Lost Streets of Sittingbourne & Milton - Dean Street

[@mrcashy5]

I like the music 🎶

[@sharoncollman7030]

My Great Grandfather David Deacon, lived at 11 Dean Street in 1881, have asked many people, but nobody knew where it was. Thank you for this informative video

[@geoffaustin9385]

As someone who works in Sittingbourne this was an exceptional and fascinating video. Thank you

[@philippankhurst6680]

I lived in Sittingbourne until 1972 and I often travelled through the gloomy area at the back of Sittingbourne mill en route to work at Kemsley mill. The picture of Charlotte Street in the 1950s reminds me instantly of how much of that area looked (and smelt). Excellent piece of film, thank you.

[@EtonieE25]

It’s a shame it’s not in ‘smell-a-vision! 🤣 Yeah that smell that stuck to your noise hairs 🤣

[@MLElf]

Great video! I can’t even remember what the paper mill looked like already!

[@rogergoodger5511]

Fascinating video. I had known all about Queen Street but not Dean Street. The best part for me, however, were the photos of the row of houses in Charlotte Street. I was born in the second from the right, in 1951. We moved out in late 1954 - I suspect this photo was taken after that, because one house had an "ITV" aerial, and "our house" didn't. We were one of the first houses in Charlotte Street to have a TV, and I guess we took the aerial with us when we moved to Langley Road!

[@christophertucker1314]

Very professional. Fascinating!

[@pamelaburtt418]

Fascinating history. My grandfather Albert E. Whitnell was born on Dean St. Doesn't seem like it was a nice place to grow up in. Thanks Allen for doing the family history and video.

[@DogsthorpeInfants]

I also remember The Milton Arms pub that was roughly near where Pizza Hut is now. In those days it was a bit creepy at night walking under the old bridge that carried the trains across the road at the back of the pub. Mill Street had been demolished but lots of brick rubble and overgrown grass and there was an old Victorian style lamp which when it was dark and the steam from the steam pipes and smoke from trains in the early evenings of winter, the smoke and steam from trains made that whole scene look like a Jack The Ripper movie set. If I had £1 for every time my grandad took me there during the day to walk to Milton Creek where he used to work, I’d be a millionaire by now, Rodney!’ But such happy days! After dad was sent back home for a few days after Dunkirk he went to find his wife, my mum, who was living with her parents during the war. He couldn’t find them at home and eventually found the three of them in The Milton Arms. Purchased by grandad, Dad told me that it was the best pint of beer that he had ever drank. Of course at that time Mill Street and The Wall were still very much lived in.

[@DogsthorpeInfants]

1962-64. My grandad would, at 8.30am Monday to Friday walk me from his home 81 Charlotte Street up to the end of the road, turn left down Jubilee Street to the arches at the bottom. We always walked near on the railway track wall side of Jubilee Street because on the Mill side I once saw a rat and it frightened me so always chose the other side of. The road. I remember the rifle range. Under the bridge out onto Laburnham and down towards Ufton Lane school, passing the Fleur De Lis pub and the Salvation Army hall and cross the Zebra crossing and up Ufton Lane. At 3pm he was back, walking me round the corner to the bus stop near Lea’s Toyland. A carton of milk from the Milk Machine that stood by the bus stop. And when the 58 bus arrived I boarded aged 5, grandad would pay the driver and off I went on my own back to Borden. The bus dropped me off at Hartman’s Corner and I walked up the road to my house, let myself in and the only thing I could do was put on the TV and wait for the music entitled Southern Rhapsody which heralded my children’s tv and Gerry Anderson series. At Christmas I got all of the Gerry Anderson toys which I’ve kept, and all of their boxes and festive tags from loved ones. I have them in cabinets in my recording studio in Cambridgeshire to remind me every day of where I came from - and the people who loved me.

[@DogsthorpeInfants]

@DreamBelieveShine 0 seconds ago At the bottom of Charlotte Street was a row of shops and one was a butchers shop Me and Grandad often walked there. He never had a fridge just a ‘meat safe’ to keep the flies off the meat. Lovely! The butcher had a shop and a walk in freezer next door. The shop had sawdust on the floor. Grandad told me it was to soak up the blood of people who tried to leave the shop without paying! Not that such an image would mentally scar a five year old in any way!!!! The butcher’s name was ‘Horace’ (true). A portly jovial man frequently seen with a big chopper in his hand. Just to add weight to the nightmare that would accompany what my grandad had placed in my brain. Horace would chop off Grandad’s chops and Sunday roast and then showed them to him asking, ‘How are they, Frank? And my grandad would say ‘lovely’. Then we would pay for it all (thank God) and leave alive and well and stroll home. By the time we got back, the newspaper in which my Grandads dinners were placed were soaked in blood. But not our blood - because we had paid for our dinner. Meanwhile,, down the road a muffled scream was heard as Horace the killer claimed his next victim. I assumed at the time that cows, sheep and pigs always tried to leave the shop without paying.

[@SittingbourneHeritageMuseum]

Probably Hales the butchers