Nice
This one is quite classy. It features cast versions of the Sigil of the Barons of the Cinque Ports and the seal of the Cinque Ports. Easier to make it out in color.
Probably 19th C – we can’t do stuff like that now.
We were in Littlestone and just south of it is Greatstone, in Kent. I’ve always had a romantic notion that the names came from something like two meteorites that landed in Medieval times and were revered as signs from God.
Nope. ChatGPT tells me in the early 19th Century there was a shingle of stoney beach that stuck out well into the bay that was called the Great Stone. Over time, tides shifted and washed most of it away. It is a restless coast, the south coast of England. The name stuck, though, and was smashed together into one word, Greatstone.
Similar story for Littlestone, with a smaller shingle headland.
In the late 19th, the area was eyed up for development as a seaside resort and AI thinks the names were smooshed together then. It was marketing. Same as it ever was.
You can still see the bones of their project: a seafront row of Victorian houses. The actual settlement happened in the Twenties and Thirties. And one day, I feel sure, an angry sea will top the wall and claim the lot.
October 9, 2025 — 7:00 pm
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