Place:Snodland, Kent, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Snodland is a town in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. It lies on the River Medway, between Rochester and Maidstone, and approximately from central London. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 10,211.

Snodland was originally an ancient parish in the Larkfield Hundred of Kent. It was a civil parish in the Malling Rural District from 1894 until 1974. Since 1974 it has been part of the non-metropolitan Tonbridge and Malling District. Snodland had responsibility for the extra parochial area of Paddlesworth.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Paddlesworth from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"PADDLESWORTH, a hamlet in Snodland parish, Kent; 1¼ mile W of Snodland [railway] station. It formerly had a church, and was anciently a parish."

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

"Snoddingland" is first mentioned in a charter of 838 in which King Egbert of Wessex gave "four ploughlands in the place called Snoddingland and Holanbeorge" (Holborough) to Beornmod, the Bishop of Rochester. Since -ingland names are mostly derived from personal names, the name appears to refer to 'cultivated land connected with Snodd' or Snodda. The Domesday Book refers to it as "Esnoiland".

The first Roman advance in the conquest of Britain may have crossed the River Medway near Snodland, although there are other possible locations. The supposed crossing place is marked by a memorial on the opposite side of the river from Snodland, close to Burham. Near this spot, a ferry later carried pilgrims bound for Canterbury along the Pilgrims' Way.

Bishop Gundulph, at the end of the 11th century, built a palace at Halling, which was used by his successors until the 16th century.

Lime working had been carried out at Snodland for centuries, but expanded dramatically in the 19th century, as building boomed. The firm of Poynder and Medlicott began quarrying on the Snodland-Halling border in the early 19th century and the company was taken over by William Lee in 1846. Others followed and the last one was built in 1923 by W. L. H. Roberts at Holborough. Lime for building Waterloo and other London bridges came from the area.

The paper-making industry came to Snodland around 1740, when the May family built a mill which the Hook family took over in 1854. New manufacturing techniques and the coming of the railway in the 1850s improved paper production from five to 70 tons a week. Snodland's population doubled between 1840 and 1857. After the Medway Valley railway was opened on 18 June 1856, the village trebled in size between 1861 and 1881. As a result, the parish boundary was re-aligned in 1898 and again in 1988, both changes absorbing areas of Birling parish, known locally as "Lower Birling".

Snodland is now under a 10-year development plan by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council to redevelop and expand the Holborough part of Snodland. In 2005, Berkeley Homes began the construction of around 1,200 houses on the former Holborough Quarry.

Research tips

• Kent County Council Archive, Local Studies and Museums Service. James Whatman Way, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LQ. This incorporates the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone and the East Kent Archives Centre near Dover.
• Canterbury Cathedral Archives see the Archives web pages on the Canterbury Catherdral site.
• For information on the area around the Medway Towns, have a look at Medway Council's CityArk site.
• Ordnance Survey Maps of England and Wales - Revised: Kent illustrates the parish boundaries of Kent when rural districts were still in existence and before Greater London came into being. The map publication year is 1931. An earlier map of 1900 may also be useful. The maps blow up to show all the parishes and many of the small villages and hamlets. Maps in this series are now downloadable for personal use.
• Census records for Kent are available on FamilySearch, Ancestry and FindMyPast. The first site is free; the other two are pay sites but have access to microfilmed images. Steve Archer produced a very useful round-up of the available sources, but this information may not be up to date.
• Registration Districts in Kent for the period 1837 to the present. By drilling down through the links you can follow any parish through the registration districts to which it was attached.
• England, Kent, Parish Registers, 1538-1911 The full database from Kent Archives Office, Maidstone, has been available online from FamilySearch since June 2016.
• Kent had five family history societies (now only four):

• Kent FHS (serves the whole county)
• Folkestone & District FHS (serves the southeast corner)
• North West Kent FHS (serves the western area of present-day Kent)
• Tunbridge Wells FHS (ceased operation 31 Dec 2016; see North West Kent)
• Woolwich & District FHS (serves eastern sections of Greater London which were in Kent until 1966)

• Volume 2 of the Victoria County History of Kent (published 1926) is available online through the auspices of British History Online. It includes accounts of the early history of Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals, and of several sites now within the conurbation of London.
• Volume 3 of the Victoria County History of Kent (published 1932) This includes the text of, and the index to, the Kent Domesday survey. It has been provided by the Kent Archaeological Society.
• In place of the other volumes of the Victoria County History, British History Online has transcriptions of the numerous volumes of The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent by Edward Hasted (originally published 1797)
• English Jurisdictions 1851, a parish finding aid provided by FamilySearch, is particularly helpful in locating parishes in large ancient towns and cities like Canterbury.
• Kent Probate Records Numerous links provided by Maureen Rawson
• GENUKI lists other possible sources, however, it does not serve Kent so well as it does some other counties.