Rory Walsh visits a Kent Downs village with a royal connection
Discovering Britain
View • Rural • South East England • Web Guide
More than 3,000 British roads were closed for King Charles III’s coronation. Those with royal titles included the King’s Road in Chelsea and Bath’s Royal Crescent. In MediaCity UK, near Manchester, coverage from the set of Britain’s oldest TV soap meant that there was even a coronation street party on Coronation Street. Meanwhile, the Kent village of Wye prepared for the occasion by burnishing a local landmark – a huge crown carved into a nearby hill.
Wye sits beside a natural ford over the Great Stour where the river cuts through the chalk ridge of the North Downs. Head east out of the village, along the tree-lined Coldharbour Lane, and the Wye Crown appears on a scarp to the left. The white outline, 55 metres tall, is visible for miles. Intentionally so. The Wye Crown was created in June 1902 for the coronation of Edward VII.
Until 2009, Wye was home to a thriving agricultural college. Wye College used the Stour Valley’s fertile soils to cultivate plants, notably varieties of hops. By 1902, southern England was already dotted with chalk hill figures, including various horses and Dorset’s Cerne Abbas Giant. A unique crown on Wye College’s land, however, would provide great publicity.
Placing a perfectly proportioned crown on a humpy hillside wasn’t easy. While a team of students climbed the slope, the college’s surveying lecturer, Tommy Young, stood in the fields below. Young used flag signals to arrange the students into formation. With the crown’s outline marked, 7,000 wheelbarrow loads of soil and chalk were then excavated and removed. The task took 35 students four days. They were paid in beer.
Wye’s royal connections long precede the crown. Tribal kings ruled their land by travelling on foot between strategic bases or ‘vills’. Wye was a royal vill by the sixth century. The ford over the Stour was an ideal defensive site, while the gap in the North Downs at Wye provided routes to Canterbury and Dover. By the 13th century, Wye’s location had helped it to become a royal manor with its own court.
On Edward VII’s coronation (delayed until August by appendicitis), the Wye Crown was lit with 1,500 candles. The king eventually saw it two years later while staying at nearby Eastcote Manor. The crown was illuminated by electric lights. For Charles III’s coronation, the Wye Crown was freshly whitewashed. To reduce maintenance, the original chalk cutting was replaced in 1991 with cages of painted flint. Easier lies the hill that wears a crown.
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