Leigh: Early History

Bronze Age Arrow Head

Found at 2 Coppins Brook Cottage by A Dalton in 1987/8 and given to Tunbridge Wells Museum.   Brian Philip – Chairman, Council for Kent Archaeology was going to help find details ( 020 8460 1442  11 Penshurst Green, Bromley BR2 9DG: wrote 18 April 09 but no response).  Bronze Age in southern Britain started about 2000 BC – introduced by the Beaker people, so called because of their pottery.  They used tools of metal but also used flint implements.  Copper and gold ornaments were included in decorating their weapons.  Built long barrows for burials and possibly Stonehenge/Avebury.

Celts and Leigh

– from Brian Philip above. Weald area very uninhabited compared to North Downs  and main N-S river areas such as Darenth Valley.  Very tribal with each area dominated by hill forts which enclosed the area’s main town.  The Leigh area – heavily wooded – would probably have been rather generally in the area overseen by the Keston based local “king” where there was a  large hill fort.  But basically, the whole country was small farmers – no large standing professional army – which was one reason the Romans conquered so easily.

Castle Hill

Two miles SE of Tonbridge had two different Iron Age forts each, occupied fairly briefly around 300 BC and then 225 BC.

Romans and Leigh

No Roman Villa or Roman Roads between Edenbridge and almost Canterbury.  And bearing in mind the Romans built 10,000 miles of roads and between 400 and 1,000 villas (the majority classified as ‘minor’ villas to distinguish them from ‘major’ villas) this really means the Weald area was unimportant/unpopulated in the Roman era.  Sevenoaks does not seem to have had any Roman fort or villa/s although Darenth Valley had 8-10 large villas.  Tonbridge may have had some sort of building near the river crossing but it was not a much used crossing and the Tonbridge Historical Society has found almost nothing from the Roman era.  There are minor Roman remains at Plaxtol.   So, Leigh very unlikely to have had day-to-day contact with the Romans in their 400 years dominance – not least because there was probably very few people around the parish or the wider SW Kent area.

Chris Rowley (March 2021)