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Elham beat off stiff competition for the title of Kent Village of the year 2011 organised by Action with Communities in Rural Kent.
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Censuses for outlying communities in the parish will be rolled out gradually. Check out the stats page for interesting facts and
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trivia about the village. We still need your help so please send us any information relating to Elham that may be of interest.
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Les Ames hits out
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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.
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Abbot's Fireside c 1450
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The Abbot's Fireside is one of the older buildings in the village and probably dates back to the mid fifteenth century.
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Audrey attends school
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Audrey Hepburn (left) 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?
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George V Playing Field
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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
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Swing Riots of 1830
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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
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Folkestone to Canterbury
1922
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The first bus service started to run from Folkestone Harbour to Canterbury. The service was started by Sergeant Brothers with open-top charabancs with solid rubber tyres. They ran for a few years, then the East Kent Road Car Company took over and bought them out.
"They never minded how many stood in the gangway as long as you could get on. Sometimes, when it was fully loaded, they had a job getting up Grace Hill in Folkestone. When it rained the driver had to stop and pull a canvas hood over. I think when the buses started, the railways began losing passengers, because going by bus you could go right into the towns, whereas you had quite a walk from Canterbury South or Folkestone Central Stations."
Memoires of Bill Watson
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King's Arms
1729
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Sp. at the Cock when the Cess was Sinned 00-02-06 Sp. at the Cock at the Crownation of King George the Second 00-02-06 Pd. For a Lowanes at the Cock for the workmen at work a bought the Church 00-08-06
Elham Churchwardens’ Accounts
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Raising A Riot
1955
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Filmed in Elham and featuring Bill Booth, son of PC William Wellington Boot. The same Kenneth More who is appearing as the legless airman, Douglas Bader, in the current British film "Reach for the Sky," is also in "Raising a Riot," which came to the Seventy-second Street Playhouse yesterday. Only in the latter British comedy, his character is in full possession of all his limbs and is called upon to use them adroitly in a variety of farcical ways.
As the father of three healthy children whom he alone has to tend while his wife (and their mother) is in Canada, he runs a long gamut of routines designed to show how little a father realizes the household problems a mother has to bear.
Perhaps "run" is not precisely the right word. A distinct characteristic of this film is its leisurely build-up of incidents and its sometimes a bit too casual pace. The first half of it seems spent entirely by Mr. More preparing food for his brood of ravenous youngsters who inhabit a remodeled windmill with him on the south-of-England downs.
Somehow the authors, Ian Dalrymple, Hugh Perceval and James Matthews, believe that there is still some comedy to be developed in a man discovering that spinach shrinks when boiled or that cooked meat shouldn't be left where it can be reached by the family dog. And it is with such comedy material that Mr. More moves through the first half of the film.
The second half gets a little more deeply into child psychology and a slight involvement with a young lady neighbor who takes a shine to the struggling dad. But it doesn't move any faster. It still holds that casual pace. And the wind-up hits no more of a climax than has occurred several times in the film.
Withal, it makes agreeable entertainment. Mr. More is a comical chap, particularly when he has a dog to cope with, as he had in the memorable "Genevieve." And his three youngsters in this minor frolic—the charming girl called Mandy, who played in "Crash of Silence," Gary Billings and Fusty Bentine—are entirely tolerable kids. Jan Miller is pretty as the milkmaid and Ronald Squire is properly grumpy as Grampy. The English downs and fishing villages are bright in color.
"Raising a Riot" is an amiable little film.
Bill Booth
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