Chilham is a mostly agricultural village and

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

in the English county of

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 ...

with a clustered settlement, Chilham village centre, in the northeast, and a smaller linear settlement, Shottenden. Well-preserved roads and mostly residential

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

s in its centre have led to its use as a location in television and film.

Settlements

The village of Chilham is in the valley of the Great Stour River and beside the A28 road 6 miles (10 km) southwest of

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...

. It is centred on a market square, where a traditional annual May Day is celebrated. At each end of the square are its major buildings: Chilham Castle and the 15th-century parish church, dedicated to St Mary. It has been claimed that

St Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...

was buried in the churchyard, despite his ornate tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, destroyed at the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

. The

Pilgrims Way The Pilgrims' Way (also Pilgrim's Way or Pilgrims Way) is the historical route supposedly taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent. This name, of comparatively recent c ...

passes through Chilham on the way to

. The village has a number of period houses such as the former vicarage, which dates from 1742. The castle was owned by the Viscounts Massereene and Ferrard until its sale in 1997. From 2013 it was owned by Stuart Wheeler, founder of the spread-betting firm

IG Index IG Group is an online trading provider with 290,000 active traders, offering access to spread betting and CFD trading, which allow traders to bet on the direction of equities, bonds and currencies without owning the underlying assets. Establish ...

, until his death in July 2020. The

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...

is in a part of the village sometimes called Bagham on the line from

Ashford Ashford may refer to: Places Australia *Ashford, New South Wales *Ashford, South Australia *Electoral district of Ashford, South Australia Ireland *Ashford, County Wicklow *Ashford Castle, County Galway United Kingdom * Ashford, Kent, a town ** ...

to Canterbury. There are two other named localities or neighbourhoods in the civil parish: Shottenden and a much smaller neighbourhood, Old Wives Lees.

Amenities

There are two large public houses in Chilham, the Woolpack and the White Horse, which dates from the 16th century. Other amenities include a restaurant and tea shop, post office, gift shop, bus stop, tennis club, sports centre, children's playground and 15th-century village hall which originally was the tithe barn for the castle. Most shops are also along the main through road towards Canterbury just before the entry to the network of streets having the oldest buildings in the village.

Culture and media

The

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several part ...

longbarrow of Julliberrie's Grave is on the Julliberrie Downs east of the river. Chilham and the surrounding area was one of the locations for much of Powell and Pressburger's 1944 film '' A Canterbury Tale''. In 1965 it was used for part of the filming of '' The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders'' starring

Kim Novak Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter. Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...

, Leo McKern and Angela Lansbury, and it was also used as a location for the BBC's 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen's novel ''Emma''. The village and the castle featured heavily in a fake snow-bound episode of ''Agatha Christie's Poirot'' called '' Hercule Poirot's Christmas'' starring David Suchet. The village was made over to sunnier times for '' The Moving Finger'', a mystery featuring Agatha Christie's other famous sleuth Miss Jane Marple, portrayed by Geraldine McEwan.

Notable residents

* Sir George Colbrooke, (1729-1809), banker * Dudley Digges, (1582/3-1639), politician and diplomat * West Digges (1720-1786), actor and theatre manager * Philip Francis (1708-1773), writer and translator * William Ridge (1859-1930), novelist and short-story writer * Charles Shannon (1863-1937), artist * Augustus Toplady (1740-1778), cleric

References

External links

Chilham parish
{{authority control Villages in Kent Civil parishes in Ashford, Kent