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Welcome to the home page of Halling Historical Society's web-site.
The next talk in our 2026 lecture programme will be on Monday 14th September, details as below:
About the Halling Historical Society . . . . .
The main aim of Halling Historical Society (HHS) is to promote an interest in local history, especially about Kent and the Medway Valley.
To achieve this, each year we organise a public programme of talks on subjects of local historical interest.
Talks are free to members and usually take place at least every two months mostly on a Monday evening at the Jubilee Hall, Browndens Road, Upper Halling, ME2 1JH. Talks usually start at 7.30 pm (doors open 7.00).
We also try and arrange at least one visit a year to a local site of historical interest - note that these visits may require payment of an entry or tour fee
(Some talks may take place at other venues depending on the subject however, so check carefully in the programme.)
Our full lecture programme for 2026 can be found here.
Annual membership is £12.00, payable from February, and entitles members to attend any of our annual lectures free of charge.
Entrance fee to our talks for non-members is £3.50.
Talks usually include a break for refreshments and a raffle.
Other Society Activities:
HHS is proud to support Halling Parish Council in its efforts to promote the history of our local community.
A recent example of this was in January 2026, when the work HHS undertook to research the history of Forge Green (the green space adjacent to Halling's War Memorial) came to fruition with the installation of a public information board - link here.
In 2025, HHS celebrated its 40th anniversary (details here). To commemorate that milestone, the Society placed blue heritage plaques (sponsored by the Parish Council) on thirteen of the oldest buildings in the village, to develop a "Halling History Trail."
Details of the Halling History Trail can be found here.
The first of these plaques arose from a Society project in 2021, when a plaque was placed on the house in Halling High Street from where the village local World War 1 hero, Sergeant Thomas Harris VC MM, enlisted in 1914, aged 22. The story of this courageous man can be found here.
The plaque was unveiled on Saturday, 7 August 2021, and details of that occasion can be found here.
Memories of Halling past...
Several local residents of Halling have been kind enough to share their memories of our local community on our Villager's Reminiscences page.
If you'd like to share your story of growing up in Halling before 1980, please email hallinghistorical@gmail.com .
If you can add any other historical detail to this website, or see an error, please email hallinghistorical@gmail.com
Dedications and thanks...
The Society is affiliated to Kent Archaeological Society and members can use the KAS study facilities free of charge, using a membership card available from the Secretary.
This website is dedicated to the memory of Ted Gowers, a founder member of the Society, who did so much to record the history of Halling and especially in his book, co-written with Derek Church, 'Across the Low Meadow - a history of Halling in Kent’ (1979), sadly out of print but available from local public libraries. Much historical detail on this website is sourced from Ted's book.
Thanks are also due to Frank Smith, Stu Cunningham and Paul Bullivant for their help in putting this website together, with their many historical resources about the village.
