The team
Other teams
If You're Going to Snodland... Find!
In sleuthing for literary connections to the Tonbridge & Malling district of Kent, we have made an unlikely find. The poet Thom Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, but he lived in California for over 40 years. Understandably, he is associated with bohemian San Francisco rather than...Snodland.
However, after the breakdown of his parents' marriage, & his mother's tragic suicide, Thom Gunn spent long periods living with his aunts in Snodland. In an interview with Hank Nuwer, Gunn describes the town:
"I also stayed with two maiden aunts who had a mild run in the country. It was very beautiful countryside, in Snodland, a town as ugly as any small industrial town in England, but with these very beautiful blue hills rising in the distance."
He also remembers his aunts' occupation, " It seems amazingly old-fashioned now, but we had a pushcart and carried a huge churn around. I would help them [deliver milk.]" http://www.hanknuwer.com/thomgunn.html
Snodland is the setting for one of his most famous poems, The Butcher's Son, from his Boss Cupid collection:
He stood in his shop and found
No bottom to his sadness,
Nowhere for it to stop.
When my aunt came through the door
Delivering the milk,
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/books/00/10/12/THOM_GUNN.html
Here's a link to a photo of Thom Gunn & his niece Charlotte taken during a return visit to Snodland in 1970:
11 September 2009 from Rob Illingworth
4 Comments
Leave a comment
Finds
- Grubby Tales from Beardy Ardagh
- The Men of Kent March On
- The Curse of Aphis Minimus
- One True Crime
- Why Pick Lydden?
- From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea!
- Dover- Life's a Beach
- The ideal home
- The Tramping Methodist - more tramping in Kent!
- The Small Years by Frank Kendon
- Everyone Loves Rupert Bear!
- Knole
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 4
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 3
- On the write tracks in literary Kent - Day 2
- On the write tracks in literary Kent Day 1
- On the write tracks in literary Kent
- Penshurst is the Place
- From Country Pursuits to the Western Front
- Edmund Blunden - echoes from Yalding church bells
- Jane Austen walk
- John Knatchbull from Quarterdeck to Gallows
- Catherine Aird
- More from the tramps .....
- Van Gogh in Ramsgate?
- Tissot A Passing Storm c1876
- The Downfall of a Reading Detective
- Male Georgian/Regency authors
- Bluestocking writers
- Sketches By Boz - We must leave town!
- If You're Going to Snodland...
- The Kent Tramp Trail
- The Altar in the Loft
- Regency and Georgian Literature with a Kent Connection
- Jane Austen and Godmersham by The Rev. S. Graham Brade-Birks
- Kent Clues!
Recent posts
- Denton Welch
- 45 London Road Sevenoaks
- To Penshurst
- Kent Finale!
- Mon 21 Sep 10.30 am DETECTIVE EVENT AT CENTRE FOR KENTISH STUDIES, MAIDSTONE
- Cat Lovers
- W H Davies
- Silence on the home front as my hard drive has died
- Jeffery Farnol
- Denton Welch, a look back to simpler times
- What Jane Austen really looked like !
- Life in the Country: With Quotations by Jane Austen and Silhouettes by Her Nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh
- First Meeting for Kent
- Jane Austen - Monster Mash Up
- Launch of Kent's Reading Detectives Team on 12 August
- Jane Austen Heritage Link
- Reading Detectives are starting soon in Kent
Help the team
Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!
Dr Andrew Ashbee of the Snodland Historical Society has contacted me with information about Thom Gunn's aunts & the butcher who is the central figure in Gunn's poem.
"[Thom Gunn's] aunts were Catherine and Mary Thomson, daughters of the farmer Alexander Thomson, living at Covey Hall farm, Holborough Road. The farm had to cease because its land was swallowed up by housing and by chalk excavation, so the two aunts had a milk round. Mary died a few years ago, but Catherine is still alive, nearly 100, and with a mind as sharp as ever....
The butcher/grocer was Henry William Pierce in the High Street,(shop destroyed in the early 1980s because it was on the line of the by-pass.)"
http://www.snodlandhistory.org.uk/
Hi Rob
As a Kentish Man I was intrigued to see you writing about Snodland since I was born just down the road in Larkfield and grew up the area in the 50s and 60s. I was born and raised in The Monks Head pub in New Hythe Lane , Larkfield and the only other pub with that name is in Snodland.
Really interested in following your research
Will
Hello Will,
Nice to hear from you,
The Snodland Historical society have a photo of the butcher's shop featured in the Thom Gunn poem.
I think that The Monk's Head is still in business, (unlike many other small pubs in the Maidstone area- sad to say.)
http://monkshead.wordpress.com/about/
I enjoyed your mermaid mystery & Jeremy Duffield's poem.
Love,
Rob
In an electoral register for Autumn 1945, Robert Norman Pierce is listed at 31, the High St, Snodland. I wonder if he is/was "the butcher's son?"