Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird, (1848-1939 was a consulting surgeon, who spent his later life at Meopham, near Rochester, in Kent as a country gentleman interested in the life of the village, in gardening, and in collecting clocks. He was a famous surgeon at the time, and had a reputation was 'an exceedingly neat operator and a delicate manipulator'. His training in histology, at a time when all section-cutting of tissues was done by hand with an ordinary razor, enabled him to make sections of the retina, drawings of which afterwards appeared in many editions of Quain's Anatomy. He did much useful work during his long period of retirement, for he was surgeon to the Gravesend Hospital and the Royal Deaf and Dumb School at Margate, chairman of the Kent County Nursing Association, a member of the Central Midwives Board, and churchwarden of St John's Church, Meopham. He was interested in local archaeology and wrote this history of Meopham.