Kevin Ralph talks about film crews' use of the Old Forge Wartime House in Sittingbourne which is set to shut this month
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00:00 There is still hope on my side of things that if the film income, the rental to the
00:05 film industry keeps this alive, I'm probably speaking out of turn, but I
00:10 would like to think we could keep the museum open here maybe one day a month
00:14 instead of all week, but that's something to be discussed.
00:17 Well at the moment there's still enough people alive that come down here and
00:22 they're of an age where they experienced it, or indeed they have stories from
00:26 their family, so apart from people coming down and learning from this museum, for
00:32 example we do have a lot of schools that come during the week, we'll have WA
00:36 groups come down, scout groups, and it's interesting because we're not talking
00:42 about trench warfare all the time, we're talking about what it was like to live
00:45 in the 1940s on rationing, you know, just surviving the war in this country, not on
00:52 the front line, so it's a little less militarier, although we do have the
00:55 Open Militaria Day for the lads that like to get their weapons out, so
01:01 basically what you've got is something that's more special and more so
01:06 because the owner, they're the Gorman family, so their great-great-uncle
01:12 purchased this place at the end of, sorry, their great-great-grandad purchased this
01:16 place at the end of World War Two, so it's been in their family since then. He
01:21 turned what was a forge into his shop, so the actual building has a family history,
01:26 so as much as you get a real experience, because everything in the house is real,
01:30 you can sit on it, you can touch it, you've got that family background as
01:36 well, so there's a family legacy here, which is part of the town, you know, the
01:40 Gorman family have been in this town since then, and it really, I think, would
01:44 be a shame to lose that connection.