History
The club has been contacted by a lady called Sarah, her father and grandfather were both bowlers. She has stumbled across the first 4 photos that you see on this page, I think the story behind it brings the photographs to life.
The black and white photo is a postcard produced by Douglas West in Whitstable and it was sent to my grandparents by my aunt in 1945 so I guess the picture is from around that time or maybe a bit earlier.
The photo I have called bowling at the castle is another postcard which I'm guessing dates to the early 60's as my late mother always told me that the bowler on the left wearing a fairisle pullover is her father, my grandad, Frederick George, who passed away in 1964. He wasn't a native of Whitstable having been born in Watford but he bought the house my mother was still living in till last year in 1931.
The other colour photo I only found a couple of days ago and I notice it shows the castle with a different extension on the side of it so I'm not sure when this was taken. When I was growing up the castle was where I had to go with my dad to pay the rates :-) I think my dad, Frederick Chaplin, was a member of your club for a while too, possibly in the 80's.
The other photo with the four gentlemen in it was sent to my grandad at Christmas 1934 and says on the back of it '4 bowlers wish you and yours a very Happy Xmas' there are names on the back of it too, the first three in my grandad's writing and the last one in my mother's and they are - Snell, Hinds, Hammond and Ternouth. They look like real characters !! I think it might have been taken at Chestfield going by the thatched roof of the building behind them and it looks like a lily pond too.
Wallace Harvey was a local historian and in 1955 he was also a member of Whitstable Bowling Club. In Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library is much of his important work, along with a couple of items relating to our club. Their is a Fixtures Book from 1968, a Membership Letter with your cost of membership from 1968 and a Rules Book going back to 1955. I would like to say a big thank you to Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library and in particular Daniel Korachi-Alaoui for all his help. The enclosed photos are of the genuine documents held in the archives.
I have also managed to find out that there was also a Bowling Green in Chestfield, which was set up by the developer George Reeves, in the early 1930s on land to the north of and adjacent to the corner of Chestfield Road and Molehill Road. Reeves went bankrupt in 1938 and at some point before 1945 the new owners sold the land for housing, although by the 1960s it had passed to what is now BT who built an office and connection unit on the site. A picture of that can be seen in the above photos.
