Queen Victoria’s Friend Has His Windows Blown Out

John Frederick Herring was born in 1795 and became a stage coach driver in the Borders. He turned to painting and became the most popular painter of sporting scenes in his day. He was rich, a friend of Queen Victoria and well known in society.

In 1852 he rented Meopham Park on a long lease where he lived very happily away from London where he had found “the stench all around the neighbourhood intolerable”.

Dennis Hill, a Leigh Historical Society member, has a copy of a long letter that Herring wrote to a friend abroad on 11 November 1855. (The full letter is in the Historical Society archives). In it, Herring is saying how much more money his pictures are now reaching now he lives in a big house in the country, when he interrupts himself:

‘BANG ... BANG. “What’s that?” “Father. Father. the PowderMills have blown up.” and so they have. We live only a straight half mile from some powder mills, and we have just had five shocks that shook the House to the foundations. ‘tis half past eight & very dark. When I went out to look, to the Gate that enters the pleasure ground, there were great flakes of Fire lying on the Grass. I have sent down to hear if any lives are lost, for though tis Sunday, I believe they are always at work. The last explosion broke 3 panes of a Glass in the Entrance Hall door, that was about 4 years ago, two men were blown to Atoms. My Coachman has just come back he says noone is hurt, but in another 5 minutes the Men would have entered the Mills to remove the 2 Charges that have just exploded, another of the interpositions of providence’

Herring lived for a further ten years at Meopham Bank, dying there and being buried at Hildenborough Church.