Edenbridge

Edenbridge, a market town in the south-western parliamentary division of Kent, England, 26 m. S.S.E. of London, on the South-Eastern & Chatham, and the London, Brighton & South Coast railways. Pop. (1901) 2546. It is pleasantly situated on the river Eden, an affluent of the Medway, in a valley between the Ragstone Hills and the Forest Ridges. The church of St Peter and St Paul is principally Perpendicular. The town, which has considerable agricultural trade, possesses a chalybeate spring, but this is little used. Two miles from the town is Hever Castle, a beautiful moated mansion dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, but occupying the site of an earlier structure. This was rebuilt by Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, whose grandson, Sir Thomas, was father of Anne, second wife of Henry VIII., who here spent much of her life before her marriage, and was visited several times by the king. There is a chapel of her family in the fine parish church of Hever. Not far distant is the modern Chiddingstone Castle, on an ancient site. A block of sandstone in the park is called the “chiding stone,” tradition asserting it to be a prehistoric seat of judgment.

* * *