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Launched 09/04/2011

Latest update

21/02/2025 03:58

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Graveyard Memorial Inscriptions
Welcome to the Elham Historical Society database website. Feel free to browse and uncover the history of Elham. Our dedicated team of historians has recently finished recording the details on all the memorials in the graveyard. Our chairman Derek Boughton has overseen the operation, correlating the data and checking for errors. The results of their labours can be seen on the burials page.

Elham beat off stiff competition for the title of Kent Village of the year 2011 organised by Action with Communities in Rural Kent.

Censuses for outlying communities in the parish will be rolled out gradually. Check out the stats page for interesting facts and

trivia about the village. We still need your help so please send us any information relating to Elham that may be of interest.

Les Ames hits out
Les Ames in action

Elham resident Les Ames in action for England against the West Indies in 1939. He was one of the finer wicketkeeper - batsmen and played for Kent CCC.

Abbot's Fireside c 1450
Abbot's Fireside

The Abbot's Fireside is one of the older buildings in the village and probably dates back to the mid fifteenth century.

Audrey attends school
Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn (neé Rushton) lived in Orchard Cottage (Five Bells) for five years in her childhood (1935-1940) and attended the local village schools. She took ballet lessons and dreamed of becoming a prima ballerina. I wonder what became of her?

George V Playing Field
George V Playing Field

Dave Lee opens Elham's brand new playground with a sensory garden and a pretty flower meadow created by the Play for Elham charity. 21st November 2010

Swing Riots of 1830
Swing Riots

The machine breaking that led to the riots of August 1830 onwards started in the Elham Parish, writes our historian Derek Boughton, who has made a lifetime's study of the subject.

Elham residents were prominent in the gangs that sought out the new fangled threshing machines and destroyed them. Some of them cost the not inconsiderable sum for the day of £100. Full Story

Voluntary Aided status 1947

The National School was given the present Voluntary Aided status under the provisions of the 1944 Education Act. It is officially known as Elham Church of England (Voluntary Aided) Primary School. The school was founded and continues to be governed by the Church of England through its appointed Trustees. The State - through the Local Education Authority - (i.e. K.C.C.) finances the day-to-day running costs and maintains the interior - while the Diocesan Board manages capital projects and premises. The school is very much part of the church here in the village - and is committed to the teaching of the Christian faith.  The pupils regularly take part in services - including Eucharist - and the vicar takes a weekly Assembly in the school. The Methodist Minister also attends on occasions. Elham Primary School

New Inn 1824

ELHAM. TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION, By Mr GEORGE FINNIS, at the THREE TUNS INN, in ELHAM, on ..24th May 1824, all that FREEHOLD MESSUAGE or TENEMENT, (In two dwellings,) with the large brick building formerly used as a Wine Vault, but now converted into stables; fifty perches .. of garden ground .. situate in Middle-Row, in Elham, and now in the occupation of James Rootes and Henry Crouch, as yearly tenants. K.G., 21 May 1824, 1c K.G., 15 June 1824, 4a

Cyril Northcote Parkinson 1993

Famous for his aphorism 'Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion' he was British naval historian and author of some sixty books - the most famous of which was his bestseller Parkinson's Law - which led him to be also considered as an important scholar within the field of public administration.

He attended St. Peter's School in York before gaining a place at the University of Cambridge and receiving his BA degree in 1932. In 1934 he enrolled as a graduate student at King's College London. He was commissioned into the Territorial Army as a member of the 22nd London Regiment (The Queen's) and was promoted to Lieutenant. Emmanuel College, Cambridge elected him a research fellow. In 1935 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Trade and War in the Eastern Seas, 1803-1810, which was awarded the Julian Corbett Prize in Naval History. He took up the position of senior history master at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon in 1938

In 1943 he bought Elham manor before being appointed lecturer in history at the University of Liverpool from 1946 to 1949.

1950 saw him appointed Raffles Professor of History at the newly-established University of Malaya in Singapore. While there, he initiated an important series of historical monographs on the history of Malaya, publishing the very first of the series in 1960. A movement developed in the mid-1950s to establish two campuses, one in Kuala Lumpur and one in Singapore. Parkinson actively attempted to persuade the authorities to avoid dividing the university, but to maintain it to serve both Singapore and Malaya in Johor Bahru. His efforts were unsuccessful and the two campuses were established in 1959. The original Singapore campus, where Parkinson taught, later became the University of Singapore.

In 1955 he published his most famous work Parkinson's Law, a book that expanded upon a humorous article that he had first published in the Economist magazine in November 1955, satirizing government bureaucracies. The 100-page book, first published in the United States and then in Britain, was illustrated by Osbert Lancaster and became an instant best seller. This collection of short studies explained the inevitability of bureaucratic expansion, arguing that 'work expands to fill the time available for its completion'. Typical of his satire and cynical humour, the book included a discourse on Parkinson's Law of Triviality (debates about expenses for a nuclear plant, a bicycle shed, and refreshments), a note on why driving on the left side of the road (see road transport) is natural, and suggested that the Royal Navy would eventually have more admirals than ships. After serving as visiting professor at Harvard University in 1958, and the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley in 1959–60, he resigned his post in Singapore at the University of Malaya to become an independent writer and celebrity. To avoid high taxation in Britain, he moved to the Channel Islands and settled at St Martin's, Guernsey, where he purchased Les Caches Hall and later restored Annesville Manor. His writings from this period included a series of historical novels, featuring a fictional naval officer from Guernsey, Richard Delancey, during the Napoleonic era .

He moved to the Isle of Man in 1985 and then to Canterbury in 1987. He died in March1993, at the age of 83. He was buried in Canterbury. Blue Plaque at 36 Harkness Drive, Canterbury

wikipedia


What's in the database
11820 People
6789 Demography entries
2422 Events
1299 Marriages
415 Properties
427 Photographs
Completed projects ...
  • Properties 1841-1911
  • Demography records 1841-1911 (village only)
  • Cemetery & Graveyard burials
  • Memorial and graveyard inscriptions
Work in progress ...
  • Demography records 1841-1911 (parish)
  • Marriages within the Elham parish
  • Audio/verbal accounts by Elham residents
Coming soon ...
  • Mapping of all properties within the Elham parish
  • List of artefacts
Future projects ...
  • Audio village tour
  • Complete list of shops - past and present
What's new!
Michael Hayes
Doctor Who Producer
Arthur Frederick Broadbridge
Elham resident and diplomat
Charles Alfred Fortin
Elham assistant surgeon
William Lewis Cowley
Elham resident and author
George W Palmer
Graveyard burials
John Midgeley
Henry Clayson
STATS - Facts & Trivia
Windlass Cottage Title Deeds
Church Cottage history back to 1720
Anthony Eden
Prime Minister and Elham resident

EHS
Swing Riots
Les Ames in action
Audrey Hepburn
Letters

EHS Database

Swing Riots of 1830 recounted by Derek Boughton our local expert historian.

Les Ames for England v West Indies at Kingston, Jamaica 1930 or 1935. WK Ivan Barrow watches on.

Audrey Hepburn attended private schools in the village and dreamed of being a ballerina. I wonder what became of her?

What's in the database? Find the latest additions here.

1999 Village Hall