Village stocks (2013)

Post date: Sep 12, 2013 12:51:40 PM

The following is an article written by Ted Bates, initially published in Rostrum, on the village stocks:

If you live in the village, you will have seen that a new set of Stocks has been installed on a spare piece of grass between the entrance to the village car park and the Lock-Up in Bow Road. These are a replica of the Stocks which originally stood on the same site, and had probably done so for over 500 years. We know about the earlier stocks from George Newman, son of John Newman, a former Head Gardener to Matthias Prime Lucas who at one time owned Wateringbury Place. George born in 1835, revisited Wateringbury in 1901, and recalled the village which he had known as a youth in the 1840’s. His recollections were gathered together by Dail Whiting and republished in 2002 under the title “Wateringbury Revisited”. In this volume George wrote: “.... there is a village smithy, and close by it used to stand the village cage or lock-up, and an ancient pair of stocks. ..... Of both cage and stocks, like their misguided occupants, nothing remains but a memory.” This is not quite true as the Reverend Grenville Mairis Livett, who was Vicar of Wateringbury at the time, had asked in 1896 the then Parish Clerk Henry Harris for a history of the lock-up. With his reply the Clerk enclosed a sketch of both the lock-up and the stocks. This sketch is shown on page 22 of Dail Whiting’s edition of 2002, and it is this sketch which was used as a template by the designer of the present Stocks.

The new Stocks were designed and made in English oak at Cranbrook in Kent, by Mounts Hill Woodcraft and Design Ltd., and installed on site by Chris Chaplin Property Maintenance of Old Road, Wateringbury. Both contractors liaised with each other to produce the desired result, which is a tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the Diamond Jubilee of her Coronation. The royal crown and the date 2013 are incised on the upper horizontal rail of the Stocks, and the name of the village in 3” uppercase Roman letters on the lower rail. The new Stocks have been erected on land owned by Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council with its gracious permission, without cost either to it or to the Parish Council. The new Stocks are a gift to the village and to the Parish Council, the entire cost having been paid by the members of Wateringbury Local History Society, and by the Village Amenities Fund of ROSTRUM, the parish magazine. A ceremony is being arranged at which the Chairman of the Local History Society, Terry Bird, will formally present the Stocks to the Chairman of the Parish Council. Stocks have been part of English life at least since Saxon days. A statute of 1351 made it law for every township to provide a set of stocks. A later statute of 1405 ordered every Manor to provide and maintain a set of stocks, and this would certainly have included Wateringbury. So far as is known, this statute has never been repealed, and so the provision of the new Stocks enables the present Parish Council to comply with this law. Rogues, vagabonds and drunkards were stocked in mediaeval times, and a later statute made it legal for those caught swearing to be confined in the stocks for an hour, if they could not pay the fine of twelve pence (5p today). Village stocks gradually fell out of use in Kent after the formation of the Kent County Constabulary in 1857, with its first headquarters in Maidstone at Wren’s Cross. This lead to the construction of new police stations equipped with police cells for holding offenders, and the Queen’s Peace was no longer largely a Parish responsibility

EFB 16th June 2013

Addendum by Terry Bird

In Kent archives there are a series of 3 books (reference Q/C/I/448/2) which represent the accounts /workbook of James Perrin, a Wateringbury based builder/carpenter. In his account with the Wateringbury Overseers labour and materials for the stocks in 1815 was charged as follows: