ve-meta title="Kent Maps Online" description="This site provides a set of themed essays about Kent, a county in South East England, which include interactive maps and images. Kent has a rich history and provided inspiration for a number of writers and artists."
ve-header title="Kent Maps Online" background=gh:kent-map/images/Kent_Maps.jpg contact=ron.snyder@ithaka.org search-domain=kent-maps.online search-cx=568011e472c1ffe27 search-key=565e6d76446e5654542e205672444f6d247e4070444756707e5c7226415b67735176617e425a70 .sticky
Kent Maps Online is an interactive Digital Humanities project exploring the county’s rich heritage, using multi-disciplinary lenses to research and present historic, literary and geographical records. Travel through the site and find answers to questions you haven’t even thought of yet.
Featured Essays
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Mobile Landscapes - Finding Kent Dickensian
Mobile Landscapes - Finding Kent Dickensian
You’ll need a map because there are no signposts … There are witnesses of course, hundreds of them queueing up to tell you that they are the original Aunt Betsey.
H.G.Wells
H.G.Wells
“This bus it was, this ruddy, venerable and, under God’s mercy, immortal bus, that came down the Folkestone hill with unflinching deliberation, and trundled through Sandgate and Hythe.”
Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman
It isn’t perhaps surprising that Derek Jarman should have fallen in love with Dungeness and Prospect Cottage in particular when happenstance and a desire for fish and chips at the Pilot Inn brought him to Romney Marsh.
Paul Nash
Paul Nash
Paul Nash was a war artist and photographer who became an important influence in British inter-war surrealism and Modern Art.
Essays by Period
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Medieval
Medieval
The Kingdom of the Kentish (Cantwara rīce; Regnum Cantuariorum), The murder of Becket, the Black Death, Wat Tyler’s rebellion, Canterbury pilgrims and Canterbury tales.
16th century
16th century
Chatham Dockyard was established, the Battle against the Spanish Armada took place. Industry in the county included textiles, leather-making and iron production. Prophesizing and playwriting.
17th century
17th century
Industry includes production of malt for brewing. Fighting takes place as part of the English Civil War. Scientific discoveries in mathematics, chemistry and anatomy.
18th century
18th century
Strategic position of the Medway in relation to European wars. New sea water ‘cures’ see the reinvention of Margate as a fashionable resort.
19th century
19th century
Hoy and steam boats, railways and passenger ships brought people to the county in ever increasing numbers as the county’s tourist industry develops.
20th century
20th century
Dover and Folkestone become the gateway to the Western Front during WW1. Seaside towns decline, challenged by the increasing popularity of overseas holidays.
21st century
21st century
Regeneration and the rise of the DFL, street murals, poetry, books and Covid.
Essays by Place
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Places A-D
Places A-D
Shingly beaches, white cliffs and ferries. What was happening in Broadstairs, Canterbury, Deal and Dover.
Places E-J
Places E-J
Towns of grandeur. Articles on Folkestone and Gravesend.
Places K-Z
Places K-Z
Seaside resorts such as Ramsgate and Sandgate.
Essays by Theme
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Actors and Theatres
Actors and Theatres
Actors have made Kent their home, playwrights have used it as a setting, and theatrical companies have performed in its theatres.
Artists and Designers
Artists and Designers
Architects, designers, painters, illustrators, cartoonists and muralists have been inspired by Kent’s rich landscape.
Children’s Authors and Stories
Children’s Authors and Stories
From the Railway Children to Rupert Bear, Kent has been in the inspiration for many children’s authors and stories.
Crime Fiction
Crime Fiction
It turns out Kent may be a more dangerous place than you realised (at least in the imaginations of writers).
Literary Landscapes
Landscapes
Kent is a county of diverse landscapes, from its wild coastal marshes to the uplands of Down and Weald, from the heavily wooded Blean complex above Canterbury to the bleak, windswept chalklands of East Kent.
Mathematicians and Scientists
Mathematicians and Scientists
Botanists, chemists and naturalists abound in the beautiful garden of England.
Musical Peregrinations
Musical Peregrinations
Take a musical jaunt with the Canterbury Catch Club through Nineteenth Century Kent, but mind the roads.
Poets and Poetry
Poets and Poetry
The Kent coast and countryside has provided inspiration for poets throughout the centuries.
Prisons and Discipline
Prisons and Discipline
An exploration of Kent’s penal system including the Bloody Code, convicts, transportation and prison hulks.
Religion
Religion
An exploration of some of the people and places that have shaped faith in the county.
Seascapes
Seascapes
The Kentish coast, the Straits of Dover and the Goodwin Sands have inspired authors and artists throughout the centuries.
The Built Environment
The Built Environment
A county of rich architecture; castles, churches, ports, forts and towers.
The Garden of England
The Garden of England
Famed for its cherries, hops and fruit, organic farming, and the modern day greenhouses of Thanet Earth, Kent is known as the ‘Garden of England’ due its rich agricultural history.
War in Kent
War in Kent
On the frontline of England’s defence, Kent has played a pivitol role when faced with invasion, from the Spanish Armada up until the First and Second World Wars.
Featured Authors
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Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Born in Steventon, near Basingstoke, Hampshire, in 1775, Jane Austen often visited Kent, the birthplace of her father, and the long-term residence of her brother Edward Austen Knight, with whom she stayed at Rowling House and later at the magnificent Godmersham Park.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
From Rochester to Broadstairs on the East coast – wherever you go you can be fairly certain that Dickens has been there before you. One of the greatest Victorian novelists, Charles Dickens lived in Kent from 1816 to 1822; and again from 1856 to 1870.
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
After suffering a breakdown in 1921, T.S Eliot positioned himself in the seaside town of Margate to recover. It was there he wrote “The Fire Sermon,” part three of the hugely influential poem ‘The Waste Land’. He wrote to Sydney Schiff from the Albemarle Hotel, Cliftonville: “I have done a rough draft .. but I do not know whether it will do.”
Vita Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West
Sackville-West is perhaps best known today as a gardener, for her unconventional marriage, and as the inspiration for Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s time travelling, gender fluid, eponymous character. However, she was a prolific and versatile writer in her own right, both a a celebrated poet and author of fourteen novels.
Featured Projects
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Inspirational Kent Women Writers
Inspirational Kent Women Writers
To accompany the Inspirational Kent Women Writers event held by the Centre for Kent History and Heritage, Kent Maps Online have curated a collection of inspirational Kent women writers as well as some lesser known women writers who have been inspired by Kent.
Black History
Black History
Black History Month 2024 encourages the Black community to reclaim the narratives of the past. Read these articles to find out more.
Dover at Night
Dover at Night
To celebrate Dover at Night, Kent Maps Online have written an article about Dover as depicted in literature, where smuggling, assignations and abductions occur along its moonlit shore.
Duke of Edinburgh Project
Duke of Edinburgh Project
During the Covid pandemic, Kent Maps Online offered remote volunteering and skills training for Duke of Edinburgh participants who may not have been able to complete their awards without access to online opportunities. This space showcases the work completed by our Duke of Edinburgh participants at all levels.
Featured Texts
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Double Double
Double Double
It was 1969, and in the fictional coastal North Kent town of Brindown, things would never be the same after the visit of Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition who come in search of a venue for an “open-air freakout”.
A Hop-Picking Holiday in Kent in Margaret Harkness’s In Darkest London
In Darkest London
Although Margaret Harkness’s novel In Darkest London (1889) primarily takes the reader through the most destitute slums of London, it also includes a “holiday” in Kent.
Miss Balmaine’s Past
Miss Balmaine’s Past
Bithia Croker’s novel is set on the Romney Marshes in the fictional town of ‘Horton’. Rosamund Balmaine finds love when Ronald Gordon arrives to survey the area for a new railway.
Shepherds in Sackcloth
Shepherds in Sackcloth
Delmonden is a village in Kent that doesn’t actually exist except in Shepherds In Sackcloth by Sheila Kaye-Smith. However, there is a real village in the location Kaye-Smith has chosen for her creation; Newenden.
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