This is a list of grounds that

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

have used since the formation of the first county club in August 1842. The club has used 29 grounds for first-class,

List A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

and

Twenty20 Twenty20 (T20) is a shortened game format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single innin ...

home matches. Prior to the formation of the first county club an informal

county team A county is a geographic region within Gaelic games, controlled by a county board of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and originally based on the 32 counties of Ireland as they were in 1884. While the administrative geography of Ireland has ...

had appeared in first-class matches from 1773 and cricket had been played in the county from at least the 17th century.A brief history of Kent

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2016-02-14.Early Cricket (Pre 1799)

International Cricket Council The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the world governing body of cricket. Headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, its members are List of International Cricket Council members, 108 national associations, with 12 List of Internation ...

. Retrieved 2018-03-24.

White Hart Field White Hart Field was a cricket ground in Bromley in south-east London. The ground, which was in the county of Kent until 1965, was on an area of open space and farm land which stretched from Bromley Palace to Widmore Green.

Bromley Bromley is a large town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, and had an estimated population of 87,889 as of 2011. Originally part of Kent, Bromley became a market town, char ...

played host to the club's first home fixture in first-class cricket against an All England cricket team in 1842. The county was based at the

Beverley Ground The Beverley Ground was a cricket ground in Canterbury in Kent. It was in use in the mid-19th century, with recorded matches taking place between 1839 and 1846. It was the home ground of Beverley Cricket Club and was where the first Kent County ...

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. ...

until 1846 and

Canterbury Cricket Week Canterbury Cricket Week is the oldest cricket festival week in England and involves a series of consecutive Kent home matches, traditionally held in the first week in August. It was founded in 1842, although a similar festival week was first hel ...

was first established at this ground.Jones KH (1934
An early relic of Kent Cricket
in ''Archaeologia Cantiana'', vol 48, pp.240–243. Retrieved 2017-12-01.Homer J (2015) Ye Olde Beverlie, St Stephen's Green in ''Canterbury Pubs''. Stroud: Amberley Publishing Limited.
Available online
Retrieved 2017-12-01). From 1847 the base for the county moved to the

St Lawrence Ground The St Lawrence Ground is a cricket ground in Canterbury, Kent. It is the home ground of Kent County Cricket Club and since 2013 has been known as The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence, due to commercial sponsorship. It is one of the oldest grounds ...

, also in Canterbury, and this ground was later established as the county's formal headquarters.Sweetinburgh S (2015
Kent Cricket and a Tudor Mansion

Canterbury Christchurch University , mottoeng = The truth shall set you free , established = 2005 – gained University status 1962 – teacher training college , type = Public , religious_affiliation = Church of England , city ...

, 2015-08-06. Retrieved 2018-03-24. It is now the main ground for the county and hosts the majority of home matches, although it was typically only used for county cricket during Canterbury week until well into the 20th century.Hignell A (2002) ''Rain Stops Play: Cricketing Climates'', pp. 67–112. London: Abingdon. . The ground is famous for having had a tree, the St Lawrence Lime, on the playing area for most of its history.The Kent County Club and the St Lawrence Ground, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', 1896-03-14, p.13.Kent County Cricket Club, ''

'', 1897-03-25, p.11.Moseling M, Quarrington T (2013) ''A Half-Forgotten Triumph: The story of Kent's County Championship title of 1913'', p.35. Cheltenham: SportsBooks. . Unusually for a first-class county, Kent have played over 100 home fixtures at seven grounds and continued to play the majority of its matches away from the St Lawrence Ground until well into the 20th century.Hignell, ''op. cit.'', pp. 65–66. The out-grounds still in use as of 2018 are the

Nevill Ground The Nevill Ground is a cricket ground at Royal Tunbridge Wells in the English county of Kent. It is owned by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and is used by Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club in the summer months and by Tunbridge Wells Hockey Club in t ...

Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the Weald, High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Roc ...

, which hosts the annual

Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week Tunbridge Wells Cricket Week is a festival of cricket during which Kent County Cricket Club play their home matches at Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club's Nevill Ground in Royal Tunbridge Wells. Games held during it are considered some of Kent's most ...

, and the

County Cricket Ground, Beckenham The County Ground, Beckenham is a cricket ground in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley. The ground is owned by Leander Sports and Leisure and is used as an outground by Kent County Cricket Club for First XI fixtures, as well as for othe ...

. The 29 grounds that Kent have used for home matches since 1842 are listed below along with

The Oval The Oval, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Kia Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, located in the borough of Lambeth, in south London. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club since ...

in London, which is the home ground of

Surrey County Cricket Club Surrey County Cricket Club (Surrey CCC) is a first-class club in county cricket, one of eighteen in the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Surrey, including areas that now form South London ...

which was used for two home matches by Kent.

Grounds

Below is a list of grounds used by

in first-class, List A and Twenty20 matches. Grounds are listed in order of their first use by the county. The count only includes matches where Kent were the home team. Many grounds have been used by other teams, including for international matches.

The Oval

Kent have used

, the home ground of

, for "home" matches on two occasions. The quarter-final of the 1981 Benson & Hedges Cup against

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

was scheduled to be played on the St Lawrence Ground but, following heavy rain, the ground was deemed unplayable. Play was impossible on the first two days allocated for the fixture and an inspection on the third day also ruled out play and the match was switched to use The Oval at short notice.Milton (2020), pp.203–204.Ross, A. (1981) Tavaré the backbone of Kent's victory, ''

'', 1981-06-27, p. 15
Available online
at The Times Digitial Archive. Retrieved 2022-06-05.) The second Kent "home" match on the ground was a 2010 Twenty20 Cup fixture against

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

which Kent chose to play on the ground in an attempt to increase attendance and, as a result, income. The experiment was not repeated.Kent to stage home T20 Cup clash at the Brit Oval
Kent Online, 2009-12-09. Retrieved 2016-01-30.Kent play host at The Oval but home from home no help against Essex
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 2010-07-09. Retrieved 2016-01-30.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Milton H (2020) ''Kent County Cricket Grounds''. Woking: Pitch Publishing. {{English county cricket grounds Kent County Cricket Club Cricket grounds in Kent

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 ...

Kent-related lists