Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE

MILTON-NEXT-SITTINGBOURNE, a town and a parish in Milton district, Kent. The town stands on a hill-side, at the top of a creek of the river Swale, adjacent on the NW to the town and r. station of Sittingbourne, and adjacent on the NE to the junction of the North Kent railway with the branch to Sheerness, 10 miles ESE of Chatham; was anciently known as Mideltun; is Supposed to have had a palace of the Saxon kings; was a royal manor from the Saxon times till the time of Charles I., often held in dowry by the queens; is said to have been the death-place, about 680, of Sexlburga, the canonized prioress of Minster in Sheppey; was attacked, in 893, by Hastings the Dane, with a fleet of 80 ships; suffered desolation from fire raised by Earl Godwin, in a quarrel with Edward the Confessor; is recorded to have had six mills and twenty-seven salt-pits at Domesday; was a considerable maritime place in the time of Queen Elizabeth; has a court-leet, said to have been established by King Alfred, and held annually for the appointment of two high constables and other officers; is governed by a portreeve, elected annually, who collects dues and tolls, two-thirds of which are now devoted to the paving of the streets; is a sub-port to Faversham, and the seat of a very famous oyster fishery; consists of a number of small streets, intersecting one another at right angles, and straggling into scattered outskirts; and has a post office ‡ of the name of Milton, under Sittingbourne, a courthouse, a market-house, shipping quays, a church, two dissenting chapels, a free school, a workhouse, and a variety of institutions, some of them conjoint with Sittingbourne. The court-house stands in the centre of the town; is an ancient timbered structure; is used for the manor courts; and includes what was long used as a small town jail. The church stands to the N of the town; is partly Norman, partly early English, and chiefly decorated English; incorporates pieces of Roman brick scattered through its walls; has, in the S chancel, three paving-tiles with coloured patterns, seemingly either Venetian or Moorish; and contains a piscina, two sedilia, the brass of a knight of the time of Edward IV., two other brasses, and some monuments. The Independent chapel was built in 1860, at a cost of £1,200. A weekly market is held on Saturday; and a fair, chiefly for cattle, is held on 24 July. An extensive tanyard is at Chalkwell; and some oil and cement mills are at Crown Quay. A considerable export trade, in corn, wool, bricks, and paving stones for London, is carried on from Crown Quay. The oyster fishery dates from at least the Roman times, and is believed to have furnished the Rutupian oysters celebrated by Juvenal; it was granted by King John to the abbots of Faversham, and continued in their hands till the dissolution; it has been worked, from very early times, by a company of fishermen under special bye-laws like those of Faversham; and it employs a large fleet of smacks and hoys in conveying the produce to London. The oysters are known as "Milton natives; ''they bear the reputation of being the best in the British market; and, since the discovery of the great sea-beds off Shoreham, in consequence of the comparative coarseness and plenteousness of the supply from these beds, they have risen in value.-The town and the parish are statistically regarded as conterminate. Acres, 2,556. Real property, £12,385; of which £300 are in fisheries. Pop. in 1851, 2,407; in 1861,2,731. Houses, 507. Part of the land is marsh. An earth-work of about 100 feet square, known as Castle-Rough, with a broad fosse and a single vallum, on Kemsley Down, in the marshes, is believed to have been a fortress formed by Hastings the Dane at his attack in 893; and traces of a raised causeway lead from it to the mouth of the creek. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Canterbury. Value, £400.* Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Cauterbury.


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

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a town and a parish"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Milton CP/AP       Milton RegD/PLU       Kent AncC
Place names: MIDELTUN     |     MILTON NEXT SITTINGBOURNE
Place: Milton Regis

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