Crundale is a mostly rural 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the Ashford District of

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

in southeast

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The village covers a section of one of the dual escarpments of the

North Downs The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. Much of the North Downs comprises two Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Areas of Outstanding Natural Be ...

at this point, about halfway between Ashford and Canterbury.

Geography

About a quarter of the village is woodland, and barring its western side which slopes steeply to the Great Stour, which is at above sea level, most of the rest of its land is at more than above

Ordnance Datum An ordnance datum (OD) is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as above ordnance datum (AOD). Usually mean sea level (MSL) at a particular place is used for the d ...

Amenities

The community living in the civil parish is relatively small - many of its activities are shared with the neighbouring parish of

Godmersham Godmersham is a village and civil parish in the Ashford District of Kent, England. The village straddles the Great Stour river where it cuts through the North Downs and its land is approximately one third woodland, all in the far east and west ...

History

An early

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

gold

buckle A buckle or clasp is a device used for fastening two loose ends, with one end attached to it and the other held by a catch in a secure but adjustable manner. Often taken for granted, the invention of the buckle was indispensable in securing two ...

and other princely items from a grave dating from the mid-7th century were found in the Crundale Downs in 1861 and are now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. The intricately designed object is notable for the representation of a three dimensional

appliqué Appliqué is ornamental needlework in which pieces or patches of fabric in different shapes and patterns are sewn or stuck onto a larger piece to form a picture or pattern. It is commonly used as decoration, especially on garments. The technique ...

fish. The early Norman parish church is dedicated to St Mary the Blessed Virgin and is a building listed in the highest category of the national system, at Grade I. It is on the escarpment of the Crundale Downs, a less eroded top layer of the escarpment, making it higher, about half a mile southeast of the village mainstay which is made up of dual clusters very close to each other and connected by road and by separate footpath.Outline civil parish map
Neighbourhood Statistics. The Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 12 May 2013. The tombs of Juliana Hervey and Reverend Francis Paine are separately listed.

Recreation

The Stour Valley Walk runs north–south through the civil parish, linking to

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climat ...

and to Ashford.

References

External links

Crundale Church
at John E. Vigar's Kent Churches {{authority control Villages in Kent Villages in the Borough of Ashford Civil parishes in Ashford, Kent