Content generated during research for the paperback book 'The Medway Valley: A Kent Landscape Transformed' (ISBN 13 : 978-1-86077-600-7) for the England's Past for Everyone series
Aylesford High Street looking east. The road from the mediaeval bridge enters from the right. Little has changed in this view.
Aylesford. Preston Hall from the south-east. This was the home of the Culpepers from the later thirteenth until the eighteenth century.
Aylesford looking North. The central arch of the mediaeval bridge had to be widened to allow river traffic through.
For 70 miles the River Medway runs through Kent shaping the landscape and providing opportunity for the people of the county.
Snodland’s last pre-war public building is the cinema built in 1912, now in use as a Roman Catholic church.
In 1852, Samuel Hook, with his wife Anna Maria and their five children moved from Chalford, Gloucestershire to Tovil, Maidstone, where Samuel took
Snodland papermill was in existence long before the Hook family purchased the business in 1854.
The Hook family played an important role in the life of Snodland from the mid nineteenth century, when they moved to the parish from Gloucestershir
In 1854-55, at the age of twenty-two, Charles Townsend Hook acquired the Snodland mill and he and his rest of the Hook family all moved to 'Acacia
Probate records – wills and inventories – are a very useful source for the local historian.
