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More about the Trust
The Birchington Heritage Trust was established in May 2002 and was
granted Charity status in August 2003. We now have over 250 members.
The Aims of the Trust are to research, discover and record Birchington's interesting 3,500 years of history. We have
established a local museum/archive room in the Burley Gallery at the Library
where we can display some of our collected items and perform research for
members of the public and local schools. We will also aim to make the material
available for students to do their own research from this material. The museum
is open to view throughout the library opening hours; the room is manned and
the archives are available on Mondays, Thursdays andSaturdays from 9.30 to 12.30.
The Trust holds four General Meetings a year, which include talks
and to which all are welcome (visitors are invited to donate £3).
Archival information
The past runs parallel
with the present and is always intruding on it. But we feel we must be wary not
to remain stuck in the past for its own sake. The past has something to teach
us - but so has the present. We honour and learn from them both.
We hold written
information on almost every topic connected with Birchington, all of which is
held in alphabetical order - from Acol to York
Terrace.
There are separate files on All Saints Church, the history of the village of
Birchington, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who died here), Windmills (we had three),
Charles Spurgeon and his Homes (the last of which was in Birchington), the
First and Second World Wars and Gladys Cooper (who visited Birchington in the
1920s) to name a few.
We also have access to the archives from All Saints Church mainly
in transcript form, as all the earliest material is now held in Canterbury
Cathedral Archives. The catalogue for this material runs to 117 pages. The
Church's archives date from 1489 to the present day and cover the daily life of
the Church as well as the village as a whole. The Registers start in 1538 and
the Churchwardens' accounts begin in 1531 and apart from two brief breaks are
continuous to the present day. There are the account books of the Overseers of
the Poor as well as the Way Wardens' accounts, covering the maintenance of the
local roads.
All the material is constantly being augmented and updated where new evidence
is uncovered.