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hand the farmers and landowners would attempt to reduce the claim as much
as possible. These two forces pulling against each other would surely
produce a truthful record. If they did not, then the mediating values
would draft a fair award. Always, the most important piece of evidence was
that observed in the field.32
In the tithe apportionments grassland is sometimes simply
described as ‘grass’, but more usually a finer classification into
pasture, down-land, meadow, marsh and saltings is employed. Invariably,
meadow is defined as mown grassland, its produce being expressed in
hundredweights per acre in the tithe files. Pasture, was land that was
grazed and was valued in shillings per acre or by the number of stock it
supported. The marshland classification is probably the least
satisfactory. Very often marshes were classified as pasture. These
inconsistencies can be partly explained by the fact that often marsh
grassland in Kent was not liable to tithe on produce but was subject to
some nominal modus, usually one shilling per acre. Therefore, it was
unnecessary to distinguish between various types of grassland as the modus
applied irrespective of the produce of the land. The reason for saltings
and downland being distinguished separately seems to be the much lower
charge they were expected to bear in some areas. In the north Kent parish
of Swanscombe, for example, four types of grassland were recognized. In
1843, there were 66 acres of pasture
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valued at 35 shillings an acre, 120 acres of meadow yielding 21 hundredweights,
which at three shillings a hundredweight was worth 63 shillings an acre,
whilst the pasturage of 80 acres of saltings was valued at only 20 shillings
an acre and that of 30 acres of downland at only 22 shillings an acre.33
Apart from these general difficulties, there are few problems
of interpretation peculiar to the Kentish apportionments. Some surveyors did
occasionally note combinations of land-use in one field. In Penshurst, for
instance, some tithe areas are described as meadow and arable, wood and
pasture, and arable and wood and hops. In the Cranbrook apportionment there
are no state of cultivation entries and in a few others descriptions of some
tithe areas have been omitted. Crops, apart from hops, are not detailed in
the Kent apportionments except for the occasional mention of sainfoin.
TITHE MAPS
The tithe maps of Kent were produced at all the usual scales,
but that of three chains to an inch is the most common. In detail, they vary
from the simplest, showing only the boundaries of tithe areas, to those
indicating the land-use of every field. Wood, hops, orchards and gardens
32 F. D. Hartley, The
agricultural Geography of the Chilterne c. 1840, unpub.lished University
of London M.A. thesis, 1953, 12.
33 P.R.O.
I.R.18/3830.
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