Hackington, on the north-east edge of Canterbury, is a Saxon name, either meaning 'Hacca's Farmstead', or a settlement among hacks, or thorn bushes. A church may have existed prior to 1100, when Archbishop Anselm authorized the building of St Stephen's, parts of which still exist in the west end and nave.

Simon Langton raised the church tower in the 13th Century, when he was Archdeacon, and his brother Stephen was Archbishop.

A large house was built in Hackington village, in which successive Archdeacons lived until the Reformation. Elizabeth I gave this manor to Sir Roger Manwood in the 16th Century, who founded the almshouses still to be found in the village. Sir Thomas Colpepper, who sold it in turn in 1675 to the Hales family, bought the manor house from the Manwoods. This house, and it's 18th Century replacement, became known as Hales Place. In 1884 the house went to a French Jesuit community, who founded a college. In 1928 the college closed, and the entire property was demolished, to make way for a housing estate. The Jesuit chapel and cemetery in Tenterden Drive still survive today.

(Text derived from the Church Guide)

Records at Cathedral Archives

Sir Roger Manwood (1525-1592). Judge of the Chancery, and M.P. for Sandwich. Co-founder with Archbishop Parker (of 'Nosy' Parker fame) of the Sir Roger Manwood Grammar School at Sandwich. Sir Roger paid for the south transept at St Stephen's, in which he is buried in a monument carved by Maximilian Conk, who also carved Elizabeth I's monument in Westminster Abbey. A macabre detail on the slab under the bust is a full-size wooden skeleton, which Sir Roger must have seen, as the tomb was built during his lifetime!