Kearsney is a village in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. At one time it would have been called a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

, there being no church there. The population of the village is included in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

Temple Ewell A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

Geography

Nowadays the village falls within the Dover urban area and sits a little over two miles northwest of Dover town centre. Much like the adjoining villages of River and Temple Ewell, it is effectively a suburb of the town. If an area can be defined as Kearsney it is the rectangle of Kearsney Avenue forming two sides and the London Road and Sandwich Roads forming the other two. Kearsney is situated between the parishes of

River A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of w ...

and

Ewell Ewell ( , ) is a suburban area with a village centre in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, approximately south of central London and northeast of Epsom. In the 2011 Census, the settlement had a population of 34,872, a majority of wh ...

. Being an administrative part of Dover borough it was part of the parish of River.

History

The name is taken from an old Saxon name for a place where

watercress Watercress or yellowcress (''Nasturtium officinale'') is a species of aquatic flowering plant in the cabbage family Brassicaceae. Watercress is a rapidly growing perennial plant native to Europe and Asia. It is one of the oldest known leaf v ...

grows. Kearsney Abbey was not an abbey, but a country house with large pleasant grounds. It is situated on the

River Dour The River Dour is a chalk stream in the county of Kent, England. It flows from the villages of Temple Ewell and River between which is a neighbourhood served by a railway station, Kearsney. It is roughly long. It originally had a wide estu ...

, more a large stream than river, but big enough to sustain

flour mill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separated ...

s and paper mills along its path, like Crabble Mill, which is a couple of miles downstream in River. Kearsney railway station takes its name from the area. Kearsney station was the station for

and the parish of River. The community of Kearsney grew around the Railway Bell Hotel which was on the main Dover to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

road. There is also a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

convent A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglic ...

near to the railway station. The famous boys' school

Kearsney College Kearsney College is a private boarding, English medium high school for boys in Botha's Hill, a small town between the provincial capital of Pietermaritzburg and Durban, in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. History Kearsney Coll ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

takes its name from Kearsney.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Kent