Men Of Kent & Kentish Men, All Saints, Maidstone

Just the usual Sunday stuff today as regards food shopping and the pint afterwards. More often than not we pop into Maidstone on the way home , park the car and then give ourselves an hour to try and capture an image or two.
The town was very quiet today so the chance of capturing an interesting street photograph was small. Also, I think street photography in a small town can be harder to do as they are far fewer people (except when events, parades or festivals are on) and you do stick out a bit more with your camera, becoming "invisible" is all but impossible! It's strange that people have become warier of people with cameras but much less so of people with phones even though, with technology, you can get great images with both.
We decided to change tack a little and headed to All Saints church and luckily, this time, it was open. We'd never been inside before and it was a majestic sight. It's a huge, cavernous space with beautiful stained glass windows and some amazing architectural features. However, what really interested me visually was this heavy curtain embossed with Men of Kent and Kentish Men with all these metal elements stacked in front of it. They almost looked like part of some dismantled, futuristic organ and made for a surreal image.
The exact historical meaning and origins of Men Of Kent and Kentish Men ( and of their female counterparts Maids of Kent and Kentish Maids) are lost in the mists of time but the division stretches back many centuries with east Kent being settled by the Jutes and the west by the Saxons. In the 600s they even had different kings, Hlothere for the east and Eadric for the west. Many of the administrative  and religious headquarters also coalesced around two major cities, Rochester and Canterbury. Every now and again they liked to slag each other off (like all rivals do!), an example being a quote from a certain Reverend Samuel Pegge in 1735 - "A Man of Kent is a term of high honour, while a Kentish Man denotes but an ordinary man".
Today it's commonly regarded that if you were born in East Kent you are known as a Man of Kent (or a Maid of Kent) and if born in the west as a Kentish Man (or Kentish Maid). As I wasn't born in Kent or even England I'm neither but it's interesting watching from the sidelines!