Kent County
(Historic)

Map Reference: (51.201274, 0.54385)

Kent is a maritime county at the south-easternmost point of Great Britain. Kent's name derives from the Cantii, an ancient British tribe. Kent was a British kingdom before the Romans came and after them it soon became a Jutish kingdom. It could almost still be considered a small country, based on the richness of its heritage, the beauty of its landscapes and the diversity of its settlements and economic activities. The county is known as the “Garden of England” for the richness of its arable farming. The north-west of Kent, from Lewisham and Greenwich out to Bromley, is part of the metropolitan conurbation, containing a great variety of townscapes. Greenwich is home of the Greenwich observatory, the crosshairs of whose telescope define the prime meridian of the world. Rural Kent holds a great variety of landscape, from the North Downs, to the delightful Weald, down to the fertile solitudes of Romney, Denge, and Walland Marshes stretching inland from the south coast, and the Isle of Thanet in the northeast. Kent has numerous noteworthy castles, and more modern defensive works along the coast. The Cathedral City of Canterbury is where St Augustine established himself in AD 597, and is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.