Bredhurst, Kent

Historical Description

Bredhurst, a parish in Kent, 3 miles SSW of Rainham station on the L.C. & D.R., and 5 from Maidstone. It has a post office under Chatham; money order and telegraph office, Rainham. Acreage, 602; population of the civil parish, 121; of the ecclesiastical, 307. In 1884 the hamlet of Lidsing, in the civil parish of Gillingham, was ecclesiastically annexed to this parish. The living is a vicarage, with Lidsing, in the diocese of Canterbury; net value, £261 with residence. Patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is old but good.

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	Bredhurst St. Peter
Hundred	Eyhorne
Lathe	Aylesford
Poor Law union	Hollingbourn

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

Church Records

The register dates from the year 1545.

Findmypast have the following online for Bredhurst, St Peter: baptisms 1547-1916, marriages 1570-1935, burials 1547-1946

Churches

Church of England

St. Peter (parish church)

The church of St. Peter is chiefly in the Early English style, with some traces of Norman work, and has a stone bell gable containing 2 bells: the chantry chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, on the south side of the chancel, is Early English, and shows remains of wall-painting: in the 16th century it was the burial place of the Kemsley family: the nave was rebuilt in 1865, and a stone holy-water stoup and a copper paten of the 14th century, belonging to the old church, are still preserved: there is a memorial window to the Rev. T. H. Day, by whom the entire cost of the restoration was defrayed, and all the other windows are also filled with stained glass. In 1905 the Rev. Anthony Collett M.A. then vicar, gave a new positive organ and the parishioners an organ case: the church affords 150 sittings: in the churchyard is a yew tree, said to be about 500 years old.

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 Bredhurst from the following:

Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bredhurst (St. Peter))

Maps

Online maps of Bredhurst 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	Maidstone
County	Kent
Region	South East
Country	England
Postal district	ME7
Post Town	Gillingham