Mr and Mrs Johnstone’s Committee for Clayton’s Farmhouse 1914-1915

Updated 08 July 2016

Hon. Mrs FIELD, Ashurst Park

The Honourable Emily Maud FIELD nee HARDINGE

Widow (and second wife) of George Hanbury FIELD, and daughter of Charles Stewart HARDINGE, 2^nd Viscount Hardinge, of South Park, Fordcombe.

She lived at Ashurst Park with her son Reginald, step-son Cuthbert MORRIS-FIELD, JP, and step-daughters Isabel and Hilda who together sponsored a Belgian family for the duration of their stay in England [1].  Reginald was killed in action in April 1918. Her step-daughter Hilda FIELD was a VAD nurse at Bidborough Court and 8 Nevill Park Hospitals (Kent 74), and was awarded the Ordre de la Reine Elisabeth for her work.

Mr & Mrs FOOKS, Langton House, Langton Green

Solicitor Edward John FOOKS and his wife Beatrice Emmeline FOOKS nee ARNOLD

They had married at St John’s Roman Catholic Church, Gravesend, in 1876, and moved to Langton around 1910.  Mrs FOOKS’s late father George Matthews ARNOLD had been 3 times Mayor of Gravesend, and the family home was Milton Hall.  Mr FOOKS was a partner in the London law firm, Messrs Fooks, Chadwick, Arnold & Chadwick, and clearly spoke good French as he provided for the Courier newspaper the translation of an account of the experiences of one of the Belgian refugees from Herent, near Louvain [2].  He was for 20 years Legal Adviser to the R.C. Diocese of Southwark [3].  Their daughter Idaberga Mabel FOOKS  was a VAD nurse for the duration of the war, at Bidborough Court (Kent 74) and for two years on secondment to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in Russia and Serbia.

Mrs PARDINGTON, Glynlee, Clarence Road, Tunbridge Wells

Elizabeth Jessie PARDINGTON nee DICK

Wife of Dr George Lucas PARDINGTON, and daughter of the late William Bruce DICK, industrialist, inventor, and proprietor/lessee of the Tunbridge Wells Bishops Down Spa (now the Spa Hotel) from 1879 until, I think, but am not certain, his death in 1905.

Mrs PARDINGTON was also very active on behalf of the RSPCA and the Naples Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Mrs IREDELL, St Barnabas Vicarage

Annie IREDELL nee OSTREHAN of St Barnabas Vicarage, 31 Lansdowne Road, Tunbridge Wells.

Wife of the Rev. Henry Shrubb IREDELL, Vicar of St Barnabas Church, Quarry Road.

Mrs JOHNSTONE, Burswood  –  Hon. Sec.

Marian Ada JOHNSTONE nee YEO, of ‘Burrswood’, Old Groombridge, Kent

Wife of Edwin James JOHNSTONE, a former High Sheriff of Suffolk. They owned Burrswood from around 1906 until the 1920s.

Colonel HERBERT, Wyvern, Groombridge – Hon. Treasurer

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles HERBERT, C.S.I. 1909, Indian Army (Retired)

Husband of Edith Helen HERBERT  and father of Olive, Edith and Sophia. After a distinguished career in India, he and his family had settled in Groombridge. His obituary in the Kent & Sussex Courier of  11 July 1919 mentions that while living in the village he ‘inaugurated a flourishing band of Boy Scouts and acted as their Master’.

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[1] Kent & Sussex Courier – 18 September 1914

[2] Kent & Sussex Courier – The Heavy Hand of the Hun – 13 November 1914

[3] John Cunningham – “175 Years of St Augustine’s Parish Tunbridge Wells, 1838-2013”