The historic Village of Bethersden is dominated by St Margaret’s Church
with its stunning 15th Century Tower but is well known for formerly
producing Bethersden Marble and the village was also once the centre of the Kentish Wool Trade.
The oldest rocks in Kent
are the Hastings Beds, sandstones which outcrop at places like Harrison's Rocks near Tunbridge Wells. Above, the Weald
Clay is made up of soft shale and mudstone with bands of freshwater limestone
known as Bethersden Marble (the term ‘marble’ being used as
the stone is capable of taking a polish) which is also known as Paludina limestone,
Sussex Marble, winklestone, Charlwood Stone, Laughton Marble, and Petworth
Marble.
Whatever it is called, its defining characteristic is the particular
type of fossil snail whose sectioned shell gives the stone its unique
character: the freshwater gastropod Paludina (now known as Viviparus). In the
past, other shelly limestones, especially those containing the bivalve Cyrena,
were probably passed off as Sussex Marble. It fact, it is a product of a
geological curiosity. At some period, it seems, this area was some kind of
crustacean Sargasso Sea, to which a particular
species of water snail resorted for what no doubt seemed good reasons at the
time. The creatures died there in their millions and their shells were
compressed into a rock strata during a million years or so, to be quarried as
Bethersden marble in a very few short centuries.
The limestone occurs in beds up to 30 cm thick with the
‘Bethersden Marble’ used extensively in Kent for decorative work, paving and
building stone and a more practical use for lining clay routes (footpaths) with
slabs of the mock marble across the sticky Wealden clay fields. These made
causeways, across which, pack horses loaded with raw wool and finished woollen
goods could pick their way to the markets that made the local industry one of
the richest in England
for four hundred years.
The two Kent
cathedrals, Canterbury and Rochester, as well as many humbler churches
and large houses throughout the county, are embellished with Bethersden marble.
The Village's own church
of St Margaret has none,
apart from that which paves the south porch. The Dering Arms at Pluckley Station provides an example of the use of
‘Bethersden Marble’ (which crops out to the south of the village), with
Ragstone blocks. Biddenden lined pavements along its high street is also another
good example.
The
stone is no longer quarried and Bethersden has lost its textile industry. Not
much more than a hamlet now, it is still an attractive place, with a short
street lined with typically Wealden weather boarded houses and several old hall
houses.