Kingsdown (next Sittingbourne) comes from the Old English ‘cyning’ meaning a ‘king’
with ‘dūn’ as a ‘hill’; therefore, ‘the kings hill’.
The now redundant parish church is a Grade: II listed building, dedicated to Saint
Katharine. The Neo-Gothic architect Edward Welby Pugin built it in 1865 for Lord
Kingsdown. It replaced an earlier medieval church, which Edward Hasted described
in 1798 as being a ‘very small mean building, consisting of one isle and one chancel…
At the west end there is a small turret, with one bell’. The Kingsdown church remains
almost exactly as Pugin designed it, although in the care of the Churches Conservation
Trust.
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