Vernacular Events and the Leas Lift

The Leas Lift connected the resort above with the foreshore below. Club Shepway used that familiar piece of seafront infrastructure as a public setting for Vernacular Spectacular, placing exhibitions and events within the route between the Leas and the beach.

Later Vernacular Folk carried the programme through folklore, regional myth, a reading room and works shown at the B&B Project Space. The connection was practical as well as thematic: public places in Folkestone became places where stories, images and local knowledge could gather.

Across the publications and events, Club Shepway kept returning to the same linked terrain: seaside infrastructure, changing town-centre life, local folklore and the forms through which people recognise a place. The Leas Lift, Tontine Street, the beach and the reading room all appear as active parts of that record.