SPECIALFEATURE
Gravesend: Pocahontas and Beyond
In an intriguing twist of world history, the Native American figure Pocahontas is buried in the riverside town of Gravesend. Brought to England in 1616, she fell ill and died while preparing to return home and was buried at St George’ s Church. Though her exact gravesite is lost, a bronze statue stands in her memory.
Gravesend is also home to the oldest cast-iron pier in the world, and a Cold War bunker hidden beneath Woodlands Park- both testaments to the town’ s layered past. In literature, Gravesend appears in Mary Shelley’ s The Last Man, a dystopian science fiction novel, and in Joseph Conrad’ s Heart of Darkness as a symbolically significant gateway between the so-called civilised world and the unknown darkness beyond, only adding to the town’ s mysterious allure.
Fun fact! Local legend claims that Pocahontas’ s coffin may have been moved during church renovations and misplaced forever, turning her exact resting place into one of Britain’ s great unsolved mysteries.
Ashford: The Birth of Road Safety
In 1914, a quiet road near Ashford became the unlikely birthplace of a global safety standard. Here, the world’ s first-ever white lines were painted on a road to separate lanes of traffic- a revolutionary move at the time, now so common it goes unnoticed. Designed to reduce accidents on busy roads, the success of this trial quickly saw the idea adopted nationwide and then internationally. A mundane but profound innovation from a small Kentish town.
Fun Fact! The first white line was painted with nothing more than a bucket of paint and a brush in 1914- by a local police sergeant fed up with near misses on a busy stretch of road. He never imagined he’ d start a global road safety revolution!
Sheppey: The Cradle of British Aviation
Long before Heathrow took flight, the Isle of Sheppey in East Kent was lifting off. In 1909, the Short brothers established the world’ s first aircraft production factory at Leysdown. Working with the Wright brothers, they built early flying machines that soon made history. Nearby, in 1909, John Moore-Brabazon became the first Briton to make a recognised powered flight on British soil. Today, Sheppey’ s aviation legacy is commemorated at the Sheppey Aviation Museum, a must-visit for anyone curious about Britain’ s flying heritage.
Fun fact! In 1909, aviator John Moore-Brabazon proved flight’ s practicality by taking a pig- strapped into a wastepaper basket- up in his plane in Sheppey, making it the first pig to fly and inspiring the phrase‘ pigs might fly’.
A Literary Coastline: Dickens in Broadstairs and Rochester
The great Charles Dickens left deep footprints in Kent, particularly along the coast. Broadstairs was his beloved seaside escape, where he wrote parts of David Copperfield and found inspiration for characters in the town’ s eccentric residents. You can still visit Bleak House, perched above Viking Bay, where he stayed frequently.
Inland, the ancient town of Rochester features heavily in his final, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and its cathedral and cobbled streets evoke scenes from across his canon. Every June, the city hosts the Dickens Festival, where fans don top hats and crinolines to honour his legacy.
PRINCESS POCAHONTAS STATUE, GRAVESEND www. insidekent. co. uk • 35