Town in Kent, England
Maidstone
In 1381, Kent rebels freed a radical priest from Maidstone's prison and picked Wat Tyler as their leader.
Key information
- County
- Kent
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Being Kent's county town, the River Medway, ragstone, paper-making and hops
- What locals are called
- Maidstonians
- Famous people
- William Hazlitt, Julius Brenchley, Wat Tyler (rebel leader)
- Football clubs
- Maidstone United, known as The Stones
About Maidstone
The town that broke a prisoner out and made a rebel leader
In June 1381, rebels from across Kent marched into Maidstone during the Peasants' Revolt. They opened the archbishop's prison and freed John Ball, the radical priest who had been preaching against serfdom and privilege. It was in Maidstone that Wat Tyler was chosen to lead the rebels. From here the army set off towards Canterbury and then London, where the revolt reached its famous climax. Maidstone has seen fighting before and since. In June 1648, during the Second English Civil War, Sir Thomas Fairfax's Parliamentarians stormed the town against a Royalist force in fierce street fighting.
A river, a lot of rock and a lot of hops
Maidstone grew up where the River Medway was easy to cross and easy to sail along. That made it a natural place to load up the heavy things Kent was good at producing. Kentish ragstone, a tough grey limestone quarried around the town, was shipped down the Medway and used in medieval building, including the Tower of London. The surrounding orchards and hop fields fed brewing, and the old Fremlins brewery, with its elephant emblem, was a Maidstone name for generations. The town was also a papermaking centre. James Whatman's mill here became famous for high-quality paper, and the Whatman name is still known to artists and scientists.
Landmarks: a giant church, a palace and a mummy
All Saints' Church sits right by the river and is the largest Perpendicular parish church in Kent. Beside it stand the remains of the College of Priests, founded in the late 1300s, and the Archbishop's Palace, a medieval residence for the archbishops of Canterbury. Maidstone Museum, housed in an Elizabethan manor in the town centre, is a magpie's nest of a place. It has an Egyptian mummy called Ta-Kush and a big collection of Japanese objects gathered by the Maidstone-born traveller Julius Brenchley. Mote Park, the old estate behind Mote House, is the town's great green space, with a lake, big lawns and a long cricketing tradition on its ground. A short drive east is Leeds Castle, a moated fortress on islands in a lake.
The summer the water turned deadly
In 1897 Maidstone suffered one of the worst typhoid outbreaks in English history. Contaminated water from a spring source in the town's supply sickened more than 1,800 people, and over 130 died. The outbreak became a landmark case in public health. It pushed ahead the idea that clean, reliably supplied water was something a town had to guarantee, not just hope for. It also showed how fast an illness could spread through an entire community from a single source.
The football club that lost its ground and found its way home
Maidstone United, nicknamed The Stones, were founded in 1897 and reached the Football League in 1989 after winning the Conference. The club had sold its old Athletic Ground and had nowhere to play at home. Its Football League games were played at Dartford's ground, a story that still makes Maidstone fans wince. The club left the League in 1992 and folded. It was reborn and worked its way back up from the bottom. Today it plays at the Gallagher Stadium, which opened in 2012 in the town itself, so Maidstone has a home ground again.
William Hazlitt and the people who made Maidstone
William Hazlitt, one of the sharpest English essayists, was born in Maidstone in 1778. His family moved away when he was a child, but he's the town's best-known literary son. Locals are called Maidstonians, and the town still carries the confident air of a county town, with its shops, courts and civic buildings. It is Kent's administrative centre, with the Medway still running through it and the orchards and hop gardens of the Garden of England close by.