Between 1845 and 1880, the industrial village of Lower Murston was built by entrepreneur George Smeed in a gradual conversion of ancient farmland into brickfi elds. By 1875, George Hambrook Dean, a farmer who married Smeed’s eldest daughter, set up the Smeed Dean Company in partnership with his father-in-law, producing cement as well as bricks by 1900. But times changed and, in 1930, the parish of Murston, established in Saxon times, was disbanded and the community became a part of Sittingbourne.
The village of Lower Murston was demolished in the 1960s and the inhabitants were re-housed in a new Murston estate leading off Tonge Road. Nowadays, houses are still being built and the town is expanding.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bryan Clark was educated in Murston and has lived there all his life. At the age of fifteen he started work at Murston’s Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers (later Blue Circle) in the brickfields. He is now retired and is a prominent member of Sittingbourne’s Historical Research Society.
235 x 165 mm | paperback | 192 pages | 200 b&w illustrations
