Did You Know?

Maidstone the county town of Kent has a rich history going back to the Mesolithic times. It’s home to the Archbishop’s Palace, formally the fourteenth century residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury.

Maidstone began as a Saxon village. From the 10th century, it was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the time of the Domesday Book (1086), Maidstone was a large village with a population of perhaps 250.

By the 13th century it grew into a town. Situated on the Medway it was ideally situated for transporting vegetables and fruit from Kent by water to London.

Elephants were once a common sight in Maidstone as the Zoo was a popular tourist attraction until it closed in 1959. For 25 years local townsfolk could hear the lions roaring.

Week Street lies on the same line as a Roman road which ran to Rochester via the ironworks of the Weald. Its name is thought to derive from the Latin word ‘vicus’, meaning small town. A possible Roman building was unearthed at the junction of King Street and Week Street in the 1960s.

The tooth of a woolly mammoth was discovered at the site of Barclays Bank in Maidstone High Street in 1959.

Long before Fremlin Walk was at the forefront of the retail scene a very different industry dominated the town centre. Fremlin’s Ales & Beers was opened by Ralph Fremlin, of Wateringbury, in 1861 and over the next century grew to become the largest brewery in Kent. It amassed 800 licensed premises which in 1967 were brought by Whitbread, which also owns Costa Coffee and Premier Inn

Maidstone’s coat of arms depicts a lion and one of the town’s most famous residents, Iggy the Iguanadon.

One of Maidstone’s most famous residents is a 3.5tonne, 13metre long dinosaur. Iggy the Iguanadon was discovered in a quarry in Queen’s Road in 1834. A cast of the 125-million-year-old herbivore is now on display at the Museum. Iggy is part of Maidstone’s coat of arms, the first dinosaur to be featured on one.

A freedom of information request in 2014 revealed Maidstone Borough Council had spent a grand total of £0 taking precautions against nuclear attack.

The last person to be publicly executed on Penenden Heath was John Dyke, from Bearsted, who was hanged on Christmas Eve 1830 for arson after setting light a hay bale. Years later another man confessed to the crime on his death bed.

While over the centuries it earned the title of Kent’s county town and became known for its paper making and brewing industries, that has not always been the case. It first became known as a town when it was granted the royal charter in 1549, a title it was to lose five years later for its part in the Wyatt Rebellion, an uprising stemming from Queen Mary I’s decision to marry Philip of Spain. The town would regain and lose its title several more times.