A PLAY inspired by an 18th Century Essex legend is set to bring the story of a historical woman home to the village where she was born.
Writer and director Nicola Matthews is staging Kitty Canham at Beaumont Hall, at Beaumont‑cum‑Moze, drawing on years of research, a lockdown novel and a lifetime in local theatre.
Kitty was born in Beaumont in 1720 and is still woven into local folklore, with some saying her ghost haunts the Bell Inn in Thorpe‑le‑Soken, where she married the rector before mysteriously disappearing.
Nicola grew up steeped in performance. Her father was actor Jack Watling, her siblings also went on to the stage, and by the 1980s she was helping husband Seymour Matthews run Frinton Summer Theatre, a role she kept for more than 20 years.
Despite that, she never imagined she would become a writer due to being “an undiagnosed ADHD dyslexic”.
“I never thought I’d be able to write,” Nicola said.
“In my 50s I went to art school and strangely, it was there I discovered I could write. For a number of years afterwards I wrote poetry from time to time.”
Walking the quiet Walton backwaters from Kirby‑le‑Soken to Beaumont Quay during lockdown, she came across Kitty’s story and began to picture her treading the same marsh paths 300 years earlier.
Those walks led to the novel Kitty Canham, which weaves fiction around conflicting local tales – from rumours she leapt from a church tower to claims her body was shipped home from Europe in a barrel of rum.
Nicola instead imagined why Kitty married late, at 25, and why she felt compelled to vanish, shaping what she calls “a pastoral drama of love, loss and necessary lies”.
A friend later suggested she adapt the book for the stage, and several drafts later she had a script keeping faithful to both the novel and the woman at its heart.
Nicola said: “A novel can hold many characters and endless worlds. A play must find its power in something more immediate and intense.
“Inevitably, the piece has transformed into something new — shaped not only by the adaptation itself, but by the wonderful cast who have brought their own insight, emotion, and interpretation to the story.”
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Now the production is being co‑produced by Langham’s Black Brook Theatre and brought to Beaumont Hall, right in the heart of Kitty’s home village.
First, it will head to Black Brook Theatre in Langham, a new and exciting venue for open air theatre.
“For me, this feels like the culmination of a long and personal journey,” Nicola said.
“I feel I have grown close to Kitty, and I feel that I will be honouring her story by giving her life on stage. And for me, it is a return to theatre after many years.
“I am delighted to be producing a distinctly Essex play which digs into the history of one of its fascinating characters.”
To find out more, or secure tickets, visit the https://www.nicolamwrites.com.
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