p
valley of the latter which there turns northward through the Downs. To
the North, therefore, it is everywhere cut off by those great green
uplands, save where the valley, at the other end of which stands
Canterbury, breaks them suddenly in twain. To the south it is cut off
by a perhaps greater barrier; between it and the sea, stands the
impassable mystery of Romney Marsh. In such a situation, before the
railways revolutionised travel in England, how could Ashford have had
any importance? Even the old road westward from Dover into Britain,
the Pilgrims' Way to Stonehenge or Winchester passed it by, leaving it
in the Weald to follow the escarpment of the Downs north or west. No
Roman road served it, and indeed it was but a small and isolated place
till the Middle Age began to revive and recreate Europe. Even then
Ashford was probably late in development.

Its history, if one may call it history, is concerned with the owners
of the manor of Ashford and not with any civil or municipal records.
Indeed the earlier chroniclers, though they speak of Great Chart and
Wye, know nothing of Ashford which in Domesday Book appears to have
consisted of a few mills and a small church, the manor being in
possession of Edward the Confessor, while St Augustine's at Canterbury
and Earl Godwin held certain lands thereabout. Hugh de Montfort got
what the King and Earl Godwin had possessed, after the Conquest, but
the Monastery of St Augustine's seems to have continued to hold its
land. We know nothing more of Ashford, which, as I have said, till
late in the Middle Age consisted of a church and two mills and a dene
for the pannage of hogs in the Weald. It is not one of the many
owners of the Manor who is remembered to-day in Ashford as its
benefactor, but the Lord of the Manor of Ripton during the Wars of the
Roses, Sir John Fogge, who was Treasurer of the Royal Household and a
Privy Councillor. In the fourteenth century the church had passed to
Leeds Abbey, and with the abbey the church of Ashford remained until
the suppression, when it passed to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.
It was not, however, the Abbey of Leeds that rebuilt it as we see it, a
poor example it must be confessed in spite of the nobility of the
tower, of the latest style of English Gothic architecture, the
Perpendicular. It was Sir John Fogge, who for this and other reasons,
is the father of the town. He lies in a great tomb in the chancel. As
for the Smyths, who lie