Set beside the river Darent where it cuts through the North Downs on its way to the Thames, Shoreham is a village of just over one thousand inhabitants about six miles north of Sevenoaks in west Kent.

Our best known monument is the great cross cut in the chalk hillside to commemorate the dead of the First World War.
The village also has a place in the folklore of the Second World War, when the BBC named it the most bombed village in Britain.
Today Shoreham Aircraft Museum displays numerous relics of the air combats over southern England.

Our best known former resident is Samuel Palmer,
the watercolour artist and mystic, who painted his most famous works here early in the 19th century and attracted a circle of painters, poets and writers to the village.
There is even a theory that William Blake took his inspiration for 'Jerusalem' from our 'clouded hills' and certainly the Shoreham Women's Institute took it as their anthem, to be taken up later by the national organisation.

Other famous former residents include Verney Lovett Cameron, the first European to cross central Africa, the poet Lord Dunsany, artist Harold Copping, who often used Shoreham residents for his models, Sir Joseph Prestwich, the controversial Victorian geologist, and Robert Colgate, founder of the soap and toothpaste empire, who fled to America because of his sympathies with the French Revolution.

The Shoreham & District Historical Society was formed in 1997 to promote awareness of our history, organise meetings and visits, conserve archives and conduct and publish research.
To date we have over 27 publications and have conducted a major 'oral history' project, supported principally by the Local Heritage Initiative, on the experience of the village during the Second World War.
We have over 130 members with a subscription of
£6 a year, which includes our quarterly newsletter, Revista.

Meetings are held on Friday evenings at 8pm in the Village Hall.

Bridge over the River Darent

View of the Cross

How to find us
Click map to enlarge