St Mary's Church is on the west side of the village on Chart Road, close to the junction of the High Street with the A274.

Another landmark is Sutton Valence Castle on the east side of the village, of which only the ruins of the 12th-century keep remain, under the ownership of English Heritage.

Before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the manor was owned by Leofwine Godwinson, brother of Harold who was to become King of England in 1066 and be defeated by William the Conqueror.

In 1086 the village is recorded in the Domesday Book under the name of Sudtone (South Town, or Sutton),[2] granted to Adam FitzHubert who held it from Odo Bishop of Bayeux, the half-brother of William the Conqueror.

[3] The manor was then granted to the Count of Aumale, Baldwin of Bethune, who built a castle, the remains of its keep or tower can be seen on the east side of the village.

She married William Marshal the son of the Earl of Pembroke, the manor passing to him on her death in 1215 (the date of Magna Carta).

In 1221 a Royal charter was granted by Henry III allowing the village to hold a fair annually.

St Mary's Church In the 14th century, the church was rebuilt using the local ragstone a grey limestone, possibly quarried in Boughton Monchelsea between Sutton Valence and Maidstone[5] In 1401, the manor was one of those sold to provide a ransom for the release of Baron Grey of Ruthin who had been captured by Owain Glyndŵr the Welsh leader who rebelled against King Henry IV and is mentioned in the Shakespeare play of that name.

[7] The Filmer family lent money for the construction of the turnpike road from Maidstone to Tenterden (the current A274).

1827 - the Clothworkers Company gave £20 towards a gallery at the west end, in the front of which the pupils of the grammar school had seats.

[6] During the Second World War the residents of Watts' Almshouses, Rochester were evacuated to a Georgian house in the village called Eylesden.

[14] The 100m contour (328 ft) passes E-W along the N side of Chart Road, along the West part of the Village High Street and East to the remains of the Castle tower.

At the South end of Sutton Valence CP at Bardingley and the River Beult, the altitude falls to 16 m (52 ft) AMSL.

Sutton Valence lies on the A274 road from Maidstone south to Headcorn and Tenterden and is linked by bus to each.

The nearest railway station to the village is Headcorn, on the South Eastern Main Line to the Kent Coast and the Channel Tunnel via Ashford, and to London via Staplehurst, Paddock Wood and Tonbridge.

In 1904 Colonel Holman Stephens proposed the construction of an extension of the Kent & East Sussex Railway line from Headcorn to Maidstone via Sutton Valence, but World War I intervened and it was never built.

A diagram is on the left, and the exact boundary is shown by a dotted black line on the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 map.

The principal and older part is at the top of the Greensand Ridge overlooking the Vale of Kent, the area known as "The Harbour" is to the South at the bottom of the hill, and many houses here were originally owned by the local authority.