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Researches and Discoveries in Kent 1915-1919
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( 163 ) REVIEW. A Saunter through Kent with Pen and Pencil, Vol. XIII. By CHARLES IGGLESDEN. Ashford, 1919. AFTER a five years' interval, for which, it is scarcely necessary to state, the war is responsible, Mr. Igglesden resumes his Saunters through Kent. His latest volume, the thirteenth of the series, comprises five parishes, viz., Dymchurch, Aldington, Mersham, Sevington and Egerton. Concerning these the author, as before, presents a vast amount of miscellaneous information from written and printed records, tradition, local gossip and other sources, forming- a permanent record of much that is vanishing or already passed away. Not least interesting is the account of the smugglers of Aldington and the hard fate that befel those of them who had the ill-luck to be caught. As to the Petty Sessions at Dymchurch, it is agreeable to note how the barbarous severity of " justice " began to relax in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Thus in 1827 a man (ultimately transported) was condemned to death for stealing and killing one lamb; whereas ten years later another man who stole six sheep was not sentenced to death at all, but simply to transportation. Again, in 1828 a man was sentenced to death for the mere act of entering- a dwelling with intent to steal, whereas in 1830 a man, convicted of housebreaking, was only transported for ten years. A curious precedent for the removal of an old house is recorded at Sevington. In 1632 the timber-framed dwelling called " The Moat" was bodily taken down, removed and re-erected a quarter of a mile distant from its original site at Willesborough, where, disguised with a later stone front and renamed " Boys Hall," it still stands. N 2