There was a bit of a skirmish, from which the soldiers withdrew after one of the local men had been killed. The incident threatened to spark off a serious Royalist rising, and might actually have done so if any such prospect had not been very promptly quelled by a large body of troops who rode with all haste to the village.

Buried in the churchyard is Adelaide Kemble, who died in 1879. She was one of the great opera singers of her day, the younger daughter of the English actor Charles Kemble and niece of Sarah Siddons.

Although some distance from the village centre, Ightham Mote bears its name and is easily the most notable local building. The house is one of the finest moated houses in England, although the name refers not to the moat but to the fact that the building stands on the site of an ancient meeting place (mote).

The Selby family owned the house for almost three hundred years. The most celebrated member of the family was Dame Dorothy, a lady in waiting to Elizabeth I and renowned for her speciality fine needlework. There are various stories about how foiled the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, one of which tells how she sent an anonymous letter to her cousin, Lord Mounteagle, warning him to stay away from the opening of Parliament that year.

She didn't say why he should do that, but he recognised his cousin Dorothy's handwriting and begun the enquiries that led to the discovery of the plot.

Another notable owner of Ightham Mote was that Sir Charles Selby who was described by Pepys as 'the lewdest fellow of his age'. He was a poet and dramatist who was born at Aylesford in about 1639 and who, in 1663, was fined £500 for running naked in London's Fleet Street while drunk. When he found himself in trouble for another drunken frolic five years later, the king himself intervened on his behalf and, it is said, got drunk with Selby and his friends, just to show where his sympathies lay.