In Ashford James had his own business as a carter, as we can see from this extract from a letter written by his grandson Horace from Sydney to the Ashford Institute, dated Jan 1915.

When my grandfather (whose ashes lie in the old burying ground) removed to Ashford from Smarden, the town population was 2,150 inhabiting 411 houses. In 1804 my father was born in New-rents. In those days merchandise from London was conveyed in a hoy to Faversham. My grandfather's waggons brought them from that town to Ashford.

Hoys were sailing boats crewed by two or three men and trading up and down the Thames estuary. There used to be hundreds of them; a few survive. Until the railways were built, it was much cheaper and easier to carry goods by boat than over land. Faversham is only about 15 miles north of Ashford but the journey by horse-drawn cart on what we would regard as an unmade road over the North Downs would probably have taken the best part of a day.

The picture postcard shows New Rents as it looked in 1912, by which date the road had been paved. Today all the buildings on the right side of the street have been replaced, though the nearer ones on the left still stand.

Family Photographs

Tree of all descendants of James and Ann

1815 was the year of the battle of Waterloo and the army was moving men and materials through Dover in preparation for the final campaign against Napoleon. Army carts collected loads of supplies from the local farms. Young James took a ride, clinging on the side of a cart; he was thrown down when it lurched into a deep rut. His right leg went under a wheel and was broken. The break mended but he was left with a marked limp.

This story came to me from Erik von Zweigbergk, who heard it as a boy from his grandmother Mary, the sixth of James' ten children. The photograph (above) taken when James was about 60 shows him sitting with his right leg straight, as though he could not bend the knee.

The tithe records comprise high-quality, large-scale maps with all fields numbered and catalogued, so we can identify James's farm as outlined here. In addition to the area marked the 57 acres included several other fields: three water meadows bordering the river, one across the new railway line across the top of the map and a large field on the other side of Ashford. Lastly there was a group of buildings in Ashford, on the north side of the Maidstone Rd., described as "Barn Lodge and Yard". This could well have been the base for continuing business as a carter, though there is no other confirmation of this.

The dotted section of road on the map was catalogued as the "forstall" and would have been gated. The sections of road on either side would therefore have been used only by traffic to and from the farm itself. The inset on the map shows James's farm house in more detail, based on the 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map of 1873. This plan view seems to be an exact match to a photograph (no. 2535 in the Local Studies collection) in the Ashford Library, taken about 1900 and showing a farmhouse and outbuidings in the background with a gate across the road in the foreground (tastefully decorated with two ladies!).

James Bridge's farm at Beaver; original photograph cropped and tinted to emphasize the buildings and reproduced with permission.

Comparing with Mary's painting, it becomes evident that that showed the view from the other side of the house, across the garden. Mary's depiction of the various outbuildings is a bit more approximate but the basic plan is the same. The prominent chimney is also visible in the photograph (though you have to look closely to pick it out against the tree behind). The most obvious difference is that the painting does not show the black and white timbering. There are two possible explanations: firstly the painting shows that the back wall was three-quarters covered by a creeper and secondly the black and white effect is the result of using tar as a preservative for the wood. Over a lapse of 40 years the creeper could be cut down and the beams painted.

It seems that the family had moved out of Mitchell Farm to Ashford prior to James' death.

The house occupied by Anne and her children in April 1871 is at the right of this view of North St., taken from a picture postcard dated 1912. At the time the family must have been quite well off, since the house is large and well-situated, close to the market and the church.

The house still exists, seemingly unchanged and indeed the view down North Street has changed surprisingly little, at least looking in the direction shown. Turn around and the old road is closed by modern buildings, with the Ashford ring road on the further side.