Simone Weil, the French authoress and philosopher, died in Grosvenor Sanatorium, Ashford, in 1943, and is buried in Bybrook Cemetery.

Her vintager's (grape-gatherer's) hat was presented to Ashford Borough Council by Monsieur Eugene Fleure, a member of the Association for the Study of the Thoughts of Simone Weil, during the official naming of Simone Weil Avenue in Ashford on Friday, 8th July, 1983. The hat is now on permanent display at the Civic Centre in Tannery Lane.

Simone Weil was born in Paris on 3rd February, 1909. She had sympathy with the poor and worked as a manual labourer in order to experience working class life. She served with the Republican Forces in the Spanish Civil War and in 1942 joined the Provisional French Government in London, but developed tuberculosis which was aggravated by her insistence on eating the same rations as were allowed to those in occupied France.

Simone Weil's writings, which have been published since her death, have established her as one of the foremost modern philosophers.