A gentle reminder that we are calling for volunteers to assist in the Library and Archive cataloguing projects. We have two major requirements as we gear up towards a fully accessible catalogue in 2025.

The team had a great time at today's Maidstone Community Support Centre Open Day!

A list of speakers for local societies on a wide variety of topics.

The archive of monographs, irregulars and documents of the Romney Marsh Research Trust (RMRT) are now available on the Society website.

A talk by Professor K.R. Dark of Kings College London on 7th February 2023 entitled 'Mission to England: reinvestigating the origins of St. Augustine’s Abbey'.

On Thursday the 1st of December, 2022 Professor Michael Wood OBE, FSA, entertained members of the Kent Archaeological Society at Maidstone Museum with a live talk.

The National Archives at Kew now provide online access to the Manorial Documents Register (MDR); the official index to English and Welsh manorial records and provides brief descriptions of documents and details of their locations in public and private hands.

Reports from the "Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project" are currently available to download online, via the Historic England website.

British History Online provides a digital version of "A history of the County of Kent: volume 2", originally published in 1926. This volume deals with the religious houses of Kent, including accounts of the early history of Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals.

British History Online provides online access to "The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent", volumes 1 to 12, by Edward Hasted and originally published in 1797. These volumes include a general account of the history, topography and natural history of the ancient county. It also details the parishes of the two hundreds of Blackheath and Bromley and Beckenham, including several parishes which now form part of metropolitan London. These include Charlton, Deptford, Greenwich, Lewisham and Woolwich.

Cobham Landscape Detectives was a three year, lottery funded, community archaeology project. It aimed to explore the Kentish Parish of Cobham and beyond. The booklet details some of the discoveries that were made and the history that was uncovered. It takes a chronological approcah, beginning in Prehistory and ending with WWII military camps that still dot the landscape. This booklet has kindly been donated to the KAS library by the Detectives.

I came across this video (slightly dated) on the weekend where the London and Surrey 'Earth Mysteries' groups have a day trip around some of the Kentish prehistoric sites. Particularly of interest to me was the visit to Chestnuts. (I believe that site is currently inaccessible, being on private land.) The video prompted me to take my own little day trip to to find the Chiding Stone.

For a short period of time the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names has made its database available for free. "This huge, new dictionary is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK, covering English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames. It includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census."

The National Archives are making digital records available on their website free of charge for as long as our Kew site is closed to visitors. Registered users will be able to order and download up to ten items at a time, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of our digital services for everyone.

In response to the challenges created by the global public health crisis of COVID-19, Project MUSE is pleased to support its participating publishers in making scholarly content temporarily available for free on our platform.

The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets.