What's In a Name - Maidstone

Postcard illustrated by M. F. Peck

 It is not by accident that the commercial/residential development in the village of New Kent was named Maidstone in 2008. Maidstone is a town of 120,000 in southeastern England, on the river Medway. Maidstone is "county town" or administrative center of the county of some 1,500,000 people.

A settlement since Neolithic times, notable sites inside the town include the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Fourteenth Century building was the rural residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury until passing into the hands of Henry VIII. It is now a wedding venue.

The Palace as seen from the river Medway

"Invicta Lane" is the first entrance road of the Maidstone development as you arrive  from the east, the name originating in the Latin motto of the county of Kent, meaning "unconquered." Other roads in the development: "Allington Castle" named for a Twelfth  Century castle just north of Maidstone, "Knockholt" for a village on the eastern border of Kent with London, "Leeds Castle" for  a castle some seven miles southeast of Maidstone dating from 1823 (though a fortification has been on the site for approximately a 1000 years), and "Broadstairs" for a village on the North Sea on the far western tip of Kent.

The rather interesting maps of Kent used here are from a postcard by 20th Century artist M.F. Peck.