Stephen Wynn - Maidstone in the Great War

Your Towns and Cities in the Great War

Maidstone

in the Great War

Your Towns and Cities in the Great War

Stephen Wynn

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Stephen Wynn, 2017

ISBN 978 1 47382 791 2

eISBN 978 1 47386 490 0

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47386 489 4

The right of Stephen Wynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Stephen is a happily retired police officer who served with Essex Police as a constable for thirty years between 1983 and 2013. He is married to Tanya who is also his best friend.

Both his sons, Luke and Ross, were members of the armed forces, collectively serving five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013. Both were injured on their first tour. This led to his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone Afghanistan: The True Story of a Fathers Conflict , which was published in October 2010.

Both of his grandfathers served in and survived the First World War, one with the Royal Irish Rifles, the other in the Mercantile Navy, while his father was a member of the Royal Army Ordinance Corps during the Second World War.

His teenage daughter, Aimee, currently attends a local secondary school.

Stephen collaborated with Ken Porter on a previous book published in August 2012, German POW Camp 266 Langdon Hills . It spent six weeks as the number one best-selling book in Waterstones, Basildon, between March and April 2013. They have also collaborated on four books in the Towns & Cities in the Great War series by Pen and Sword. Stephen has also written other titles in the same series.

Stephen has also co-written three crime thrillers which were published between 2010 and 2012 and centre around a fictional detective named Terry Danvers.

When he is not writing, Tanya and he enjoy the simplicity of walking their four German shepherd dogs early each morning when most sensible people are still fast asleep in their beds.

Maidstone has a long and varied history going back to Mesolithic times, but it was the Romans who really played a significant part in making the town what it is today. They routed Watling Street, between Rochester and Hastings, through Maidstone, which greatly improved its trading capabilities and put it well and truly on the map. Watling Street, which was an ancient trackway, stretched from the Kent coast, carried on through London and St. Albans, and continued all the way through to Wales.

After the Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion in 1066, the Norman influence throughout the country, Kent in particular, increased drastically.

The Archbishops Palace, which dates back to the fourteenth century, and which still stands today, sits on the banks of the River Medway. It was here in 1381 during the Peasants Revolt that the radical preacher John Ball, having been arrested, was detained by the then Archbishop, Chancellor Sudbury.