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Near the church door is a stone commemorating Quarter Master Thomas
Loftus of the 52nd Foot Regiment, who was wounded at The Battle of Bunker
Hill, one of the first engagements of the American War of Independence in
June 1775.
The boy who once rang the former single bell at Charing Church was Toby
Ward, who wrote his memoirs in 1933, recalling life in the village from 1868.
He recorded that his grandfather was the last toll keeper at Charing.
Another local man, a surgeon called Charles Wilks who died in 1873 aged
70, is remembered by the Wilks Memorial Hall in Ashford, and he had a
brother, the Rev William Wilks, who became a Fellow and secretary of the
Royal Horticultural Society and earned as his memorial a cooking apple
which was named after him.
On Charing Hill, which rears above the village on the north side, was one of
the several secret hideouts dug and fitted out for a proposed British resistance
movement if the Germans had invaded Kent during 1940.
Brian Saxton
September 2016

Not wishing to brag, but happy to report
that I managed this years Ride London in
4 hours 22 minutes - only one minute
slower that I rode in the inaugural 2013.
And my saddle came loose at the to of Box
Hill so that’s at least ten minutes lost! My
De Laune kit clearly made all the difference.

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