Sevenoaks, Kent

Historical Description

Sevenoaks, a town and a parish in Kent. The town stands on high ground amid fine and varied scenery, with stations on the L.C. & D.R. and S.E.R., 22 miles from London, and 6 NW by N of Tunbridge. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office. Acreage of the civil parish, 6805; population, 9341; of the ecclesiastical, 7155. Sevenoaks took its name from seven oaks now represented by other trees, dates from considerably ancient times, belonged for ages to the archbishops of Canterbury, was exchanged by Cranmer to Henry VIII. for other property, and passed afterwards to the Sackvilles of Knole. It was a seat of the Kent assizes in the time of Elizabeth, is now a seat of petty sessions and county courts; publishes two weekly newspapers; serves also as a tourists' centre for very interesting excursions, and for visiting the noble mansion of Knole, which we have separately noticed, and has become of late years a favourite residential place for London merchants. There are several good inns, a county court-house, a police station, a literary and scientific institution, a bank, a good social club, a grammar-school, a village hospital and fever hospital, two suites of almshouses, and considerable other charities. The parish church figures conspicuously on an eminence, is mainly Later English, with an embattled tower 100 feet high, and contains the grave of Farnaby, a native and eminent scholar of the time of Charles I., a monument of Lambarde the antiquary, whose family was seated at Sevenoaks House, and monuments of the Amhersts, the Bosvilles, the Dorsets, the Fermoys, and many others. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Canterbury; net value, £650 with residence. St John's Church was built in 1858, and is a neat edifice of stone in the Gothic style. The living is a vicarage; net value, £200. The church of St Mary, Kippington, is a building of Kentish rag, in the Early English style, and was erected in 1880. The living is a vicarage; net value, £400. There are two small iron churches, and Congregational, Wesleyan, Baptist, and Roman Catholic chapels. The grammar-school was founded in 1432, by Sir W. Sevenoake or Sennocke, originally a poor orphan of the parish; adjoins an hospital, by the same founder, for decayed elderly trades people; was rebuilt in 1727; has, jointly with the hospital, an endowed income, and has also scholarships at Cambridge and Oxford. The endowed national school was founded by Lady Boswell in the time of Charles I. A stock market is held on the third Wednesday in the month.

Sevenoaks Parliamentary Division of Western Kent was formed under the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, and returns one member to the House of Commons. Population, 80,063. The division includes the following:-Sevenoaks, Brasted, Chevening, Halsted, Kemsing, Otford, Seal, Sevenoaks, Shoreham, Sundridge, Westerham; Bromley (part of) -Beckenham, Bexley, Bromley, Chelsfield, Chislehurst, Cudham, Down, Farnborough, Hayes, Keston, Knockholt, West Wickham; Blackheath (part of)-Mottingham; Deptford parliamentary borough-the part in Kent; Lewisham parliamentary borough-the part in Kent.

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 Sevenoaks from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Seven-Oaks (St. Nicholas))

Maps

Online maps of Sevenoaks 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.