Chilham Chilham Chilham is a mostly agricultural village and parish in the English county of Kent with a clustered settlement, Chilham village centre, in the north-east, and a smaller linear settlement, Shottenden. Well-preserved roads and mostly residential listed buildings in its centre have led to its use as a location in television and film. The village of Chilham is in the valley of the Great Stour River and beside the A28 road 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Canterbury. It is centred on a market square, where a traditional annual May Day is celebrated. At each end of the square are
Chilham Castle Tradescant the elder, were redesigned twice in the eighteenth century. First, under the London banker James Colebrooke (who bought the estate from the Digges family) fine vistas were created stretching to the river and then, under Thomas Heron (who acquired the estate from Colebrooke's son Robert), Capability Brown made further recommendations for change, some of which were implemented. Chilham Castle was purchased by James Wildman in 1794 and in 1816 was inherited by his son James Beckford Wildman, who sold it in 1861, because of falling income after emancipation of the slaves on the family estates in the West Indies.