The place-name 'Sutton-at-Hone' is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Sudtone. The place is called Suttone atte hone in a charter of 1281 at one time in the British Museum. The name means 'southern town or settlement near a stone', probably a boundary stone, from the Old Englishhān meaning 'stone'.[1]
Sutton-at-Hone has a long history. A commandery of the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was established in Sutton-at-Hone in 1199, and is now the National Trust property St John's Jerusalem. The property is partly open to the public (on Wednesday afternoons, April–October), including the 13th-century chapel of the Knights Hospitallers and a garden moated by the River Darent. The church of St John the Baptist was in existence by 1077. It was rebuilt in the 14th century, and substantially rebuilt after a fire in 1615, reputedly caused by a gun being fired at a bird. The parish of Sutton at Hone belonged to Axstane Hundred and its successor Dartford Rural District. The chapelry of Swanley in the parish was formed into a separate parish of Swanley in 1955.
Sutton-at-Hone Primary school, also has a very successful girls football team, who were crowned Kent schools champions in 2021, winning the tournament with an unbeaten record, they will also be competing in the southern counties cup in 2022, representing Dartford.
The lathe was the most westerly of the lathes into which Kent was divided. The former boundary of the Lathe with the rest of Kent is now, with minor deviations, the boundaries of Dartford and Sevenoaks with the rest of Kent.[4]
Although not formally abolished, hundreds and lathes had fallen out of use by the end of the 19th century, although the Lathe of Sutton was mentioned in the London Gazette as late as 1899.[5]
^See The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 1, author:Edward Hasted, publ. 1797
^See the list of parishes for each hundred in the History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: (Vols 1 and 2), author:Edward Hasted, publ. 1797 and the Wikipedia articles on Dartford and Sevenoaks. Also the census report by lathe and hundred in Victoria County History of Kent, Vol 3 (1932)
^"The said railway deviation being wholly within the parish of Stone, in the county of Kent, Hundred of Axton, Lathe of Sutton-at-Hone" - THE LONDON GAZETTE, MAY 30, 1899