This video remembers President John F Kennedy visit to Forest Row in East Sussex, from BBC One South East Today’s On The Map series.
Forest Row’s history goes back centuries, but it’s the visit of one of the 20th centuries most famous politicians that made the biggest headlines.
Sara Thornton meets a man who remembers the day John F Kennedy came to worship in the village’s Roman Catholic church.
Release date: 30 June 2021
Transcript of President John F Kennedy visits Forest Row
At the gates of the Ashdown Forest lies the village of Forest Row.
Once a small hamlet, it’s grown steadily over the last 150 years, and today it’s a busy and bustling large village.
One of its earliest dwellings is Brambletye House, or houses. In fact, there were two. The first mentioned did Doomsday, and this the second built in the early 1600s.
But this Jacobean country house barely lasted decades. Its owner was found to be housing arms in the English Civil Wars, and there are conflicting stories around whether the house was blown up by Cromwell’s men or left to rot.
The ruins of this house are evidence of centuries of British history, but it’s actually Forest Row’s brief brush with 20th Century American history that brought us to the village today.
June 1963, the US President John F Kennedy touches down in the UK to visit Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at his Sussex home for the weekend, and on the Sunday morning, a visit to a tiny Catholic Church in Forest Row.
Tony Lewin, an 11 year old schoolboy at the time, stood in awe mere feet away from the world’s most powerful man.
“We have lots of kids behind the barrier there. And we saw the motorbikes coming down and the president behind in his big black car. And then they swung around, and they drove down as far as I remember, into the chapel forecourt here. Then the President came out, and he shook hands with all the people who were standing there, and all the mums were swooning, and everyone was very excited.”
It was to be Kennedy’s last official visit to the UK, and the village was agog with the international glamor had arrived in rural Sussex.
“He had star quality. His predecessor was an old general who was, you know, no one was interested in. So this is the one we could really relate to.”
Less than six months later, the moment that defined a generation Kennedy’s assassination spawned that oft asked question, “Where were you when you heard?”
“My brother told me I’d been to stay with a friend in Tunbridge Wells, and came back off the train, which ran then, and he told me President Kennedy was dead. I didn’t believe I thought he was joking. No one believed it, but it was such a shock to it, especially as kids, because he was this guy was a bit of a hero. He was so different to other politicians we had in this country.”
A life so shockingly cut short, making the memory of his visit here all the more special.