Fagg Legacy: Thank you for the opportunity

Thanks to the generosity of the Fagg bequest and Allen Grove Fund, the research I am undertaking will predominantly look at poverty in the Medway Valley in the long eighteenth century and carry on where my master’s research on the Reverend Caleb Parfect concluded. During my master’s, I uncovered the lost vestry book from St Nicholas, Strood, which means for the first time since Smetham reported it was lost in 1899, academia has a chance to explore the financial situation of the town that the Rev Parfect and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) chose for the first workhouse. This discovery of unknown data of considerable importance drove the initial conceptual idea of this research.

This original contribution to scholarship will examine the written records and allow me to explore a neglected aspect of Medway’s rich history. The period under consideration is also crucial in understanding the transition from a predominantly agrarian to an industrial society. The research will mainly be carried out in the Medway Archive Centre, which again is an underutilised resource and always at threat from local authority funding cuts without use. While it is possible to construct an argument that the whole of the workhouse movement, spurred on by the SPCK and the Anglican Church, started in Strood.

With its historical connections to St Claire’s, Strood may have always been a place of charity; both hypotheses remain unexplored.

When Dickens wrote The Seven Poor Travelers, he was directly referring to the Watts Charity of Rochester, set up on the death of Richard Watts in 1579 to help with societal problems. When Knatchball launched the Test Act, he had been MP for Rochester. Equally, when the slave trader Sir John Hawkins set up his charity or Sir Joseph Williamson set up his school, they both would have known of the social and economic hardships facing a population that survived mainly agriculture and fishing. These themes, central to this research, raise important academic and social questions about the Medway valley as a whole. Yet to date, little or no research has been found to explore why this may be the case.

Without the substantial funding that has been generously awarded, it would not be possible to undertake this research. This study must be undertaken now, given the threat to the collections in Medway Archives and the number of documents from the period that are becoming unfit for production. Their condition makes it vital that they are considered seriously before it is too late. The potential data will be lost, and the benefits to the academic debate on poverty, Medway valley, and north Kent’s local history will be missed. Thank you to all involved, and I look forward to sharing the research with you all as it evolves.

Pete Joyce is a KAS scholar at CKHH and supported by the Ian Coulsdon Memorial Fund. This research has been supported by the Allen Grove Local History Fund.