Swale Wassail

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Swale Wassail "Hands on the Past - Making it Last:
Sittingbourne High Street Living Heritage, Art, Conservation
and Community Festival 2025"

"SWAIL WASSAIL" will include several workshops leading up to our main event - a celebratory day that includes musicians, living history people and conservators, as surprise guest demonstrations/drop-in workshops in the Forum and along the High Street (AKA, the A2/Roman Wattling Street) all topped off with a procession: a 'HIGHSTREET WASSAIL' - a reinterpretation of the age-old traditional communi

ty orcharding mid-winter festivity brought into an urban context. A good-will and Highstreet re-invigoration event pioneered by the good people of Willesden Green.[https://www.facebook.com/WillesdenGreenWassail/]

We are going to animate the streetscape and thread together various activities and displays - relating to re-interpreting our town's particular sense of place / identity as both an urban hub and stopping place along the historic road between Dover and London where people from all over the world pass through in generations past, present and future, ...as well as... being rooted as a rural yet industrial town embedded within the living landscape of the North Kent Fruit Belt, steeped in traditional orcharding heritage, hop growing, brick, paper and barge making. This project is funded by UK Government, via SWALE Borough Council, designed to complement, build on, and celebrate present and past projects that AMTeC Heritage Science CIC has been undertaking in The Forum, in partnership with DGB Conservation and The Sittingbourne Heritage Museum, since 2009. We view this event as a fantastic legacy project for CSI: Sittingbourne – which won an international award IIC Keck 2012 (co-awarded with The Acropolis Museum in Athens!), and received extensive media coverage in national and local press and tv. Sittingbourne is the only town centre shopping mall with a conservation laboratory and there are at least 4 professional conservators based in Sittingbourne – unusual for this ‘niche profession’.

14/10/2025

We could receive £5,000 in the Movement for Good draw.

After 16 years of CSI: Sittingbourne Lab & Sittingbourne Heritage Museum having a home in The Forum, it is sad that we h...
12/10/2025

After 16 years of CSI: Sittingbourne Lab & Sittingbourne Heritage Museum having a home in The Forum, it is sad that we have been evicted - but positive if The Forum is soon to be thriving with all their shops occupied.

We have loved being based in the centre of town and meeting all who popped in and/or enjoyed participating in our pop up events.

Hopefully the museum will find a new, more permanent home for their collections to continue to be enjoyed and cared for & that more pop-up heritage, conservation, and/or paper, brick, metal… ‘making’ - Hands on The Past - workshops will be possible, from our new peripatetic mode.

https://www.amteccic.com/ is proud to have been co-awarded the 2012 IIC Keck award for best public engagement with conservation project (alongside The Acropolis Museum). And also we feel blessed for all the other pop up events funded by , , , and private donations that we enjoyed doing 😍

The Museum exhibition in the Forum is to close - October 2025

Big thanks to Sittingbourne.me for lovely write-up and photos !!
26/02/2025

Big thanks to Sittingbourne.me for lovely write-up and photos !!

The half term week provided a showcase of Sittingbourne’s historic past with a fun filled week of activities cumulating in the Swale Wassail festival which was held on Saturday.

22/02/2025

Wassail - Good health to Sittingbourne !!
Today we give blessings, prosperity & fun times !!

Fun activity trail for kids !!
22/02/2025

Fun activity trail for kids !!

We had a fun start to the weekend today with Hair braiding and metal bead making for our Hooden Horse’s mane 🙂 and setti...
22/02/2025

We had a fun start to the weekend today with Hair braiding and metal bead making for our Hooden Horse’s mane 🙂 and setting up our Roman hair pins and Oxford Archaeology’s 17th/18th century wig curlers display.

Special guest speaker Professor Duncan Sayer from University of Central Lancashire will be giving a talk!!"How artefacts...
22/02/2025

Special guest speaker Professor Duncan Sayer from University of Central Lancashire will be giving a talk!!

"How artefacts and DNA tell us their stories from our deep past" at 2:30pm in Sittingbourne Heritage Museum :-)

He and archaeologists from the recent BBC Digging for Britain programme, involved with the site in Kent where "that astonishig 6th century sword" was found, will be around to chat about the sword and other Anglo-Saxon finds at the table in the Forum. 12:30-3:30

Yay - here's our schedule of our upcoming festival !! This coming Saturday :-)
17/02/2025

Yay - here's our schedule of our upcoming festival !! This coming Saturday :-)

We've been busy with preparations for our Wassail festival & Half Term workshops - very excited to start posting about m...
12/02/2025

We've been busy with preparations for our Wassail festival & Half Term workshops - very excited to start posting about more details...

This Saturday, 10:30-4:30, we'll begin with a 'taster' for the next Saturday:.. As well as celebrating the town's papermaking industry, we'll be looking back at our Anglo-Saxon connections and we have 2 special guests: Archeologist Dr Andrew Richardson from will be talking about his work, alongside the fabulous ring sword - as recently seen on BBC's Digging For Britain (look out for it in our green coffin museum display case !!) has added to our Anglo-Saxon display in unit 21 and our town's display is in the CSI lab & Sittingbourne Heritage Museum window, unit 21.

Toni Mount and her husband will be bringing along some of her recent books and their early medieaval apothecary display too !! www.tonimount.com
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toni-Mount/e/B0034P0FF8/
https://www.facebook.com/medievalwriter/
https://twitter.com/tonihistorian
www.SebastianFoxley.com

Address

Unit 21 The Forum, Sittingbourne High Street

ME99BA

Telephone

+447973856311

Website

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