The Cazeneuve Family Part I

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Jacob Cazeneuve Troy's mother Mary Cazeneuve (1722-1760) was a member of a family that had been settled in Chatham for several generations. 

The Cazeneuve family is remembered today in Cazeneuve Street in Troy Town. In the past there were three storey buildings in Cazeneuve Street, with shops and living accommodation. 

Troy Town 1959 looking west; Maidstone Road in the background
Cazeneuve Street indicated in red, with shop fronts and awning visible. 
Observant people may note that this photograph is likely to have been taken on a Monday.

An elderly resident of Troy Town described Cazeneuve Street as 'like a little high street' - one could get everything one wanted there without having to go to the actual High Street. 


Cazeneuve Street Troy Town 1959 Enlarged
The white rectangle towards the top is the side of a building facing King Street. Presumably it was intended to be used for advertising.

Cazeneuve Street was demolished and Rochester Police Station was built in the 1960s. The Police Station was itself demolished in 2009 and new housing built. Nothing now remains of the original Cazeneuve Street except the name, and this is almost the only reminder of the Cazeneuve family in Medway. 


Rochester Police Station from Victoria Street.
The brewery can be seen on the right. 

For a time, though, the Cazeneuves were among the prominent families in Rochester and Chatham. 

The name Cazeneuve suggests a family of Huguenot origins - that is, French Protestants who had emigrated from France to escape religious persecution, although that spelling of the name does not appear in lists of Huguenots who settled in England. 

Huguenots had been settled in Kent and elsewhere in England since the mid sixteenth century. In 1598 King Henri IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes which granted a degree of religious toleration to French Protestants, but there was a renewed influx of refugees after Louis XIV revoked the the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Between 50,000 and 100,000 French Protestants are thought to have migrated to England after 1685. It is at this time that the earliest references to the Cazeneuve family in Chatham are found.  


Huguenot refugees landing at Dover

The persecution suffered by French Protestants in the late seventeenth century is described by another Kent-based Huguenot, Isaac Minet of Dover. 

La Providence, the French Hospital, and the Huguenot Museum, both in Rochester, are reminders of the Huguenot presence in Kent, although the French Hospital originated elsewhere and only moved to Rochester in 1959.

Many Huguenots were skilled craftsmen, such as the silk weavers of Spitalfields, or like the Minets had business or financial skills. 

The Cazeneuves too were successful in business in Chatham during the eighteenth century.


Next: The Cazeneuve Family Part II

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The author has lived all her life in Kent, apart from a few years elsewhere as a student. She has a lifelong interest in local history, especially the history of Kent, and has been researching family history for decades. This blog brings together those interests in an ongoing study of the history of a small area of a smallish English city. The author also writes historical mystery fiction, which can be found on Amazon Kindle: see links at the foot of each blog post.

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