DISCOVER MAIDSTONE
Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, 32 miles (51 km) southeast of London. The River Medway runs through centre of the town.
Traditionally Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural county of Kent, known as the Garden of England. There is evidence of a settlement in the area dating back to the Stone Age.
Stone Age finds have been made locally, but it was the Romans who first gave Maidstone importance. Their road from Watling Street at Rochester to Hastings across the Weald passed through the site, and two villas have been discovered. They were also among the first to extract stone (the sandstone known as Kentish ragstone) from the area.
This part of the Medway Valley was important too, by the time of Domesday Book. Heathland to the north of the town (today the suburb of Penenden Heath) was the site of shire moots or regional assemblies and the location of a key trial in the years immediately following the Norman Conquest. In the Middle Ages there were two hospitals here built for the care of wayfarers, especially those on pilgrimage; and a “college” of secular priests.
The growth of the central town of Maidstone has incorporated previously outlying villages and settlements on its boundaries including Allington, Penenden Heath and Tovil.
The original site of the town centre, where the main streets are, is situated on rising ground to the east of the River Medway. The pedestrianised areas of the High Street and King Street run up from the river crossing at Lockmeadow; Week Street and Gabriel’s Hill bisect this route.
 MAIDSTONE IN THE CIVIL WAR
The Battle of Maidstone took place on 1 June 1648.
About 2,000 Royalist forces were defending the town, governed by Sir Gamaliel Dudley, and his lieutenant, Sir John Mainy, and their junior-lieutenant, Sir Conor Forker, who had arranged earthworks and other defences. General Fairfax and a body of dragoons approached in the afternoon, following the Medway Valley from Farleigh Bridge, which had been only lightly guarded, and the first skirmishes took place on the outskirts of the town around 7 o'clock.
The Royalists put up a spirited resistance and managed to repulse Fairfax's pikeman. Reinforcements from the town arrived and heavy hand-to-hand fighting took place. Fairfax was astonished that his disciplined New Model Army soldiers where thrown into confusion. Fairfax himself, who had been observing the action from a carriage a short distance away, took to horse and lead his troops on a charge which, following further heavy close fighting, forced the Royalists to retreat. Fairfax pushed on, and the storming of the town began at 9 o'clock.
By midnight, the remaining Royalists had been driven into the churchyard, and surrendered. 300 Royalists had died in the battle, and 1,300 captured. Between 30 and 80 of Fairfax's men were believed killed.
MAIDSTONE LANDMARKS
• MAIDSTONE PRISON
The prison lies to the north of the town centre. Designed by Daniel Asher Alexander (the architect of Dartmoor Prison) It was completed in 1819 to replace the bridewell and old gaol in the centre of the town. Building work was carried out by French prisoners-of-war. The first inmates moved in at the end of 1818.
On 28 April 1868, the last woman to be publicly hanged in Britain was Frances Kidder, a 25-year-old woman who had murdered her stepdaughter; the execution took place outside Maidstone Prison.
• ARMY BARRACKS
There have been two Army barracks in Maidstone. The first was built in 1797 as a reaction to the threat of Napoleon and the barracks became the home of the West Kent Regiment. By 1813 the barracks along the Sandling Road were used to train the cavalry’s young horses and 20 years later they became the Army Riding School. It was also a staging post for the colonies and in the 1860s 600 men could be stationed here.
The present Invicta Barracks is home to the Royal Engineers 36 Engineer Regiment, which includes two Gurkha field squadrons. The pub - The White Rabbit - now occupies the listed building that used to be the Officers’ Mess of the original barracks.
ECONOMY OF MAIDSTONE
The early economy of Maidstone was built around its position as a central market town to the agricultural industry of the surrounding Kent countryside. Its position on the River Medway (which was in turn fed by a series of tributaries) allowed goods to be transported in and out of the town quickly for trade.
The existence of trade attracted craftsmen and other artisans adding to a supporting manufacturing economy.
The quarrying of building stone around Maidstone has always been important and continues even today. Some of the sandstone is also used in the glass industry.
In the 17th century the Wealden cloth industry reached as far north as the town; for here were deposits of Fuller's earth used for degreasing the wool and, perhaps more importantly, the means of transporting the finished products — the river.
In Maidstone there were many small breweries at the end of the 19th century, the river being useful for transport and water for the beer production. One of the biggest, the Style & Winch brewery, was on the river bank in the centre of the town. It shut in 1965 and the building was demolished in 1976. There were five other breweries; today only a small one — Goachers — remains. Parts of the former-Fremlins brewery are now incorporated in the Fremlin Walk shopping arcade.
Paper mills, known locally as “the treacle mines”, also grew near the river. Paper was produced at places such as Turkey Mill and Hayle Mill, and what was to become the Reed group had several paper and cardboard milling plants in Maidstone. Today Aylesford (on the northwest side of Maidstone) has the largest paper recycling factory in Europe, manufacturing paper for the newspaper industry.
Until 1998 the Sharps toffee factory of (later part of Cadbury Trebor Basset), makers of liquorice allsorts, was in central Maidstone and provided a significant source of employment.
Loudspeaker manufacturer KEF was founded in 1961 in Maidstone on the premises of a metal working operation called Kent Engineering & Foundry (hence KEF). Today, KEF still occupies the same river-bank site. In the late 1990s KEF manufactured a loudspeaker called “the Maidstone”.
The town centre has the largest office centre in the county and the area is a base for the paper and packaging industry. Many high-technology firms have set up on surrounding business parks.
The town is ranked in the top five shopping centres in the south east of England for shopping yields and has more than one million square feet of retail floor space, including the new Fremlin Walk.
The Fremlin Walk shopping arcade opened, on the site of a former brewery in the centre of the town. It has an area of 32,500 square metres. Other recent developments include the riverside Lockmeadow Centre, which includes a multiplex cinema, restaurants, nightclub, bowling alley, and market square
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
 MAIDSTONE Hotels & Accommodation
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