Hartlip is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

in the

borough of Swale Swale is a local government district with borough status in Kent, England and is bounded by Medway to the west, Canterbury to the east, Ashford to the south and Maidstone to the south west. Its council is based in Sittingbourne. The dist ...

, in the county 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 population estimate was 680 in 1991, and in 2001 there were 566 registered

voter Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an Constituency, electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision making, decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election camp ...

s. At the 2011 Census the population was 746. The village covers 1420

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s (5.7 km²) and is in an

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peopl ...

region of high quality

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in partic ...

farming,

hops Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant '' Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to wh ...

and

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit ( caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legu ...

Location

Hartlip is situated between the M2 motorway ( Strood to

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 ...

) and the A2 main road from

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

to Canterbury. It is at Hartlip Hill, between Rainham and Newington on

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main ...

, the old

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman R ...

. It stands about 50 m above sea level. Ordnance Survey grid reference: TQ 838 642 GB.

Name

The name Hartlip derives from the Old English ''hliep'', which meant a

gate A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word derived from old Norse "gat" meaning road or path; But other terms include '' yett and port''. The concept originally referred to the gap or hole in the wal ...

fence A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or netting. A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its whole length. ...

. In combination with '' heorot'' ( hart or stag), the name therefore means a "gate over which harts leap". The first recorded version of the name was ''Heordlyp'' in the 11th century.

Places of interest

Queendown Warren is a nature reserve in the village. The reserve covers almost 80 hectares (198 acres) and comprises several distinct sections. The original reserve was a rabbit warren in mediaeval times and forms the reserve's core. It has been open downland for many hundreds of years and has an internationally important community of grassland orchids.

Buildings

There are the remains of an extensive

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas ...

discovered in Danes Field. Hartlip

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

church, named St. Michael and All Angels, is built of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

and has a peal of 6 bells. The oldest bell, number 5, was cast by Robert Burford between 1392 and ''circa'' 1418. The church registers go back to 1538. The village also has a Cardiphonia United Methodist church, built in 1821. Hartlip Endowed Church of England Primary School is one of the oldest establishments for primary education in North East Kent. It was endowed in 1678 by Mary Gibbon and rebuilt in 1855. It is situated next to the parish church, with an adjoining gateway. The only

public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

is the Rose and Crown. It is situated at the lower end of Hollow Lane, whose name is reputed to come from a secret

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

leading to it from the church. The countryside around Hartlip held in the past, three manor houses: Yaugher, Hartlip & Grayney. From these manors remain two manor houses. Yaugher had the manor house Queendown Warren. This was built in 1560 using oak bought from Henry VIII. In 1841 the owner chose to move the house to a new site. The local wagoner and his men took down the house and moved it a few miles to its present location on Queendown Warren alongside the nature reserve. Hartlip Place was built in 1809 replacing a former one built 500 years earlier, which had fallen into disrepair.

References

External links

* http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mrawson/dir08hart.html {{authority control Villages in Kent Civil parishes in Kent