Frittenden is a village and

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 ...

in the

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 High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. T ...

District of

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 parish is located on the flood plain of one of the tributaries of the River Medway, 15 miles (24 km) to the east of Tunbridge Wells: the village is three miles (4.8 km) south of Headcorn. It is in a very rural part of Kent. The parish church is dedicated to St Mary.

History

Roman remains have been found near an old Jutish track which ran through the area, along which pigs were driven into the forest of Andreadsweald. The village itself is named in a charter of 804, and the '' Anglo Saxon Chronicle'' of 839 relate that King Ethelwulf of Wessex gave the village land to St Augustines in

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a 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. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false char ...

was given land in the village during the reign of King Henry VIII. Frittenden Church underwent extensive renovation in 1848 following a fire in the Church in 1790 when lightning struck the Church steeple. Rumours of the Frittenden Treacle Mines were started by locals in the 1930s at the expense of gullible Londoners who would tour the area in their newly acquired motor cars, eager to visit the source of much of the world's treacle. Frittenden Historical Society keeps a record of the history of the village and its inhabitants. It meets regularly in the Memorial Hall.

Notable people

The

Rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

of the parish church from 1900 to 1916 was Rupert Edward Inglis who was a former England rugby international. He was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His letters home to his wife from the front were published by his widow after the war. He is commemorated on the war memorial, and the

lychgate A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, lyke-gate or as two separate words lych gate, (from Old English ''lic'', corpse), also ''wych gate'', is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style ch ...

at St Mary's church is dedicated to him. Admiral Sir Arthur Moore (1847–1934), the son of another rector of the parish, Edward Moore, was born at Frittenden in 1847 and was buried in the churchyard.

References

* (source of History section) * *

External links

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