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To many people
Kent is the main Horticultural area of the United Kingdom. It also contains many historic towns fronting onto the sea from south of the river Thames down to and along the English Channel. Kent also has ports used by ferries connecting to various destinations across the English Channel.
Thanks to its proximity to London, Kent is one of the most popular holiday counties in England.
Inland, beautiful
Canterbury and its extraordinary cathedral is still the main crowd-pleaser, but you can also catch your breath in some gorgeous countryside.
Probably the most distinctive feature of the fertile, rolling hills of inland Kent are the white cone shaped roofs of Oast Houses.
Oast Houses were basically giant, housed kilns for drying hops, a key ingredient in the brewing of beer, introduced to the region in the early 15th century. An Oast House is made up of four rooms: the Kiln (Oven), the drying room (located above the kiln), the cooling room, and the storage room where hops were pressed and bailed, ready to go to the local inn-brewery. The cone shaped roof was necessary to create a draft for the fire. The bits sticking out from the top of the cone are cowls that could be moved to regulate the fire.
Most Oast Houses have been converted into homes, and are increasingly sort after as prime real estate. Oast Houses B&Bs are increasingly common throughout the county. |
The city of Canterbury is one of the top tourist attractions in England, and for very good reasons. The medieval centre that towers above it all is one of the most impressive you’ll see anywhere in Europe. In WWII the Luftwaffe was a little too keen in its efforts to bomb the city, but thankfully their targeting was a little off due to the local people lighting fires in the heart of the city giving the impression that the city centre had been effectively bombed, and the centre was preserved.
From AD 200 there was a Roman town called Durovernum Cantiacorum on this site which later became the capital of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. When St Augustine arrived in England in 597 to carry the Christian message to the pagan hordes, he chose Canterbury as his Cathedra, or primary see, and set about building an abbey on the outskirts of town.
Following the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Canterbury became northern Europe's most important centre of pilgrimage, which in turn led to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, one of the outstanding poetic works in English literature.
Rampant tourism and blasphemous murders aside, Canterbury remains the primary see for the Church of England.
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