Research by a Bean Resident

The following is a summary of an article from CIRPLAN, the bulletin of the Society of Cirplanologists (Researchers of the Methodist Circuit Plans). The K.F.B. mentioned is K. F .Bowden the Librarian at Bacup, Lancashire who sent this to Dartford on 25th February 1983.

The information appeared in the Wesleyan Methodist Circuit Life magazine 1911, entitled " A Sub-postmaster and a Zoo", by the Rev. J. Edward Harlow.

BEAN --- an intriguing story found by K.F.B.

Transcribed by Neil Pearson-Coffey

Bean is at the bottom of the plan, but it occupies the highest place in a wide circuit. The membership is only two, but not even the minister's class in the big town, with its more than forty members, has anything like the average attendance of that class of two. If you look at the preaching appointments you will find the name 'Turner' there week after week. A man who makes puns once said, "Turner is always turning at Bean; no one else has ever been to Bean to take a turn".  The truth is, this tiny village that straggles along one or two lofty and lovely roads in Kent has no chapel or Sunday-school or trustees' meeting. The only really orthodox and Methodist thing is that Mr. and Mrs. Turner pay class-money; and they do it right loyally, believing that some day Methodism will have her opportunity in Bean, with two members for a start.

Come with me to the village post-office, where Mr. and Mrs. Turner live. I have been twice ( original author ). The first time of going was with a circuit steward, who knows all about a post-office. It was a sunny autumn day, and in our ignorance we lost our way, or, at any rate, we missed the direct line of travel for some roads are circuitous! At last, through country roads that seemed to negative one another, and on the contradictory advice of a certain 'guide', we found the place we sought ------------.

The dog 'Rover' was lost one night, and Mr. Turner's son Clifton was troubled because it was his brother's dog, and his brother had sailed for Queensland, leaving 'Rover' in his charge. After nearly two days' search they found him. He had slipped down an old shaft, called a dene-hole, where, it is said, smugglers used to hide. They heard the dog bark, but how to get him up they did not know. One ladder was lowered out of sight, but it did not touch the bottom. A second ladder was brought and fastened to the first, and a very long rope let down till solid ground was felt. Then they tied a rope around Clifton Turner's body and lowered him twelve or fifteen feet till he could get on the ladder. At a depth of forty feet he put 'Rover' in a sack, and the villagers --- for nearly half the village had assembled --- pulled them up........

My quiet talk with Mr. Turner was about Providence and Methodism, and the wonderful way he had been led and blessed. He came to these parts from Mildenhall, in Suffolk, thirty-three years ago ( i.e.1878 ... K.F.B.). In six years he passed from being servant to being master in a small way. One day he found that a change in his employer's arrangements would put him out of work. He was mystified and troubled, and tempted to be over-anxious. What happened? Someone said to him: "Mr. Turner, I hear you must lose your situation. Would you care to start a little business for yourself? If you have no capital, never mind; you once did me a good turn, and now it is my turn to help you". That friend was a friend indeed. Mr. Turner could bake bread, and his friend built an oven for him, and the millers were very kind. He bakes bread still, and grows fruit, and sells postage stamps, and carries the mail to Longfield every night. The men at the mill where smokeless powder is made, and all the villagers, know the sub-postmaster. In the photograph of postal officials he is the nicest-looking man with a beard near the centre. He is a local preacher, too, and his sermons are always brief, bright and brotherly.

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Mr. R. A. Baldwin adds the following scraps of information to the above intriguing story:

        "In 1869 Bean was virtually a name on a map. The 1869 25" map shows two farms and an odd house, and nothing else. What made it grow to be worthy of a pub and a post office I can only guess. An explosives factory was built sometime later in the area, a completely rural one, and must have been the cause, I cannot otherwise see why.

In Kelly's Directories for 1871 and 1895 Bean had no mention. Two farmers who lived in the area were under their farm names. By 1899 Bean was still not mentioned, but under Stone, which is the parish in which it fell, James Henry Turner is shown as grocer, baker, boot-shoe, china, glass, earthenware and hardware dealer of Bean. This is under the commercial heading. A separate entry shows Post Office. James Henry Turner sub-postmaster. To warrant a Post Office and a village store means there must have been a lot of housing in the area --- comparatively so. In 1913 Bean gets a heading under BEAN---"a little hamlet, at which place fruit is grown". Then there is perpetuation of the two entries for 1899. There is no chapel there --- if there was it would be in the Dartford circuit.  

K.F.B.

N.B. The Methodist Church is divided into districts, circuits and classes, the latter being the smallest division within the religion. The name was first used by the founder John Wesley which he used to describe the groups of people he preached to at Oxford University. 'Class money' is simply a method of funding the church by gathering money at a local level.

N.P-C.