EHS Database
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Welcome to the Elham Historical Society database website. Feel free to browse and uncover the history of Elham. Our dedicated team of historians has recently finished recording the details on all the memorials in the graveyard.
Our chairman Derek Boughton has overseen the operation, correlating the data and checking for errors. The results of their labours can be seen on the burials page.
Swing Riots
The machine breaking that led to the riots of August 1830 onwards started in the Elham Parish, writes our historian Derek Boughton, who has made a lifetime's study of the subject.
Elham residents were prominent in the gangs that sought out the new fangled threshing machines and destroyed them. Some of them cost the not inconsiderable sum for the day of £100.
Full Story
Les Ames (1905 - 1990)
Former Elham resident Leslie Ethelbert George Ames CBE; who died suddenly at his home in Canterbury on February 26 1990 - aged 84 - was without a doubt the greatest
wicketkeeper-batsman the game has so far produced; and yet - at the time he was playing - it used to be said there were better wicketkeepers than Ames - and that he was in the England
team because of his batting. If this was so would Jardine - for example - have preferred him to Duckworth in Australia in 1932-33?
Surely not. When fully fit - Ames was England's
first-choice wicketkeeper from 1931 to 1939 - when he virtually gave up the job. For Kent - he was an integral part of their Championship side from 1927 to the first match of 1951
- when a sharp recurrence of back trouble - which had dogged him for so long - brought his career to an end while he was actually at the crease. By this time he had amassed 37248
runs - average 43.51 - made 102 hundreds - including nine double-hundreds - and passed 1000 runs in a season seventeen times - going on to 3000 once and 2000 on five occasions.
He had had a direct interest in 1121 dismissals - of which more than 1000 were effected when he was keeping wicket. His total of 418 stumpings is easily a record.
In Test cricket
- Ames played 47 matches - scoring 2434 runs with a batting average of 40.56 - and taking 74 catches - and 23 stumpings. Record 8th wicket partnership in all tests of 246 with
GO Allen :Made 123 in the pre-lunch session of the 1923 test against South Africa (a record for runs in a session): Scored centuries against every first-class county apart from Kent.
Unusually for a wicket-keeper - he also bowled over 200 overs - taking 24 first-class wickets with a bowling average of 33.37.
Ames was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1929.
He was a pupil at the Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone and he also played five times for Gillingham FC.
Audrey Hepburn (1929 - 1993)
She came to village with her mother Dutch Baroness Ella van Heemstra. She lived at Orchard Cottage (now the Five Bells) and attended the private schools in the village square.
1871
VIOLENCE JUSTLY PUNISHED
The quiet of our peaceful parish has for a long period been frequently disturbed by the wild vagaries of Danzey Summerville Cresswell, pseudo "doctor," but it is to be hoped that a wholesome check has been put upon his movements by the decision of the magistrates assembled in petty sessions last Monday, whereby "Dr." Cresswell was mulcted in the penalty of £5 and costs. The circumstances from which the magisterial proceedings arose have long been the subject of our village gossips, but readers of this paper elsewhere may like to know something of the doings of this modern example of ruffianism. It seems from the evidence given on Monday that some time in January last a man named Castle was at work with a horse and cart upon the road just outside Elham, when Cresswell approached riding a horse at his usual rapid pace, and called out to have the road cleared for him. Now as it happened that a waggon, and several gentlemen on horseback had just previously passed the spot where the horse and cart were still standing, Castle did not immediately obey the order, which it is said was given in language not fit for ears polite, whereupon Cresswell without further ado commenced to belabour the head and shoulders of the disobedient curter with blows from the butt end of a heavy hunting whip. A scuffle ensued; the doctor got unhorsed, and commenced " squaring " up for an engagement. Castle, however, quickly felled his antagonist to the ground, and when opportunity offered repeated the performance. The doctor thus got the worst of the encounter, his eyes were blackened, his lips cut and bruised, and the "bridge" of his nose broken. Next morning Mr. Cresswell invoked the majesty of the law, and obtained a summons against Castle for an assault. The simple carter, too, objecting, it is to be presumed, to the Legree style of castigation practised upon him, like-wise obtained a citation to appear against the " doctor," and when the cross-summonses came on for hearing, Mr. Cresswell, by virtue of his having placed himself in the position of the original complainant, had his " say " first. Nothing doubting, Mr. Cresswell stated (upon oath, of course) his version of the affray, but happily for Castle, whose tongue the law now kept silent, he had "free and independ.ent " witnesses to bring forward whose testimony clearly convinced the bench of Magistrates which of the parties was the actual aggressor, and without waiting to hear the evidence in detail they at once dismissed the case. The tables had now turned; the man of the horse and cart was complainant and the soi disant professor of the healing art, defendant. Castle (not only by his own testimony but by the evidence of others who evidently spoke without favour or affection for either party) clearly demonstrated to the bench that a brutal assault had been committed upon him, and the magistrates—most righteously we think—ordered the "doctor" to pay a penalty of £5 and costs. It is said that at first the administrators of justice were inclined to commit the defendant to prison without the option of paying a fine. Who would have regretted it but himself?— From a Correspondent.