Hadlow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hadlow is a village in the Medway valley of Tonbridge, Kent; it is in the Tonbridge and Malling district. The Saxon name for the settlement was Haeselholte (in the Textus Roffensis). The Domesday Book records it as Haslow and in the Middle Ages it became Hadloe and then Hadlow.
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[edit] Village history
The area has always been settled: Stone Age implements have been found nearby. From the Middle Ages Hadlow was owned by the Knights Hospitallers until the Reformation. It came into the possession of the May family in 1647. In Victorian times Walter May built Hadlow Castle, to which his son added a 153-feet high folly in 1835. The folly was damaged in the Great Storm of 1987 and, despite being Grade 1 Listed and previously being included in the World Monuments Fund's Top 100 Most Endangered Sites, it has yet to be repaired. The owner of the folly was issued with a Compulsory Purchase Order by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council in July 2006 [1].
The church celebrated 1000 years in 1975, although it was rebuilt in the 12th century, with its tower dating from 1568. The main door of the church has the date 1636 on it. This is often misread as 1036 due to most of the upper part of the first 6 being missing. In the churchyard is a 19th century memorial to the drowning locally of 30 hop-pickers.
The main village street is brick-paved and there are several old houses and two Tudor inns.
Hadlow College is concerned with a wide range of land-based training including agriculture, horticulture, medicinal horticulture, landscape management, garden design, equine management, animal management and sciences, sports fisheries and countryside management.
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with its suburbs, villages, towns and parishes: |
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Addington • Aylesford • Beltring • Birling • Blue Bell Hill • Borough Green • Burham • Ditton • East Malling • East Malling and Larkfield • East Peckham • Eccles • Golden Green • Hadlow • Hildenborough • Ightham • Kings Hill • Larkfield • Leybourne • Mereworth • Offham • Platt • Plaxtol • Ryarsh • Shipbourne • Snodland • Stansted • Tonbridge • Trottiscliffe • Walderslade • Wateringbury • West Malling • West Peckham • Wrotham • Wrotham Heath |
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| The borough of Tonbridge and Malling List of places in Kent |
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[edit] Hadlow's historic cricket club
In the 1747 English cricket season, the Hadlow cricket club was stated in contemporary sources, later published by F S Ashley-Cooper, to be a famous parish for cricket.
The Penny London Post of 1 July that year announced a match to be played by Hadlow against the famous Dartford Cricket Club as "the deciding match". Unfortunately, there was no report of the outcome (perhaps it was rained off) and no reports have been found of the previous fixtures either.
But the importance of the Hadlow team was confirmed when a major match at the Artillery Ground on 9 July 1747 between teams led by the star players Robert Colchin and William Hodsoll included on Hodsoll's side: John Larkin and others from the parish of Hadlow in Kent.
Later in the month, we find "Five of Hadlow" twice taking on the might of "Five of Slindon", the legendary Sussex club that was famous for Richard Newland and challenges to the rest of England.
In August 1747, when Kent played against All-England at the Artillery Ground, its team included Larkin and a player called Jones, also of Hadlow. Larkin was certainly an outstanding player of the time.
The last we hear of this great team is a match against Addington Cricket Club, another of the "great little clubs" of this pre-MCC era, in 1751. Cricket went into decline in the 1750s, largely because of the Seven Years War and Hadlow was missing when the war ended in 1763 and the "Hambledon Era" began.
| English cricket teams in the 18th century |
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Berkshire | Essex | Hampshire | Kent | Leicestershire | Middlesex | Mitcham | Nottingham | Sheffield | Surrey | Sussex |
[edit] Village Reference
The Kent Village Book Alan Bignell (Countryside Books, 1986)
[edit] Cricket References
- Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians - various publications
- At the Sign of the Wicket (from "Cricket" magazine 1900) by F S Ashley-Cooper (ASW)
- Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket by G B Buckley (FL18)
- Fresh Light on Pre-Victorian Cricket by G B Buckley (FLPV)
- The Dawn of Cricket by H T Waghorn (WDC)
[edit] External links
- Further notes concerning Hadlow
- note error: The Castle was built by Walter May, not his son, who only built the folly
- Hadlow College
