Blean is located in the Canterbury district

City of Canterbury

The City of Canterbury is a local government district with city status in Kent, England. The main settlement in the district is Canterbury, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.-History:...

 of Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It is the name of the civil parish

Civil parish

In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation and, where they are found, the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties...

 as well as the village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 within it: the latter is scattered along the road between Canterbury and Whitstable

Whitstable

Whitstable is a seaside town in Northeast Kent, Southeast England. It is approximately north of the city of Canterbury and approximately west of the seaside town of Herne Bay. It is part of the City of Canterbury district and has a population of about 30,000.Whitstable is famous for its oysters,...

, in the middle of what was once the extensive Forest of Blean.

The village name of Blean is thought to have derived from the Old English word ‘blea’ which means rough ground.

The parish church is dedicated to St. Cosmus and St. Damian in the Blean: the ancient ecclesiastical parish carries the same title. It is a 13th century building, set away from the village.

Blean is the birthplace of early England woman cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er, Peta Taylor

Peta Taylor

Mary Selena M Taylor, married name Mary Jaegar, was an English cricketer. She played in the first women's Tests against Australia and New Zealand. Taylor also played cricket for Middlesex Women and South Women.-References:**...

. The Blean Beagles Hunt that set out from the village gave its name to HMS Blean

HMS Blean (L47)

HMS Blean was a Type III Hunt class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was named after the Blean Beagles Hunt at the village of Blean just north of Canterbury....

.

Blean is the home of Smallfilms

Smallfilms

Smallfilms was a British company that made animated television programmes for children, from 1959 to the 1980s. It was a partnership between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin . Several very popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including The Clangers, Noggin the Nog,...

, the production company that created the animated television series Ivor the Engine

Ivor the Engine

Ivor the Engine is a British children's animation by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's Smallfilms company. It is a children's television series relating the adventures of a small green locomotive who lived in the "top left-hand corner of Wales" and worked for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway...

, Bagpuss

Bagpuss

Bagpuss is a 1974 UK children's television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The title character is "an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams"...

and the Clangers

Clangers

Clangers is a popular British stop-motion animated children's television series of short stories about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and in, a small blue planet . They speak in whistles, and eat green soup supplied by the Soup Dragon...

, among many others. The programmes were filmed in a barn on the Blean farm owned by co-founder Peter Firmin

Peter Firmin

Peter Arthur Firmin is an English artist and animator. He was the founder of Smallfilms, along with Oliver Postgate. Between them they created a number of popular children's TV programmes, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood.-Early life:He trained at...

 (the other founder being Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate was an English animator, puppeteer and writer.He was the creator and writer of some of Britain's most popular children's television programmes...

). The bay window of Firmin's house featured in the opening sequence of Bagpuss.

According to Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

' humorous 1983 dictionary "The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff is a humorous dictionary of toponymy and etymology, written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in the United Kingdom in 1983, and the USA in 1984....

", a Blean is a "Scientific measure of luminosity: 1 glimmer = 100,000 bleans. Usherettes' torches are designed to produce between 2.5 and 4 bleans, enabling them to assist you in falling downstairs, treading on people or putting your hand into a Neapolitan tub when reaching for change".

External links

• Parish Church of St Cosmus & St Damian in the Blean