Copyright Kent Past 2010
Kent Past
The History of Kent
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History of Blean
Blean comes from the Old English ‘blēa’ meaning ‘course, rough terrain’. The Domesday Book records Blean as Bleham.
Blean parish church is dedicated to Saint Cosmus and Saint Damian. The church occupies a site on the ancient salt road to Seasalter, and the monks who accompanied St Augustine, built a shrine there to Saints Cosmus and Damian. Around 1233, King Henry III replaced the original church. In 1659, Thomas Palmer cast and hung a bell in a wooden turret at the west end of the church. In, 1799, Edward Hasted described the Blean church as ‘small and mean. It consists of only one isle and a chancel, having a low pointed turret at the west end, in which hangs one bell’. In 1866, the Victorians doubled the church’ size with the addition of a huge north aisle and replaced the wooden turret with a single bell gable…. more