The return of the beautiful tabletop game
Plus the magazine keeping Kent history alive, Maidstone fish and chips keeps winning awards, upcoming Kent events, and more
If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, there’s a good chance you have encountered Subbuteo. The tabletop football game was created in Kent and was all the rage at some point, and while its popularity may have peaked, it still has a dedicated following. After the Subbuteo World Cup returned to Tunbridge Wells, the game is seeing a resurgence in Kent, so we’ve been finding out more.
Further down, we learn about the Kent magazine keeping Kent history alive, a Maidstone fish and chip outlet that keeps winning awards, our guide to the best upcoming Kent events, and lots more.
The return of the beautiful tabletop game
Subbuteo, the tabletop football game, was created by Peter Adolph in Tunbridge Wells. Following the company's sale, the game's production left Kent in 1982. Eventually, there was no longer even a club for the game in the town. However, last year, the Subbuteo World Cup returned the beautiful game to Tunbridge Wells, and now there is once again a club in Tunbridge Wells. We spoke to the English Subbuteo Association’s Alan Lee to learn more.
Subbuteo was created in 1946 by Peter Adolph in Langton Green, just outside Tunbridge Wells. “It was a game played by, they estimate, about seven million people back in the late 70s, and early 80s,” says Alan Lee, Chairman of the English Subbuteo Association. The tabletop football game is similar to the regular game, only at scale, and “basically you get three flicks with any one player,” Alan says. However, you must use your index finger or your middle finger to flick the player against the ball, as using your thumb is a foul or ‘an illegal flick.’
The pitch is also slightly different to a standard football pitch in that it has a ‘shooting area.’ “There's an extra line just outside the 18-yard box,” Alan tells me. I start to have flashbacks of a 10-year-old me, both hurting my fingers flicking the players or being upset that I had accidentally knelt on a player. “Yeah, a common memory is of fights with siblings because it was hard to get the game on the kitchen table.”
The players in the 80s could be quite brittle, but modern players can be more robust. Alan tells me there are splinter groups of the game. “You've got collectors of the old vintage teams. A lot of these will sell for maybe a thousand pounds.” There is a big market for collectors and for stadium builders as well. “I wasn't lucky enough to be able to afford the grandstands and all the accessories back then.”
The ESA promote both the vintage game competitions and the modern sports side of the game, which is played through the Federation of International Sports Table Football. A modern team usually has “a very professional type of figure”, with a flatter base than the older models and made with better materials, “which can withstand the intense game”.
The ESA facilitates the playing of the game and competitions, as well as encouraging collections and stadium building. There are currently 50 clubs across England, “which is a massive growth since covid,” including a club in Twydall, Gillingham. The ESA run the English championships, six events hosted by different clubs. They also run the English entry into an international Grand Prix, which features 200 players from all over Europe. They also host international opens, “which are development tournaments for the FISTF World Tour,” played in 26 countries worldwide, including Japan, Singapore, Brazil, the US, and Canada.
Peter Adolph sold Subbuteo to Waddingtons in the late 70s, who moved the factory out of Tunbridge Wells in the 80s, and interest in the game declined over time. “I was staggered that there wasn't a club in Tunbridge Wells. You couldn't buy Subbuteo in any shop in Tunbridge Wells”.
That changed last year when the ESA hosted the Subbuteo World Cup, and they contacted Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to host the tournament. “They have become partners with us now. They have been superb in terms of giving us space and support.” Having successfully hosted the World Club, the Langton Green Subbuteo Club launched in April. It runs at the Amelia Scott Centre and meets monthly on a Saturday afternoon. “If you play the game in public, people just come up to you and tell you their Subbuteo story.”
Alan himself got to the final of the English Championships in the 80s, where he lost 1-0. He has gone on to captain the England Subbuteo team in the modern game, though he notes that he doesn’t get to play as much anymore as “organising the World Cup was almost a full-time job.”
You can find out more about the English Subbuteo Association on their website, which has details of the two Kent clubs mentioned above.
The magazine keeping Kent’s history alive
Bygone Kent is a local history magazine which has been informing and entertaining readers since 1979. Taken over by Christine and Stephen Rayner in 2013, they were highly commended in the Kent Magazine of the Year category at the 2024 Kent Press Broadcast Awards. We caught up with them to find out more about their work.
Bygone Kent is a magazine entirely devoted to Kent history, started in 1979 by Hamish Mackay Miller, a Rainham printer and publisher. He “was approached by various history-based writers,” says Christine. “He had a publishing company, and they were approaching him to say, ‘Could we have somewhere where we could publish our work?’” Hamish could see the appeal in the publication, and in October 1979, 10,000 copies were printed of the first edition. “That probably tells a tale about why there are still a lot of old copies around,” notes Christine, who is clear that the print run is nowhere near 10,000 today.
Christine and Stephen Rayner, who both have a long history of local journalism, bought the magazine in 2013. The Rayners, as well as three other professional journalists, work on the magazine without pay. “That's what surprises some people, because it's a glorified hobby project, but we feel it's important. Any money that we take, we plough back into it to keep it going.”
The magazine has followers as far afield as Australia and America who have links with Kent. “We are telling stories which are vital to be held in the public eye, we feel.” As well as journalists, they have contributions from the oral historian and anthropologist Dr Chris de Coulon Berthoud, who recently spoke to our Medway-focused sister title, Local Authority. Chris came onto the team as “a marvellous researcher and innovative person.” Sadly, the team lost a member a year ago, “a very good friend of ours called John Coulter, an absolute stalwart, our fact checker, our terrier of facts.”
Stephen’s first connection with the magazine was when he was a reporter on the Chatham News, which is also where he first met fellow reporter, Christine. Stephen interviewed the editor of Bygone Kent when it was launched in 1979. “I went back to the office and said what a great idea it was, and no one paid any attention to me at all. They thought I was absolutely crazy.” It is at this time that I have a flash-forward and wonder, as a journalist named Steven interviewing the current owners of the magazine, will I one day be approached to purchase it?
When Bygone Kent celebrated its 40th anniversary, Stephen and Christine interviewed the founder, Hamish. “He is clearly somebody who had a vision, that history had a niche, and he wanted to assist history writers in passing on the information they had.” The magazine is quite different now from when it launched. Then it was “more intense, less interested in presentation,” says Christine. Stephen is a sub-editor with the Sunday Times and is more focused on how something looks. “The original features were usually theses,” says Stephen, “with postcard shaped pictures slapped on the page by the printer. It wasn’t properly designed at all.”
Despite being dull to look at, Stephen acknowledges that people did still buy them. “In fact, we still sell articles from it,” providing digital copies as a small source of income. “Income is not great,” Stephen admits, but “we don't lose money very often, we break even.” It's fair to say that Bygone Kent owes its two directors money. The income they do receive is through subscriptions. “We can’t get any advertising,” laughs Stephen.
Their plan is to create a Community Interest Company and broaden the company's remit to publish local writers. They also want to continue teaching journalism. Christine lectured at the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent until its closure. “I teach practical journalism and have done for five years there,” she says. “Both of us are very passionate about the continuation of good quality journalism.” Christine and Stephen have a century’s worth of journalism experience between them, and both feel they still have something to share about the state of journalism in the future.
Christine and Stephen agreed to buy Bygone Kent as a hobby project and work Andrew Rootes, an experienced journalist and historian who is Bygone Kent’s editor. “I worked with him on the KM,” says Stephen. “We soon realised we had similar interests.” Andrew is an expert on Higham, where he was brought up, Canterbury, and above all, Dickens. “We always used to joke about it with another guy called Crispin Whiting, saying wouldn't it be nice when we retired to have a hobby something like ‘Bygone Kent’. So there was a little bit of kismet.” The Rayners had never written for Bygone Kent before they took it over. “I'm not even sure I'd ever bought a copy because we always used to get a free copy at the office. I always used to read it. I had a big, big collection of them.”
They admit to not knowing what is going into each edition until fairly late in the day. The magazine has a long production cycle, and are always pleased to welcome contributors. “At the moment, we're half empty,” says Stephen. “Stephen starts panicking,” interjects Christine. “He always does until we can find a cover image and see the pages begin to fill.” Readers and contributors will send them stories out of the blue, “Kent is so rich in history. We will never run out of stories.”
You can find out more about Bygone Kent on their website, where you can also subscribe or learn how to contribute to the magazine.
Maidstone fish and chips keeps winning awards
Lewis’s Fish and Grill in Maidstone is an award-winning family-run business. We spoke to owner Gavin Lewis about managing a takeaway in a cost-of-living crisis, the work they do in the community, and being up for a Just Eat award.
Gavin describes his business as a new style of takeaway. “I would say gone are the days of the greasy fish and chips.” Lewis’s cooks in high-quality oil and at high temperatures, and they use a light thin tempura batter for the fish “just to make sure that the fish is nice and crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside.” They also have a grill serving peri-peri chicken, which is baked in the oven before being chargrilled.
Based on Loose Road in Maidstone, they provide a click-and-collect service and delivery to the surrounding area. “We've got a couple of benches outside in case you fancy it straight away, which is obviously the best way to have fish and chips.”
This is the seventh year of Lewis's Fish and Grill. They won Best National Newcomer at the Fish and Chip Awards, which is very much a thing, in 2020. They have been rated one of the best in the UK ever since. This year they are a finalist in the Just Eat Awards in the Innovation Category.
Business hasn’t been easy. Gavin has worked in the fish and chip trade for 30 years, but the covid pandemic hit shortly after he launched his own shop. “We've seemed to have gone from one crisis to another.” They have also been hit by a potato crisis from poor potato harvests caused by drought and now the cost-of-living economic crisis. “A large part of our demographic, who would have had fish and chips as part of a weekly or a fortnightly menu, are now moving more towards a monthly visit instead.”
Gavin sees this as part of a recalibration of how the meal should be perceived. “The thing about fish and chips is that we've always been seen as cheap.” However, that has been built around margins that are “super tight” compared to other takeaway options like Chinese food or pizza. “Fish is one of the last hunted and caught products that we have on the planet. Our fish comes from the North Atlantic where fishermen risk their lives to get it.”
Whilst the increase in prices has been challenging for the business and his customers, Gavin thinks this is how it should be and should have been for a long time. When external forces are affecting your two main ingredients, there is not a lot of control there. Lewis’s uses between 30 and 40 bags of potatoes and 100 kilos of fish, predominantly cod, each week. Whilst there are some other fish like pollock that are coming through because of the cost, “in the south, we are pretty sold on Cod. I think that that is going to be really hard to kind of break away from.”
Gavin sees that an important part of what they do is giving back to the community. In addition to providing paid employment, they also support local work experience opportunities and pay for a fully-stocked book vending machine at a nearby school. The giving back even extends internationally when Gavin makes an annual trip to the Faroe Islands as part of the International Fish Fryers.
“A lot of our fish comes from the North Atlantic, comes from the Faroe Islands, and Winston Churchill was a great fan of the Faroe Islands. The Faroese played quite a big part in helping to maintain a food supply to the UK during the Second World War.” Gavin and other international fish fryers are part of an event where they fry fish and chips for the whole island. “That can be around 10,000 portions in a day. It's great fun, but it's hard work.”
Out to Lunch: Lewis’s Fish and Chips
Seeing as we were there, it made sense to sample the food at the same time…
Lewis’s can be found on the corner of a busy one-way route in Maidstone. This can be a slight challenge if you are travelling by bus, as was this writer. For normals who are driving, it’s a simple system, and there’s parking. Some crazy people even order a delivery. Lewis’s is clean, open, and welcoming. It also provides benches outside where you can sit, eat, and watch the one-way traffic go by.
I ordered a large cod and chips, along with a side order of onion rings and a vanilla milkshake. Having previously discussed the challenges regarding the costs of fish and chips, it seemed reasonably priced.
The onion rings are some of the nicest I have eaten, not just in the history of food reviews for this and our sister publication Local Authority, but ever. I wouldn’t say you should go somewhere just for the onion rings, but it is a strong plus point, as was the delicious vanilla milkshake. But of course, the reason that you should travel to Lewis’s Fish and Grill is, thankfully, the fish and chips.
In a world where the cost of fish and chips has increased, some takeaways seem to overcompensate by over-portioning chips. This leads to, in the best case, chips being wasted and ending up in the bin, or the worst case, becoming overstuffed by starch and carbs. The portion size here was proportionate, providing the right amount of well-cooked chips. All of which is a preamble to the fish. The batter is crisp and tasty, and the fish is also well-portioned and melts in the mouth.
When fish and chips taste this good, it’s easy to see why it wins awards.
Upcoming Kent events
🍻 Sat 24 May - Kent Craft Beer Festival // Craft beers from breweries across the UK, alongside live music and street food. Hatch, Gravesend. Tickets from £10.
🥘 24 - 26 May - Chatham Maritime Food and Drink Festival // Local food and drink, with entertainment and dragon boat racing on the Sunday. Chatham Maritime, Chatham. Free.
🤼 Sat 31 May - UKPW Get Decked // Kent’s premiere professional wrestling organisation put on their biggest show yet. Chatham Historic Dockyard, Chatham. Tickets from £12.
🎤 Sat 31 May - Brian Bilston & Henry Normal // Two people reading some poems. Revelation St Mary, Ashford. Tickets from £23.
🏎️ 31 May - 1 Jun - Masters Historic Festival // Two days of classic motorsport action on the legendary Grand Prix circuit. Brands Hatch, West Kingsdown. Tickets from £27.
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