Sittingbourne Paper Mill
Kemsley Paper Mill is a paper mill located in the village of Kemsley near Sittingbourne in the English county of Kent.
Paper manufacture started in Sittingbourne in 1708, when Peter Archer was recorded as a paper-maker. Sittingbourne Paper Mill existed from circa 1769, which by 1820 had grown and was owned by Edward Smith. After newspaper editor turned publisher Edward Lloyd bought the factory in 1863, it burnt down that August.
Covering paper production from his London sites with longer shift production, Lloyd had the Sittingbourne paper mill rebuilt in 1863, but closer to the new railway to enable easier shipping of product to his newspaper presses in Bow, East London. After purchasing the Daily Chronicle in 1876, Lloyd installed new machinery capable of producing 1,300 square feet (120 m2) of paper per minute, and handed over management of the site to his youngest son, Frederick. By 1882, the transfer of paper-making from London to Sittingbourne was complete, enabled by using esparto grass imported from Algeria and Southern Spain via the creek port as a replacement for expensive cotton rag; the output supplied newsprint to his presses in Bow, East London.
The site's production capability was expanded by converting the mill to steam power, and, after the death of his father in 1889, eldest son Frank introduced a horse-drawn tramway to carry materials from a new wharf at Milton Creek to the mill. As the mill expanded and silt built up in Milton Creek, in 1904 the tramway was converted into a narrow gauge railway, to allow both ships and barges to offload pulp product at Ridham, for onward transport to the mill. On what is now known as the Sittingbourne and Kemsley Light Railway, the first of three steam locomotives came into operation in 1906, all being 0-4-2 Brazil type tank engines, sourced from Kerr Stuart.
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