Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

The quote in the title of this post is one from Winston Churchill.  My difficulties this week started with the fact the only card that remotely links with the Sepia Saturday theme this week is one I found with a statue of Winston Churchill on The Green at Westerham in Kent.  My opportunities lay in finding out why he was there, because I don't know the area at all.

I very quickly discovered that the Churchill statue is in recognition of the fact that he lived at nearby Chartwell, from 1922 until his death in 1965.  When I realised that, I was able to pull out two more cards of Chartwell itself, now owned by the National Trust and open to visitors.

This card dates from the 1960s by which time Churchill no longer owned the house.  He had bought it in 1922 but in 1946 he and his wife Clementine were finding it too expensive to run.  At that time a consortium of businessmen bought the property and rented it to the Churchills at a nominal rent.  On their deaths it was to be passed on to the National Trust but in fact Clementine decided to present it to the Trust immediately after Churchill died.

This more recent postcard from Gordon Fraser Gallery published for the National Trust gives a better idea of the red-brick building.

The statue on The Green was unveiled by Sir Robert Menzies in 1969 as recorded by Pathé News.

CHURCHILL STATUE

But Churchill wasn't alone on The Green.  I found earlier cards showing a statue of General James Wolfe, before the arrival of Churchill's statue. 

Wolfe was born in Westerham [updated after Bob's comment].  His statue was unveiled in 1911 on the 250th anniversary of his death.  According to the Dartford Times, on that day there were lunchtime lectures featuring Great British Heroes - and they were held in Chartwell, 11 years before another Great British Hero took up residence.

You might like to visit Sepia Saturday and see how other people have interpreted (or not) the theme this week.