Downs is a term given to undulating grassy hills or uplands, specially applied to two ranges of undulating chalk hills in England, extending through Surrey, Kent, and Hampshire, known as the North and South Downs. The word is sometimes used as equivalent to dunes or sand-hills. Research Downs
Kentish Fire is rhythmical hand-clapping (sometimes reinforced by stamping) adopted at political meetings either to express approval or to interrupt the speaker. It is so called because it was first heard in Kent during the anti- Catholic agitation of 1828. Research Kentish Fire
The Road House Mystery was a murder that occurred in Wiltshire in 1860 in which four-year old Francis Savile Kent disappeared from his cot during the night and was found the next day in an outside privy - where his body had been thrown down the toilet but had caught on a splash board and so not disappeared into the cess pit beneath - with his throat cut and a stab wound to the heart. The case was investigated by detectives Jonathan Whicher and Adolphus Williamson of the Metropolitan Police. The police concluded that the murderer was the boy's sixteen-year old step-sister, Constance, but with insufficient evidence she was never convicted. She later confessed to the murder to a priest. Research Road House Mystery
The 'Tamworth Two' was a name given to two juvenile Tamworth pigs which escaped from Newman's Abattoir on Monday the 6th of January 1998 and went on the run. The pair, a brother and sister, belonged to a road cleaner, Armaldo Diiulio, who had intended to sell them for 40 pounds each to the abattoir to be slaughtered and butchered. The escaping pigs swam across the River Avon and hid in a thicket on a wooded hillside near MalmesburyAbbey. The story was reported by Wendy Best of the 'Western Daily Press', a local newspaper, and then the national newspapers heard about the story and the 'Daily Mail' dispatched a freelance reporter to find the pigs, who they christened 'Butch' and 'Sundance', and rescue them. The story gripped public attention for a week while the search for the pair continued until they were caught, and bought by the 'Daily Mail' for an alleged sum of 15,000 pounds. The newspaper then housed the two pigs at a Rare Breeds Centre in Kent where they were cared for and six years later were still living, fully
grown by then and very content. Research Tamworth Two
Trinity House was founded at Deptford, Kent and received a royal charter in 1514. It was composed of skilled mariners, and had charge of the naval dockyard under Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I it began its work of lighting the coasts of England. Today it is responsible for light houses, buoys etc. Research Trinity House
Emus is a genus of rove beetles, Staphylinidae. A single species lives in Europe, Emus hirtus, which is thickly covered with golden yellow, grey and black hairs. In Britain they occur only in Kent. Research Emus
The lesser horseshoe-bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros) greatly resembles the Greater Horsehoe-bat but is smaller, with a wing span of about 22 cm. pointed and have a well-developed antitragus very similar to that of the greater horseshoe-bat on a smaller scale, but there are small differences from that species in the details of the form of the nose-leaf. The colour is a rather greyer brown without the yellowish or pinkish shade, and the fur is proportionately longer, silkier and less velvety. The underside tends to be lighter in colour and the fur extends on to the base of the wing membranes. As in the larger species there is a barepatch at the base of the tail on the upper surface. The upper incisors, and the first upper, and the first two lower premolars are very minute. The range extends from Ireland to the Himalayas and north Africa and includes all Europe south of the Baltic. In the British Isles it is common in the south and west from Kent to Cornwall, though scarcer in Sussex and Hampshire.
The lesser horshoe-bat is found throughout Wales and the border counties but not in east Anglia or north of Yorkshire. In Ireland it is confined to the west. The lesser horseshoe-bat is gregarious, the summer colonies occurring in house and church roofs and perhaps in hollow trees. The winter colonies are nearly always in caves, but the species is not then closely gregarious, individuals usually hanging up at some distance from their neighbours. They do not always hang in the roof of the cave and often choose the undersides of projecting points or boulders where they are only a few inches from the ground. The summer colonies show a segregation of the sexes and usually consist mainly of adult females, some immature bats of both sexes, and a few adult males.
The flight is rather fluttering with frequent glides, and usually fairly near to the ground. The food consists of the smaller insects; moths appear to form a large part of the diet. The single young is born in June or July, the breeding season being rather protracted. Hibernation lasts from early October to the beginning of April, but it is frequently interrupted, the bats shifting their quarters within the hibernating cave and perhaps feeding upon the gnats which are usually found in them; but they are not known to come out into the open in the winter. Wherever caves are used by the greater horseshoe-bat for hibernation this species is found too; but because its range in Britain is much wider, it is also found in many caves outside the range of that species. Research Lesser Horseshoe-Bat
The serotine is a large bat, about the size of the noctule, with a very limited distribution in Britain. The wing-span is about 38 cm, and the wings are considerably broader than are those of the noctule. The oval ears are longer than broad, spaced far apart, and the unnotched but sinuous hind margin ends between the base of the tragus and the angle of the mouth. The tragus is fairly long, bluntly rounded at its tip, and has a curved hind edge. The anterior premolar is absent from the upper jaw and small in the lower one. The fur is longer and less velvety than in the noctule; it does not extend far on to the upper surface of the wing nor on to the under surface of the interfemoral membrane both of which are, however, sparsely sprinkled with very fine hairs. A band of hair extends along the under side of the armbone towards the wrist. The colour is dark brown above and a lighter shade of brown beneath.
Bats of this or closely allied species have a very wide distribution throughout temperate Europe and Asia, but the British Isles are on the extreme limit of the range. The species is locally abundant in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire including the Isle of Wight, and parts of Devon. Elsewhere it is either unknown or very rare, but it has been recorded from Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Easer and Suffolk. The serotine lives in small colonies of up to twenty individuals, frequently in the roofs of houses. Research Serotine
Abbreviations
Research Downs
