Ash may have thought of that, the vestry of one of its neighbours, Fawkham, protested in 1869 that the roads were ‘in a far worse state than under the old system and at a considerable increase in cost’. Things do not change much.
   Centralisation of government was no doubt engendered, at least in part, by the Great Reform Bill, which itself was an inevitable consequence of the industrial revolution. Nevertheless, the immediate impact which that measure made on the parish of Ash was not very considerable. Kent, less the bigger towns, was given two parliamentary divisions, each returning two members, as opposed to the two knights of the shire who had previously represented the rural, parts of the whole county. The franchise was extended to include copyholders and £50 leaseholders, but Ash had no copyholders and not many £50 leaseholders. At the time of the General Election of 1847, there were only twenty-eight voters registered for Ash, including a number of freeholders who did not actually live in the parish.

   At the 1847 election, which followed the repeal of the Corn Laws in the previous year and the split thereby occasioned in the Tory party, the candidates for West Kent were Sir Edmund Filmer of East Sutton Park and Col. Thomas Austen of Kippington, co-runners in the Conservative interest, and Thomas Law Hodges of Hemsted Park, Benenden, who was a Liberal. Filmer’s election was perhaps a foregone conclusion, his seat being not much less secure than his baronetcy; in fact, he sat continuously for West Kent from 1838 until his death in 1857. The Colonel had the advantage of being a collateral relation of Jane Austen, but may have been a little unpopular with the conservation lobby, if there was one; it was he who had bought Sevenoaks Park from Multon Lambard and then demolished it. Nevertheless, he had substantial support in the Sevenoaks area, more so even than Sir Edmund. He would need all that and more. Hodges, an old hand at the game and a member of the great reforming Parliament of the eighteen-thirties, was a powerful challenger,