CENTENARY COMMEMORATION OF ROTHERMERE GIFTS

BENENDEN COMMEMORATES CENTENARY OF ROTHERMERE RECREATIONAL GIFTS

 

A tree-planting ceremony was held on the Benenden recreation ground, adjoining the Village Hall, on Saturday September 21, 2024, to commemorate the centenary of major gifts to the village by the first Viscount Rothermere for the recreation of parishioners.

 

The ceremony was organised by Benenden Village Trust, the charity which now oversees Lord Rothermere’s legacy.  Its assets include Benenden Village Hall and its recreation ground and children’s playground; the Pavilion hall at Iden Green and its adjoining recreation ground and children’s playground; and St George’s Hall in the centre of Benenden, which houses the village Pre-School and Social Club. The trust also owns the land on which sit the Iden Green Tennis Club and the Benenden Bowls Club.

 

Martin Dickson, the current BVT chairman, welcomed guests and noted that the trust’s list of assets underlined the very central role it played in village life, even though it was not particularly well known.

 

The tree - an English Oak, donated by Martin - was planted by David Harmsworth, the first chairman of BVT, which was founded in 2018 to take on oversight of the trust’s assets. David gave a fascinating speech in which he outlined Lord Rothermere’s career, his connection with Benenden and the reason for his gifts to the village, commemorating the deaths of two of his sons in World War I.

 

David also noted that, while coincidentally he happens to share his surname with the family name of the Viscounts Rothermere - Harmsworth - he knew of no direct connection between the families.

 

David’s remarks can be read in full below.

 

Both he and Martin thanked trustees for overseeing the Rothermere legacy, both now and over the past 100 years, and for all their hard work on behalf of the village.

 

However, Martin also noted that the trust currently faced a cash crunch, since outgoings substantially exceeded income, due to general inflation, rising staffing costs and the need for extensive maintenance of its old buildings. It therefore welcomed donations and offers of voluntary help.

 

He said trustees had been developing plans to ameliorate the problem, with new initiatives including a fund-raising film night at the village hall and the much-welcomed return of football to Benenden recreation ground after an absence of many years. BVT looked forward to celebrating a second century in 2124.

 

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David Harmsworth’s speech in full:

 

Up at Hemsted House, the Girls’ School, there’s an impressive stone fireplace in the Entrance Hall with a coat of arms above it – crossed rolled newspapers, with four flying bees. 

 

When I first visited Benenden almost exactly 50 years ago, I had no idea why it was there, until I was ushered into the Headmistress’s study and Betty Clarke fixed me with beady, teasing eyes and asked me if I had noticed my family coat of arms.  I had to confess both that I hadn’t noticed it and that I had no known connection to any famous Harmsworths. I still know of no blood connection! 

 

However, I got the job and I’m grateful that when Lord Rothermere sold Hemsted Park a hundred years ago, it was sold to the Founders of the School.  He also left gifts of land to the Parish which have been valuable to generations of us ever since.  Hence the commemorative tree.

 

Those crossed newspapers and the bees are good icons for just how Lord Rothermere came to be able to afford to buy Hemsted Park in 1912.  Constant activity and publishing.  His father Alfred Harmsworth was a not-very-successful barrister, his mother the Irish daughter of a land-agent. Together they had 13 children; Harold Harmsworth was the second son.  He left school at 16.

When he bought Hemsted it was as Sir Harold Harmsworth, Baronet of Horsey. No fewer than three of his brothers were also to become Lords. His older brother Alfred was the first. At Stamford Grammar School he had launched a school magazine. He started work as a journalist. He wrote frequently for the greatest publishing success of the time, Tit-Bits. Alfred, at the grand age of 23, decided to set up his own publication, but to raise the thousand pounds required he needed the help of his younger brother Harold. Together they launched Answers to Correspondents, often devising themselves the questions which they would then answer!  It was a great success, and they followed up with further titles - Comic Cuts, Boys' Home Journal, Pluck, Marvel, Boy's Friend, Forget--Not, subtitled "A Pictorial Journal for Ladies". Home Sweet Home, Home Chat and Sunday Companion

 

Six years later the brothers purchased the Evening News and two years after that launched the Daily Mail.  Busy publishing bees indeed! And the growth and acquisitions went on with the creation of Associated Newspapers Ltd.   From Baronet, Sir Harold Harmsworth was elevated to become Baron in 1914, taking the title Lord Rothermere of Hemsted. He loyally supported the government during the war and in November 1917 was appointed as Secretary of State for Air. Two of his sons, Vyvyan Harmsworth and Vere Harmsworth, both joined the British Army, and they are a large part of the reason we are here today.

 

Vyvyan in 1914 was a student at Oxford. He enlisted and as a Captain in the Irish Guards was wounded on several occasions in France, finally so severely that he was repatriated but died in hospital two months later, aged 23.

 

His younger brother Vere was a pupil at the Royal Naval Colleges in Osborne and Dartmouth and in August 1912 gained the rank of Midshipman. Although he had been discharged because of a hearing problem, he volunteered in 1914 for the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve and was assigned to the Royal Navy Division.  He was captured in Antwerp and escaped to serve in Gallipoli, before being sent to France, where he died, shot in the throat, on the first day of the Battle of Ancre in the Battle of the Somme.

 

The following month Lord Rothermere tended his resignation as Secretary of State for Air. David Lloyd George replied: "Your sacrifices to the national cause have been so heavy, and the strain imposed on you so cruel that it would be impossible to deny you the right to some repose. Sympathy in these matters is generally best given by silence, but I am sure you know without my telling you how much I sympathise with you in your losses and in the way in which you have continued your public duties in spite of everything."

 

In 1919, he was further elevated to became Viscount Rothermere.  But one can imagine just how his hopes for his sons at the house here had been dashed. Moreover, his brother was a sick man and when he died in 1921 Lord Rothermere took full control of the newspaper empire.

 

This recreation ground was his gift to us in memory of Vyvyan; in memory of Vere, he gave the recreation ground in Iden Green; he also gave land for allotments, and the St George’s Club building built by Lord Cranbrook.

 

It feels, as one looks back, as though we are handling the acorns that have fallen from the giant trees of the past. The grandees have departed, but they have left behind a really significant inheritance. Lord Rothermere was at the forefront of producing educational publications; I’ve no idea what he thought about passing on Hemsted House to become a school, but it happened only a couple of years after he started to publish instalments of the Harmsworth Encyclopedia.

 

In paying tribute to Lord Rothermere’s thoughtful generosity, I’d like also to pay tribute to the way in which over the years many people have stepped up to looking after our inheritance – all those Parish Councillors who acted as the Trustees of the Harmsworth Memorial Trust and made bold decisions which led to the repurposing of the allotment plots for valuable housing and provided the recreation grounds with playground facilities, the Iden Green Pavilion and the Benenden Village Hall. The management and future of these assets are now in the care of the Benenden Village Trust – long may it flourish!

 

“Mighty oaks from little acorns grow” There is an oak in Hemsted Park next to our house which is getting on for 400 years old – it occurs to me that if this oak grows as well, it will be here for the 500th anniversary of Lord Rothermere’s gift – shall we all gather again in 2424?

 

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