6. The Sunday School Outing.

The Sunday School Outing, organised by the Reverend Gower-Smith, took place, annually, on a Saturday during the children’s summer holidays until about the mid 1960’s. I was too young to know why it stopped, probably due to cost and lack of support. For us kids in the village it was a marvellous day out. In a time when very few families in the village owned cars, this was a treat we all looked forward to.

On the day we would all meet at the Village Hall at about 9 o’clock in the morning. There would be two coaches, one for the adults and one for the children.

The first bit of the trip would see us going to Folkestone, where we would spend the largest part of the day. Most of our time there was spent on the beach, and it was always a nice sunny day, we were lucky then if we saw the sea more than twice a year.

There was ‘Tea’ at about 5 o’clock in a restaurant which overlooked a boating pool which was surrounded by ‘penny arcades’. Whatever pocket money we had soon disappeared in the 1d (pre-decimal times) slot machines. Tea was always a nice salad. During the tea, us children were given more money for the slot machines - 6d from Major Hedley and 3d from Mr Vincent.

At about 6 o’clock we left Folkestone for Dymchurch and stopped for about an hour and a half at a public house called the Ship Inn (which I think is still going). For us kids it was a soft drink and the rest of the time was spent on the beach again which was a five minute walk from the pub.

From there we headed back towards Thanet. There was a stop at the public toilets in Dover which were opposite the Prince of Wales Pier. Then on to Deal, where we parked in the big car park in the centre of the town. Here we were treated to fish and chips, a treat that we didn’t have very often then. From there it was back to Monkton, arriving home at about 9.30.

I remember being travel sick on my first outing and at Dymchurch it was decided that I should be taken home which my mother was not too disappointed in as we got to ride back to Monkton in Major Hedley’s new Jaguar car.

I also learnt later in life that a lot of the men spent most of their time on the ‘outing’ drinking in various pubs in Folkestone and at Dymchurch and were quite the worse for wear by the time they got home, which was probably why us kids had a separate coach.

Next month Monkton Primary School.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (February 2023).