| Boughton under Blean | |
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Boughton under Blean
Boughton under Blean shown within Kent |
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| Population | 1,865 |
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| District | Swale |
| Shire county | Kent |
| Region | South East |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | FAVERSHAM |
| Postcode district | ME13 |
| Dialling code | 01227 |
| Police | Kent |
| Fire | Kent |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | Faversham and Mid Kent |
| List of places: UK • England • Kent | |
For other "Boughtons" in Kent see Boughton Aluph; Boughton Malherbe; and Boughton Monchelsea Boughton under Blean is a village and civil parish between Faversham and Canterbury in southeast England. "Boughton under Blean" technically refers only to the hamlet at the top of Boughton Hill; the main village at the foot of the hill is named Boughton Street but the whole is referred to as "Boughton under Blean" or more commonly as just "Boughton".
It had a population of 1,865 according to the 2001 census. The parish contains the hamlet of Crouch.
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Before the opening of the A2 Boughton bypass in 1976, Boughton lay on the main route between London and Canterbury. As well as this, having passed through the village and climbed Boughton Hill, it is the first place from which one is able to see the towers of Canterbury Cathedral if one is travelling from the direction of London. Due to this it is mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in 'The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue'.
Boughton under Blean is also mentioned in the context of Chaucer in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune: "For a time he amused himself by reviewing Chaucer's route from London to Canterbury, listing the places from Southwark: two miles to the watering-place of St. Thomas, five miles to Deptford, six miles to Greenwich, thirty miles to Rochester, forty miles to Sittingbourne, fifty-five miles to Boughton under Blean, fifty-eight miles to Harbledown, and sixty miles to Canterbury. It gave him a sense of timeless buoyancy to know that few in his universe would recall Chaucer or know any London except the village on Gansireed."
The poet and translator Sir Thomas Hawkins was baptised on 20 July 1575 at Boughton under Blean. He was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Hawkins (1548/9–1617) of Nash Court, Boughton, and his wife, Ann (1552–1616), daughter of Cyriac Pettyt of Colkyns, also in Boughton. His 1625 translation The Odes of Horace the Best of Lyrick Poets was republished in 1631, 1635 and 1638, and plagiarized in 1652. He died in the parish of St Sepulchre's, London, probably in late 1640. The family remained Roman Catholic until well into the 18th century. Nash Court was attacked by Protestant crowd during the 1715 Jacobean uprising and Hawkins's valuable library destroyed.[1]