Petham

Petham

Petham village hall
Petham
Petham shown within Kent
Area 13.61 km2 (5.25 sq mi)
Population 708 (Civil Parish 2011)[1]
 Density 52/km2 (130/sq mi)
OS grid reference TR127515
Civil parish
  • Petham
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town CANTERBURY
Postcode district CT4
Dialling code 01227
Police Kent
Fire Kent
Ambulance South East Coast
EU Parliament South East England
UK Parliament

Petham is a rural village and civil parish in the North Downs, five miles south of Canterbury in Kent, South East England.

The village church is All Saints, Petham and is Grade I listed.[2] It was built in the 13th century but suffered from a fire in 1922 and had to be reconstructed. The village hall was rebuilt in the early 21st century next to Marble pond on relatively low meadows deemed unsuitable for housing and insurance.

Petham has rolling hills within its bounds, including ancient forested slopes and thatched medieval and Tudor period cottages.

It now incorporates Swarling to the north, which had "33.5" households in the Domesday Book,[3] and is one of the type sites for British Iron Age Aylesford-Swarling pottery. The excavation, by J. P. Bushe-Fox, to publication took place in 1921-1925.[4]

History

Similar to other comparable villages, Petham once featured multiple facilities such as a baker, cobbler, post office and garage.[5] Today, none of these facilities remain and the only public buildings are pubs and restaurants. This decline began in the 1940s and can be attributed to increasing household car ownership (in the early 1940s 90% of households did not own a car[6]). Increasing car ownership allowed easier travel between Petham and Canterbury, enabling residents to access services in the city.

References

  1. Key Statistics; Quick Statistics: Population Density United Kingdom Census 2011 Office for National Statistics Retrieved 21 November 2013
  2. British listed buildings retrieved 20 July 2013
  3. Open Domesday, "Swarling"
  4. Cunliffe, Barry W., Iron Age Communities in Britain, Fourth Edition: An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century BC, Until the Roman Conquest, near Figure 1.4, 2012 (4th edition), Routledge, google preview, with no page numbers
  5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-612000-150000/page/4
  6. http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/car%20ownership%20in%20great%20britain%20-%20leibling%20-%20171008%20-%20report.pdf

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