Rusty Goffe who appeared as an Oompa-Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was born and raised in the town attending nearby Sturry Secondary school.

Sturry railway station was opened in 1848 and electrified in 1962, by the South Eastern Railway: it is on the line between Canterbury west and Ramsgate.

Other signs of early human activities include a collection of axes and pottery shards from the Bronze Age and more pottery from the Sturry Hill gravel-pits, and a burial-ground near Stonerocks Farm showed that there was an Iron Age settlement of Belgic Celts ( who gave Canterbury its pre-Roman name of Durovemum ) from the end of the 2nd Century BC.

The most important era for Sturry, determining its future shape, size, function and name, was that part of the early 5th century when the beleaguered Romano-Britons brought in Frisians and Jutes as mercenaries to help them fight against invading Picts and Scots, and rewarded them with land.

Some of them settled near Sturry: their cemetery was found at Hersden.

During the Second World War, Sturry was one of the most badly bombed villages in England, the greater part of the High Street being destroyed by a parachute mine in 1941 during the Baedeker Blitz, killing 15 people of which 7 were children aged 12 and under.

Sturry has had a cricket club playing off Field Way since 1863, Sturry Cricket Club in 2005 were made homeless after the land was sold, currently the club are playing out of Polo Farm Sports Ground near Fordwich and run two sides in the KRCL on saturday and a friendly side on sundays.

He was the son of Humphrey Plowden ( 1490 – 1557 ), by his wife, Elizabeth Sturry ( died 1599 ), widow of William Wollascot, and daughter of John Sturry, Esq., of Rossall, Shropshire Tresswell & Vincent, Vis.

He rebranded the original Green Shield Stamps catalogue shops as Argos beginning in July 1973, the first purpose-built store opening on the A28 Sturry Road, Canterbury in late 1973.

The road continues via Upstreet and Hersden to Sturry, and on to the cathedral city of Canterbury.

Sturry is a village on the Great Stour river three miles north-east of Canterbury in Kent.

Since the 1960s a large number of satellite housing estates have been built on the north side of the village, mostly in former woodland, which have turned Sturry into one of the major dormitary villages for Canterbury.

In the book, Letters to Sturry, it is recorded that on Wednesday, 28 August 1940, there were eight separate air raid warnings and on ' Battle of Britain Day ', 15 September 1940, a German Dornier bomber plane, ( Aircraft 2651, 3rd Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 76 ), crash-landed in a field below Kemberland Wood near the Sarre Penne stream.

* Barham Downs, Barton, Blean Forest, Chartham and Stone Street, Chestfield and Swalecliffe, Gorrell, Harbledown, Harbour, Little Stour, North Nailbourne, Northgate, St Stephens, Seasalter, Sturry North, Sturry South, Tankerton, Westgate, and Wincheap.

The school, which is mixed, currently has around 425 pupils, ages 3 to 13, and is located at Milner Court in Sturry.

Nearby villages include Rough Common, Sturry and Tyler Hill.

Other conversions of oasts for non-residential purposes include a theatre ( Oast Theatre, Tonbridge, Oast house Theatre Rainham, a Youth Hostel ( Capstone Farm, Rochester, another at Lady Margaret Manor, Doddington – now a residential centre for people with learning difficulties ), a school ( Sturry ), a visitor centre ( Bough Beech reservoir ) offices ( Tatlingbury Farm, Five Oak Green and a museum ( Kent Museum of Rural Life, Sandling, Preston Street, Faversham, Wye College, Wye and the former Whitbread Hop Farm at Beltring.

The large parish of Sturry Church incorporates the former mining village of Hersden and several hamlets.

Human habitation in Sturry is thought to have started around 430, 000 years ago, as dated flint implements-namely knives and arrow-tips-show.

Fordwich itself is smaller in size than Sturry.

A 16th Century manor house and oasthouse, built in 1583 and which belonged to St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury still stand in Sturry village beside the medieval tithe barn-although they have all been incorporated into the King School after they were sold by the widow of Lord Milner in 1925.

Three of the five crew were killed and were firstly buried in Sturry Cemetery but then re-interred in the late 1960s into the German war cemetery at Cannock Chase.

Nonetheless a number of interesting buildings remain intact in Sturry, including St Nicholas parish church, which is predominantly Norman in style, with the oldest parts dating to about 1200.

Sturry Church of England Primary school is situated near the north of the village, with strong links with Hersden Primary School.

The junior part of The King's School, Canterbury, is also located in south Sturry.

Spires Academy, formerly known as Sturry Secondary Modern School and later Frank Montgomery School, is the only secondary school in Sturry.

But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.

There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.

The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

The herd was watered and then thrown onto a broad grass flat which was to be the first night's bedground.

Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.

For Matilda, it was the first she had known in many a night.

Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.

Stevens was grunting over the last empty pocket when Russ abruptly rose and lunged toward Carmer's hat, which had tumbled half-a-dozen feet away when he first fell.

The Indian's arm whipped sidewise -- there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car.

It was her first smile.

At first, I thought he was out of his head, talking wildly like this.

Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven -- how many years ago was it, Rob ''??

Miss Langford ( her first name was Evelyn ) was an attractive girl.

School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.

It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.

`` Bastards '', he would say, `` all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me ''!!

In 1961 the first important legislative victory of the Kennedy Administration came when the principle of national responsibility for local economic distress won out over a `` state's-responsibility '' proposal -- provision was made for payment for unemployment relief by nation-wide taxation rather than by a levy only on those states afflicted with manpower surplus.

The first systematic thinking about this Pandora's box within Pandora's boxes was done four years ago by Fred Ikle, a frail, meek-mannered Swiss-born sociologist.

The smell at first was more surprising than unpleasant.

His collaboration with Washington, begun when he was the general's aide during the Revolution, was resumed when he entered the first Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.