Medieval
Anyone who has grumbled about a pothole outside their door might take comfort from an entry in the national records of the fourteenth century. It shows that the road between Penshurst and Barden was a standing grievance more than six hundred years ago — and that even repeated royal intervention failed to sort it out.
Barden Road, as it remains today, carried heavy traffic, and with iron works operating at Barden there was plenty of reason for carts to grind along it year after year. The result, as the medieval documents make plain, was a highway that became over-deep and muddy, worn out by the constant passage of carts and horses.
In response, the crown issued a commission dated 18 June 1371, concerning the street from Penshurst to Barden. William Pympe was Sheriff of Kent that year, and the commission named William de Cobeham and Roger Assheburnham among those appointed. Its task was to hold an inquisition to discover who was bound to repair the road, and to compel the repairers to act by all means available.
It did not work. A second commission, dated 16 May 1373, returned to the same highway from Penshurst to Barden. By then Geoffrey Colepepir — also recorded as Geoffrey Copepepir, the name more familiar to us as Culpepper, whose family owned the manor of Great Barnetts — had become Sheriff of Kent, and he joined William Harewell and Roger Asshbournham on the commission.
A third commission followed on 16 May 1374, when Robert de Notyngham was Sheriff of Kent, again naming William Harewell and Roger Asshbournham. Still the road was described as deep, muddy and worn. Three commissions in three years, and the highway remained as bad as ever.
This account draws on an unattributed piece in the Parish Magazine of October 1994, probably written by Lawrence Biddle.