A to Z

Here you will find information and sources of reference about places featured in 'Letters Home'.

Acrise

Acrise is an ecclesiastical and civil parish in the Folkestone and Hythe district, Kent, England, about six miles north of Folkestone. The settlement derives its name from Old English, 'Acrise' being a development of the Old English term for "Oak Rise", the parish being on a small hill, still populated with old oak trees. 
 

More to be added......

Hougham

Hougham Without is a civil parish between Dover and Folkestone in southeast England. The main settlements are the villages of Church Hougham and West Hougham, collectively known simply as "Hougham". The Channel Tunnel runs underground just south of West Hougham and directly under both Church Hougham and the Farm. 

The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 9, by Edward Hasted. Originally published by W Bristow, Canterbury, in 1800, details the parish. The following is but an extract:

THE PARISH of Hougham lies among the high eastern hills of Kent, in a healthy though a very rude and wild country. In the midst of it are two streets, called Church Hougham, and East Hougham; in the former of which the church stands, and at the south-west part of it, a hamlet called West Hougham. Great part of this parish is full of small inclosures, interspersed with frequent coppice wood, and much rough ground. The soil is but poor and barren, consisting of either chalk or a red earth, covered with a rotten slint stone, with which the narrow roads here abound. Towards the eastern part of it the ground lies high, being an open uninclosed down, across which the high road leads from Folkestone to Dover, quite to the sea-shore, over which the chalk cliffs here rise to a great height; from hence there is a most beautiful prospect over the channel, and the Bologne hills on the coast of France. Near the bottom of these cliffs are three holes, called Lydden Spouts, through which the subterraneous waters empty themselves

Domesday: Church and West Hougham was a settlement in Domesday Book, in the hundred of Bewsbury and the county of Kent. It had a population of 53 households, putting it in the largest 20% of settlements recorded in Domesday (NB: 53 households is an estimate, since multiple places are mentioned in the same entry), and is listed under 2 owners in the Domesday Book.