Lee, Kent

Historical Description

Lee, a village and a parish in Kent The village stands on the rivulet Lee, 1½ mile SSE of Greenwich, is a pleasant, salubrious, and picturesque place, and has a station on the S.E.R., 7 miles from London, a police station, and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Lewisham, London, S.E. Both itself and its environs within the parish are a resort of merchants and .wealthy families from the metropolis, and many handsome residences have been erected in Lee Park, Manor Park, and Lee Road. Lee Manor House, Lee House, Lee Grove, Lee Place, Lee Villa, and others are old mansions; a continuous line of new villas connects the village with Blackheath Park, and so very many other new villas and ornate cottages are disposed in terraces or lines that a large proportion of the parish may be pronounced a metropolitan suburb. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester. Patron, the Lord Chancellor. The old church went to ruin, but the cemetery of it continues to be interesting for containing several handsome monuments, one of which is to the Dacre family, and another to the astronomer Dr E. Halley. A new church was built in 1842, but this was found in a few years to be too small for the increasing population, and was then taken down. The present church stands near the old one, in a beautiful situation, with an extensive prospect, was erected at a cost of £8000, and is a handsome structure with a lofty spire. Five other churches are within the parish. Christ Church stands in Lee Park; it is a neat structure in the Pointed style, and was well restored in 1882. Holy Trinity Church was completed in 1864, is cruciform, in the Early English style, of Kentish rag with Bath stone dressings; has an external staircase turret, surmounted by an openwork oak bell-turret and shingled spire, and presents a somewhat novel yet heavy appearance. St Mildred's was erected in 1878-79, and is a building of Kentish ragstone, in the Early English and Decorated styles. The Church of the Good Shepherd was erected in 1881 as a chapel of ease to the parish church, and is a plain brick building. St Augustine's Church was erected in 1886 as a chapel of ease to St Mildred's; it is an edifice of Kentish ragstone. There are Baptist, Wesleyan, Congregational, and Bible Christian chapels, a well-conducted proprietary school, thirty good almshouses for the wives of freemen of the Merchant Tailors' Company, almshouses with endowed income founded by C. and T. Boone, and other charities. There is a working men's institute. The Earl of Northbrook is lord of the manor.

Administration

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

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

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Lee from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Lee (St. Margaret))

Maps

Online maps of Lee 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:

• Kent & Sussex Courier
• Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald
• Dover Express
• Kentish Gazette
• Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald
• Kentish Chronicle
• Maidstone Telegraph

Visitations Heraldic

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