Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for TENTERDEN

TENTERDEN, a small town, a parish, a sub-district, and a district, in Kent. The town stands on elevated ground, 7 miles WNW of Appledore r. station, and 12 SW of Ashford; was anciently called Theinwarden; became, in the time of Henry VI., a member of the Rye cinque port, and a municipal borough; is governed, under the new act, by a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors; includes, within its borough boundaries, all T. parish, and part of Ebony; is a seat of quarter sessions, petty sessions, county courts, and a polling place; consists chiefly of one street about a mile long; and has a post-office‡ under Staplehurst, two banking offices, a good inn, a town hall and assembly-rooms, a small town jail, a church, four dissenting chapels, a new ultra-mural cemetery, an endowed national school with £59 a year, and British schools, a female reformatory, a sub-scription library, an agricultural society, a workhouse , apprenticing charities £80, other charities £130, a weekly market on Friday, and a fair on the first Monday of May. The church belonged anciently to St. Augustine's abbey in Canterbury; is large and later English, with a lofty pinnacled tower; and has attached to its N side an exclusorium, in which the martyrs of the time of Mary were confined prior to their removal to Canterbury. The tower is of a later period than the main body; was erected in the time of Henry VI.; and is not-able for a proverb which alleges that the removal of stone for it, from a sea-wall on the E coast, was the cause of the formation of the Goodwin sands. Pop. of the borough in 1851, 3,901; in 1861, 3,762. Houses, 711.

The parish comprises 8,300 acres. Real property, £21,457; of which £105 are in gasworks. Pop. in 1851, 3,782; in 1861, 3,656. Houses, 692. Heronden Hall and Finchden are chief residences. Hales Place and Kenchill were formerly mansions, and are now farm-houses. A section in the N was constituted a separate charge, under the name of St. Michael, in 1862: and another section, noticed in our article Small-Hythe, is also a separate charge. The head living is a vicarage, and that of St. Michael is a p. curacy, in the diocese of Canterbury. Value of the former, £450;* of the latter, not reported. Patrons of the former, the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury; of the latter, S. Beale, Esq.—The sub-district contains 6 parishes. Acres, 26,372. Pop., 6,616. Houses, 1,269.—The district includes also Rolvenden sub-district, and comprises 46,889 acres. Poor rates in 1863, £7,808. Pop. in 1851, 11,279; in 1861, 10,947. Houses, 2,134. Marriages in 1863, 69; births, 329,-of which 27 were illegitimate; deaths, 214, -of which 80 were at ages under 5 years, and 12 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 762; births, 3,794; deaths, 2,146. The places of worship, in 1851, were 12 of the Church of England , with 4,762 sittings; 5 of Baptists, with 660 s.; 1 of Unitarians, with 262 s.; 7 of Wesleyans, with 1,210 s.; and 4 of Bible Christians, with 518 s. The schools were 14 public day-schools, with 1,171 scholars; 25 private day-schools, with 537 s.; 23 Sunday schools, with 1,395 s.; and 2 evening schools for adults, with 17 s.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town, a parish, a sub-district, and a district"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Tenterden AP/CP       Tenterden SubD       Tenterden RegD/PLU       Kent AncC
Place names: TENTERDEN     |     THEINWARDEN
Place: Tenterden

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