Chilham Castle Chilham Castle Chilham Castle is a manor house and keep in the village of Chilham, between Ashford and Canterbury in the county of Kent, England. The polygonal keep of the Norman Castle, the oldest building in the village, dates from 1174 and is still inhabited - making it perhaps one of the oldest dwellings in the UK. It was said to have been built for King Henry II. But archaeological excavations carried out in the 1920s suggest that it stands on the foundations of a much older Anglo-Saxon fortification, possibly dating from the seventh century. In June 1320, Chilham Castle
English county histories English county histories English county histories, in other words historical and topographical (or "chorographical") works concerned with individual ancient counties of England, were produced by antiquarians from the late 16th century onwards. The content was variable: some recorded archaeological sites, but others were heavily slanted towards the genealogies of county families and other biographical material, particularly relating to property and the descent of lordships of manors. The tradition continues with the series of Victoria County Histories. A closely related genre, which emerged in the second half of the 17th century, was the county "Natural History", which focused on the county's