Otterden is a

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 authority ...

and village on the

Kent Downs The Kent Downs is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in Kent, England. They are the eastern half of the North Downs and stretch from the London/Surrey borders to the White Cliffs of Dover, including a small section of the London Borough ...

in the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...

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.

History

Otterden is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

under Kent in the lands belonging to Adam FitzHubert. The book which was written in 1086 said: Otterden has an important place in the history of science: Stephen Gray and

Granville Wheler Granville Wheler (August 1701 – 12 May 1770) was an English clergyman and scientist. Life He was third son of Sir George Wheler, born in August 1701, and was educated in Durham where his father was a canon at Durham Cathedral. He was admitted ...

carried out their seminal experiments showing that electricity can be conducted over long distances at Wheler's estate there in 1729. From 1933 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1948, Otterden was the home of the

Bunce Court School The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germa ...

, founded by

Anna Essinger Anna Essinger (15 September 1879 – 30 May 1960) was a German Jewish educator. At the age of 20, she went to finish her education in the United States, where she encountered Quakers and was greatly influenced by their attitudes, adopting them fo ...

when she closed her German boarding school after the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

seized power and moved her school to England.Michael Luick-Thram
"Anna Essinger and the New Herrlingen School"
Parish of Otterden website. Dissertation excerpt, ''Creating 'New Americans': WWII-era European Refugees': Formation of American Identities''. Retrieved September 28, 2011

References

External links

Villages in Kent Civil parishes in Kent {{kent-geo-stub