The lathe was an important administrative, judicial and taxation unit for 600 years after the Domesday Book. The Sheriff toured the county twice yearly attending on the lathes, however the lathe court became anomalous as it fell between the hundredal courts below and the Justices of the County (in petty and quarter sessions) above. When the lathe and division of the lathe were used as the basis for meetings of local justices of the peace in monthly or petty sessions, Shepway became the unit for this purpose, however a group of hundreds in the middle of the Lathe of Scray, centred on Ashford, were for convenience attached to the Lathe of Shepway for petty sessional purposes. These were the four Hundreds of Felborough, Wye, Calehill, and Chart and Longbridge, with the township of Ashford.