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- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Borough Green is a large village and civil parish in the Tonbridge and Malling District of Kent, England. The main village is situated on the A25 road between Maidstone and Sevenoaks in Kent. The village's name describes what it originally was - the green to which the people of what was then the borough of Wrotham went for recreation. The civil parish was formed in 1934 from 457 acres of Wrotham and a much smaller area from the adjacent parish of Ightham.
Its location at a crossroads (the old route from Gravesend to Hastings crossed here) meant six inns were gradually opened between 1586 and 1878. Great Comp, an early 17th-century house, is located in the parish of St Mary's Platt, one mile to the east of the village.
The London, Chatham and Dover Railway opened its line to Maidstone on 1 June 1874, and a station named Wrotham and Borough Green was built. Later the names were reversed to Borough Green & Wrotham reflecting the fact that the station was in Borough Green, whereas Wrotham is a mile or so to the north. The reversal also reflected Borough Green's size, since it had outgrown Wrotham. In 2011 Borough Green's population was 4,554 according to the UK census of that year.
The River Bourne flows through the southern part of the parish, and formerly powered a paper mill at Basted.
Research Tips
- Kent County Council Archive, Local Studies and Museums Service. James Whatman Way, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LQ. This incorporates the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone and the East Kent Archives Centre near Dover.
- Canterbury Cathedral Archives see the Archives web pages on the Canterbury Catherdral site.
- For information on the area around the Medway Towns, have a look at Medway Council's CityArk site.
- Ordnance Survey Maps of England and Wales - Revised: Kent illustrates the parish boundaries of Kent when rural districts were still in existence and before Greater London came into being. The map publication year is 1931. An earlier map of 1900 may also be useful. The maps blow up to show all the parishes and many of the small villages and hamlets. Maps in this series are now downloadable for personal use.
- Census records for Kent are available on FamilySearch, Ancestry and FindMyPast. The first site is free; the other two are pay sites but have access to microfilmed images. Steve Archer produced a very useful round-up of the available sources, but this information may not be up to date.
- Registration Districts in Kent for the period 1837 to the present. By drilling down through the links you can follow any parish through the registration districts to which it was attached.
- England, Kent, Parish Registers, 1538-1911 The full database from Kent Archives Office, Maidstone, has been available online from FamilySearch since June 2016.
- Kent had five family history societies (now only four):
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- Volume 2 of the Victoria County History of Kent (published 1926) is available online through the auspices of British History Online. It includes accounts of the early history of Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals, and of several sites now within the conurbation of London.
- Volume 3 of the Victoria County History of Kent (published 1932) This includes the text of, and the index to, the Kent Domesday survey. It has been provided by the Kent Archaeological Society.
- In place of the other volumes of the Victoria County History, British History Online has transcriptions of the numerous volumes of The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent by Edward Hasted (originally published 1797)
- English Jurisdictions 1851, a parish finding aid provided by FamilySearch, is particularly helpful in locating parishes in large ancient towns and cities like Canterbury.
- Kent Probate Records Numerous links provided by Maureen Rawson
- GENUKI lists other possible sources, however, it does not serve Kent so well as it does some other counties.
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