Wills Data and Visualisations

On this page you will find below two lists of all surviving wills from Maidstone and the surrounding areas. If you feel there is anything missing or incorrect then please let us know through the comments or email.

Maidstone Wills

Below are two tables of wills was obtained from Kent County Council’s (KCC) database and The National Archives (TNA) catalogue Discovery. The wills held locally stem from a search using a Maidstone filter in the ‘Place’ column and a date range of 1484-1680. For those held at The National Archives the results returned from a search for Maidstone within the ‘Place’ field of the PROB 11 search with the dates ranging from 1522 to 1680.

Below are the two tables. In the future, I will compile them into a single table and have links for each will to take you to the individual transcription, photo, or catalogue record.

Wills held locally

We are currently working on the best way to display the locally held wills which we are interested in. We will be looking at more than 1,500 between, roughly, 1520 and 1680.

Wills held at The National Archives

Mapping the Wills

Below is a map showing the locations the wills relate to. This data has not been proofed significantly and contains many errors. See, for example, the point at ‘London Wood’ which likely relates simply to London. Also, the point on the Borough Council Depot (not sure why that has happened yet). This is will be fixed in due course. I simply wanted to make users aware of where the wills are drawn from