VILLAGE SIGNS OF KENT by Ken Savage, VSS Member

The decorative village sign may have started life in Norfolk, but it was not long afterwards that the first signs appeared in Kent. Again, it was the Royal Family that provided the stimulus. The Duke of York made a speech to the Royal Academy in 1920 with the objective of encouraging villages to erect signs similar to those on the Sandringham estate and shortly afterwards the Daily Mail organised a sign competition and exhibition, offering a total of £2,000 in prizes. Ten awards were made and the winning design was St.Peter’s in Kent, which won an award of £1,000. The sign is still there, although refurbished several times in the intervening years, most recently in 1996. It shows the eponymous saint holding his keys, with wavy blue and white lines representing the chalk cliffs and the waters of the English Channel. The sign at Biddenden was also a prize-winner, this featuring the Siamese twins who lived in the village around AD1100 and left their property to the village poor which took the form of a distribution of bread and cheese each Easter Monday. The distribution still takes place, although these days only of biscuits stamped with a representation of the sisters. The third prize-winning sign still surviving is that at Bromley, which displays the town arms, although the area has now been swallowed up within Greater London.

After the establishment by Augustine of a church at Canterbury, Kent in AD604 the county became one of the first centres of Christianity, so it is not surprising that the ecclesiastical theme of the St.Peter’s sign is repeated on a number of the county’s signs. An abbey was founded at Minster-in-Thanet as early as AD670, the land granted by King Egbert for its establishment being determined, so the story goes, by the amount the queen’s tame deer could run at one breath! The deer has become the emblem of the abbey and is reproduced on the village sign. An even earlier nunnery was founded at Lyminge by Queen Ethelburga, wife of the first Christian King of Kent, this in AD633. She was sanctified after her death and is buried in the parish church which is dedicated to her and is shown on the village sign. Another Kentish saint was Edith, the daughter of a 10th-century king, who was venerated as a miracle worker. She was born in Kemsing, where a convent was later built round a well considered to have healing qualities. Although the convent has now gone, the well survives and it and St.Edith are celebrated on the village’s sign. The early churches and monasteries had, by the Middle Ages, become prosperous with the See of Canterbury one of the richest and most powerful. Successive archbishops built palaces at various places in Kent, where they could stay whilst visiting their extensive lands; those at Charing, Halling and Otford being recalled on the signs of the respective villages.

In earlier times the Kent coast was vulnerable to seaborne raids, from Scandinavia and France in particular. There was no national fleet in those days, so in the reign of Edward the Confessor, four Kent and one Sussex towns formed a confederation with the objective of protecting the coast from attack. After the Conquest the towns were fortified and in 1278 the confederation was given legal status by the granting of a charter. The five (Cinque) ports were later joined by other coastal towns as the obligation to provide ships to the king became more and more onerous. After the formation of the Royal Navy by Henry VIII the defensive role became less important but the confederation has survived, if only as a ceremonial arrangement, and the signs of Birchington, Dungeness, Faversham, Hythe, Lydd, Sandwich and Tenterden all proudly attest to their Cinque Port status.

Kent considers itself to be the birthplace of English cricket, its supposed origin being the mediaeval game of ‘creag’, which was apparently played in Newenden in 1300 by the future Edward II. Although cricket historians claim this as the first game of cricket in the county, it is by no means certain that ‘creag’ was in fact cricket. Nevertheless, the village claims that distinction on its sign, which includes cricket bat and balls in the design. On firmer historical ground is that the first county match, between Kent and Surrey, was held in the county in 1708 and that one of the first grounds on which the game was played was at Bearsted. The village sign records the longstanding connection with the game by portraying Alfred Mynn, who was a famous member of the local club in the early 19th-century. Other cricketers of the same period are depicted on the sign at Benenden, namely Edward G.Wenman and Richard Mills, both of whom played for Kent for many years, at a time when the county could field a team capable of beating an All-England XI. Several villages claim the distinction of holding the first game, including West Malling, where records show a game played in 1705, and Meopham. The sign at Teston includes cricket gear in its design for a somewhat different reason, for it was in this village in 1808 that Thomas Mann established a factory which made cricket balls.

The cricket match depicted on the West Malling sign forms a link between the game and the county’s best known author, Charles Dickens, who supposedly used a match held in the village as the basis of the cricket match described in Pickwick Papers. Several other places in the county claim a connection with the author. He spent his honeymoon at Chalk, which ignores the fact on its sign, preferring local trades of the past for its theme. Rochester was used for many of the scenes in his books and the town sign includes the outlines of its more important buildings. In the churchyard at Cooling are thirteen gravestones of members of the Comport family, all of who died in infancy and were the inspiration for the reference to similar stones in Great Expectations. The church, gravestones and a bust of the author all appear on the village sign. The author lived in Higham for 14 years until his death in 1870 and the village devotes the entire design of its sign to him, as its most famous past resident. (Note: The Higham sign showing Charles Dickens has now been taken down and not yet replaced.)

Kent is not known as an industrial county, but in the Tudor period there was an extensive ironfounding industry in the Wealden villages which, together with similar enterprises in Surrey and Sussex provided the country with much of its iron products, particularly guns and other weaponry. The industry died with the Industrial Revolution, production moving to the West Midlands, and few of the village signs in the county make any reference to it, that at Hildenborough being a notable exception. The industry most associated with the county in recent times is the growing of fruit, particularly of hops and it is this which is most recorded village signs, usually by a representation of hop plants and oasthouses, where the fruit was dried. There are too many to list in full, but those at East Farleigh, Goudhurst and Platt are particularly attractive examples. Fruit growing was not, of course, confined to hops and a number of signs include images of apple trees in their design to represent their local industry. The sign at Upper Harbledown cleverly combines the two, being fashioned in the shape of an apple with oasthouses at its centre. Other industries which get a mention are brickmaking at Lower Halstow, where the firm of Eastwood owned both the brick works and the barges which transported them to customers in London, aviation at Eastchurch where the first British aircraft factory was built in 1909, and paper making at Snodland and Tovil.

The Tovil sign is one of a number of signs to be seen in the county which since 1984 have been made by the firm of Hillcraft of Coxheath. The distinctive signs are made from coloured resin which is moulded and cast, the results usually being contained within a wooden frame. The first sign was made for Staplehurst and since then a number of others have appeared, including those at Broomfield, Frittenden, Harrietsham, Marden, Tyler Hill, the latest being at Sutton Valence. The sign in Coxheath itself is a little different, being hung from a bracket on the village’s beacon. It depicts images representing the military camp which was established in the 18th-century on what was then heathland and which was the origin of the present day village.

Finally, it must be mentioned that the county possesses what are probably the least and most expensive village signs in the country! The least expensive is the sign at Paddock Wood, where one of the old Southern Region nameplates from the railway station has been fixed on to an old railway sleeper and utilised as the village sign. This is not inappropriate as the village owes its present size to the coming of the railway in the 19th-century. The most expensive is undoubtedly that at Detling, which shows the village name in sculpted Portland stone, flanked by a curved brick and stone wall and pillars with carved stone animals on top. The sign was unveiled in 2001, the project having apparently taken four years to finalise and cost over £20,000! Was it value for money? Well, go and see it for yourselves