Tourism, heritage, aspiration, interpretation and identity. The search for creative space.

Virginie Whittaker, Towncentric Visitor Manager.
Meeting 10 May.
•     The perception of the town needs to be changed to encourage more people to come.
•     In 2012 the aim is to get lots of new visitors staying in Gravesend and travelling up to the Olympics on the train. Additional accommodation will be provided in liner ships moored on the Thames, as well as two temporary campsites.
•     A new pontoon at the end of the Old Town pier will enable pleasure cruisers to once again deliver tourists direct to the High Street.
•     2012 is also the Dickens Bicentenary.
•     Gravesend has many individual historic gems, which need to be more accessible so that visitors feel there is always something new to discover.
•     The town is no longer about heavy industry and is surrounded by beautiful countryside and riverside walks.
•     New audio walks will be launched in July, to take visitors on a tour of the historic highlights of the town.


Two women overheard in Gravesend Library.
5 May
•     What’s the point of the new pontoon? What will people do when they disembark? Go to the pound shop?


Gravesend Historic Society.
12 May Discover Gravesham walk with Tom Bains.
13 May meeting in market cafe and visit to St Andrew's Art Centre.

Lynda Smith (author of 'The Place to spend a happy day. A History of Rosherville Gardens.')
•     Victorian pleasure seekers required elaborate entertainments and there was always a tension between the high-brow aspirations of some and low-down behaviour of others.
•     So many intricately researched stories about the characters who populated the town for 70 years from the 1830s.
•     All that remains of Rosherville now is a model in Towncentric.

Tom Bains (author of 10 books on the pubs and taverns of Gravesend).
•     Hundreds of pubs, where they stood, what they were called, what became of them. Which were his favorites? which did his Dad visit?
•     Walking, pointing out empty places where pubs once stood.
•     Sense of loss.

Sandra Soder.
•     Saving the town heritage, sometime from skips. Fighting to keep the museum going. Safe guarding the archive. Artifacts wrapped in red tape, hidden in dehumidified storage. Might consider lending some objects to the project.


Tony Larkin.
•     Encyclopedic knowledge of the town. Interpreted at every step. Accompanied by a commentary on decades of struggling with authorities to have local history told and to have his voice heard. 
•     Feels that what people who visit Gravesend like is the fact that it is different, quirky and full of character.


Where now?


It feels like the Talking Halls project is in the middle of a tangle of beliefs about the place of heritage in interpreting Gravesend's identity, which goes back to the earliest days of tourism and Victorian civic aspirations. Deciding how to tie together all the elusive treads is an ongoing debate (see also 'A Museum for Gravesham' feasibility study.)


How is it possible to respond to this situation as an artist? On one hand every aspect of the heritage story is interpreted in microscopic detail, leaving no room creative discovery. On the other hand the evocative objects and places that could spark original ideas are inaccessible, in store or have ceased to exist.


Perhaps the artist residency part of the project needs to draw back from the contested and highly scrutinized centre ground and seek out a wider perspective. Move instead to the margins.


Karen Butti, the restoration architect for the Old Town Hall, told me the story of how the workmen fixing the roof were very slow at completing their work because they kept stopping to watch the ships go by on the Thames. The roof is inaccessible now, but the desire to stand in the heart of the building and metaphorically look up and out to a clear horizon feels increasingly pressing.


Lucy

Rosher family album, showing a series of photos of Thames shipping. From Gravesend Library collection.

Penny a liners are droll fellows

The Gravesend Omnibus, preserved in the local library, was a mischievous rag aimed at the steam boat punters. Published weekly and for the safety of the editor, one hopes anonymously, it describes itself as "an impertinent publication ... daring to depict the local follies of that exquisitely irritable asylum of Cockneys". People singled out for ridicule include "Cockney Fashionables" who "be in perpetual grin" at young ladies promenading on the pier and pretentious Londoners, including one who at the opening of the Literary and Scientific Institution "would insist on making a speech," resulting in "several gentlemen amused themselves by pelting him with oranges." All very "droll" I am sure.
Each edition features sketches of the local people the tourist would encounter. The Steam-boat Captains and Stewards, the Hotel Proprietors, the Ticket Collectors and Public House Landlords. A flavor of the uncomfortable relationship between tourist and tourist industry employee is capture below. 

Lucy

Advice from Mayor Arnold himself

 Published in 1896

From collection of historic books available in Gravesend Library.


Lucy

Street party in Gravesend

Lucy

Tourism's influence on the Town hall

Across the face of the Old Town Hall is carved “REBUILT A.D. 1836 IN THE MAYORALTIES OF M. TROUGHTON AND R.OAKES. ESQRS. A.H.WILDS. ARCHT.” Although it might not be obvious looking at the building now, its appearance is a testimony to tourism.


The architect Amon Henry Wilds’ background was in the development of Brighton as a boom tourist town and appointing him was part of the Town Council’s aspirations for Gravesend to achieve the same popularity and success. The Greek Revival style Wilds employed had its origins in the Grand Tour, when collectors and connoisseurs began to explore and record the architecture of Greece. The passion of these Grand Tourists for ancient Greek public monuments was distilled to become the recognised architectural shorthand for civic pride on a smaller scale, at a time when Town Halls were gaining social influence.


The first steamboats had started bringing tourists from London in 1815 and by 1840 reports estimate that 20,000 visitors a week flocked to Gravesend. It was described in the 1840 “Directory of Watering Places” as having “a most romantic appearance, and in point of view, health and pleasure, Gravesend will yield to none.” Disembarking from the Town Pier tourists crowded up the High Street past the proud new façade. This is the essential axis of the Old Town Hall, as shown here in this print from the mid nineteenth century, which distorts the true perspective to emphasise the vital relationship between the two. The prosperous period was soon in decline as by 1849 the London tourists were defecting to Margate on the train.

The second inscription on the building reads “RE-CONSTRUCTED DURING THE MAYORALTY OF CEO.H.EDMONDS. ESQ. 1882-3” The alterations were largely internal and resulted in the confectionary of plaster mouldings and gilding which is so appealing in the restored decor today. These new Victorian embellishments were in part funded by a second wave of London tourists, attracted to the Rosherville Gardens. This souvenir teacup and saucer hints at the gentile and convivial pastimes the pleasure seekers experienced.

The Gravesend of this era must have been a strangely unequal mix of affluent visitors and local social inequality, brought about by the growing pains of the industrial revolution. The uses of the building and the commercial influences on the town have undergone many significant changes since then. However, once again the Town Council seems to be looking to tourism as an industry, not only to bolster the prosperity and strengthen the identity of the town, but also to provide a layer of meaning and functionality to the building, whose civic functions have also moved on. Among the many intertwining stories encapsulated in the Old Town Hall, it makes me wonder if tourism might be a thread that links the past and future of a place that is so important for representing the aspirations of the people it serves.


I am looking forward to being a tourist at the Royal Wedding celebration parade in Gravesend this week and joining in the convivial atmosphere as the crowds pass up the High Street in front of the Old Town Hall. The bunting is up and the school children have completed their costumes. The traditional brass band will be joined by bhangra drummers and a brazilian salsa group, as a testimony to a new sense of civic pride.


Written with reference to Alan Baxter & Associates Conservation Plan document produced for Kent County Council May 2004. Teacup photo from the Discover Gravesham website.


Lucy

Gravesend's Vaisakhi Parade

Lucy

Town Hall colour and gilding

Went to visit the Old Town Hall today, with the intention of following up on the architectural clues and searching out subtle traces and memory marks. Instead got swept away with enthusiasm for the colourful, decorative and flamboyant details. 

Lucy