The 1901 Census

The Census Group has transcribed the 1901 Charing census and, to enable further analysis, the information has been put into an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This enables the data to be easily searched and filtered. You can download a copy of the spreadsheet for your own use by clicking the following link:

Charing 1901 census transcription in Excel spreadsheet format

It shows the members of each household, their relationship to the household head, their age and sex, occupation and place of birth. It also shows the number of rooms in the dwelling if this is less than five.

The census recorded people who were in a dwelling on the night of 31 March to 1 April 1901. If people were absent from their usual home they were recorded where they were.

There are a few things to note:

• The transcription has been prepared from the enumerators’ handwritten sheets and deciphering the writing was not always easy. The enumerators themselves could make mistakes in their transcription from household records while information given by households was not always accurate (people could lie about, or be uncertain about, their age for example). Where writing of people’s names was illegible we have searched for other records of the person concerned but we have not always been able to confirm the name. Names or other information which are uncertain are shown in red. There is a comment column at the end which may give further information.

• Charing was part of the sub-district, or hundred, of Calehill. For census purposes Calehill was divided into a number of districts. Charing and Charing Heath made up districts 2, 3, and 4. Each household within a district was given a schedule number. The returns in the file are in district and schedule order.

• The Notes tab in the file gives some detailed information about the way the file is constructed.

• House numbers did not exist or were not recorded so, while for the most part the census schedules appear to follow a logical order along a street, it is only possible to identify with any precision those houses which were named and where the name is still the same today. Street names have also changed and could also be variable. For example:

  • Burleigh Road was known as Station Road

  • Pluckley Road, while recorded as such in 1901, was also known as Chart Road

  • Station Road was part of the High Street or Pluckley Road (or Chart Road)

  • School Road was known as Maidstone Road or Lenham Road

If you are interested in knowing more, have any queries, or notice anything wrong, please contact us by email