© P.Blanche 1998	WESTERHAM
	General James Wolfe [b.1727 - d.1759]

---

As the name implies, Westerham is set in the very West of Kent, close to the Surrey border. Fortunately, thanks to the "new" M25 London Orbital Motorway, much of the heavy traffic no longer finds its way through this large village with its narrow and twisty main street.

The death of General Wolfe at Quebec

Its most famous son has to be General James Wolfe, the English hero of The Plains of Abraham, who enabled England to add red paint to another large piece of the globe. The Wolfe family and his father, Edward Wolfe, had originally come from Ireland and he married a Yorkshire lady, Henrietta Thompson of Long Marston. James was born in The Vicarage in Westerham while his Father was away although the family eventually lived at a house on the Squerryes Court Estate, now called Quebec House and run by The National Trust. The Wolfe family became close friends of the Warde family who bought Squerryes Court and many of the family are buried in the local church of St. Mary the Virgin. It is said that after General Wolfe died at Quebec, a bag of earth was dug from his old garden and sent to Canada where it was placed around his monument there so that the flowers surrounding it could grow in Kent soil.

It seems impossible to read about Westerham without finding a reference made to a most unfortunate "non-event". A certain Rev. Thomas Streatfield, who lived at Chartsedge, a hamlet just outside the village had ideas about producing a huge work on the history of Kent. For this he gathered together fifty-two volumes of text and plates. The unfortunate part is that the eventual product never happened because the Rev. Streatfield died after twenty six years of putting together all this material which was to be printed as a limited edition of 300 copies. What a work it would have been - the original volumes of research now lie in The British Museum.

Westerham is also known for being the home for many years of Sir Winston Churchill at Chartwell to the South of the Village and yet another famous occupant in the centre of the Village was William Pitt.