Queen's own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum & Help for Heroes Fundraising

One of Kent's Military Museums is celebrating its 50th year of being open to the public this year. A few years ago the last CO & curator died and the collection being based in Maidstone Museum was handed over to the Museum & Borough Council to run & administer. In the current day and age of Budget cuts & credit crunch threats to the public sector this could be a worry. However Maidstone Museum won a bid from the Heritage Lottery fund to expand its display area which was desperatly needed, as although it is the Museum of Maidstone it also in all reality  the 'Kent County Museum' with collections from all over Kent also given display space ' from Dinosaurs to the best Japanese collection outside of London'!

While the redevelopment of the museum will take place over the next couple of years and affect availability and display of some material, the West Kent's room in the museum will remain open and indeed much is planned to celebrate the regiments history & the military history of Maidstone.

Now as my scanner isn't coping with the leaflet very well I will post & advertise each of the events on this blog and will look into redesigning this blog to enable anyone to access information on Kent Military Museums & military sites of interest. I wil probably start a seperate Kent Military History blog and link from Victory V & use it to provide information for visitors to the County.

Also on the museum 'breaking news' page is the following article :
Somme to Staplehurst Walk

A group of five local men will be undertaking the challenge of walking approximately 150 miles from the Somme in France back to Staplehurst in Kent to raise money for the Help the Heroes Charity. This event is registered with the Help for Heroes charity and will take place between 10th April to 17th April 2010. One of the men taking part is a descendant of Thomas Harris whose Victoria Cross medal is on display in the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regimental Museum. The men taking part themselves have 29 years service with The 2nd Battalion, the Queens Regiment.

The event is listed on the Help for Heroes website in the national events/Kent section. Reading this link made me aware what everyone is doing for the charity perhaps us Bloggers should think about some kind of blogging event .....perhaps a sponsored blog day where people who read our articles donate via Just Giving towards the Charity? Thoughts??

If you would like to make a contribution by sponsoring the Somme to Staplehurst event, then this can be done by the Just Giving website.