Front Meadow, Drying Orchard, Ewell House, Faversham

The place and its story

Even the pond had a number

Pond Meadow sounds simple enough. In Ann Neame’s land entries, even the pond inside it gets a separate plot number.

The Faversham tithe transcription breaks a farm into house, barn, yard and named pieces of ground. Thorn Field, Pratts, Garden Slip. Charles Neame’s entries add Clap Gate Piece and Lady Dane. These are names people worked with long before a postcode could find the place.

Ann and Charles occupied these plots. That does not make every field a Neame-named place, or make them relatives. But choose a plot and you get a surprisingly small doorway into nineteenth-century Kent.