Acol, or Wood, a ville in Thanet, Kent;  3 miles southwest of Margate.  Acres, 1,176.  Population in 1861, 260.¹

Acol or Ville of Wood is a small parish and rural village, 3-3/4 miles southwest by west from Margate and 2 miles north of Minster, in the cinque port liberty of Dover.  The parish contains 1,420 acres of land, and at the last census had a population of 232 souls, and 52 houses.  Population in 1801, 145; in 1831, 292.  Rateable value, £2,141.

The principal land owners are the Dean and Chapter, John Powell Powell, Esq., Rev. G. W. Sicklemore, and John Friend, Esq..

The chapel of Woodchurch stood about one mile north-east from Acol;  it was dedicated to St. Nicholas, and was standing and used as a place of worship in the year 1563.  The Vicar of Monkton, to which church this was a dependent chapel, was bound by the endowment of his vicarage to find a chaplain, to celebrate in this chapel on Sunday and every Wednesday and Friday;  for which duty he had paid him £3 14s 4d. yearly.  The parsonage of this church is united with that of Birchington, but the church has long been desecrated.  The ruins are still to be seen a little south-west of the farm dwelling at Woodchurch, this being the only dwelling here, and the rest of the houses being at the Ville of Acol, anciently called Millburgh, nearly a mile from it, and the same distance from Birchington;  it is likely this chapel was so far suffered to go to decay as at length to fall down.  The foundations are of considerable extent, measuring 84 feet in length and 56 in breadth;  a mound in the centre appears to be the ruins of the tower.  The tithes are commuted, the appropriate to the Dean and Chapter, for £635, and the vicarial for £137.

A fair is held at Acol for toys, on May 30th.⁴

For additional information about Acol see also the Acol Village History website.

¹John Marius Wilson, comp.  The Imperial Gazatteer of England and Wales. (London, England: A. Fullerton & Co., 1870).

²Edward Hasted, ed. and comp.  The town and parish of Acol: Town and manors, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 4 (1798), pp. 260-307.

³William Page, 1861-1934, ed.  The Victoria County History of Kent, vol. 3, p. 359.(London, England: The St. Catherine Press, Stamford Street, Waterloo, S.E., 1932).

⁴Samuel Bagshaw, ed.  History, Gazetteer and Directory of Kent. Vol. II, pp141-142.(Sheffield, Yorkshire: pr. by G. Ridge for Bagshaw, 1847).

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