England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Blean St Cosmas & St Damian

The Parish

The parish of Blean lies in northeastern Kent close to its Thames Estuary coast. Blean is located about 2 miles northwest of the city of Canterbury astride the A290 road which links Canterbury with the coastal settlement of Whitstable. Blean is a relatively compact village strung along that road and lanes to its northeast. Once a separate village Blean has nowadays become a favoured dormitory for the workers of its nearby city. The area around Blean was one with a very mixed landuse, roughly a third was arable, a third pasture and the balance used for woodland, indeed the parish was bordered to the west by the largely wooded extra-parochial district of Dunkirk and even today much of the parish is wooded. Blean sits on a low ridge, the first high ground along the Canterbury to Whitstable road, the village is sited at 80 metres above sea level, the valleys either side are a good 30 metres lower. Most of the drainage for the parish is headed northeastwards as the Sarre Penn which joins the Stour to reach the North Sea through Sandwich. Blean parish was a fairly typical size for this area at almost 2,300 acres it supported around 600 parishioners. In Domesday times Blean was held by one Haimo the Sheriff and boasted just 3 ploughs, much woodland (including swine render) and a fishery.

The Church

St Cosmas (also rendered Cosmus by some sources) & St Damian's church lies some way from the modern village centre, it sits in splendid isolation around a half mile east of the village. Pevsner is extremely scathing of the Victorian restoration which he claims "restored almost to extinction" the preexisting church. Little survives of the mediaeval but enough to date the building to the 13th century. The addition of the overlarge north aisle during that restoration effectively doubled the size of the building from what had been a plain nave, chancel and bellcote. The church is reached by following Tyler Hill Road to the east, a hedged driveway then turn south to the site. The graveyard has quite a few trees which rather limit the photographic possibilities.