Harty
| Harty | |
|---|---|
 Harty Church on the bank of the Swale |
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 Harty
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| Harty shown within Kent | |
| OS grid reference | TR023663 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Sheerness |
| Postcode district | ME12 4 |
| Police | Kent |
| Fire | Kent |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | |
Harty is a small hamlet on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent consisting of a few cottages, a church and a public house, the Ferry Inn (a Grade II listed building). At the 2011 Census the population of the hamlet was included in the civil parish of Leysdown
The earliest recorded evidence of human occupation comes from a late bronze age hoard of axes, gouges bronze founder's appliances and metal. The find has wider importance from the information it gives into methods used for casting in the late bronze age. Evidence of Roman occupation also exists; finds of tesserae, roof and flue tiles may indicate the site of a Roman villa.
During the middle ages there were extensive salt workings. Remains today consist of groups of salt mounds which are the waste left over from the process.
In 1798 Edward Hasted recorded that an earlier form of the name was 'Harteigh' which he presumes came from the Saxon Heord-tu, an island "filled with herds of cattle". Other forms of the name have been Hertei (1086), Heartege (1100), Herteye (1242) and the modern Harty by 1610.
Hasted also noted that the islet was part of the hundred of Faversham unlike the rest of the island of Sheppey which came within Milton Hundred. There were also 4000 sheep and six cottages with 20 people, but of those 20 six were on permanent poor relief and another 3 occasionally so.
Harty is a few minutes walk from the Swale National Nature Reserve. Public footpaths run from Harty, along the southern extent of the reserve to the hamlet of Shellness, and back around the reserve's northern perimeter to Harty.
The church of 'St. Thomas the Apostle' is Grade II* listed. The date of founding cannot be fixed with certainty. The official listing dates it to late 11th or early 12th century, based in part on Pevsner (1977) and in part on Patience & Perks. Patience & Perks start by reporting the raid by Harold in 1052 and then note that ""The date ascribed to the church of 1089 would be consistent with a re-building following damage by the Danes". However, on the next page they discuss the narrow walls which are indicative of Saxon builders and note that in 1989, when a shallow trench was excavated in the south wall, traces of Saxon work were found.Tufa stone was rarely used after the early Norman period, and so the use of it in a window in the north wall would indicate a date of no later than the end of the 11th century. Patience & Perks observe that the "date of AD 1089 is ascribed to the Norman work, which may well have been the re-building of an earlier structure desecrated by the Danish invaders".
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Wikipedia