Uses of West Malling Accommodation Block at airfield
Hi,
I was reading through the history if the airfield on your site. It was very interesting and I do remember when the Ugandan asian fefugees where homed there for a while. I had made best friends with one of the young girls that been relicated there with her family. I often went to visit her before her family were rehomed. Families had been seperated by hospital curtains in large rooms. They all used to eat in a large mess room.
When the mill where my father worked in Snodland closed, my family became homeless because we were in a mill house.
My mother, myself and brother were homed at Kinghill airfield in what I assume now as being (officers?)airmen quarters. I was only 5 at the time. Each family had two small rooms. One living area and one bedroom. We had to share other facilites with all the other families in the block. No men were allowed in the blocks…so we were seperated from our father. He had to find his own accommodation as a lodger in Maidstone.He didn’t drive, so we didn’t see him often.
The large gates were locked at night to prevent intruders and keep us in. The milkman used to give crystal jelly for our bones, cod liver oil and malt syrup.
We had mice holes in all of the rooms, where my mother used to have to put mousetraps out all the time. The sound of the traps snapoing in the night used to wake us up,as they were under our beds too!
We lived there in the hostel, as it was called then in 1964/65 until the housed were finished being built in Larkfield.
Hope this little snippet fills a gap in the history of the airfield.
