This film is about the things we do in Smarden as a local history group: our talks programme, the way in which we catalogue and preserve archives in our Heritage Centre, our research projects, our interaction with the village and the services we provide to researchers and other groups like ours.

Smarden has been on the map for 500 years, but probably not as you know it. For example, do you know where Udden Bridge is? Or Harbileden? Or Spiers Ash? If you are familiar with Smarden will know them, but not by these names.

This film is about power and politics in the years leading up to the 1914 – 1918 war. It tells the remarkable story of how one man challenged the world’s most powerful oil empire… and won. But having achieved his aim he decided there were more important things in life.

To mark the 80th Anniversary of The Battle of Britain our new film looks at the life stories of two pilots who came down in Smarden in 1940, one Canadian and one German. However the film begins with earlier crashes involving two planes, each of them carrying gold, one in 1929 and the other in 1931.

You may be puzzled by those two lines, but we promise you they are true. We are taking a fact-finding tour around Smarden’s lanes and fields but geography apart, we’ll be talking about some of the interesting characters who have lived in Smarden: sportsmen, writers, craftsmen and entertainers. Some of them with local reputations, others known around the world.

In this film we go back over 200 years to follow the fortunes of three Smarden men who enlisted to fight the French in Spain, Portugal and at the Battle of Waterloo.

A heroic doctor, contagion, lockdown, shocking fatalities. A scenario only too familiar to us today, but this is what happened in the Kent village of Smarden 350 years ago. This is a forgotten episode in the history of a rural village that resonates strongly with us now.

Shot in 2005, this film tells the story of Smarden from early obscurity to its golden age of broadcloth and back again, as told by present-day villagers. This is the second of two videos.