Introduction
At the suggestion and in compliance with the request of many friends, I narrate some particulars as to the state of my native Parish in my early years. I was born on third of June 1811. I confine myself pretty much to the years 1819 in which the Queen was born, to 1825, by so doing I avoid touching on political or other controversial matters.

The Village
Staplehurst was then and is still one the prettiest Villages in the County. As you enter from the North there is a pretty artistic house called The Cottage, thatched with reeds which was built by a Mr Gillet, and was destroyed by fire in 1827. Further on stands the fine old mansion of Loddenden. With other boys on the acquittal of Queen Caroline I followed the band into Loddenden and through the Village to see the wonderful illuminations.

Loddenden was owned and occupied by Mr Chambers Usborne. Passing up the village we come to what is now called The Limes, where I have often seen Dr. Watson with his white powdered hair pacing to and fro and heard his well known low cough.

On the top of the Hill opposite Bell Lane was Mr Bromley’s Butcher's shop. Between the path and the main road stands the joss block. The butcher’s man threatened us small boys that he would cut our heads off with his big knife, and I for one believed it. At the Church gates was Thwaites Butcher’s shop, just below it Pattisons small cottage He was a good civil little old man.
In the year 1841 Mrs. Barling and myself became teetollers, one day he came with a gallon stone jar and said to my wife, “I understand since you have become teetotalers you are going to throw your wine away, which will be a great pity will you give me some of it?" He was told we had no wine to throw away. Close to his house were the stocks, I saw George Grandsbury in them for being drunk. He twisted and swore and foamed at the mouth but his feet were fast in the stocks. Was it not a better way of treating drunkards than the present respectable plan of imposing a small fine by the Magistrates?
Some years later Shop, House, Stocks and Cage were all removed. Opposite Bell Lane were two very high posts one on each side of the road, and, beam across the top from the middle of which hung the sign The Bell. We boys when we saw a very high load of Hops coming up used to guess whether it was high enough to make the sign swing. If it did there was a clapping of hands. Of course all this was before the crown of the hill was removed which was done about 1834.

With the exception of the Chapel, The Manse, the house of Mr Jull and the front of Mr Piper’s shop, the Village except that it has been brightened up, is much the same as it was seventy years ago.

The Church which “tops the Hill”, had a large number of square pews, there also a wide and deep gallery where the singers and musicians used to sit. In its front a large black board on which was chalked the Psalms and Anthems which were to be sung. The large gallery was not in harmony with the pews. Was it erected in the days of Daniel Poyntell? called the “learned Poyntell”,. as history says great crowds came to hear his expositions. Pews and gallery were all removed and the Church reseated many years after.

The Rev. Joseph Varenne was the Rector, he collected the Tythes in kind and erected a large Barn and Oast house, sent his wagons to collect the tenth cock of hay, and the tenth shock of corn, the tenth bushel of hops.

At the close of his life he was afflicted with blindness. He was most unpopular in the Parish and was followed by Mr ………(no name) who was highly esteemed by Churchmen and Dissenters.

On the site of the present Congregational Chapel stood the old Meeting House. It was a peculiar structure, my Grandmother lived in part of the building & kept a small shop which was under one of the galleries. Mr Hunt was the Minister being old and very much afflicted the Congregation had diminished to half a dozen. My cousin and I used to count how many times he used a favourite expression in Prayer "A thousand thanks O father of' mercy". He was a good man, in 1824 he conveyed the Meeting House to the late Mr Jull & my late Father who put the property in trust & the present Chapel was erected in 1825. There was a small Baptist Chapel which was afterwards sold to the followers of the late .Dr Burch.

Mr Dobell who lived and kept the shop where Mr Spicer now is was the Minister. The attendance at all the places of worship was at very small and religion in the Parish a very low ebb.

Schools
"Be it a weakness it deserves some praise
We love the play place of our early days
The fond attachment of the well loved place
Where first we started into life’s long race
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway
We feel it less in age & at our latest days”

When very young I was sent to Molly Masters school. I have no recollection of learning to read. I could read the New Testament as well at six years of age as I can now. I next went to the school kept by Mr Beadle, it was a brick and tile building adjoining the Church North side. There were the boys in the “Benefactio”, next the pay scholars of which I was one also a considerable number of boarders.

Mr Beadle was a good kind easy going master, not very strict fond of a good dinner, in afternoons he would pretty frequently put his spectacles on his forehead, place his arms on the desk and take a little sleep. The knowledge of this went “whispering round". In the school was a boy named Winter, he could not play Cricket, or possibly any other game but he could work sums. The Boarders supplied him pretty libera1ly from their pocket money to work their sums for them. Often when they showed their slates to the Master he said “You have been to Winter again”. Just outside the school room door there was plenty of room and no graves and we used to play a splendid game called fives against the Church Tower. Our balls never injured the Tower but when the school was pulled down in 1832 the boys were no longer permitted to play fives there.

At ten years of age I was taken from School, had to enter the battle of life and from that time to earn my own living.

Happy days of boyhood. Mrs Beadle kept a girls school. She wore a turban, fed the Boarders well & took care of them. The boys all liked her much.

The Inhabitants
Change is the diet on which all subsist
Created changeable, and change at last destroys them.

And so nearly all those who inhabited the Parish 75 years ago are now gone to "that home from whence no traveller returns”. Out of some seventy Farmers nearly all of whom I knew personally, where are the Ballards, Brooke, Butchers, the Reeves, the Spongs, Stills, Spicers? gone, and only some of the same name their descendants of about twenty of the Tradesmen are found.

Probably the same element of change is to be found among the working class in about the same proportion.

Where are the round frocks and fustion jackets. the red cloaks and the pattens? Where is the "tinderbox", the flint and steel and the rushlight candles? It is the same Staplehurst but so different in so many ways:, but nearly all "the old familiar Faces" of my youthful days are passed away.

I give two pictures, the parties are all dead long ago.
Mrs. George at the Pinnock was about the best dairy woman in the Parish, but she took a large quantity of snuff, fastidious person about the butter but not the snuff. I know not if it was an affliction, or merely a. habit, in speaking to you she preceded what she had to by by che, che, che.

Mr Nicholas Toke Usborne who lived at Loddenden before Mr. Chambers Usborne was afflicted by being a great stutterer.
A Mrs Biggs, who. lived at Biggs Barn had a son who was similarly afflicted, he was sent with a message to Mrs Usborne, the boy could not get his word out, so something like the following took place,"Yes m,m,mum, I am a young r,r,rascal” then the boy tired (sic), (“)I didn’t m, m, mean you Sir,(“) so Mr Usborne told the boy he would see his Father about his bad behaviour, which he did next day. Mr Biggs assured Mr Usborne that his son really could not help it. “P, p poor boy, I am very sorry for him, give him this half crown”. “A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind”.

Roads
As the public has been in the enjoyment of excellent roads for a large number of years. it may seem strange that at the time of which I am writing with the exception of a few roads at Chittenden, and of course the main road through the Village the whole of the so called roads of the Parish were soft mud roads. Proof of this I can give from unpleasant personal experience.

One winter I. had several journeys with my Father bringing corn from Exhurst with the wheels in ruts up to the naves.

Another winter we were bringing timber from Mr. Stills woods. There was a wash pinnock named “Robin Hole", my father obtained of Mr Still four of his horses to help us through the hole. With Mr Still I walked on the other side of the hedge and crossed the stream with a plank. Two of the horses fell down in the mud, Mr. Still was a gentleman who would not make use of an oath on any account, but he could not help exclaiming "Bam it, bam it, they, wull all be down”, and sure enough in getting through the slough seven out of the eight horses fell and were floundering in the mud.

During another winter we had to bring some thick oak planks from Cockle Wood. The ruts were so deep and the road so bad that we could not get the timber tug near the place, and we drew the planks on the ground as far as Henhurst and then loaded them.

Some years before this at the end of' the road where Mr Shoobridge shop now is, during a flood a post chaise was by some accident driven into the water and overturned. How our forefathers through the centuries got on with these so called roads is a mystery.

They erected large Farm Houses, as at Hartsheath and Pagehurst but stone roads was too great a matter for them to attempt.

It is said the darkest hours are just before the dawning of the morning. At the time of which I am writing and a few years after there great distress in the Parish, many men being out of employment for several weeks during the winter months.

Generally some thirty or more men on Friday night attended the Committee room to apply for and to receive relief, the poor rates were about thirteen shillings in the pound for the year.
Various plans were adopted, one of which was to billet the men for a certain number of days in the week on different Farmers and Tradesmen. After a while this thought in some way got into the heads at least of a few, will it not be better to take steps so as to stone the roads rather than keeping the men to walk about in idleness. This -sensible conclusion was acted on, and as a stone pit was opened at Chittenden a large quantity of stones was drawn in the winter. In the following summer the road was stoned from the Pinnock as far as Henhurst.
It was my privilege to assist in bringing the pit stones into the roads. Pits were afterwards opened at Maplehurst and Pagehurst, and gradually, very gradually, the whole of nearly twenty miles of roads on the parish were metalled, which took nearly twenty years to accomplish. A word of praise is due to the late Benjamin Samson for throwing up the roads to make them round before the stones were put on. The expense was borne by a Highway rate that exceeded 2/0 in the pound on the houses and land of the Parish.

Hedges and Ditches
One improvement leads on to another, the room for which increases as you proceed. thus high hedges were cut down especially on the sides of the road to let the sun and wind do their part. The hedgerows were grubbed and other hedges were cut down to let in light and air. The time was not yet come for draining the land except with stones or bushes. Simple as it now appears, the genius had not yet been found to invent a tile machine, but after a time one of these were found, and I believe one was found in this parish. Drain tiles were then made and sold at moderate prices. Much of the arable and hop land was under drained and the land generally was more highly cultivated, and thus in one way or another nearly all found profitable employment.
Readers who are now living can compare the state of the Village and the Parish with how it was some seventy to eighty years ago, as given in this narrative and I trust will act on the counsel of the wise man "Say not that the former days were better than these”. Should you doubt “thou dost not act wisely concerning it".

Robert Barling January 18 1898.