Maidstone

Maidstone , city (1991 pop. 86,067), Kent, SE England, on the Medway River. It is a market city with agricultural, paper, printing, quarrying, brewing, and engineering industries. There is evidence of a Roman station. Chillington Manor (Elizabethan) contains the Maidstone Museum, the public library, and the headquarters of the Kent Archaeological Society. The grammar school dates from 1549. Noteworthy are the Church of All Saints, founded in the 14th cent.; the palace of the archbishops; and Penenden Heath, a recreation ground. Maidstone has technical, art, and adult-education schools. William Hazlitt was born in the city. Nearby Cobtree Manor is the "Dingley Dell" of Dickens's Pickwick Papers.

Maidstone Kent. Mægthan stan late 10th cent., Meddestane 1086 (DB). Probably ‘stone of the maidens, i.e. where they gathered’. OE mægth, mægden + stān.

Maidstone, battle of, 1648. Although the Kentish royalists in 1648 had assembled an army of 11,000 men, they dispersed them among several towns, leaving only 2,000 in Maidstone. Sir Thomas Fairfax, after assembling a 4,000–strong parliamentary force, attacked the town on 1 June. Under heavy rain the defenders were eventually overpowered.