Chestfield History Society has created this website to encourage the people of Chestfield to work on our own local history. The information on this site is based on interviews with local people and on the books/records listed under 'Source Materials', but this site also provides an opportunity to speculate on the history of Chestfield when we do not have direct evidence available to us.
If you want to join the History Society, contribute, correct or make any other comments, please use the email form on the Contact Us page. You may want to work on one our projects (gathering photos, George Reeves' life, producing the Chestfield Calendar) or you may introduce a new topic (sport, pubs, religion, architecture, families, for example), or focus on a particular period in time, or just offer changes to this website that you think are worthwhile. If you would like to meet other contributors please let us know.
You can find out about our events by clicking on the "MORE" tab and the selecting the "Events" page.
If you want to join the History Society, contribute, correct or make any other comments, please use the email form on the Contact Us page. You may want to work on one our projects (gathering photos, George Reeves' life, producing the Chestfield Calendar) or you may introduce a new topic (sport, pubs, religion, architecture, families, for example), or focus on a particular period in time, or just offer changes to this website that you think are worthwhile. If you would like to meet other contributors please let us know.
You can find out about our events by clicking on the "MORE" tab and the selecting the "Events" page.
Chestfield - choosing the history it needs.
What we want to know about the past is what can help us to understand our own time. In a small place like Chestfield it can also be an opportunity to play detective, as so much of history can only be glimpsed through limited records and this begs for creative interpretation.
The picture opposite shows one of half a dozen barbecues arranged in Chestfield in 2012 as a celebration of the Royal Jubilee. The plaque under a commemorative oak tree planted later that year in the centre of Chestfield (on the green, south of Ridgeway) says that some 400 people celebrated the occasion in various communal events around the village.
This tells us several things. It shows that the inhabitants are able to work together to arrange events, and their focus can be a smaller unit than Chestfield itself. But the oak's plaque also shows that Chestfield recognizes itself as united and distinct. One way of looking at Chestfield that can take us back a long way, is to see it as a collection of separate sets of people who find it helpful to come together. A century back, before street parties were organised, it would have been farms working on drainage ditches and trading animals. Earlier still, it would have been wood-felling and carting the wood to Canterbury.
A recorded or evidenced story of human habitation in this area goes back to the effects of the arrival of the 'Crab and Winkle Line' (one of the earliest British railways), back to the growth of commercial farming, to the Tudor, Medieval, Saxon, Roman, pre-Roman, the Bronze Age and beyond. All this shows us how people have the capacity for reinvention that makes the past so interesting and relevant.
Your comments on this page and the rest of the website are welcome - click here
The picture opposite shows one of half a dozen barbecues arranged in Chestfield in 2012 as a celebration of the Royal Jubilee. The plaque under a commemorative oak tree planted later that year in the centre of Chestfield (on the green, south of Ridgeway) says that some 400 people celebrated the occasion in various communal events around the village.
This tells us several things. It shows that the inhabitants are able to work together to arrange events, and their focus can be a smaller unit than Chestfield itself. But the oak's plaque also shows that Chestfield recognizes itself as united and distinct. One way of looking at Chestfield that can take us back a long way, is to see it as a collection of separate sets of people who find it helpful to come together. A century back, before street parties were organised, it would have been farms working on drainage ditches and trading animals. Earlier still, it would have been wood-felling and carting the wood to Canterbury.
A recorded or evidenced story of human habitation in this area goes back to the effects of the arrival of the 'Crab and Winkle Line' (one of the earliest British railways), back to the growth of commercial farming, to the Tudor, Medieval, Saxon, Roman, pre-Roman, the Bronze Age and beyond. All this shows us how people have the capacity for reinvention that makes the past so interesting and relevant.
Your comments on this page and the rest of the website are welcome - click here