FARNINGHAM, a village, a parish, and a sub-district in Dartford district, Kent. The village stands on the river Darent, in a fine valley between ridges of chalk hills, 1½ mile S by W of a station of its own name on the Mid Kent railway, and 4½ S of Dartford; was known at Domesday as Ferninghame; was once a market town; and has now a post office† under Dartford, a hotel, a four-arched bridge across the Darent, a monthly cattle market, and a fair on 15 Oct. The parish comprises 2, 708 acres. Real property, £5, 232. Pop., 944. Houses, 151. The property is divided among a few. There were formerly paper-mills. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Canterbury. Value, £300.* Patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is chiefly early English, with a later English tower; and has an octagonal, figured, later English font, a brass of a vicar of 1451, and four other brasses. There is a Wesleyan chapel. Roper's charity, shared also by other places, has £91; and other charities have £86.—The sub-district contains eleven parishes. Acres, 22, 465. Pop., 6, 110. Houses, 1, 102.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))