Portal:Kent

Kent is a county in England, south-east of London and the county town is Maidstone, its two cities were Canterbury and Rochester until the later lost its official city status.

The county has borders with East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London, and a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames estuary. The area has always had close transport links with Europe through its ports and since 1994 through the Channel Tunnel, it has a nominal border with France halfway along the tunnel.

Kent is known as the Garden of England because of its agricultural influence, extensive orchards and hop-gardens. Distinctive oast houses are common in the countryside, although many have been converted into residential dwellings.

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An oast house is an example of vernacular architecture in England, especially Kent and Sussex.

They are farm buildings used for drying hops in preparation for the brewing process. They consist of three or four storeys on which the hops were spread out to be dried by hot air from a wood or charcoal-fired kiln at the bottom. The drying floors were thin and perforated to permit the heat to pass through and it escaped through a cowl in the roof which turned with the wind. The freshly picked hops from the fields were raked in to dry and then raked out to cool before being bagged up and sent to the brewery.

The earliest surviving oast house is that at Cranbrook near Tunbridge Wells which dates to c. 1750 but the process is documented from soon after the introduction of hops into England in the early 16th century. Early oast houses were simply adapted barns but, by the early 19th century, the distinctive circular buildings with conical roofs had been developed in response to the increased demand for beer. Square oast houses appeared early in the 20th century as they were found to be easier to build. In the 1930s, the cowls were replaced by louvred openings as electric fans and diesel oil ovens were employed.

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Credit: User:Mschlindwein

The Tour de France cycling race was in Kent during 1994, starting in Dover and will be again in July 2007, finishing in Canterbury.

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Any help on the Kent project would be gratefully received, even if only on your local area of expertise.

Sections that need extensive work:

List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Kent - Only very few of a very long list of articles have been yet been created. Please visit the list and see if there are any areas that you think you may be able to help out on.
List of churches in Kent - Currently a very short list, please add your local churches.

If you are unsure then you are welcome to visit the talk pages of this portal where other Wikipedians will try and help

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Kent news

On February 28th 2007 Mid Kent Water lifted the hosepipe ban, imposed on the region on 8th August 2005, the longest period since 1933

During January 2007 Operation Stack, on the M20 motorway, caused transport problems in East Kent.

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Rod Hull, born 13 August 1935 on the Isle of Sheppey, died 18 March 1999, was a popular entertainer on British television in the 1970s and 1980s. He rarely appeared without Emu, a mute, highly aggressive arm-length puppet of such a bird.

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Did you know...

... that there have been 36 Kings of Kent?
... that Ramsgate is the only Royal Port in the country and a member of the Cinque Port Confederation?
... that Dover's towering cliffs helped give Britain its nickname of Albion, meaning "white"?

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The County

At the time of the 1831 census, Kent was the 10th largest county, covering 972,240 acres, however by 1871 it had grown to 995,344 acres and became the 9th largest.