Kent - Hythe

Hythe is a small coastal market town on the edge of Romney Marsh.

Even before the First World War, Hythe was known as a military town, home to both the Royal School of Musketry and the Hythe Ranges. With the start of the war the military presence within the town expanded and came to include Canadian camps based at Sandling Junction. The Hythe Ranges were used as training grounds for different divisions.  In April 1915, news came that Bert Idiens, who used to live at Wickhamford but then emigrated with his family to Canada, was with the Canadian contingent at Hythe.  Letters of March and April 1915 reveal that machine gun training courses were run at Hythe; one of Cyril Sladden’s colleagues attended such a course.

From August 1914 to about the end of November 1914, Hythe was home to Fred and Florence Mourilyan.  They had taken lodgings at Gainsborough House, 18 West Parade when the outbreak of war meant that they could not return to their home in Belgium.  Just after the outbreak of the First World War, Julius and Cyril Sladden went to visit the Mourilyans and saw several battleships a good way off the town.