Manston 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 Thanet 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 village is situated one mile northwest of

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to the Census, there was a populati ...

. The parish includes four hamlets and the former Manston Airport.

Etymology

The village was originally ''Mannestone'' which means 'farm on top of a hill' (a possible alternative variation is a farm belonging to a man called Mann) and was recorded in 1254 as ''Manneston'', but obtained its modern spelling in 1381 around the time of the

Peasants' Revolt The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Blac ...

History

The discovery of an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

sword at what is known as the Ozengell burial ground and also 200 graves including a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

stone and lead-lined coffin, never preserved, show that the site has been occupied for many centuries. In June 1381 the

reached Manston. :''"A proclamation in the name of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler ordered that labour services should not be performed nor distraints made, and called on the people to destroy the Manston house of William dea Medmenham local coroner who evidently acted as representative for St Augustine's and Catherine's and if possible behead him. The same day a crowd some 200 strong attacked the house, burnt "the books and muniments" and "took away and burnt the rolls" to the value of 20 marks."'' Two road names in the parish give clues to its past. Manston Court Road refers to Manston Court, the seat of the Manston family who held high office, including Richard de Manston at the time of King John (circa 1200) and William Manston, Sheriff of Kent in 1436; and Spratling Street gets its name from the Sprakling family who lived in Ellington in

from 1558 to 1659, at a time when Manston was still a part of St Lawrence Extra. Smuggling was rife in the Isle in the 17th and 18th centuries. Manston Cave, on the road towards

Sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

, was one of the smugglers' hideouts. Little of it now remains. In 1901, the

Isle of Thanet The Isle of Thanet () is a peninsula forming the easternmost part of Kent, England. While in the past it was separated from the mainland by the Wantsum Channel, it is no longer an island. Archaeological remains testify to its settlement in an ...

Poor Law Union opened a children's home at Manston. The homes comprised four pairs of houses and could accommodate a total of 120 children. In the 1901 census there were 46 inmates and the Superintendent was Edmund L Martins. One of the orphans, Frank Sidney Smith, an artist, painted a picture of Manston from memory in later life. This is now hanging in St Catherine's Church. The children's homes have now been converted to residential use. The orphanage's school is now the village hall. During both World Wars the Manston area became important as an aircraft base, particularly in the Second World War as an airfield for emergency landings of damaged Allied bombers returning from the continent. Today the former

RAF Manston Royal Air Force Manston or more simply RAF Manston is a former Royal Air Force station located in the north-east of Kent, at on the Isle of Thanet from 1916 until 1996. The site was split between a commercial airport Kent International Airpo ...

is home to

Kent International Airport Manston Airport was a British airport. It was branded as Manston, Kent International Airport and was located in the parish of Minster-in-Thanet and partly adjacent to the village of Manston in the Thanet district of Kent, England, north-eas ...

. The RAF Manston Museum tells the story of the air station.

Governance

Manston Parish Council consists of seven members and holds its meetings in the RAF Museum

Geography

Manston Parish lies in the middle of the Isle of Thanet and includes the hamlets of Haine, Lydden, Woodchurch and Shottendane. A large part of it is agricultural land.

The village

St Catherine's Church was built in 1872 with monies raised by locals as a

Chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently. Often a chapel of ease is deliberately bu ...

for those of the St Lawrence Parish who were unable to attend the church in St Lawrence. The land was donated by the Vicar of St Lawrence, Rev. G. W. Sicklemore. There is a war memorial on the village green to those who served and died in the two world wars of the twentieth century. The village pub is The Jolly Farmer, located in what was in 1672 part of a pair of farm dwellings, and originally registered as a public house in November 1738 by Lazarus Haywood under the name "Jolly Farmers". It was leased to its first tenant Keeper, Samuel Packer (a boot and shoe maker from

) in March 1739. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

the Jolly Farmer was a favourite of pilots stationed at

. It was rumoured that many of the pilots signed their names on the ceiling of 'the snug', but this has been painted over and so the rumour is unverifiable. The licensee from 1957 to 1980 was the footballer Bert Turner. There is an active village hall with its own committee, used during

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

as a

polling station A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections. The phrase polling station is also used in American English and British English, although polling place is the building

; and two caravan parks: Preston Parks (statics) and Manston Court. The erstwhile

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional se ...

and village store is now closed: the post box bearing the mark of GR is all that remains. There is flourishing Garden Club.Manston Garden Club

Transport

(formerly RAF Manston) is located near the village. Plans were announced in October 2013 for a new

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...

to serve the village and airport. The airport closed on 15 May 2014.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Kent Civil parishes in Kent