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Built mainly on one side of the B2015, the village is the furthest west in the borough of Maidstone. More than 800 people live here. The parish church of St Mary the Virgin has links with William the Conqueror's half brother, Odo.
It is said that Nettlestead church owes its enormous stained glass windows to a 15th century Agincourt veteran who came back from France very impressed with what had already been done with stained glass decoration for churches there. The man was Reginald de Pympe, and his son, John, added more stained glass later in the same century. The de Pympes made quite an impression upon Nettlestead in their day. Reginald moved into Nettlestead Place, which he rebuilt at about the same time as he had the church rebuilt and embellished with the new glass.
By that time, the family had already earned a certain amount of notoriety as a result of one of its sons. Philip, having been committed to Canterbury prison for harbouring an outlaw in 1318. The same Philip was pardoned for homicide in 1337.
Another member of the family fought with Edward IV in France and then afterwards sided with the Duke of Buckingham in his rebellion against Richard III's claim to the throne. That was a mistake, because the rebellion was crushed and the de Pympes had their estates confiscated, although they were restored to them later, after Henry VIII became king in 1485.
After the de Pympes, Nettlestead Place was owned by a family called Scott whose men seem to have had a weakness for strong-willed wives. Sir John Scott once locked his wife in a room in the house during a quarrel, but she escaped by digging away the mortar round some of the stones with a bodkin.
The a 17th century Scott, Edward, who backed Cromwell in the Civil War, found himself at variance with his wife, Catherine, who was so whole-heartedly Royalist, that she reputedly bore the illegitimate son of Prince Rupert, the dashing Cavalier cavalry leader and, later, naval commander.
Edward might well have found that a bit too partisan for his liking even if he had shared her loyalty to the Crown. As it was he took a particularly dim view of the affair and during a family row that went on for some days, Catherine waited until Edward lest the house and then slammed the door in his face when he tried to come back in again.
Her husband promptly laid siege to the house, resolved to starve her out and, presumably carry on the row to a rather more satisfactory conclusion, But Catherine escaped and the domestic fracas ended with Edward deciding that all he could do was to acknowledge the little bastard, who was called Thomas, as his own heir.
Yet another Nettlestead Scott, Sir Thomas, was one of the leaders of some ten thousand men who formed a 16th century Home Guard and stood ready to repel invaders should the Spanish Armada force a way past the English ships and make a landing on Kentish soil.
Later, Nettlestead Place fell into less caring hands and might well have crumbled into total disrepair as a neglected farm store during the 19th century. But in 1920, enough of it remained intact to encourage a Mr R Vinson to buy it, and restore it to the family home it is today, still with its old stone gatehouse and a remarkable 13th century undercroft.
We tend to think of villages as invariably old, but New Ash Green is a reminder that this is not so. It was developed as a 'green fields' site in the 1960s, borrowing its name from the nearest existing village of Ash, in unspoilt North Downs countryside between Gravesend and Wrotham. The plan was to house 6,000 people there, including some of London's 'overspill' population, in 2,200 homes built on 430 acres of farmland.
The houses would be built around The Minnis, an open green, in a pattern of neighbourhoods separated by woodland but linked by footpaths and vehicle-free roads. A compact shopping centre, with a large car park where shoppers could leave their cars and move about without having to worry about traffic, would provide all the needs of the villagers. It would, its developers promised, be unique and 'one of the most unconventional private housing developments in Europe'.
When the idea was first put forward, Kent County Council turned it down. So did a government inspector at a public enquiry. But Richard Crossmen, then Minister of Housing, , overruled them both and building began in 1967. All did not go smoothly. The Greater London Council, which had said it would rent 450 of the homes for 'overspill' Londoners, pulled out. The developers lost financial backing and quit the project, leaving it started but far from finished, and the village was labelled as a an experiment that failed.
But in 1971 another developer took over the site of the half-completed village and realised the original concept. The finished result was, indeed, something new in housing development and today the village has about it the lived-in look of an established community.
All villages acquire legends and New Ash Green's concerns a mysterious nine foot tall wooden statue which appeared overnight in the village. It was a figure of a man, his chin resting on a staff, and because of the expression on his face he was dubbed the Weary Traveller. No one claimed him but he was adopted by the village and made to feel welcome.
One night, he disappeared again, as mysteriously as he had arrived, to be rediscovered later, lying in a ditch. he was recovered and re-sited in private ownership. He must have sent out word that this was a good place for carved wooden men because in 1986 another, smaller wooden statue appeared in woodlands half a mile away. This one was given the name of the Wanderer but he, unfortunately, burned down, as mysteriously as he had arrived, a few years later.
When Prince Edward was at Newenden in 1300, when he was sixteen years old, money was paid from the Royal exchequer for him to play at 'creag' with his friends. Cricket historians like to use this as evidence that cricket (creag?) was being played on Kentish soil by a future king of England about seven hundred years ago, but there is no proof that that creag was, in fact, cricket.
The village is at last - or, of course, the first, depending upon how you look at it - in Kent, literally teetering on the edge of the Kent Ditch county boundary with East Sussex. It is also one of the smallest Kent villages, comprising very little more than a tiny church, a single pub, and a handful of houses. For centuries after His Royal Highness played creag there, though, Newenden continued to be a town and river Rotherside port of some consequence. As late as the 16th century it is said to have had no fewer than sixteen inns or taverns. Today, only the five hundred year-old White Hart remains to offer its hospitality to travellers.
Newenden shares with Faversham the distinction of being one of only two market towns in Kent named in the Domesday Survey.
Today, the church is smaller than it used to be and still looks too big for a population of only about two hundred people. But the village is still very self-conscious and when, in the 1970s, a Kent guide book author described it as a 'decayed village' the local people took it very much to heart and took spiteful delight in watching all the tourists' cars bounce tummy-tumbling across their little hump-backed bridge over what remains of the once considerable river Rother.
There are two Newingtons in Kent: one near Folkestone, which is small and really quite rural, and this one, near Sittingbourne, which is larger, stretching along the A2 and almost linking up with Rainham. Neither has impressed itself particularly upon the county consciously, although the A2 Newington has at least won a place in county lore.
In 1936 a great stone was moved from the corner of Church Lane to the entrance to St Mary the Virgin church. It is known as The Devil's Stone. There used to be two such stones, so-called sarsens which some experts believe are relics of huge slabs of stone brought southwards from distant sources by the last Ice Age glaciers.
One of the Newington stones was broken up but the remaining one survived to perpetuate the legend that once the Devil was so disturbed by ringing of Newington church bells that he went to the belfry on night and gathered the bells up in a sack. Then, with the sack over his shoulder, he jumped down
But as he landed, he tripped over the great stone and fell, leaving his footprint stamped into the stone and spilling the bells out of the sack. They rolled down the lane towards Halstow and into a stream which the story always ended, flowed clear as a bell ever afterwards. Sadly, honesty necessitates the admission that the stream has, in fact, dried up now. However, the Devils footprint remains clearly to be seen on the stone, to confirm the truth of the story!
It's unsure whether it was the village that lent its name to the valley or the valley that gave rise to the village. It hardly matters now. Village and valley have lived together too long and harmoniously to question the precedence of either.
The point is that Newnham is a surprisingly little-spoilt village with very little depth on either side of the street and with one particular gem, timbered Tudor Calico House. Once it was the vicarage and the house was altered in 1712 when the outside walls were plastered and painted with a design of flowing foliage in a terra cotta colour. Large pieces of plaster remain, still with their painting on them.