Sandwich Society Journal
The Sandwich History Society considers it important to preserve the information, insights and personal perspectives on Sandwich contained within the journal of the now dormant Sandwich Society. We will be making the full series of publications available online, including volumes currently undergoing digitisation. These can be found on the web pages titled “SSJ” (an abbreviation necessitated by character limits).
We are extremely grateful to Ann Harrison-Brooks for both maintaining a complete set of the Journal and for providing the introduction to the Society and its publication that follows.
The Sandwich Society by Ann Harrison-Brooks, former editor The Sandwich Journal
According to the Chairman’s Report in The Sandwich Society Newsletter Souvenir Edition 1993 (Vol 1, No 14, p1) the Sandwich Society was founded in 1967, as a Civic Society. The Life President, Patricia Lavers (1919-2007) made it her life’s work. She stated that the Society’s mission was to “preserve [the] heritage and to endeavour to protect, maintain and enhance the environment of our historic town and surrounding area” (The Sandwich Society Newsletter, Vol 1, No 1, Spring 1983, p2).
For over fifty years the Society continued to keep a watchful eye on, and was an advisory voice for, the welfare of this historic town. It did, on occasions, taken action and applied pressure as appropriate, to fulfil the Society’s purpose. It appraised town planning applications, attending the Town Council’s Planning meetings and feeding into the consultation process for proposed new developments when necessary.
Traditionally, the Society’s committee has included Sandwich Town Councillors and District Councillors, enabling it to better appreciate and understand the basis of policy decisions and current local and District council thinking. Members’ subscriptions funded the Society, which was a registered charity. This income enabled it to make a limited number of grants to other local groups where their activities, or a specific project, were felt to be of benefit to Sandwich and the local area. The Society has also had an educative role in terms of drawing issues to its members’ attention via the Sandwich Society Journals, the open lecture at each AGM, and the Society’s organisation of Open Heritage events in partnership with English Heritage.
It was Patricia Lavers who oversaw the introduction of the predecessor of The Sandwich Society Journal: The Sandwich Society Newsletter. The first issue was produced in Spring 1983 and nineteen further issues followed, ending with number twenty in 1999 at which point Patricia Lavers stepped away from the role of Editor and from the position of Chair of the Society. She then handed over the latter role to Keith Wells, who chaired the Society successfully until his death in 2013. It was soon after Keith took over as Chair, that he invited Ann Harrison-Brooks to take over as Editor (in 2001) and in November 2002 she produced the first issue of The Sandwich Society Journal. It carried a new cover design featuring the 1788 cartoon of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792) ‘sandwiched’ between two eighteenth-century ladies. This was replicated on every subsequent issue, each one in a different colourway with the exception of a full colour cover for the special edition in 2012-2013 honouring the memory of Keith Wells, and again in 2021-2022 to mark the final twentieth issue in this series.
When Ann Harrison-Brooks became Editor, her aim was to provide an annual Journal which, in its appeal, would be as broad as its readership. She wrote in the final issue (number 20) that her intention for these publications was to provide material that had a “fairly wide appeal [with] a range of subject-matter in each issue”. Across the twenty issues compiled by her are articles relating to the town’s various businesses, local societies, and individuals whose contributions to the life of Sandwich and environs were deemed worthy of record. There are articles focussing on the town’s history and architecture and others concentrating on the concerns of the day. She also tried “to include enough articles to give each Journal sufficient ‘bulk’ so that it would attract more than one glance, ie, to make it a publication that readers would want to keep on their shelves and return to” (The Sandwich Society Journal, Volume 2, No 20, 2021-2022, p 46). It did indeed prove to be the case that hard copy full sets of the Journal (Volume 2) became much sought after.
Digitisation brought the opportunity to make this collection available to any reader with internet access. It is hoped that this will prove to be a useful resource for contemporary and future researchers, and the Sandwich History Society is to be thanked for making this possible.
Ann Harrison-Brooks MA DipAdContEd FRSA
Editor 2001-2022
