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Godmersham earns a mention mainly because if its association with the 19th century novelist, Jane Austen. Her brother was quire at Godmersham Park and some of her novels probably described the red-brick mansion and nearby vicarage, although with different names. Some say that the rectory of the Rev Collins in Pride and Prejudice was modelled on the vicarage occupied by Rev Joseph Sherer, Vicar of Godmersham from 1811, and that Mansfield Park was, in fact, Godmersham Park.
In 1935 the house was bought by Robert and Elsie Tritton. Mrs Tritton was a New Yorker whose first husband, Sir Louis Baron, made a fortune from the famous Black Cat cigarettes. Robert Tritton was a noted collector and during their ownership, they were the hosts of many famous people, including the writer Somerset Maugham and artist Rex Whistler.
In 1985, the foundations of Court Lodge were uncovered on land next to Godmersham church. The Lodge was demolished thirty years before but it was once the centre of an estate that was owned by Canterbury Cathedral for a thousand years. In began life in 1270 as a great hall house and was said to have had the finest windows of any manor house in Kent. One of those windows was believed to have been removed by Dr Hewlett Johnson, the notorious 'Red' Dean of Canterbury, before the house was demolished but no one knows what became of it.
The village is in the Stour valley, just off the A28 between Canterbury and Ashford, in wonderful walking country. The bridge across the river was built in 1698 and the donkey wheel which survived the demolition, in 1828, of Georgian Eggerton Manor is very early 17th century. The fifteen foot diameter by three foot wide wheel was once used for drawing water from a 120 foot well and it was in use until 1923. Sir Charles Igglesden, in his Saunters Through Kent with Pen and Pencil, thought the wheel was 'a great sight which will repay anyone for a walk up to Eggerton.'
The church of St Lawrence the Martyr at Godmersham stands on rising ground near the River Stour. It has an 11th century north tower and the nave and west end of the chancel are also Norman, although the east end of the chancel is 13th century. The south transept, aisle and porch were added in 1865.
Smuggling was rife here in the 18th century and the Star and the Eagle pub is said to have a secret passage connecting it to the 14th century church. The locals will tell you that if you climb to the top of Goudhurst church tower you will be able to see no fewer than fifty-one other churches, from Romney marsh to the North Downs. Some say its sixty-eight churches, but perhaps that was before the tower was rebuilt, less loftily, after the older one was struck by lightening in 1637.
Opposite the church a group of weavers' cottages are a reminder that this was one of those Wealden villages that prospered greatly after the arrival of the Flemish weavers that Edward III encouraged to come and teach their skills to Englishmen.
The village was in the Kentish Weald ironworking region, as well. The nearby manor of Bedgebury, better known today to many thousands of visitors for its forest and Pinetum, had a quite famous 16th century foundry, owned by the ubiquitous Culpeper family, which cast guns for the fleet that fought the Spanish Armada in 1588.
As long ago as 1341, Goudhurst had begun to influence Kentish traditions. Then, the Archbishop of Canterbury decreed that the annual tithe due to the vicar of Goudhurst should include '...onions and all other herbs sown in gardens...' That led to a long legal argument about whether hops should be included among 'all other herbs.' The vicar and his supporters believed they should and the argument went their way, with the result that, ever since, Kent hops have been said to grow in gardens rather than fields or yards as they are in other parts of England.
Even before the Civil War began, another Goudhurst vicar was attracting Puritan wrath. In 1641 the Rev James Wilcorke was dragged from his pulpit in mid-sermon by soldiers and charged with 'odious, blasphemous, popish and superstitious preaching.'
Then in 1747 a hastily recruited militia under the leadership of an ex-Army corporal called William Sturt took on and defeated, in what became known as The Battle of Goudhurst, a hundred or so of the most vicious outlaws of the day. They were members of the notorious Hawkhurst gang of smugglers, including the three Kingsmell (or Kingsmill) brothers, Thomas, Richard and George, who were Goudhurst natives.
The gangsters disrupted the whole local farm economy be seducing away from regular employment on the land labourers who could earn more from one night's smuggling than from a week of farmwork. They treated much of the High Weald countryside around Hawkhurst as if they owned it, riding in to take whatever they wanted and discouraging any opposition with ruthless thoroughness. It was all very 'Wild Western' a century before America gave the world its version of that term, with the ex-corporal, Sturt, cast in the role of 'goodie' home from the Army to clean the town up.
When the gang heard about the militia he formed, its leaders sent a message warning that they would burn every house in Goudhurst and murder everyone in it. They even announced the exact day and hour when they would do it. But when they came, during the morning of Monday, April 20, 1747, the villagers were ready for them, and beat them off in a pitched battle in which one of the leaders and two others were killed.
Things are quieter in Goudhurst these days, although that is not to say it has not had its explosive moments. During WW2 the church tower was used as a Home Guard observation post, and one of the men who manned it was Richard Church, the Kent author who lived in a converted oast house at nearby Curtisden Green.
The Isle of Grain, rather like the Isle of Thanet, is no longer a discernible island as the result of the silting up of Yantlett Creek, but it is still the furthest extremity of the Hoo Peninsular and the village of Grain is the furthest extremity of the isle. To describe the approach road to it as rather like an avenue is more accurate than fair, since the word does not suggest chain link fencing with KEEP OUT notices prominently displayed and a general air of inhospitable dereliction even where current activity is keeping actual dereliction at bay. One of Kent's beauty spots this is not, but it is, nevertheless, one of those that helps to pay the bills.
However, people have found it appealing, for changing reasons, for at least 2,000 years. There is a Roman tiling built into the fabric of St James' church, which also has a fairly grotesque pagan fertility symbol over one of its doors. Most of the church, which once belonged to a nunnery on the Isle of Sheppey, is 13th century although there was a church there in the 8th century.
Repairs were carried out by Dutch sailors who dishonoured Kent's claim to be the Bastion of Britain when they breached the Medway defences and sailed into the river in June1667, having already taken Sheerness. It was afterwards asserted that the invaders behaved a good deal better, during their intentionally brief and mainly nose-thumbing occupation, than the English militiamen who arrived to 'liberate' the area after the Dutch had made their point and gone home again.
In 1823, the Lord Mayor of London ordered a ditch to be cut to allow boats to pass between Stoke and Grain again, as they could before the silting-up. Local people objected and a special jury at Surrey Assizes ruled that the Corporation of London had committed a nuisance and ordered the road and causeway that carried it to be restored.
Queen Victoria took a rather curious fancy to Grain as a chosen departure point for trips to Germany. Port Victoria was built essentially as a railway station at the end of a line from Windsor, via Gravesend, and a little jetty from which Her Majesty could embark.
The 'port' continued to bask in Royal patronage until 1911, when the Kaiser returned to Germany after attending the coronation of George V. After that, although various members of the Royal Family contributed towards the restoration of the church, the 'port' fell into disuse. The railway line was abandoned, the station rotted away and now only Port Victoria Road, which wanders off in its perpetual search for any skeletal remnants of the jetty, remains to commemorate the days when Royal voyages began and ended here.
But Grain was not permitted similarly to decline into oblivion. Royal patronage was succeeded by industrial development and 19th century prestige was replaced by 20th century commerce when an oil refinery was built here. In 1944, petrol was pumped to Allied invasion forces in France, via the pipeline under the ocean (PLUTO), and in 1953 the sprawling 750 acre British Petroleum Co's Kent oil refinery came into use, processing up to ten million tons of crude oil a year.
That was followed by the building of Grain power station, at the time the largest oil-fired power station in Europe and possibly the world. Fuelled by oil from the adjacent BP refinery, as was nearby Kingsnorth power station, it was capable of producing enough electricity to meet all the needs of cities the size of Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
But the refinery closed in 1982 and when, in 1987, British Gas unveiled plans to create the UK's second largest deepwater container port on the site, local conservationists feared for the future of rare marshland habitats. They were not at all reassured to be told that it could be at least twenty years before any such development was complete. Today, the Thamesport site is a significant employer and a relatively low-profile contributor to the local landscape of tall chimneys and squat gas and oil storage tanks.
There are plans for yet another power station, the fifth in this part of Kent, to be built at a cost of £400m on part of the former oil refinery site.
The road that follows the coastline from Faversham to Whitstable takes its travellers through Graveney, over the North Kent railway line and past the 12th century church of All Saints, before plunging across Graveney Marshes towards Seasalter. It is a functional village: a pub, a shop and a post office, a primary school and a variety of farm building and cottages.
In 1971 Graveney found itself thrust a little reluctantly into public notice as a result of the discovery, during the widening of a drainage ditch on the low-lying meadow land behind the sea wall, of what came to be known as The Graveney Boat.
Archaeologists fussed about the old timbers for weeks, guarding their precious find from untutored eyes with a great tent of plastic sheeting while they made up their minds that it was probably a Saxon boat, rather than a Viking one as they had at first thought, and that it had, therefore, lain there in the mud for about a thousand years. They took it out piece by piece and carted it off for reassembly to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.
This part of Kent has never been in the forefront of the county's history. The local economy was once eked out with a spot of salt panning, though always on a relatively small scale. It was mentioned in the Domesday survey, when sea brine was collected in pans and transferred to coppers in which the water was boiled off, leaving the salt which was used mainly as a preservative for fish and meat.
Salt panning died out certainly before the mid-16th century, when efforts were made to re-establish it to reduce British dependence on imports from France and Spain, made necessary by the population growth in London and other towns. But mined salt from Cheshire proved to be more economically viable. The North Kent coast 'panning' never did revive and Graveney settled into an agriculture-based lifestyle, with a bit of smuggling now and then to keep the wolf from the door.
The agriculture was seriously threatened by the disastrous flooding in February 1953, which devastated much of the east coast of England, When the water was finally absorbed, the land had to be reconditioned and a great deal of new drainage put in place behind the new sea wall that was built to prevent a recurrence of the disaster.
But Graveney church survived and today it is an attractive little edifice on the very edge of the village, overlooking open countryside and beyond. It was probably built during the 12th century and is unusually light inside, most of the windows being of clear glass, only two of them displaying stained glass of the first half of the 14th century. Unfortunately, it is a little was out of the village centre and consequently very vulnerable. In 1998, 730 of its clay tiles, now much sought after and worth about £1,000, were stripped off its roof by thieves.
The neighbouring hamlet of Goodnestone also has a church, St Bartholomew's, which lies back from the road at the end of a narrow lane or causeway where it seems actively to discourage visitors of any kind.
Between the wars, this was one of those coastal areas where all sorts of holiday homes went up on often totally unsuitable sites and led, too late to save some places, to the Town Planning acts. In fact, Greatstone was one of the first places to be regulated by a town plan, so that instead of developing into a haphazard and ramshackle collection of beach huts, it was laid out rather well. The result is one of the happier results of post-war property-owning prosperity, with a resident population well-served by shops and other facilities to meet their everyday needs.
But it is also a popular holiday resort, with large caravan camps the legendary 'stone's throw' from the beach, where gently sloping sands make it ideal for young families. During WW2 some of the bungalows were requisitioned by the Army and used as camouflage for the pumps that were part of the PLUTO (Petrol Line Under The Ocean) installation that supplied fuel to forces taking part in the Normandy landings in 1944. Greatstone holiday camp was taken over, too, but after the war all was returned to residents and holidaymakers and more were built.
St Peter's Church is particularly ship-shape because when the growing number of churchgoers baulked at travelling to nearby churches to worship, the community's own church was built - in the shape of a ship.
Groombridge teeters on the very borders of Kent and Sussex. In fact, part if it actually spills over into the neighbouring county and there is some local controversy about whether it should remain thus divided or be absorbed wholly into one county or the other. At one corner of the triangular green the Crown Inn keeps a friendly eye on the 17th century brick church of St John the Evangelist. This began life as a chapel built by a Protestant owner of Groombridge Place in thanksgiving for the failure of Charles I's plans to marry the Catholic Infanta of Spain. The church overlooks the green from across the B2188, from which an access to the Burrswood Centre slices the green in two.
The Burrswood Christian Centre for Health Care and Ministry, established in 1960, includes a church, a conference centre and tea room. It offers physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and other treatments for physical and spiritual ills in 220 acres of some of the most beautiful countryside in England, itself a balm to both heart and soul.
Two sides of the green are framed by tile-hung and weatherboarded cottages behind pollarded lime trees, creating a picture-postcard scene that is both peaceful and, at the same time, oddly lifeless, in spite of the fairly constant stream of traffic that passes it. There is though, nothing lifeless about moated Groombridge Place, which advertises its welcome to paying customers to explore the wholly delightful gardens and grounds. The house, although not open to the public, can still be admired from across the moat. It boasts a 700-year history, beginning in 1239, when Henry III gave his permission for a fortified and moated castle to be built. In 1286, a Charter of Edward I permitted the founding of a weekly market and annual fair at Groombridge. The fair died out in the early 1900s but the market was still being held every week until the middle of the century.
Through the centuries, Groombridge Place has been owned by some of Kent's most distinguished families, including the de Cobhams and that Sir Richard Waller who, after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, found the wounded Duke of Orleans, half-brother of the French King, and brought his back to Groombridge. Here he was nursed back to health while waiting for the ransom that was demanded for his return to be paid. Unfortunately for Sir Richard, word got around and the prisoner was claimed by the Crown, as was the huge ransom that was eventually paid for him.
After the Wallers, the castle was owned by the Sackvilles (of Knole, at Sevenoaks) but it was the 17th century owner, Philip Packer, who rebuilt it pretty much as it is today. After 1734, the house lay empty and falling into dereliction for twenty years, during which time it may well have been used by the notorious Groombridge Gang of smugglers as a 'hide'. The gang was finally broken up and one of its leaders, John Bowra, who turned land agent and map maker, was commissioned to draw up an estate plan, which is still preserved at Groombridge Place.
The new owner, William Camfield, restored not only the house but St John's church and the village generally. After the Camfields, the estate was inherited by the Rev John James Saint and his family, who are commemorated pretty prominently in the churchyard.
The diarist, John Evelyn, who was a friend of the Packers during their ownership and stayed at Groombridge Place more than once, described it as 'a pretty melancholy seat, well wooded and watered' and he confided to his diary his opinion that the new house would have been far better situated south of the wood. Nevertheless, there is some reason the believe he helped design the gardens although he probably did not envisage such features as the Enchanted Forest, Sacred Pools, Draughtsman's Garden with its giant chess and draughts sets, and much else besides, all designed to help Groombridge Place compete with other major attractions.