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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Introduction to the Kent Domesday Survey - Page 181

   Eastry lest included the following hundreds :—Bevsberge (Bewsborough); Cornelist (Cornilo); Estrei (Eastry); Prestetune (Preston); and Wingeham (Wingham). The ‘Domesday Monachorum’ suggests also a hundred of Edesham (Adisham?) (habet hundred’ in se ipso).
   Limowarlest, the derivation of whose name may be from the river Limen rather than the royal vill, included, besides its more settled portion, a large district in the south-eastern part of the county, covering Romney Marsh and much of the weald where hundredal organization had probably not yet emerged, but where the countryside was still regarded as capable of forming denns or swine pastures for manors in the more settled regions. The hundreds included in Limowarlest were as follows :—Adilovtesbrige (Aloesbridge) ; Blackeborne, or Blaketone in the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ (Blackburn); Belicolt (Bircholt franchise) ; Estraites (Street) ; Fulchestan (Folkestone) ; Lamport (Langport) ; Moniberghe or Honiberge (Loningboroügh) ; Nevcerce (Newchurch) ; Oxenai (Oxney) ; Rovinden (Rolvenden) ; Selebrist (Selbrittenden) ; Stotinges (Stowting) ; Werde (Worth) ; and probably also Ham (Ham), and Hen (Hayne). The ‘Domesday Monachorum’ puts Saltwood in the hundred of Hede (Hythe), probably another form for the Domesday Hen.
   It will be noticed from these lists that the total number of hundreds in Kent in Domesday times was great; that some of the later hundreds, notably in the region of the weald, had not yet appeared, while other Domesday hundreds coalesced in later times to form larger units, and that therefore the general size was necessarily small, the hundred seeming sometimes to be merely a district drawn around some important place. Thus the later Bleangate was made up of the three hundreds of Reculver, Sturry, and Chislet, each including little more than one important place of the same name as the hundred.18  In like manner Folkestone, Sandwich, Dover, Rochester, and Canterbury were each a hundred, and, if the nomenclature of the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ be correct, Hythe also. Seasalter in the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ is said to be in no hundred. The large number of cases in which the name of the hundred corresponds with the name of the chief vill, which had usually once been a royal vill granted, as the Charters show, by an early king to the church, is probably indicative of the method of the early formation of a hundred round the vill. The ‘regions ‘ referred to in the Charters like those of Chart (Cert) and Eastry will be remembered.19  Both Chart and Eastry were later reckoned as hundreds.
   A glance at the Domesday map of Kent will show very clearly the third geographical characteristic of the county, namely, the strong contrast between thickly settled regions and the stretches of land almost unsettled. A similar contrast may be noticed in Sussex 20 where the weald lay almost untouched except by occasional outlying portions of southern manors.
   That marked peculiarity of the woodland of the county, which appears so clearly both in Saxon charters and also in the later 13th-century surveys, namely, its use as denes or swine pastures which were attached to manors situated sometimes at remote distances receives disappointingly little attention
   18  The archbishop’s manor of Norton is put in Reculver hundred (see p. 211). It probably lay near Northwood in Westgate hundred. For the identification of doubtful place names see note on ‘Domesday Monachorum.’
   19  Birch, op. cit. Nos. 191, 214, 254.
   20  See the map in the second volume of Domesday Studies.

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