Footnotes to Chapter XIII

1.  The Board of Guardians comprised representatives from Dartford and the twenty parishes united with Dartford pursuant to the new Poor Law Act of 1834. Keyes, op. cit., 236, lists the first members of the Board, all of whom attended the Inaugural meeting.

2.  The Poll Book for West Kent 1847; idem for 1852.

3. Ash Register of Voters 1848, in DCL.

4. The turnpiked version of the Maidstone road (otherwise, the Hythe road) had, of course, long existed. The amended route of the road from Kingsdown to the Medway was settled by the Turnpike Act of 1765: AC XLIII, 93.

5.  The actual number was 702, including fourteen unnamed persons who were sleeping rough. Discounting these and allowing for people in or out on visits, the permanent population seems to have been 693.

6. ‘Birling’ often proved troublesome. ‘Berlin’ has been noticed in a census return from a neighbouring parish, but was not in Germany.

7.  Adjusted as in Note 5 (supra), the official figure of 587 becomes 577, 116 less than in 1851. Oddly enough, the population of Ridley had increased while that of Ash declined. In 1861, the recorded figure was one hundred and one, which was perhaps the only time that it has ever reached three figures. That was a flash in the pan and, ten years later, it had shrunk to eighty-one. In any case, Ridley was a strange little parish. In 1861, only five inhabitants over the age of fourteen had been born in the parish. In 1871, there were only three such, the eldest of them being aged thirty-one.

8. ‘Maple Down’ was the name given at that time to the farm at Berry’s Maple. Peter Ashenden, who a decade before had been working ninety acres there, had extended his acreage to one hundred and twenty- two.

9. Giving, on adjustment, a permanent population of 664, an increase of eighty-seven on the adjusted figure for 1861.