9th July, 2024 in Local & Family History

Essential historical facts about Kent

By Malcolm Horton

Kent truly is the gateway into England and the whole of the history of this “Sceptred Isle” has passed through the ancient kingdom of Kent. Its very name goes back into the mists of time. A Greek traveller who sailed the Channel twenty four centuries ago recorded in his records that it was already called Kent. No county in England can trace its ancestry that far back.

Romans, Saxons and Jutes first entered England through Kent. Julius Caesar first landing in 55 BC. The oldest evidence of tools and weapons used by human hands were found in Kent. Paleolithic Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples all settled in Kent.In the year 597 AD St Augustine, at the behest of Pope Gregory, first brought Christianity to England when he landed on the Isle of Thanet near Ebbsfleet, to be greeted by the Saxon King Ethelbert, who became, as a result, the First English King to be baptised as a Christian. Kent was the First English kingdom where the major institutions of medieval England, Kingship, Church and written law were established.

Kent itself was divided, during the Anglo Saxon period, into two separate kingdoms, East Kent and West Kent. This division being due to the arrival of the Jutes who followed the Anglo Saxons and pushed them westwards to the other side of the River Medway thus giving rise to the sobriquets Man of Kent, the Jutes, in East Kent, and Kentish Man in west Kent, the dividing line being the River Medway. This division did not last long before the more powerful Jutes forced a unification. However the sobriquets remain and there is an Association of Man of Kent and Kentish Man with branches across the county.

There are two Anglican Cathedrals in Kent as a consequence of the earlier division one in East Kent Canterbury (AD 597) and Rochester (AD 603) East Kent They are the oldest Cathedrals in England, and gives the now unified County of Kent the distinction of being the only county in England to possess two Cathedrals. What was also unique to Kent is Gavelkind where on the death of a land owner his sons inherit equally. All other counties in the rest of England had a system called Primogeniture where the firstborn legitimate child inherited a person’s property. This was the Norman system. This meant that states remained intact. Today the laws of inheritance, where there isn’t a will, are effectively Gavelkind, with all children inheriting equally. Gavelkind was one of the privileges the William the Conqueror gave, uniquely, to the Kingdom of Kent in return for their cessation of hostilities.

It is hard to imagine that the Weald of Kent was the centre of the iron smelting industry, in England, since from Roman times, fuelled by the charcoal from the Wealds abundant forest of oak trees, from which the name Weald is derived, and local iron are deposits from the greensand ridge. The industry only moved to South Wales and the north of England in the 17th century when coal became king. In any case the Wealden oak was becoming rapidly depleted, being in much demand for ship building and house building. The Kentish Coal fields were not to be unearthed for another two hundred years.

Also there was another industry established in Kent in the early 14th century when the One Hundred Years was (1337-1453) with France resulted in England not sending lamb’s wool to Flanders for weaving so King Edward III invited the Flemish weavers to come to Kent and set up their looms in the villages of the Weald around Cranbrook. And a thriving cottage industry was created. Evidence of its existence can be found in the magnificent Cloth Halls still surviving in the Wealden villages of Cranbrook and Smarden. These Cloth Halls were clearing houses for wool on their way to the Port of Faversham. This industry again moved north during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century to places like Lancashire when cloth making was mechanised. Kent then settled down to what was to become its defining characteristic as the Garden of England where cherries, plums, apples and pears were to be grown in abundance due to its rich soil and mild climate. Thus creating the fruit growing industry.

In the 16th century hop growing emerged in order to preserve the beer and to give beer its characteristic bitter taste. Kent became the centre of hop growing in England with the characteristic Oast House dominating the landscape alongside its numerous hop gardens. And every September trains would bring hordes of hop pickers from South London for the annual hop picking festival described by H.E. Bates as the English vendage. It was in reality a paid holiday for hop pickles families escaping from “the smoke” of South London. Sadly hop growing is greatly diminished due to cheaper imports and a great change in drinking habits as lager took hold in the 1960s. H.E. Bates also maintained that Kent was the healthiest county in which to live because it was rich in iodine on account that it was practically an Island being surrounded by the sea and the rivers Thames and Medway.

In the 20th century Kent was at the centre of two great technological changes aviation and printing.Who would have thought that the cradle of British aviation was the unfashionable Isle of Sheppey where the British Aero Club was established in 1901 initially flying balloons. It gained the appellation Royal in 1909 when John Moore Brabazon achieved the first powered flight in Britain on the 2nd of May 1909 flying a French Voisin. This led to the granting of the first Pilots Licences to Charles Rolls (of Rolls Royce fame) and John Moore Brabazon. In 1909 balloon manufacturers Short Brothers moved from Battersea to Sheppey. They became the world’s first aircraft manufacturers when the world’s first powered flight aviators the Wright Brothers visited Sheppey and granted the Short Brothers a licence to build six Wright Flyers. Equally surprising is the fact that the greatest technological change in printing since Caxtons time, computer assisted typesetting, first took place in Europe in the small town of Westerham in 1965, just a stone’s throw away from Winston Churchill’s home in Chartwell. Kent possesses a unique and varied tapestry making it, arguably, the cradle of English civilisation.