How independence was abruptly ended

The first warning that the City of Canterbury might be in imminent danger of losing its precious hard earned county borough status was given at the ceremonial annual meeting of Canterbury City Council held in May 1962.

In is speech proposing that Cllr the Reverend Clive Pare, headmaster of Canterbury Cathedral Choir School, be formally elected Mayor of Canterbury, Alderman Stanley Jennings warned: “You may, in the year that lies before us, have to fight for the continuance of our county borough status”.

The biggest threat to the City of Canterbury’s hard-won county borough status came in October 1966, when Kent County Council autocratically decided that the City will lose its county borough status if it has its way, according to details contained in their plans for local government reorganisation put to the Royal Commission on Local Government Reform.

Following previous failed attempts to remove the city’s self determining status, Kent County Council rolled out their heavy artillery.

Chairman of Kent County Council’s Local Government Committee, Alderman Robin Leigh-pemberton, told the Kentish Gazette: “Our proposals are for the county as a whole and Canterbury has been included.

“I am aware that in the past, the county council has said that it would not object to Canterbury retaining its county borough status and has said that it would support Canterbury in its claims.

“But with this new report...all previous decisions of this kind go by the board.

“We cannot envisage Canterbury retained as an isolated and independent authority in the middle of a county which has been reorganised so that the present abnormalities will be done away with.”

A total of 526 years of historic independence abruptly ended by the Kentish invasion!

Richard West Founder, The Chaucer Education Project Tudor Road, Canterbury