Somerden Hundred information

Somerden was a hundred, a historical land division, in the county of Kent, England. It occupied the southwest corner of Kent, in the southern part of the Lathe of Sutton-at-Hone,^[5] in the west division of Kent. The hundred was one of the last to be created in Kent, unlike the majority of Kent hundreds, it was not formally constituted in the Domesday Book of 1086,^[3] but came into being sometime after. Today the area is mostly rural and located in the southern part of the Sevenoaks District, south of Sevenoaks and west of Tonbridge. Somerden Hundred was approximately 7.5 mi (12.1 km) wide east to west, and 5.5 mi (8.9 km) long north to south,^[5] and had a small exclave about 1 mi (1.6 km) out from its south east corner. In the 1831 census Somerden was recorded as having an area of 13,650 acres (55 km²).^[1] The population in that census was recorded as 3,924,^[2] of which 2,078 were male and 1,846 were female,^[8] who belonged to 734 families living in 567 houses.^[1]

In the later years of its existence the Oxted Line and Redhill to Tonbridge Line railway lines were constructed through the hundred. Somerden, like the other hundreds in Kent, became less significant gradually over time, and although never formally abolished, it was obsolete by 1894 with the creation of new districts. The majority of Somerden became part of the Sevenoaks Rural District in 1894,^[4] which in turn merged with the Sevenoaks Urban District in 1974 to become the Sevenoaks District which remains up to present day.