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Kent
County News
2011-2012
In the presence of Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Kent, Mr Allan Willett CMG,
the High Sheriff of Kent, Mrs Georgie Warner, was installed at All Saints'
Church, Brenchley, on 3 April 2011 by His Honour Judge Jeremy Carey,
her signature being witnessed by The Right Honourable Lord Justice Aikens
PC. The service was led by the High Sheriff's Chaplain, the Revd Campbell
Paget, the Dean of Rochester, The Very Revd Adrian Newman, and the Chaplain to
the Immediate Past High Sheriff, the Revd Nigel Hale. The Honourable Mr
Justice Akenhead, the Chairman of Kent County Council, Mr Bill Hayton, the
Chief Constable of Kent Police, Mr Ian Learmonth, the Deputy Mayor of
Tunbridge Wells, Councillor Mrs Elizabeth Thomas, and the Under Sheriff, Mr
Roger Sykes, attended along with other guests from across the county, and
an account of his Year in Office (below) was delivered by the Immediate Past High
Sheriff, Mr Peregrine Massey.
 Georgie is using her coat of arms as her emblem of Office, as has been the custom of High Sheriffs for many centuries. On the left, as the shield is viewed, are the arms of Warner, described heraldically as 'Per Saltire indented Gules and Or two double Plumes of Ostrich Feathers in pale and two Balances in fess all counterchanged'. With these are 'impaled' (the term for a shield bearing the arms of husband and wife) the Garfit arms of her father's family: 'Sable a Bend nebuly Argent gutty de poix between four Goats two and two salient and bendwise a Bordure Argent'. The motto can be translated as 'Always constant and faithful', an appropriate guide to High Sheriffs, among whom were Georgie’s relations, William Garfit and Thomas Garfit, High Sheriffs of Lincolnshire respectively in 1892 and 1897.
2010-2011
“Yesterday upon the stairs
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today:
Oh, how I wish he’d go away!”
It has always seemed to me that that piece of doggerel verse captures the equivocal view of so many to the fountainhead of their religion. But it also seems not an inappropriate reflection of the parlous position of your High Sheriff on the day when he stands down from his office and hands over to his successor: now you see him, now you don’t.
Looking out at a sea of faces of past High Sheriffs, I feel a little as if I am standing at the pearly gates pleading with St. Peter to let me in.
I wish my successor a fruitful and enjoyable year: it is good to know that in Mrs Georgie Warner, supported by her husband Charles, the Shrievalty will be in capable hands indeed.
Many of those present today attended the Lord-Lieutenant’s Civic Service in Canterbury Cathedral on Tuesday last. This was the last such ceremony which Allan Willett will address before he retires later in the year, and I want to begin my account of my
Shrieval year by expressing my thanks to him and his wife Anne for all the encouragement and support that they have given us. It has been a privilege to serve during the Lord-Lieutenant’s final full year in office, and you do not need me to tell you what a force for good he has been for this great county of ours and for the Lieutenancy. He is truly the marathon runner: by comparison, a High Sheriff serving for only a year undertakes no more than a 100m dash!
While on the subject of the Lieutenancy, I also want to thank the Vice Lord-Lieutenant and the many Deputy Lieutenants, active and retired, who have given me such generous, energetic and unstinting support during my year.
In many respects this has been a year of milestones. In May, shortly after I was installed, we had a General Election, and I was pleased to serve as Returning Officer for my home constituency of Ashford, and to have oversight of the work of all the other returning officers across the county. I am pleased to say that no voters were locked out of the polling booths in Kent, and the process was entirely orderly.
It is of course essential that the role of High Sheriff is apolitical, and is perceived as such. The business of engagement with local political issues is therefore constrained, and necessarily so, but I have been pleased to get to know a number of our civic leaders at County, Borough, City and Town level, and in this context I make particular mention of the Chairman of Kent Country Council, Bill Hayton (here with us today) for whom this has been a year of mixed emotions but much achievement. To him and to his predecessor, John Davies, with whom I was also privileged to work in the earlier part of the year, I express my grateful thanks.
Shortly after the General Election we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation and the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, both events with great and abiding significance for the history of this country, but for none more poignant than for the people of Kent. On those occasions and subsequently, it has been an honour and a privilege to be in attendance at a number of visits to the county by members of our Royal Family.
Other milestones have included 150 years of the Cadet Force, in recognition of which I attended their summer camp on Salisbury Plain; 100 years of Girl Guiding with an uplifting service in Canterbury Cathedral; the installation of two Bishops at Dover and Rochester – and how good it is to know in that context that the Dean of Rochester, Adrian Newman, who is happily participating in this ceremony today, is shortly to take up his see as the newly appointed Bishop of Stepney.
These are all major and significant milestones, but I would be dissembling if I led you to believe that these events, important as they are, captured the essence of the High Sheriff’s role. A High Sheriff who spends his year supporting all those involved in upholding our justice system and working with all those charged with the administration of justice in the county will, in a county of the size and complexity of Kent, have a very full year indeed. And so it has proved.
I have been pleased to welcome visiting High Court judges into the county (and in that connection have spent some considerable time looking at the issue of how best to accommodate them securely and satisfactorily while they are with us. I am pleased to say that a solution to the judges’ lodgings dilemma now appears to be in sight.)
I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to work with our Crown Court and District Court Judges. During the course of the year I have seen the role of Resident Judge at Maidstone pass seamlessly from Judge Andrew Patience to Judge Jeremy Carey, who is installing his first High Sheriff today. I have fond memories of a fixture which I organised between the Judges and staff at Maidstone and the Judges and staff at Canterbury: the cricket was rained off but the croquet, bowls and other activities which took its place were competitive. Without in any way presuming to bind my successor, I very much hope the competition may have earned a place in the
Shrieval calendar.
I have spent time with many of our magistrates serving on the North, Central and East Kent Benches, and have involved myself in the work of the Magistrates’ Association, most particularly in connection with the consultative process which led to the decision to close the courts at Ashford and at Sittingbourne. And I want to pay tribute here to all who serve our county in a judicial capacity, and in the case of our lay magistrates, as volunteers. It is vital work that they do on our behalf; it is sometimes thankless; it is under-resourced; it is often lonely; it requires great skill, application, judgment and humanity to be a judge at any level. I have no hesitation in saying that we are well served at all levels in Kent, and in the financial circumstances in which we currently find ourselves all those who work in and support our criminal and civil justice systems will need unwavering encouragement and support from all of us in the community in the coming months.
During the year I have visited all our prisons in Kent, in some cases on more than one occasion. It seems to me that the public understanding of the service provided in our prisons is about a century out of date. We have some extraordinarily professional and sophisticated work going on day in day out in our prisons, and in my view this needs to be better recognised both by the media and by the community at large.
I have been pleased and honoured to see at first hand the work of Kent Police. Lord Justice Aikens reminds us that the work of the High Sheriff was often dangerous: it still is if, like me, you have patrolled Maidstone High Street on a Friday night with some inspirational beat officers last summer.
And, sparing his blushes, it has been a real pleasure to see the manner in which, and the energy with which, our new Chief Constable, Ian Learmouth, has gone about his business since he and his wife Deborah joined us from Norfolk last year. He and his senior officers inspire confidence in all they do on our behalf, and I have absolutely no doubt at all that policing in Kent is now in very safe and competent hands indeed, notwithstanding the demands that are being placed upon them, both as a result of the current financial circumstances and in the context of next year’s Olympic Games.
In other law enforcement areas, I have spent time with H.M. Border Agency; with the hard-pressed Probation Service; and with H.M. Coastguard at a time when they have seen their establishment dramatically reduced around our national coastline.
In respect of all these institutions, agencies and individuals, it gave me great pleasure to sound a very public note of congratulation and appreciation at the Justice Service which I organised at Canterbury Cathedral last September. This is the one opportunity a High Sheriff has publicly to honour all those who support and serve our Justice System. I repeat my thanks to them all today.
When I took up my office last April, I said that I wanted to find ways of supporting young people caught up in one way or another in the justice system, at one end of the spectrum as young offenders, or at the other as young victims of crime. And so my charitable focus has been very much in this direction.
We have some exceptional organisations working in these areas here in Kent. I am, for example, delighted to be a Patron of the Caldecott Foundation in its centenary year. My wife D and I are Patrons of Childhood First, a national charity with a home in Kent for children aged 5-12, offering therapeutic treatment to some of the most seriously abused and traumatised children in the country. We have attempted to raise the profile of organisations such as Dandelion Time; and we have been pleased to support the work of many other organisations working in the same areas.
We have also found the time to visit all of the hospices across the country, not because the work they do fits the template I have just outlined – far from it – but simply because we are enormous lifelong devotees of the late founder of the hospice movement, Dame Cecily Saunders. And once again, there is some inspirational work being done by our Kent hospices right the way across the county.
In the educational arena, I have taken parties of promising young schoolboy cricketers to Lord’s to encourage them to understand that they are not far away from those they are watching in either age or ability, and therefore to keep going; we have worked with NASA astronauts from the ATLANTIS space mission to encourage young people into engineering and the sciences; I have been working with a number of charities and businesses to bring greater levels of financial awareness and understanding to young people before they leave school for the workplace or the wider world; and I have lent support to a number of organisations, such as Kent Youth, which encourage public-spiritedness and a volunteering mindset from a young age. I have visited primary, secondary, grammar and independent schools and our three universities. In all these endeavours, I have tried to encourage adoption of the Obama mantra “Yes we can”, or, if you prefer, the Nike slogan
“Just do it!”.
There is, as you here will all appreciate, a common strand which binds together all the organisations and activities to which I have so far alluded. All of them wrestle with the societal problems that arise from young people growing into adulthood without the love and support they need – we all need – to make the most of our lives. I am sorry to say that we who have lived our adult lives in the post-world-war years have seen a steady erosion of the essential framework which all young people need to grow into useful, confident and fulfilled adults. And it is no answer for us now to shrug off responsibility for the consequences of that failure on to the hard-pressed courts, prisons, the police, or the teaching profession. We have a generation, probably now two generations, who are the victims of bad parenting and inadequate community cohesion. It behoves us all, across all walks of life and all sections of society, to redress the balance urgently.
Ladies and gentlemen, Kent is a wonderful county. I have lamented elsewhere the tendency for institutions, companies and individuals who should know better to omit the county name from letterheads, websites and corporate literature. A postcode is an inadequate substitute and appeals to none of the emotions that give us our sense of place and belonging.
One is honoured to take up any appointment graciously conferred by Her Majesty the Queen. It has been a fascinating and a humbling experience to serve as High Sheriff of this wonderful county, my adopted county. It is an experience that I would not have missed for all the world.
I have been enormously well supported by the Under Sheriff Roger Sykes and his wife Sabrina, by my Chaplain Nigel Hale and his wife Valerie; and by my PA Susie Fox, to all of whom I owe and express an immense debt of gratitude. But I would not have felt able to contemplate the task without the quiet, constant and selfless support of my wife D. It is right that, as ever, the last word goes to her!
God bless the Shrievalty
Long live the Lieutenancy
God save the Queen
Peregrine Massey
High Sheriff of Kent 2010/2011
3rd April 2011
2009-2010
The Revd Patricia Hill, Chaplain Leader at William Harvey Hospital, Ashford; Dr Harry Cragg, Lord Mayor of Canterbury; and Jane Rogers, High Sheriff of Kent 2009-10 at the Kent Prayer Breakfast in March 2010.The breakfast is held twice a year, under the patronage of the High Sheriff. It provides an opportunity for Christians, in positions of responsibility within their places of work and the community at large, to meet and listen to a speaker tell them how his or her faith has influenced their sphere of activity.
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