Birchington, Kent

Historical Description

Birchington, a village and a parish in Kent. The village stands 3½ miles W by S of Margate, and has a station on the L.C. & D.R., 71 miles from London. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office. It occupies a gentle declivity, with extensive prospects by sea and land, and is about a mile long. The parish is within the Cinque-Ports liberty of Dover, and comprises 1679 acres of land and 448 of foreshore and water; population of the civil parish, 1822; of the ecclesiastical, with Acol, 2050. The manor belonged from the beginning of the 15th century to the family of Quex, and passed by marriage in the time of Henry VII. to the Crispes. One of its owners, a distinguished Puritan, in 1657 was carried off from it to the Continent by the Royalist captain, Golding, and long kept prisoner at Ostend and Bruges. William III. frequently rested at the manor house on his excursions to Holland. The present mansion is modern, and bears the name of Great Quex. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the chapelry of Acol, in the diocese of Canterbury; net value, £232 with residence. Patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The church consists of nave, chancel, and aisles, with tower and spire, and on the north side of it is a chapel of the manor, containing some firie monuments and ancient brasses. There are Baptist and Wesleyan chapels.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient County	Kent
Ecclesiastical parish	Birchington All Saints
Hundred	Ringslow
Lathe	St. Augustine
Liberty	Dover
Poor Law union	Thanet

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

The register dates from the year 1538.

Findmypast have the following online for Birchington, All Saints: baptisms 1538-1880, marriages 1540-1923, burials 1538-1887

Findmypast have the following online for Birchington, Wesleyan: burials 1835-1836

Churches

Church of England

All Saints (parish church)

The church of All Saints is of shingle and flint in the Perpendicular style, and has a tower of Transitional and Early English dates, with spire, and containing a clock and 8 bells: there are several brasses and tombs to the Queke or Quex and Crispe families, and various memorial windows, one of which, in the south aisle, is to Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, the distinguished painter and poet, who resided in this parish, and dying at Birchington on Easter Sunday, 1882, was buried in this churchyard, where also there is a cruciform monument to his memory: in 1910 the church was partly restored and a new organ provided and two vestries erected, in memory of the late Right Rev. Charles John Ellicott D.D. (Bishop of Gloucester 1897-1905), who for many years resided during the summer months in this parish.

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Birchington from the following:

Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Birchington (All Saints))

Maps

Online maps of Birchington are available from a number of sites:

Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
Google Streetview.
National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
OpenStreetMap.
old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Kent newspapers online:

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitation of Kent, 1619 is available on the Heraldry page, as is also The Visitation of Kent, 1663-68.

District	Thanet
County	Kent
Region	South East
Country	England
Postal district	CT7
Post Town	Birchington