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<title>Wormshill</title>
<authors>Wikipedia</authors>
<publisher>wikipedia.org</publisher>
<publishedplace>network</publishedplace>
<publishedyear>2010</publishedyear>
<edition></edition>
<category>Featured articles</category>
<section id="32811" fatherid="0" title="" lv="" priority="-1" level="1">
Wormshill ( wurmz-HILL) is a small village and civil parish within the Borough of Maidstone, Kent, England. The parish is approximately  south of The Swale and  north of Maidstone. The villages of Frinsted and Bicknor are   equidistant to the east and west, respectively; while Hollingbourne is  to the south. The village lies on an exposed high point of the North Downs, within the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Archaeological and toponymic evidence of Wormshill's existence predates its appearance in the Domesday survey of 1086. The village contains a number of heritage-listed buildings, which include a Norman church, a public house and one of the oldest surviving post office buildings in the United Kingdom. The fields and woodland surrounding Wormshill have changed little in the past 500 years, and the village itself remains rural with a low population density compared to the national average. The population of 200 is a mixture of agricultural workers employed by local farms and professional residents who commute to nearby towns.

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<section id="32812" fatherid="0" title="History" lv="" priority="-2" level="1">
<section id="32813" fatherid="32812" title="Toponymy" lv="" priority="-1" level="2">
Wormshill was listed under the name Godeselle in the Domesday Book of 1086. The village is thought to be much older, its name derived from the Anglo-Saxon god Wōden (a version of the Norse god, Odin) and meaning "Woden's Hill". The area was also described in a paper in Archaeologia Cantiana, 1961, as "Wormshill, an ancient possession of the Kings of Kent, the hill where they worshipped the heathen Woden". The University of Nottingham's Institute for Name-Studies has offered the suggestion that the name means "shelter for a herd of pigs".
The Latinised form, Wornesell, appears in the Kent Hundred Rolls of 1274-75 and in a mediæval will recorded in September 1409.  A corruption of the name, Wormsell, is mentioned as the birthplace of a Cistercian Abbot at the nearby Boxley Abbey in 1474; a further variant, Wormysell, is found in a will of 1487, and court papers concerning a land dispute in 1534 use the name Wormeshell.

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<section id="32814" fatherid="32812" title="Early history" lv="" priority="2" level="2">
A 1994 landscape survey identified woodland to the north of the village as having contained ancient flint tools and what appeared to be flint boundary markers, the latter apparently gathered from loose-lying surface flints. The area around the village features ancient deneholes, or agricultural chalk mines, some of which are pre-Roman. These holes, which may be up to  deep, were often dug at the edges of fields, onto which the chalk marl would be spread.
The parish of Wormshill was originally appended to the village and parish of Boughton Malherbe, since both had the same patron; the patron of a parish was the land-owner who often built the church on the estate and who had the  (known as advowson) to appoint the parish priest.  The first recorded patron of Wormshill was Robert de Gatton, who owned the Manor of Wormsell during the reign of Henry III (1207-72). From the Gatton family, the village passed by marriage in the 13th century to Sir Simon de Northwood, whose family crest appears in the stained glass of St Giles, the village's only church, and whose name (Norwood) is given to the farm at the north of the village.
Patronage of the parish subsequently transferred through a number of landholding families, vesting by the 17th century with the prominent Kent family of Sir Charles Sedley, which at times held the barony of Aylesford. During this period the Tylden (or Tilden) family, believed to have had links to the Crusades of Richard I, were also significant landholders in the area in the early 1600s; a memorial to William Tylden, who died in 1613, rests in the north chancel of St Giles church. Around the same time in the late 16th century, recruits of Sir Francis Drake's navy may have used a track, now known as Drake Lane, in the south west of the parish or camped nearby as they marched from the Weald of Kent to the dockyards at Sheerness.
From the Sedley family patronage is believed to have lapsed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and then to Sir Joseph Aylosse before being conveyed by gift from a Mr. Serjeant Moses to the charity of the president and governors of Christ's Hospital in London in gratitude for a University of Cambridge scholarship he had received. As late as 1798 the parish was still paying its traditional castle-guard rent to Dover Castle and retained a court baron; this fee was a substitute for a feudal obligation requiring the provision of knights to defend the castle.
Little (if any) information exists about the village's population or demographics before 1801; however evidence from the first census indicates that the village grew steadily, reaching a peak in 1871. A possible indication of the growth in the agricultural output of the village is the construction of two windmills marked at "Beddington" (possibly present-day Bedmonton) on an Ordnance Survey map published between 1819 and 1843. The mills stood north and south of each other and were approximately ½ mile (800m) to the north-west of the church.  House building continued during the mid- to late-1800s, and  Table indicating parish population 1801-1971. Graphic representation of total houses from census data 1831-1961. together with a post office and school. Like much of rural Kent during the time of the Swing Riots (1830), Wormshill experienced a degree of civil unrest and Home Office records indicate that "a large body of men, numbering 50-100" assembled at Wormshill with the purpose of "intimidation and to enforce demands on farmers...inducing other labourers to join them".

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<section id="32815" fatherid="32812" title="20th century" lv="" priority="3" level="2">
During World War II, Wormshill joined a number of similar settlements in the region to form part of the anti-invasion network. On the outskirts of the village, near the hamlet of Ringlestone, there are the remains of a zero station (or Operational Base), a secret underground communications relay post operated by Auxiliary Units of the British Home Guard. In the event of a German invasion the zero station was to be used by defending forces to receive and transmit coded messages between a series of similar stations in the area as well as to the operational command headquarters at Hannington Hall in Wiltshire. A concealed underground concrete bunker, it was designed to be invisible from the surface and is located in woodland about  from the road. Although its primary purpose was a communications post, the zero station was also designed to hold ammunition and explosives and provide living quarters for the radio equipment operators. Anecdotal evidence also indicates that anti-aircraft guns were sited near the village and that a Bren gun emplacement was installed in the valley between Wormshill and Frinsted.
 Roadside checkpoints were set up on the main routes into the village to the north and south and allied forces moving through the region camped overnight in the area, including a detachment of New Zealand troops in fields near Home Farm. Villagers resident during the war also recall a V-1 flying bomb or "doodlebug" being shot down in orchards near Norwood Farm and a fighter aircraft crashing in fields to the south of Yew Tree Farm.

Following an initial decline in the population at the turn of the century, more houses were constructed between the Great War and World War II and again in the 1950s and 60s, adding to the cluster of cottages from the 1800s and earlier. A village hall was also built at this time.

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<section id="32816" fatherid="0" title="Governance" lv="" priority="-3" level="1">
At the time of the Kent Hundred Rolls in 1275, Wormshill was in the Hundred of Eyhorne, a regional sub-division used in the Middle Ages by feudal and crown officials to administer communities. Although the Hundred of Eyhorne (including Wormshill) still exists, it is a mediaeval anachronism and no longer has any practical or administrative significance. In the 1800s, the village was within the lathe of Aylesford, the Bearsted petty sessional division and the Hollingbourne Rural District. The village was also incorporated into the Hollingbourne Poor Law Union (a means of funding and administering the operation of the Poor Laws in the area). The parish of Wormshill in part sits astride the West Kent and East Kent divide, a demarcation which until 1814 applied to an administrative boundary for the purposes of the law courts' Quarter Sessions. According to Edward Hasted (writing in 1798): "northward of the church, including the borough of Bedmanton, is in the division of East Kent, but the rest of it, including the church and village, is in that of West Kent". This differs from the traditional distinction between Men of Kent and Kentish Men, which are separated by the River Medway, accordingly persons born in Wormshill would be Men of Kent.
Since 1975, Wormshill has been administered within the North Downs ward and, together with surrounding communities, elects a representative councillor for the ward in the Borough of Maidstone. The incumbent councillor for the North Downs ward is Daphne Parvin. The village forms the central focus of the civil and church parishes of Wormshill. The parish chairman is Jeremy Leigh-Pemberton, a deputy Lieutenant of Kent and the brother of Robin Leigh-Pemberton, Baron Kingsdown. Wormshill is part of the parliamentary constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent, whose Member of Parliament as of September 2009 is Hugh Robertson of the Conservative Party. It is also in the South East England constituency in the European Parliament.

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<section id="32817" fatherid="0" title="Geography" lv="" priority="-4" level="1">
At , the village is in central Kent, approximately  south-east of London. The nearest town is Sittingbourne,  to the north. Wormshill is surrounded by villages and hamlets of a similar size, including Frinsted, Bicknor, Bedmonton and Hucking.
The village is on a high point of the North Downs. The nearby road intersection of Black Post is recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps at  above sea level. The landscape is primarily characterised by undulating calcareous grassland and ancient deciduous woodland over chalk downland. The settlement itself (as opposed to the wider parish) is on a downland ridge between two shallow dip slope valleys that separate it from Bicknor to the north-west and Frinsted to the east.
Wormshill's elevated and exposed position on the North Downs means it occasionally experiences extreme weather conditions such as the heavy snowfalls of 11-14 January 1987, March 2005, February 2009 and January 2010. Reports indicating snowfall specifically over the Kent Downs Article indicating North Downs received highest snowfall during relevant period (28cm (11 inches)) Article indicating North Downs to experience heavy snowfall during January 2010 In the late 1700s Hasted commented: "Being exposed to the northern aspect, it lies very bleak and cold."
Much of the local woodland was devastated by the Great Storm of 1987, which in October swept across south-east England with hurricane-force winds. A significant part of the exposed woodland to the north-east of Wormshill was felled and, after replanting, has only recently shown signs of maturing. An ancient yew tree believed to have stood for several hundred years in the grounds of the house at Norwood Farm was destroyed along with other long-standing trees. However, some 20 years later, the village displays few obvious signs of the damage.
The countryside around the village has been described as "an area where the whole landscape is a piece of history-a valley where time has stood still and the pattern of woods and
fields is much as it was 500 years ago". A designated ancient woodland lies to the north-west of the village. A website providing detailed map overlays giving landscape information.  Predominantly centred on Barrows Wood but also including High Wood and Trundle Wood, this is likely a remnant of the woodland described by Hasted: "…at the northern boundary of the parish there is a considerable quantity of wood, consisting mostly of hazel and oak, with numbers of trees of the latter, interspersed among them, which are but small, never here growing to any size." An ancient track that passes through the remnants of this woodland has been damaged by the use of off-road vehicles leading to attempts by local landowners to block Drake Lane, a byway that runs through Drake Lane Wood in the south-west of the parish and which may have been used by recruits of Sir Francis Drake's navy. Photograph of barriers to four-wheel drive vehicles at Drake Lane. Deep water-logged ruts in the track have resulted in the partial resurfacing of the route. and  Photographs of tyre ruts and further barriers to access at Drake Lane.
The village stretches primarily along a single carriageway road known as The Street. The north-eastern end of The Street is a designated Conservation Area. The lack of development stems from its position within the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and a Site of Nature Conservation Interest, which influences local planning laws and limits permission to build new housing. All development is subject to a high level of scrutiny; any development that would adversely affect the natural beauty of the landscape will automatically be resisted, and large-scale development proposals must be accompanied by an environmental impact assessment. The last major development was that of the residential cul-de-sac Draysfield.

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<section id="32818" fatherid="0" title="Demography" lv="" priority="-5" level="1">
The record in the Domesday Book does not give the population in 1086, though several people are named.  By the late 1800s the village and parish were described as:
WORMSHILL, a parish in Hollingbourn sic district, Kent; 5 miles  S by W of Sittingbourne r. station. It has a post-office under Sittingbourne. Acres, 1,467. Real property, £1,295. Pop., 253. Houses, 46. The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Canterbury. Value, £260.* Patron, Christ's Hospital, London. The church is plain. Charities, £12. 
Wormshill's location remains rural. Because of geography and restrictions on development, building in the village has been scant since the 1960s and 1970s. In 1821, the parish contained only 26 dwellings: by 2001, the total number of houses had risen to 82.  
The rural nature of the area is indicated by a population density of approximately 0.36 persons per hectare (1 person for every 6.86 acres), compared to the average for the south-east of England of 4.2 persons per hectare (1 person for every 0.6 acres).
The village has been recorded as a distinct parish unit for the purpose of census statistics since the first United Kingdom census in 1801.No census was taken in 1941 as a result of World War II. Statistics for 1981 and 1991 are unavailable because of the United Kingdom's Public Records Act restrictions. The majority of the official population of 198 (per United Kingdom Census 2001) is aged 45 or over and lives in homes comprising married family units. The total population has increased by around 40 people since 1801 however, during the past 200 years, it has fluctuated more widely within that range. In 1801 the population was 157 before peaking at 253 in 1861. In 1901 census records indicate a parish population of either 163 or 169.
Data for the ethnicity of the wider Maidstone area show that the population is around 97 percent white and that the remainder is of mixed, black, and Asian descent. Specific figures for Wormshill held by Kent County Council indicated in 2001 that all the villagers were of white ethnicity.

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