Petham

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Petham
Kent

The church of All Saints
Location
Grid reference: TR127515
Location: 51°13’22"N, 1°2’50"E
Data
Population: 708  (2011[1])
Post town: Canterbury
Postcode: CT4
Dialling code: 01227
Local Government
Council: City of Canterbury
Parliamentary
constituency:
Canterbury

Petham is a rural village and parish in the North Downs, five miles south of Canterbury in Kent. Along with Bridge, it lends its name to the hundred of Bridge and Petham, in which it lies.

The village church is All Saints, Petham and is Grade-I listed.[2] It was built in the 13th century but suffered from a fire in 1922 and had to be reconstructed. The village hall was rebuilt in the early 21st century next to Marble pond on relatively low meadows deemed unsuitable for housing and insurance.

Petham has rolling hills within its bounds, including ancient forested slopes and thatched mediæval and Tudor period cottages.

It now incorporates Swarling to the north, which had "33.5" households in the Domesday Book,[3] and is one of the type sites for British Iron Age Aylesford-Swarling pottery. The excavation, by J. P. Bushe-Fox, to publication took place in 1921-1925.[4]

History

Similar to other comparable villages, Petham once featured multiple facilities such as a baker, cobbler, post office and garage.[5] Today, none of these facilities remain and the only public buildings are pubs and restaurants. This decline began in the 1940s and can be attributed to increasing household car ownership (in the early 1940s 90% of households did not own a car).[6] Increasing car ownership allowed easier travel between Petham and Canterbury, enabling residents to access services in the city.

References

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Petham)
  1. Key Statistics; Quick Statistics: Population Density United Kingdom Census 2011 Office for National Statistics Retrieved 21 November 2013
  2. "Church of All Saints, Petham, Kent". http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-171367-church-of-all-saints-petham-kent. Retrieved 1 November 2017. 
  3. [1]
  4. Cunliffe, Barry W., Iron Age Communities in Britain, Fourth Edition: An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century BC, Until the Roman Conquest, near Figure 1.4, 2012 (4th edition), Routledge, google preview, with no page numbers
  5. "Village Amenities - (1)". http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-612000-150000/page/4. Retrieved 1 November 2017. 
  6. "Car ownership in Great Britain". http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/car%20ownership%20in%20great%20britain%20-%20leibling%20-%20171008%20-%20report.pdf. Retrieved 1 November 2017.