Charing is a village and civil parish in the Ashford District of Kent, in south-east England. It includes the settlements of Charing Heath and Westwell Leacon. It is located at the foot of the North Downs and reaches up to the escarpment. The Pilgrims' Way, the M20 motorway and Charing railway station (between London Victoria and Ashford International via Maidstone) serve the parish. History The name Charing first appears in 799 as Ciorrincg. The name probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word cerring, which means a bend in the road, or it may be from Ceorra-ingas, which is Anglo-Saxon, meaning people of Ceorra. The village is sited on the Pilgrims' Way from London to Canterbury, and is one day's walk from Canterbury. There are a number of old manors located around the village, such as Newlands (now a horse stud) and Pett Place. The village had a market recorded in 1285, and a fair recorded in the fifteenth century. The Church of St Peter and St Paul, Charing, the parish church of Charing, is situated next to the remains of the Archbishop's Palace, just off the High Street. The church's west tower was built in the 14th century, though most of the rest of the building was reconstructed following a catastrophic fire in the 16th century. The church contains a number of memorials to the Dering family, a branch of the Dering family of Surrenden Dering, Pluckley, Kent. Mills Charing has had four mills over the centuries, serving the needs of the villagers. There were two watermills on the Upper Great Stour and two windmills. Watermills Burnt Mill, a corn mill working until the 1950s, now derelict. Field Mill, a corn mill, the building of which survives retaining its waterwheel. Windmills Charing Mill, also known as Field Mill on the Downs above the village is a smock mill which was built in the early nineteenth century and last worked in 1891. It stands today as a house conversion. Charing Heath Mill was a smock mill that was demolished c.1878. Millers include William Missing in 1845 and Robert Millgate 1862 – 1878 Places of interest Its most famous building is the Archbishop's Palace, which lies by the church and was an ancient possession of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The palace was an important building in the diocese of Canterbury, and counted amongst its guests King Henry VIII, who took it for himself.