It lies roughly half-way between Maidstone and Hastings, about 38 miles (61 km) southeast of central London.

The smaller settlements of Sissinghurst, Swattenden, Colliers Green and Hartley lie within the civil parish.

[2][3] There is evidence of early activity here in the Roman period at the former Little Farningham Farm where a substantial iron working site was investigated in the 1950s.

[4] The site had earlier produced a number of clay tiles bearing the mark of the Roman Fleet, or Classis Brittanica who may have been overseeing the work.

Edward III brought over Flemish weavers to develop the Wealden cloth industry using wool from Romney Marsh; Cranbrook became the centre of this as it had local supplies of fuller's earth and plenty of streams that could be dammed to drive the fulling mills.

Iron-making was carried on at Bedgebury on the River Teise, an industry which dates back to Roman times.

In 1290 the town received a charter from Archbishop Peckham, allowing it to hold a market in the High Street.

[5][6][7] Legend holds that he was riding on his way to Cranbrook in order to have two local Protestants executed, when he turned back after the news reached him that Queen Mary was dead.

In 2010 Francis Rook of the Liberal Democrats won one of the three council seats in the Benenden and Cranbrook ward from the Conservatives to become one of only 6 non-Conservative councillors out of 48 in the borough.

The brewery Sharpe & Winch was established in Baker's Cross at some point prior to 1846 by William Barling Sharpe (who is buried with his wife, Ann, in the cemetery at Westwell, and his daughter, Elizabeth Louisa, who married William Francis Winch).

The brewery assumed the name Sharpe & Winch in 1892, and was purchased and taken over by Frederick Leney & Sons Ltd, a Wateringbury company, in 1927.

[19][20][21][22] The brewery were responsible for the mock-Tudor extension to the 18th century Baker's Cross House (a Grade II listed building).

The Colony artists tended to paint scenes of domestic life in rural Kent – cooking and washing, children playing, and other family activities.

[34] Glassenbury Park is a late-15th-century manor house on the road to Goudhurst with a 1730s front block, remodelled in 1877–79 by Anthony Salvia.

[35] Wilsley Hotel was originally built in 1864–70 as a home for the Colony artist John Callcott Horsley, designer of the first Christmas card twenty years earlier.

[37] Over the years there have been four windmills in and around Cranbrook of which only the Union Mill survives and dominates the local skyline.

The latter also shows a mill at Saint's Hill, 1 mile 5 furlongs (2.6 km) north east of the church.

The Hawkhurst Branch Line ran a short distance from the town, but Cranbrook railway station, which was 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of the centre, stopped operations on 12 June 1961.

Cranbrook Church of England Primary School has been on its current site in Carriers Road since 1985; it was placed in special measures from November 2013 until June 2015.

[44] The school's observatory is named after alumnus and NASA astronaut Piers Sellers; it houses the 22.5 inch Alan Young telescope operated by the Cranbrook and District Science and Astronomy Society (CADSAS).

St Dunstan's Church is known as the "Cathedral of the Weald";[46] its 74 feet-high tower, completed in 1425, has a wooden figure of Father Time and his scythe on the south face.

[50] Cranbrook joggers club runs routes around Angley Woods and Bedgebury Forest.

There was an open-air swimming pool on the Frythe Estate, which closed when the Weald Sports Centre opened in 2000.