For our personality this month we went to the new flats at Badger Gate where we found Miss Hetty Brenchley.
Miss Brenchley was born in 1907 at Sturry where her father was the local policeman. During her childhood, due to her father’s work, they were often moved to various places in the county, she spent her school days in Herne Bay and Gillingham. Mr. Brenchley eventually became Superintendent of the Kent Police at Maidstone.
On leaving school Miss Brenchley worked at Freeman Hardy & Willis shoe shop at Deal. As her experience in the shoe trade grew she was promoted by Freeman, Hardy & Willis and did relief work for them until the early part of the last war, when she was given the management of a shop at Margate. Still with Freeman, Hardy & Willis she did various management relief work until twenty-one years ago when she came to Rye as Permanent managress of the Rye Branch.
At Christmas, after having worked at 32 branches of Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Miss Brenchley retired and moved from her flat over the shop in the High Street to Badger Gate.
1st. Rye Cubs
Miss Brenchley has many hobbies, but the most outstanding feature of her social life is her work for the 28 boys comprising the 1st Rye Cubs, of whom she is the Cub Master. Miss Brenchley has been with the Cubs for fifteen years, and, as a result, in October she received a Medal of Merit, which was awarded to her by the
Chief Scout for her outstanding services. Miss Brenchley said that she used to go camping with the cubs, but with her work at the shop and other hobbies later found it impossible to find the time. Many of the boys that were cubs under her have become Queen’s Scouts and some of them went on the Explorer Belt Expedition to Sweden. She is also a member of the B.P. Scout Guild. Another of Miss Brenchley’s hobbies is Botany. She belongs to the Wild Flower Society and, with a friend, spends her holidays at various parts of the country Wild Flower Hunting, this year she said she is going to Wales. Other societies she belongs to are the Horticultural Society and the Rye Natural History Society.
Hetty Brenchley has a twin sister who lives at Brede and is also a Flower enthusiast, and two brothers, both retired Kent policemen.
*Woggle…….A band of leather used by Scouters to hold their neck-a-chief in place
From the February 1967 issue of Rye’s Own
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