coming of the railways did the land route gain an overwhelming advantage in all weathers.

p 41 [Standard inhabitants of Thanet]

From now until the rise of the towns the standard inhabitants of Thanet consisted of the usually secular landlord, the yeoman (usually tenant) farmer, the husbandman (small farmer, usually a tenant), the cottager and the labourer, together with the parish clergy, the few craftsmen, traders and inn-keepers and the fishermen and seafarers in the fishing villages. A class of large farmers would seem to have re-emerged or have been re-emerging in Henry VIII’s reign (1509-1547), (if indeed it had ever been entirely absent), and was to be a feature of the island until the present.

pp 45/6 [Religious developments]

It is worthwhile looking at the politico-religious events of the 16th–17th centuries for the light they throw on the development of Thanet’s character. During Henry VIII’s Reformation, the return to Catholicism under Mary and the final shaping of the Church of England by Elizabeth I, most of the Thanet population apparently accepted the changes imposed upon them from above, and at first only a few took sides. ... more recently it has been found that the Lollard tradition survived in parts of East Kent into the middle of the 16th century. There was extreme Protestant, Lollard-type activity at Faversham in 1535, at Canterbury in the 1540s, at Faversham again in 1550-51, and some of the Canterbury martyrs burnt under Queen Mary in 1555 were accused of Lollard-type arguments. ... In 1556 John Alchorne of Birchington denied all the ceremonies of the Church and kept illicit books, though he gave in and agreed to conform.
The vicar of St Peter’s was accused of supporting the Pope in 1537. ... Serles (famous for having maintained that Mary gave birth to Jesus when she was fourteen because the moon comes to the full in fourteen days), was vicar of Monkton in 1552-1561. ...
Later in the century various sectarian tendencies definitely became established here. William Claybrooke, a former lawyer living at Nash Court, owned or had read “all contentious or schismatic books at any time printed” about 1588. The Vicar of St Nicholas, a non-conforming Puritan, preached against other sectaries in 1590. By the end of the 16th century separatist or semi-separatist groups were especially active in Thanet ... In 1617-18, under a moderate Puritan archbishop, St John’s was one of various parishes in East Kent given a new vicar with reforming duties — a “reformed pulpit” as it was called. The Puritan movement is not mentioned again until the 1640s.

pp 47/8 [Plague]

According to the Birchington records at least the Restoration was greeted with the relaxation of behaviour traditionally associated with it: for there was much eating and drinking. The Great Plague of 1666 did not affect the island, but plague or other epidemics occurred frequently in Birchington throughout the 17th century, the early part of which was much worse in this respect ... than the late 16th century. At Minster, too, of 33 upland holders in 1635 only 17 appeared to be still there in 1640.

p 50 [Poorhouses]

A feature of Thanet parishes from the 16th century ... was the appearance of charitable endowments for the poor, often including the provision of schooling for them. A workhouse and an almshouse were established in Minster in the mid-17th century, and all parishes must have had poorhouses of some kind by the end of the 17th century.

p 57 [Thomas Sackett]

Thanet yeomen were amongst the wealthiest in Kent in the 17th century. By the mid-17th century a middling farmer and shopkeeper in Minster, Thomas Sackett, enjoyed the comfort of a feather-bed (a prestigious item in those days), some “joyned” furniture (made by a joiner expert in furniture-making and again prestigious), pewter dishes, two bibles and two testaments. In 1692 Richard Mockett of St Peter’s left inter alia in his will ten pairs of sheets, four “pillowcoats”, one dozen of napkins and four towels.

pp 60/1 [Causes of poverty]

... in Birchington receipt of alms did not necessarily mean misery, and one widow obtaining poor relief for 14 years died in possession of a comfortable home, including a featherbed, in 1669. Findings for the early 18th century treatment of the poor in St Nicholas suggest that they were probably not dissimilar there in the 17th century. It may have been different in the poorer parishes. The commonest causes of poverty must have been widowhood, orphaning, handicaps, old age, injuries and sickness, which from all accounts were common enough. Bad weather and animal and plant disease seem to have been a less frequent cause ...; there should have been no lack of work for those able to do it.

p 65/6 [Farming and fishing]

... researches confirmed the important role in the latter half of the 17th century of fishing as a tandem occupation with agriculture in Thanet, ... Both small and largish farmers owned shares in sometimes as many as seven different vessels, and a considerable amount of fishing tackle. In the period 1660 to the end of the century, ... most boats were jointly owned, at this time in shares of 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32, and ownership was not confined to coastal parishes. ... but fishing interests were naturally more prominent in Birchington, St John’s, St Peter’s and St Lawrence. Labourers fished in the intervals between the main surges of farm work, and conversely men mainly employed as seamen sometimes worked on the land in harvest.

p 66 [Smuggling]

Another increasingly important maritime occupation from the late 17th century was smuggling. The various privately owned “cuts” down through the cliffs to the sea, and the legendary caves reputed to lie under many Thanet farms must have proved useful for this. There are still intact examples of these “cuts” at Coleman Stairs Road at Birchington, Botany Bay, Dumpton, etc.

[Not mentioned in this book is Sackett’s Gap, cut centuries ago by local farmers, it was believed, for the purpose of bringing seaweed from the foreshore to fertilize their land. Perhaps the prime purpose of Sackett’s Gap was more glamorous!]

[The Eighteenth Century to 1792]

p74-5 [Sea-bathing]

The 18th century was one of great developments ... in Thanet’s local story. ... In Thanet the commencement of sea-bathing for health reasons in the 1730s was a very significant milestone in the life of our towns and ultimately of the whole island. ... The fashion for sea bathing and seaside holidays, as a change from visiting spas, started amongst the upper classes, and soon catapulted Margate and Ramsgate to fame as rival select resorts within easy reach of London by sea. Sea bathing began at Margate in 1736, and soon after at Ramsgate. By 1776 Margate was claimed to be “in great vogue among wealthy citizens of the metropolis and the most respectable class of gentry in this kingdom”. According to a local inhabitant, however, “both the houses of Ramsgate” and “the company which resorts to them” were “of superior description to Margate”.

p 75 [New bridge and roads]

The fashionability of the Thanet resorts led to some improvement in the roads and coaching services. Communications with the mainland were facilitated by the rebuilding in brick of the small bridge over the Wantsum at Sarre ... By 1796 during the season two diligences, one post-coach, one coach and two night coaches plied each twenty-four hours from Margate to London. ... But many of the growing number of visitors preferred to come by sea, and the island atmosphere continued.

p 134 [Sackett’s Hill estate for sale]

Sackett’s Hill estate (8 freehold acres of farmland, vegetable garden, stables, etc.) ... did not reach its reserve and was withdrawn at £5,350 in May [1891].

p 147 [Barzillai Sackett and harvest homes]

It was in this period, probably in the 1870s, that farmers began to stop giving harvest homes to their men, but to give overtime or extra harvest payments instead. A Kentish Gazette report from Ramsgate in 1861 mentions harvest homes as routine: “the Lord of the Manor meets his tenants on Court days, the landlords at the rent audits, and the farmers their men at the harvest homes”. ... But gradually they decreased; for instance Barzillai Sackett, who started farming in the 1880s, never gave one, and Eric Quested could not recall having heard of one in the years 1911-1914 in North Thanet.

p 154 [Bar Sackett and broccoli]

“Collyflowers” had been a market-garden crop since at least 1750, and Walcheren broccoli, which had only a three-week season in April, had probably been here for as long or longer. ... The seed of longer-lasting spring varieties, mainly Roscoff and some Anger, was brought to Thanet by Barzillai (Bar) Sackett of Northwood (1849-1942) and Augustus Brockman of Haine ... , two young market-gardeners with adjoining land, who went to Brittany together and bought it there. Local and family tradition gives the leading role in this enterprise to the older Bar Sackett. ...
Bar Sackett founded his fortunes on the broccoli. Having inherited only 15 acres from his father, he was occupying 34 acres, with three men working for him, by the 1881 census. In 1884 he began selling wheat, indicating he had moved definitely into farming, and he began to take over the tenancy of larger farms ... He was the first to take broccoli into large-scale arable farming in Thanet.

pp 163/4 [Bar Sackett and Woodchurch]

The winter of 1894–5 was very severe, and there were eleven farm sales in 1895. ...
In 1896 there were another eleven sales ...
It is believed that Bar Sackett bargained with the Powell-Cottons to take on Woodchurch at a reduced rent when it was offered for the second year, ...
The indications that some farmers were making money from livestock was reinforced by the house-warming ball which Mr and Mrs F de B Collard gave in January 1897, after they took over Minster Abbey (Court) farm: sixty people attended, many arriving in carriages. Bar Sackett, living in a much more frugal style, was also doing well from livestock and broccoli. Having taken on Woodchurch and Chilton for his sons, by 1899 he had progressed from West Northdown farm to Yorkshire farm, and a little later to East Northdown.

p 167 [Bar Sackett’s privy]

Living styles of farmers varied greatly. The modern-minded Val Smiths ... had had a bath with running water installed in 1892. ... Bar did not have a bath put in, but in the 1900s the Friends, his landlords, enlarged East Northdown farmhouse for him with two new rooms and a first-floor W.C.; his son Vincent at Woodchurch had a W.C. next to the coal-shed a few yards from the back door, replacing the old earth privy. Bar kept his privy; at East Northdown it was a pit about 8 feet deep with a wooden seat. When it was about half full two men would come with a wheelbarrow to empty it, the contents ... [going] onto their manure heaps, or directly onto their plots.

p 168 [Bar Sackett’s diet]

The diet in Bar Sackett’s house contained a great deal of meat: always eggs and bacon for breakfast and in winter fat pork instead, a joint every day for lunch, always served with a yorkshire or suet pudding and three kinds of vegetables, followed by a fruit pie. Tea was white bread and butter, supper cold meat and bread and butter, with generous salads in season. Soup was not made: vegetable water, whether laced with soda or not, was regarded as unwholesome and thrown away. This was probably typical of many farm households. Vegetables were naturally overboiled in the traditional English manner.

p 168 [Bar Sackett’s church-going]

With rare exceptions farmers in those days drank little alcohol — the mid-19th to mid-20th century was unusually abstemious — and attended church regularly. Bar and his wife Sarah went twice on Sundays, and this was quite common. ... He may have been particularly mindful of his reputation because he was born out of wedlock, a status which it seems was technically never reversed, although he was brought up as a legitimate son. Amongst country people in 1844, the year of his birth, it may not have amounted to much more than it would now, but it was shocking to the true Victorian middle class into which he rose. It must have been widely known, as it is to Sackett family history researchers now, and there is some evidence that it was sniggered about in his later lifetime.

p 169 [Bar Sackett and broccoli]

[Bar Sackett’s fame as a broccoli grower was such that,] The Friends at Northdown were so gentlemanly that they declined their farm manager’s suggestion that they grow broccoli, lest it seem an affront to Bar Sackett!

p 170 [Bar Sackett and the Boer War riots]

During the Boer War in March 1900 Margate and Ramsgate were amongst many town around Britain where “patriotic” riots took place, with attacks on the property if not the persons of people with pro-Boer sympathies or perhaps merely having some Dutch connection. ... Bar Sackett and one of his sons “had to lead a crowd of men and sack the shop of a Dutchman called Maas” in King Street, Margate, “because he had hung out a Dutch flag”. ... The full details of what happened on those two days remain obscure. At Margate police station on 21 March two men were fined £1 each for assaulting policemen, and three ordered to pay 5/6 costs. But Bar was not among them. ... On 24 March 1900 Bar Sackett was elected Overseer of the Poor and a member of the burial board for Northdown parish, proving that his status had not been affected. On the contrary, he seems to have been a local hero.

p171 [Bar Sackett & Eric Quested in the First World War]

Similar, though unpublicized attacks on German-owned businesses took place in the First World War, but Bar was not involved. ... Val Smith’s three sons, Bar Sackett’s grandson Eric Quested and the son of F. Wellard of Cleve Court farm all joined the Royal East Kent Mounted Regiment (Royal East Kent Yeomanry) in the years before 1914. They went to camp every summer for two weeks, riding their own horses. ... All survived, although Alan Smith was badly injured in a riding accident, and Eric — saved from Passchendaele by being recalled for a commission — was gassed at Cambrai in 1918.

p 173 [Farming in the First World War]

Yet despite their difficulties ... the Thanet farmers almost certainly made good money during the war [First World War], like British farmers in general. On the other hand the Thanet towns suffered considerable damage from enemy acton, flight of better-off residents, and loss of holiday trade, as well as greater liability to military service, which aroused a certain urban resentment against the farmers that lingered on in some quarters into the 1930s. ... The farmers themselves tended to maintain that the war had been a terrible time when they had barely managed to stay afloat, and Eric Quested, who started farming in 1919, always loyally supported this view.

pp 176/7 [Bar Sackett and men drinking, 1890s]

It seems the men did drink rather more than their masters: the head cowman at East Northdown came home singing from the Wheatsheaf nightly, but was always up sharp at 5.30 and Bar seemed satisfied with his work, the daily pint of beer at lunchtime perhaps being given to stop him going to the Wheatsheaf then.

p 179 [Bar Sackett and farming practices]

Markedly less wheat and barley was grown [during the years 1893–1918] than in the previous period, and only a few farmers as yet grew broccoli besides Bar Sackett.

p 180/1

Many upland farmers rented marshland and kept sheep; Bar Sackett did not, but in other respects probably farmed in a typical manner, though some younger and better educated men would have been more progressive. Bar was 70 in 1914 and probably educated at the National School at St Peter’s. At the height of his operations (c1900-1904) he with his two sons occupied four farms: East Northdown with Yorkshire farm as one unit, Chilton and Woodchurch. He sold Chilton and bought Reading Street farm in 1904, and sold Reading Street in 1911. He was a true entrepreneur — “everything he touched turned to money” — and patriarch, and like all capable farmers, patrolled his land constantly, driving himself in a trap, in wet weather holding in one hand a heavy trap umbrella, covering the whole vehicle. Later his grandson held it for him.

p 181

Wheat and barley were his main crops, with mangolds, lucerne and clover for the stock, and forty acres of broccoli, grown after potatoes or wheat, in 1911–14. ... Fertilizer was mainly good farmyard manure, but Bar used a patent barley manure from Mockett and Thorp, corn factors of Margate, as a top dressing for his barley in spring, and put nitrate of soda on his cauliflower and broccoli.
Bar kept four teams of horses and three odd horses at East Northdown. Stock at Woodchurch, and Reading Street were similar, though fewer, and at Reading Street, where there was a small pond, there were a pair of geese, eight ducks and two drakes as well.

p 185 [First World War]

Though the Thanet farmers did not have to sacrifice very many of their sons, they may have lost a good many of their beloved carthorses, taken to pull Army wagons and the heavy guns for the Western Front. ... A team of Bar Sackett’s was requisitioned in the field four days after war broke out in 1914 by Major Harris, R.E.K.Y. [Royal East Kent Yeomanry] whose name was mud in the family thereafter.

p 187

Some of the hardest labour shortage stories came from 1915 and 1916, especially after the start of conscription in March 1916; for instance only one married wagoner to help the farmer on a 100-acre farm with four horses at Monkton in December 1916. ... fourteen men had enlisted from East Northdown by March 1915 [and] one can imagine Bar Sackett urging them to [do so].

p 194 [Eric Quested’s speech at the National Farmers’ Union dinner]

Only in 1930 was there no suggestion in the speeches ... that Thanet was blessed. Eric Quested in the first speech at the dinner complained that agriculture had statutory obligations to the worker but no security of markets, and called for an import board, with guaranteed prices for the farmer and the development of a cartel system to share the market between the Empire, home farmers and foreign countries.

p 195 [1931 dinner]

Eric Quested called attention, as he had the previous year, to the efforts being made in France, Italy and Germany to help farmers there, and said that he had written to the leader of the Conservative party, who had replied that he would guarantee a price for wheat if returned to power.

p 195 [Winter 1931]

By the winter things were worse. That was the only time before he retired when the author can remember that her father was really short of money. Her headmistress had to be given two successive sacks of potatoes, as well as ... cauliflowers, as earnest that her private school fees would eventually be paid. The car was partly laid up, and she was taken to school in the milk lorry, which was parked a discreet distance from the school gates. Eric Quested was in easier circumstances than many smaller farmers, having 250 acres, only one child and a wife with some money of her own, but his case was certainly not exceptional.

p 198 [Unemployment in 1939]

The improved status of the farmers came against the first, ominous signs of Margate and Ramsgate’s decline in the late 1930s. It was noted at the 1937 NFU dinner that the first was attracting too many day trippers. Though Cliftonville, the smaller Thanet towns and parts of Ramsgate remained rather high-class, the Margate municipal orchestra had been considerably cut back by the eve of war, and there was an alarming recrudescence of unemployment in Margate and Ramsgate. In January 1939 a desperate mob ... fought day and night for the coal cargo of MS Aquiety when it ran aground on the Nayland Rock. Women were "knee-deep in the cold water", and children "still there at 2 a.m.". There were 2,000 unemployed in Margate in September 1939.

p 198 [Eric Quested and the Milk Marketing Board]

After the First World War Thanet farmers made their mark ... in the wider world beyond the island. The establishment of the Milk Marketing Board owed much in SE England to the efforts of Eric Quested. ... Eric Quested was chairman of the Kent Milk Recording Society 1928-1930, chairman of the Thanet NFU 1932-1934, and Kent representative on the NFU central milk and dairy produce committee 1928-1933, and as chairman of the Kent county milk committee in 1933 piloted the MMB through Kent. ... From 1933 to 1938 Eric was chairman of the SE Regional Committee of the Board, and from 1938-1970 MMB member for the SE Region.

p 206 [Second World War]

RAF or allied planes crashed at various places besides Flete, and German ones at Goodman's farm, Manston, Monkton, Hengrove, Sackett's Hill, Shuart marshes, near Brooksend farm, at Vincent, and probably other places too.

[Further Sackett references not transcribed are at pp 207, 212, 218, Eric; 218, Bar; 223, Eric; 224, Eric & Guernsey herd; 225, 227, 228, 230, 234, Eric; 236, Bar; 237, 239, Eric; 251/2, broccoli; 252, Eric & Guernseys; 253, 254, 256, Eric; 257, Eric's bulls; 262, Eric.]