Affectionately known as the Garden of England for its hop fields, fruit orchards and vineyards, is ringed on three sides by the coast, with more than a quarter of the lush county lying in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As the closest county to the Continent, Kent has been the landing point for many a marauding tribe, lending it a long and rich history. You don’t have to be a boffin to appreciate Kent’s ancient brewing traditions, and architectural legacy, with many villages featuring a charming mix of oast houses, clapboard cottages and beamed Tudor coaching inns.
Ranking Kent’s prettiest villages presents a delightful dilemma. As a maid of Kent rather than a Kentish maid (the county has been divided into east and west Kent since it was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom), my natural allegiance lies in the . Yet the charms of west Kent’s villages are impossible to deny.
.. So here you find my entirely subjective top 10, which I appreciate will cause hefty outrage and debate, hopefully carried out in some of the excellent pubs named below, if not in the comments section.
As you arrive in Biddenden, perhaps having passed Sissinghurst Castle en route, take a moment to look at the wrought iron sign on the tiny village green. Erected in the 1920s, it depicts conjoined twins allegedly born here in 1100. The Biddenden Maids, as they came to be known, started a tradition of perpetual charity that is still honoured today.
Images of the benevolent sisters dot the village, whose dainty.