Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, situated 21 miles (35 km) east-southeast of Charing Cross on the south bank of the River Thames and opposite Tilbury in Essex. Located in the diocese of Rochester, it is the administrative centre of the borough of Gravesham. Gravesend marks the eastern limit of the Greater London Built-up Area, as defined by the UK Office for National Statistics. In 2021 it had a population of 58,102.
New Road, Gravesend in 2009
Kent coat of arms
Gravesend Town Hall
Milton Chantry, built c. 1320
Kent is a county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone.
Image: White Cliffs of Dover, Kent
Image: Saint Thomas Becket (Samuel Caldwell, 1919) crop
An early mention of Kent in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between 11th and 12th centuries
Title page of William Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent (completed in 1570 and published in 1576), a historical description of Kent and the first published county history