Famous and Notable People 'In and Around' the Elham Valley

• Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977) ~ British statesman, who briefly served as prime minister (1955-1957). He was born in Bishop Auckland, Durham, England, and educated at Eton College and Christ Church College, University of Oxford.
  
  An extract from My Life & Memories of Old Elham by Bill Watson ~ "During W.W.II Sir Anthony Eden lived in Park Gate House, Elham and often came into the village. He attended Elham Church. Sir Winston Churchill sometimes paid him a visit. I'm not sure we had some spies about because one night when he was here a German bomber dropped bombs across the village, from Spruce Lawn to the top of the Avenue. One bomb dropped on the Kennels but there was not much damage done, thank goodness. I'm sure it was meant for Park Gate House".
  
  Some of Anthony Eden's famous quotes included:
  
  "Corruption never has been compulsory"
  
  "Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure".
  
  "If you've broken the eggs, you should make the omelette"
  
  "We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict"
   

• Audrey Hepburn ~ (1929-1993) (Link to official website)
  Just before W.W.II Audrey, known then as Audrey Ruston, lived with Mr & Mrs Butcher at Orchard Cottage, Elham, now known as  Five Bells . Whilst in Elham she went to two schools, one run by the Rigden sisters in the Square and the other West Bank, a property just down from Elham Manor. West Bank later became the home of the Oscar winning actress Katie Johnson. (Information source - Derek Boughton 15/11/2006).  This is a link to a recent Newspaper Article regarding Audrey's time in Elham.

• Leslie Ames ~ (1905-1990) Kent and England Wicket Keeper  lived in Elham. (Link to E.C.B. website)

• Mark Ealham ~ Kent and England Cricket Player lived for a time in the Square, Elham. (Link to E.C.B. website)
   
• Mary Smith ~ Mary and her family were well know and respected within the community. Mary was born at 2, Southdown Cottages, Elham and lived a great deal of her life at King Post, Elham. Her father Edward Smith was the village postmaster during WW2, as well as the Chairman of the Parish Council. He was responsible for producing a large quantity of early photographs of Elham, a number of which are reproduced on this site. They are very important to members of the community today as they give us the opportunity to see village life in the early 1900's and give many residents the opportunity to see their own homes in days gone by. Mary is often seen as a small girl in many of the photographs.
  
  Mary's diary for 1940 was used by the author Dennis Knight as the basis for his book Harvest of Messerschmitts  which tells the story of Elham and events during the Battle of Britain.
  
  Towards the end of her life Mary was seen on the TVS program "Country Ways" when the Elham Valley was featured in a program first shown on air in the mid 1980's.
   

• Mrs. Miniver
   

       

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  The original Mrs Miniver was a pre-war creation who first appeared on the Court Page of The Times on 6 October 1937. Once a fortnight for two years, a 'Mrs Miniver' piece was published.  The articles were anonymous, signed 'From a correspondent'.  The articles were all about the gentle pleasures of a modern upper-middle-class marriage. Their position at the top of the Court Page was reassuring: if His Majesty The King was holding a luncheon at Holyrood in the left-hand corner, and Mr and Mrs Miniver were attending the Highland Games in the right-hand corner, then surely civilization (in spite of the horrors going on in Spain and the threatening noises from Germany) must be safe.

  When the articles were published in book form by Chatto & Windus in October 1939, the author's name was revealed: Jan Struther, the pseudonym of Joyce, n�e Anstruther, whose married name was Mrs Anthony Maxtone Graham.  But when it was published in America in 1940, it became the Number One national bestseller.

  This book was the basis of the 1942 Academy Award winning film.

  This story of an average English middle-class family begins with the summer of 1939; when the sun shone down on a happy, careless people, who worked and played, reared their children and tended their gardens in that happy, easy-going England that was so soon to be fighting desperately for her way of life and for life itself.

  There is no lack of supporting evidence that MRS. MINIVER is a fantastic film. It was nominated for twelve Academy Awards in 1942 and took home six: Best Actress (Greer Garson), Best Supporting Actress (Teresa Wright) and Best Director (William Wyler), as well as Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Writing, and Best Picture of the year.

  It was the top-grossing film of 1942 and the second biggest box-office hit of the decade, following GONE WITH THE WIND (*1) --, were MRS. MINIVER's effects on the isolationist temperaments of its 1940s American audience. There was not a single battle scene in this war film, yet through its portrayal of the hardships suffered and overcome by a middle-class English family during the Blitz, Americans came to sympathize with the English, and support for American involvement in the European war rose dramatically.

  More than just a propaganda piece, MRS. MINIVER succeeded as a movie, making its message all the more potent. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill commented that MRS. MINIVER was "more powerful to the war effort than the combined work of six military divisions. True or not, it remains one of the most important and socially significant films in American history.

  As a literary adaptation, the film's greatest success is the way in which it captures the distinctly human qualities of its characters (especially those of Mrs. Miniver) as originally depicted in Struther's book.

  

  The connection with Elham is two fold, firstly the author based the setting (Belham) and some of her characters on people she had met whilst in the Elham valley. Secondly she wrote the book whilst living in Admiralty Cottage, Rye which later became the home of Dennis Knight who wrote Harvest of Meschersmitts the book about Elham in 1940. Dennis was not aware of the connection at the time, later on he found that she had been in Coast Guard Cottage until it was commandeered by the MOD, causing her to move next door to his home Admiralty Cottage. (Information source - Dennis Knight 10/11/2006)

   

  

  Katie Johnson (1878-1957) ~ Not many achieve stardom in their '70s, but that is what happened to Johnson after her BAFTA-winning role as the little old lady whose Victorian rectitude outlasts and outwits a gang of thieves in The Ladykillers (d. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955). On the stage from 1894 and in numerous small film roles from 1932's After Office Hours (d. Thomas Bentley), she played many old ladies, including a German spy in I See a Dark Stranger (d. Frank Launder, 1946). Sadly, she died just two years and two films after her breakthrough.

  
      

  Pictures from the Lady Killers.

  Mrs Johnson lived with her son in West Bank, Elham which had been previously used as a private school. This was one of the schools that Audrey Hepburn attended when she lived in Elham, the other being the one run by the Rigden sisters.

  
  Reginald Fitzurse ~ (fl. 1170, one of the murderers of St. Thomas of Canterbury, was the eldest son of Richard Fitzurse, on whose death about 1168 he inherited the manor of Williton, Somersetshire (COLLINSON, iii. 487); he also held the manor of Barham, Kent (HASTED, iii. 536), and lands in Northamptonshire (Liber Niger, p. 216). He is sometimes called a baron, for he held of the king in chief. He was one of the four knights who were stirred up by the hasty words of Henry II to plot the archbishop's death. They left Bures, near Bayeux, where the king then was, and proceeded, it is said, by different routes to England, all meeting at Saltwood, then held by Ranulf de Broc, on 28 Dec. 1170. The next day they set out with a few men, and having gathered reinforcements, especially from the abbot of St. Augustine's, at whose house they halted, they entered the archbishop's hall after dinner, probably about 3 P.M., and demanded to see him. Reginald told him that he bore a message from the king, and took the most prominent and offensive part in the interview which ensued (FITZSTEPHEN, Becket, iii. 123, Vita anon., ib. iv. 71). He had been one of Thomas's tenants or men while he was chancellor; the archbishop reminded him of this; the reminder increased his anger, and he called on all who were on the king's side to hinder the archbishop from escaping. When the knights went out to arm and post their guards, Reginald compelled one of the archbishop's men to fasten his armour, and snatched an axe from a carpenter who was engaged on some repairs. While Thomas was being forced by his monks to enter the church, the knights entered the cloister, and Reginald was foremost in bursting into the church, shouting "King's men!". He met the archbishop, and after some words tried to drag him out of the church. Thomas called him pander, and said that he ought not to touch him, for he owed him fealty.
  
  After the murder had been done the knights rode to Saltwood, glorying, it is said, in their deed (Becket, iv. 158), though William de Tracy afterwards declared that they were overwhelmed with a sense of their guilt. On the 31st they proceeded to South Malling, near Lewes, one of the archiepiscopal manors, and there it is said a table cast their armour from off it (ib. ii. 285).
  
  They were excommunicated by the pope, and the king advised them to flee into Scotland. There, however, the king and people were for hanging them, so they were forced to return into England (ib. iv. 162). They took shelter in Knaresborough, which belonged to Hugh Morville, and remained there a year (BENEDICT, i. 13).
  
  All shunned them and even dogs refused to eat morsels of their meat (ib. p. 14). At last they were forced by hunger and misery to give themselves up to the king. He did not know what to do with them, for as murderers of a priest they were not amenable to lay jurisdiction (NEWBURGH, ii. 157; JOHN OF SALISBURY, Epp. ii. 273); so he sent them to the pope, who could inflict no heavier penalty than fasting and banishment to the Holy Land. Before he left Reginald Fitzurse gave half his manor of Williton to his brother and half to the knights of St. John. He and his companions are said to have performed their penance in the Black Mountain (various explanations of this name have been given; none are satisfactory; it was evidently intended to indicate some place, probably a religious house, near Jerusalem), to have died there, and to have been buried at Jerusalem before the door of the Templars' church (HOVEDEN, ii. 17). It was believed that all died within three years of the date of their crime. There are some legends about their fate (STANLEY). Reginald Fitzurse is said to have gone to Ireland and to have there founded the family of McMahon (Fate of Sacrilege, p. 183).
  (Information source http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/3203/FitzUrse.html )
  
   

  

  Rev. Richard Harris Barham ~ The "Thomas Ingoldsby" of literature was born at Canterbury, December 6th 1788. His family had long been residents in the archiepiscopal city, and had estates in Kent. He used to trace his descent from a knight who came over to England with William the Conqueror, and whose son, Reginald Fiturse, was one of the assasins of Thomas a' Becket (see above). Part of the family estate included a manor called Tappington Wood, often alluded to in the Ingoldsby Legends. One of the most famous stories being "The Spectre of Tappington", which mentions Denton and of course Tappington Hall itself (referred to as Tappington Everard).

  
  
  

  Lord Kitchener (1850 - 1916) ~ Lived at Broome Park and was probably best known for his famous recruitment posters bearing his heavily moustachioed face and pointing hand over the legend, 'Your country needs you'. As secretary of state for war at the beginning of World War I Kitchener organized armies on an unprecedented scale and became a symbol of the national will to win. He was killed in 1916 when HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine while taking him to Russia.

   

  

  Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909 - 1993) ~ Famous for Parkinson's law "Work expands to fill the time available etc", lived in Elham Manor House.

  English writer and historian, celebrated for his study of public and business administration, Parkinson's Law: the Pursuit of Progress (1958), which included the dictum: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

  Parkinson's Law first appeared as an article in the London Economist in 1955, based largely on his experience of bureaucracy as an army staff officer. It was a humorous guide to boardroom behaviour and decision‐making (or lack of it), exposing organizations that had become too large and unresponsive. He stated that administrators made work for each other to increase their staff numbers and enhance their own prestige. Parkinson introduced his second law in Law and the Profits (1960), which stated that expenditure always rises to meet income.

  Parkinson was born in Barnard Castle in County Durham, England, and educated at St Peter's School, York. After graduating from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he received a PhD in history from King's College, London. He was a senior history master for a year at Blundell's School in Tiverton, before joining the teaching staff of the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1939. At the start of World War II, he was commissioned as a captain in the Queen's Royal Regiment and then attached to the RAF as an instructor in 1942. Promoted to major in 1943, he was transferred to the General Staff of the War Office in 1944. Parkinson joined the history faculty at the University of Liverpool in 1946 and was Raffles Professor of history at the University of Malaya (now Malaysia), Singapore 1950to58. He was appointed visiting professor at the University of Harvard in 1958 and at the Universities of Illinois and California in 1959.

  W.L. Cowley A.R.C.Sc., D.I.C, Wh. Sch. (1890 - 1966) - lived at Wingate Farm, Elham
  Friend and associate of R.J. Mitchell the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire.
  Cowley's book "Tunnel Tests on High-Speed Seaplanes" Summarised Results of the National Physical Laboratory (N.P.L.) Researches on the British 1927 Schneider Trophy Machines. In the early part of 1926, tests were carried out in the N. P. L. wind tunnels upon models of high-speed seaplanes for the Schneider Trophy-Competition in America. Owing to lack of time it was decided not to enter British machines for that contest, but the wind tunnel work was continued, as the Air Ministry wished to further the development of high-speed craft. After the 1926 contest the Air Ministry decided to allow R.A.F. seaplanes to be entered by the Royal Aero Club, and to assist the Club in the competition in the following year. The high-speed seaplane work was, therefore, again applied to machines for the Schneider Trophy Contest.
  1944 published "Aerodynamics of the aeroplane" The Ronald Press Co. 
  For further detailed information click here.

Page last updated 19/01/2024.