The March lunch started off with the Chairman welcoming as a guest a potential new member, and presenting one of our members with a bottle of claret to mark his reaching the age of 80. After the Grace we sat down to a meal of grilled fillet of salmon, sauté potatoes, sauerkraut and tender-stem broccoli followed by a sticky toffee pudding with custard.
Our guest speaker, Dr Geoffrey Mead, then gave a lively talk entitled “The South at Work”. If anyone thought that the South had no history of industry, they were soon pout straight, from brick making , flint mining, and iron production, to boat building, fishing, and hop growing, not to mention activities such as smuggling goods into England, and also “owling”, smuggling goods like wool and leather out of England.
Much of our production was geared to supplying the needs of London, whether by barge, by cart, or on the hoof (droving animals into the city to markets such as Smithfield). As for the present day, with its emphasis on service industries, two of the biggest employers in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex area are the NHS and Gatwick Airport.
John Gilbert
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