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The Birchington Heritage Trust was established in May 2002 and was granted Charity status in August 2003. We now have over 250 members.
The Aims of the Trust are to research, discover and record Birchington's interesting 3,500 years of history. We have established a small local museum/archive room at the Village Centre where we can display some of our collected items and perform research for members of the public and local schools. We will also aim to make the material available for students to do their own research from this material.
The Trust holds four General Meetings a year, which include talks and to which all are welcome (visitors are invited to donate £1.00).
Archival information
We
also have access to the archives from All Saints Church mainly in
transcript form, as all the earliest material is now held in Canterbury
Cathedral Archives. The catalogue for this material runs to 117 pages.
The Church's archives date from 1489 to the present day and cover the
daily life of the Church as well as the village as a whole. The
Registers start in 1538 and the Churchwardens' accounts begin in 1531
and apart from two brief breaks are continuous to the present day.
There are the account books of the Overseers of the Poor as well as the
Way Wardens' accounts, covering the maintenance of the local roads.
All the material is constantly being augmented and updated where new
evidence is uncovered.