Yalding
| Yalding | |
| Kent | |
|---|---|
 Houses on the High Street | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ6949 |
| Location: | 51°13’26"N, -0°25’44"E |
| Data | |
| Population: | 2,236 (2001) |
| Post town: | Maidstone |
| Postcode: | ME18 |
| Dialling code: | 01622 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Maidstone |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Maidstone and the Weald |
Yalding is a village in Kent, found 6 miles southwest of Maidstone at a point where the Rivers Teise and Beult join the River Medway. At the 2001 census, the parish, which includes the villages of Benover and Laddingford, had a population of 2,236.
There are three bridges in the village; the Twyford Bridge (meaning twin ford, where there was originally a double crossing of the two rivers) is one of the finest mediæval bridges in the south-east of England. Yalding was one of the principal shipment points on the River Medway for cannon, from villages of the Wealden iron industry.
The wharf was later used for transporting fruit from the many orchards in the area. Garden Organic, the UK's leading organic growing charity, created a demonstration garden located near the village. This was closed in 2007 but leased and reopened by the local business Maro Foods, in 2008. The gardens are now known as the Yalding Gardens.
History
The Anglo-Saxon village was called Twyford and was close to the bridge. But the name was recorded in the Domesday Book as Hallinges and records that "Richard FitzGilbert holds Hallinges. Æthelred held it from King Edward. It answered for 2 sulungs then and now." Domesday records 16 villagers with 12 smallholder, 6 ploughs, 2 churches and 15 serfs.
By 1642, the name of the village was recorded as Yaldinge.
The mediæval records from Yalding are so complete that it was used in a History Case Study for Secondary Schools, called the The Yalding Project.
During the English Civil War in 1643, a battle took place at Town Bridge between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Cavaliers had advanced from Aylesford towards Tonbridge, but the Parliamentarian soldiers had marched to block their movements, bombarded them and forced their surrender, with the result that 300 were captured and 300 escaped.
Yalding was a favourite of Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, who wrote in the 1920s: "The Medway just above the Anchor (at Yalding, Kent) is a river of dreams...If you go to Yalding you may stay at the George and be comfortable in a little village that owns a haunted churchyard, a fine church, and one of the most beautiful bridges in Europe."
Buildings
St Peter's and St Paul's church is a Grade I listed building. It is built from ragstone, and is judged to be from the 13th century. The tower turret has a weather vane dated 1734.[1]
Rivers
The mediæval Town Bridge is built of ragstone in the 15th century, it has seven arches and spans the Beult and the marshy ground each side.[1] It is reputed to be the longest existing mediæval bridge in Kent being nearly 500 ft in length.
Twyford Bridge crosses the River Medway.
Just upstream of Twyford Bridge is an automatic sluice where the river drops from 36½ feet to 24 feet above mean sea level, the navigation bears left through the Hampstead Road Canal, and the Hampstead Lock, the main stream drops over the weir and sluice and is joined here by the River Teise (Lesser Teise) and both pass under Twyford Bridge. The river then flows in a loop towards the village where it is joined by the River Beult which has passed under Town Bridge. However the main stream of the River Teise flowed into the Beult near Benover, two miles upstream of Town Bridge. Twyford Bridge is not navigable. Twyford bridge is ten miles from Allington, where the Medway becomes tidal.[2]
Floods
Parts of Yalding are prone to flooding, notably:
- Christmas Day 1927;
- eight times in the winter of 2000/1;
- in December 2013.
Sport and leisure
- Cricket: Yalding Cricket Club, a club that has existed at least since its first recorded game in 1798. The cricket pitch was once beside the River Medway on the Lees (the village common).
- Football: Yalding and Laddingford FC
The Greensand Way long-distance footpath crosses the Medway at Twyford Bridge, and follows up the High Street, passes through Blunden Lane, and leaves the village by an ancient byway by Bustom Farm Cottages. The Medway Valley Walk follows the river from Tonbridge to the sluice on the east bank, then the Hampstead Lane Canal, and the river to Maidstone on the west bank.
Yalding Organic Garden has a display of fourteen individual gardens, demonstrating gardening through the last 800 years. The plants have been carefully chosen to make sure that they are accurate to their historical period.
The Yalding and District Beekeepers Association was formed in January 2011, by a group of local beekeepers, and meets monthly in The Chequers Inn, Laddingford.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Yalding) |
- Yalding & District Beekeepers Association
- Yalding parish church
- Yalding Cricket Club
- Pictures of Yalding and the area on Geograph.co.uk