POPULATION

THE POPULATION OF CHIDDINGSTONE

In 1801, the population of the parish of Chiddingstone was 910 people. In the last census in 1991 it was 1122. That means that for the last two hundred years there have been roughly one thousand people in the parish. This general observation masks some interesting fluctuations.The chart on the left shows the population density of the parish. The size of the parish is just under 6,000acres which, with 1,000 people, means six acres per person or a population per acre of one sixth (0.16). The chart shows the population density oscillating around this level with a peak of 0.23 in 1841 and a trough of 0.13 in 1971. The 1841 peak, when the population reached 1405, coincides with the building of the Reading to Tonbridge railway line that cuts through the middle of the parish. The population was temporarily swollen by the labourers working on the line. From that peak the population density declines reasonably steadily for the next 130 years. People seem to have used the railway to seek their fortunes elsewhere ! In 1971. this trend is finally reversed. The Hever estate which owned a substantial part of the parish was broken up at this time. The consequent auction of land and farm buildings reinvigorated the area, as barns and oast houses were converted into family dwellings. Urbanites seeking a rural idyll find Chiddingstone highly desirable.

It is interesting to compare Chiddingstone with its neighboring parishes. The Hundred of Sumerden contains four parishes. Chiddingstone in the center with Penshurst to the East, Hever to the West and Cowden to the South. The chart on the left shows the population density of Chiddingstone redrawn against its neighbors. Chiddingstone for almost all of the last 200 years has been the most underpopulated of the four. Penshurst's growth in the 19th Century stabilised in the 20th. Hever is the smallest of the parishes with only 2,600 acres but it has grown from the least to the most densly populated. Its current population of 1077 is similar to Chiddingstone despite being less than half the size. The surge in population in the early 20th century can be linked to Lord Astor's acquisition of Hever Castle which he renovated and subsequently built a complete new mock-tudor village beside it. Cowden trails with Chiddingstone as the least developed of the parishes but diverges at the beginning of the 20th Century as the hamlet of Mark Beech developed. In addition, the north-south Hever and Cowden railway line provided a direct link to London for commuters unlike the east-west line through Chiddingstone. This became less important as car ownership spread in the 1950s, reducing the inconvenience of home to station travel. Now the train services from Hildenborough, a ten minute car drive from Chiddingstone, are much more convenient

Taking one step further back, the development of the other Hundreds compared to Sumerden Hundred is startling. On this scale, the parishes that make up the Sumerden Hundred look stagnant compared with the population explosion in places like Sevenoaks (Codsheath Hundred) and Edenbridge (Westerham Hundred) . Both Codsheath and Westerham hundreds have seen populations increace fivefold in the last 200 years. Having started with a density of 0.2, similar to Chiddingstone their population densities are now more than 1.0, meaning less that one acre per head. In fact, in the parish of Sevenoaks it exceeds 3.0 or one third of an acre per head. The table below shows more details of the Hundreds and Parishes.