History
The Wanderer Returns To Staple
Page 3
My Aunt Gwen ran a small library at the rear of the old wooden village hall, which was replaced in 1998. Now a mobile library stops for fifteen minutes, once a week. The new brick hall is still not enveloped by ribbon development along Mill Road, which recalls a windmill towards Summerfield, which burned down in June 1914.
Shatterling had a small infants school whose land was conveyed in 1875. Staple School is also closed. This red brick and slate roof school opened in 1867 with a combined chimney and bell tower. Frank Barr taught my mother there. When he announced the Great War had broken out, mother ran home to tell her parents, but they already knew, such was the bush telegraph in pre-wireless days!
The roughly rectangular school with detached WC block was enlarged in 1910. It educated 100 children on 1910, but by closure in 1969 this had fallen to below 30. The last head teachers were Mabel (Sally) Waterhouse and finally Olive Govier. Many relics awaited buyers, including a weighing machine for the pupils, an attendance board, a plate warmer, a teacher's desk, rounders poles, 140 coatpegs and plenty of chalk.
Two graphic designers, Ned and Chrissy Sherring, bought the school for �2,500 and worked on it from 1972-74, respecting its character. When it was put on the market in 1995 at an inflationary �165,00 , features such as the barrel vaulted roof trusses and stone corbels, also a surviving porcelain hand basin with taps were singled out. The old school looks strange without its surrounding tarmac, but it resurfaced at Tilmanstone Cricket Club's car park!
In my time, we had two bus services passing along Lower Road. The 14A to Canterbury ran from the Black Pig, the more frequent 76 to Deal from the Three Tuns. To economise, the East Kent Road Car Co. extended the Deal route to Wingham. To feed into the main Deal to Canterbury Route via Shatterling. In 1971 the single fares to Deal were 15p, to Canterbury 14p, compared with 70p today. The present diversion of 7 to 8 services via Staple from Ash/Wingham has lasted for over twenty years, so Staple is luckier than Goodenstone, who have said farewell to Stagecoach.
Staple station was three-quarters-of-a-mile north of the village, on Durlock Road. The East Kent Light Railway fell back on farm produce and passengers when the coalfields failed to reach their potential (Wingham Colliery closed in 1914). The lone ran from March 1912, coupling on a passenger coach from October 1916. Staple was the busiest intermediate station, earning itself a brick station outbuilding with two offices separated by a booking office and passenger shelter. There was also a corrugated iron shed used by C.W. Darley, Vegetable Merchants, later by a basketware maker. There were two platforms, one for goods, a passing loop, windpump and water tank for the engines, and a dismounted old carriage used for offices.
Two to three trains a day took thirty five minutes to reach Shepherdswell, where a preserved line still operated the first part of the route. After nationalisation, the line fell into sad neglect, passenger services going in November 1948, and freight from 25th July 1950. The line was dismantled in 1954 and a poultry farm took over the site. Telegraph poles still mark the route, but the sight of trains picking up speed on the straight through hop fields towards Wingham is now a distant memory.
My grandfather attended the Chapel Lane Baptist Church in Barnsole, but it became a private house many years ago and lost its ecclesiastical appearance. A smaller chapel on the main road at the west end of Shatterling is still recognisable but much enlarged to the rear.
Continued on next page............
BUS TIMES � POST-CODES � MAPS � BLACK PIG � THREE TUNS � FROG & ORANGE � LOCAL BUSINESSES � LAYHAM'S GARDEN CENTRE � SUMMERFIELD NURSERIES � STAPLE HISTORY � VILLAGE CHURCH � BARNSOLE VINEYARD � STAPLE VINEYARD � OLD PHOTO'S � PICTURE TOUR � GUESTBOOK � STAPLE-FORUM � NEWS & UPDATES � LINKS � LOCAL COMMUNITY