Place:Little Chart, Kent, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Little Chart is a civil parish and small village, centred 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of the town of Ashford in Kent, England. The river flowing eastwards, passing a long mill pond and mill on its way, is the West Stour. Within the parish boundaries is the linear settlement village centre by the old water mill and two smaller neighbourhoods less than 500m east:

• Little Chart Forstal (the term forstal means the land in front of a farm and farmyard). Colloquially known as The Forstal, it is home to Little Chart Cricket Club.
• Rooting Street.

The secular property that would have had the highest grading of listed building in the parish, Surrenden Park, half in Pluckley parish, was owned by the Dering family for over 400 years; the family estate covered about four square miles of Kent. Part of their property was Calehill Park, to the north. Neither property now exists: Surrenden succumbed to fire in 1952; Calehill was demolished in 1951.

The original village church, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and the Holy Rood, was wrecked in 1944 by a V-1 flying bomb during World War II; it stood on a site further upstream from the village, near Chart Court. The new church is now within the village.

The Ford Paper Mill, named after the one-time ford over the Great Stour, has a long history, and is still in operation dealing in salvaged paper.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Little Chart was originally an ancient parish in the Calehill Hundred. Between 1894 and 1974 it was part of the West Ashford Rural District. Since 1974 the area is covered by the non-metropolitan Ashford District.

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.