BIRLING, or Byrling, a parish in Malling district, Kent; adjacent to the river Medway, 2¾ miles WSW of Snodland r. station, and 6 NW of Maidstone. It has a post office under Maidstone. Acres, 1,883. Real property, £3,277. Pop., 662. Houses, 111. The property is subdivided. The manor belonged formerly to the Mainmots, the Says, and the Nevilles; and belongs now to the Earl of Abergavenny. Comfort, now a farmhouse, and Birling-place, now represented only by a fragment, were seats of the Nevilles. A range of chalk heights, called Birling Hills, occupies the W. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Canterbury. Value, £158. Patron, the Earl of Abergavenny. The church is perpendicular English, in good condition; and contains the remains, but no monuments, of some of the Nevilles.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))