Dorcas Vant c1798-1844

 

Dorcas’ Life:

Dorcas Vant, my 3x great grandmother, was born around 1798 in the quiet parish of Westwell in Kent, the daughter of Edward Vant/Vaunt and Sarah Chambers. She was baptised 2 Feb1799 in St Mary’s Church, Westwell.  The last name is written as Vaunt.

Westwell is nestled at the foot of the North Downs, just four miles north of Ashford. The village has been mentioned as early as 858 and appears in the Domesday Book. By Dorcas’s time, it was a quiet agricultural community, its heart marked by St Mary’s Church, a 13th‑century building surrounded by ancient yews. The Pilgrims’ Way, the medieval route to Canterbury, ran nearby, so Dorcas grew up in a place where history and faith were woven into the very landscape.  Life revolved around the church, the fields, and the changing seasons. She would have grown up in a world where children were expected to help from an early age—working in the fields, tending animals, or assisting their mothers with household tasks.

At twenty years old, Dorcas married Henry Tilbee in Westwell.  Henry was a young labourer from nearby Charing. He had been Henry was born there in about 1798.

 They settled in Charing, a larger village just a few miles away. Charing lay directly on the Pilgrims’ Way and had long been a stopping point for travellers heading to Canterbury. Its most striking landmark was the Archbishop’s Palace, once a residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury and even visited by Henry VIII. The parish church of St Peter and St Paul stood beside it, anchoring the community. By the 19th century, Charing was still primarily agricultural, with Henry working as an agricultural labourer, one of the most common occupations in Kent.  It would have meant long hours in the fields, low wages, and dependence on the harvest. Families like theirs lived close to the edge, often supplementing income with seasonal work or parish relief.

The census for 1841, 1851 and 1861 they are shown as living in Charing.

Dorcas and Henry raised six children in Charing.

 William Tilbee (c.1820– )

1. Alice Tilbee (1826–1877)
• Baptised: 3 Dec 1826, Charing
• Married Samuel White in 1842
• Lived in Egerton, Kent
• Died 14 Mar 1877, Egerton (cause: diseased lungs/bronchitis)
• Buried: 18 Mar 1877, Egerton
2. John Tilbee (c.1829– )
3. Louisa Tilbee (c.1831– )
4. George Tilbee (1834–1912)
5. Stephen Tilbee (1837–1921)

Their daughter Alice, my 2x great grandmother later moved to Egerton, a village perched on the Greensand Ridge with sweeping views across the Weald. Egerton was known for its scattered farmsteads and its 13th‑century church of St James, reflecting its deep agricultural roots. The oldest surviving houses in the village date from about the fifteenth century.  Other children remained closer to home, marrying into local families or moving to nearby parishes. In 1851 Alice was living with her husband, Samuel, in Stonebridge to the north east of Egerton village centre.   

Just a few miles south lay Ashford, the market town that increasingly shaped the lives of surrounding villages. Ashford had been a market centre since the Middle Ages.

Dorcas’s life spanned turbulent times for rural Kent. The Swing Riots of the 1830s erupted in her county, as labourers protested against low wages and the spread of threshing machines. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 meant that parish relief was harder to obtain.  The relief shifted from parish-based outdoor aid to the dreaded workhouse system. Families like the Tilbees would have lived with the constant threat of destitution and institutionalisation.

Henry died in September 1866 in Egerton, leaving Dorcas a widow.  In 1871 she was a visitor at a property in Charing, near the Gas works.

 She lived on into her late eighties, recorded in the 1881 census back in her birthplace of Westwell. She died in November 1884 in the Westwell Union Workhouse.