Wartime house living museum set to close

Kevin Ralph talks about film crews' use of the Old Forge Wartime House in Sittingbourne which is set to shut this month

Transcript

00:00 There is still hope on my side of things that if the film income, the rental to the

00:05 film industry keeps this alive, I'm probably speaking out of turn, but I

00:10 would like to think we could keep the museum open here maybe one day a month

00:14 instead of all week, but that's something to be discussed.

00:17 Well at the moment there's still enough people alive that come down here and

00:22 they're of an age where they experienced it, or indeed they have stories from

00:26 their family, so apart from people coming down and learning from this museum, for

00:32 example we do have a lot of schools that come during the week, we'll have WA

00:36 groups come down, scout groups, and it's interesting because we're not talking

00:42 about trench warfare all the time, we're talking about what it was like to live

00:45 in the 1940s on rationing, you know, just surviving the war in this country, not on

00:52 the front line, so it's a little less militarier, although we do have the

00:55 Open Militaria Day for the lads that like to get their weapons out, so

01:01 basically what you've got is something that's more special and more so

01:06 because the owner, they're the Gorman family, so their great-great-uncle

01:12 purchased this place at the end of, sorry, their great-great-grandad purchased this

01:16 place at the end of World War Two, so it's been in their family since then. He

01:21 turned what was a forge into his shop, so the actual building has a family history,

01:26 so as much as you get a real experience, because everything in the house is real,

01:30 you can sit on it, you can touch it, you've got that family background as

01:36 well, so there's a family legacy here, which is part of the town, you know, the

01:40 Gorman family have been in this town since then, and it really, I think, would

01:44 be a shame to lose that connection.