A lathe (

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

''lǽð'',

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''lestus'') formed an administrative country subdivision of the county of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, from the Anglo-Saxon period until it fell out of use in the early twentieth century. Etymologically, the word ''lathe'' may derive from a Germanic root meaning "land" or "landed possession", possibly connected with the Greek word ''latron'' ("payment").

List

By the late eleventh century the traditional area of West Kent comprised three lathes: * Lathe of Aylesford * Lathe of Milton * Lathe of Sutton while

East Kent Kent is a traditional county in South East England with long-established human occupation. Prehistoric Kent Kent has been occupied since the Lower Palaeolithic as finds from the quarries at Fordwich and Swanscombe attest. The Swanscombe sku ...

comprised four lathes: * Lathe of Borough * Lathe of Eastry * Lathe of Lympne * Lathe of Wye Of these, Sutton-at-Hone and Milton sometimes ranked as half-lathes.J. E. A. Jolliffe, "The Hidation of Kent", in ''English Historical Review'', Vol. 44, No. 176 (Oct., 1929), pp. 612-61

/ref> In the thirteenth century Kent had a total of five lathes: * the lathes of Borough and Eastry merged to form the Lathe of St. Augustine * the lathe of

Lympne Lympne (), formerly also Lymne, is a village on the former shallow-gradient sea cliffs above the expansive agricultural plain of Romney Marsh in Kent. The settlement forms an L shape stretching from Port Lympne Zoo via Lympne Castle facing Lympne ...

underwent a name-change to become the Lathe of Shepway * the lathes Milton and Wye merged to form the Lathe of Scray * the Lathe of Aylesford survived unchanged.

History

The lathe was an ancient division of Kent and originated, probably in the 6th century, during the Jutish colonisation of the county. There exists a widespread belief that lathes originally formed around the royal settlements of the

Kingdom of Kent la, Regnum Cantuariorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the Kentish , common_name = Kent , era = Heptarchy , status = vassal , status_text = , government_type = Monarchy ...

. By the late Anglo-Saxon period they seem to have become purely administrative units, each of which contained several

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

s. The lathe was an important administrative, judicial and taxation unit for 600 years after the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

. The functions of lathe and hundreds were somewhat similar, with a lathe covering a much wider area. Although never formally abolished, they have no administrative functions today. The Sheriff toured the county twice yearly attending on the lathes, in the case of Sutton at Hone, possibly at Shire Hall. The lathe was responsible for the raising of aids and subsidies for the Militia. However the lathe court became anomalous as it fell between the hundredal courts below and the justices of the county (in petty and quarter sessions) above. The lathe and division of the lathe were the basis for meetings of local justices of the peace in monthly or petty sessions. These were established on a regular footing at a particularly early date in Kent. Lambarde in his ''Perambulation of Kent'' (1576) gives the ''Distribution of the Shyre for Execution of Justice''. Sutton at Hone and St Augustine were each divided into two divisions and Aylesford into three. In an exception to this scheme, a group of hundreds in the middle of the Lathe of Scray, centred on Ashford, were for convenience attached to the Lathe of Shepway for petty sessional purposes. Also the Corporation of

Romney Marsh Romney Marsh is a sparsely populated wetland area in the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers about . The Marsh has been in use for centuries, though its inhabitants commonly suffered from malaria until th ...

in this lathe possessed its own quarter and petty sessions (separate from the county). From time to time existing divisions were split for sake of convenience and in 1857 the provisions of the Act of 9 Geo. IV were invoked to re-examine the whole structure. Although not formally abolished, hundreds and lathes fell out of usage at the end of the 19th century, with, for example, the Lathe of Sutton last being used as a unit in the London Gazette, the newspaper for governmental orders, as late as 1899. However Shepway reappeared as principal local government division of Kent in 1974, within roughly the same area as previously. The area of each lathe in 1831 was as follows:"The Hidation of Kent", in ''English Historical Review'', Vol. 44, No. 176 (Oct., 1929), p.612, by J. E. A. Jolliffe {, class="wikitable" border="1", -bgcolor="D0D8DD" !Lathe !! Area
(acres) !! Area
(sq.miles) , - , align="left", Saint Augustine , align="right", 166,760 , align="right", 260 , - , align="left", Shepway , align="right", 127,380 , align="right", 199 , - , align="left", Scray , align="right", 260,510 , align="right", 407 , - , align="left", Aylesford , align="right", 244,150 , align="right", 381 , - , align="left", Sutton at Hone , align="right", 173,440 , align="right", 271 , - , TOTAL , align="right", 972,240 , align="right", 1,519

References

01 Former subdivisions of England History of Kent Local government in Kent Defunct types of subdivision in the United Kingdom

List

History

See also

References