Small Hythe (or Smallhythe) is a hamlet near

Tenterden Tenterden is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. It stands on the edge of the remnant forest the Weald, overlooking the valley of the River Rother. It was a member of the Cinque Ports Confederation. Its riverside today is not ...

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. The population is included in Tenterden. It stood on a branch of the Rother estuary and was a busy shipbuilding port in the 15th century, before the silting up and draining of the Romney Marshes. Small Hythe's quays and warehouses were destroyed in a fire in 1514 and were never rebuilt.

History

Bridleway sign, Smallhythe Bridge - geograph

Small Hythe was within the medieval

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to de ...

, which does not appear to have existed at the time of 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 ...

. It is first mentioned in about 1300 and received a

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the rec ...

in 1449 from Henry VI. Small Hythe lay on a branch of the River Rother. The settlement was made accessible to seagoing craft in the 1330s when the Knelle dam (an earthen bank at Wittersham Levels in the lower Rother valley, constructed to deflect floodwater from the holdings of local landowner Geoffrey de Knelle) diverted the main course of the river around the north of Oxney island. Large sea-going warships were built on the river banks from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, with associated ship-breaking for reuse of fittings and timber. The ready supply of timber from the

Weald The Weald () is an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the ...

made this isolated community one of the most important shipbuilding centres, other than the major ports, in the country. The town of Tenterden was given the status of a Limb of the Cinque Ports, with its consequent relief from taxation, in acknowledgement of providing royal warships built in Small Hythe. A storm of 1636 carried away the dam and the river returned to its former course. Small craft were still able to reach Small Hythe until gradual

silting Siltation, is water pollution caused by particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments and to the increased accumulation (temporary or ...

put an end to this, early in the twentieth century. Small Hythe appears as "Smalide" in the legal dispute about land in Tenterden and Small Hythe in 1460, and as "Smallitt" in the eighteenth century.

Notable residents

Smallhythe Place, Small Hythe, Kent - geograph

Actress

Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and tour ...

lived at

Smallhythe Place Smallhythe Place in Small Hythe, near Tenterden in Kent, is a half-timbered house built in the late 15th or early 16th century and since 1947 cared for by the National Trust. The house was originally called 'Port House' and before the River R ...

between 1899 and her death in 1928. It is now managed by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

and houses her collection of theatrical memorabilia and a small theatre.

References

External links

* * ''

Time Team ''Time Team'' is a British television programme that originally aired on Channel 4 from 16 January 1994 to 7 September 2014. It returned online in 2022 for two episodes released on YouTube. Created by television producer Tim ...

'' Season 6 Episode 6: account of brief archaeological exploration of the shipbuilding areas * * Hamlets in Kent Tenterden Shipyards of England {{Kent-geo-stub