The Entrance Room

Provides a background to the history of the town, the ‘tenet-ware-den’, the ‘den’ or pig-pasture of the men of Thanet (Tenet). Maps and models of the town and of the Rother estuary explain the development of Tenterden around its 13th century market area, on a broad ridge above the valley of the Rother, only two miles from the busy sea-port of Small Hythe, also within the *Hundred of Tenterden.
The robes of a Baron of the Cinque Ports and other exhibits belonging to the Corporation show how important to Tenterden’s future was the incorporation of the ‘Town and Hundred’ in 1449, as a member of a Confederation of the Cinque Ports.

The Buildings Room

Numerous photographs and examples of building materials show the way in which 18th century facades were applied to the massive oak frames of many of the town’s 15th century buildings. Mathematical tiles (the original meaning of ‘mathematical’ is ‘scientifically precise’), which could be hung on laths fixed to a timber frame to simulate brickwork, were first used in the eighteenth century to give a contemporary appearance to an old timber building of the sixteenth century or earlier. Later, frequently fixed with cement to a solid timber wall, they were used on new buildings, to look like brick while avoiding the brick tax.