Extensive Definition
Teston (pronounced ’’Teesun’’) is a village in
the civil parish
of Barming
in the Maidstone
District of Kent, England. It is
located on the A26 road out of
Maidstone, four
miles (6.4km) from the town centre. There is a narrow stone bridge
over the River Medway
here.
Barham Court is the 'big house'. It has now been
converted into offices and apartments. It was once the home of
Randall
Fitz Urse, one of the knights who murdered Thomas
Beckett in 1170. It passed to the de Berham family now called
the Barhams, and then the Boteler (or Butler) family. They were
Royalists,
William Butler was imprisoned for supporting the Kentish
Royalist Petition 1642, which indirectly led to the Battle
of Maidstone 1648. When Edward
Hasted visited in the 18 th century it was owned by the
Bouveries. After that it passed to the
Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham .
The village church is dedicated to St Peter and
St Paul. On one wall of the church, under a window, is a memorial
tablet to a former vicar, the
Rev James Ramsay, he was the Rector of Teston and Nettlestead
from 1781 until he died in July 1789. He was a friend of
Charles Middleton, William
Pitt and William
Wilberforce and he worked with them for the abolition
of slavery.
Rev. James Ramsay, who served as a surgeon under
Middleton aboard HMS Arundel
in the West Indies
but later took holy orders and served on the Caribbean island
of St
Christopher (now St Kitts), where he observed first-hand the
treatment of slaves. He
briefly lived with the Middletons at Barham Court, then was given
the living of the Teston and Nettlestead, by Middleton. Nestor
Court is named after Ramsey's servant and companion.
William
Cobbett passed through Teston on Friday 5th September
1823.
There is a village green, shop/Post Office,
Village Hall, [Teston Club]http://www.testonclub.co.uk and a
Farm Shop.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Thomas
Martin began making 'cricket
balls in a workshop above the post office. When he retired the
business was taken over by Alfred Reader who expanded the business
and transferred it to the factory. The current factory. on Malling
Road was built in 1927. The workers at the Reader factory formed
their own trade union -
The Teston Independent Society of Cricket Ball Makers, to represent
their interests, it was the smallest trade unions in the country,
and was only de-listed in March 2006.
At Teston Bridge there is a picnic site on a 12
hectare meadow, with public day ticket fishing. There is a
continuous footpath along the bank of the Medway and at this point
is included in the Maidstone Millennium River Park, and the Medway
Valley Walk.