Highway repairs and Lilly Hoo (1657, 1674 and 1675)

Post date: Jul 18, 2012 1:16:1 PM

• At Maidstone Assizes of 7th July 1657 the inhabitants of Wateringbury and Yalding for not repairing the highway leading from Tudeley to Yalding.

• At Maidstone Assizes of 28th July 1674 the parishioners of Wateringbury were indicted for not repairing 'the high road' from Beltring Green to Whetsted. It was endorsed a true bill and on 27th July 1675 Thomas Crouch and Isaac Kempe confessed and fined 6s 8d.

• At the Maidstone Assizes of 27th July 1675 the parishioners of Wateringbury and Yalding were indicted 'for not repairing a highway called Lilly Hole, lying in Wateringbury and Yalding'.

These cases straddle both the Commonwealth period and the restored monarchy. Parishes had long been responsible for repairing roads in their boundaries and Wateringbury had like many North Kent parishes an outlying area or 'den' in the Weald at Lilly Hoo (near the Beltring Hop Farm). In the 17th century it looks as though the liability of the parish for the roads by Lilly Hoo would have exceeded the rates revenue coming from such a small area.

It is to the 'den' in the Wealden forest that Anglo-Saxon villagers would have driven their pigs in the autumn to feed off the acorns there. According to the 1839 tithe commutation survey (q.v.) Lilly Hoo covered 84 acres and at this time was used mainly for arable farming but later on the farm was acquired by Edward White of Beltring Farm and converted to hop farming.

Hoo is a name used not just in Kent (in the Hoo peninsular) but was frequently used in the Chilterns. Literally the word means 'ridge ' or 'spur of land' but it often indicates an outlying woodland pasture (Source Alan Everitt 'Continuity and Colonization' p.343) and this would seem to to apply here.

This remained a detached part of the secular parish of Wateringbury until 1887 or 8 and remained a part of the ecclesiastical parish until much later. In May 2011 it looked semi-derelict.

Within Kent Archives Office there is a file P385/28/1 marked as containing 4 documents about Lilly Hoo from 1887 but unfortunately in September 2012 only one was contained a letter from The Local Government Board to the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor of Wateringbury dated 27 June 1887 saying that an order issued under the "The Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment act 1876 and " Poor Law Act 179 was attached together with extracts from these aCTS. Unfortunately the attachments do not remain but it can be surmised that this was the order moving Lilly Hoo from Wateringbury to East Peckham for secular administration purposes.

For an early land transfer relating to Lilly Hoo see Feet of Fines (1509-1547).