Lost bookshops of Medway

Number 48 Luton High Street, Chatham, is an unassuming terraced house with a potent history, a place where some of the more penumbral ideas of the Twentieth Century were mulled over. In the Kelly’s Directory of 1939, it is listed as the bookshop for the Medway Branch of the British Union of Fascists, run by H Dore. It is only listed in 1939, unsurprisingly, because on the 1st September of that year the Second World War commenced and Mosley’s fascists immediately became targets of suspicion. By May of 1940 members of the BUF began to face arrest and internment as potential 'fifth columnists,' and the shop was closed down.

On May 19th 1962 it opened again as a bookshop selling “Literature of the left and peace movements.” It was called the Kent Bookshop, and also operated as the headquarters for the Communist Party of Great Britain. It later became a print shop, called the Oldham Press.

Local poet Philip Kane recalled, “The shop was actually used as a commercial print shop in its latter days, run by a Communist Party member who was a retired head teacher. I can’t recall his name, but he printed all but the very first issue of our Deserted Streets fanzine so his name might be inside the covers of those. I honestly don’t recall the Kent Bookshop ever stocking a single book, let alone selling any!”

“The print shop moved in there around 1980 when Bill - I think that was his name - retired from teaching and set up his printing business. Until that point, the shop itself was generally an empty space, at least from my first knowledge of the place in 1976. There was an office upstairs, as the building was meant to be the admin HQ for the Kent District of the Communist Party, but frankly it was chaotic, even to my eyes, with files and documents scattered all over the place, so I don’t know how they managed to actually administer anything there. The basement was used for meetings and sometimes for social events, fundraisers and the like.”

Another of the lost bookshops of Medway was also at number 48, this time a second-hand and antiquarian bookshop at 48 Rochester High Street. This shop, operating a decade earlier than the one in Luton, was also short-lived, open only between 1929 and 1930. By 1933 it was back to being a bookshop under the proprietorship of FL Alloway, Secondhand and New Bookseller, and in 1938 it is listed in Kelly’s as WA Wanstall, Second-Hand Bookseller.