The Accounts of the Wardens of the Town Lands of Tonbridge, 1574-1760

THE ACCOUNTS OF THE WARDENS OF THE TOWN LANDS OF TONBRIDGE, 1574-1760

christopher chalklin

The accounts of the Tonbridge Town Wardens have been transcribed by Mr Sydney Simmons and are now published in full on one of the websites of the Kent Archaeological Society – www.kentarchaeology.ac. This paper describes the class of men who served as Wardens from the 1570s through to the 1760s and their duties in respect of the public amenities of Tonbridge.

The maintenance of bridges, highways and public buildings by trustees drawing rents from properties was common in early modern England. The amount of their income naturally varied according to the size of their estate, and the type and range of their work also differed. The trustees, sometimes called feoffees or wardens, were drawn from the more prosperous, propertied local men. The donor, donors or source of the trusts are sometimes unknown, particularly if they were of medieval origin.¹ In Kent by far the most important were the Wardens of Rochester Bridge, who drew a large income from estates in north Kent, Essex and London. Their income was £212 in 1580 and as high as £393 in 1650. At Edenbridge the Great Stone Bridge Trust repaired a six-arch stone structure built about 1500 which was small by comparison. Its income came from property in four parishes, paying about £50 in 1750. Surplus money was sometimes spent on the church or on paupers. There were up to 12 wardens, and when the number fell to four, eight more were elected. Such trusts were in addition to the many individuals paying for bridges, road improvements or public buildings in their lifetime or leaving bequests for them in their wills. Everywhere the voluntary creation and maintenance of such funds provided a variety of public services before local rates made them less important. Sometimes the funds were lost as property was wrongfully sold or rent charges became unpaid. In 1601 an act was passed ‘to redress the misemployment of lands, goods and money given into charitable uses’, and attempts by a committee of the Council to get information about charities from counties in the 1630s shows concern about their survival.²

In Tonbridge the Town Wardens owned nearly 40 acres near the town for the maintenance of four out of five bridges over the River Medway and the paving of part of the High Street (see Maps 1 and 2). This paper is based primarily on the first account book of the Wardens, from 1574 to 1760. There is a gap between 1636 and 1662, after which the contents not only includes the appointment of Wardens and tenants with their rents but also detailed payments for work. The Town Lands estate existed by 1431. A deed of that date refers to a garden called Dodekyndennysgardyn at Dodekynden bordered on the south and west sides by land called Towenelandys and two land parcels adjoining at Dodekynden with the Towenelandys on the north side. However the origin of the Lands trust is unknown. One may speculate that if there was one source the trust was created on the death of a local owner without close kin to whom to bequeath the Lands, who had constantly used the bridges. While landowners were often responsible for bridges their estates usually adjoined them, as was the case with the northernmost bridge at Tonbridge, or Great Bridge.³

The charity was registered in 1575 dealing with ‘eight parcels of land and meadow commonly called the Town Lands’. The indenture names eight Wardens who, when reduced by death to five, were to make up their number to eight, and so on in perpetuity. In fact two Wardens were elected every three years, except between 1665 and 1708 when they served a five or six year term. As the book gives the names of two Wardens from 1571, probably there had always been two, the number and procedure in the deed being a formality to help protect the endowment. Their duties were to let the Lands to the best advantage and with the income:

to sustain and maintain or newly to re-edify all the bridges in the town of Tonbridge (excepting the Great Bridge which the Lord of the town is in right to maintain) ... and if there is any surplusage over and above the needful reparations of the said bridges then the same to be employed for the amending of the ways in the said town.

By custom those responsible for bridges also maintained the road for 100 yards on each side.⁴

The difficulties which trusts or charities encountered is well illustrated by the history of the Town Lands between the 1570s and 1630s. During a dispute which ran from 1626 to 1637 Michael Couchman, a clothier who had spent his first 35 years in the town, connected the indenture with the discovery of an interest by some inhabitants, ‘the Johnsons’, probably Thomas senior and Thomas junior, the father presumably being the Warden from 1574 to 1577, and William, a butcher, to sell the Lands for their own benefit. It seems that the Wardens themselves were trying to sell the Lands with the help of several relations or acquaintances, that they were allowed to continue their term, and that they were succeeded in 1577 by the men whom Michael Couchman said had stopped them. His father Thomas and ‘one old Thomas Harris’, who were to be the next Wardens, were said to have told three Kent gentry, ‘Mr Lambert, Sir Thomas Cotton and another knight which he beleiveth was Sr Christopher Allen’, who had the Lands re-established by the deed. Cotton and Allen were Justices of the Peace, and if Lambert was William Lambarde he became a Justice in 1580. William Jacob, a sawyer ‘near 100 years’, also referred to a plot ‘to sell away the Town Lands’; ‘by one William Harris, [probably Thomas] Johnson, [William] Hart and Martin Drew’, Harris being a tailor, and Harte, Drew and probably Johnson being yeomen and Harte being the other Warden between 1574 and 1577; however ‘Widow Chowne’ discovered it and three unnamed Justices and other gentry confirmed the trust. According to Jacob’s reckoning this happened about 1580. One might think that there were two separate plots as only one Johnson was mentioned by Jacob and the other persons had different names. However the fact that the aged Jacob may have mistaken the time, that suspiciously there were three Justices in each case, and that Harte and Johnson were conveyed the property in the indenture suggest that there was just one scheme, in 1575.⁵

Another problem emerged in 1598, no accounts having been seen publicly for 12 years. Money may not have been collected and accounted for assiduously. The new Wardens and Thomas Blundell a constable bought a book for one shilling (on 25 December!) which the Vicar John Stockwood used to bring the accounts up to date. They had ‘the consent of sundri of the chiefest of the Towne’. Following this revival of local interest the method of appointment becomes increasingly formalised. The Wardens were elected at the Court Leet of the manor of Tonbridge, that is Tonbridge town, in the Crown or the Bull at Michaelmas or before the end of the year, after notice in Church. They gave security for letting the Lands and receiving the rents by signing bonds for the proper performance of their duties to two ‘surveyors’, or just one, who advised about their work when needed; after the 1660s bonds and surveyors are not mentioned, although presumably they continued. They had been signing bonds by 1580; the amounts in which they were each bound were raised from 50 marks in 1601 to 100 marks in 1616 and £100 in 1619. When they were chosen in 1610 further conditions were imposed on them: ‘that none of the woodes uppon the Town Lands shalbee cutt downe or by them or their assigns ... [given] ... to any other use then aboute needful things touching the amending of the waies or bridges vizt clappers of the Towne’, which of course did not stop them selling timber to add to their income. (Clappers were wooden walkways used by pedestrians and horsemen across the wet ground between the bridges – see below.) For the first time in 1616 two justices were recorded as being present, though again there is no mention of them after 1662. The examination and approval of the Wardens’ accounts at the end of their term and the election of their successors were done by an elite group who included former Wardens and often constables and highway surveyors. Thus in October 1619 ten signed the book, all except one being a Warden before 1637, ‘divers others’ being present. They were usually literate as being mostly well-to-do; in 1719 only one of eight witnesses, John Paris a carrier, signed with a mark. While the indenture of 1575 refers to ‘such of the parish as then shall be present’ to identify them properly, they were in fact townsmen. Although it required the accounts to be examined between Easter and Whitsuntide, for convenience it was done when the Wardens changed at the Court Leet.

Despite this greater care over the appointment and accounts, by 1625 three of the four bridges were in a bad state. Wardens had not repaired them for about 19 years, their income having been spent on ‘town works’, that is especially the paving. Perhaps the state of the bridges was not serious at first so they could be ignored; as a result when it became serious later the new Wardens did not know they were responsible. In 1626, following an order at Kent Assizes, the County began renovations, charging the lathe of Aylesford, the part of Kent in which Tonbridge lay. This was challenged on the grounds that the Wardens should pay. In 1633 a Commission of Charitable Uses was issued to consider the issue. After careful collection of evidence from mainly elderly townsfolk and other people the Lord Keeper decided against the Wardens, and they finally accepted his Decree in 1637. From the time the accounts restart in 1662 bridge maintenance is part of their work.

The Wardens are known from 1571 to 1636 (Appendix 1). Most common among them were mercers, butchers and yeomen; there was also a husbandman, shoemaker, two blacksmiths, a tailor, a cutler, a joiner, two clothiers and a weaver, with just two professional men (a land surveyor and an attorney) and two gentlemen. The presence of the gentlemen, professional people, yeomen with just one husbandman, and mercers and butchers suggest that wealthier and probably more prominent men held the office. The mercers with their large stock were typical of market towns and the butchers played a large part in the cattle trade between the Weald and London. Some were highly assessed on lands or goods in the lay subsidies; thus Nicholas Swayland, Warden from 1571 to 1574, was assessed at £8 8s. on goods in 1572 and £5 in 1589; the yeoman Richard Pratt, Warden from 1610 to 1613, was the son of another Richard, a butcher, who died in 1592, assessed on lands at the large figure of £15, one of the richest men of his time. Some of the Wardens left considerable sums in their will, in which they often mention servants, another mark of prosperity; occasionally there is evidence of more than one Warden in a family. Thomas Everest, a prosperous butcher who made a will in 1598 leaving £60 to a daughter when she was 20 or on marriage and mentioning £40 owed by a son-in-law, with tiny legacies to two female and a male servant and a former female servant, had a son Thomas, again a butcher, who was a Warden in 1616-19 and another son-in-law, the yeoman John Holmden, a Warden in 1622-25. The majority were townsmen in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and at least some of the farmers lived nearby. Naturally they held other local offices. Eight have been traced among the incomplete list of churchwardens, despite the fact that the latter were drawn from the whole vast parish of 15,378 acres. As in Edenbridge, the Wardens were among the leading men, who in corporate towns would have been mayors.⁶

From 1662 to 1760 they remained among the more prosperous parish-ioners (Appendix 2). Yet they are more exclusively townsmen, with just two farmers (in 1726-32), probably the result of the further growth of the town from about 600 people in 1664 to about 900 by 1740 allowing a wider choice. Town and country society were beginning to separate, townsmen who were part-time farmers becoming less important. As the four bridges and paving lay in the town it was natural that townsmen should handle repairs even though the sources of their income sometimes came from outside it. There were fewer butchers before the 1720s and none thereafter, which may again mean greater choice. The expanding trade locally and with London was reflected in the number of shopkeepers. Other tradesmen and craftsmen included four or five blacksmiths, two or three carriers and a saddler, which shows the importance of riding and horse-drawn transport and the modest use of horses in farming despite ploughing with oxen. There was a tailor, felmonger, two threadtwisters (both named Strange), a tallow chandler, an innkeeper and a victualler. Again the few professional men as Wardens reflect their small number. There was a scrivener in 1662-65, apothecary in 1691-94, and at least one attorney, in 1729-32. Robert Weller, a Warden from 1741 to 1744, was a barrister and considerable landowner although he lived on the northern edge of the town. Hooper the scrivener put his savings into houses and neighbouring meadowland over a long period.⁷

The large size of the houses occupied by most of the Wardens is a sign of their prosperity. Of the four Wardens known in the 1660s Hooper lived in a house with three hearths, George Petley, described as a gentleman who may have been an attorney one with nine hearths, a mercer, Stephen Putland one with four hearths, and a blacksmith, Nicholas Brookshead, one with two hearths, in 1664. All except Brookshead lived in houses which were much larger than the average; Petley’s dwelling of perhaps 16 or 18 rooms was the third largest out of 141 in the town. Wills again often reveal some wealth, if not its precise size. The butcher Thomas Oliver, Warden for the exceptional five-year period of 1686-91, died in 1714 when he was described as ‘the elder’ as his younger son was also Thomas. He was able to divide real estate among three daughters and two sons while leaving his wife an ample life income. The apothecary John Wood, Warden from 1691 to 1697, had settled lands and left £100 to his granddaughter at 21 or on marriage when he died in 1700. Again they were sometimes churchwardens, such as Robert Weller in 1728. Out of 52 Wardens between 1662 and 1760 22 held that office. Many of them were overseers of the poor for the town, surveyors of the highways, constables, market and other officials and jurymen for the Courts Baron and Leet of Tonbridge.⁸

The account book mentions nine fields. In 1729 the Wardens estimated the total size as 37 acres, three roods and 27 perches. More modern surveys show it as being 39 acres, three roods and 12 perches or 16.12ha. Almost two-thirds were arable, the rest being meadow where ploughing was always prohibited on payment of a penal rise in rent on account of its normally accepted higher value, a corn crop robbing the soil of some of its nutrients.⁹

The only land north of the River was two acres of meadow half a mile west of the town referred to as ‘by Brights Fay’, or ‘by the Cottons’ (and later Brightfriars Meadow). The most westerly field, ‘at Haisden’, also meadow, of six acres, was a mile south-west of the town. Three parcels named ‘Lodge Oak Land’, of which one was meadow, adjoined two lanes two-thirds of a mile south­-east of the town. They were usually let together, the Wardens selling their oak trees in the later period. The largest field comprised nine acres of arable about the same distance from the town. Finally a few hundred yards to the north nearer the River were three parcels of arable and meadow named ‘Postern Hoath’.

There were four, five or six tenants at a time until 1735, after which one leased all the Lands. They were tradesmen, craftsmen, professional men and naturally farmers. Occasionally there was a widow who took over her former husband’s land. A few were former or future Wardens, or their relations. Sometimes farmers had holdings near the parcel or parcels which they rented, such as Hugh Banes of Hayesden in the 1720s, whose widow took a new lease on his death in 1729. The Weller family rented three parcels between 1686 and 1735 as the longest occupants. Tenancies began at Michaelmas after the harvest, at the beginning of the farming year. Between the 1570s and 1630s and in 1662 leases were for three years; the term was 12 years from 1665 to 1711, the last being reduced; in 1720, 1729, 1735 and 1750 it was 15 years, the first two 15-year terms being shortened. The tenants benefited from the longer leases, more like the typical 21-year leases which were the common term on other estates; probably they helped the Wardens to raise the rents. The conditions of letting were simple. The tenant also signed a bond for £50 in the early seventeenth century, and presumably from the 1660s; the timber was reserved for the Wardens just as normal agricultural leases kept it for the owner; the tenant was to look after the property, or ‘not to streepe or waste the land’, a condition either stated or implied in usual lettings.¹⁰

The rents from the Town Lands gave the Wardens most of their money. No fines (that is single initial payments) were levied when tenancies began, as on many lay and church estates. There were minor occasional charges for the upkeep of the Lands. Thus in 1719 a footbridge was mended in ‘Mr Vanderlure’s field’, Vanderlure being the tenant of Bright Fay meadow; between 1720 and 1723 4s. was paid ‘for making and hanging one new gate for Mr Weller’s Towne lands’, and rails and posts were also replaced. While a little of the timber from the Lodge Oak lands was used to repair the clappers, dipping places and bridges, they sold timber, the tan (bark used in tanning) and the toppings. The sums were often small. For example in 1622 the retiring Warden Henry Allen had received £27 6s. 6d. ‘whereof for tan 11s and 16s 6d for wood and the rest for rents’, the wood presumably being cuttings. When an oak tree was felled, the bark was ‘flawed’, that is flayed or stripped off and bundled into six-foot pieces or ‘fathoms’ called ‘tan’. It was used for treating leather in tanning vats. On account of nearby woods tanners existed among the townsmen throughout the period, working downstream of the bridges to take advantage of the prevailing west wind to keep the offensive smell away from the town. Because of its size London was a huge market for leather. The later Wardens had the pollard wood cut and sold by the cord, like the owners of coppices, Tonbridge parish still being heavily wooded in the eighteenth century. Sizeable sums were occasionally recorded from selling timber. In 1699 three trees were sold for £5, in 1709 an exceptionally big one fetched £2 7s. 6d. and in April 1749 60 were sold for £75, equal to a doubling of the income of the Wardens for 1747-50. Of course they had to pay for the work of preparing these materials. In 1719 they paid ‘Edwd Hilman and Wm Curd for 2 days & a half work felling and flawing of timber’ 9s. 2d., and ‘2 servts three days hewing of timber & other work’ 12s. A few small sums came from selling road stone which was presumably surplus to their present needs, and for work done for the parish highways. Thus the accounts for 1717-20 included ‘recd by rubbidge Stones left in paving the bridges: 7s’.

The annual pound owing to the lord of the manor known as St Andrews Aid was paid out of the rents. The land tax was mostly paid by the tenants as a deduction from their rents, between the 1690s and 1735, and occasionally they made other payments. In February 1716 Richard Bennet, a husbandman, paid £2 16s. rent, having deducted 4s. for land tax, and in March Robert Wright paid £2 11s. 10d. having taken off 8s. land tax and 2d. bridge tax. In the 1570s an average figure of about 6s. 8d. an acre may have been an economic rent, even though some of the Lands were meadow. However, although rents rose a little until the 1630s, with a peak of nearly £19 between 1616 and 1622 (see Table 1), they do not show the effects of inflation, with normal rents rising at least two or three times In 1625 arable land near the town was valued at 10s. an acre and meadow at 26s. 8d., while the Lands were let at an average of about 8s., then at about 7s. an acre. As the incoming Wardens granted the three-year leases, it is likely that the almost constant rents were a favour, that is, a form of patronage. This is despite the fact that there was said to be an auction of sorts, with the Wardens being charged with getting the best price at a public meeting. This comment must be taken as a formality. Institutional estates such as those belonging to bishops or chapters often did not pay an economic rent. A favour is suggested in the comment on 10 November 1616: ‘memd. that Thomas Carr recanted and would not take the parcell of land according as he had taken it: therefore … he was releassed with an intendent he should never bee admitted to hire in this kind and of the said land’. Rents were a little higher between the 1660s and 1720s. Then they rose about 50 per cent to 1760. While general rent levels increased only slightly over the century, those of the Town Lands stayed below the real value. This was despite the holding of public auctions and much longer leases. Presumably leases by the Wardens were a privilege for respected and prosperous local people. As has been seen they were the men who bore the burden of public office.¹¹

The rents were usually fixed at a rate which paid for the work which the Wardens believed was necessary, probably after discussion with some of the leading townspeople. From the 1660s retiring Wardens left their successors a small or tiny surplus. There was one extreme case: in 1732-35 James Dejovas and William Wells received £70 12s. 6d. and spent only £33 17s. 6d.; however their successors John Scoones and Richard Johnson had an income of £72 6s. which with the surplus they took over allowed them to spend £109 9s., leaving the accounts balanced at the end of their term (see Appendix 3). Normally the two Wardens divided the rents so they could both make payments. In 1686-91 Thomas Oliver received £48 15s. 6d. and spent £42 6s., Edward Overy having £49 6s. and paying out £38 18s. 7d. They split the types of work between them and both handled large and small tasks. Oliver’s biggest bills were for stones at 6s. a load from Thomas Baldwin and William Coppinger for £15 18s. and paviors at 2½d. a square yard at £11 10s. 6d., and his tiniest two at 2s. for felling two trees and digging a sawpit, for the clappers; Overy’s largest was for stones to the same men at £15 18s. again and paving at £11 19s. 11d., and the smallest 3s. for ‘taking stones out of two rivers’, that is, branches of the River. While the number of payments made by Wardens naturally depended on whether they served a three- or five-year term, the amount of work they undertook also varied. The most striking case of this was in the 1730s: Dejovas and Wells together paid 12 men between 1732 and 1735; their successors made 38 payments to 28 people. Sometimes they are not dated, as between 1686 and 1691 and 1732 and 1735. When dates were stated they were well spread over the terms, allowing the Wardens to spend rents as they were received. George Hooper and Thomas Orton made payments in summer and winter between 1698 and 1701, while Scoones and Johnson confined them to the winter, especially January, between 1736 and 1739, as though they were giving work when other types of construction paused on account of the weather.

The first charge on the Wardens’ funds was the maintenance of the four most southerly bridges, that is, those over the three middle streams, described as ‘dead water’ in 1626, and what was regarded then as the main river. The northern Great Bridge over the Castle or mill stream was the responsibility of the lord of Tonbridge manor and after 1660 of the County. South of it the land was several feet lower than it is today. The water level over the mill stream was kept up by an artificial bank maintained by the occupant of the Town Mill downstream to the east.

The humped-back bridges to the south reared over the streams in quick succession. All were stone arches, originally 11ft wide, being widened in stages until by 1777 the width was about 17ft. The crown of the first, known by the 1750s as ‘the Logerheads Bridge’, lay about 30 yards from the foot of the Great Bridge, that of the second 50 yards beyond, and that of the third 70 yards still further; finally, after 55 more yards, there was an equally steep slope to the crown of the fifth or Lower Bridge of two arches.

The Wardens maintained by the former main stream a stage or platform of stone and timber known as a ‘dipping place’ or ‘washing place’. A second dipping place by the Great Bridge was at least intermittently cared for in the eighteenth century. Carts were driven into the water here to allow the cattle to drink and to tighten the joints of the cart wheels. The townspeople cleaned clothes and materials and drew water for boiling, although drinking water came from wells. The ground between the bridges regularly flooded and would have been impassable in winter but for the clappers. Lying at the lowest point between the fourth bridge and Lower Bridge, in the 1630s the clappers were 100ft long and 3ft wide. By 1719 there were clappers, probably short, at the Great Bridge. They were also looked after by the Wardens.

Their other main responsibility – when money was available – was paving part of the High Street, which ran from north to south and was at least three-quarters of a mile long. North of the Great Bridge it rose gently to the top of the town. After 110 yards it widened to about 22 yards in the Market Place, where a short road from the Castle entered from the west, and a longer East Lane came in opposite. Then the High Street narrowed only a little for about 110 yards to a junction with Church Lane from the east and the Back lane opposite. Houses were contiguous along both sides of these sections of the High Street, though scattered along East and Back Lanes. For nearly 600 yards to the north houses which were mainly not contiguous lay on both sides of the road as far as the junction with the road from Sevenoaks and London. South of the Lower Bridge the street of about six to eight yards width ran for about 150 yards to the junction of the road from Rye and Hastings with the road from due south; there were scattered houses along the whole stretch south of the Great Bridge except between the fourth bridge and the Lower Bridge.

The bridges were often damaged in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries because of the carriage of iron from Wealden ironworks to Chatham and London, and throughout the time from growing traffic between Rye or Hastings and London. Their repair was sometimes costly. The first evidence for work on bridges is for 1598-1601, when Edward Clarke was Warden. In 1633 his daughter Anne Deane said that there was a hole ‘as broad as a bushel’ in the Lower Bridge, with one of its arches being likely to fall, and her father mended it. The bridges then fell into disrepair for about 25 years as the Wardens neglected them. After the County began paying for them in 1625, a report was made a year later. Of the middle three, each of one arch, the second and the fourth were almost entirely ruined, both costing £50 to repair. The middle one was in a reasonable state and would cost only £6 13s. 4d. The Lower Bridge was said to have been newly made and almost finished for as much as £120.

The accounts from the 1660s show that small sums were often spent on stones, sand, lime and even bricks and using them to mend the bridges. The arches, ends, walls, coping and the roadway had to be maintained, though the type of work was often not specified. In 1698 the Warden George Hooper paid ‘for picking and carriage of 2 load of stones, small stones laid upon the bridges’ 4s. Several Wardens spent nothing on the bridges, others spent £2 or £3, while those for 1717-20, 1747-50 and 1750-53 spent over £10. Between 1692 and 1697 all four bridges were overhauled by a mason, Thomas Page, when John Wood and Thomas Johnson were Wardens. The second bridge cost £9 13s. 9d., the third £13 11s. 7d., the fourth £18 5s., and the Lower Bridge £26 3s. 6d., totalling £67 13s. 10d.; the work is not described apart from the mention of the sides of the third and fourth bridges. Perhaps the raising of the rents from £16 15s. to £20 in 1689 may have encouraged the work, or the rents were increased to help pay for it. If these repairs are excluded aggregate expenditure on bridges was a tiny proportion of the total, perhaps eight or ten per cent.

In 1598 the washing place at the Lower Bridge was furnished with a stone wall and steps and a platform of wood, all part of the bridge structure and regarded as a necessity by the townsfolk. As the Warden responsible was Edward Clarke again he was clearly prepared to assume an active role. ‘One Goodhugh was the master workman employed therein’, presumably with two or three journeymen or apprentice craftsmen and labourers. It is not clear whether the platform continued to be protected by a stone wall, but there are many later references to repairs to posts and rails and a timber platform. In November 1670 the washing facility was enclosed. David Sherlock and his son were paid £3 7s. 4d. ‘for felling, hewing and framing the washing place and mending the clappers at 3s. 4d. per day and 8d. for work over one night’. The platform was periodically rebuilt. In 1741 the carpenter William Brissenden received £1 12s. 2d. ‘for new making the stage at the dipping place’. As this last item suggests, the Wardens regarded their occasional work at the horsewash at the Great Bridge in the eighteenth century as of secondary importance, though it had existed from at least the 1550s.¹²

The clappers were long thick oak planks laid on stumps held in place with ironwork and partly railed. By the early eighteenth century the joints were reinforced by iron plates as large as 18 x 6in., with ‘dogs’ to fasten the timbers together. Dogs were square iron bars shaped like goalposts, the ends being sharpened to drive them into the timbers which were to be held together. Again there are frequent small payments for maintenance. In 1665 7s. 4d. was spent on seven stumps, a five foot plank ‘and mending the clappers’. The Wardens between 1681 and 1686, Edward Kent and Robert Wybarne, paid William Johnson, who was probably a joiner, £13 11s. 6d. for repairs, and 18s. on ‘ironwork about the clappers’. They did not receive such major attention again, naturally causing less expenditure than the bridges. In the eighteenth century small works were done on the clappers by the Great Bridge, such as in 1719 ‘one days work hanging the gate and mending the clappers at the Great Bridge’ for 4s. One or two private walkways ran alongside the public clappers or extended them, one being noted in 1703 as belonging to a shop.

The other main responsibility of the Wardens until at least the 1630s whenever money was available was paving about six yards wide, that is, broad enough for two wagons or carts to pass each other, between the market place and Church Lane in the centre of the High Street. In 1634 it was said to have existed since 1580. While travellers through the town naturally used the whole length of the High Street, it was the part most used by townspeople as it linked the market and the Church. At this time the High Street was said not to be otherwise paved except for ‘divers ancient pavements’, pathways claimed to have dated from the fifteenth century linking the adjoining houses with central paving. If this comment is correct, there were stones laid down the centre of part of the street long before its more formal paving of the last quarter of the sixteenth century, which may have been new work by the Wardens as the money became available. The only other paving by the Wardens before the 1630s were the four bridges, which presumably involved their approaches, especially as they provided the clappers. There was no stonework in the stretch of the High Street between the market place and the River and along East Lane (that is, East Street). There is no evidence whether they were paved before the 1750s. While from the 1660s paving is often noted, such as the reference to the payment to John Carter in April 1667 of £7 ‘in part for paving 1146 yards at 3d per yard’, they do not mention the position of the work. It was noted first between the market place and the River in 1760, and along East Lane in 1761. However as it was only from the later 1750s that there was a general tendency to name locations, including paving between the market place and Church lane, and south of the Great Bridge, one cannot be certain from this evidence that it had not been done before in these places.

Wardens and leading townsmen from the 1660s to the mid-eighteenth century may have been deterred from undertaking permanent new work by the terms of the Decree of 1635 which had been accepted (see above). Once, in 1738, the Wardens were told at the examination of their accounts that work on a causeway costing 16s. 6d. must not be a precedent. Some of the square measurements suggest the paving at one time was several hundred yards long, if the width was six yards, or less among the bridges. The largest square measurement noted was 2,284 yards between 1681 and 1686, suggesting a length of 381 yards, or more. This may plausibly represent approximately both the distance between the market place and Church Lane, and the approaches to the four bridges, except where clappers had to be used. In only two cases, being in 1736 and 1738 when funds were exceptionally large, does the unusually dear price of 4d. per square yard suggest new paving. Most of the paving by the Wardens from the 1660s was probably frequent repaving; this is suggested by a comment on maintenance in the early seventeenth century. In 1633 Thomas Roades of Maidstone, a paviour aged about sixty, said that repairs were often done, ‘once evry three years in places necessary’. He had paved over all the bridges ‘and twice over some of them’.

A few items were for tasks not on the High Street. In 1667 the tiny bridge called Wichenden stile which lay to the east of the lower High Street was paved and mended with the clappers for the relatively small sum of 18s. 9d. In 1699 the causeway ‘in Mill Lane’, which lay in East Street where it crossed the medieval ditch (or ‘fosse’) was paved for 15s. However these works may have been done on these occasions just because the cost was small. On the other hand there was one instance of the Wardens widening their duties, though not to the extent of the Edenbridge Trustees. In 1702 a brick ‘cage’ (or lock-up) was built by the Wardens in Back Lane (later Bank Street); Mr Thomas Weller supplied 2,200 bricks costing £1 19s. 6d. and 1,200 tiles at 19s., both with their carriage, and ‘60 corners, 25 gutters and three ridge tiles’ at 8s. 5d.; for ‘doorcase, window and eves boards’ for £1 6s. they received timber measuring 214 by 50ft. Thus materials alone cost £4 12s. 11d. Probably this unprecedented work was regarded as of great immediate importance. It is hard to believe that the money was spent for this purpose when sections of main road were in pressing need of paving. Perhaps the fact that the High Street north of the Great Bridge has a marked slope which drained water by a gutter down the middle may explain the relatively late paving of parts of it.

The accounts name the location of paving work from the later 1750s. Although stones continued to be spread on existing work, between 1756 and 1759 the whole length was paved 15 or 18ft wide between the Lower Bridge and the Turnpike Gate by the Angel Inn about 150 yards distant. As the cost was 4d. a square yard new work is indicated. Just north of the School broken stones were laid between 1756 and 1759. Next year the Wardens began new paving north of Church Lane by ‘laying stones in ye road near the Red Lyon’. The paving in East Lane and between the market place and the River at the same time has already been mentioned. However, increased expenditure on paving which is not described began between 1744 and 1747. One of the reasons was that money available for paving rose permanently in the mid-1740s, and income increased from £25 to £31 in 1750; whether the rise was made to make more work possible or the Wardens found themselves with more money which they needed to spend, one cannot be certain. The other factor was cheaper materials by the mid-1740s. Higher expenditure in the next ten years was partly to enhance the quality of existing work such as edging it with shallow depressions or gutters of stone in 1750 and mending causeways, which is stated. However probably much of it was on unspecified new work such as perhaps the paving of East Lane or the road between the market place and the River. All the time traffic through Tonbridge between London, Rye and Hastings and Tunbridge Wells was continuing to grow, making road improvement more and more pressing.

From time immemorial townsmen in England were expected to pave in front of their houses to the middle of the street. In practice it was partly or never done by them. Instead it was taken over by a trust such as the Town Wardens or, if the town was a borough, by the corporation, again drawing income from houses and land. Thus Chichester corporation before 1575 paved the market-places and main streets which had been ‘very mierie, and full of watrie’; unusually it obtained an Act of Parliament to compel householders in the rest of the town to pave in front of their dwellings. Non-corporate towns without trusts sometimes found trade and travelling hindered. In the 1790s Hasted wrote of Cranbrook: ‘there is but a very small part of it paved, from the market-place eastward, which was begun in 1654, being done through mere necessity; the deepness and mire of the soil before, being not only a great hindrance to the standing of the market people, but to the passing of all travellers in general’. It may have been done by adjoining shopkeepers and householders, by prosperous local gentry and farmers, or by the parish highway surveyors appointed since the act of 1555. Cranbrook lacked a trust or corporation and much of the street was not naturally drained. Even some boroughs, such as St Albans where the corporation as usual owned real estate, did not pave their market place and principal streets. One must assume that the ground was firm and well drained. By contrast sometimes more than one authority were active in a town, at least spasmodically. In Tonbridge the records of the Court Leet, which survive from 1689, suggest that a town surveyor also had a responsibility. He is mentioned in connexion with several causeways. Thus at the first recorded meeting on 2 October a causeway ‘in Lurkpool against the Almshouses’ just off the High Street was said to need repair by ‘the surveyor of the town’; he was to do it within five months on pain of a 5s. fine, the normal means of ensuring the defaulter made amends. As causeways crossed ditches or low-lying land they particularly needed maintenance. Presumably the surveyor was a Court Leet official as there is no other reference to him in the records.¹³

‘Paving’ in this period meant a surface which had been strewn and strengthened with stones which were then stamped or rammed into the clay. Wardens from the 1660s bought tools called ‘rammers’ several times. Occasionally the type of stone was altered. In 1633 Roades of Maidstone said that formerly the Wardens used small stones, but lately larger ones. As he was used for Tonbridge paving the much larger town may have served as the example in this respect. In 1700 two sizes, described as ‘stones’ and ‘small stones’, were bought from different suppliers. In 1719 ‘grett stones’ were used, probably rag, good quality stones. They were laid over the bridges to give an irregular but tight surface. Today they would be regarded as cobblestones. Several times stones were described as ‘spread’, presumably laid on top of existing paving. While a Warden between 1625 and 1628 referred to ‘ripping up and amending places where the pavements were decayed’, one cannot tell how often the practice of excavation before repaving occurred from this single mention of it. Most of the paving was overlaid with gravel, the amounts bought suggesting that the quantity was considerable. In 1667 185 loads were bought when the 1,146 square yards were paved; in June 1755 purchases were 35 tons of stones and 43½ tons of gravel, and in December they were 64 tons of stones and 31 tons of gravel.

One may analyse the charges involved in the paving process between the 1660s and the 1740s. The cost of paving itself was considerable, though often much less than the stone. Thus in 1686­-91 Thomas Oliver and Edward Overy spent £23 10s. 5d. on it, or 31.3 per cent of the total of £75 2s. 7d., the materials totalling £49 2s. 2d., or 65.3 per cent, leaving £2 10s. for unspecified workmen’s expenses. Stones were always more costly than gravel, the former in 1686-91 being priced at £35 0s. 8d. (46.7 per cent) and the latter £14 1s. 6d. (18.7 per cent).

The outlay on stone depended on where it was mined or picked, trans-port being the major charge. The stone itself was relatively cheap. When Culverden Quarry near Tunbridge Wells Common, four miles south of the bridges, supplied 24 loads of stone in 1667, the carrier John Basset charged 4s. and the landowner only 6d. a load. In 1701 Will Hartridge was paid as much as 7s. 3d. a load for the carriage of 26 loads from Ightham, six miles to the north. The previous year 7s. 6d. a load was charged for another 26 loads, and 7s. for 10 loads of small stones, presumably from similar distances. In 1694 6s. a load was paid for stone from Roughway, four and a half miles to the north. The passage from Ightham and Roughway was along narrow muddy lanes. By far the nearest source, and hence the cheapest, was the ruins of Tonbridge Castle. In September 1665 the accounts record: ‘paid Mr Weller [the tenant] for 48 court load of stones had out of the Castle £2 8s. 0d., paid John James for carriage thereof £1 4s. 0d.’; the stones cost 1s. a load and the transport 6d. In 1667 26 loads cost 2s. 6d. a load. Though the accounts are missing for the 1670s, there is no further recorded purchase; perhaps the owner forbad more sales in case he considered a partial restoration of buildings. While another nearby source was the River, such stone was soft, being quickly crushed to mud. In wet weather it washed away and when dry it crumbled to dust.

By comparison with stone gravel was often very cheap, coming from local pits. In March 1700 John Arrows was paid £1 5s. for gravel from Portmansfield near the north edge of the town and John Wells £1 for carrying 40 loads of gravel and some stones and ‘rubbish’ [probably broken stones], that is, 6d. a load. Later it was more expensive probably because it came from further afield. In the years 1711-14 it cost between 1s. 2d. and 2s. 6d. a load, 2s. in 1732-35 and in September and October 1745 five loads cost 2s. 6d. a load.

Paving was transformed by the opening of the River to navigation by the Medway Company in 1741, with a wharf just below the Great Bridge. Good quality Ragstone and gravel was delivered much more cheaply, 4s. 6d. being paid for the stone and 1s. for gravel in the 1750s. Thus in October 1754 70 tons of stones and 102 tons of gravel cost £20 17s. 0d. at these prices. The contrast with the price of stone supplied overland at the same time is shown by two purchases in May and July a few months later of what was good quality Ragstone: ‘pd Thos Eliot for fetching two load of stones from Prats Quarry 0: 10: 0’ and ‘pd George Pratt for two load of sanston to mend ye Lower Bridge 0: 16: 0’. As has been seen Wardens were able to buy in larger quantities.

In many of the accounts the cost of individual workmen is not stated, payments being described as for work, such as carrying stone, paving the street or mending the clappers. When wages are stated, they were paid on a daily basis, which was the usual custom. Skilled workmen such as carpenters, joiners, masons, bricklayers and smiths earned more than labourers. Between 1665 and 1753 craftsmen were paid 2s. a day. Amounts received by the unskilled varied, being 12d. in 1665 and 1695, 18d. in 1702, 16d. in 1723 and 14d. in the 1750s. A boy was paid 8d. in 1665, youths normally earning less than adults. Workmen also benefited from food and drink especially when heavy work was involved; in 1671 Warden George Petley recorded that after paying £9 5s. for the transport of 47 loads of stone he had paid 19s. 7d. on ‘bread and beer for the carriers’, beer being the common safe and nutritious drink. Craftsmen worked on their own, used relations with them, or had, one, two or three apprentices and labourers. In November 1670 the carpenter David Sherlock and his son were paid £3 7s. 4d. ‘for felling hewing and framing the washing room and mending the clappers at 3s 4d per day and 8d for work over one night’, thus cutting down one or two trees, shaping planks and slabs as well as joining them. At the same time the sawyer James Sherlock and his brother Richard, another carpenter, prepared wood for the clappers for £1 7s., a piece-rate payment. On 6 December 1699 John Sherlock, again a carpenter, worked seven days and his man six days ‘at the Great Bridge and felling the timber’, probably for the clappers there, earning £1 5s. The carriage of stone and gravel involved a carrier, and paving a craftsman, each working with one or two assistants. In 1694 Nicholas Sylvester was paid £11 11s. for paving 1,106 yards, paying his men himself, 2s. 6d. being given to ‘his servants’ as a gratuity, with bread and beer for 19s. 2d. The Wardens used numerous workmen between 1662 and 1760, often only once, earning mostly between several shillings and a few pounds. Despite the importance of the tasks, they were necessarily small employers.¹⁴

The maintenance of bridges was essential for both local and long distance trade in early modern England. Those at Tonbridge lay halfway between London and the Channel coast, being the only significant river crossing along the most important road across Kent and East Sussex after Watling Street in north Kent. While the bridges at Maidstone and Canterbury were maintained by their respective corporations, at Tonbridge which was not a borough four of the five bridges were in the care of the Wardens. The clappers eased crossing at all times and made it possible when the River flooded. The dipping places served both townspeople and travellers. The paving south of the Great Bridge crossed low-lying, muddy land which would have developed deep ruts and potholes without it. Between the market place and Church Lane it symbolised the importance of the town centre. With the Court Leet which controlled market trading and handled nuisances for the manor of Tonbridge the Wardens helped to fill the gap left by the absence of a corporation. Further while the parish and its officials handled the Church, the poor and the rest of the roads, as the work of the Wardens was the responsibility of townspeople like the manor it encouraged the cohesion of its society as distinct from that of the parish.

acknowledgement

Sydney Simmons commented on a draft of this paper; he gave the author ample access to the MSS in his custody and his knowledge of technical matters such as the nature of the paving was invaluable.

endnotes

¹ Well documented are two of the numerous Suffolk trusts. The Nayland feoffees in being from 1550, many of whom were wealthy clothiers, owned 21 properties formerly belonging to a medieval gild, the income from which was spent on the church, charities, poor relief and even town administration. In 1523 a farm was given to feoffees for Abell’s bridge, the rents being used for its repair in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. See R. Knox, ‘The Origins and Development of the Nayland Feoffees’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, xxxvii, part 3 (1991), 225-33.

² [Footnotes are given at the end of the paragraph.] This paper is based on the first account book (1574-1760) in the Wardens MSS in the custody of Tonbridge Town Wardens and on present loan to Mr Sydney Simmons; and an eighteenth-century copy in the Centre for Kentish Studies: Gordon Ward Collection (U442) Q7; the MSS also include a copy of a conveyance dated 18 September 1575, some mid eighteenth-century dockets and the second account book from 1761; references to these MSS are not separately noted in this text; the Clerk to the Wardens between 1947 and 1974, Mr Paul Baxter, ensured their safety when ownership changed; also S. Simmons, ‘The Work of the Town Wardens’, in C.W. Chalklin, ed., Georgian Tonbridge (Tonbridge, 1994), pp. 83-133, and ‘Introduction’, pp. 11-22; N. Yates and J.M. Gibson, eds, Traffic and Politics: the Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, A.D. 43-1993 (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 147; H.L Somers-Cocks and V.F. Boyson, Edenbridge (Edenbridge, 1912), pp. 230-38; K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London, 1992), p. 272.

³ British Library MS. Department Add. Ch. 45980. Dodekynden lay among the main group of Town Lands south-east of the town; its precise location is unknown.

⁴ The conveyance was a formal document intended to safeguard the estate, its custody by a succession of Wardens and the objects of the charity; some details were ignored if these basic features were not threatened.

⁵ National Archives E179/126/424; CKS Sydney MSS. (UI475) E24.

⁶ B. Wadmore, Some Details in the History of the Parish of Tonbridge (Tonbridge, 1900), p. 18, for list of churchwardens.

⁷ CKS Knocker Collection (U55) T456.

⁸ D. Harrington, S. Pearson and S. Rose, eds, Kent Hearth Tax Assessment, Lady Day 1664 (London and Maidstone, 2000), pp. 145-47.

⁹ The indenture has the formal figure of 30 acres in eight parcels.

¹⁰ CKS TR 2451/20/4. There is a gap in the accounts in the 1670s, and between 1662 and 1760 some information which one might reasonably expect to find, such as the signing of bonds, is absent.

¹¹ B.L MS. Department Harl. 77 Al and 2 and 7; NA State Papers Domestic (SP) 522/123. For rents drawn from a church estate, A. Thomson, ‘Winchester Cathedral: its Clergy and their Duties before and after the Interregnum Part II: the Business of the Cathedral Chapter’ Southern History, 27, 2005, pp. 1-23. An aid was a payment by a vassal to his lord: as St Andrews Day is at least a month later than the payment, the meaning is not clear, unless the payment had originally been on 30 November, and it was now done in October with other business for convenience.

¹² CKS DRb/Pwr12 f.345.

¹³ S. and B. Webb, English Local Government: Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes (1922), pp. 298-9, 311; F.H.W. Sheppard, ‘Street Administration in Chichester from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, XC (1952), 27-8; E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2nd edn. VII (1798), p. 91; J.T. Smith and M.A. North, eds, St Albans 1650-1700 (Hatfield, 2003), p. 7 and ch. 3; CKS U55 M386; there are no Tonbridge highway surveyors’ accounts before 1760.

¹⁴ CKS DRb/Pwr 25 f.490, U55 T483 (bd1.2); Tonbridge parish records (P371): parish clerk’s register, 1661-71.

Map 1 Tonbridge in the Seventeenth Century.

Map 2 Part of Tonbridge parish in 1799 showing the Town Lands (shaded). Scale 3 inches to one mile.

(From Georgian Tonbridge, p. 86.)

TABLE 1. TOTAL ANNUAL RENTS FROM THE TOWN LANDS

1571-98	£13 0s 10d	1662-65	£18
1598-1601	£15 13s.	1665-77	£17
1601-04	£13 15s. 6d.	1677-89	£16 15s.
1604-07	£12 15s. 4d.	1689-1700	£20
1607-10	£16 16s.	1701-11	£20
1610-13	£13 14s.	1711-14	£20
1613-16	£16 5s. 6d.	1714-17	£19
1616-19	£18 12s. 6d.	1717-20	£19 10s.
1619-22	£18 13s. 8d.	1720-29	£21
1622-25	£16	1729-35	£22
1625-28	£14 9s. 4d.	1735-50	£25
1628-31	£14 1s. 8d.	1751-65	£31
1631-34	£14 6s. 8d.
1634-37	£15 5s. 0d.

Appendix 1. The Town Wardens of Tonbridge 1571-1637

Date	Name	Occupation	Subsidy Assessment
1571	Henry Stubbersfield	Yeoman	1572 £3 3s. on goods
1571	Nicholas Swayland		1572 £8 8s. on goods
1574	Thomas Johnson	Shoemaker	1572 £5 6s. 8d. on lands
1574	William Harte	Yeoman	1572 £8 8s. on goods
1577	Thomas Harris	Butcher	1572 £8 8s. on goods
1577	Thomas Couchman	Yeoman	1572 £5 5s. on goods
1580	Thomas Chowne		1572 £6 6s. on goods
1580	George Oxley	Clothier	1572 £6 6s. on goods
1583	Robert Casinghurst
1583	John Rolfe	Innholder or Yeoman
1586	John Baldock	Mercer	1589 £3 on goods
1586	John Brooker	Husbandman	1589 £1 on lands
1589	Robert Newman	Mercer	1589 £3 on goods
1589	Nicholas Harris	Yeoman	1598 £4 16s. on lands
1592	Richard Seliard	Clothier	1589 £4 on goods
1592	Alexander Rottenbridge	Weaver	1589 £5 on goods
1595	George Bishop	Yeoman	1589 £4 on lands
1595	Thomas Pratt	Butcher or Yeoman	1589 £5 on goods
1598	Edward Clarke	Yeoman	1598 £1 4s. on lands
1598	Thomas Blundell
1601	Richard Johnson		1598 £2 8s. on lands
1601	William Harris*
1604	Richard Darrell	Mercer	1598 £5 13s. 4d. on goods
1604	Thomas Fisher	Cutler
1607	William Bartlett	Yeoman	1622 £4 on goods
1607	Thomas Roots	Butcher	1598 £2 8s. on lands
1610	Richard Pratt	Yeoman
1610	John Langham alias Collyn	Mercer	1598 £2 8s. on lands
1613	Thomas Webb	Gentleman	1598 £1 4s. on lands
1613	James Dicker	Mercer	1622 £4 on goods
1616	Thomas Everest	Butcher	1598 £6 16s. on goods
1616	William Roots	Butcher
1619	Henry Allen	Land surveyor	1622 £1 on lands
1619	Henry Gransden	Gentleman	1622 £3 on lands
1622	Gregory Rose		1622 12s. on lands
1622	John Holmden	Butcher or Yeoman
1625	George Chowne		1622 £1 on lands
1625	Robert Boardman	Blacksmith	1622 £3 on goods
1628	Richard Chowning	Scrivener
1628	George Putland	Blacksmith
1631	Daniel Pinckney	Joiner	1628 £1
1631	Anthony Paris**
1634	William Bartlett sen.	Butcher	1628 £4
1634	Thomas Everest sen.	Butcher	1628 £2

* There were four or five parishioners of this name in about 1600. **Tenant of house and 5 acre meadow, 1632: will of George Children.

Sources: Occupations: Prerogative Court of Canterbury: PROB 2 (wills), Centre for Kentish Studies. Rochester Diocesan Court: DRb/PWr/13-21 (wills), Knocker Collection (U55) T425, T456, T459, T480, T487, Gordon Ward Collection (U442) T104, U1108, T102, Dixon MSS (U1823/1) T20, Quarter Sessions MSS QM/SB, QMSRc, Sewers MSS (SM) AZ1.

Lay Subsidy assessments: National Archives: E179/126/424 (1572), E179/127/515 (1598), E179/127/572 (1622), E179/128/605 (1628): CKS U55 O23/1.

This evidence confirms the text in emphasising that the Wardens were drawn from the prosperous minority: under one-quarter of adult males left wills, and increasingly fewer men were assessed in the lay subsidies; assessments were becoming smaller, despite rapid inflation, so that early seventeenth-century figures are especially unrealistic; only a small minority of townspeople were assessed. Those taxed £5 or more before the 1590s were very prosperous.

Appendix 2. The Town Wardens 1662-1760

Date	Name	Occupation	Name	Occupation
1662	George Hooper	Scrivener	Nicholas Brookshead	Blacksmith
1665	George Petley	Gentleman	Stephen Putland	Mercer
1671	William Freeman	Victualler	Edward Moyce
There are pages cut out of the accounts in the 1670s
1681	Edward Kent	Gentleman	Robert Wyborne	Saddler
1686	Thomas Oliver	Butcher	Edward Overy	Mercer
1691	John Wood	Apothocary	Thomas Johnson	Tailor
1697	George Hooper	Gentleman	Thomas Orton	Carrier/currier
1703	John Putland	Mercer	Nicholas Shirley	Property owner*
1708	John Wood	Gentleman	Roger Strange	Threadtwister
1711	James Beecher	Gentleman	John Putland	Mercer
1714	Samuel Vandalure	Mercer	Thomas Abraham	Butcher
1717	John Brookstead	House owner**	George Sherlock	Carpenter
1720	Henry Cheesman	Blacksmith	Thomas Smyther
1723	William Muggredge	Gentleman	George Everest	Butcher
1726	William Johnson	Blacksmith /	Thomas Hollamby	Yeoman
1729	John Johnson	Carrier/Joiner	Thomas Scoones	Gentleman (attorney)
1732	James Dejovas	Mercer	William Wells	Yeoman
1735	John Scoones	Felmonger	Richard Johnson	House owner ***
1738	William Woodgate	Mercer	George Summerton	Blacksmith
1741	Robert Weller	Esq barrister	John Colegate	Mercer/shopkeeper
1744	Thomas Whiffen	House owner***	William Strange	Threadtwister
1747	John Wood	Gentleman	Samuel Mills	Mercer
1750	John Slater	Blacksmith	Richard Williamson	Innholder (The Bull)
1753	John Lines	Perukemaker	James Norris	Shopkeeper
1756	William Muggredge	Tallow chandler	William Dudgen	Maltster
1759	Edmund Dennis	Carrier	John Woodgate	Mercer

* A Tonbridge property owner: CKS U47/17 T79 ** A Tonbridge house-owner: Tonbridge Library: TU1 T12) *** A Tonbridge house-owner: CKS U55 M388. At least some of the gentlemen were attorneys.

Sources National Archives: PCC PROB2. CKS DRb/Pwr 26-35, DRa/Pwr 1-6; Weller-Poley MSS (U38) T20, T22; Kent Archaeological Society Collections (U47/17) T79, T95, T107, T114; U55 M388, U55 T425, T433, T450, T456, T457, T459, T497; Fane MSS (U282) T35; Courage and Barclay MSS (U612) T3, T5; Somerhill Additional MSS (U1109) T13, T49. Tonbridge Library TU1 T1/1, TU1 T12.

Appendix 3. Expenditure by the Town Wardens

Years	Cash available (£)	Pavings	Bridges	Clappers	Other	Surplus
1681-86	97	70	1	16	0	10
1686-91	98	76	1	4	0	17
1691-97	126	49	68	1	3	5
1697-03	120	93	5	2	7	13
1703-08	97	75	1	12	6	3
1708-11	59	43	12	0	1	3
1711-14	63	36	3	7	0	17
1714-17	70	59	0	0	26	-15
1717-20	56	26	11	1	4	14
1720-23	80	60	*	*	19	1
1723-26	64	52	3	0	1	8
1726-29	72	50	7	2	3	10
1729-32	74	46	*	1	23	4
1732-35	71	30	0	0	4	37
1735-38	109	101	2	4	2	0
1738-41	71	58	2	3	6	2
1741-44	73	49	3	3	3	15
1744-47	87	83	1	1	1	1
1747-50	146	87	11	*	11	37
1750-53	128	114	11	1	0	2
1753-56	95	77	2	*	12	4
1756-59	91	92	*	1	2	-4
1759-62	86	54	2	7	7	16

* indicates that some work may or may not have been done. The figures in this Table must be accepted as approximate.