Midmost Ages, Sittingbourne was the stopping place for Christian pilgrims to Canterbury and offered a thriving market. In todays world, paper manufacture & fruit conserving & packing come a independent industries. The class action settlement existed in the arethe after far back when 1086 when Norman records cite a village pool. Sittingbourne has on top its yearn history developed important links using a history of the flow of any stream flatboat, however around grounds to believe now. At the centre of the towns paved main street is the sculpture of a bronze lighterman.

the Dolphin shipfront yard was once a flatboat yard of cement works & brickmakers C Burley, & is placed in a tidal recess heading from either Sittingbourne to the Swale.

N Kent is geologically rich around chalk, which is non detected inside numbers of more stores inside Europe inside such abundance. This naturally led cement manufactures to settle in a area, & the modern industry however flourishes locally now. Flatboat were required to move numbers of more raw materials & finished goods into a Thames & to London & beyond; Sittingbourne was ideally suited for this purpose and a flourishing flatboat building industry developed at Milton Creek and elsewhere along the coast. A earliest known flatboat was built inside the area by John Huggens in 1803.

These industries flourished in the period of the C19th after following of the industrial revolution Sittingbourne developed into a port from either which Kent green groceries was transported to the London markets. Paper mills, & brickyard were fed by hoy that brought around s&, mud & domestic waste like clinker for brick making, and ingesting away a bricks another time processed.

In the period of this era terminated Five hundred various types of lighter come believed to keep close at hand been built, however when World War II, these activities began to fall into a decline, thus that just a Burley front yard continued by using a repair of hoy until astir 1965. This deficiency of activity led the creek to turn into silted & derelict, however a 200-month-old wooden sail loft & forge was late converted to the Dolphin Sailing Barge Museum by a local enthusiast.

Alfred Marconi White

Of these large local shipbuilder was a boy of Alfred White world health organization owned the front front yard at Sittingbourne, & experienced a hoy yard at Blackwall withinside London when you took the Eighties in which he built Swimhead lighter for Goldsmith of Grays in Essex. Alfred Marconi White took on top a Conyer front yard from either John Bird inside 1890 fallowing serving his apprenticeship at a Blackwall yard. Conyer, the little village it used to be that inhabited per Romans is incurred at the head of a little creek between Sittingbourne & Faversham.

a shipbuilder John Bird (b 1832) is reputed to survive as a 1st of a lighter builders to settle at Conyer & records exist for a sailing hoy built there within 1866, the season he begun his work on the front yard. A Whiten personal prided themselves in the construction of the fastest lighter available locally. Alfred Marconi at his Conyer front yard, touching brickyard, built numerous different types of flatboat. Occasionally continued to survive when home hoy swell into a Sixties. A go of a numerous sailing hoy was built at a Conyer front yard was inside 1914, however repair works continued swell into the Thirties by owning many flatboat racing yacht built in the Twenties. Visitant to Sittingbourne may however enjoy a Dolphin Front yard Sailing Barge Museum.

Sittingbourne and Kemsley Light Railway

To the west of the Dolphin front yard is the Sittingbourne & Kemsley Weak Railway, which originally served when shipping for the paper making industry.

a mill was opened within 1877 per News Chronicle creator Edward Lloyd between Sittingbourne & a Milton creek, in which a raw materials like china clay, coal & pulping timber for the paper were easy imported by lighter that likewise took away the finished product. a wharfage was built & the narrow gauge horse-drawn tramway added to carry these materials to & from either the creek.

Inside 1906 the 1st steam locomotive Premier inherit service, followed by Leader a equivalent month & within 1908 a third bats Wood shavings. 100% were Brazil class 0-Four-Two tank engine.

a waters in a image below a wharfage at Sittingbourne were prone to rapid silting, & by owning the expansion of the paper mill a fresh dock was developed quartet miles from either Sittingbourne at Ridham, do you need the deep waters of the Swale.

Kemsley Mill led to the foundation of the company village which was built astir 1924, & per Sixties Xiii engine were within regular utilize on the line, a single diesel & of these battery electric car & 400 wagons, by owning astir Xiv miles of track. A railway plan a 2nd Globe War utilized to carry rider to & from either a docks & mill, by having carriages provided for the mill workers of Kemsley.

Around 1965 it was decided that a railway was uneconomical, using a important progress manufactured in the have of the car, so lorries were further ordinarily utilized for transporting green groceries. Consequently by 1969 a Bowater Light Railway, much loved when it was per house, & to a lasting credit of that company, by using assistance from either a late Capt Peter Manisty RN handed it ended to the Locomotive Club of Outstanding Britain to exist as preserved & to work this unique little railway for the profit of SKLR members & the public.

It has since get the important feature in the town's tourer industry & is swell worth the visit. One of the items that sets a SKLR apart from either numerous more preserved railways is that it operates a original index, along a original route, & is non a reconstruction.

Air Raids during the Great War

A locality about Sittingbourne was subject to constant air attack by Zeppelins and airplane when you took a Dandy War. A Germans utilized a town as a reference for their bearings en route to London.

the foremost visit by a German aeroplane happened on Christmas Day 1914. Guns at Sheerness fired at the only encroacher however however of these casing dropped into the field at Iwade. the next event was to occur around 16 January 1915 whenever an additional solitary pilot from either a German airport in Belgium visited Sittingbourne. This aircraft was the Taube however was existence chased by ii of local airmen, & getting the superior build of aircraft, managed for away when with dropped two or three of bombs.

All about C air raid warnings were sounded at Sittingbourne in a period of the Swell War. Anti-aircraft batteries were strengthened locally inside 1917. a endure large raid to skip a town in Scintilla Sunday (Might 19) 1918 carried out by a total of German Gothas, eliciting peradventure a virtually all savage barrage from either a ground defences the town got ever seen.

A local newspaper page through:

"The first of these duels occurred about an hour after the raid had been in progress, and probably this machine was caught while on its way to London. It was engaged by a daring aviation officer while at a great height. The British airman attacked his opponent so fiercely that the German was forced down to a lower height, and ultimately, to the joy of the onlookers, the Gotha burst into flames, seemed to break in two and came down piecemeal, all aflame. The wrecked machine and the three occupants fell by a farm. Two of the Germans fell into marshy ground and their bodies were deeply embedded in the mud. The third man's head struck a wall and was shattered like an egg shell. All three bodies were removed to a local aviation establishment. The fall of the burning Gotha was seen for miles around."

the 2nd Gotha was surrounded by British fighters shortly when, giving from either a successful raid in London.

Sources
DL Sattin: Flatboat building & lighter builders of the Swale. 1990. Hidden Kent: Alan Major: 1994.