Village History
Please select:
STURRY, THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND to 1998
STURRY SINCE THE LAST WAR to 1998
HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE OF HERSDEN to 1998
VISUAL IMPRESSIONS OF THE PARISH to 1998
PLACES OF WORSHIP IN THE PARISH OF STURRY
STURRY, THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND to 1998
A motorist, driving along the A28 towards Margate, might gain a first impression of our village, Sturry, as a ribbon-developed, slightly fly-blown kind of place with a level-crossing by the railway station, not much charm, and not much else. He would be entirely wrong.
In the first place, the motorist would see little of the old High Street and less still of the Church and Manor-house. Futhermore, he would be unaware that he was driving along the route of a Roman road, and would cast not more than a cursory glance at the River Stour.
The community's history starts long before the railway, before even the Roman road; it starts, in fact, a matter of 430,000 years ago. In the rectangle bounded in the south by that same Roman Road, on either side by the Herne Bay Road and the Reculver Road and in the north by Hawe Lane, there were dug some sixty-five years ago some gravel pits. They yielded, in addition to the gravel, evidence of habitation, starting with flint implements from the fore-mentioned unbelievably archaic date, and quite a number of axes and items of pottery from the much later Bronze Age, merely 1500BC. Subsequently, some Neolithic axes of about 2500BC were found in the Sturry Road brickyards, and a bronze-smith's hoard from between 750 - 500BC near the Shalloak Road level-crossing. More pottery from the Sturry Hill gravel-pits, and a burial-ground near Stonerocks Farm showed that there was an Iron Age settlement of Belgic Celts (who gave Canterbury its pre-Roman name of Durovemum) from the end of the 2nd Century BC. All this evidence indicates that habitation of some kind existed on the north bank of the River Stour, on Sturry's site, for hundreds and thousands of years before the mythical motorist ever put foot to clutch and brake pedals and cursed the delay at the level-crossing.
The Romans, when they colonised Britain in the 1st Century AD, built in their usual methodical way major routes connecting their towns and forts. They built Island Road, (the A28) to connect Canterbury, the local tribal capital, with the ferry to the Isle of Thanet, with a branch to their fort at Reculver. Excavations, again for gravel, by Messrs. Brett after the 1939-45 war, south of the point where the branch of the latter road occurs, revealed that here had been a creek-side settlement with a quayside during the 2nd and 3rd Centuries. The Stour was then much wider, and tidal, and this was a port. European pottery was found, along with the timer jetty-revetment and the usual tiles and bricks from buildings.
The most important era for Sturry, determining its future shape, size, function and name, was that part of the early 5th. Century when the beleaguered Romano-Britons brought in Frisians and Jutes as mercenaries to help them fight against invading Picts and Scots, and rewarded them with land.
Some of them settled near Sturry: their cemetery was found at Hersden Then when large numbers of these people arrived from the Continent and began to displace the Romano-Britons, in the mid 5 Century, came the organisation of the new Kingdom of Kent into lathes, or districts. Sturry was the first, as its names indicates- Stour-gau district or lathe on the Stour. The lathe was bounded by the Stour as far as Canterbury in the North by the sea, and farther south as distant as Wye. The lathe was the framework of the king's government of Kent. Sturry was a royal vill, where the king held court and all the freemen (ceorls) attended to pay their dues and receive, if they needed it justice The family as a unit worked the land, which was divided into six 'boroughs' farmsteads with Mayton as a sub-borough. The vill was rated at five sulungs, a Kentish word for an area of about 200 acres. When the king made Canterbury his principal vill the lathe's name was changed to Borowart (Burh-wara-lathe), and Sturry was given by King Wihtred in about 690Ad to the Abbess of Minster-in-Thanet. A church was built in Sturry at about this time, probably on the site of the present one.
Minster was destroyed by the Danes in 1011, and the victorious King Cnut gave Sturry to St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury: a lot consisting of the church, the court-house and six homesteads with their orchards and woods. 979 years later, this 'lot' is recognisable as modern Sturry. When William of Normandy became King of England, and seized the entire country as is own, the Abbot of St Augustine's was given back his manor of Sturry. In the Conqueror's unique and wonderful Domesday survey of 1086 the manor is still rated at five sulungs, ploughed by twelve plough-teams of oxen. Its rateable value is assessed at £54. Its acreage appears to be about 1000 acres; today the acreage is 3000, but much was not cultivated in 1086. The same parish boundaries existed then as now.
The church is entered in Domesday, and quite possibly it was the basic nave tower and chancel which stand today. By about 1200, arches pierced the nave for the'two aisles and in 1230 the chancel was built. A spire was added to the tower, and in around 1370 the north aisle was widened, with new windows. The south aisle was also widened but much later, at the end off the 15th Century, and this was the last major building done except for the porch, a Tudor construction, whose sides were bricked up in the early 19th Century. When St Augustine's Abbey was dissolved in 1538, the patronage of the living passed to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Court, originally the King of Kent's, probably near to the Church, was rebuilt as a retiring house for abbots of St Augustine's. Some of the timber in the present manor-house is much older than its building-date and might well have come from its mediaeval predecessor. At the dissolution, the last abbot spent his remaining days in the house before it reverted to the Crown. After which it passed through several hands until in 1578 Thomas Smyth, haberdasher and clothier, bought it.
'Customer' Smyth, as he was called, a man of considerable means, rebuilt the house and barns and erected the gateway to the churchyard.
By 1790 the house was in disrepair and two-thirds of it was demolished, leaving the present truncated third. In 1906 Lord Milner, home from South Africa, bought the estate, renovated the house and finally in 1925 his widow sold it to the King's School Canterbury.
The five sulungs of Sturry Land produced large quantities of wheat, barley and oats, which meant that proportionately large amounts went to the monks of St. Augustine's, which accounts for the existence from an early date of a vast tithe barn, possibly on the site of the present one near the church, which dates from the early 17th Century. By 1283 the farms which were all let out for cash rent, which by 1380, with the much smaller farms of Fordwich, produced £40 annually for the monks. In the 19th Century most farms had oast-houses and grew hops; none are grown now.
Of other historic buildings in Sturry, Mead Manor, in Broad Oak, is perhaps the best: a 14th Century hall-house whose roof remains intact. Originally called Meadowgrove, it was possessed by one William de Hadlow in 1293. Presumably he or his heirs built it. Whatmer Hall, on the north side of Island Road, (and, therefore, within the parish, as the road is the boundary here), owes its name to the family of Whatmer who moved from Shropshire to Canterbury in the 16th Century, and built the house in the 17th Century, using timbers from an earlier building.
The most recent feature of Sturry, which altered the line of Island Road, and delays motorists every day, was the railway. The line from Ashford to Ramsgate was built and opened in 1846 for the South-Eastern railway. The station, re-roofed in recent years, followed in 1848. All houses north of the railway, except Whatmer Hall and the farmhouses, are subsequent to its construction. The development along Island Road, and the big housing estates on the hill where the gravel pits were dug may be seen in context with the long centuries of Sturry's existence before that date. Moreover, a short walk, or even drive, along the Herne Bay Road or the Reculver Road as far as the parish boundary, brings realisation of the huge size of a predominately agricultural parish, and the comparitively small area occupied by the 'ribbon' development. A man suddenly transplanted from the 8th Century would still be able to find his way about the ancient parish. We, its modern residents, should be proud of such antiquity and continuity.
STURRY SINCE THE LAST WAR to 1998
Back to top
It was no accident that the sub-title of the history of the village, published in 1972, was "Sturry - The Changing Scene". A new arrival in 1946 comparing the village now and then would have a great deal to report.
He would have reached the village from Canterbury over an od brick bridge, the Sturry side of which was at a sharp and dangerous angle, that contrived to add a blind corner to its other hazards. A few hundred yards further on the road took another sharp bend to the left into what remained of the bomb-devasted High Street.
There were no houses at all on either side of the road from where the Stockbridge's Carpet Shop now is (once a country branch of Lloyds Bank) up to the site of Alldays, which was then Thompson's Bakery. On the other side of the road there was a great gap between a Kentish clap-boarded house called "Fairview", next to the baker's shop, and 36 High Street. Roughly in the middle of this there remained the crater left when one of the two land mines fell in 1941. (Persuading the relevant authority to fill this in before anyone was drowned in it took a grat deal of effort).
In the middle of this brick desert Ivor Bolton had a wooden hut for a shop, at which accumulators could be charged for powering wirelesses. The road then followed its existing bends round by the Post Office - it requires a real effort of imagination now to envisage two East Kent Road Car Company double-decker buses passing at this point - but they did. (There was a Bren gun carrier which found the street more difficult to negotiate and the mark it left on No. 37 High Street can still be seen by the observant; so can the remains of a tank trap across Church Lane). The new road, through the allotments at Sporting Place was built in the early 1960's and the Pedestrian Crossing some 25 years later. The clap boarded house called Fairview was demolished to make way for the new road.
The level crossing was not only manually operated in those days but hand-signalled shunting took place into and out of the tiny goods yeard of the station at the end of Feild Way. This was timed between two and three o'clock in the afternoon and caused traffic jams of heroic proportions. The Sunday traffic was exacerbated by dozens of charabancs on their way to Margate for the day from London, quite often with crates of beer on top. The queue of these in the evening when the level crossing gates were closed often extended back as far as the Four Vents crossroads at Westbere. The line, built in 1847 was electrified on 18th June 1962, the even more modern electric trains first ran in 1997 but it is cheering that an occasional steam train still comes through.
The Parish Hall in Sturry, which had been the garden of what is now the Old Vicarage, was another casualty of the bombing and there was no place where meetings could be held. Smaller groups met in houses, while the Headmaster of Milner Court, The Reverend W.O. Oldaker, started a campaign of making the Barn watertight and as warm as was possible in those fuel-less days.
In 1948 the Sturry Social Centre was initiated to convert the old Wesleyan Chapel (which has been used to store furniture from bombed buildings) into a usable hall.
About this time the railway was persuaded (with difficulty) to remove some advertising hoardings which had been a real eyesore for years from the approach to the "up" platform.
Possibly the change with the greatest consequences for the following years was the bringing of the main drainage to Sturry village in the 1950's and a little later to Broad Oak. Until then sewage had either been collected from buckets by what was eupemistically termed "the honey wagon" or directed into domestic septic tanks.
The failing supply of water to the village was at one time also a problem. A new main was run out from Canterbury and a connection made at the top of Calcott Hill to the Herne Bay water supply.
Once water and main drainage were available both re-building and new building began. Franklyn House, named after a mediaeval Sturry philanthropist, was the first warden assisted accommodation to be established in the area. A new Fire Station was built - until then the volunteer and retained Brigade had been housed behind Vale House in the Fordwich Road. (The special small tiles for the horses' hooves can still be seen there).
The major building, though, took place within the quadrilateral of land formed by Popes Lane, Sturry Hill, the Island Road and Babs Oak Hill. Several hundred houses were erected each year in the early 1960's there, and in Fairview Gardens, and the population rose accordingly.
This in turn led to a new school building, better street lighting and well stocked shelves in the local shops - a far cry from 1946 when one of them had only half a dozen small items available for purchase. The butcher's shop in those days operated from part of what had once been the stables of Friendly Hall.
There have been physical changes too, in Sturry Church over these years. A very Victorian wooden screen was removed and the old organ, hand pumped for many years by Miss Jessie Simpson, was replaced by a modern electric one. A reredos, the subject of much disharmony between the clergy of Sturry and Fordwich in the 1860's, was removed without any of the fuss which attended its installation. The altar and main cross were replaced in plain wood and in a simple style. More recently still some of the back pews have been removed to create an open space.
In 1998 the pews in the side aisles were replaced by chairs. Less memorably, old street lighting has been succeded by modern, new style sans serif signposts erected in place of fingerposts of yesteryear and many a pavement put where once there was only a footpath. The Sturry telephone exchange has been subsumed into the Canterbury one and letter are no longer sorted at Sturry Post Office. Amenities, though, have been provided in plenty.
There is a large playing field, administered by the Parish Council, to the south of Park View. There is a new Library, and there has been much rebuilding in both the Infants ans Junior Sections of the Primary School and at the Secondary School in Bredlands Lane. This was re-named the Frank Montgomery School following Mr. Montgomery's death in 1980; he having been the Chairman of the Governors of the school for thirty years. The old primary school, which was vacated in 1986, was a casualty of the great storm of October 1987.
A major loss to the village of Hersden was the closure of Chislet Colliery; this and its history have been chronicled in the history of Chislet and Westbere.
There have been inevitable changes in the nature of societies in the village over the past forty years but new ones have sprung up where old ones have died and it would be a most unclubbable soul who could not find some group where her or she could happily settle, or did not find Sturry - then and now - a friendly village in which to live.
HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE OF HERSDEN to 1998
Back to top
The village of Hersden lies at the eastern boundary of the Parish and almost entirely to the north of the A28 (Island Road).
It owes its existence to the discovery of coal during exploration work for a channel tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff, Dover. The year was 1890!
A joint Anglo-German company was formed in 1911 to undertake exploration work to evaluate the potential of the northern sector of the Kent coalfield. It was a subsidiary company (The Anglo-Westphalian (Chislet, Kent) Colliery Ltd) which started sinking two shafts in November 1914. The First World War caused severe labour shortages and the named change to Chislet Colliery Ltd. The first coal to go on sale from Chislet was in October 1918.
Coal production continued through the strikes of the 1920's, the Second World War and nationalisation in 1947. Coal production continued until the closure of the pit on 25 July 1969.
One of the greatest problems for Chislet Colliery was obtaining housing for its workforce. Most of the workforce had been recruited from Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham and Wales with many of them living in Margate and Ramsgate. They travelled on special trains to and from Grove Ferry Station and later Chislet Colliery Halt.
This was the background which promoted the idea of a village closer to the colliery. The first recorded thoughts on the matter were in 1917 when the figure of 200 houses was proposed. This rose to a proposal in 1919 for 800 houses and a report in 1928 states that the village was designed for 1,000 houses!
The scenery which existed before the development of the pit was one of woodland, scrub and pasture. There was an orchard in the vicinity of the Vehicle Testing Station and the Field Aquatic Nursery and the proerties that would have been found were very few. Recollections are that a cottage existed in the vicinity of what is now Arosfa Dunelm on Island Road. (The well for this cottage still exists in the garden of Arosfa) Another cottage existed in the vicinity of the aforementioned orchard. Little Hoplands Farm and Haseden Farm were tucked down over the hill on the northern slopes of the Stour Valley. To complete this picture were Westbere Court and Chislet Park Cottages.
The name of this new village was Chislet or Chislet Colliery Village which because of the confusion was re-named Hersden in 1929.
1929 also saw the building of two churches: The Methodist Church Hall and St. Alban's Roman Catholic Church. The latter was sadly to be demolished in 1978.
Hesrden was to see yet another church development because in 1935 St. Dunstan's Roman Catholic Church was built.
By 1945 there were 165 houses in Hersden which included two General Stores, a Co-Operative Food Hall with Butchery and wet fish departmets, a Post Office, a Drapery, a Fish & Chip Shop, three Churches ( two with adjoining halls), a Working Men's Club, a Public House (The Black Horse) and a temporary School. The next big change came in 1950 when the Bridge Blean Rural District Council built another 92 houses to house mainly colliery workers.
Little development took place in Hersden for over a decade with the building of five bungalows in The Avenue and a new miners' welfare club with accommodation for the steward to the rear, which took place in the early 1960's. Next came the Vehicle Testing Station and the disastrous news for the village that the colliery was to close. The closure of the colliery heralded the steady decline in the facilities and wellbeing of the village with the loss of most shops, a church and both church halls. It is as if the village lost its sense of purpose and community spirit which it has been trying in recent years to rekindle with some measure of success.
1979 produced another surge of building when Canterbury City Council built 60 houses and flats in an area know as St. Alban's and a small starter home development of 11 properties at the western end of the village, which is Maple Gardens.
A further 16 small flats, a detached house and a bungalow have been built in the St. Alban's area since then.
In conclusion it can be said that the village of Hersden has, in the space of 70 years, been conceived, developed and has fulfilled its primary purpose. This is an evolutionary process which would normally, outside the "Wild West" gold rush towns, take hundreds of years! Despite the decline following the closure of the colliery, the rapid transfer of properties into private ownership (over 50% in 10 years) shows that the residents have confidence in the future of their village.
VISUAL IMPRESSIONS OF THE PARISH to 1998
Back to top
Visually Sturry Village is split into two parts. The newer and larger is the post war housing estates on the north side of the Island Road. A complete lack of imagination by the planners and architects created a large area of semi-detached stereotype houses and bungalows not all in keeping with a country village.
The second part, being the old village, is far more interesting. It contains many older buildings some dating from the 12th Century. The Manor House and Barn owned and well maintained by The Kings School are prime examples, St. Nicholas Church being another.
These two aspects of Sturry are indicative of the village's very nature, at the heart there is a conservation area which has been extended over the years.
Historically what typifies Sturry visually are the Church and Milner Barn, the High Street. But whilst identifying the traditional aspects, most of us also appreciate that on a practical level, the growth in population has irrevocably altered the nature of the Village.
The dilemma is maitaining a balance. Any more growth would further erode the rural nature of Sturry, of which we are all so fond.
(The Black and White Mills), Mill Road and the level crossing are where visitors gain their first impression of Sturry. Much could be done to improve the Mills and the Milner Memorial Ground.
Broad Oak and Hersden, because of their relative isolation, find their rural aspects easier to maintain. However, Broad Oak suffers from the same traffic problems as Sturry and again intensive planning permissions have allowed the erection of structures totally out of keeping with the village. It is a pity that the most spectacular views in Broad Oak, eg. the sweeping farms, woods and valley and Vale Farm House, are hidden from view to the passerby but Broad Oak residents appreciate and cherish them.
Hersden differs from the other villages in the Parish in that it was essentially purpose made to serve the coal industry. The increasing number of owner occupiers is revitalising the village and thus making it a more attractive area. Again, Hersden residents appreciate its rural setting. The panoramic view over Westbere Lakes and the Stour Valley is interupted only by the beginnings of industrial and residential expansion. But the benefits of allowing further expansion must be sensitively weighed against the desecration of our countryside.
PLACES OF WORSHIP IN THE PARISH OF STURRY
Back to top
There are five buildings of worship situated within the Parish boundary. In Sturry Village there is the ancient Parish Church of St. Nicholas, dating from the 12th. Century and situated adjacent to Mill Road, between the River Stour to the west and Sturry High Street to the east.
The Church seats about 300 persons and is used by both Anglican and Methodist worshippers. In 1984 a new gas heating system was installed and several pews removed from the west end of the nave, the latter project providing some open space for community activities in addition to worship.
Further north in the newer part of the village, the Roman Catholic Church has a Mass Centre, St. Joseph's, at the junction of River View with Heath Close. A dual purpose building, St. Joseph's is used for worship on Sundays and for various community activities at other times.
In Broad Oak, there is a Chapel of the Countess of Huntingdon connection situated in Chapel Lane, off Shalloak Road, which was opened in 1867. A small denomination of Methodist origins, it has been linked with the Congregational Church in more recent years, and Broad Oak Chapel is now more helpfully described as "Free Evangelical".
The remaining two churches are both in Hersden: that now known as Hersden Church, basically, the building has served both Methodist and Church of England Congregations since 1970 when the two were linked together in a local ecumenical project (The Church of England formerly had its own building in Hersden, also dating from 1928 and situated further to the west along The Avenue. It was no longer used for worship after 1970 and has now been demolished. Its name, St. Alban's is perpetuated in the road which now joins The Avenue at the site of the former church. The remaining Methodist/Anglican Church was renovated and converted to a dual purpose building in 1974, so that it could be used for community activities in addition to worship. In 2005 it was sympathetically renovated again, extended and converted to the Hersden Neighbourhood Community Centre and is no longer a Church.
About 100 yards to the east of the "Joint" Church at the junction of The Avenue and East View, stands the Roman Catholic Parish Church of St. Dunstan opened in 1935.
NOTE:
The Church of England Parish, in its association with the Methodist Church, also includes the Town of Fordwich and the Parish of Westbere, in each of which there is an ancient Parish Church. The Church in Fordwich is now a Closed Church.
The Roman Catholic Parish also includes Fordwich and Westbere as well as Chislet, Hoath and Marshside.
Back to top