The Heritage Buddy

Kent is a county FULL of history; from the Roman Villa at Lullingstone, to Medieval christian pilgrimage routes to Rochester or Canterbury, to hop farming county-wide and brewing ale to the spitfires dogfighting the Luftwaffe in the skies above.  Whilst volunteering remotely for the Imperial War Museum's War Memorial Register, I learnt about a hidden treasure in Sevenoaks that I had to go and see for myself.  Cornwall Hall Auxiliary Hospital Cornwall Hall was an VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) Hospital set up in September 1914, which were located anywhere, including local churches, schools and community settings.  The ex-VAD hospital was located at The Drive Methodist Church in Sevenoaks; if you cross the car park to the left of the church building, there is the church hall, which is still named Cornwall Hall (pictured below). It was managed by nurse Kathleen Mansfield, Commandant of the VAD 76 Hospital.  A brass tablet is mounted up on the wall on the right as you co...

Now that I have this blog up and running, what shall I start off my blog series with? I’ll start by explaining how the ‘Heritage Buddy’ namesake came about; it was at the height of the toy action figure trend via Chat GPT. I’m not a huge follower of AI generated artwork but I felt curious enough to jump onto the bandwagon. It took a frustrating good few attempts to get right, but what I did get out of those attempts was a very inspiring name. Because my name is HB, I typed into Chat GPT something along the lines of “create a toy figure of a heritage and museum worker called HB”, then despite the results not being what I was expecting, it came up with the following: Name: HB (Heritage Buddy) Appearance: HB is a cute, small figure with a friendly face and bright eyes. Dressed in a navy blue outfit reminiscent of a classic museum guide, complete with a white collar and a little badge that reads "Museum Explorer." Accessories include a tiny backpack filled with miniatu...