Westerham is a town and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Sevenoaks District Sevenoaks is a local government district in west Kent, England. Its council is based in the town of Sevenoaks. The district was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of Sevenoaks Urban District, Sevenoaks Rural District and part of Dartford Ru ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. It is located 3.4 miles east of

Oxted Oxted is a town and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs. It is south south-east of Croydon in Greater London, west of Sevenoaks in Kent, and north of East Grinstead in West Sussex. Oxted ...

and 6 miles west of

Sevenoaks Sevenoaks is a town in Kent with a population of 29,506 situated south-east of London, England. Also classified as a civil parish, Sevenoaks is served by a commuter main line railway into London. Sevenoaks is from Charing Cross, the traditio ...

, adjacent to the Kent border with both Greater London and Surrey. It is recorded as early as the 9th century, and was mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

in a

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

form, ''Oistreham'' (compare

Ouistreham Ouistreham () is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy region in northwestern France. Ouistreham is a small port with fishing boats, leisure craft and a ferry harbour. It serves as the port of the city of Caen. The town borders the ...

in Normandy, ''Oistreham'' in 1086). ''Hām'' is Old English for a village or homestead, and so Westerham means a ''westerly homestead''. The

River Darent The Darent is a Kentish tributary of the River Thames and takes the waters of the River Cray as a tributary in the tidal portion of the Darent near Crayford, as illustrated by the adjacent photograph, snapped at high tide. 'Darenth' is frequen ...

flows through the town, and formerly powered three

watermill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...

Electoral Area

Westerham Hill, Berry's Green,

Luxted Luxted is a hamlet in the London Borough of Bromley, located to the south of Downe. The area is rural, noted for its abundance of woods and grasslands.Willey, Russ. ''Chambers London Gazetter'', p 307-308. It is a part of the largest ward in Grea ...

Single Street Single Street is a hamlet in the London Borough of Bromley in Greater London, located between Luxted and Berry's Green,Willey, Russ. ''Chambers London Gazetter'', p 443. and centred around a street of the same name. The first record of a settl ...

, Cudham,

Downe Downe, formerly Down, () is a village in Greater London, England, located within the London Borough of Bromley but beyond the London urban sprawl. Downe is south west of Orpington and south east of Charing Cross. Downe lies on a hill, and ...

, and

Leaves Green Leaves Green is a village in Greater London within the London Borough of Bromley. The village lies on the Bromley to Westerham road ( A233), adjacent to the north-western perimeter of Biggin Hill Airport. It is some south of Bromley and nort ...

combined form the

Darwin (ward) Darwin is a ward of the London Borough of Bromley, named after Charles Darwin, who lived and worked in the ward for 40 years. Geography It is the largest ward in Greater London, covering a very rural area including Downe, Cudham, Leaves Green, ...

, Greater London's largest electoral Ward.

History

There is evidence that the area around Westerham has been settled for thousands of years: finds such as a Celtic fortification (c 2000 BC) and a Roman road are close by, along with the remains of a Roman encampment just past the ruins of a

tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specifi ...

south of the town at the summit of Tower Woods. The tower dates back to the 18th century, and was originally constructed by the owners of

Squerryes Court Squerryes Court is a late 17th-century manor house that stands just outside the town of Westerham in Kent. The house, which has been held by the same family for over 280 years, is surrounded by extensive gardens and parkland and is a grade I lis ...

as a

folly In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings. Eighteenth-cent ...

for their children's amusement. The manor was originally run by

Godwin, Earl of Wessex Godwin of Wessex ( ang, Godwine; – 15 April 1053) was an English nobleman who became one of the most powerful earls in England under the Danish king Cnut the Great (King of England from 1016 to 1035) and his successors. Cnut made Godwin the ...

and later by his son

Harold Godwinson Harold Godwinson ( – 14 October 1066), also called Harold II, was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon English king. Harold reigned from 6 January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the ...

the last Saxon King of England. The first Norman lord of Westerham was

Eustace II of Boulogne Eustace II, (), also known as Eustace aux Grenons ("Eustace with long moustaches"),Heather J. Tanner, 'Eustace (II), count of Boulogne (d. c.1087)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. was Count of Boulogne fro ...

, and the town appears in the

as Oistreham. By 1227 Henry III granted Westerham a market charter, making the new village a major player in the buying and selling of cattle in Kent, a tradition that survived to 1961 when the last cattle market was held. St Mary's Church is thought to date from the 13th century, although it was much altered in Victorian times. In 1503 the

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

martyr John Frith was born in the town. The church is unusual in that it displays the only known representation of a royal arms of King

Edward VI Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and the first E ...

(reigned 1547–1553) in a church. There is little doubt that it is the king's arms as the supporters are a lion and a dragon, and there is a curious

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase beside the arms: "VIVAT REX CURAT LEX" (Long live the King, custodian of the law). England did not have another male monarch until the

Union of the Crowns The Union of the Crowns ( gd, Aonadh nan Crùintean; sco, Union o the Crouns) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of the Kingdom of England as James I and the practical unification of some functions (such as overseas dip ...

in 1603. In 1596, there was a peculiar subsidence of a hill measuring 80 by 28 perches, which was transformed into a dale. General

James Wolfe James Wolfe (2 January 1727 – 13 September 1759) was a British Army officer known for his training reforms and, as a major general, remembered chiefly for his victory in 1759 over the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. ...

was born in the town in 1727 at what is now known as the Old Vicarage due to a terrible storm on the night he was born. He lived in Quebec House—many streets and buildings are named after him and St Mary's contains not only the font in which he was baptised but also a memorial window to him by

Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman ...

. The town square contains statues to both Wolfe and

Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

. Interior and exterior scenes for the 2009

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Electoral Area

History

Economy

Chartwell

Transport

Rail

Buses

Roads

Local sports clubs

See also

References

External links