MRP: Contrast of north weald and Medway valley with east Kent triangle

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Contrast of North Weald and Medway valley with East Kent triangle

Editorial history

01/12/11, CSG: Made minor formatting changes




Draft article


The Dallison and Oxenden families both lived in Kent, roughly forty-five miles apart. However, in the mid-seventeenth century the two areas in which they lived differed markedly in terms of social and economic character.

Whereas the Dallisons lived under the North Downs, overlooking the Weald and near the Medway valley and the growing port city of Rochester, the Oxendens lived in the East Kent area described by the triangle of Canterbury, Sandwich and Dover, near the Adisham Downs and the growing port town of Dover.

The North Weald and Medway valley were within striking distance of the Thames estuary and of London. Furthermore, the Rochester, Chatham, Sheerness (& Isle of Grain) ports were integrated into the London port system. This area had experienced considerable change in the first part of the seventeenth century in terms of urbanisation and population growth.

The Kent hearth tax data, when superimposed on relatively early Kent road maps, give a sense of the demographic and economic contrast between these two areas.[1] High densities of hearths per 1000 acres occured in East Greenwich, in Rochester and in Maidstone. Densities were far lower in East Kent. The St Augustines lathe and specifically the Wingham hundred was something of an exception within East Kent. The highest densities of large hearth houses were in a line from London through Gravesend, Rochester, and Sittingbourne down to Faversham, with the isle of Sheppey also showing a high density of large hearth houses, and with small concentrations in the towns of Canterbury, Ashford, XXXX, and XXXX.

The London to Dover road was key, but Maidstone, certainly by 1814, was also central to the Kent road system, with a number of roads radiating from it – to Rochester, to London (through Malling, Wrotham, and Eltham), to Sevenoaks via Seal and into Surrey along the base of the North Downs, to Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, and to Ashford and Folkestone, via Lenham.[2]

Kent, it has been demonstrated by F.J. Fisher, was highly integrated economically with London in terms of the grain trade. This integration appears to have been particularly high in the first part of the seventeenth century.[3]

Broader studies of London’s relationship with a hypothesised hinterland help place Kent in a possible regional economic (and social) system. W.S. Chalkin identifies one hundred and fifty towns in South-East England in the 1540-1650 period, and suggests that they should be divided conceptually into three groups, rather than viewed as one single network.[4]

Group two towns were between twenty and fifty miles of London and are described as collecting food for the capital and distributing luxury goods, groceries and coal from London. Group three towns were the most distant from the capital and had stronger ties with cities and regions outside the South-east. The Dallison and Oxenden families lived close to towns which fall into Chalkin's second and third groups. Sevenoaks, Maidstone and Rochester, the closest towns to the Dallisons, falling into group two, and Canterbury, Sandwich and Dover, the closest towns to the Oxendens, falling into group three.

W.S. Chalkin provides maps for urban concentrations in south-east England for c.1670 and one hundred and seventy years later in 1841.[5] It is striking that in 1841 it is Kent, of the eleven counties constituting Chalkin’s south-east England, which saw the largest number of towns with populations over 50,000. It is also through Kent that the only new 'main road' as defined by Chalkin runs, from London through Tonbridge in Kent, to end at Hastings at the east side of Sussex.


Possible secondary sources


Cambridge University hearth tax analysis by Kent hundred, XXXX
Cary, (CHECK NOT CANY) Map of ‘London to Canterbury’, 1814 (MORE DETAILS?)
Chalkin, W.S., 'The South-east', pp. 49-66, in Peter Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 1540-1840, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2000)
Fisher, E.J., 'The development of the London food market, 1540-1640', RcHR, 1st series, 5 (1934-5), 50, 60 (cited in W.S. Chalkin's article in Peter Clark (2000: 56)

Ormrod, David in Nigel Yates (ed.), Traffic and politics: the construction and management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43-1993 (Woodbridge, 1994) , p. 1XX, citing XXXX
  1. ↑ Cambridge University hearth tax analysis by Kent hundred, XXXX
  2. ↑ Cary, Map of 'London to Canterbury,' 1814 (MORE DETAILS?)
  3. ↑ E.J. Fisher, 'The development of the London food market, 1540-1640', RcHR, 1st series, 5 (1934-5), 50, 60 (cited in W.S. Chalkin's article in Peter Clark (2000: 56)
  4. ↑ W.S. Chalkin, 'The South-east', pp. 49-66, in Peter Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 1540-1840, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2000)
  5. ↑ W.S. Chalkin, 'The South-east', pp. 49-66, in Peter Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 1540-1840, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2000)

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