Maidstone is taken from the Saxon word 'Maegoastan' meaning the 'peoples stone'. This can be traced to a megaloithic tomb, which was used as a meeting place for the people of the surrounding area. There have been various spellings: Medestan, Meddestane, Maidestan and Maidestane.
Maidstone has been settled from early times, first with Mesolithic hunter-gathers then by Neolithic farmers tilling the fertile soil of the Medway Valley. Important remains from this period are the Medway megaliths just north of Maidstone. By the time the Romans arrived in AD 43, Maidstone was already a small community; the Romans added villas and other stone buildings, and (probably after building Watling Street) constructed the road lying under the town's Week Street and Stone Street.
The Domesday Book of 1086, records Maidstone as a centre for crafts and part of the manorial estate of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This small manorial town was destined to grow into a market town and borough by the 16th century; the first grammar school was founded in 1549, and by the early 17th century, with expansion in the number of schools, literacy was markedly improving.
By 1620 most Assize hearings were held in Maidstone.
It was the Georgian age which sparked off real prosperity; living standards rose, specialist industries, shops, inns and professions proliferated. It was still an important market town, and maintained by the weekly Thursday market, four annual fairs, Sunday fairs, and a monthly cattle market. By the time the town hall was built in 1765, Maidstone had replaced Canterbury as Kent's most important town, and with the opening of the first General Dispensary in 1824, a new gaol in 1819, the County Sessions House in the 1820's, and expansion of the barracks, Maidstone was firmly established as the County Town of Kent.
A Christian Church has stood by the River Medway in what is now the middle of Maidstone, since about 650AD. The first church on the present site was a wooden Saxon building. St Mary, as it was then named survives only in references in manuscripts such as the Doomsday Monachorum at the Chapter Library in Canterbury.
In 1395, Archbishop Courtenay replaced St Mary's with All Saints, as Maidstone's parish church, which has been described as the 'Grandest Perpendicular Church in England'.
The church did possess a spire rising to a height of 172 feet but this was burned down after being struck by lightning in 1730, the men watched helplessly and in frustration until the fire came to within reach of their hand-pumps.
Set into the wall by the south-west door is a 17th Century memorial to local man Laurence Washington. If you look at the family arms on the memorial, you can see where his descendent George Washington found the inspiration for the American Stars and Stripes'.
Maidstone East railway station was opened by South Eastern Railway on 25 September 1844.
Maidstone West station opened at the same time as Maidstone East, and was the terminating point of the branch line from Paddock Wood.
Maidstone Barracks station opened later than the rest of the northern half of the Medway Valley Line, coming into use on 1st July 1874.
