Rabbit Holes in East Kent

 Tithe maps and their apportionments give a good view of the rural countryside in the 1840s, showing (at best) the ownerships, tenancies, land use and the local names of fields, woods and marshes. For Kent there are two sources for the apportionment listings - the Kent Archaeological Society and Ted O'Connell's website, but unfortunately for the desk-bound amateur historian the maps can only be viewed in local libraries by asking the librarian for CDs for each parish. Part of the Tilmanstone Tithe Map, showing the village and Dane Court Kent Archaeological Society's website for tithe maps includes a good introductory article from Archaeologica Cantiana summarising the reasons, progress and outcomes of the project, which was an impressive achievement. There are also useful maps showing the dates of progress, the teams of surveyors and crop coverage. Transcription of the 407 parish allocations was carried out by a small team of historians (east Kent mainly by Pat Tritton) a...

Cumberland H Woodruff  excavated a bowl barrow on the Freedown in the parish of Ringwould in 1872. The KCC Heritage map site shows the location: Regretably the post-war changes to agricultural practices (and probably the recent loss of rabbits) have allowed the area surrounding the bowl barrows to be scrubbed up and so they are no longer visible from a distance. A badger sett has taken over the northern one, further distorting what is left of the original shape. A trackway that passed close to the barrows has been lost to ploughing although the straight track south-west from Victoria Road remains.  

 The effects of the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410CE and of the arrival of Germanic peoples a few decades later have long been debated.  Did the economy and the rule of law collapse or did remaining Romano-Britons continue much as before? Did the Saxons (and Angles and Jutes) arrive as warriors, clearing out the Britons towards the west and north and taking over their lands to be settled by their kinfolk, or did the new arrivals assimilate with the native population (albeit in a dominant role). Were the remaining Britons enslaved? Canterbury Museum has an excellent series of model tableaux indicating the grandeur of the city under Roman occupation with forum, amphitheatre, theatre and so on, and of that city in ruins some time later.  Bede describes a genocide and was influential for many centuries, while others (more recently) have argued for more integration. Alan Everitt in  Continuity and Colonization Evolution of Kentish Settlement uses locations and plac...

 Kent has received more than its share of visitors over the years, some of which have left their thoughts on the county. This is a brief summary of some of them, with particular reference to our corner. John Leland (1503 - 1552) was a humanist antiquary in and around the court of Henry VIII. He warned Thomas Cromwell of the risk of losing the wealth of monastic libraries during the Dissolution, and searched out books thereafter. The five volumes of his Itinerary included a chapter on Kent "Let this be the firste chapitre of the booke", he wrote; "The King hymself was borne yn Kent. Kent is the key of al Englande." His Itineraries were made between 1538 and 1543 at the height of the Reformation. The structure of the work, divided into counties, set the form of local historical writing for the future. He commended the results to the king, writing "there is almoste nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peere, river or confluence of rivers, breches, waschis, lakes...

  HL_PO_PB_1_1839_2&3V1n79.Local and Personal Act, 2 & 3 Victoria I, c xxxiii.pdf http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/map%20Kent%20turnpikes.jpg

Richborough was one of the most important towns in Roman Britain for at least the first half of the occupation, as it was the main port for goods and the military movements to and from the continent. They fact that it was virtually undefended for most of its life shows how complete was Roman control of England at the time. A minor unsolved mystery is which were the routes used for travelling inland from the island of Richborough, surrounded as it was by the wide Wansum Channel to the north and east and by marshes to the west and south. Over the four hundred years of occupation, there were probably a number of routes as conditions changed. Even today, paths around the English Heritage site are muddy and hampered by water-filled ditches. This map by Floodmap.net has been used to show water levels of 3m higher than today, giving an indication of the landscape in Roman times. Richborough castle (1) and the amphitheatre (2) are on the east side, with the (as yet unexcavated) town between t...