Lyminge, Kent

Historical Description

Lyminge, a village and a parish in Kent. The village stands 1½ mile E of Stane Street, and has a station on the S.E.R., 70 miles from London. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.) Area of the parish, 4617 acres; population of the civil parish, 835; of the ecclesiastical, with Paddlesworth, 881. The manor passed to the Archbishops of Canterbury; was surrendered by Archbishop Cranmer to the Crown; and went through various possessors to Lord Lough-borough, thence to the Price family, and now belongs to the-Kelceys. A nunnery was established hereby Ethelburga, and she was buried in the church. The nunnery was destroyed by the Danes and early disappeared, but the monastery (it was a double foundation) survived till 965. A spring, called St Radburg's Well, is near the church, and forms a headstream of the Little Stour river. Upwards of 1000 acres are under wood, and part of the land is hilly, with a light poor soil, but the rest is very fertile. The living is a rectory, united with the perpetual curacy of Paddlesworth, in the diocese of Canterbury; gross value, £720 with residence. The apsidal foundations of the nunnery church are to be seen on the S side of the present one. It was built out of the ruins of the Roman villa of Lyminge, and the present church was built by Dunstan out of the remains of the original monastic buildings. The archbishops had a palace here which existed from 965 to 1400. The present church comprises nave, N aisle, and chancel, with a remarkable flying buttress, and has been repaired. There is a massive tower, built by Cardinal Morton out of the remains of the archbishop's palace, in which are six very fine bells. There is a Wesleyan chapel which was recently built on a new site. The Elham Workhouse, situated at Etching Hill, is in this parish.

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 Lyminge from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Lyminge (St. Mary and St. Eadburgh))

Maps

Online maps of Lyminge 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.