The River Stour at Fordwich © P.E. Blanche

In Medieval Times ships that would carry wine, timber and Caen stone for Canterbury Cathedral would dock at Fordwich after making their way up the Stour to the quay near the half timbered Town Hall that has stood there since the 16th Century. The Town Hall is supposedly the smallest in England. It has an overhanging top story and the ground floor has the original gaol still in place with its damp, dark and cramped quarters. The last recorded use of this tiny room was to imprison three local poachers in 1885. There is a set of stocks in the press yard and inside the Court room you can still see the original ducking stool. (Unfortunately, the Shrew Beshrewed public house that stood just up the road outside of Hersden and so graphically depicted the use of one of these chairs closed a few years ago. Actually, the sign was the best part, the architecture left very much to be desired!).

It is a well-known fact that Robert Cushman, one of the original "Pilgrims", lived in Canterbury. I was recently told (1999) by one of the Official Canterbury guides that the Mayflower actually originally sailed from Fordwich before travelling to Plymouth to pick up the remainder of its human cargo destined for Virginia. (Since being told about this possibility, I have read a book called "The Mayflower Connection" by Audrey Bateman. There is a possibility, according to this account that the ship could have stopped at Fordwich as it did leave from London on its first stage of the trip around the coast to Southampton and it could easily have put into the River Stour and Fordwich. However, It seems that Robert Cushman had left (or perhaps fled) Canterbury a few years earlier and it is rather unlikely that there was any need for the ship to make this detour).

Fordwich was originally a 'limb' of the Cinque Ports but lost its status as a Town in 1880 when it no longer had a Mayor and Corporation. However, in a reoganisation in 1972, Fordwich was again made a Town as much as anything because of its prior importance in what is now a rather sleepy corner of Kent.

There are several references in older books or documents to a particular fish that was supposedly found in the River Stour at Fordwich, namely the 'Fordwich Trout'. It was meant to be so large that it had only once been caught on rod and line. Izaak Walton, in his book, 'The Compleat Angler', includes the following details of this fish:

"There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called there a Fordidge Trout, a trout that bears the name of the town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them near the bigness of salmon, but known by their different colour; and in their best season they cut very white...

This whole section of River through Sturry and Fordwich is now reserved for fly-fishing members of the Canterbury and District Angling Association. However, the Fordwich trout is no longer there for them to catch.

See also: St. Mary the Virgin, Fordwich

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