Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Henley’s Second World War Industrial air-raid shelters.
trial air-raid sheltersBy Victor Smith12RI1RUWKÀHHWRQ7KDPHVLGHZHUHDWHPSWLQJWDUJHWEXWthey did not receiveuer sdbintnt they merited. Anecdotally, Henley’swas, however, bombed at least once, resulting in theVLJKWRIEDQNQRWHVÀRDWLQJLQWKHDLUIURPWKHLQVLGHRIDGDPDJHGIDFWRU\¶VSD\R൶FHThe theoretical procedure was for the employees, carryingtheir gas masks, to be evacuated into the shelter uponhearing an air-raid alert and then, as earlier mentioned,WR UHWXUQWRWKHLUZRUN SODFHV XSRQWKH QRWL¿FDWLRQ RIan all-clear and after a judgement had been made by acoordinator that it was safe to do so.How often a factory evacuation and shelter occupationwas practised is unknown. The hope and intention wasAir-raid alerts could hold up factory production. DuringWKHFRXUVHRIWKHZDUWKHUHZHUHLQ1RUWKÀHHWDQGGravesend but how many of theseof work at Henley’s and shelter occIt may be that, as at some pla tothe shelter would not have takKDGDFWXDOO\VWDUWHGVX൶FLHQWO\FORVHhing threat. The walls of the shethe marks of soiling or wear which cted to result from frequent occupLO¶V VLPSOL¿HG FKDUDFWHUL]DWLRQ RI report of 1946 was of a period of ll from 3 September 1939 to Auguty during August 1940 – August 1941the Battle of Britain took placDQ\RYHUÀLJKWVRIWKHDUHDDVHFRQGOXOOanuary 1943; sporadic raiding from nd the V1/V2 attacks from Junenley’s North Woolwich works in the /RQGRQVX൵HUHGUHSHDWHGO\IURPKHDY\DLath, injuries and destruction of buildings and plant.$DUHGEHWWHULQWKHUDLGV¶LWwas decfacturing there.%ULFNSDUWLWLRQZDOOPhoto Nick Combes+HQOH\+RPH*XD of the shelter tobe accomplishceiptof a bombing alert and so sready be safely ide andprotected should an attack includethe use of poison gas.In the event of the latter startingwithout warning, there might havebeen some confusion as the shelterbegan to be occupied and thereare perhaps questions concerningthe ability of the decontaminationentrance to cope with a possibly largethrough-put of people. The numberof combined entrances/exits was apragmatic substitute for the provisionof separate emergency exits.+HQOH\VWDৼWDNLQJVKHOWHULQWKHWXQQHOVDWDQXQNQRZQGDWHSHUKDSVDVDGULOO:DUWLPHSKRWRJUDSKInside the sheltersThe gathering of people in communal shelters was aneedful social phenomenon of the war, in this case of aVSHFL¿FJURXSRISHRSOH:KDWFRQYHUVDWLRQWRRNSODFHLQthem is unknown. At times during shelter use there was,by report, some informal entertainment in the form ofsing-along. Whether there was provision for the supplyof drinks to shelterers is unknown. There is no evidenceof there having been a kitchen.Subterranea BritannicaGravesend Historical SocietyGRAVESEND HISTORICAL SOCIETYExploring the history of GraveshamThe Society was founded in 1924 and is acCve in promoCng the heritage and history of the area. We hold regular talks to which all are welcome and guided footpath walks. The Society publishes annually “Historic Gravesham” which contains arCcles of local historical interest and reports about the Society’s acCviCes. Members receive “Historic Gravesham” as part of their membership subscripCon. The Society also publishes other local history books and holds exhibiCons including “pop‐up” exhibiCons. GHS has an archives room which is brim full and is accessible by appointment. For more informaCon contact: the Hon. Secretary, Sandra Soder, 58 Vicarage Lane, Chalk, Gravesend, Kent, DA12 4TE, e‐mail: sandrasoder@yahoo.co.uk also find us at www.ghs.org.uk on facebook and twi\er.THAMES DEFENCE HERITAGE(formerly New Tavern Fort Project)Based at the New Tavern Fort, Fort Gardens, Gravesend, Kent.In co‐operaCon with Gravesham Borough Council we open the underground magazines, the Chantry and the Gravesend Cold War bunker to visitors. All year we work on restoring, conserving and maintaining the displays. New volunteers are welcomed. Enquiries via e‐mail to sandrasoder@yahoo.co.uk and Facebook: Thames Defence Heritage GravesendThis historical account originally appeared in the August 2022 (no. 60) issue of Subterranea,published by Subterranea Britannica. This has been reproduced here by the Gravesend Historical Society. Funding for this was generously provided through a Kent County Council Combined Member Grant, supported by Councillors Alan M. Ridgers and Jordan Meade.© Subterranea Britannica, the Gravesend Historical Society and Victor Smith. (2023)ISBN 978‐1‐9999842‐2‐9Printed by Northfleet Press. 41b Singlewell Road, Gravesend, Kent. DA11 7PN northfleetpress.com 01474 534484 1Henley’s industrial WWII air-raid sheltertunnels at Northfleet, KentVictor SmithLooking north along the central latrine tunnel in 2007. Photo Nick CoombsFormed of tunnels in the chalk, some 55 ft below Fountain Walk at Northfleet in Kent, is a large Second World Warindustrial air-raid shelter complex. It was created as a refuge for 2,500 employees of the W.T. Henley Telegraph Worksand its associated companies, whose Thameside premises were adjacent. The need for physical protection reflectedthe increasingly destructive and existential threat of aerial bombing and of a national imperative to safeguard skilledindustrial workers – and at some places elsewhere, factory plant as well. As such, the survival of this complex evokes amemory of the determination of government, industry and people to survive the onslaught of the German air campaignand to win the war. The shelter incorporated the latest thinking in design and protective measures. This wartimeunderground heritage is of at least regional heritage importance and might be considered for statutory protection.This study was preceded by the author’s research visit tothe tunnels in 2003/4 in cooperation with Thames DefenceHeritage and the Kent Underground Research Group (KURG)and by a mention of the site in his report of the Kent Thamesidesection of Kent County Council’s 20th-century Defence ofKent Project in 2010. It also benefits from contributions ofinformation and thoughts from Robert Hall and Paul Thorne,also of KURG. This study is also supported by the KentDefence Research Group of the Kent Archaeological Societyand by the Gravesham Heritage Forum.BackgroundThe threat of bombardment from the air had beenpredicted since the late nineteenth century by suchwriters as Jules Verne, George Griffith and, evocativelyin 1908, by H G Wells in his War in the Air. In thelatter, Wells noted the potential for this form of attack todestroy ground targets, including industrial assets andnational infrastructure. Coincidentally, and followingearlier technical interest, it was in the same year as thepublication of Wells’ story that the British governmentformed a committee to consider the possibilities and thethreats from the development of military aviation.This led, over the next five or so years, to a growingrecognition of the menace it represented to home defenceand, in 1913, a dummy air bombing exercise took placein the Medway area. During the Great War, industry,docks and other assets along the Thames were embracedwithin an increasing deployment of gun defence, balloon 1Henley’s industrial WWII air-raid sheltertunnels at Northfleet, KentVictor SmithLooking north along the central latrine tunnel in 2007. Photo Nick CoombsFormed of tunnels in the chalk, some 55 ft below Fountain Walk at Northfleet in Kent, is a large Second World Warindustrial air-raid shelter complex. It was created as a refuge for 2,500 employees of the W.T. Henley Telegraph Worksand its associated companies, whose Thameside premises were adjacent. The need for physical protection reflectedthe increasingly destructive and existential threat of aerial bombing and of a national imperative to safeguard skilledindustrial workers – and at some places elsewhere, factory plant as well. As such, the survival of this complex evokes amemory of the determination of government, industry and people to survive the onslaught of the German air campaignand to win the war. The shelter incorporated the latest thinking in design and protective measures. This wartimeunderground heritage is of at least regional heritage importance and might be considered for statutory protection.This study was preceded by the author’s research visit tothe tunnels in 2003/4 in cooperation with Thames DefenceHeritage and the Kent Underground Research Group (KURG)and by a mention of the site in his report of the Kent Thamesidesection of Kent County Council’s 20th-century Defence ofKent Project in 2010. It also benefits from contributions ofinformation and thoughts from Robert Hall and Paul Thorne,also of KURG. This study is also supported by the KentDefence Research Group of the Kent Archaeological Societyand by the Gravesham Heritage Forum.BackgroundThe threat of bombardment from the air had beenpredicted since the late nineteenth century by suchwriters as Jules Verne, George Griffith and, evocativelyin 1908, by H G Wells in his War in the Air. In thelatter, Wells noted the potential for this form of attack todestroy ground targets, including industrial assets andnational infrastructure. Coincidentally, and followingearlier technical interest, it was in the same year as thepublication of Wells’ story that the British governmentformed a committee to consider the possibilities and thethreats from the development of military aviation.This led, over the next five or so years, to a growingrecognition of the menace it represented to home defenceand, in 1913, a dummy air bombing exercise took placein the Medway area. During the Great War, industry,docks and other assets along the Thames were embracedwithin an increasing deployment of gun defence, balloon 2Map of the London Air Defence Area during the Great War. Drawn by Victor Smith 2015Diagram of a typical civil defence organisation as itevolved during the Second World War:from ‘Front Line 1940-41’, HMSO, 1942.Cover of the influential book, ‘ARP, by JBS Haldane,London, 1938barrages and fighter protection, evolving into the LondonAir Defence Area. Some impromptu shelter provisionwas also made, reportedly in the use of suitable parts ofexisting buildings, with some limited new construction.It is not impossible that existing chalk tunnels onThameside were designated for use as shelters. Certainly,new shelter tunnels were created in chalk in East Kentand at Chatham but more about this subject needs to bediscovered.Although WWI air attacks proved not to be a seriousimpediment to the operations of industry or to the war effort,they diverted resources to provide for countermeasures andwere a salutary lesson of the likely greater destruction inany future conflict. But, after1918, the possibility of a newmajor European war seemedunlikely for some years. Bydefault, in the early 1920sdefence planning centredon maintaining military airparity with France, the nextmost powerful continentalstate. As part of this, ‘passive’air-raid precautions (ARP)began to receive governmentattention including, on asmall scale, the production ofbespoke designs for air-raidshelters.The statement of the former(and future) Prime MinisterStanley Baldwin in 1932that, in future wars, ‘thebomber would always get through’ and the subsequentperceived menace of German re-armament and expansionof her air force, engaged the thoughts of British politiciansand defence planners. It was predicted that a future airwar would start with heavy bombing of populations,military, industrial and infrastructural resources, intendedto deliver an early and decisive knock-out blow in anattempt to compel surrender. 3Advertisem*nt from a supplier of gas defence air filtration systems for shelters, published in 1939 4Such concerns led to the Reorientation Scheme againstGermany in 1934. This included two strands: first astrengthening of Britain’s active air defences in the formof greater numbers of more modern military aircraft anda scheme for gun defence on the ground, including KentThameside becoming part of a projected – and laterimplemented – Thames and Medway Gun DefendedArea; second, there were enhanced efforts, taken forwardin 1935, by a new department at the Home Office, toachieve effective measures of civil defence.Initially, and for about two years or so, the latter wasattempted by means of promotion and persuasion butthis came to be succeeded by statutory requirements. Inconsequence, protective measures began to be introducedin the community in the form of groups of organizedpersonnel and volunteers, who would be brought intoaction shortly before, during and after air raids, andwho were to operate from a network of warden, firstaid, fire and rescue centres. Control centres were toprovide coordination of these assets and of the civildefence response. Measures were also to include industry.Nevertheless, preparations in Britain were said to havebeen more than matched by those of other countries, suchas France, Germany and Soviet Russia.The concurrent example of death and destruction fromair bombing during the Spanish Civil War served onlyto increase the perceived urgency for civil defencepreparedness. Not least did this provoke the appearanceof the influential book ARP by J B S Haldane in 1938.The use of poison gas as a weapon of war had beensuggested in the nineteenth century and featured in thestories of H G Wells. The memory of its actual use on theWestern Front during the Great War and knowledge of itsrecent employment from the air in 1935 by the Italiansin Ethiopia, and in 1937 by the Japanese in China, hadadditionally focused the minds of defence planners.have been a typical candidate for such consultation butthere is no surviving record of this. Haldane criticizedgovernment guidance, following the Civil Defence Actof 1937, as being ‘beautifully vague’.The scare of the Munich Crisis in 1938 drove adetermination to do more. Government became moreassertive in its Act of 1939. A requirement for civildefence and, in phases sheltering, whether for industryor for the population, was of course as much aboutensuring national resilience in war as being humanitarianin intent. Air-raid precautions increasingly became apreoccupation of architects and engineers as well as ofcommercial companies intending to benefit from newbusiness opportunities. Their articles in journals andbooklets, supplementing and reinforcing the guidance ofgovernment, are a window into contemporary thinking.Immediate originsUnder the Act of 1939 measures for air-raid precautionsin industry became mandatory, so that workers couldexpect – by law – the provision of protection from thoseby whom they were employed. A code of that year setout a standard of protection. As described elsewhere,measures were to secure against blast, splinters and debrisbut, in general, not against a direct hit. The resistance ofvarious types of material against bombing was set out.Henley at Northfleet had become an important specialistindustrial centre. This grew out of the emergence of the Ageof Electricity, being chiefly a manufacturer of electric cables,distribution equipment, connection boxes and of insulatingmaterials. Following its beginnings elsewhere in the previouscentury the company had expanded in 1903 to buy land fora new factory north of Crete Hall Road in Northfleet. Thisgrew in size in 1910 and 1926, as well as in 1939, on groundpreviously the famous Rosherville Gardens, on the southside of the road. By then the works had also been producingrubber vehicle tyres for nearly twenty years.Map of the Second World War anti-aircraft gun sites on Kent Thameside.Drawn by Victor Smith 2009Government had begunto consult with industryand representatives ofnational infrastructurein 1936 and to issueguidance for shelterprovision in thesesectors, such as ‘AirRaid Precautions inFactories and BusinessPremises’. Initially therewas a somewhat mutedresponse in taking firstdefinite steps, althoughit is known that somecompanies such as I.C.I,Boots and Harris Lebusdid so. The owners andmanagement of theHenley factory would 5Premises, such as Henley’s, with more than fifty staffwere required to have shelters for the staff who workedwithin them, a policy from 1936 for them to be senthome in the event of an air raid having been recognizedas impracticable. Standards of protection, which includedthose of anti-gas filtration plant, were laid down in ARPguidance and Codes. For Henley’s, and for the county ofKent, technical advice, if required, was available fromspecialists at the Home Office in Westminster. Costs wereto be defrayed against the claim of a government grantand factories were required to provide progress reportsby August 1939. Factory inspectors were empowered tocarry out monitoring visits.The shores of the Thames below London were recognizedas containing vital industries and national assets. Withinthat, and including Henley’s, the Northfleet parts of KentThameside were the home of important other industriesand facilities such as Bevan’s Cement Works, Bowater’spaper factory and other paper suppliers, as well as theRed Lion manufacturing and repair wharf. In a bombingrisk assessment map of April 1939, Kent Thameside wasgiven the highest category of bombing vulnerability andpriority for shelters.The Act was a signal for industry to consider urgentlywhat it needed to do. Henley’s must have acted quicklywith planning and preparation of a design because cuttingof the tunnels was reported in early 1939 to be imminentand appears to have been underway by June, the time tocompletion being later reported to have been ‘about 10months’. Government felt a need to define the meaningof an air-raid shelter and, in its Code of August 1939,did so by explaining that this was a means of ‘protectionotherwise than by war-like means…from hostile attackfrom the air…’There were other tunnel shelters as well as surfaceshelters nearby, for the personnel of Northfleet andSwanscombe cement works with sundry surface sheltersfor the local factories, and further tunnels for civilian,and perhaps some industrial users, under The Hill atNorthfleet and elsewhere. Regional Commissioners hadpower to coordinate civil defence in their designatedareas across the country, the Henley site coming withinRegion 12, which covered Kent and Sussex and whoseheadquarters were at Tunbridge Wells.DesignAs recorded in a plan by W.T. Henley of April 1940, thecomplex is on a rectilinear grid-iron plan. A drawing madeby Gravesham Borough Council in a recent rendering ofPostcard, c. 1906, showing part of the former RoshervilleGardens in front of the cliff face, later tunnelled intoto create the Henley shelter complexPart of a bombing risk assessment map of April 1939, including the partof Thameside in which the Henley tunnels were locateda plan apparently datedMarch 1941, shows analmost identical layout.The plan of the complexwas one of a numberof contemporary designapproaches dating from1936 for the layout of alarge-capacity refuge. Thechalk overhead providedample protection andshock absorption fromthe landing and explosionof bombs, the semicircular arching of thetunnel being resistant todownward forces. Thewhite-painted internalskin of 6-in of reinforcedconcrete applied to thewalls and arch was alining to the chalk.Shuttering marks maybe seen. The floors, of6A copy of an April 1940 W.T. Henley plan of the shelter complex. Drawn by Victor Smith 2021varying quality, were either concrete or compacted stonelaid in mortar.Within a short walking or running distance from thefactory, the shelter was accessed through six gas-proofentrances/exits in the chalk cliff face. Post-demolitiontraces remain. Each had outer doors and inner ones,forming an air lock, which best design practice prescribed.There are surviving doors in steel plate. At least two ofthe entrances appear to have been fronted by blast walls.Enlargement of the decontamination entrance as shownin the W.T. Henley plan of April 1940.Drawn by Victor Smith 2021Moreover, and following the approach adopted elsewhere,the angled entrance passages reduced the effects onshelterers of an otherwise unrestricted blast-wavefrom a bomb exploding at factory level outside. Therewas a seventh special decontamination entrance withsimilar protection. In keeping with other very capaciousshelters, the number of entrances had to be adequate toensure unimpeded transit of the large numbers of peopleexpected to enter and leave the shelter at the same time.Entry was required within seven minutes of a warninghaving been given.Fear of gas attackThe decontamination entrance and two of the others gaveaccess to a communications tunnel (or travel gallery asit was officially called) and which led into the shelterarea. The other four entrances led more directly into thelatter. The decontamination entrance is shown as havinga projecting entrance structure in the plan of 1940 butthe plan of March 1941 does not. Demolition of thisarea has removed the evidence and air photographs andmaps are unclear. In either case, and as is evident today,it was divided into separate areas, with disrobing roomsfor women or men who might have been contaminatedin the event of an attack with chemical weapons.There were cleansing showers, first aid and dressingrooms, stores of replacement clothing being held ready.Scales of equipment and supplies for a decontaminationfacility were laid down, including bins for contaminatedclothing, anti-gas ointment, bleach paste, soap andtowels, eye douches and distemper brushes. Within theshelter grid was a command post or control room, linkedby telephone to protected outside observers who wouldreport the situation during and after a raid, advising whenit was safe for the shelterers to leave and, if possible,return to work. 7The air conditioning plant room in 2007. Photo Ed CombesOne of the outside posts for observation was a blockhouse ona cliff overlooking the factory. This was reached by scalingthe 110 rungs of three ladders lashed together and pitchedsheer up the cliff face. There was also the nearby staircaseto the cliff top from the Rosherville Gardens days but it isunclear whether this was accessible at the time.Inside the shelter there were also first-aid rooms and a roomfor shelter wardens and others, apparently made by dividinga passage with temporary partitions. Latrines were provided.Official guidance was for there to be an equal balance ofplumbed-in toilets and chemical ones but the Henley tunnelsappear to have had mainly chemical, utilizing Elsan buckets.According to the plans of 1940, these were provided on eitherside of a central latrine tunnel, in individual cubicles. Althougha large number of Elsans are to be seen today, there is no traceof cubicles, unless they were of light, portable form. There isperhaps a sense that the arrangement to be seen today might,in some details, not entirely reflect that shown in the plans.Recesses for Elsans may be found in the decontaminationentrance, the first-aid and squad rooms and in the controlroom. Pipework for water may be seen in various places,including at the northern end of the central latrine tunnel(possibly indicating the former presence of a handbasin).There is a waste water gulley under the floor nearby.Essential ventilationSafe breathing of the air within the shelter was achieved bythe provision of ventilation and gas filtration, powered froman internal engine or plant room. The equipment concernedwas a mechanical science in itself and manufacturers offereda selection of types. As a general rule, the larger the shelterthe larger the required equipment. Indeed, the Henleyengine room was, in effect, two-storied in height, containinggenerating plant to (a) power air movement and filteringsystems to prevent the entry of war gases, and (b) to providea stand-by supply of electricity for lighting, the public mainsbeing used pending its disruption or failure. Both bare andconduit-mounted cables were connected to a succession ofexposed light bulbs.It was recommended for such shelters that electric torchesbe kept ready in the event of failure of both the mains supplyand the standby set. Ventilation was by forced draught, the airbeing drawn in from the outside, where traces of intakes maybe seen, to be passed through the anti-gas filtration equipmentand circulated through the tunnels by ducts, of which tracesremain. The air was reported to have been changed everysixteen minutes.Paul Thorne examined and commented on this plant in2003, noting that there appear to have been two independentPlant room diagram (filtered ventilation). From a drawing by Paul Thorne 8ventilation circuits, one with two-stage filtration and the otherwithout. Neither could run unless the generating set was alsooperating. One seems to have been mechanically driven by a(now missing) diesel engine, whilst the other needed DirectCurrent power to run its motor, and only a DC generatorcould provide this. Either fan would positively pressurizethe main cross tunnel, thus expelling air at all the entrancesexcept the one (No. 3) containing twin air intakes.Paul Thorne has added that ‘a changeover switch wouldhave allowed the tunnel lights to be switched from externalmains AC or DC generator, both at 230V. But either fandrive would be run entirely off the generator engine, eitherdirectly, or via a DC generator to run the DC motor.’The 7-ft wide tunnels had moveable bench-seating alongeither wall, with further seating along the centre of thelarger 10-ft wide ones, as marked in lettering on the walls.This consisted of horizontal wooden planking resting onvertical boards at intervals, in turn fixed into transversefloor bearers. This was one of a number of typical seatingPlant room diagram (non-filtered ventilation). From a drawing by Paul ThorneSeating in the shelter during the wartime periodAdvertising photograph by the Allen Companyshowing typical bench seating, 1939 9designs for shelters, something similar being shown, forexample, in an advertising photograph of the Allen’scompany. There was extensive painted directional andother signage throughout to help guide the shelterersas they entered, so avoiding confusion and congestion.some use of space in the travel gallery. The samecommentator remarked that ‘This 2,500 feet tunnelsystem….was designed by the people at GravesendWorks [Henley’s], the Holborn Construction Companybeing responsible for construction and concrete lining.Altogether, about 8,000 tons of chalk have beenexcavated. The entrances are built out from the cliff faceas solid structures – a measure designed as a safeguardin the event of heavy falls of chalk from the cliff face….’ Cross-section of one of the 7-ft. wide tunnels.Drawn by Victor Smith 2021Each shelterer was given a card identifying their reservedseating. There is no evidence of there having beenprovision for sleeping spaces, although if need be, thesecould have been extemporized. The 14 ft x 10 ft room atthe centre of the southern extremity of the tunnel systemmay have been designated as a strongroom for storageof company and factory records.Tight seatingLegal requirements were for the capacity of a shelter tobe that of the maximum number of employees and ofany anticipated increase. A study of seat numbers paintedon the tunnel walls suggests that there was provisionfor around 2,500 shelterers, each of whom would havehad a planned seating space of 1ft 6in to 1ft 7in, a notuntypical situation in other shelters and a generallyexpected minimum, which was to provide for ten peoplewithin a bench run of 15 ft.Section of tunnel showing recess for Elsan chemical toiletin 2007. Photo Nick CombesThe shelter was contemporarily reported to have hadcapacity for 2,300 people, but that up to 3,000 could beaccommodated in an emergency, presumably involvingIntersection of tunnels in 2007. Photo Nick CombesThe chalk was taken out on skips running on rails while‘concrete, mixed in a mechanical mixer outside, wasbeing brought in by another – similar to the transportsystem in a colliery.’ It has been suggested that the initialstage of the digging out obliterated some grottoes whichhad been created for the earlier Rosherville Gardens,although the evidence for this is unknown.Signage painted in black on the walls gave occupantsdirections to the first-aid rooms and to the designatedseating spaces. Other signs stated that ‘Smoking isstrictly forbidden’. On the trunking in the plant roomhas been found pencilled ‘To Hell with Hitler’. At thedecontamination entrance are the words ‘534 WorksDep’, of unknown date.Travel Gallery in 2007. Photo Nick CombesImportance of protecting Henley’s workersThe attention given to the protection of Henley’s workerswas underscored by the factory being a key and strategicindustrial site, whose role was crucial to the war effort inall its stages. Examples of Henley’s increasingly diverse 9designs for shelters, something similar being shown, forexample, in an advertising photograph of the Allen’scompany. There was extensive painted directional andother signage throughout to help guide the shelterersas they entered, so avoiding confusion and congestion.some use of space in the travel gallery. The samecommentator remarked that ‘This 2,500 feet tunnelsystem….was designed by the people at GravesendWorks [Henley’s], the Holborn Construction Companybeing responsible for construction and concrete lining.Altogether, about 8,000 tons of chalk have beenexcavated. The entrances are built out from the cliff faceas solid structures – a measure designed as a safeguardin the event of heavy falls of chalk from the cliff face….’ Cross-section of one of the 7-ft. wide tunnels.Drawn by Victor Smith 2021Each shelterer was given a card identifying their reservedseating. There is no evidence of there having beenprovision for sleeping spaces, although if need be, thesecould have been extemporized. The 14 ft x 10 ft room atthe centre of the southern extremity of the tunnel systemmay have been designated as a strongroom for storageof company and factory records.Tight seatingLegal requirements were for the capacity of a shelter tobe that of the maximum number of employees and ofany anticipated increase. A study of seat numbers paintedon the tunnel walls suggests that there was provisionfor around 2,500 shelterers, each of whom would havehad a planned seating space of 1ft 6in to 1ft 7in, a notuntypical situation in other shelters and a generallyexpected minimum, which was to provide for ten peoplewithin a bench run of 15 ft.Section of tunnel showing recess for Elsan chemical toiletin 2007. Photo Nick CombesThe shelter was contemporarily reported to have hadcapacity for 2,300 people, but that up to 3,000 could beaccommodated in an emergency, presumably involvingIntersection of tunnels in 2007. Photo Nick CombesThe chalk was taken out on skips running on rails while‘concrete, mixed in a mechanical mixer outside, wasbeing brought in by another – similar to the transportsystem in a colliery.’ It has been suggested that the initialstage of the digging out obliterated some grottoes whichhad been created for the earlier Rosherville Gardens,although the evidence for this is unknown.Signage painted in black on the walls gave occupantsdirections to the first-aid rooms and to the designatedseating spaces. Other signs stated that ‘Smoking isstrictly forbidden’. On the trunking in the plant roomhas been found pencilled ‘To Hell with Hitler’. At thedecontamination entrance are the words ‘534 WorksDep’, of unknown date.Travel Gallery in 2007. Photo Nick CombesImportance of protecting Henley’s workersThe attention given to the protection of Henley’s workerswas underscored by the factory being a key and strategicindustrial site, whose role was crucial to the war effort inall its stages. Examples of Henley’s increasingly diverse10and vital war-effort manufacturing were:• 14 million gas masks for adults and half-million forbabies• Cables used on ships as a countermeasure againstGerman magnetic sea mines• Cables used offshore to detect and connect withexplosives to destroy submarines• Rubber tyres for military vehicles• Ear defenders for soldiers• Communication cables• Millions of parts of artillery shells, mortar bombs,rocket firing apparatus, aircraft fuel tanks and smallarms ammunition• For the liberation of Europe, the innovative PipelineUnder the Ocean (PLUTO), to supply fuel for the Alliedarmies once they had landed.Working parties and others brought in from outside thefactory could be called upon to clear rubble and debrisin the event of bomb damage and to repair machinery.Civil defence teams were on hand to decontaminate thefactory buildings in the event of an attack with gas.The agent used might have been of a poisonous, irritant orblistering nature, whether of a persistent or non-persistentkind. Most, but not all, types of gas could be discoveredby a range of special detector sheets around the factoryElectrical box in passage in 2007. Photo Ed CombesInside of one of the entrances in 2007. Photo Ed Combespremises. Decontamination workers, who followed wellprepared procedures, had available to them a range ofequipment and large stocks of bleach with which to treatsurfaces. Rescue and first-aid detachments were similarlyprepared and had a large supply of the plant and otherthings they needed.Use of the shelterNo documents have yet come to light recording thefrequency of the occupation of the shelter. The industriesManufacturing area at Henleys for PLUTO:Wartime photographGas masks were also made at Henleys: Wartime photographLead press shop at Henleys11An advertisem*nt for another type of industrial shelter, similar to some other civilian types11An advertisem*nt for another type of industrial shelter, similar to some other civilian types12of Northfleet on Thameside were a tempting target, butthey did not receive quite the determined and focusedbombing attention they merited. Anecdotally, Henley’swas, however, bombed at least once, resulting in thesight of banknotes floating in the air from the inside ofa damaged factory’s pay office.The theoretical procedure was for the employees, carryingtheir gas masks, to be evacuated into the shelter uponhearing an air-raid alert and then, as earlier mentioned,to return to their work places upon the notification ofan all-clear and after a judgement had been made by acoordinator that it was safe to do so.How often a factory evacuation and shelter occupationwas practised is unknown. The hope and intention wasAir-raid alerts could hold up factory production. Duringthe course of the war, there were 1,252 in Northfleet andGravesend but how many of these resulted in cessationof work at Henley’s and shelter occupation is not known.It may be that, as at some places elsewhere, a retreat tothe shelter would not have taken place until bombinghad actually started sufficiently close-by to be seen asan approaching threat. The walls of the shelter do notexhibit the marks of soiling or wear which might havebeen expected to result from frequent occupation.Kent County Council’s simplified characterization ofthe air war in their report of 1946 was of a period ofcomparative lull from 3 September 1939 to August1940; greater activity during August 1940 – August 1941(during which time the Battle of Britain took place, whenthere were many overflights of the area); a second lullfrom August 1941 to January 1943; sporadic raiding fromJanuary to April 1943 and the V1/V2 attacks from June1944 to March 1945.Henley’s North Woolwich works in the dockland district ofLondon suffered repeatedly from heavy air raids resultingin death, injuries and destruction of buildings and plant.As Henley’s at Northfleet ‘had fared better in the raids’, itwas decided to transfer some manufacturing there.Brick partition wall (right) in the tunnels in 2007.Photo Nick CombesHenley Home Guard in 1941for the occupation of the shelter tobe accomplished promptly on receiptof a bombing alert and so sheltererswould already be safely inside andprotected should an attack includethe use of poison gas.In the event of the latter startingwithout warning, there might havebeen some confusion as the shelterbegan to be occupied and thereare perhaps questions concerningthe ability of the decontaminationentrance to cope with a possibly largethrough-put of people. The numberof combined entrances/exits was apragmatic substitute for the provisionof separate emergency exits.Henley staff taking shelter in the tunnels at an unknowndate, perhaps as a drill: Wartime photograph.Inside the sheltersThe gathering of people in communal shelters was aneedful social phenomenon of the war, in this case of aspecific group of people. What conversation took place inthem is unknown. At times during shelter use there was,by report, some informal entertainment in the form ofsing-along. Whether there was provision for the supplyof drinks to shelterers is unknown. There is no evidenceof there having been a kitchen.13Postwar usesAs for shelters everywhere, use of the Henley complexceased with, or rather shortly before, the end of the war.It might have been a candidate in the early Cold War forinclusion in a national list of shelter assets for possiblefuture utilisation. Indeed, it was briefly considered as acandidate for adaptation of part of the tunnels as a localCivil Defence Control Centre but the final choice layelsewhere.Map withthe sheltersuperimposedon the layout ofpost-war housingand roads, afteran undated Henleyplan.Drawn by VictorSmith 2021Large shelter for Vickers Armstrong workers at Weybridge,Surrey. The now sealed shelter is located at the rear of thecar park for the David Lloyd health club at Brooklands.Evidence of later production is seen in one of the sheltertunnels in 1999. Wartime signage is seen on the end wall.Photo Nick CatfordThe Littlewoods Pools building in Liverpool was used forthe manufacture of Halifax Bombers during the war. Alarge shelter complex was constructed by cut and cover forworkers to one side of the factory. When specially openedfor members of Sub Brit in October 2012, the tunnels werestill in good condition but only wartime graffiti remainedto be seen. Photo Nick CatfordIn 1959 Henley’s was acquired by Associated ElectricalIndustries, then in turn by the General Electric Companyin 1967, and renamed GEC Henley. It has been reported tothe writer that in 1975, if not earlier, the tunnels were usedas an extension to the Engineering Drawing Departmentof the factory, having draughtsmen working at drawingboards. This was not a conducive environment for suchwork and would have required adequate lighting.By this date, the outcrop of chalk containing thedecontamination entrance had been demolished. Thetunnels were subsequently, and until the later 1980s,an assembly area for Special Accessories, in the main,products for the offshore oil industry. In time, some ofthe tunnels became a repository for a variety of discardedscientific and laboratory equipment from the factory.Some factory records were also kept inside, includingpapers from the 1950s.14The eastern end of the tunnel complex was partitioned inbrick during the postwar period, presumably in supportof some of these activities. Some of the timber flooringin evidence might have originated at this time. Also, atan uncertain date in the postwar years, the internal airlock doors were removed and outer doors and entrancefacades altered. In 1997 the company was taken over byTT Electronics in 1997 and, in 2010, by Groupe Sicame.Housing developmentIn the first few years after 2000 the Henley factorysite became earmarked for future development and thecontents of the tunnels were subsequently removed.Following gradual clearance of the factory buildings,not complete until fairly recently, the ground in front ofthe entrances to the shelter entrances was raised fromthe deposition of material excavated from the LondonCrossrail project. After settling, this became the site forconstruction of housing by Keepmoat Homes, at present(2022) in progress.has covered them with wire mesh against falls. Theapproaches to the cliffs and tunnel entrances across thedevelopment site are in other ownership.Other types of wartime sheltersJust as surviving pillboxes symbolise Britain’s antiinvasion defences during the Second World War, soair-raid shelters define the years-long imperative toprovide passive protection against the threat and realityof bombing from the air. Many thousands of shelters werebuilt across the country. Such protection varied widelyfrom use of basem*nts, strengthened or otherwise, tosmall designed private shelters next to (or within) homes.These were the ‘Anderson’ and the ‘Morrison’ shelters,provided free or sometimes bought from government vialocal authorities, added to which were communal sheltersfor the public, industry and for service personnel. Thelatter three categories could be surface, semi-surface,blockhouses inside buildings or underground, whether infreshly tunnelled spaces or the adaptation of existing ones.One of the entrances to the shelter complex at Henleysin 2021. Photo Victor SmithThe remnants of the decontamination entrance at Henleysin 2021. Photo Victor SmithBecause it is below the housing of Fountain Walk andassociated land, which are in the ownership of GraveshamBorough Council, the shelter is owned by the latterwhich, for safety reasons, maintains the cliff faces andControl Room at Henleys in 2021. Photo Victor SmithIndustrial shelters had the same basic frame of referencefor design as for most of the other types. Contrastingwith Henley’s shelters at Northfleet, some were usedfor the protection of production, such as at the CarrowWorks complex in Norwich. This had a similar layout butwas smaller in extent. The vulnerability of the Plesseyfactory in Ilford led to the transfer of manufacturing tofuture Central line tube tunnels nearby. Some aviationproduction of Short Brothers took place in chalk tunnelsin the hillside at Rochester, not far from Thameside.Some shelters for workers were built into the design ofthe buildings of recently-constructed factories, such asat Park Works, Kingston-upon-Thames and elsewhere.Blockhouses were sometimes used as shelters insidefactory working areas, exemplified in the wartimemotion picture Millions Like Us (1943). Henley’s NorthWoolwich factory had no space for underground sheltersso it used strengthened ground-floor areas as refuges.Another example of shelters for a large number ofworkers comparable with Henley’s was the complex forthe Ekko factory in Essex, although this was cut-and-15cover in fields close to production. A network of sheltersfor workers at the Courtauld factory at Halstead, Essexis featured on page 86 of this issue of Subterranea. Theexposed quarried chalk faces along the riverine parts ofNorthfleet and Kent Thameside had offered ideal pointsof entry for the creation of tunnel air-raid shelters, for theprotection of both industrial workers and civilians. Someof the tunnels selected for use as shelters already existedas communications between riverside works and nearbychalk quarries, only needing to be adapted or extended.In these categories, west of Henley’s was a possibletunnel behind Bowaters, and as previously mentionedfive tunnels under The Hill at Northfleet, several at theNorthfleet cement works, others in rear of similar worksat Swanscombe as well as at Greenhithe but these werenot of the same regular design and scale as those forHenley’s. Elsewhere in the county of Kent were thetunnel shelters in Chislehurst Caves, at Ramsgate, atDover and, as mentioned above, Rochester. There wereothers in South Essex. New large tunnel shelters were alsoproposed for a number of major inland urban locationsin Kent but these were not proceeded with.justified by the resistant qualities of a thick protectiveoverburden. Indeed, concerns were expressed at one stagethat shelterers at Ramsgate and elsewhere might becomereluctant to come out again.Vertically, the Henley tunnels fulfilled the official definitionof a ‘Deep Shelter’, in which shelterers were officiallyregarded as being in no danger from bomb-inducedconcussion. Their entrances were, of course, at factorylevel, at risk from bombing and horizontal blast but, asearlier suggested, it was presumably considered that theeffects of the angled entrance passages to the shelter areasand the barrier of chalk were sufficient protection.As commented in a report by CGMS, ‘in terms of nationalsignificance, the complex at Northfleet is mentionedexplicitly within Historic England Guidance (2016) on civildefence structures as a surviving example of undergroundWorld War Two industrial air-raid shelters. Indeed, thecounty of Kent is noted for this and one other shelter of asimilar type [the Shorts tunnels at Rochester], indicatinga degree of national and regional significance…..’ and,as noted within Historic England Guidance, the paintedsignage found within the tunnels at Northfleet ‘addsmarkedly to the historic interest of a civil defence structure.This contributes to the significance of the site due to therare nature of this signage in other air-raid shelters of thistype, and indeed of other types, that survives.’The eastern opening to the air conditioning plant room(right), with a turning in the tunnel to the left to the shelterspaces and the first aid room in 2007. Photo Nick CombesElsan buckets in one of the tunnels in 2007.Photo Nick CombesBunker mentalityAs exemplified by the use of the London’s tube tunnelsand platforms, protection in places deep undergroundcould instill in people a soothing sense of security, usuallyThe tunnel seen from entrance 4 in 2007, with a no-longerpresent wooden door of unknown date and ventilationtrunking above. Photo Nick CombesDespite the mutilation of its entrances – especially regrettablein the case of the decontamination area – the complex isnoteworthy for its large size and the completeness of itslayout, representing an historically ideal template for design.The remaining machinery in the plant room exemplifiesthe technology of its age. It is a scarce surviving exampleof its type in the southeast of England. Its importance isunderscored by its relationship with key Thameside industry,symbolizing a crucial national industrial effort during a mostchallenging period of world war.These factors argue for consideration to be given to itsstatutory protection. Its entrances should be securedagainst intrusion and the carrying out of damage, alreadyevident in the presence on the walls of painted graffiti.16Looking south along Tunnel 3 in 2007. Tunnels 3 - 6 areparallel with each other and are linked by cross passageswhich are seen on the left. The tunnel to the right leads tothe decontamination entrance and entrances 1 and 2.Photo Nick CombesNecessary conservation measuresA road under the cliff has been retained and securityfenced in order to provide access to Gravesham BoroughCouncil for the purpose of external maintenance to guardagainst chalk falls. An electrical pillar has been offered bythe developer to allow for the possibility of introducingan electrical installation inside. There is gated access tothe road from a route across the development.In this writer’s opinion, and after the implementationof safety works, the tunnels are of sufficient historicinterest to lend themselves to occasional public access viaguided tours of selected areas, with suitable interpretationand display of related artefacts. The size and layoutof the tunnels might offer the possibility of incomegenerating reuse, especially for storage, at the same timesafeguarding their historical features. It is understood thatthe developer will be providing external interpretationof the tunnels.One of the sealed tunnel entrances in 2007.Photo Nick CombesAcknowledgements and thanksI must thank Rod Le Gear and Paul Thorne of the KentUnderground Research Group for their participation withThames Defence Heritage in a survey of the tunnels in2003/4 and for their supply of notes afterwards. Robert Hallgenerously shared his notes, following a visit he made withLooking north along Tunnel 3 in 2007; cross tunnelsare seen to the left. Photo Nick CombesKURG in 2016. The former Associated Electrical Industriesand Groupe Sicame kindly facilitated visits to the tunnels atvarious dates and, most recently, Keepmoat Homes for visitsby the writer in 2021 and 2022.Historical information and suggestions were gratefullyreceived from Wayne Cocroft, Jay Curtis, the late KenMcGoverin, David Neale, David Oliver, Roger Thomas andPaul Thorne. Reports by Kayley Page and her team in drawingattention to insecure places of entry to the tunnels and to theingress of slurry from the outside were important in leadingto remedial action being taken by the developer.SourcesJ.B.S. Haldane, ARP, London (1938)Felix J. Samuely and Conrad W. Harmann, Civil Protection, London,(September 1939)Articles in Spring and Quarterly Emergency issues of The Henley Telegraph(1939)Plan of the Henley tunnels air-raid complex dated April 1940, and arendering of one of March 1941 by Gravesham Borough Council, in thecollection of the writer.W.L. Platts, Kent – The Administration in War, 1939-1945, Maidstone(1946)Anon., 1939-1945, The Story of Henley in War-Time (undated, butpresumably early-postwar)Colin Dobinson, Twentieth-Century Fortifications in England, Vol. VIII,Civil Defence in WW11, CBA (1996)Frank R. Turner, The WT Henley Telegraph Works, Gravesend (2001)Victor Smith, Henley Air Raid Shelter Tunnels at Northfleet, typescript(2009)Victor T.C. Smith, Twentieth Century Military and Civil Defences: Part1 - Thameside, Archaeologia Cantiana, CXXX (2010)Robert Hall, notes on an investigation of the Henley Tunnels, typescript(2016)Roger J.C. Thomas, Civil Defence: from the First World War to the ColdWar – Introductions to Heritage Assets, Historic England (2016)CTP, Hermits Cave and Second World War Air Raid Shelters, Northfleet,Kent, Measured and Condition Survey (May 2020)CGMS, Heritage Management Plan and Interpretation Strategy –Northfleet Embankment East, Northfleet, Kent (May 2020)CGMS, Statement of significance in support of a proposed scheme ofprotection in respect of Hermits Cave and WW11 Air Raid Shelters,Northfleet, Kent (May 2020)Keepmoat Homes, Cable Wharf Northfleet air raid tunnels report (aphotographic survey) (January 2021)Wessex Archaeology, Cable Wharf, Northfleet, Kent – ArchaeologicalWatching Brief (May 2021)Various official memoranda on civil defence at the Kent History and LibraryCentre; sundry minutes of the councils for Northfleet Urban District andGravesend Municipal Borough, as well as documents in the HO series atthe National Archives.ABOUT THE AUTHORVictor Smith read history at King’s College, London, specialising in War Studies. He is an independent historian of BriEsh historic defences and has researched and reported on sites in Southern England, Scotland, Gibraltar, Bermuda and the Caribbean. In 1989/90 he was Chief ExecuEve of the Brimstone Hill Fortress NaEonal Park in St. KiUs which he helped gain UNESCO World Heritage status. Victor Smith coordinated Kent County Council’s 20th century Defence of Kent Project and was Director of Thames Defence Heritage from 1975‐2011. His work has included, in partnership with Gravesham Borough Council, the restoraEon and re‐armament of New Tavern Fort and the refurnishing and interpretaEon of a Cold War bunker in Gravesend. He was the chairman of the Kent Archaeological Society’s Historic Defences CommiUee and five Emes President of the Gravesend Historical Society. He is currently engaged with many studies of historic defences in Britain and abroad. KENT DEFENCE RESEARCH GROUPThe Kent Defence Research Group are dedicated to the discovery, idenEficaEon, research, recording and preservaEon of historic sites and structures throughout Kent. We are an informal group, whose members reflect a range of skills and specialist interests, meeEng every three months to update and discuss the various projects in which we are each involved and to plan our Group acEviEes. We also look to share our knowledge and experEse with the wider heritage community and to make available the results of our research in the public domain.We can be found on Facebook at:hUps://www.facebook.com/KentDefenceResearchGroupOr we can be contacted by email at:historicdefences@kentarchaeology.orgGRAVESHAM HERITAGE FORUMThe ethos and aims of the Gravesham Heritage Forum (GHF) are to promote and support the heritage of Gravesham and of the great county of Kent, formerly known as the ‘Kingdom of Kent’. To this end the GHF has been formed by Peter Torode and includes experts who can offer a high level of accreditaEon to meet the objecEves and aims outlined above. These include Victor Smith and Christoph Bull, who are well‐known in the field of heritage, with other associated members. The GHF have delivered on various projects and can offer advice and pracEcal soluEons in the pursuit of maintaining and promoEng our wonderful heritage, including interpretaEonal signage and other pracEcal cost‐effecEve methods.Chief ExecuEve of the GHF and Director of Consilium Dare07827 885453 email peter@consiliumdare.comK DR GKent Defence Research Groupwww.subbrit.org.ukwAir Raid Shelters wBell Pits wBunkers wCanal Tunnels wCatacombs wCaves wChalk Pits wCold War wControlCentres wConduits wCrypts wDeneholes wDungeons wFollies wFortifications wGrottoes wIce HouseswMilitary Works wMines wOssuaries wUnderground Quarries wRefuges wReservoirs wROC Posts wSallyportswSewers wSilos wSubways wSurface Remains wTunnels wUnderground Railways wWells wMuch, Much MoreEXPLORATION, RECORDING & STUDYUNDERGROUNDTo find out more about the UK’s leading Underground Society and how to become a member, visit our website
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
KENT AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE:A COUNTY STUDY, 1760s - 1807KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETYDavid KillingrayArticle first published inArchaeologia Cantiana, Vol CXXVII 2007 pp 107 - 126© 2007 David KillingrayLicensed for personal &/or academic use107KENT AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE:A COUNTY STUDY, 1760s-1807david killingrayTwo thousand and seven marks the bicentenary of the abolition of theBritish slave trade. This brutal ‘human traffick’ that carried men, womenand children from west Africa across the Atlantic to enslavement in theAmericas, by 1750 was dominated by British shipping. Most slavescarried in British ships went to the Caribbean islands where they weremainly employed as forced plantation labour. By the mid-eighteenthcentury the Caribbean islands had become Britain’s imperial jewels; thesugar, rum, molasses, cotton, and other slave-produced goods were seenas vital mainstays of the domestic economy. Although the transportationof white convicts to the American colonies, a system akin to temporaryenslavement, continued to the 1770s, the view had arisen that whitepeople should not be enslaved but that black people could. Great outragewas expressed at the enslavement of Europeans as captives in the northAfrican Muslim states, and many parishes, including those in Kent,raised contributions for their redemption.1 Before mid-century only a fewisolated Europeans questioned the morality of shipping African slaves inmurderous conditions across the Atlantic. However, thereafter disquietsteadily increased in both Britain and North America at this growing tradewhich, in the 1760s-70s saw 1.3 million people shipped to the New Worldcolonies, with the resulting deaths of thousands more. The reasons forthis slow change in attitudes, and from anti-slavery to abolitionism, arepredictably complex. They reflected economic and social changes broughtabout by increasing industrialisation and urbanisation, the influence ofthe evangelical awakening on both sides of the Atlantic, Enlightenmentideas about the employment of labour, and political changes brought bythe revolutionary situation in the North American colonies that changedperceptions of Empire and commerce.2Demands to end the slave trade gained pace in Britain in the 1770s.By the late 1780s and early 1790s this had developed into an extraparliamentary campaign that influenced legislators to pass a series ofregulatory measures and then culminated in an Act abolishing the slavetrade in March 1807. This extra-parliamentary campaign was organisedDAVID KILLINGRAY108from London by the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the SlaveTrade, created in May 1787. Its leaders were a group of Quakers and afew evangelical Christians who set about organising public opposition,using methods that became standard for future similar lobbies: publishingPlate IThomas Clarkson (1760-1846), the lifelong campaigner against the slave tradeand then slavery, an oil painting by Carl Frederik von Breda, 1788. (CourtesyNational Portrait Gallery, London)KENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807109pamphlets and books, public meetings, gathering subscribers, creatinglocal branches, lobbying MPs, organising petitions to Parliament anddistributing a medallion, produced by Josiah Wedgwood, showing thefigure of a kneeling African beneath the caption: ‘Am I not a man anda brother?’. Later was added a campaign to promote a popular boycottof slave-produced sugar and other goods. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), an Anglican deacon, visited the relevant ports around the countryon behalf of the Committee collecting data on the slave trade, often atconsiderable personal risk. Within parliament the campaign was led byanother evangelical, William Wilberforce, the MP for Hull.The organisational direction of the anti-slave trade lobby came fromthe Committee in London. The bulk of the support for abolition camefrom northern manufacturing towns. There was relatively little publiclyorganised anti-slave trade sentiment in the south east counties, includingKent, although few historians have attempted to investigate this. Localstudies of both pro- and anti-slave trade activities are useful in that theyprovide a more balanced account of a major change that occurred inBritain’s foreign commerce.3 Of course, the county may not necessarilyprovide the most sensible or logical unit for study, but local studies haveto begin somewhere and to have limits. The County of Kent seems, atleast at this stage of research, to provide a useful and containable area inwhich to investigate how the abolitionists organised their campaign andhow those who opposed change responded.Kent and the slave trade: traders, merchants, and plantersEighteenth-century Kent was a maritime county with a long seaboardcut by the river Medway, a number of small but strategically significantports, a substantial shipbuilding industry both naval and mercantile,and proximity to London which was the major overseas trading citydependent on the Thames. Certain Channel and Thames-side ports werestrategically placed to furnish ships bound for the Atlantic trade withstores, sailors, and the vital services required for commercial shipping.London undoubtedly exerted considerable influence on Kent’s coastal andThames-side towns and ports, invariably tying certain of their fortunesto those of the metropolis. Deptford and particularly Gravesend fed offtheir maritime closeness to London, the latter often being a port of callfor ships departing or returning from the blue water trade. Until the mideighteenth century London was the most active slave port followed byBristol and then Liverpool. It had held the headquarters of the RoyalAfrican Company, which from 1672 to 1689 had a monopoly of the westAfrican trade. From 1760 onwards, London was second to Liverpool,and ahead of Bristol, in the number of ships despatched to west Africaand in the number of slaves carried to the Americas. From 1698-DAVID KILLINGRAY1101807, London ships carried over 717,000 slaves to the Americas, andalthough the pattern of its trade with west Africa became irregular after1760, nevertheless the city remained Britain’s second slaving port untilabolition in 1807.4 This trade to west Africa and the Americas impingedon Kent. Seamen, enlisted and impressed, from the county helped to manthese ships. Vessels constructed in Kent yards, for example, the schoonerPeggy, and the clinker built Comet, both built at Folkestone in 1783 and1787, and the Queen Esther, a ‘West Indian ship’ built at Gravesend in1789, were engaged either directly in the slave trade or in shipping slaveproduced goods from West Indian to British ports.Of all Kentish towns, Deal perhaps had most direct involvement inthe slave trade. It was a ‘head port’ of London with a position closeto the Continent, a deep water anchorage between the Goodwin Sandsand the shore, and defended by shore batteries. In the early seventeenthcentury the Bowles family of Deal forged strong links with the Crispes ofThanet, to whom they were related, whose London company was activelyinvolved in the African trade. Nicholas Crispe had created the Companyof Merchants Trading into Africa in 1631, the direct ancestor of the RoyalAfrican Company. The Bowles were employed in the Guinea trade in the1650s. Tobias Bowles, four times mayor of Deal, with offices there andin London, conducted a trade mainly in sugar and tobacco with Maryland.In 1704 the Bowles imported African ivory worth £430, and in 1715Tobias and George Bowles sent a Deal-registered snow to trade on theRiver Gambia. Four years later a Deal wine merchant, Henry AlexanderPrimrose, who was the son-in-law of Tobias Bowles, chartered the sloopSamuel for Guinea, eventually delivering 98 slaves to a Barbados slavemerchant in June 1720. Deal also sent goods for sale in west Africa andsupplied men to crew ships.5 Another Deal family directly involved inthe slave trade was the Boys. In October 1726, William Boys sailed onthe Luxborough Galley to Cabinda where the ship loaded 600 slaves.On the ‘middle passage’ to Jamaica, one third of the human cargo died.Returning to London with a cargo of rum and sugar, the vessel caught fireand was abandoned with considerable loss of crew.6In the eighteenth century it would have been difficult for those in Kentinvolved either directly in the West Indian islands, such as John Matson,town clerk of Sandwich and Chief Justice of Dominica, or in the servicesconnected with extra-European commerce and shipping (such as bankingand insurance), not to have benefited in one way or another from theslave trade and slavery. Slave-produced goods constituted a significantsource of Britain’s overseas derived wealth. Francis Cobb (snr), and hispartner Hooper, of Margate acted as agents for owners of a cargo and werealso involved in the business of salvage. In September 1782 when theEmperor, bound from Jamaica to London with a cargo of sugar, pimento,rum, and cotton was lost on the Mouve Sands, Cobbs’ salvage operationKENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807111involved two sloops, three large boats and more than 50 men. Eighteenmonths later Cobb and his partner acted as agents for the owners of acargo of sugar and rum lost when the Matilda from Jamaica was wreckedoff Margate. And as brewers Cobbs were happy to supply merchantswith ale and porter destined for the Danish West Indian island colonyof St Croix with its harsh slave regime.7 And so it may have been withother similar commercial companies and concerns in Kentish towns andports.8 Some of the migrants from Kent to the American colonies settledin societies where slavery was well established. How many became slaveowners, like Isaac Titford from Cranbrook who bought a Jamaican estatein St Katherine producing coffee and pimento, is unknown.9The Bowles and the Boys were directly involved in the murky business ofbuying slaves in west Africa and shipping them to the American colonies.Behind them, as always, were the big men, merchants who suppliedcapital and advanced goods, who oiled and organised trading systems,dealing in human lives from the comfort of city offices. Slave trading,and the importation of slave-produced goods, were profitable concernsthat girdled a large part of the globe; East Indies’ cloth and cowries wereshipped west to meet British manufactured goods, both to be traded forAfrican slaves. Prominent in this were a number of merchants who leasedor bought property in north-west Kent, rural homes conveniently placedfor easy access to the City. Years later, in 1821, William Cobbett, certainlynot an impartial voice and also indifferent to colonial slavery, wrote in hisRural Rides of the ‘infinite corruption in Kent, owing partly to the swarmsof West Indians, nabobs, commissioners, and others of nearly the samedescription, that have selected it for the place of their residence’.10 Whetheror not they were corrupt is one matter; certainly many were rich and partlyon the proceeds of their involvement with slavery and the slave trade.Among the cluster of wealthy merchants living in metropolitan Kent, inBlackheath and Greenwich, was John Angerstein, a founder of Lloyds, whoowned a one-third share in a Grenada plantation; there was also AmbroseCrowley, the iron manufacturer with extensive wharfing interests inGreenwich, whose manacles and chains were supplied for slave ships andto plantation owners. Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), lived in Greenwichand owned ‘Saltspring’ a plantation in Hanover parish, Jamaica. In 1784he bought property at West Kingsdown, subsequently paying a total of£21,458 for 2,000 acres; at his death his son inherited the Jamaica estates.Thomas King, with a house near to Blackheath Common, was a partner ina firm of slave agents, Camden, Calvert and King. Nearby were the homesand estates of John Boyd (1718-1800) at Danson House, Bexleyheath, SirAlexander Grant (1705-1772) in Eltham, and John Sargent (1714-91) atMay Place, Crayford.Boyd’s father, Augustus, was a director and vice-chairman of theEast India Company; he owned property in Lewisham, plantations inDAVID KILLINGRAY112St Kitts, and at his death in 1765 left an estate valued at £50,000. Hisson, John, inherited four West Indian estates from his grandmother andfrom his father giving him sufficient wealth to have Danson House builtas a Palladian villa. John Boyd, created a baronet in 1775, had been inpartnership with fellow expatriate Scots, Richard Oswald (1705-84) andAlexander Grant, a company in which Sargent was a shareholder. In 1748Oswald, Grant & Co. had bought the former Royal African Companytrading post on Bance Island, Sierra Leone, from where they barteredwith Africans for slaves who were then sold on to European traders fortransport to the Americas.11 During the Seven Years’ War with Francefrom 1756 to 1763, Boyd bought several plantations in the islands ofGrenada and Dominica, but his interests were hit by the fall in the priceof sugar, the capture of St Kitts by the French, during which brief perioda number of his slaves died from starvation, and the collapse of his bank.The onset of the American Revolution further hit his finances. Boyd’seldest daughter married one of his partners, John Trevanion, elected MPfor Dover in 1783, who acquired plantations in the Windward Islands andlater in the eastern Caribbean. When Sir John Boyd died his will providedan annuity of £1,200 to his wife Catherine out of his ‘plantation with theslaves and other appurtenances … in the island of St Christopher …’.12John Sargent, a shareholder in Oswald, Grant & Co. and thus intimatelyconcerned with the success of the Bance Island venture, became a directorof the Bank of England and a leading light in the Ohio Company. Heserved in the Commons as member for Midhurst (1753-60) and then forWest Looe (1765-8), selling his Bance Island interest in 1771, when hebought Halstead Place, on the North Downs overlooking Sevenoaks. Onhis death the estate passed to a relative, George Arnold Arnold, who ownedland in neighbouring Knockholt, bought with income derived from thefamily firm that had East Indian and west African interests. In the earlynineteenth century, Halstead Place was bought by the London AldermanAbram Atkins, whose wealth was based on shipping with Bermuda andJamaica. Two other associates of Oswald, Grant & Co. were Robert Scott,who had an estate at Blackheath (he also owned plantations in Grenadaand St Vincent), and Robert Stratton with property at Charlton.Colonial plantations, mainly in the Caribbean, were bought by merchantsbut also often came by marriage settlement or inheritance. When MaryAnn, the daughter of David Orme of Lamorby, Bexley, married NeillMalcolm in 1797, she received a settlement of lands in Jamaica whichincluded 207 slaves.13 The Malcolms, of Poltalloch, Argyllshire, hadmade great profit from their Jamaican plantations. Robert Marsham,Lord Romney, of Mote Place near Maidstone, in 1724 married Priscilla,daughter and sole heir of Charles Pym of the island of St Christopher(St Kitts). When Pym died in 1740, Romney thus became, through hiswife, owner of those estates valued at £19,000 sterling.14 Romney died inKENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-18071131793 and the St Kitts estates were inherited by his son Charles who wasMP for the County in three successive parliaments; he pulled down theMote and rebuilt it. James Beckford Wildman (d.1816), who owned threeJamaican properties – Salt Savannah estate, Papine in St Andrews, andLow Ground in Clarendon, with a total of 640 slaves – bought ChilhamCastle in 1792.15 The profits derived from the slave trade and slaverycontributed to certain Kentish family fortunes, although lack of datamakes it impossible to quantify how much and also how such incomewas used or invested.16There were several members of Parliament for Kent constituencies, forexample Charles Romney and John Trevanion, who owned slave estatesin the Caribbean or had a vested interest in the slave trade. WilliamGeary (1756-1825), of Oxenhoath, one of the County members from1796-1806, and again from 1812-18, in the Commons in Spring 1804questioned the propriety of immediate abolition arguing that such actionwas likely to benefit other nations. Joseph Marryatt (1757-1824), whoowned an imposing house in Sydenham, was a merchant and ship ownerwith interests in the Caribbean islands of Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad,Martinique and Guadeloupe, as well as in north America. As agent forTrinidad, and then for Grenada (agents representing islands were activelobbyists), he petitioned Parliament against abolition in February 1807.Elected MP for Horsham in 1808, and then for Sandwich four years later(until 1824), he spoke on aspects of the slave trade and slavery, arguingthat there was no need for a registry of slaves as this would infringethe legislative rights of individual islands, and that since the slave tradehad been abolished plantation owners had a vested interest in treatingtheir slaves humanely. He further argued that the imperial Parliamentshould not emancipate slaves as the system of slavery would die a naturaldeath.17 Those commercial men who became Kentish landowners, theplantation owners resident in the County, and MPs with commercial andfamily interests in the American colonies, undoubtedly presented an antiabolitionist presence in Kent. However, to what extent they exercisedthat influence is difficult to calculate. It is a subject well worth furtherinvestigation, particularly at the local level, although there are obviousproblems in quantifying the extent of their opposition in defence ofthe slave trade and later to the manumission of slaves in the colonies.Analysing the changing views of electors is clearly a challenging task.The West Indian lobby, as it has been called, collectively representedby the Society of West Indian Merchants that emerged in the 1760s, andembraced planters in 1773, was not a hom*ogenous body. Its members didnot speak with a common voice as they represented different islands and avariety of often conflicting interests. The American war divided plantationinterests and put the West Indian Committee on the defensive, but at thesame time it greatly altered the relationship between the West IndianDAVID KILLINGRAY114legislatures and the home parliament.18 Within Kent there were voicesready to rally to the support of the West Indian interest, for example withletters to the local press.19 The Reverend Thomas Thompson (1708/9-73),formerly employed as a missionary in North America and in west Africaby the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (the SPG owned slavesin the Caribbean), while vicar of Reculver, wrote a pamphlet, publishedin Canterbury, arguing that slavery was consistent with humanity andChristian principles.20The abolitionist campaignThe successful assault on the British slave trade was a great achievement.Opponents of the slave trade from the 1780s onwards set out to bringto an end a system of trade that was widely regarded as essential to thecontinuing economic prosperity of Britain and her overseas Empire.There has been no shortage of studies of the significance of the Atlantictrade, and particularly the contribution made by the slave trade and slaveproduction to the fortunes of the British economy in the eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries, from the influential ideas of Eric Williams inthe 1940s to the detailed economic analysis of Joseph Inikori in 2002.21Whatever the precise figures for the value of that trans-Atlantic trade,it was of undoubted significance to the British economy and perceivedto be so by many people at many levels. And it seems clear from theexamples given above that individual and family fortunes partly turnedon it. To challenge and secure legislation to remove from this economicedifice the transhipment of slaves from Africa to the American colonieswas a serious and daunting task involving a twenty-year struggle thateventually secured abolition in 1807. The obstacles were enormous.Slavery and the slave trade had been a global and European activity formany centuries. The West Indian economy relied upon the continuedimportation of slaves to maintain a labour force which demographicallyfailed to reproduce itself. And contrary to the view that the West Indianeconomy was in decline in the years 1793-1807, it now seems thatslave productivity was increasing and that West Indian wealth was notdiminishing. In short, abolitionists were assaulting a vital and thrivingcomponent of the domestic and Imperial economy.22 Abolition wasnot gained solely by parliamentary manoeuvres pressured by extraparliamentary lobbying. Great political events such as the American andFrench Revolutions not only altered perceptions of Empire and patternsof overseas commerce but also changed peoples’ world political views.However important these external factors, the domestic campaign topersuade people and parliament that the slave trade was immoral andthat its continued practice had negative political value is among the firstgreat popular lobbies in British history.KENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807115Although slaving practices were pursued in the Atlantic world, blackpeople were generally recognised as fellow human beings despite thecontinued circulation of books and pamphlets that suggested otherwise.Since the beginning of the age of reconnaissance in the fifteenth century,people from Africa had come to Britain. By 1770 they probably numberedjust over 10,000 (one contemporary estimate suggested double thatfigure), mainly living in London (Westminster, and the City), Liverpool,and Bristol.23 Some eighty per cent were men who worked as servants,labourers, artisans, and as sailors who were invariably itinerant workers.Black sailors were not uncommon in Kent ports, particularly Deptford,Gravesend, and on the lower Medway. Many West Indian planters andmerchants trading to the Americas brought black servants with them toBritain; black retainers are a common feature in many family portraits ofthe period. The legal position of black people in Britain was ambiguous.The slave trade from Africa was a legal commerce in property, and thecolonies’ local legislation stated that black slaves could be bought, soldand owned as chattels. But what was the legal status of black slaves oncethey were brought into Britain? Some slaves, and also some owners, falselybelieved that baptism endowed them with freedom; some opponents ofthe slave trade argued that no human being could be a slave on Englishsoil. Despite various judicial and extra-judicial statements the law wasunclear.The first moves to challenge the slave trade came in the late 1760s and1770s with successful attempts by Granville Sharp (1735-1813) to securethe release of black slaves brought into England whose owners attemptedto ship them back to the colonies. These actions helped to promotepublic awareness of the brutalities of the slave trade and excite humanesentiment. One of the first cases was that of Thomas Lewis, a black manseized at night time in Chelsea by Robert Stapylton and shipped downriver to be sold to the West Indies. Lewis’ cries for help were heard. Sharpwas alerted, and he succeeded in securing a writ of habeas corpus whichwas served by the mayor of Gravesend for Lewis’ release.24 A significantcase, brought by Sharp in 1772, resulted in the release of a slave namedSomersett, and the declaration by Lord Justice Mansfield that black slavescould not be forcibly removed from England and Wales.25 This did notstate that black people could not be slaves in England, but the declarationeffectively marked the beginning of the end of the idea that slavery couldexist in this country. An illustration of the continuing vagueness of the lawis a comment attached to the baptism of little Thomas West at Chislehurstin January 1788: ‘a negro of about 6 years of age, who had been sentover as a present to Lord Sydney from Governor Orde of Dominica’!26Whatever Sharp’s actions in raising consciousness about the slave trade,he did not start an anti-slavery movement. That had to wait until the endof the American war in the 1780s, the slow mobilisation of Quaker anti-DAVID KILLINGRAY116slavery activity, which included petitioning Parliament in 1783, and thegrowing political confidence of opponents of the slave trade that theycould press for legislative change.James Ramsay (1733-89), Vicar of Teston, 1781-9, an oil painting by Carl Frederikvon Breda, 1788. (Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London)Plate IIKENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807117The Anti-Slavery Society was formed in London and held its firstmeeting in May 1787. Within four months the Committee had expandedits membership and activities and begun to collect the names of subscriberscounty by county. Two significant figures in the extra-parliamentarycampaign were Thomas Clarkson, and the Reverend James Ramsay(1733-89) who held the livings at Teston and Nettlestead on the Medway.Clarkson had secured a Cambridge University Latin prize for An essayon the slavery and commerce of the human species. Returning to Londonfrom Cambridge, where he had read his essay, he had a ‘Damascusroad’ experience which turned him to an active life of opposition to theslave trade and then to slavery. Ramsay’s abhorrence of the slave trade,and his deep concern that slaves in the West Indian islands should hearthe Christian Gospel, had been cultivated by nineteen years’ residencein St Kitts first as a medical doctor and then a clergyman. His viewswere set out in two influential books that he published in 1784 on thetreatment and conversion of slaves in the British sugar colonies, andon the effects of the abolition of the slave trade.27 Ramsay’s living atTeston and Nettlested was due to the benefaction of the pietistic andcharitably-minded Elizabeth Bouverie (c.1726-98) who lived at TestonHouse (the present Barham Court, Teston). Bouverie, a single lady, wasan evangelical and she shared her home with her close friends MargaretMiddleton and her husband, naval politician Sir Charles Middleton, laterLord Barham (1726-1813). Boverie and the Middletons opposed theslave trade.28 The other figure in the Teston ‘circle’ was Bielby Porteus(1731-1809), Bishop of Chester and then of London, who had preachedand written against the slave trade; he held the nearby living of Huntonwhere he spent a good part of each year.29In the summer of 1786 Clarkson spent a month with Ramsay atTeston. They were frequently joined by the Middleton’s and Porteus,and also by the evangelical Hannah More (1745-1833), a close friend ofMargaret Middleton. In these discussions the merely ameliorative ideasof the Teston ‘circle’ were challenged, Ramsay became more outspokenagainst the slave trade, and Clarkson’s career took a new direction as hedeclared himself ‘ready to devote myself to the cause … of the oppressedAfricans’. Hannah More wrote that this time at Teston would prove tobe ‘the Runnymede of the negroes, and that the great charter of Africanliberty will be there completed’.30 Clarkson left Teston promising toprovide ‘my friend Mr. Ramsay [with] a weekly account of my progress’,but after four weeks it had become ‘so voluminous that I was obliged todecline writing it’.31 In the autumn of 1786 Wilberforce visited Testonto talk with Ramsay. Several months later, in May 1787, he met withPitt and Grenville at the former’s estate, Holwood in Keston, to the westof the County, where it was agreed that he would introduce a Bill inParliament to end the slave trade.DAVID KILLINGRAY118It is apparent that the initial geographical focus of the LondonCommittee included the metropolitan areas of surrounding counties. InDecember 1788 subscriptions were advertised in the Morning Chronicleand the General Evening Post, London newspapers that circulated in themetropolis and the neighbouring counties, addressed to those ‘residing inLondon and its vicinity’, which presumably embraced metropolitan Kentand the towns of Deptford, Woolwich, and Greenwich.32 Many of the firstsupporters and subscribers contacted in Kent appear to have come throughthe Quaker network. The first supporters of the Abolition Committee canbe taken from the List of subscribers published in 1788, the minute bookof the Committee, and also from the local press. In 1787 of the over 2,000subscribers throughout the country, a mere 20 or so can be identified byname and place as living in Kent, nearly half of them in Canterbury. TheList includes four women, two of them aristocrats, Lady Middleton andGrizel the Dowager Countess Stanhope of Chevening, plus ElizabethBouverie and Mrs Ringsford of Canterbury. ‘Mrs Bouverie’ (older singleladies were so described) contributed five guineas, a sum matched byPeter Nouaille, the owner of a silk works at Greatness, Sevenoaks.33Quakers subscribers in Dover included Richard Low and Richard Baker,and in Canterbury John Chalk, a hoyman, and William Pattison, a glover(not included in the 1787 List).34 By 1788 other supporters had beenenlisted and included William Cooper of Rochester, and Ellington Wrightof Erith who wrote to the Committee on 24 June 1788, both of whom wereknown to Clarkson. When the Committee sent out its first annual report inAugust 1788, fifty copies went to the Revd Thomas Cherry (1748-1822),the Church of England headmaster of Maidstone Grammar School, anAnglican supporter and one assumes a signatory of the Maidstone petitionof that year (see below).In 1788 Clarkson toured the south coast of England, beginning in Julyin Kent, to raise support for abolition. The visit to the County was not asuccess and lasted less than a month with Clarkson returning to Londondue to ‘the difficulties which have occurred during the late Journey ofexciting a sufficient degree of public attention to form Committees’.35 Kentwith its naval towns and vested establishment interests was clearly not afruitful field. In certain towns, for example Rochester, those who mightlend their support to the abolitionist cause could or would not because this‘would involve counteracting obligations of political support’.36 Therewere two great petition campaigns directed at Parliament demanding theabolition of the slave trade; they came from all over the country and fromthree sources: institutions such as guilds and universities, counties, andtowns and boroughs. In 1788 there were 100 petitions and in 1792, amore popular response, when 519 petitions were submitted to Parliament.Most petitions came from the north of England and the industrial areas.There was a poor response from the densely populated counties of theKENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807119south. The only petitions from Kent came from two boroughs: Maidstone,in 1788, and Folkestone in 1792,37 although the Lord Mayor and 20Alderman meeting in the Court of Common Council in Canterbury, in earlyFebruary 1788, unanimously agreed to petition Parliament, and appointeda committee to act.38 Writing to Samuel Hoare in late December 1787,James Ramsay said that Sir William Bishop, the Mayor of Maidstone, was‘desirous of giving the assistance of his Office for procuring a petition forthe abolition of the Slave Trade from the Corporation to the parliament.He only wishes to have a form, that it may meet your wishes, and knowwhen you would that they should come forward’.39 Meanwhile, in 1790,Clarkson, with Middleton’s support (he was then at the Admiralty) waslooking over 160 vessels at the ‘sea stations’ of Deptford, Woolwich,Chatham, and Sheerness in an unsuccessful attempt to gather evidence onthe conduct and impact of the slave trade.40Why only two Kent towns produced and presented petitions is a subjectthat requires further research; it may be, as with Canterbury, that petitionswere proposed but for some reason not proceeded with. Maidstone’spopulation included a sizeable radical element among paper makersand those who worked on the river, plus a good number of dissenters.In the case of Folkestone it may be that influential individuals embracedthe cause of abolition and organised the petition through their localcontacts and influence. Although the ‘weight of government’ and officialpatronage had a heavy influence in Kent towns from Greenwich to Dover,there were also several pockets of working class radicalism. In the 1790sbranches of the United Corresponding Society were active in Rochester,where there were 200 members, and in Linton, Brompton, Gravesend,and also in Maidstone. One of the first statements of the Society was onhuman equality, and John Gale Jones, in his political tour through northand mid Kent on behalf of the Society in 1796, openly denounced notonly the slave trade but also slavery.41 Kent was not dominated by largelanded interests and a tradition of yeoman independence pervaded thelimited electorate. In addition, in the old heartlands of religious dissentsuch as the towns and villages of the Weald, there were undoubtedlythose who instinctively opposed the slave trade. Generally across thecountry, the opponents of the slave trade, both men and women, weredrawn from the ‘middling sort’. A close scrutiny of local newspapers mayreveal abolitionist subscribers and petitioners, although in an age whenthe franchise was highly restricted the voices of working men and womenmay not have been registered. The common voice may be better recordedin church records. For example, in 1789, Pastor John Lloyd, of TenterdenParticular Baptist church, was requested to ‘preach a Discourse relativeto the African Slave Trade in Order to Discountenance the Same’.42Although other Baptist associations in southern counties subscribed toand financially supported the work of the London Committee, the KentDAVID KILLINGRAY120and Sussex Association of Baptist Churches appears to have said nothing.Other denominational records would be well worth investigating to seeif dissenters, and also Methodists following John Wesley’s forthrightdenunciation of the slave trade, made their views known across theCounty.The anti-Jacobin reaction of the 1790s (and the slave risings on theFrench island of Saint-Domingue, and on Grenada and St Vincent in 1794-5) helped to suppress protest of various forms, and determined that the1792 petition against the slave trade was not followed by others. However,as Drescher has argued, this did not mean that public opinion ceased toplay a significant role in the pressure that eventually brought about thepassage of the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill of 1806, prohibitingBritish ships from carrying slaves to foreign ports, and the total abolitionof the British slave trade in 1807.43 In 1784 Sir Charles Middleton wona seat at Rochester, ensuring one sympathetic voice for abolition fromthe County in the Commons. According to Humphries, over the next twodecades the Kentish press ‘was unusually silent on national affairs’ and‘the early struggles against the slave trade were not the issues to inspiremass agitation’.44 And yet, Edward Knatchbull, elected an MP for theCounty in 1790, two years later argued in the Commons that the slavetrade be ended in 1796, a motion passed there but subsequently rejectedin the Lords. Another abolitionist was the undistinguished MP for Dover,C.S. Pybus, who voted for the Abolition Bill in 1796 and also in support ofthe Slave Trade Limiting Bill in 1799. But these appear to be alone amongKent MPs who were in favour of either outright abolition or regulation ofthe slave trade during the 1790s. At the Canterbury by-election of 1800,Joseph Royle, a radical candidate who supported abolition, was defeatedbut not necessarily because he was an abolitionist. In the 1802 election hestood again denouncing the system of representation and proclaiming thathe was ‘a decided enemy to the Slave Trade in all its branches’. After 1805(did victory over the French and Spanish at Trafalgar have an influence?)parliamentary sentiment was changing. In the parliamentary elections ofNovember 1806, John Calcraft, at Rochester, spoke of his recent supportfor abolition, while the three County candidates also identified withthe abolitionist cause. Sir William Geary stated that ‘no one was moreanxious for its abolition than himself’ and associated his sentiments withthose of Wilberforce; Knatchbull felt likewise and recalled his motionof 1792 for the discontinuance of the trade, while Honeywood describedthe slave trade ‘as disgusting to human nature, as it was disgraceful toEnglishmen’.45 However, although the principal topic of debate from thehustings was the slave trade, as the Kentish Chronicle stated ‘this wasscarcely an issue capable of swaying large numbers of voters, even had thecandidates disagreed violently’.46 But for at least one Kent elector it wasnot just sufficient to vote for a local abolitionist candidate; Francis CobbKENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-1807121of Margate expressed his support for Wilberforce in the Hull election of1807 and received in return a letter of thanks from the grateful victor.47One consistent although unpredictable voice opposing the slave tradein the Lords was that of the reform-minded Whig, Lord Stanhope ofChevening (1753-1816).48 In notebooks, titled ‘Slave Trade 1’ and ‘SlaveTrade 2’, he recorded details of the slave trade, along with occasionalpersonal comments. From these notes we know that he read OlaudahEquiano’s Narrative, published in 1789, a best-selling two-volumeaccount of an African’s experience of the slave trade and slavery, thatwent into several editions.49 Wilberforce wrote to Stanhope, in January1788, soliciting his support for the abolitionist cause:For many reason, I am clear, and Pitt is of the same opinion, that ‘tisextremely desirable that petitions for the abolition of the trade in flesh andblood should flow in from every quarter of the kingdom: they are goingforward in many places and counties, nor is there any need of generalmeetings in the case of the latter, which might be inconvenient at thisseason of the year, and on such a short notice we can only allow on thisoccasion. I know how friendly you must be to my motion, and I trustyou will lay a load of parchment on the shoulders of the members of theCounty of Kent … .50Stanhope was in contact with the London Committee, in 1789 expressing‘in the warmest manner his disposition to promote the cause in the Houseof Lords’. In 1804, during the Lord’s debate on Wilberforce’s measure toabolish the slave trade, he made what Wilberforce described in his diary,as ‘a wild speech … [that] contained some most mischievous passages,threatening the Lords that by means of his stereotype press he wouldcirculate millions of papers among the people and deluge the countrywith accounts of the cruelties of the Slave Trade and of the barbaroustreatment of the Slaves in the West Indies’.51ConclusionThe campaign to end the British slave trade was successful in 1807. Thetransatlantic trade in Africans, with all its harsh and murderous methods,became illegal for British subjects. The Committee for Effecting theAbolition of the Slave Trade had achieved its purpose, but slavery remainedin the colonial empire.52 The struggle to end slavery took another thirtyyears and was only finally achieved in 1833 following the greatest masspetitioning campaign then in British history. Full emancipation came in1838 after a further four years of lobbying. The abolitionist movement bythe late 1780s, as Brown argues, ‘had come to enjoy moral prestige …because antislavery sentiment … had become uncontroversial and, moreunusually, because antislavery organizing had come to seem worthy ofDAVID KILLINGRAY122esteem’.53 From then, using the tactics of ‘modern’ organisation, sentimentwas mobilised nation-wide to press the cause on Parliament. A good dealis known about the ideas and actions of the organisers of abolition, that is,of the politics from above. Far less is known of the politics from below, theresponses and actions at the local level that actually turned this cause intoa popular movement. What did people think in the shires? Did they readthe numerous pamphlets and books that denounced the slave trade? Howdid they respond to the demands to boycott slave-grown sugar and otherproduce in the 1790s? What was said in churches and places of assembly?Who was prepared to put his hand in his pocket, and who was willing toturn out and vote for the cause, and why? Did the urban and rural workingclass support abolition? Women were clearly involved in the campaign,but to what extent? And how did the West Indian interest react in Kent inthe years 1792-3, and what influence, if any, did they try to exercise inparliamentary elections, and over tenants and other dependants? Furtherresearch is required to investigate to what extent the question of abolitionexercised minds and political passions in Kent during the period 1780s1807. Existing research on the years 1807-1833, which also needs to berevisited, argues that the clamour for the emancipation of slaves in theBritish Empire was not an issue that greatly exercised Kentish electors orMPs.54 This article has merely sketched the process of abolition in Kentand must be considered as ‘work in progress’ that hopefully will succeedin challenging others to undertake further research.endnotes1 E.g. the parish records of Aldington, 1734; Aylesford, 1670; Burmarsh, 1680, 1692,and 1701; Dymchurch 1680; East Farleigh, 1680s; Loose, 1685; Murston, 1670 and 1754;Tenterden, 1628; and Yalding, 1735. As late as 1817 a Tunisian corsair, one of a pair, wasapprehended in the Channel and brought ‘into the Downs’.2 Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral capital: foundations of British abolitionism (ChapelHill, NC, 2006), provides a skilful analysis of the trans-Atlantic roots of abolitionism. Seealso Roger Anstey, The Atlantic slave trade and British abolition, 1760-1807 (London,1975), and Adam Hochschild, Bury the chains: the British struggle to abolish slavery(London, 2005). On the slave trade, see James Walvin, Black ivory. A history of Britishslavery (London, 1992), and more broadly, Hugh Thomas, The slave trade. The history ofthe Atlantic slave trade 1440-1870 (New York, 1997).3 Local studies include E.M. Hunt, ‘The north of England agitation for the abolition of theslave trade, 1780-1850’, MA thesis, University of Manchester, 1959; Hunt, ‘The anti-slavetrade agitation in Manchester’, Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society, Transactions,CXXVI (1977); and on Bristol, Madge Dresser, Slavery obscured. The social history of theslave trade in an English provincial port (London, 2001), chs 4-5.4 James A. Rawley, London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade (Columbia MO and London,2003), chs. 2, 3 and 8.5 Nigel Tattersfield, The forgotten trade: comprising the log of the Daniel and Henry of 1700and accounts of the slave trade from the minor ports of England, 1698-1725 (London, 1991), pp.202-11. See also W.H. Bowles, Records of the Bowles family (London, 1918), pp. 30 ff.KENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-18071236 William Boys, An Account of the loss of the Luxborough Galley by Fire, on her voyagefrom Jamaica to London … in the year 1727 (London , 1787). Is the Thomas Boys, masterof the brigantine Adventure at Jamaica in 1709 with 120 slaves (TNA, Kew, CO142/14),and later in the century recorded as trading in slaves from Gambia to Virginia, of the samefamily?7 Centre for Kentish Studies (CKS), East Kent Archives Centre. Cobb papers. U1453/O28/1; U1453/B5/4/97; and B5/4/167.8 Beyond the period under discussion, but perhaps pertinent, is the entry in the shippingregister relating to the Emma of Ramsgate (133 tons), owned by Sir William Curtis Bt(1752-1829) of Ramsgate, which was ‘condemned as a prize at Sierra Leone on 5 October1822 for being engaged in the slave trade’. CKS. East Kent Archives Centre. RBS/Sal/1.9 Cranbrook Museum Archives, Cranbrook, 5266 2.1, TIT, is an indenture for the sale ofthe estate and the slaves, who are listed, dd. 1806. See also Anthony R. Titford, ‘A family ofDissenters: the Titfords of Somerset, Kent & London, ts., 2005, vol. 1, part 3, pp. 9-13. Theauthor is grateful to Stuart Bligh and to Betty Carmen for this reference.10 William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830; Everyman edn, London, 1957), vol. 1, p. 45.11 David Hanco*ck, Citizens of the world: London merchants and the integration of theBritish Atlantic community, 1756-1785 (Cambridge, 1995), describes in splendid detail thecommercial interests of Oswald, Grant and Co.12 Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre (LSAC), Bexley. Danson papers. LS CO/DAN/9. A brief account of slave owners in Bexley is by Oliver Wooler, The great estates(Bexley, 2000), pp. 32-3, 60-5, and 100.13 Bexley LSAC. DR/2/38-39, 1797.14 CKS, Maidstone. Romney papers. Marriage settlement U1300 T4/7, 1724; CKS 1515E284, will dd. 16 March 1741, ‘An estimate of the reall and personall (sic) estate of the lateCapt. Charles Pym in the Island of St Christopher’.15 Edward Hasted, The history and topographical survey of the County of Kent, vol. VII,1798, p. 276; addendum in Vol. VIII, p. 544, corrects ‘Thomas’ to James. Robert Gordon,The Jamaica church: Why it has failed (London nd., c.1872), p. 10.16 For an example from Wealden Sussex, where the Fullers used proceeds from Jamaicanestates to invest in charcoal, iron and gun founding, see D.W. Crossley and R. Saville, eds,The Fuller letters: guns, slaves and finances, 1728-1755 (Lewes: Sussex Record Society,vol. 26, 1991).17 Joseph Marryat, Thoughts on the abolition of the slave trade … (London 1816). RalphBernal, MP for Rochester 1820-41, and owner of inherited Jamaican estates, also argued forthe slow pace of emancipation; as a representative of West Indian interests he stressed thatslaves were legal property; see Ralph Bernal, Substance of the Speech of Ralph Bernal Esq.in the House of Commons, on the 19th May, 1826 (London, 1826).18 See Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, An Empire divided. The American revolution and theBritish Caribbean (Philadelphia PA, 2000).19 E.g. Kentish Gazette, letters from ‘E.B’, 16 May 1788, p. 2; from ‘GRENADA’, 3 June1788, p. 2; and from ‘A Speculist’, 8-12 August 1788, p. 2, and 22 August 1788, p. 2.20 Thomas Thompson, The African Trade for Negro Slaves. Shewn to be Consistent withPrinciples of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion (Canterbury, 1772). Elevenyears later Charles Crawford, born in Antigua of a slave-owning family, wrote an antislavery poem, Liberty: A Pindaric Ode (first published in Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury,Maidstone and London, 1783); in a lengthy footnote he argued that Christian principlesdemanded that Africans be treated as equals and as brethren, that the slave trade was theopprobrium of England and should be abolished immediately, but (and contrary to the ideasof the ‘profane scribbler’ Thomas Paine) that emancipation of slaves in the West Indiesshould be gradual.DAVID KILLINGRAY12421 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944; London, 1964); Joseph E. Inikori,Africans and the industrial revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002). For these debates, seeKenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic trade and the British economy, 1660-1800 (Cambridge,2000).22 See David Richardson, ‘The British Empire and the Atlantic slave trade, 1660-1807’,in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. II. The eighteenthcentury (Oxford, 1998), pp. 440-64.23 See Peter Fryer, Staying power. The history of Black people in Britain (London, 1984).Also Kathy Chater, ‘Untold histories: Black people in England during the British slavetrade, 1660-1807’, Ph.D thesis, University of London, 2007 (forthcoming).24 Thomas Clarkson, The history of the rise, progress, and accomplishment of theabolition of the African slave-trade by the British parliament, 2 vols (London, 1808), I, pp.73-4.25 See Stephen M. Wise, Though the heavens may fall. The landmark trial that led to theend of human slavery (Cambridge MA, 2005).26 Chislehurst baptism records, 20 January 1788. Lord Sydney, Thomas Townshend(1733-1800), was Deputy Lt of Kent, a minister in various Pitt administrations, and in 1787spoke but did not vote against the slave regulation bill. The author is grateful to Mr PeterJ.R. Masson for this reference.27 See Folarin Shyllon, James Ramsay: the unknown abolitionist (Edinburgh, 1977).28 William Cowper’s anti-slave trade poem, ‘The Negro’s Complaint’, written at therequest of the Anti-Slavery Society, was published in the Kentish Gazette, 8 August 1788,with the comment that it had been ‘sent to a lady who had interested herself much in the causeof the slave trade’, possibly a reference to Elizabeth Bouverie or Margaret Middleton.29 On the Teston ‘circle’, see Brown, Moral capital, pp. 341-52, 362-77.30 Anne Stott, Hannah More: the first Victorian (Oxford, 2003), pp. 100-101. Oldfielddescribes it ‘as surely one of the most important events in the history of British antislavery’: J.R. Oldfield, Popular politics and the British anti-slavery. The mobilisation ofpublic opinion against the slave trade, 1787-1807 (London, 1998), p. 72.31 Clarkson, History, I, p. 242.32 British Library [BL] Add Mss. 21255, Anti-Slave Trade Committee minute books.Entry for 9 December 1788; and 21256, entry for 19 May 1805. See Kentish Gazette, 15January 1788, p. 3.33 List of the Society, Instituted in 1787, For the Purpose of effecting the Abolition of theSlave Trade (London, 1788).34 BL Add Mss. 21254, entry for 17 July 1788.35 BL Add. Mss 21255, entry for 26 August 1788.36 Peter F. Dixon, ‘The politics of emancipation: the movement for the abolition ofslavery in the British West Indies, 1807-33. D.Phil thesis, Oxford, 1971. p. 112.37 Thomas Baker (1751?-1840) was then mayor; a Mr Eubulus Smith of Folkestone isalso mentioned in the London Committee letter books as a supporter.38 Kentish Gazette, 5 February 1788, p. 3.39 Ramsay to Hoare, 29 December 1787. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA., Clarksonpapers. CN 141, quoted by Oldfield, Popular politics, p. 49. Bishop also wrote to the LondonCommittee, 6 February 1788.40 Clarkson, History, II, p. 174.41 John Gale Jones, A political tour through Rochester, Maidstone, Gravesend, etc(London, 1796; new edn, Rochester, 1997), pp. 28-9.42 Minutes, Tenterden Particular Baptist Church, 5 April 1789. The author is grateful toMr Stephen Pickles for this reference.KENT & THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A COUNTY STUDY 1760s-180712543 Seymour Drescher, ‘Whose abolition? Popular pressure and the ending of the Britishslave trade’, Past & Present, 143 (2004), p. 146; the speeches were recorded in the KentishGazette, 8 November 1806. See also Dixon, ‘Politics of emancipation’, pp. 113-5.44 Peter Leslie Humphries, ‘Kentish politics and public opinion, 1768-1832’, D.Philthesis, University of Oxford, 1981, p. 134. The Kentish press was not silent on the slavetrade in 1788; no literate person who read the local Kent press for that year can have beenignorant as to the Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary debate on abolition.45 Humphries, ‘Kentish politics’, pp. 191-2, 228, and 230.46 Kentish Chronicle, 24 November 1806.47 CKS, East Kent Archives Centre. Cobb paper. U1453/C278. William Wilberforce toFrancis Cobb, dd, Brighton, 27 August 1807. Francis Cobb (jnr) was one of the principalorganisers of the anti-slavery cause in north-east Kent in the 1820s-30s; see U1453 O43,etc.48 Earlier, Sharp and other abolitionists had urged William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth(1731-1801), the pious and evangelically-minded Secretary of State for the Americancolonies, who had an estate in Blackheath, to promote the anti-slave trade cause inParliament. Dartmouth failed to respond, appearing to prefer public office to risking possiblepublic obloquy.49 CKS, Maidstone. Stanhope paper. U1590 C/72/1, 2.50 Aubrey Newman, The Stanhopes of Chevening: A family biography (London, 1969),p. 147.51 Quoted by Newman, The Stanhopes of Chevening, p. 163.52 BL Add Mss 21256. It is worth noting that the Committee, on 31 January 1792, deniedclaims made by the West Indian interest that they sought the ‘emancipation of the Negroes inthe British colonies’, stressing that they adhered to their ‘original Purpose’ – ‘the abolitionof the Trade to the coast of Africa for Slaves’.53 Brown, Moral capital, p. 458.54 Dixon, ‘The politics of emancipation’.DAVID KILLINGRAY126
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
1PAPER No. 003THE PAPERMAKERS OFSNODLAND c.1740-1854Dr. ANDREW ASHBEEThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. Theauthor has placed the paper on the site for download for personal oracademic use. Any other use must be cleared with the author of thepaper who retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regardingcopyright clearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomesthe submission of papers. The necessary form can be downloadedfrom the website at www.kentarchaeology.ac 2THE PAPERMAKERS OF SNODLAND c.1740-1854ANDREW ASHBEEPreambleThere are already two excellent studies of Snodland Paper Mill1, so it may seempresumptuous to add a third. Between them Alfred Shorter2, Michael Fuller andKenneth Funnell have thoroughly researched the surviving records and there isprobably little more to find in official documentary sources. It is very regrettable thatthe extensive Snodland Mill records, which had survived the devastating fire of 12August 1906, were all pulped in the mid-twentieth century before they could beexamined by historians. So this paper turns rather to genealogical sources concerningthe early owners and papermakers, which reveal a fascinating web of connectionsbetween people and places. The arrival of the Hook family in 1854 makes a suitableend; they took the Snodland mill into expansive and profitable development.Papermakers seem to have moved regularly from mill to mill and Snodland mill (likemany others) was often but a stepping-stone for both owners and employees.Movement between local mills is of course to be expected - and there were many in theMaidstone area, but so far as Snodland is concerned there are also strong links with theprincipal papermaking area in England: the Wye valley in Buckinghamshire, wheremore than thirty mills were active in the early nineteenth century. Information onSnodland’s earliest papermakers is sparse. Owners and principal lease-holders can betraced through Overseers’ and Churchwardens’ Accounts and Land Tax assessments,but their workers can only be glimpsed briefly in apprenticeship indentures, settlementclaims, Petty Sessions records and the like. The addition of a ‘father’s occupation’ inthe format of baptismal registers from 1813 onwards is helpful. A further great leapforward occurs with the censuses from 1841 onwards, providing details of familieswhich can often be used retrospectively. Yet persistent research is required frominterested parties if papermaking families are to be traced from census to census andplace to place. The burgeoning study of family history and the presence of an on-lineversion of the International Genealogical Index [IGI] are two major tools which I havereadily seized upon, not omitting casual findings on family history web-sites. Althoughmany gaps remain in the evidence, I am particularly grateful to several people whohave been willing to share their research into families and ancestors who includedpapermakers from Snodland and who have readily agreed to my publishing detailshere: Mrs Debra Buchanan (Mayatt); Martin Clark (Clark, Mason, Gurney, Weedonand the family connections), Mrs Jilly Coles (Kidwell); Mrs Margot Corbett (Clark,1 Michael J. Fuller, Watermills of the Leybourne and Holborough Streams, private edition of sixcopies, 1990, partially reprinted and revised as Snodland and Holborough Watermills, SnodlandHistorical Society pamphlet 9 (Snodland, 1998), pp. 1-39; also ‘British Papermills: Snodland Mill,Kent’, in British Association of Paper Historians Quarterly, nos. 28-30 (Oct. 1998, Jan. 1999, June1999); Kenneth Funnell, Snodland Paper Mill, C. Townsend Hook and Company from 1854(Snodland, 1979 and 1986).2 Alfred H. Shorter, Paper Mills and Paper Makers in England 1495-1800 (Hilversum, 1957); PaperMaking in the British Isles: An Historical and Geographical Study (1971); Studies on the History ofPapermaking in Britain, ed. Richard Hills (Variorum Collected Study Series, CS 425, Aldershot,1993) 3Weedon); Mrs Rosemary Crouch (Mayatt); Mrs Pamela Hawker (Mecoy/Macoy); PaulPenn-Simkins (Spong and Fielder); Mrs R. Wallis (Robert Wagon/Waghorn); RogerThornburgh (Loose papermakers: Gurney). Further responses will be welcome. Therecitation of names, dates and places in this survey is tedious, but necessary to build upthe overall picture. Entries from parish registers are given as fully as the informationgleaned allows.3 The IGI is of some help, but as will be seen there is a very strong nonconformist element in the story, where surviving registers are often much moreinformally and irregularly kept. Many of these have not yet received the same attentionas the Church of England ones or have been lost. A large number of christenings andmarriages of the people recorded here simply do not appear at present on the IGI.Pending firm evidence I have tried to avoid undue speculation.EARLY OWNERSHIPNo evidence has been found to show that a paper mill existed in Snodland before about1740, although two snippets may suggest otherwise. The parish clerk was particularlydiligent in keeping the church registers between 1698 and 1706, systematically enteringthe occupations of all persons during that time. On 5th January 1705/6 this included theburial of ‘James Smith, paper-maker’. There are no other Smiths recorded in Snodlandthen, and no other references to paper-makers, so it remains doubtful that a paper millwas active until later. However, we can also note in passing that John Short, son ofJohn, baptized at Snodland on 23 July 1666, later moved to Sutton-at-Hone to becomea papermaker by 1691.4John May senior of Birling acquired the Snodland Courtlodge estate from the Crowfamily in 1732, when the deeds describe it as containing 'Houses, Oasthouses,Dovehouses, Barns, Stables, Edifices, Buildings, Mills, Malthouse and Maltmill andCistern therein' - no mention of paper5. This is echoed by the manorial meeting held on5 April 1733, when the transfer from John Crow to John May of ‘Snodland CourtLodge and malthouse, two barns, two stables with the outhouses, one acre of hopground, orchard and 60 acres of arable land, meadow and saltmarsh’ was recorded.6The next document in the sequence of deeds is dated 24 January 1743/4, when JohnHicks was in 'actual possession' of the property for a year. This refers not only to theCourtlodge, but also to 'the Paper Mill, Drying Houses and other Erections andBuildings lately Erected and Sett up by the said John May on the said premises', andthen goes on to make the same list as before. Further evidence that a paper mill washere comes from the lists of alehouse-keepers which shows that Jane Munt wasvictualler at 'The Paper Mill' at least between 1746 and 1759 (the records areintermittent only).7 The site of this alehouse is currently unknown, but may have beennear the mill. John May (d.1761) lived in a modest house in Horn Street, Birling, buthad acquired considerable wealth and became one of the local gentry. Around 1750 heacquired much property from Thomas Pearce, including the extensive Holloway Court3 The original format is not retained. Entries are from the registers of All Saints, Snodland, unlessotherwise noted.4 CKS: U47/45/T48: deed dated 11 September 1691 between John Short of Sutton-at-Hone,papermaker, and John Taylor of Snodland, ropemaker.5 CKS: Q/RDz3/1-17 6 CKS: CCRb/M1. 7 CKS: Q/RLv, passim. 4estate at Holborough, where his son John (1734-1805) set up home. John senior’s will,made on 8 November 17608, bequeaths all the Pearce acquisitions in Snodland,Halling, Luddesdown and Meopham, together with the lease of Halling Rectory, to hisson John, and all his property in Borden, Bredgar and Tunstall, together with the ‘RedLion’ in Snodland and its associated wharf, to his son William. The rest of the estate,which included the paper mill, was to be shared between John junior and William astenants in common. William died on 25 August 1777, so all this in turn devolved to hisbrother John, who held it until his own death on 2 September 1805. Since he had noimmediate family, John entrusted his large estate to four trustees, giving the family ofeach first benefit of particular parts of it. They were John Spong the younger ofSouthwark, hop-factor; John Simmons Esq. of Rochester; Edward Wickham theyounger of Birling, farmer; Mary, widow of Thomas Simpson, of Rochester.Closer inspection reveals links between at least some of the trustees. In his will Maymentions his late cousin Elizabeth Halfhead. She (as Elizabeth Littlewood) was marriedto John Halfhead at St Margaret’s, Rochester, on 23 September 1767. Their daughterLaetitia (bap. 26 October 1774) married John Spong [the younger] at Snodland on 30July 1793 and their daughter Sarah Eleanor (bap. 2 October 1776) married JohnSimmons on 9 June 1803, also at Snodland. There were two other daughters, Elizabeth(bap. 25 September 1771) and Mary (bap. 24 March 1773). I have not been able toascertain whether Elizabeth was the wife of Edward Wickham, or Mary the wife of‘Thomas Simpson of Rochester’, but it seems quite likely.9Snodland Court Lodge with 50 acres in Snodland and Birling, the Manor of Veles inSnodland and Snodland Mill and Wharf were allocated to Mary Simpson.10 FromMichaelmas 1794 May had leased the Court Lodge estate to Thomas Beech and IsaacWenman the younger for 14 years at £160 p.a.. A new lease was made by MarySimpson on 3 February 1806 on Snodland Court Lodge for eight years to ThomasBeech, junior, at £110 p.a. (This was the farm rather than the mill.) Young ThomasBeech was buried at Birling on 16 October 1806, and, as executor, his fathersurrendered the lease on 25 September 1807.It would seem that it was the Spong family who acquired the mill, probably when itwas put up for sale in 1807.11 John Spong of Aylesford, father of the John Spongassociated with May, was a coal merchant and had paid parish rates on the coal wharfat Snodland since 1793. Evidently it was he who made the purchase since in his ownwill of 20 August 1814 he bequeathed ‘Snodland mill and the several cottages attachedthereto’ to his son William, then living at Snodland.12 This merely confirmed the statusquo, for the manorial meeting of 25 October 1810 had already noted the transfer of themill from John May to William Spong and his partner Isaac Wenman, the papermakermaster. The Spong family continued to own the mill until at least 1842, leasing it tovarious papermaker masters. After Wenman’s death in 1815, his widow Ann alienated8 PRO: PCC PROB 11/1761, q.65.9 Edward and Elizabeth Wickham were the witnesses at the 1803 wedding. 10 PRO: PROB 11/ . It should be noted that William would only have come of age (21) on 14 February1811.11 Fuller, Snodland and Holborough Watermills, pp. 9 and 38 notes this from ‘Jackson’s OxfordJournal’ of 2 May 1807. The mill was totally destroyed by fire on 17 December 1807, but wasimmediately re-built.12 PRO: PROB 11/1564 5Snodland Court Lodge (being a house and 22 acres) to James Martin. On 28 October1818 the manorial meeting minuted:Be it Remembered that at this Court the Homage [Jury] present that James Martin sometime since purchased of the Representatives of the late Isaac Wainman a Messuage, Barnand about twenty two acres of Land, being part of Snodland Court Lodge Farm and thatthe remainder of the said Farm, consisting of a Paper Mill, Six Cottages and about eightacres of Land, is now the property of Willm Spong and which he purchased of the lateJohn May. The whole of the said premises are held at the annual rent of 18s. 8d. And theHomage apportion the Rent as follows: vizt. the said James Martin to pay the annualsum of 6s. and the said Willm Spong to pay the annual sum of 12s. 8d.13The Land Tax Assessments (and later the censuses) show that the house formerly inthe High Street, eventually occupied and enlarged by the Hook family and named'Veles' by them, was also the home of most of the previous mill managers, beginningwith Isaac Wenman the younger (1796-1806). Others who lived there were ThomasCleaves (1807-10) - not a papermaker (but he was a beneficiary in John May’s will),William Spong (1811-23), William Joynson (1824-33), John Clark (1834-40) andWilliam Wildes (1847?-1854?). Ownership of the property in this period is shown asJohn May (1793), John Spong (1795-1801), John Spong junior (1802-7), ThomasCleaves (1808-10), William Spong (1812-22), John Dudlow (a local lawyer andlandowner) (1823-39); Henry Phelps (Rector of Snodland) (1840-65).BEFORE 1807JASPER CROTHALL (1748-1781)From at least 1748 the paper mill manager was Jasper Crothall, from Benenden.Unfortunately the Benenden registers are defective so we cannot trace his birth there.He was a son of John, a tanner (buried 4 October 1738), and Mary Crothall (buried 19February 1752) and born after 1720, so he was a relatively young man when he settledin Snodland. Crothall leased the mill from the Mays, paying the parish rates on it. By1758, although he owned another house in Snodland, he himself was living in 'ProspectCottage' in Holborough Road, the old house next to the Willowside estate. Almostcertainly it was he who added the brick part to the property around 1780. He was aprosperous man, owning three houses and land, and able to make bequests of around£1000 in his will. After his death in 1781 the mill was run by his nephew IsaacWenman, also born at Benenden. Isaac was working in Snodland no later than 1765.Robert Cummings (-1748-1781)The eighteenth-century mill would have been a small affair, perhaps worked by justtwo or three men. On 2 July 1748 at the Petty Sessions, 'Robert Cummings, now ofSnodland, on Oath saith that he was bound an Apprentice and Served 7 years to oneLuke Bale of Duffeild in the County of Derby, Papermaker, and that he has not gaineda settlement since'. The judgement was that he belonged to Duffield, so on 2 May 1752he tried again, having married in the meantime. Again the Court made an order toremove him. A third attempt on 3 February 1759 to gain a settlement here met with thesame response. This time he noted that 'he served ... Luke Bale ... about three yearswhen he the said Robert Cummings ran away from his said master'. In spite of hisfailure to gain a settlement in Snodland, Cummings remained here with his wife Anne13 CKS: CCRb/M4. 6and children Anne and Robert. Records for 1754 and 1757 note that Richard and JohnEason, Francis Aldridge and Elizabeth his wife, and Robert Cummins and Ann his wifefreely held two tenements, two barns and three pieces of land (c.5 acres), occupied byRichard Eason, John Craft and Richard Hales, and that these were transferred to Halesin the latter year. It is probable that this property was the 'Old Bull' with adjacenthouses and land on the east side of Holborough Road at the corner with the HighStreet. At any rate, after living in the village for at least 33 years, 'Robert Cummins,Paper-maker', was buried on 4 September 1781. His son became a butcher, moving toTeston in 1780.Charles Lock (1761-4-)The Petty Sessions also tell of another papermaker, Charles Lock:3 November 1764: Charles Lock, now residing at Snodland, born at Ansham, county ofOxford; was bound apprentice to William Fachion of Woolvernett, Oxford, Papermaker,for 7 years (and served 5 years and 4 months); then was a journeyman in Worcestershireof 11 weeks; then about 3 weeks in Shropshire and three years with Thomas Overton, aPapermaker.He is presumed to be the Charles Lock baptized at Eynsham on 4 July 1736 andtherefore would not be the man who married Elizabeth Clampard at Snodland on 30January 1749. But on 12 May 1761 he married Sarah Lawrence, both parties describedas ‘of Snodland’, and a son Thomas was baptized on 9 November 1764, perhaps thereason he applied for settlement. Since nothing further is heard of him it is possible thathe moved away, to be replaced by Crothall’s nephew, Isaac Wenman.ISAAC WENMAN [I] (1765-1785)Isaac was baptized at Benenden on 4 August 1740, son of William and Martha (néeCrothall). He was in Snodland by 14 February 1765 when he was a witness at awedding (the first of three such duties he undertook that year). His own wedding wasat St Margaret’s, Rochester, on 26 August 1765, by licence, to Elizabeth Hales,daughter of Richard, victualler at the Red Lion, and Sarah. A succession of childrenwas born to them: Jasper (1766, died in infancy); Isaac (1768-1815), Robert (1771-);Martha (1773-1791); John (1774-); William (1777-1784); Jasper (1779-1866).Elizabeth was buried at Cuxton on 14 October 1784 (her parents had previously beenburied there) and Isaac died a year later on 22 December 1785. He too was buried atCuxton and his estate valued at around £1000 was divided between his five survivingchildren. Of these Isaac became the paper mill manager.William King (1769-1776?)In 1769 William King of Birling was apprenticed to Jasper Crothall until he reached theage of twenty-one.14ISAAC WENMAN [II] (1785-1815)Baptized on 11 December 1768, son of Isaac [I] and Elizabeth, Isaac continued aspaper mill manager until his death in 1815, aged 47, from ‘unskilful treatment of anabscess’ according to the Rector, who buried him on 1 June.Disaster struck on 17 December 1807, reported on the 22nd in the Maidstone Journaland Kentish Advertiser:14 CKS: P29/i 4/1/54. No William King is recorded in the Birling registers. 7Thursday night a very alarming fire broke out at Snodland paper Mill, which in a shorttime entirely consumed the same and all its contents, the whole to a very considerableamount. The great Double Barrelled Engine of the Kent Fire Office arrived at the spotwith great expedition, but two [sic] late to effect any good purpose, as the destructionwas complete.A note in the Overseers accounts acknowledges that Wenman's rates would needmodifying: 1 May 1808: '2 sets allowd as agreed at the Vestry for Mill being destroy'dby fire'.Edmeads, George and Thomas (1781; 1797-1816-)Among the apprenticeship records of Birling is one of 1781 for George Edmeads toIsaac Wenman of Snodland, papermaker. Edmeads fell ill in October 1791 andSnodland parish paid him poor relief, followed by £1. 5s. 'To Nursing & Burying G.Edmeads' (but the burial is not recorded in the register of All Saints). Maybe theThomas Edmeads mentioned below was George’s brother or other relation. There aremany Edmeads entries in the Birling register, but the baptism there of Thomas, son ofThomas and Elizabeth, on 2 May 1762 seems too early for our man. There were otherEdmeads who were papermakers elsewhere: from the 1780s a Robert Edmeads was apartner with Thomas Pine at Ivy Mill, Loose, and other later partnerships between thetwo families involved a John Edmeads and William Edmeads. The last two weredeclared bankrupt in 1813.15 The Snodland registers record5 November 1797: baptism of Thomas, son of Thomas and Phoebe Edmeads aliasCook.29 September 1799: baptism of William, son of Thos and Phoebe Cook4 October 1801: baptism of Joseph, son of Thos and Phoeby Cooke. Presumably hewas the ‘Joseph Cook drowned near the Mill’, aged 6, on 9 August 1807.15 May 1803: baptism of George, son of Thomas and Phoebe Cook10 February 1805: baptism of Ann, daughter of Thos and Phoebe Cook (born on 2January)1 November 1806: burial of James Cook, aged 9 days17 April 1808: baptism of Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Phoebe Edmeads (born on18 February)2 September 1810: baptism of John, son of Thos and Phoebe Cook (born on 15August)3 January 1812: baptism of Henry, son of Thomas (‘papermaker’) and Phoebe Cook.7 August 1814: baptism of Francis, son of Thomas (‘papermaker’) and Phoebe Cookalias Edwards [Edmeads].24 September 1814: burial of ‘Frances’ Cook, aged 6 weeks.14 January 1816: baptism of Philip, son of Thomas (‘papermaker’) and Phoebe Cookalias EdmeadsStephen Outridge. (-1801-1814-)8 March 1801: baptism of Sarah, daughter of Stephen and Ann Outledge27 March 1803: baptism of Ann, daughter of Stephen and Ann Outridge23 September 1804: baptism of Mary, daughter of Stephen and Ann Outridge (buried30 November 1804)15 See A. H. Shorter, ‘Paper Mills in the Maidstone District, IV’, in Studies on the History ofPapermaking in Britain ..., 247-9. 825 December 1805: baptism of Henry, son of Stephen and Ann Outridge31 January 1808: baptism of Sophia, daughter of Stephen and Ann Outridge31 July 1814: baptism of Mary, daughter of Stephen Outridge, papermaker, and AnnWilliam Hadlow. (-1805-)On 2 September 1805 a complaint was aired at the Petty Sessions:Isaac Wenman of Snodland, Paper Maker, on his Oath saith that his apprentice WilliamHadlow hath in his Service been guilty of several Acts of Misbehaviour. Andparticularly on the 26: of August last he quitted his Service & went to Strood Fairwithout his knowledge or Consent. (Hadlow was committed to hard labour for 14days.)16The Hadlows were well established in Snodland. This was probably William, son ofWilliam and Margaret, baptized at All Saints Snodland on 12 February 1786.1807-1823WILLIAM SPONG (1810-1823)As noted earlier, from around 1810 Isaac Wenman’s partner is recorded as WilliamSpong, son of John, who had purchased the mill three years before. Following thedeath of John in January 1815 (buried at Aylesford on the 28th) he continuedownership until 1823, at which time he moved to Cobtree Manor, near Maidstone.Born at Aylesford on 14 February 1790, Spong married Jane Fielder at St Mary,Newington, Surrey, on 25 January 1811. (She was baptized at St Mary Newington,Surrey, on 4 April 1788, daughter of Thomas, a rich stockbroker, and Jane Fielder.)He died at Cobtree on 15 November 1839.5 September 1813: baptism of Jane, daughter of William Spong, papermaker, and Jane17 September 1815: baptism of Charles Mansfield, son of William Spong, papermaker,and Jane2 March 1817: baptism of Elizabeth, daughter of William Spong, Gent., and Jane18 October 1818: Martha Rowan, daughter of William Spong, Gent., and Jane26 November 1820: baptism of Henry Summerfield, son of William Spong, Gent., andJaneFour more children were born to the couple 1822-1829, all baptized at Aylesford.James Loosely. (-1811-1813-)5 May 1811: baptism of James, son of James and Mary Loosely (born 25 December1810)27 June 1813: baptism of Mary Ann, daughter of James Loosely, papermaker, andMary AnnJames Dickson. (-1813-)3 January 1813: baptism of Henry, son of James Dickson, papermaker, and Gwine (onthe same date (and time?) as Henry, son of Thomas and Phoebe Cooke)16 CKS: PS/Ma 6. 9Robert Waghorn. (-1813-1825-)27 June 1813: baptism of Robert, son of Robert Waghorn, papermaker, and Ann18 February 1816: baptism of John, son of Robert Wagon, papermaker, and Ann19 July 1818: baptism of William, son of Robert Wagon, papermaker, and Ann23 April 1820: baptism of Stephen, son of Robert Waghorn, papermaker, and Ann5 October 1823: baptism of Harriet, daughter of Robert Waghorn, papermaker, andAnn13 March 1825: baptism of Edward, son of Robert Waghorn, papermaker, and AnnNot long after, it appears the family moved to East Malling, where further childrenwere born between 1828 and 1832. They were still living in one of the mill houses in1851. In a nearby house was the family of another papermaker, Richard Wagon and hiswife Phoebe. Richard was perhaps Robert’s brother, since his children were bornbetween 1817 and 1836.William Mecoy. (-1815-1854)1 January 1815: baptism of Louisa, daughter of William Mecoy, papermaker, and Eliz.(buried 4 September 1827)24 November 1816: baptism of Eliz., daughter of Wm. Macoy, papermaker, and Eliz.(buried 24 April 1833)7 February 1819: baptism of Sarah, daughter of William and Elizabeth, at East Farleigh[?]21 October 1821: baptism of John, son of William Macoy, labourer, and Elizabeth. Heis listed, aged ‘15’ in the 1841 censusWilliam was born around 1777 in ‘Maidstone’. It is possible that he was the WilliamMecoy that married Elizabeth Hobley at East Farleigh on 24 November 1799.17 Oncesettled in Snodland they remained for the rest of their lives18, succeeded by latergenerations.THOMAS FIELDER (-1816-1818-)Insurance documents and overseers’/churchwardens’ accounts show Fielder to haveoccupied the mill in these years, replacing Wenman as papermaker master.19 He mayhave been the brother-in-law of William Spong: baptized at St Mary, Newington,Surrey, on 1 June 1789, son of Thomas and Jane; died at Chobham, Surrey, on 18 June1862.William Randall. (-1816-1818-)11 February 1816: baptism of Jane, daughter of William Randall, papermaker, andElizabeth2 August 1818: baptism of Elizabeth, daughter of William Randall, papermaker, andElizabeth17 The 1851 Snodland census states that she was born in Ireland. 18 William was buried at Snodland on 23 August 1854, aged 77; Elizabeth was buried at Snodland on14 January 1856, aged 7819 Details in Fuller, op. cit (as Snodland Historical Society pamphlet 9), 9-10. 10Joseph Mayatt. (-1816-1836)26 February 1816: marriage of Joseph Mayatt and Frances Elizabeth Hawks, both ofSnodland26 January 1817: baptism of Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker,and Frances Elizabeth. She married Joseph Phillips, a papermaker born in St MaryCray, where the couple were living in 1851.19 July 1818: baptism of Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, andFrances Elizabeth.4 June 1820: baptism of James, son of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, and Frances. Hemarried Caroline Phillips on 16 June 1841 at Deptford. Three children were born tothem at St Mary Cray: Caroline Frances (1844), James (1848), John Phillips (1851).20 October 1822: baptism of Charles Henry, son of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, andFrances. He married Ann Phillips on 25 July 1844 at Bromley. Five children wereborn to them at St Mary Cray between 1845 and 1854, their daughter Ann WellerMayatt was born at East Malling in 1857 and two more children at Snodland in1867 and 1869.13 June 1824: baptism of Jane, daughter of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, and Frances.1 February 1825: burial of Jane Mayatt, infant, of Snodland15 October 1826: baptism of Frances, daughter of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, andFrances24 March 1827: burial of Elizabeth Mayatt, aged 8, of Snodland22 February 1829: baptism of Jane, daughter of Joseph Mayatt, papermaker, andFrances22 November 1832: burial of Sarah Mayatt, aged 14 months, of Snodland20Joseph is one of the few paper mill workers named in the Overseers’ accounts and isshown to be living in a house belonging to John Goodhugh between 1818 and 1836.This was on the north side of the High Street at a point where the by-pass now cutsthrough. It would appear that around the latter date the family moved to St Mary Cray,where the two sons James and Charles Henry brought up their families for a time(recorded 1844-1854) and where, no doubt, they were employed by William Joynson.The baptism of Ann Weller, daughter of Charles at East Malling in 1857 shows he atleast had moved again, to be followed by a further move to Snodland later that year.The whole third generation of his family were in Snodland by 1867 and Mayattscontinued working at Snodland Paper Mill for several more generations.The Church Book of the Independents records that ‘Mr Charles Mayatt wastransferred from the church at Malling to this church Sep. 19. 1857’. Later he becameone of the Trustees for the Providence Chapel, Holborough Road, and is named assuch on the deed of 2 August 1888 acquiring the new site for the High Street Chapel.Thomas Kidwell. (-1817-d.1860)Baptized 14 July 1776, All Saints, Maidstone, second son of Thomas and MaryKidwell (née Newton); three brothers and five sisters. Married (1) Ann (surnameunknown), c.1799 (she died in 1805). Children: Ann, Thomas, Phillis; (2) ElizabethGibbs, 24 November 1806, Tardebigge, Worcestershire (she died in Maidstone in April1830). Children: Thomas, Avis, Elizabeth, William; (3) Ann Fielder (nee Bassett),widow, 4 April 1831, All Saints, Maidstone. No children.20 Possibly a daughter of William and Hannah (see below) rather than Joseph and Francis? 11Thomas is presumed to have lived in Maidstone with his first family; perhaps he wasemployed at one of the paper mills. Following the death of his first wife he travelled toWorcestershire around 1805-6 and married again, at Tardebigge. Two of his childrenwere baptized at nearby Ipsley and Beoley and his son Thomas died at Tardebigge in1813, where there were paper mills.21 By 1817 the family had moved back to Kent andThomas’s son William was baptized at All Saints, Snodland, on 2 February 1817.Elizabeth Kidwell, aged 18, was buried from the Paper Mill on 15 February 1830 andher mother, Elizabeth, on 13 April following. Thomas lived in Snodland for the rest ofhis life, but married a third time at All Saints, Maidstone, in 1831. Presumably this AnnFielder22 (née Bassett) was the widow of John Fielder, a carpenter of Holborough, whowas buried at Snodland on 22 December 1826, but why should the marriage have beenat Maidstone? In spite of the records of births, marriages and deaths in Anglicansources, Thomas was a Non-Conformist. On 7 June 1824 his house in Mill Street wasconfirmed as ‘a place of Religious Worship by an Assembly or Congregation ofProtestants’23. This seems to have been at the instigation of William Joynson, the newowner of Snodland Paper Mill. The Church Book of the Independents gives thebackground:The gospel was introduced into Snodland by agents of the Chatham Itinerant Societyabout the year 1822. At first worship was conducted in a cottage [Kidwell’s], andafterwards a chapel, capable of accommodating about 200 persons was fitted up, chieflyat the expense of Mr William Joynson, who occupied the paper-mill. Mr. J. was not onlythe honoured instrument of providing a chapel without any charge for rent, but also ofinducing many to attend. Twelve persons from this village were received into the churchat Chatham, under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. Slatterie.LaterThose persons who had joined the church at Chatham, now became desirous of formingthemselves into a separate church. Accordingly steps were taken to bring this about andon the 8th of March 1836, a church, comprising 12 members, was formed on theprincipal of Congregational or Independent Dissenters.24Among these first twelve was Thomas Kidwell. His wife Ann is first listed on 18 June1837. Both appear in the 1841 census at ‘Snodland Wharf’ and there again in the 1851census. In the later list Thomas is given as a ‘pauper paper maker’, so presumably hadretired. Ann was buried at All Saints on 30 May 1852 and Thomas died on 13 August1860.William Jordan. (1820-1825)3 December 1820: baptism of Mary, daughter of William Jordan, papermaker, andMary2 February 1822: William and Mary Jordan were witnesses to the marriage of DanielHurd (a papermaker) of Charlton, and Elizabeth Oliver (q.v.):1 June 1823: baptism: Sarah, daughter of William Jordan, papermaker, and Mary21 See A. H. Shorter, ‘Paper-Mills in Worcestershire’, in Studies on the History of Papermaking inBritain, Aldershot, 1993, 280-286. 22 She was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Bassett, born on 19 Dec 1776 at Ightham and marriedthere to John Fielder on 4 May 1795.23 CKS: DRa/Rm/22. 24 Now at the Medway Archives and Study Centre, Strood, in N/URC/342. The Tithe Map of 1844shows the Chapel, apparently made by combining Kidwell’s house with another next door. 129 Oct 1825: baptism: Elizabeth, daughter of William Jordan, papermaker, and MaryA younger William Jordan (born c.1818) was a papermaker in Snodland in 1861. Hewas born in Boxley and may well have been a son of William the elder, who perhapswas working at one of the mills between Aylesford and Sandling before moving toSnodland.WILLIAM TRINDALL (1821-1823)William Trindall (1821-1823) was at Forstal Mill, Aylesford between 1816 and 182125,then worked as papermaker master at Snodland between 1821 and 1823.Daniel Hurd. (-1822-)2 February 1822: marriage of Daniel Hurd of Charlton and Elizabeth Oliver ofSnodland. Witnesses: William and Mary Jordan13 October 1822: baptism of Alfred, son of Daniel Hurd, papermaker, and Elizabeth.By combining all these names, it would appear that at least six to eight men wereemployed at the mill at this time26, together with an unknown number of women (asrag sorters and the like) and a few boys:1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818I. Wenman I. Wenman I. Wenman T. Fielder T. Fielder T. FielderW. Spong W. Spong W. Spong W. Spong W. Spong W. SpongR. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. WaghornT. Edmeads T. Edmeads T. Edmeads T. Edmeads T. Kidwell T. KidwellS. Outridge S. Outridge J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. MayattJ. Dickson W. Randall W. Randall W. RandallJ. Loosely W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 W. Trindall W. Trindall W. TrindallW. Spong W. Spong W. Spong W. Spong W. SpongR. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. WaghornJ. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt W. Jordan W. Jordan W. Jordan W. JordanT. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. KidwellW. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy D. Hurd25 Shorter, Studies in the History of Papermaking [...], 231. 26 Any unmarried men are of course unrecorded. Judging by later records there must have beenadditional youthful workers at the mill as well as women rag-sorters/cutters. 13WILLIAM JOYNSON: 1823-1833WILLIAM JOYNSON came to Snodland from High Wycombe in 1823.11 September 1827: baptism of William, son of William Joynson, papermaker, andAnn Catherine (buried 29 September 1827)19 September 1828: baptism of Edmund Hamborough, son of William Joynson,papermaker, and Ann Catherine31 January 1830: birth of Ann Catherine, daughter of William Joynson and AnnCatherine; baptized at The Ebenezer Chapel, Chatham, 9 February 18309 October 1833: baptism of Mary, daughter of William Joynson, papermaker, and AnnCatherineJoynson moved on to St Mary Cray, where he was extremely successful, building up apaper mill of acknowledged quality and considerable size. It employed 120 people in1842 and 630 by 1865. A paragraph from The Church Book of the Independents(quoted below) states that Snodland mill was shut briefly after Joynson’s departure andthat several of his work-force went with him. This was probably so, but the records arelargely unhelpful in confirming this. Certainly there was a steady movement of workersbetween Snodland and St Mary Cray, but this is more easily traced in the 1840s than in1833. In any case Joynson retained an interest in Snodland and the IndependentChurch there, putting up money for land for a new chapel and school in 1855. Both heand his son Edmund Hamborough Joynson were among the trustees who ran them.Another paper mill had been established at St Paul’s Cray by Thomas Nash fromaround 1824, he having moved from Hertfordshire, but no Snodland people are yetknown to have worked there.27Thomas Mullard. (1823-)21 September 1823: baptism of Thomas Moses, son of Thomas Mullard, papermaker,and AnnConstantine Weedon. (1823-)23 June 1823: marriage of Constantine Weedon and Sarah Sells at St. Nicholas,Rochester, both of St Nicholas parish16 November 1823: baptism of Sarah, daughter of Constantine Weedon, papermaker,and SarahNo link is known to connect Constantine with the other Weedens who worked atSnodland (see below)William Streeton/Stratton (1824-1825)7 March 1824: baptism of Priscilla, daughter of William Streeton, papermaker, andAnn4 December 1825: baptism of Sarah, daughter of William Stratton, papermaker, andAnnWilliam Fryer. (1825-1830)24 July 1825: baptism: Joseph, son of William Fryer, papermaker, and Mary27 See W. S. Shears, William Nash of St Paul’s Cray: papermakers, London, 1950, rev. edn. 1967. 145 July 1826: burial: Hester Fryer, aged 3, from Paper Mill5 July 1826: burial: James Fryer, aged 4, from Paper Mill21 Oct 1827: baptism: Helen, daughter of William Fryer, papermaker, and Mary23 November 1829: birth of Eliza, daughter of William and Mary Fryer; baptized at theEbenezer Chapel, Chatham, on 9 February 183030 Nov 1857: marriage: Samuel Fryer, from East Malling, papermaker, son of WilliamFryer, papermaker, to Sarah Elizabeth Privett, daughter of Joseph, carpenter (amember of the New Church and closely associated with the Hook family).It seems highly likely that the Fryers came to Snodland from West Wycombe, with (orprompted by) William Joynson. There are many families of that name in the WestWycombe registers and even a ‘Fryer’s mill’, known to have been operating between1725 and 1844.28 The baptism of Esther, daughter of William and Mary Fryer, isrecorded at West Wycombe on 13 April 1823, perhaps the same child buried atSnodland in 1826. If so, it is likely that the West Wycombe baptisms of Elizabeth, 12July 1818 and Henry, 14 November 1819, whose parents were also William and Mary,were further children of the couple. Samuel has not been traced, but he at least seemsto have found employment at nearby East Malling by the time of his marriage. (Heremained there.) So did Joseph (born 1825), who had married Maria from UpperHalling, and whose children were born there from c.1849 onwards. Also at EastMalling at the time of the 1861 census was their mother, Mary Fryer, widow, aged 64,born in Buckinghamshire, living with her daughter Mary Ann (married to JamesMarlow), aged 24, a papermaker, also born in Buckinghamshire. ‘Mary Ann Marlow’was a witness at Samuel Fryer’s Snodland wedding.Thomas Wright. (1825)24 July 1825: baptism of Thomas, son of Thomas Wright, papermaker, and SarahJames Line. (1826-1829)1 August 1826: baptism of Moses, son of James Line, papermaker, and Rebecca6 August 1826: burial of Moses Line, infant, from the Paper Mill23 September 1827: baptism of Moses, son of James Line, papermaker, and Rebecca8 November 1829: baptism of Elizabeth, daughter of James Line, papermaker, andRebeccaGeorge Harding (-1827-)2 April 1827: birth of Lucy, daughter of George Harding of Snodland, papermaker,and Sophia; baptized 17 June 1827 at the Wesleyan Chapel called Bethel atRochester.George is listed as papermaker at East Malling in 1861, aged 71, born in Hertfordshire(wife Sophia aged 70, born in Surrey; daughter Emily born c.1830 in Kent).Samuel Tovey. (-1828-1830-)3 June 1827: married Sarah Johnson at St Peter’s, Aylesford.12 Oct 1828: baptism: George, son of Samuel Tovey, papermaker, and Sarah.14 Feb 1830: baptism: John, son of Samuel Tovey, papermaker, and Sarah.28 A. H. Shorter, ‘Paper Mills in the Wye Valley, Buckinghamshire’, in Studies on the History ofPapermaking in Britain, 174-181. 15William Mayatt. (-1829-)6 December 1829: baptism of William son of William Mayatt, papermaker, and Hannah(née Brown)Probably a brother of Joseph (see above), but no firm relationship has been established.The 1851 St Mary Cray census (no. 8) shows William the elder, aged 54, born atWycombe with wife Annie [=Hannah?], son William, a papermaker, born in Snodland,aged 21, and his wife Charlotte, aged 21. The marriage of William Mayatt to CharlotteWale on 23 February 1850 at St Alfege, Greenwich, is probably them. Both parties aredescribed there as of full age; at the wedding each William was described as a‘mechanic’, as was George, the father of Charlotte.John Lynn. (1830-)14 February 1830: baptism of Ann Sophia, daughter of John Lynn, papermaker, andHannah(In the 1851 census for St Mary Cray (no. 73) is Henry Lynn, papermaker, aged 27,married to Frances, aged 25, born in Snodland.)Edward Brown. (1831-)20 March 1831: baptism of Sarah, daughter of Edward Brown, papermaker, andMargaret.Thomas Oliver. (1831-)26 June 1831: baptism of Thomas Syril, son of Thomas Oliver, papermaker, andElizabethDaniel Dean. (1832-1833-)15 January 1832: baptism of William, son of Daniel Dean, papermaker, and Hester10 February 1833: baptism of George, son of Daniel Dean, papermaker, and Esther.James Proctor. (1832-1833-)9 December 1832: baptism of Kezia, daughter of James Proctor, papermaker, andLydia25 January 1833: burial of Kezia Proctor, infant, of Snodland.1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828W. Joynson W. Joynson W. Joynson W. Joynson W. Joynson W. JoynsonJ. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. MayattT. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. KidwellW. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. MecoyT. Mullard W. Streeton W. Streeton J. Line J. Line J. LineC. Weeden T. Wright G. HardingR. Waghorn R. Waghorn R. Waghorn S. Tovey 16 W. Fryer W. Fryer W. Fryer W. Fryer1829 1830 1831 1832 1833W. Joynson W. Joynson W. Joynson W. Joynson W. JoynsonJ. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. Mayatt J. MayattT. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. Kidwell T. KidwellW. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. Mecoy W. MecoyW. Mayatt J. Lynn T. Oliver D. Dean D. DeanS. Tovey S. Tovey E. Brown J. Proctor J. ProctorW. Fryer W. Fryer J. WeedenJ. LineJOHN CLARK’S TENURE 1834-1842By an agreement dated 1 January 1834, Thomas Spong of Mill Hall, coal merchant,leased the mill to Reuben Hunt, a papermaker of Wooburn, Bucks., for 21 years at£220 p.a.29. It appears that Hunt immediately re-assigned the lease to John Clark, whois shown to be paying rates on the mill by 1835. This is confirmed by the Church Bookof the Independents, which records thatAbout the year 1832 Mr Joynson removed to St Mary Cray, and the paper-mill was shutup: several of his workmen also, who had received the gospel, accompanied him. Thisoccurrence proved a severe trial to the friends of the gospels, and caused its enemies torejoice. At length, however, this dark cloud was removed by the arrival of Mr. JohnClarke, a member of an Independent Church in Buckinghamshire, who, having enjoyedthe paper-mill, became a resident in the village, and espoused with all his heart the infantcause. [...]It was not only John Clark who came, but many friends and relations, including hishalf-brother James. Both their grandfather James [I] (c.1749 - 21 June 1827) andfather James [II] (bap. 13 December 1772 - bur. 1810) were papermakers at Wooburn.James [II] married (i) Lucy Lacey at Wooburn30 on 16 February 1792. They had threedaughters and a son JOHN. Lucy died in 1800 and was buried at Wooburn inFebruary. James married (ii) Elizabeth Stiles, a lacemaker, at Wooburn on 13 July1802. Four more children were born: James [III], Daniel, Hannah and Jonathan, all ofwhom were employed in paper manufacture. James I’s sister Mary (bap. Wooburn, 16May 1790) married Benjamin Healy, a paper maker, at Hedsor, Bucks., on 26 July1806. Their son Jeremiah, born on 23 December 1819, was baptized at Cores EndChapel on 5 March 1820. He too became a papermaker and was working at Snodland29 Hunt may have decided on working a different mill: William and Reuben Hunt were described aspapermakers at Sandling Mill (Pigot’s Directory, 1839), but by December 9th Reuben was declaredbankrupt. ‘Wm. Hunt’ is still listed at Sandling in Pigot’s 1840 directory. 30 All references to Wooburn registers are to the Cores End, Bethel Chapel. 17mill at the time of the 1841 census, having married a Kentish girl, Elizabeth. Thebaptism of their son John took place at the Independent Church, Snodland, on 17December 1843.JOHN CLARK.Baptized 1 July 1797, Independent Bethel Chapel, Cores End, Wooburn, Bucks.;married Susannah Aldridge, at Great Marlow, 10 June 1816. She was baptized atCookham on 13 July 1794, a daughter of James and Susannah (née Cossington) andwas sister to Christiana who married John’s half-brother James (q.v.). By 1824 he wasa paper maker at Eghams Green, Bucks.Children:Moses: born c.1817 at Wooburn; married Mary Ann [...], but where is as yet unknown.She was born in Ditton and their first son John was born at Sandling, Maidstone,around 1841, so Moses probably travelled to Kent with his father’s family. Aroundthe same time there is a Sandling connection too for his uncle John Mason (seebelow). Three other children were born to the couple at St Mary Cray between1845 and 1850. They lived on the Chislehurst Road and Moses was described as anengineer.31 On 31 January 1855 ‘Moses Clark of Saint Mary Cray paper manufacturer’ was oneof seventeen trustees sold a piece of land in Windmill Field, Snodland, by WilliamJoynson, for the purposes of building a chapel and other buildings on it.32James: baptized at his father’s house in Wooburn; died 1834Mary Ann: born at Wooburn 1819Thomas: born at Wooburn 1821. A papermaker in Snodland by 1841 (census). At the1851 census he was a papermaker at St Paul’s Cray with his wife Sarah (aged 28,born St Mary Cray) and children Annetta (2), William (1 month) and a nurse SusanaBeesely, aged 51, from Wooburn.Annette: born at Wooburn 1823Susan: born at Wooburn 1824; in Snodland at 1841 censusSarah: born at Wooburn 1826; in Snodland at 1841 censusJane: born at Wooburn 1827; in Snodland at 1841 censusLucy: born at Wooburn 1828; in Snodland at 1841 censusMaria: born at Wooburn 1831; in Snodland at 1841 census‘James John Clark son of John Clark Paper Maker formerly of Egham’s Green,Wooburn but now of Snodlen Kent by Susannah his wife formerly SusannahAldridge was born November 10th 1834 Baptized at Wooburn June 7th 1835.’Joseph: born 13 September 1836; baptized at the Independent Church, Snodland, 20November 1836; in Snodland at 1841 censusJohn Clark’s bankruptcy was reported in The Times of 9 September 1840: ‘John Clark,Snodland-mills, near Maidstone, paper manufacturer, to surrender Sept. 18 at 12o’clock, Oct. 20, at 11, at the Bankrupts’ Court: solicitors, Messrs Walters and Reeve,Basinghall-street; official assignee, Mr. Groom, Abchurch-lane.’ The London Gazettefor 3 June 1842 records ‘John Clark formerly of Hoxton, Middlesex then Snodlandpapermaker then Blackwell Hall near Chesham, Bucks. Foreman to a papermaker.Bankrupt.’31 Information from the 1851 St Mary Cray census. 32 Photocopy held at Snodland Millennium Museum. 18A little more can be added from a document within a bundle of title deeds concerningsome Snodland property in which both Clark and William Joynson had an interest.33This mentions a ‘Fiat in Bankruptcy’ dated 31 August 1840 against John Clark andrecords T. Stephens the younger (‘then late of Old Broad Street but then of Lime HseSquare, London, merchant, as creditors’ assignee of the estate and effects of the saidJohn Clark of Snodland, miller’); John Clark was ‘then of 26 Ray St., Clerkenwell,Middlesex’.James Clark.Baptized 30 May 1803 at Wooburn. Married Christiana Aldridge, 31 October 1824 atWooburn; she was baptized at Cookham, Berks. 9 January 1803, daughter of Jamesand Susannah (née Cossington) and was sister to Susannah who married James’s halfbrother John. Papermaker at Eghams Green, Bucks., by 1825; living at SnodlandWharf in 1841 census; was a ‘labourer’ living in the parish of St Giles in the Fields at 4White Lion Passage at 31 March 1851 (census); a journeyman papermaker atCostessey, Norfolk on 8 April 1861 (census); died before 1871 census; Christiana stillliving at Costessey at 4 April 1881 (census), aged 78.Children:Ann: baptized 1825; buried at Cores End in 1828.Susannah: baptized 1826; in Snodland at 1841 census; married John Mullett, 1849 andthey were at Sawston, Cambridgeshire, -1851-1871-.Thomas Aldridge: baptized 1828; in Snodland at 1841 census; at Costessey (1871): awidower and fishmonger.Harriet: baptized 1830; in Snodland at 1841 census.Ann: baptized 1832; in Snodland at 1841 census; at St Giles in the Fields (1851); atCostessey (1861), unmarried.James: baptized 1834; in Snodland at 1841 census; at St Giles in the Fields (1851).William: born in Snodland 25 April 1836; baptized at the Independent Church,Snodland, 21 August 1836; in Snodland at 1841 census; at St Giles in the Fields(1851).Elizabeth: born 26 March 1838; baptized at the Independent Church, Snodland, 29April 1838.Annetta: born in Snodland; in Snodland at 1841 census; at St Giles in the Fields(1851); married Thomas Holt, 1859; at Costessey (1861).John: born at Chesham, Bucks., c.1843; at St Giles in the Fields (1851); at Costessey(1861) as Agricultural labourer; emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1873 becoming aBaptist pastor.Joseph: born Denbigh, Wrexham, 1845; at Costessey (1861) as agricultural labourerA daughter of James [II] and Lucy was Jane, baptized at Wooburn on 29 April 1799.On 27 December 1830 she married John Mason, a mill board and papermaker, atHedsor, Bucks. Their daughters Eliza and Jane were born at Wooburn in 1832 and1834 respectively, but other children were born at Aylesford/Boxley between 1838 and1849, so by then the family had moved to Kent. Mason occupied the New Mill,Pratling Street from 183734. He had moved on to become ‘Foreman of Paper Boards33 CKS: U1882/T1. 34 Shorter, Studies on the History of Papermaking ..., 230, quoting an Excise General Letter dated 27October 1837. 19Manufactory’ at Loose village paper mills at the time of the 1851 census. His brotherin-law, Henry Gurney (see next paragraph), was named as a ‘visitor’ there: aged 60,married, born at Wooburn, a ‘Paper Boards Manufacturer’ employing four men andtwo boys.Another daughter of James [I] and Lucy was Eliza, baptized at Wooburn on 7November 1794. She married Henry Gurney, a shepherd and later a papermaker. Theirson Henry, born 26 September 1817 at Wooburn, baptized at Cores End Chapel on 17November 1817, was a papermaker at Snodland by the time of the 1841 census, havingmarried Ann Susannah Butler (daughter of John and Elizabeth35, baptized at Snodlandon 20 July 1820) and already with two sons, Henry (born 10 March 1839; baptized atthe Independent Church, Snodland, 22 July 1839) and John (born 11 November 1840;baptized at the Independent Church, Snodland, 12 December 1840). Henry was thus anephew to John and James Clark. At the 1841 census Henry senior was working thePratling Street mill near Aylesford with his brother-in-law Daniel Clark; presumablythey had taken over from John Mason (another brother-in-law). By 1845 he and hisfamily had moved to Cray Street, St Mary Cray, where four more children were born,all recorded in the 1851 census. A further move to Loose, near Maidstone, apparentlytook place by May in that year, where the lower of the two mills (Excise No. 303)undertook millboard production by Henry Gurney senior and junior.36 Evidently theyounger Henry’s wife Ann had died and he was now married to Susan, by whom hehad four more children. At the time of the 1861 census he was a ‘Mill BoardManufacturer’ employing nine men, one woman and one boy. By 1871 the list was of 5men, one woman and one boy.On 31 January 1855 ‘Henry Gurney of the parish of Loon [recte Loose] nearStaplehurst’ was one of seventeen trustees sold a piece of land in Windmill Field,Snodland, by William Joynson, for the purposes of building a chapel and otherbuildings on it.The Weeden family were also part of this extended group. According to the 1851census John Weeden was born around 1792-3 at Wycombe Marsh, Bucks. On 25December 1817 he married Esther/Hester Clark at West Wycombe. Born in 1797, shewas cousin to John Clark and daughter of Thomas (son of James [I] and Sarah. Theyseem to have been the earliest members of the extended Clark/Gurney/Healy/Weedongroup to have moved to Snodland, shown by the baptism of their daughter Annetta inMay 1833.Children born to this couple are:James, born at Sheepridge, Little Marlow, Bucks., 22 October 1818; baptized atCores End Chapel, Wooburn, 22 November 1818; married Frances Kemp at Stroodon 12 May 1839 (she baptized at All Saints, Snodland, on 7 March 1819);papermaker at Snodland (1841 census). The baptism of their daughter Elizabethtook place at Snodland on 10 December 1843; Both James and Frances are listed aspapermakers in the 1851 Snodland census.35 Both John and Elizabeth were among the twelve members forming the Independent Church inSnodland on 8 March 1836.36 See A. H. Shorter, ‘Paper Mills in the Maidstone District, IV’ in Studies on the History ofPapermaking in Britain ..., 249 and R. J. Spain, The Loose Watermills, I, Archaeologia CantianaLXXXVII (1972), 43-79, especially 54-61. 20Sarah, born 17 November 1820, Flackwell Heath, Wooburn, Bucks. Baptized 10December 1820, Cores End Chapel, Wooburn; paper worker at Snodland (1841census); returned to Buckinghamshire with her parents; married Timothy Adams atChesham on 7 February 1846.Daniel, born 30 January 1823 , Flackwell Heath, Wooburn, Bucks.; baptized at CoresEnd Chapel, Wooburn, 4 March 1823; papermaker at Snodland (1841 census);married Mercy Savage at Bromley on 16 February 1845. They were living at StMary Cray in 1881, where Daniel continued as a papermaker.Thomas, baptized 29 January 1825, but buried later that year.Samuel, baptized 7 May 1828.Annetta, baptized at Snodland 12 May 1833; buried there, aged seven, on 10 March1840.Mary Ann, baptized at Snodland 19 July 1835; buried there, aged five, on 17 February1840. Evidently the two girls succumbed to a common illness.William, born 13 February 1838; baptized 29 April 1838 at the Independent Church,Snodland.The family returned to Chesham, Bucks., by 1843 and John died there in 1855.37 Hiswidow, Esther, with other members of her family, were working at St Mary Cray by1861. William was in Snodland again with his family by 1871, working as a cement orgeneral labourer until his death in 1902.Clark evidently felt the need to modernise the mill and borrowed money to do so. In1838 the rates were increased because the mill had been 'improved'. A detaileddescription survives of the machinery at this time:2 October 1838One Rag Engine with Shafts and Drivers in the Mill worked in Gear by Water Wheel orcondensing Engine. One set of Glazing Rolls attached to paper machine - one KnotStrainer attached to Paper Machine. A Small Steam Engine of two Horse power - TwoBoard Tables in the Soll - One pair of small Rollers with swing Shafts and Wheels andTimbers erected in the Soll for rolling Boards - Tube Steam Boiler fourteen horse powerhigh pressure - A large cylinder steam Boiler of Twenty horse power with co*cks, pipesand valves erected in the Yard - A sixteen horse power steam engine high pressure andcondenser with pipes and co*cks; balance wheel, Spur Wheel and large Shaft erected inthe new building in the Yard - a Rag Duster with Drivers - Two washing Engines withRolls, plates and pinions; Water pumps to supply the same erected in the new building inthe Yard - A new Bleaching Chest with Racks for braining stuff erected in the bleachinghouse - A Rag Cutter with Shafts and Drivers - Four shaving Boilers with Pipes andco*cks in the lower Drying House. A Pair of large Mill Board Rollers for Glazing withShafts and Wheels erected in the Soll. A Grind Stone with Shafts and Wheels erected inthe Soll. A Grind Stone with Shafts and Pinions - sixty pairs of new Trebles marked J.C.38Clark planned more and drew up an agreement on 1 June 1840 forA New Steam Boiler of 20 Horse Power - A New High and low pressure Steam engineof 20 Horse power, with Shafts and Blocks and pinions and the apparatus therewith asgoing gear connected - Four new Cast Iron Rag Engines with pumps and Apparatus37 A John Weedon, born at Chesham c.1843, was working as a papermaker at St Mary Cray in 1881and may have been another son.38 CKS: Q/RDZ2/000001(2)c. 21complete - A New Paper Machine with Drying Cylinders, Machinery, Utensils andApparatus39and a splendid diagram survives which shows the position of the machinery new andold. Unfortunately when Clark went bankrupt the plans for this second phase fellthrough.40The 1841 Snodland census lists twenty-five persons as ‘papermaker’, ‘paper worker’,or ‘paper labourer’, all of whom are presumed to be workers at the Snodland mill. Ofthese thirteen (i.e. half) were born out-of-county: as we have seen, many came fromBuckinghamshire.We have already noted Clark (3), Gurney (1), Healey (1), Kidwell (1), Mecoy (1),Weeden (4). Here is a list of the remainder41:Surname Forename age Occupation ‘x’ = born outside KentAllchin Joseph 20 papermakerBateman Jabez 15 papermaker xBateman Thomas 25 papermaker xBoorman Frederick 30 papermakerBowler William 15 papermaker xBryant James 20 papermakerDandridge Daniel 20 papermaker xEason Thomas 15 papermakerJones Albion 14 papermakerKelvie Edward 15 papermakerNorris George 15 papermakerRalph Thomas 15 papermakerWingate John 35 papermakerWoodger Augustus 15 papermakerNone of these persons are listed in the 1851 Snodland census, so all had movedelsewhere in the meantime. Although the ages are approximate (within five years orso), it is very apparent that this is a youthful workforce. (Old stalwarts like ThomasKidwell and William Mecoy were still on hand though.) Snodland was a relativelysmall community of 500 persons (102 houses) and the papermaking fraternity formedclose-knit groups within this. It is not surprising to find the young men lodging withtheir peers. Using the census numbers: Thomas Bateman was at (54); FrederickBoorman at (55), having Daniel Dandridge and George Norris as lodgers; WilliamBowles, Joseph Allchin and Thomas Ralph were all lodging at (56). Towards the lowerend of the High Street were James Weeden (68); John Wingate (71); James Bryant(lodging at the Red Lion) (72); John Clark lived in the papermaker master’s house inthe High Street (75) (called ‘Acacia Cottage’ in 1861 and later rebuilt as ‘The Veles’);Henry Gurney (77); Jeremiah Healey (79). On Snodland Wharf Thomas Eason andAlbion Jones lodged together with Mary and Emily Boorman (mother and sister ofFrederick) (84); John Bateman’s family, including his son Jabez and lodger Edward39 CKS: Q/RDZ2/000001(2)g. 40 On Clark’s financial difficulties at Snodland see Fuller, op. cit., 16. 41 Almost certainly there were more women employed too as rag cutters, but none are named. 22Kelvie (85); Thomas Kidwell (86); James Clark (87); John, Sarah and Daniel Weeden(88) and in nearby ‘Brook Lane’ [Brook Street] was William Mecoy and his lodgerAugustus Woodger (92). There is no certainty about the following identifications ofthe youngsters from the IGI, but they may rate as possibilities.Joseph Allchin, baptized at East Malling on 4 September 1825, son of Thomas andElizabeth.William Bowler (certainly a common name in Buckinghamshire registers): either theson of Thomas and Sarah, baptized at Shenley, Bucks., on 12 February 1826, or theson of Richard and Elizabeth, baptized at Fulmer, Bucks., on 7 May 1826. Thelatter only is near the papermaking valley.Daniel Dandridge, married Martha Smith at Snodland on 28 June 1841; his father wasJohn, a papermaker.Thomas (Barton) Eason, baptized at East Malling on 22 February 1825, son ofSamuel and Elizabeth.Edward Kelvie, baptized at East Malling on 14 July 1825, son of William and Eliza.In 1881 he was a bricklayer living at New Hythe, aged 56, with his wife Maria.George Norris. A boy of this name was baptized 21 January 1827 at Ryarsh, son ofJohn and Ann. In Snodland Millennium Museum is a copy of a book of Isaac Wattshymns inscribed ‘George Norris December 1839, Snodland’, suggesting he was aNon-Conformist. A Mary Norris was one of the twelve members forming theIndependent Church at Snodland on 8 March 1836, but left (moved?) on 8 January1841. Maybe she was George’s mother.Thomas Ralph (‘Relph’ is a variant), baptized 24 January 1830 at East Malling, sonof Joseph and Jane.No likely identification has come to light for James Bryant, and no record has beenfound for an Augustus Woodger (although he may have belonged to thecontemporary East Malling family of that name. Woodgers have flourished in Snodlandsince the 1870s).Frederick Boorman.John (1755-1837) and Thomas Boorman, probably brothers, seem to have arrived inSnodland around 1817 to work the windmill. Both were Baptists from Headcorn andthe (infant) baptisms of many of their children are recorded in the registers of theBaptist Chapel there. Several subsequent adult baptisms took place at All Saints,Snodland. Among these was Frederick, son of John and Mary, first baptized atHeadcorn on 9 July 1805, but again at Snodland on 20 November 1836, when he wasdescribed merely as ‘labourer’. Thomas and his family disappear from view after 1826,although he may prove to be the Thomas Boorman who leased the lime works at NorthHalling in 1832.42 John remained in Snodland until his death in April 1837; his widow,‘daughter of Robert and Mary Dence’ was baptized at All Saints on 24 December1837. As we have seen, she was living at Snodland Wharf with her daughter Emily in1841, with papermaker lodgers. By this time Frederick occupied a separate house, was42 Edward Gowers and Derek Church, Across the Low Meadow, Maidstone, 1979, 54. 23married to Harriet and had two children of his own. The eldest, William, was baptizedat All Saints on 20 November 1836; the younger, Hannah, on 19 July 1840. By 1846the family had moved to St Mary Cray, where another daughter, Mary, was born, andthey appear in the 1851 census there. No doubt Frederick was employed by WilliamJoynson: he is now listed as ‘papermaker’.43Finally there is Thomas Bateman, born at Wooburn, Bucks. around 1813. He wasalmost certainly a son of the John and Elizabeth who in 1841 were living at SnodlandWharf (census no. 85) with three other children: Jabez, Martha and Louisa. This is theonly record of John and his family in Snodland. John’s age is given as ‘60’ whichsuggests he was born around 1780. Thomas and his wife Mary (born at EatonHastings, Berks.) first appear in this census, where he is shown as ‘papermaker’, butwith the upheaval following the bankruptcy of John Clark he seems to have movedbriefly to St Mary Cray, where a son William was born in 1842. By 1844 he was backin Snodland, but had turned to the trade of grocer (already pursued a few doors awayby Joseph Bateman, probably another brother). Joseph later moved to Aylesford, butThomas continued in Snodland until his death in 1883 and the business continuedthrough his son William.On 31 January 1855 ‘John Bateman of Saint Mary Cray grocer ... Jabez Bateman ofSaint Mary Cray, paper maker44 ... Joseph Bateman of Aylesford ... Thomas Batemanof Snodland’ were among seventeen trustees sold a piece of land in Windmill Field,Snodland, by William Joynson, for the purposes of building a chapel and otherbuildings on it.Thomas and Mary had been admitted into the Independent Church at Snodland on 18June 1837, where the baptism of two of their children took place on 3 January 1858.Later five children of William were all baptized there on 14 April 1887.Writing in 1894, the Snodland printer John Woolmer showed that Thomas also playeda part in founding the school attached to the new chapel, which wasto be free from that class of religious instruction usually taught in Church Schools ... Inthe vestry of the Congregational Chapel the Nonconformists started a small school underthe charge of Miss George. Afterwards it was fortunate when there was a great increasein the child population of Snodland, and a corresponding necessity for another schoolbeside the National, that the late Mr. Thomas Bateman was able to prevail upon hisfriend the late Mr. Joynson, of St. Mary Cray, to build these schools (in 1857).451842-1854In 1842 the mill was leased to HENRY HOLDEN, a papermaker of ‘Fulham andSnodland’, who perhaps ran the business from London; certainly the house in the HighStreet was not regularly occupied until the next manager, ‘Wildes’, took up residencein 1847. The mill appears to have been closed in 1846 since it has a ‘Nil’ assessment inthe Overseers accounts. This prompted further movement of the workforce and StMary Cray seems to have been a refuge for them. Holden leased the mill at £200 p.a.also agreeing to take as an apprentice a son of Thomas Spong ‘not exceeding43 He and his wife are still there in 1881, living in retirement. 44 The 1881 census shows Jabez to have been born at Wooburn, c.1824. 45 John Woolmer, Historical Jottings of the Parish of Snodland, Snodland, 1894, reprinted asSnodland Historical Society pamphlet 3, 1999. 24seventeen years of age to learn and be instructed by him in the trade or business of aPaper-Maker.’Further papermakers shown in the registers 1844-1854 are:Richard Burgess (1844-1847)18 October 1840: baptism of Charles, son of Richard Burgess, labourer, and Martha1 September 1844: baptism of Harriet, daughter of Richard Burgess, papermaker fromSt Mary Cray, and Martha23 May 1847: baptism of George Richard, son of Richard Burgess, papermaker fromSt Mary Cray, and MarthaPossibly the son of Solomon Burgess, baptized at Snodland on 12 February 1815; itmight be his marriage to Martha King at East Malling on 23 October 1836. He workedas a lime labourer before becoming a papermaker. He and his family were living at MillBridge, St Mary Cray, at the time of the 1851 census and they were still there in 1881.Charles also became a papermaker at St Mary Cray: he and his family are listed there inthe 1881 census.William Bowery (1845-1850)14 September 1845: burial of Mary Ann Bowery, infant22 February 1846: baptism of William James, son of William Bowery, papermaker, andDeborah30 July 1848: burial of Henry George Bowery, infant3 June 1849: baptisms of John Francis and Ellen Maria, children of William Bowery,papermaker, and Deborah17 November 1850: baptism of Adilein, daughter of William Bowery, papermaker, andDeborahThomas Barton (1851-1853)6 January 1850: baptism of Walter, son of Thomas Barton, papermaker, and Frances;buried 30 November 185120 February 1853: burial of Frances Barton, aged 33.John Hasle [Hazell] (1852)12 December 1852: baptism of William Henry, son of John Hasle, foreman of thepaper mill, and Ann.William Henry became a papermaker. Later records show him at Wells, Somerset, in1881, at Flint, North Wales, in 1882, but in Snodland again in 1891.The Charles and Ann Hasle/Hazell in the 1851 census were probably related to John. Amarriage of Charles Hazell to Ann White at Bexley on 20 September 1835 may bethem.Frederick Fentiman (1852-1855)12 December 1852: baptism of Frederick Henry, son of Frederick Fentiman,papermaker, and Emma (Emma, born Orpington, c.1824) 2511 March 1855: baptism of Emma Alma, daughter of Frederick Fentiman, papermaker,and Emma.Frederick had died before 1881, when his widow Emma and children were living inChurch Road, ChislehurstBenjamin [Berryman?] Austin (1851-1854)24 July 1853: baptism of Amelia Jane, daughter of Benjamin Austin and Mary Ann12 November 1854: baptism of Joseph Alexander, son of Benjamin and Mary AustinGeorge Silvester23 July 1854: baptism of Louisa Elizabeth, daughter of George Silvester, papermaker,and Harriet.Probably the George Silvester living at Croydon, aged 53 in 1881: a corn dealer, bornat Bexley, whose wife Harriet was born at Godalming. They were in Deptford betweenat least 1857 and 1869.Thomas Kelsey17 December 1854: baptism of Maria Lawrence, daughter of Thomas Kelsey,papermaker, and Caroline.Probably the Thomas Kelsey living at Stone, Dartford, aged 50 in 1881: an enginefitter, born at Orpington, whose wife Caroline was born at Wrotham. They were atPlaxtol between at least 1866 and 1878.HENRY ATKINSON WILDES (1847-1854)Contemporary directories show Henry Atkinson Wildes first as an attorney in StFaith’s Street, Maidstone (Pigot’s: 1840), and later as ‘deputy clerk of the peace, andclerk to the Lieutenancy of the county’ (Kelly’s: 1851). It is ‘H. A. Wildes Esq.’ whois assessed for the rates for the mill in the Snodland Overseers’ accounts, but it isWilliam Wildes, (his son?) aged 26, who is named as papermaker master at the 1851census, employing 13 men, 39 women and 4 boys46. Of these all the men and boys, butonly 22 of the women can be identified in the Snodland census. Some of the othersprobably came from outside the parish, including two from Ham Hill, Birling: ElizaNorris, aged 44, and Ann Martin, aged 27, a rag sorter. The Snodland workers are:Name Age Occupation Place of BirthWilliam Wildes 26 papermaker master MaidstoneSophia Wildes 18 papermaker RochesterBerryman Austin 34 engineer, paper mill RochesterJane Baker 31 papermaker West MallingJames Baker 14 papermaker SnodlandCharles Baker 12 papermaker Snodland46 At East Malling in the 1861 census, George F. Busbridge (with three mills) employed 49 malesand 99 females. 26Thomas Barton 31 paper maker MaidstoneFrances Barton 32 papermaker MaidstoneCaroline Beadle 20 papermaker HadlowWilliam Bowry 35 papermaker Wycombe, Bucks.Susannah Chittenden 27 papermaker West MallingElizabeth Costen 32 papermaker BirlingAnn Dartnell 23 papermaker East MallingMary Dartnall 20 papermaker BirlingJohn Endsor 48 papermaker Tamworth, Staffs.Walter Endsor 19 papermaker (cutter) High Wycombe, Bucks.Freeman Endsor 17 papermaker (cutter) High Wycombe, Bucks.Mary A. Fissenden 31 papermaker St George’s, MiddlesexFrances Goodhew 13 papermaker East MallingMary Hadlow 37 rag cutter (papermaker) PlaxtolSusannah Harden 33 papermaker BredhurstCharles Hazell 37 papermaker WilmingtonAnn Hazell 32 papermaker Suffolk: HelmingtonCharles Hazell 12 papermaker ChislehurstThomas Kidwell 76 pauper papermaker MaidstoneMary Lawrence 17 papermaker WrothamJane Lawrence 13 papermaker WrothamWilliam Mecoy 74 papermaker MaidstoneElizabeth Mecoy 72 papermaker IrelandJames Muddle 54 engine driver; paper mill Isfield, SussexPhebe Muddle 44 papermaker Isfield, SussexJemima Muddle 17 papermaker Isfield, SussexAlfred Muddle 13 engine boy; paper mill Isfield, SussexJohn Norris 58 engine driver; paper mill SnodlandMary A. Phillips 21 papermaker BirlingJames Weeden 32 papermaker BuckinghamshireFrances Weeden 32 papermaker SnodlandJane Wood 17 papermaker SnodlandA considerable change is evident between the 1841 and 1851 lists. Very few of theworkers appear in both. The number of women employed in 1851 suggests greateractivity in sorting and cutting rags, but the apparent increase may be somewhatmisleading since it is possible that the enumerator for 1841 was less concerned withrecording the women’s occupations. (It seems unlikely, for instance, that Elizabeth 27Mecoy only took up work very late in life. Frances Weeden was also present in 1841.)The opportunity that papermaking allowed for women to earn a proper wage wasseized upon by wives (eight here), daughters (four), sisters and sisters-in-law (four),niece and visitor (one apiece). It also gave Elizabeth Costen and Mary Fissenden,young widows, a job other than the more usual ‘washerwoman’ to which they mightotherwise have had to turn. What is also clear is the transfer to people born locally andto a greater variety of occupations under one roof. Wives and children supplementedtheir husband’s/father’s incomes as ‘agricultural labourer’, ‘lime labourer’ ‘gardener’,‘groom’, or whatever. Very few workers now retain the Buckinghamshire connection.The Baker, Beadle, Chittenden, Costen, Dartnall, Goodhew, Hadlow, Kidwell,Lawrence and Mecoy families remained in Snodland. Those who had moved on by the1861 census were Austin, Barton, Bowry, Endsor, Harden, Hazell and Norris. JaneWood was a niece of John Norris and married Richard Wooding at Snodland on 19June 1854, where they remained. The death of Phoebe Muddle in 1854 may haveprompted her family to move, although her son Thomas remained for a while, workingas a lime labourer.47 The Weedens moved on too, but other members of the familyremained in Snodland, some as papermakers.In 1854 the business passed into the hands of Charles Townsend Hook, whose name itstill bears.Snodland Mill seems to have begun as a small enterprise, but grew steadily during itsfirst hundred years, mixing local workers with expertise brought in from more distantparts. There was a particular ‘invasion’ from Buckinghamshire between 1823 and1845, but by the mid-nineteenth century there was less reliance on this ‘foreign’ skill.Most workers seem to have stayed for a relatively short time before moving on toother mills. It was not until after the Hook family took over that the new techniques ofmanufacturing paper from straw/esparto grass rather than rags came into play.Increasing use of machinery brought in the first ‘engine drivers’ to run the steam plant.There is no doubt that the principal employers in Snodland in both papermaking andlime working were a powerful force in controlling the social life of the community. Intheir time Jasper Crothall and the two Isaac Wenmans served their turns dutifully aschurchwardens and overseers. We see less of William Spong, although he was not anabsentee gentleman until his retirement from the scene in 1823. With William Joynson(1823-1833) and John Clark (1834-1840) we meet two managers who werepassionately involved with the Non-Conformist Church, which they promoted andestablished in Snodland. It would appear that many of their workforces were alsoactive members of such churches, both in Buckinghamshire and in Kent. Even afterthey had moved away from Snodland the Joynsons continued to foster the‘Independent Church’ in Snodland and William in particular provided money for a newchapel and school in the 1850s. This involvement with both papermaking and religionseems to have created a very close-knit community at the mill between about 1823 and1845. So far as the lists of members of the Independent Church show, the link wasdissipated after that. But the arrival of the Hook family in 1854 led to a newinvolvement: they were followers of the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg and soonbuilt up a Swedenborg Society in Snodland which in turn flourished for more than a47 The Muddles were originally from Isfield, Sussex, where there was a paper mill: see Shorter,Studies on the History of Papermaking... ‘Paper Mills in Sussex’, 172. 28hundred years. Initially they formed this with three other families who had come withthem from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
PAPER No. 004Cholera and typhoid fever in KentChristopher CollinsThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. Theauthor has placed the paper on the site for download for personal oracademic use. Any other use must be cleared with the author of the paperwho retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyrightclearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes thesubmission of papers. The necessary form can be downloaded from thewebsite at www.kentarchaeology.ac Cholera and typhoid fever are bacterial diseases that are acquired by theconsumption, mainly of water, but sometimes of food, that has been contaminated bysewage containing the excrement of people suffering from the diseaseThe natural home of cholera is the Indian subcontinent where it had been knownfor many years. In the nineteenth century, however, for reasons that are not clear, itchanged and caused a number of epidemics. It then travelled along the trade routesto most corners of the known world, causing several pandemics. In three of theseduring 1826-1838, 1846-1854 and 1863-1868, it entered Britain, causing widespreadepidemics: Pandemic years Epidemic years in Britain1826-1838 1826-18381846-1854 1848-49 and 1853-1854 1863-1868 1865-1866 Since the 1866, however, there have been only occasional cases in Britain, usuallyin travellers from abroad.Typhoid fever has been with us for centuries, probably since Roman times andhas caused many isolated cases, minor outbreaks and a few major epidemics. Thehistory of the disease is clouded. For many centuries it was confused with otherdiseases. In Britain, before 1869, it was included among the ‘continued fevers’, suchas typhus, characterised by a high temperature and a skin rash. In the mid-19thcentury, however, physicians and pathologists noted that in certain cases the feverwas not continuous but showed a diurnal variation; and in fatal cases there werelocalised lesions in the submucosal lymphoid tissue of the small intestine (Peyer'spatches, concerned with immunity). Physicians were then able to distinguish betweentyphus and typhoid (i.e. ‘typhus-like') fevers. After 1869 the disease was recordedseparately in the Registrar General's Reports, albeit as ‘enteric fever' whichencompassed typhoid itself and the three paratyphoid fevers, A, B and C, which wererecognised only after bacteriological investigation became possible. Unfortunatelythere may still be some confusion in nomenclature, as in the German languagetyphoid fever is known as typhus, typhus itself is called fleckfieber.CholeraAn attack of cholera begins with violent diarrhoea and vomiting. At first the stoolslook normal but they soon become watery with flecks of mucus – ‘rice water stools’.There is rapid and severe dehydration and prostration. Electrolyte imbalance leads toperipheral circulatory failure and renal failure and often death. Milder forms of thedisease are known.Kent is largely a maritime county, bounded on the north by the Thames estuaryand on the east and south by the Straits of Dover. There are several ports along thisextensive seaboard. On the west the northern end of the county boundary iscontiguous with London. The ports and the roads and railways which passed throughthe county provided gateways for the entry of cholera and other communicablediseases. In addition, there was a seasonal immigration of Londoners for the hop andfruit picking. Kent also had a number of barracks, military and naval, and, in theThames estuary, several prison ships: the ‘hulks’ so well described by Dickens(1869). Cholera (‘choleraic disorders’) may well have been established in 1831 in thewarships anchored in the River Medway (Creighton, 1895a), but there appears to beno record of its spread to the shore.The county was affected by all four of the epidemics and the governmentresponded to the threat of the sea-borne importation of cholera by reinforcing thequarantine restrictions. All shipping on its way to London was quarantined atStangate Creek in the Medway estuary (see ‘Cholera at Sheerness’, below).Quarantine was also enforced at Dover, Faversham, Milton, Whitstable andRamsgate (Maidstone Gazette, 1821a).The General Board of Health in London had already issued instructions about thecreation of local boards of health. A number of towns (Chatham, Gravesend,Maidstone, Sheerness, Faversham, Tonbridge and Dover) followed these andcreated local Boards (.(Maidstone Gazette, 1821b). That at Chatham asked theAdmiralty for a hospital ship, and the Ordnance Board to flush the local drains. Thevarious boards arranged for the feeding and clothing of the poor, the fumigation andlime washing of premises, cleansing of streets and drains, the removal of nuisances,and also arranged for certain building to be used as hospitals. Unfortunately, neitherthe General nor the local Boards had powers to insist that such work be done, andthere was opposition from so-called ‘dirty parties’, generally on the grounds thatratepayers would have to meet the cost (Yates et al. 1944). Nevertheless, some localauthorities did implement the suggested reforms. The Kentish Gazette (1854)published a set of precautions against cholera:_____________________________________________________________________1. Apply to a medical man immediately in case of looseness of the bowels, as it maybring on cholera.2. Do not take any salts or other strong medicines without proper advice.3. Beware of drink, for excess in beer, wine or spirits is likely to be followed by cholera.4. Avoid eating meat that is tainted or unwholesome, decayed or unripe fruit and stalefruit or vegetables.5. Avoid fasting too long. Be moderate in meals.6. Avoid great fatigue or getting heated and the chilled.7. Avoid getting wet or remaining in wet clothes.8. Keep yourself clean and your body and feet dry and as warm as your means andoccupation will permit.9. Keep your room well cleaned and lime washed; open the windows as often aspossible; remove all dirt and impurities immediately.10. Use chloride of lime or zinc to remove any offensive smells11. If there are any dust or dirt heaps, foul drains, bad smells or other nuisances in thehouse or neighbourhood make complaint without delay to the local authorities havinglegal power to remove them; or if there be no such authorities or you do not know whothey are, complain to the Board of Guardians _______________________________________________________________The first seven of these followed the advice given by the Royal College ofPhysicians and the General Board of Health. It is of interest, however, that Nos. 8and 9 were concerned with the cleanliness of persons and premises and Nos. 10 and11 with smells. At that time, when the real cause and mode of transmission ofcholera was still unknown, it was commonly believed that smells (miasmas), fromdecomposing human, animal and vegetable waste, was responsible: 'All smell isdisease' (Chadwick, 1842).The outbreaks of 1832 - 1835Cholera first entered Kent in the spring of 1832. The first two cases were a femalevagrant from London, who died in Rochester (Maidstone Gazette, 1832a) and aseaman at Chatham who worked on boat that plied between that town and London(Yates et al. 1944). There were 80 deaths on the prison ship Cumberland (includingthe surgeon). The disease spread rapidly. There were twelve deaths in Sheerness(Armstrong, 1994), another dozen in Faversham (Maidstone Gazette, 1832b) and 47in Minster in Sheppey.In September 1832 there was a debate in The Maidstone Gazette (1832c) aboutthe advisability of employing of hop-pickers from London. It was thought that as therewas cholera in the Metropolis, such people might bring it into Kent. There hadalready been twelve cases among those people in the East Farleigh district and thenthere nineteen more at Barming (Maidstone Gazette, 1834). After that, there seemsto have been a lull. In 1834, however, cholera appeared again, this time on the NorthKent coast. There was an outbreak at Whitstable, followed by another at Herne Bayin which 28 people died. As this town was a seaside resort, attracting summervisitors from London, attempts were made by the local authority to prevent publicity.One year later it surfaced again among the hop-pickers at East Farleigh, causingthirteen deaths (Maidstone Gazette, 1835).The outbreaks of 1849 – 1850There were two major outbreaks during these years. The first of these, in 1849,occurred at East Farleigh among hop-pickers at the same farm as that where therewere cases of cholera in 1832. This second incident, which cost the lives of 43people, is considered below. A further thirty hop-pickers died at the neighbouringvillages of Yalding and Loose ((Maidstone Gazette, 1849). The second outbreak wasin Canterbury and the surrounding parishes where there were forty-five deaths(Bateman, 1988).There were nine deaths in Upper Rainham. Sporadic cases occurred in several ofthe North Kent towns – Gravesend, Rochester, Chatham, Milton Regis, Herne Bay,Margate and Ramsgate, as well as at Sheerness, Maidstone and Tonbridge.The outbreaks of 1853 - 1855 The three most serious outbreaks of cholera during these years occurred atCanterbury and district (sixty deaths), Sandgate (forty-eight deaths) and Tonbridge(one hundred and 70 deaths). The latter two are considered below.Other towns and areas affected include Greenwich, Sheerness, Milton,Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and Ramsgate, from whence the diseasespread to High Halden, Staplehurst, Sturry and Eastry (Barker-Read, 1982). The lastoutbreak in this period occurred at Shorncliffe Barracks (near Folkestone) in 1855,where the deaths totalled forty-one. There was a major outbreak at Sandgate (seebelow).The outbreaks in 1865 - 1866 In this period, during the last epidemic of cholera in Britain, there were onlysporadic cases in Kent. The disease was carried by ship from London to Gravesendand thence by barges to Faversham, Sittingbourne, Maidstone, Sheerness andAylesford and finally Chatham. Various mid-Kent villages, Yalding, Hunton, Teston,Marden, Staplehurst, Otham, Bearsted and Barming, were also affected to a minordegree.According to Creighton (1895b) the total death toll in Kent for the four events was2,684. This is distributed as follows:Years 1832-35 1849-50 1853-55 1865-6Deaths 135 1208 1056 285In Creighton's ‘league tables’ of the data for 43 counties and administrative areasof England and Wales Kent may be placed 22nd in the first period, 11th in the second,2nd in the third, and 11th in the fourth.Figure 1 shows the sites of the outbreaks in the county (excluding sporadiccases). The distribution of the green dots on this map suggests that cholera travelledalong lines of sea, river and land transportation.Figure 1. Dot map (●) showing sites of outbreaks of cholera in Kent Roads ——— Navigable river ——— Railway - - - - - -The cholera outbreaks in four areas in the county merit more detailedexamination. These are: Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, East Farleigh,Tonbridge, and Sandgate.Cholera in Sheerness and Sheppey The Isle of Sheppey, on the northwest coast of Kent, is separated from themainland by a navigable waterway, the Swale, which connects the Medway estuaryon the west to the Thames estuary on the east (Figure 2).Figure 2. The Isle of SheppeySheerness is the principal town, a port and, in the nineteenth century, was animportant naval establishment. Apart from the arrival of cholera in 1831 and 1832, ithad a long association with other importable infectious diseases (e.g. plague andyellow fever) because the naval authorities there had control of a quarantine stationin Stangate Creek. At the beginning of the 19th century the government built a‘lazaretto’ on Chetney Marsh (see Figure 2) for the isolation on shore of cases ofsuch diseases that occurred on quarantined ships. This shore station was never usedbecause it was built on unsound ground. In the 1920s it was abandoned (Froggatt,1964). Nothing now remains.With the threat of cholera, which had arrived in Sunderland, quarantine of shipsbringing coal from that area was enforced. Stangate Creek soon became crowdedwith coasters and other shipping. Letters from passengers and crew of thequarantined ships were opened, fumigated (with vinegar) and then resealed beforedelivery to the Post Office in Queenborough (Froggatt, 1964). Quarantined goodswere ‘aired’ on the decks of hulks.In 1831 there was cholera on the hulk Euryalus, moored off Chatham and used asa prison ship mainly for boys aged 8 – 15. Naval records indicate that a lighter tookconvicts from this hulk to Sheerness for transportation to New South Wales andTasmania. The ship’s surgeon’s log of the transport vessel Waterloo recorded that214 convicts were taken aboard at Sheerness. Because of gales the ship had toanchor off Margate where its anchors were lost. It had to return to Sheerness forreplacements, but as there was cholera aboard it had to be quarantined. Thesurgeon recorded 40 cases of cholera, with eight deaths (Kennedy, 2003).By mid-1832 there had been 135 deaths in 11 areas of Sheppey. Sheerness itselfand the neighbouring township of Minster were most affected (Minster suffered 38deaths).The Blue Town area, in the western part of Sheerness was invaded again duringthe 1853-1855 and 1866 outbreaks (Judge, 1849).There were several cases in Eastchurch. It is of note that while two harvestlabourers who succumbed there were buried in fenced-off graves in accordance withgovernment instructions, another victim, Vice Admiral Sir Richard King, Commanderin Chief, Nore, was interred in the chancel of the parish Church(www.allsainstchurch.info), where his memorial (Figure 3) may still be seen.Apparently, cholera victims varied in their threat to others!Local response The response of the local authorities was sketchy. In 1849 cholera returned toSheppey (South Eastern Gazette, 1853). Although a local Board of Health had beenin existence for four years, not one of the original nuisances had been removed(Ranger, 1849). The new outbreak did stimulate an inquiry, however, and a reportwas made to the General Board of Health (Ryan, 1853). This noted the scale of theoutbreak and the high mortality, criticised the overcrowding, poor ventilation, theinadequacy of the water supply and lack of sewers, drains and privies. Manyrecommendations were made but to little effect. Even in 1860 Sheerness had nodrains. There was a survey by the local Board of Health in 1857 (Kennedy, 2000).This again detailed the sanitary shortcomings of Sheerness and nearby Minster.Figure 3. Memorial plaque to cholera victim Vice Admiral Sir RichardKing, C. in C., Nore, who is interred in the chancel of All SaintsChurch at Eastchurch. Reproduced by permission of the Rector andChurchwardens of All Saints Church. The only public water supply undertaking in 1834 was that of the SheernessEconomical Society, which distributed water by donkey and cart from a local well.This enterprise was purchased in 1864 by the local Board of Health, and the firstmains were laid (Martin, 2003).Cholera in Tonbridge In the nineteenth century Tonbridge was a small market town on the RiverMedway. It suffered outbreaks of cholera in 1832, 1849, 1851-54 and 1866, but thereappear to be no actual numbers of deaths on record for the first and last of these. Inthe second outbreak there were 39 deaths and in the third 48 (Barker-Read, 1983).The town was divided geographically and socially, into three areas (Chalklin,1983), marked A, B and C in Figure 4. In the northern area, A, well above the GreatBridge over the River Medway, there were the larger houses of the more well-to-dopeople. The middle area, B, between the Great Bridge and the railway, through whichfive separate side-streams of the Medway (not marked on map) passed, was on theflood plain of the river and housed the poorer classes, especially between the LittleBridge and the railway. The southern area, C, on rising ground and south of therailway, was developed for better-class housing in the mid-century. Thisgeographical-social division was emphasised by the overall mortality rates: 24.3 perthousand in areas A and C and nearly 28 per thousand in the much less salubriousmiddle area B. Between January 1851 and September 1854 there were 22 deathsfrom cholera among the total of 59 for infectious disease, and in the six months up to30th September 1854 there were 48 due to cholera, of a total of 66 for all fevers(Neve, 1933).In the 1850s the few sewers and drains that existed were inadequate, beingbarrel-shaped with flat bottoms and therefore readily blocked. Five of them emptieddirectly into the River Medway or into its separate streams.. Privies connected tothem were untrapped and no water was available for flushing. Some privies emptied,via wooden chutes, directly into ditches or one of the streams (and hence into theMedway). Some new houses were built over sewers.Until 1852 drinking water was obtained from wells at the Town Hall and CageGreen and from the River Medway at Little Bridge, all therefore liable to pollution.The Tonbridge Water Company opened its waterworks in 1852 (Martin, 2003). Theopening ceremony was marred by an ‘intolerable stench’ from cesspools and drains(Neve, 1933). Nevertheless, in 1852 only 176 of 1120 houses in the town had pipedwater.Figure 4. Tonbridge, mid-nineteenth centuryReproduced by courtesy of Dr C Chalklin, with additional material (in red:demarcation of zones of cholera incidence and approximate sites of areasinvestigated by Dickens, 1854).In September 1854 cholera was rampant, especially in the wholly insalubriousareas behind the High Street in the central part of the town (area C).A local newspaper (Tonbridge Miscellaneous Advertiser, 1894) commented.Cholera is still raging in the town. Who can expect to meet anything but disease inthose houses where pigsties are almost adjacent to the back doors, and filth andrubbish of vegetables and other matter are thrown in a heap, with house slops, torot.In December of that year, in spite of opposition from some ratepayers whothought that no progressive measures were necessary to stay the cholera, asufficient number of citizens voted that a petition be sent to the General Board ofHealth, requesting an inspection and public enquiry. An Inspector, Mr A.L.Dickens was sent down from London. His Report (Dickens, 1854) was damning.Apart from the conditions mentioned above, those in See-hoe Square,Whittaker's Row and Wingate’s Cottages (Figures 5 and 6) are of particularinterest as they highlight the inadequacy of sanitation and the pollution of theriver from privies.Dickens also commented on the stagnation of some of the Medway streams,the dirty, unpaved roads and dung heaps, offensive privy cess pools, as well ascataloguing filthy premises.Water extracted from the River Medway west of the town was not filtered. Itwas not clear and contained animalcules and vegetable matter.Figure 5. Seehoe Square, Tonbridge, showing privies (■) and surface drains (-- - - ) to River Medway[From Dickens, 1854)Figure 6a . Whittaker’s Row, showing privies.[From Dickens (1854]Figure 6b. Wingate’s Cottages, showing privies. [From Dickens (1854]Local response The Dickens Report did stimulate some local interest, but little action. Theproblems were (1), central legislation was permissive, not statutory; (2), local vestedinterests were opposed to any changes that might well affect their pockets; and (3),boundary problems, as Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells formed a single parish butresidents in the latter were unconcerned. Moreover, changes in legislation left someuncertainty about which act and which central authority was responsible for dealingwith petitions (Neve, 1933). As a result, nothing of note was achieved for fifteenyears, until the setting up of the Local Government Board. Then the Tonbridgeauthorities agreed to a sewerage system. New drains and sewers were built, leadingto a ‘sewage farm’. Nevertheless, the effluent from this was discharged into RiverMedway and no information is now available about the efficacy of the treatment ofsewage. There was another cholera outbreak in 1866. The Registrar-General’s Report thatyear shows, again, the difference in the incidence of the disease between the upperand lower parts of the town; a rate of 16 per 1,000 north of the Great Bridge and 25per 1,000 south of it (Barker-Read, 1983).Cholera in East Farleigh East Farleigh is a village on the River Medway, some 14 miles down river fromTonbridge. The various farms in the parish were visited each summer by a largenumber of hop-pickers (known locally as 'strangers'), most of whom came from theEast End of London and Ireland (www.kentishpeople.com/article).In September 1849 there was an outbreak of cholera among several hundred hoppickers who came to work at Court Lodge Farm (Figure 7). Dr P Plomley, MedicalOfficer to the Maidstone Union, investigated the incident. His report was published inthe local newspaper (Maidstone and Kentish Journal, 1849a). He stressed that theconditions under which these hop-pickers were accommodated, in huts, barns andsheds, were very bad, overcrowded and ill-ventilated. Drinking and washing waterwas drawn from wells contaminated by run-off from cow yards and by human waste.The people were half-starved and compelled to eat impure food, putrid fish andadulterated bread sold at cheap rates by unprincipled and itinerant vendors.Figure 7. East Farleigh district showing hop garden (site of cholera outbreak)and sites associated with the Maidstone typhoid epidemic The number of cases and deaths increased during the first few days of theoutbreak and the local clergy (Catholic as well as Anglican and nonconformists, asmany of the victims were from Ireland) opened the National School as a hospital andworked among the sick. Doctors and nurses (two of whom caught cholera) camedown from London to help, as local medical assistance was limited andoverwhelmed. Residents in the neighbourhood contributed personal assistance, food and material(Maidstone and Kentish Journal 1949b). In spite of medical and lay assistance,however, there were about 300 cases of cholera with 45 deaths. Forty-three of thelatter, which included eight children under ten years old), were buried in East Farleighchurchyard, where their memorial may still be seen (Figure 8).Figure 8. Memorial (of wood) to 43 hoppickers who died during the EastFarleigh outbreak. The inscription, nowbarely readable, isIN MEMORY OF FORTY-THREESTRANGERSWHO DIED OF CHOLERA SEPR 1849RIP.[Photograph Dr T Donovan, reproduced bypermission of the Rector andChurchwardens]At the time there was no public watersupply in the area. Residents probably obtained their water from springs along theMedway valley (Martin, 2003). It is of interest that there were no cases of choleraamong these people, nor in Maidstone, a few miles downstream, where, at that timethe water from the Medway was unusable. People had to obtain drinking water formold wells which yielded only about 20,000 gallons a day (Smith, 1979).Local response The immediate response, of doctors, clergy and residents, is indicated above.Although the outbreak was extensively reported in the local newspapers and haspassed into local folklore no record of local authority action seems to be available.A possible source of the outbreakDuring the 1849 outbreak in Tonbridge raw sewage from houses where there werecases of cholera drained to was or deposited in the River Medway (as describedabove). The site of the outbreak (Court Lodge Farm, East Farleigh) is only fourteenmiles downstream from Tonbridge and near to the river. At the normal flow of theriver, two-three miles an hour, water containing the agent of cholera would reach thehop garden area within seven hours. It is possible, therefore, that the cholera victimscould have ingested contaminated water directly from the river or from wellscontaminated with river waterCholera in Sandgate In the nineteenth century Sandgate (now a suburb of Folkestone) was a smalltown (little more than a village) two miles east of Folkestone, lining the road to Hythe.It was visited by cholera in 1854, having escaped during earlier national epidemics.Before 1848 there were no main sewers. Latrines and privies nearest to the seadischarged their sewage directly onto the beach. Most of the wells, which provideddrinking water to many of the residents, were polluted. In that year, however, thelocal ratepayers applied, under the Public Health Act 1848, for a local Board ofHealth to be established. In 1849 Mr T W Rammell of the General Board of Healthwas sent down to inquire into the sewerage, drainage, supply of water and thesanitary condition of the inhabitants of the town. His Report (Rammell, 1849),resulted in some improvements. By 1852 a sewage works was in operation andmany cesspools had been filled in.In 1854, however, cholera attacked the area. There were 94 cases, with 48deaths, and another inspection and inquiry were instituted (Rammell, 1854). Severalimportant and interesting facts emerged during that inspection. In the first place, noconnection could be established between the first case, a resident who had not beenaway from the town for several moths, and the disease in other parts of the country.It was noted that when some of the cesspools had been filled in (above) the ‘soil’ inthem had not been removed, permitting seepage. Moreover, the joints of the newsewers and house drains leaked. The inspector concludedBriefly it may be stated that the public and private drainage of Sandgate is, fromdefective construction, insufficient for the purposes required; that the escape ofthe liquid sewage and water necessary to its perfect action contaminates thesoil; that the surface drainage and cleansing, although in some measure latelyimproved, are much neglected; that many of the cesspools formerly in use arestill open, or only imperfectly closed; that the private sources of water supply arein many cases polluted; and that the public water supply is liable to be very shortin quantity and not exceptional in quality.The piped water supply came from two water companies, Sandgate andFolkestone, and from private wells. An analysis of the figures in the Report revealsthe following: Source Fatal cases Nonfatal casesSandgate Water Works 15 8Folkestone Water Works 6 5Sandgate and wells 7 12Folkestone and wells 3 2Wells only 14 14The immediate conclusion was that the water from the Sandgate Works suffereda higher level of pollution than that from Folkestone. But clearly, the wells inSandgate were also contaminated.Local response The local Board of Health acted on the Report, particular in respect of cesspools,which were emptied where possible, and properly capped The Sandgate WaterCompany took steps to safeguard its well against external pollution. Regrettably,local records at the Folkestone Reference Library yielded little useful informationabout actions by the local authority but Hastings (1982) has given a good account ofthe events.A possible source of the outbreakIn the Report of the outbreak at Sandgate (Rammell, 1854) it is made clear thatcontaminated drinking water was suspected as the source of the disease. There isalso mention of the building of a sea wall some years earlier, before theestablishment of the water companies. This wall was intended to prevent seawaterfrom seeping into the land and entering the wells, so making the water taste brackish.But the wall may not have been properly maintained. At that time all sewage fromhouses in Sandgate was discharged into the sea. Moreover, coastal shipping,passing inshore, could have discharged their bilges or ships’ privies into the sea.Thus there were two possible sources of water containing the cholera agent thatcould have seeped into the wells on land.Typhoid fever The incubation period of typhoid fever, after ingestion of the agent, is 14-21 days.During the first week of the disease there is fever, general malaise, abdominal pain,diarrhoea and mental confusion. Later, there may be an abdominal rash (‘rose spots')and complications including intestinal perforation and haemorrhage, osteomyelitisand meningitis. In untreated patients the mortality rate is about 10%. About 5% ofthose who recover become carriers and excrete the bacteria in their stools or (lessoften) in their urine.Typhoid fever was an accepted fact of life during the 19th century, affecting allwalks of life. Prince Albert died of the disease and the Prince of Wales (later EdwardVII), his servant and Prince Leopold contacted it while staying at a country house.There were epidemics in Britain in 1801, 1816-19, 1837-38, 1846-47 (Creighton,1894c) but these were largely confined to the midlands and the north of England.Creighton does not mention any outbreaks in Kent, where there appears to havebeen only sporadic cases in, for example, the Tunbridge Wells area. The MedicalOfficer of Health in Maidstone expected only five or six cases a year.The last major epidemic of the 19th century was at Maidstone in 1897. Thiscommenced in mid-August. By 9 September 117 cases had been reported; withinthree weeks there were 774 and by 9 October the number had risen to 1200, with 42deaths. The epidemic was over by the end of December, apart from a few, probablysecondary cases. The total number of cases was 1847, with 132 deaths (Report,1898), but this may well be an underestimate (Stanwell-Smith, 2000). Some mildcases may have not been reported or notified.The water supplyThe lessons of the mid-century water-borne cholera epidemics had been learned andthe Medical Officer of Health suspected the local supply. His investigations showedthat water from the reservoir at Barming, a short distance west of Maidstone, wasresponsible. The town was supplied by the Maidstone Water Company, a privateenterprise. The pumping station was at the bridge over the R. Medway (Figure 8).Water was obtained from several springs: at Tutsham and Ewell, west of thepumping station at Farleigh Bridge, and at Cossington and Boarley, north ofMaidstone, at the foot of the North Downs (Hales, 1983) Before 1896 samples of thesupply had been tested at monthly intervals but the Town Council, in the interests ofeconomy, had reduced this to quarterly (Hales, 1984).. Although these werechemical, not bacteriological tests the former would certainly have indicated pollution.The last samples to be tested before the epidemic were in June. Later, a localnewspaper commented that the epidemic was the penalty of such economy (SouthEastern Gazette, 1897).Epidemiological investigations showed that there had been 1583 cases amongcustomers supplied with water from the Farleigh area (Tutsham and Ewell), but only29 and 69 respectively from the springs are Cossington and Boarley (Report, 1988).There was also evidence of gross faecal contamination of the area around theTutsham spring. There were hop gardens nearby and accommodation for the hoppickers was highly unsatisfactory and the sanitary facilities were non-existent. Thehop-pickers defaecated anywhere, just as they had in the cholera epidemic in thesame area in 1849. There had been little or no improvement in sanitation since thattime. The conclusion that these people were responsible for the contamination and,in consequence, the typhoid epidemic, was fuelled by local prejudice. There was amismatch, here, however, as the hop-pickers arrived on 20 August, after the firstcases of cholera on 17 August and the incubation period for the disease is at least afortnight. Moreover, the Public Inquiry (Report, 1898) found no evidence of typhoidfever among the hop-pickers.The sanitation in Maidstone Town was also most unsatisfactory. Nearly half ofthe houses with WCs had no means of mechanical flushing, and 4000 of the 6000houses had WCs connected to imperfectly flushed drains (Report, 1898).Typhoid vaccination A successful trial of a typhoid vaccine was carried out a among the staff at theBarming asylum by Prof A (later Sir Almoth) Wright. This led to its general use in thearmed forcesLocal response At the peak of the epidemic, on 20 September, the supply from the Tutshamsprings was cut off, followed, a few days later by closure of other local supplies. On16 October the water in the Barming reservoir was treated with chloride of lime andacid, under the supervision of a distinguished pathologist (Dr Sims Woodhead). Thismay have been the first attempt at the chlorination of a public water supply.The Town Council issued a handbill, recommending the boiling of all drinkingwater and milk. A laundry was opened to wash and disinfect (free of charge) allclothing, bedding, etc from houses where there had been cases of typhoid. Suchhouses were disinfected with sulphur and carbolic acid and cleansed. Emergencyhospitals were opened, staffed mainly by volunteer doctors and nurses, some ofwhom came from London. Local people did their best to help and publicsubscriptions, to assist the poorer townsfolk were founded. Contributions came frommany parts of England (Hales, 1984).Out-of-town traders and would-be visitors stayed away and trade generallysuffered inspite of advertisem*nts in local newspapers that their merchandise wassafe and in no way connected with the water supply. Schools were closed; churchbells and factory whistles were silent. The law court sessions were transferred toCanterbury and public gatherings were cancelled. There was a marked fall in thenumbers of rail passengers to the town. Town councillors and those connected withthe Water Company were pilloried in the local press and the events were widelyreported in the national press.The Public Inquiry There were some initial local difficulties in the setting up of a public inquiry, but itwent ahead and reported in 1898. There "was no hesitation on the conclusion thatthe epidemic was caused by pollution of the water supplied by the MaidstoneCompany from their Farleigh sources." The Report (1898) was critical of both theTown Council and the Water Company.Typhoid in Faversham Although typhoid fever did not reach epidemic proportions in Faversham theMedical Officer of Health reported that there were 103 cases between 1893 and 1906and the annual variation is of interest: 1893 19 1900 * 1984 'a small number' 1901 * 1895 8 1902 7 1896 2 1903 13 1897 15 1904 16 1898 * 1905 6 1899 * 1906 17 In spite of quite detailed investigation, the Medical Officer and his staff wereunable to find any point sources for any of the incidents. The water supplies weretested and any found to be 'suspect' were closed. The sewerage in the town was notof a very high order, affected as it was by the proximity of the Faversham Creek, butwas improved by the local authority over the period. It is possible that some, at least,of the 15 cases in 1897 were associated with or secondary to the epidemic inMaidstone in that year, as there was commerce between the two towns. The return todouble figures (17) in 1906, however, cannot be explained. After that year, however,the annual numbers returned to single figures, consistent with the general endemicityof typhoid fever at the time. The reports of the Medical Officer are held by the Faversham Society (www.faversham.org).ReferencesArmstrong, F.A. (1994). The population of Victorian and Edwardian Kent.Archaeologia Cantiana, 114, 17-20.Barker-Read Barker-Read, M. (1982). Southern History, 4, 1180-200.Barker-Read, M. 1983). Local Government in Mid-Victorian Tonbridge. In MidVictorian Tonbridge. Ed. Chalklin, C.W. Kent County Libraries. pp. 1-21.Bateman, A. (1988). Public Health in Nineteenth Century Canterbury. Dissertation,University of Kent at Canterbury.Chadwick, E. (1842) Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population ofGreat Britain. London, HMSO.Chalklin, C.W. (Ed.) (1983). Mid-Victorian Tonbridge. Kent County Libraries,Creighton, C. (1894a). A History of Epidemics in Britain. London, Cass, (reprinted19650 p. 795.Creighton, C. (1894b) op.cit. pp.821, 843, 852.Creighton, C. (1894c) op.cit. pp. 218-219.Dickens, A. (1854) Report to the General Board of Health on a Preliminary Inquiryinto the Sanitary Condition of the Town of Tonbridge, 1854. London, HMSO.Dickens, C. (1869-61). Great Expectations.Froggatt, P. (1964). The Chetney Hill Lazaret. Archaeologia Cantiana, 79, 1-15.Hales, I. (1983). Maidstone's water supply. Bygone Kent (….) 639-646.Hales, I. (1984) Maidstone's typhoid epidemic. Bygone Kent 5, 217-223. Hastings, E.P. (1982). Cholera in Sandgate 1854. Kent County Council. Judge, S. (1849) The Isle of Sheppey. Rochester Press, 102, 186. Kennedy, D.A. (2000). Personal Communication.Kentish Gazette 5 Sep, 1854. Maidstone Gazette (1821a), 15 Nov. Ibid. (1821b) 22 Nov. Ibid. (1832a),14 Aug, Ibid. (1832b), 11 Sep, Ibid. (1832c), 9 Oct. Ibid. (1934), 9 Sep. Ibid. (1835), 15 Sep. Ibid. (1849a), 16 Oct. Ibid. (1849b), 22 Nov. Ibid. (1854), 5 Sep.Maidstone and Kentish Journal (1849a), 16 Oct. Ibid. (1849b), 18 Sep. Martin, R. (2003) Personal communication.. Neve, A.H. (1933).. Tonbridge of Yesterday. Tonbridge Free Press. pp. 133 et seq.Rammell, T.W. (1849). Report to the General Board of Health on a PreliminaryInquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage, Supply of Water and the Sanitary Conditionof the Town of Sandgate 1849. London, HMSO.Rammell, T.W. (1854) Report to the General Board of Health on a further Inquiryheld in the Town of Sandgate and the Parishes of Cheriton and Folkestone in theCounty of Kent, 1854. London, HMSO.Ranger, W.E, (1849) Report to the General Board of Health on a PreliminaryInquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage, Supply of Water, and the SanitaryConditions of the Inhabitants of Sheerness. London, Clowes.Report (1898) Borough of Maidstone. Epidemic of typhoid fever, 1897. Report ofan inquiry and appendices, 1898. London, HMSO.Ryan, M.J. (1853) A Local Board of Health Survey. Journal of the Kent Local HistorySociety. Autumn, 1976.South Eastern Gazette, (1833), 27 Sep, 1853. Ibid. (1897), 28 Sep..Smith, F.B (1979). The Peoples' Health. London, Croom Helm. p 219.Stanwell-Smith, R (2000). Personal communication.Tonbridge Miscellaneous Advertiser, (1894), September.Yates, N, Hume, R. and Hastings, P. (1944). Religion and Society in Kent 1640-1914. Kent County Council History Project, p.18.Yates et al. (1944). op cit. pp.1934.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Margate CavesCliftonville© 2021 R F LeGear and C M PearsonIntroductionThe man-made underground structure known as Margate Caves was dug primarily as asmall chalk mine to procure chalk to burn for lime, with approximately 2000 tonnes removedduring the mine's active life. Sometime after abandonment it was rediscovered and adaptedfor use as a wine store, ice well and later was opened to the general public in 1863. Itremained open on and off as a popular visitor attraction until 2004 when it was forced toclose by the Health and Safety Executive because of safety concerns.The local community objected strongly to plans to build over the site and the Friends ofMargate Caves was formed to save the Caves from being sealed. In 2013 a CharitableIncorporated Organisation was formed (The Margate Caves Community Education TrustTMCCET) to secure a long-term lease on the site and raise the funds needed to re-open theCaves. Remedial work was undertaken so that the Caves fully complied with modern safetyregulations. In conjunction, an archivist was appointed to collate artefacts and archivalmaterial relevant to the Caves and research its history, testing and challenging asnecessary, the hitherto accepted ‘facts’. This occasioned a major revision of its history, theresults of which, with referenced sources, are now lodged in the Margate Caves Archive.This paper was originally published in 2009 and was based on a short report prepared forthe Heritage Development Advisor of Thanet District Council (TDC) and based on acceptedhistorical facts at that time. Since then a great deal of new background research has beendone by Chris Pearson, archivist of TMCCET, which has required a complete rewrite.AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank the following for their help and support in producing thispaper:The Margate Caves Community Education Trust; Members of the Friends of Margate Caves;Kent Underground Research Group members; the staff and volunteers at the Caves; andlocal photographer Frank Leppard for providing the photographs.Chris Pearson 1952 - 2021Sadly, co-author Chris Pearson was a victim of the Covid-19pandemic and passed away in February 2021 at the age of 68.Chris served as archivist and researcher for both the Shell Grotto inMargate and the Margate Caves and was a tenacious and thoroughresearcher, always seeking out primary sources and with aremarkable talent for unearthing new information. He was a quietgenerous man who will be sorely missed. Chris PearsonLocationThe Margate Caves site is located at 1, Northdown Road, Cliftonville, Margate, Kent, CT91FG and is centred on NGR TR 3573 7114. It is situated on the north side of NorthdownRoad, and lies approximately 350m east of Margate town centre and to the north of a dryvalley (Dane Valley) on a slight promontory known as Fort Hill.It is bounded to the west by a narrow alleyway running to the rear of houses in TrinitySquare and to the east and north by land formally associated with the Capital House officeblock which was demolished in 2011 and Sandhurst Place, a new housing development,built. The southern boundary faces onto Northdown Road.The underground features lie beneath the northern half of the plot which is roughly trapezoidin shape with sides of 82m, 66m, 22m and 24m, enclosing approximately 0.2 Hectares. Thelocation of the original entrance shaft to the Caves is TR 35733 71157. Google Earth Image (2019) of Margate Caves SiteGeologyThe Caves have been dug into Margate Chalk, a division of the Upper Chalk formed around72 - 86 million years ago. The chalk was originally overlain at this point with approximately1.0m of Brickearth. As the chalk in this area approaches the boundary with the Brickearth itbecomes loose jointed with narrow horizontal beds and numerous vertical joints. This jointingcan be observed in the entrance passage to the Caves and also in the unlined chalkpassage at the nearby Shell Grotto, which lies approximately 360m to the south east.Area HistoryThe Kent Historical Environment Record lists numerous small archaeological excavationsand finds within 500m of the site, which have indicated that there was a substantialprehistoric presence in the area.1The most significant recorded archaeology adjoins the Caves site to the east and north andwas the subject of an archaeological evaluation by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust(CAT) in January 2012, directed by Adrian G. Gollop BSc Hons.2The evaluation was made as part of the preparations ahead of the proposed redevelopmentof the site, consisting of the demolition of existing buildings, including the Capitol Houseoffice block, and the erection of fourteen houses and two apartment blocks to formSandhurst Place.The excavations found the remains of extensive Iron and Bronze Age occupation, includinga large ditch running north east to south west, which continued under the Caves eastern siteboundary. The evidence points to a hill fort or defended settlement on the top of the hillPrior to the erection ofthe new visitor centre,TMCCET commissionedan archaeologicalevaluation of the sitethat was undertaken bythe Swale and ThamesArchaeological SurveyCompany (SWATArchaeology) in April2018 and directed byDan Worsley.3It was conducted as acommunity-basedproject with members ofthe public encouragedto participate under theguidance of professional archaeologists. Community ExcavationThis was very successful, with a large number of volunteers helping to uncover the pastlandscape.The two-week excavation found the continuationof the above Iron Age ditch and evidence ofoccupation in the Bronze and Iron Age, withfinds including a crouch burial of a 34-year-oldIron Age male which was excavated on the lastday of the dig by an enthusiastic youngvolunteer.The archaeology examined by SWATArchaeology is likely to be an extension of theenclosed settlement associated with thepossible promontory Hill Fort some 250m away.Some of the finds are now on display in theMargate Caves visitor centre. Iron Age Crouch BurialThere was little substantial modern development in the area until the 18th century. The areawas then known as Hooper’s Hill, named after Captain Stephen Hooper, a retired seafarer,(c1734-1812) who had erected a horizontal corn mill on the hill just to the east of the Cavessite approximately 25/30m from the position of the original shaft.Hooper had patented the design of the mill in 1770 and ten years later erected the unusualdesign at Margate in 1780.4Hooper also had built a substantial dwelling house to the south west of the mill buildingsaround the same time as the mill was being constructed in the 1780s, which he namedHooper House. It is highly likely that he also built the red brick mansion abutting it on thewest side, which became known as Bryan house, later to be renamed NorthumberlandHouse. The house was situated on Hooper’s Hill, subsequently renamed NorthumberlandRoad, and now Northdown Road,Description North – South Gallery East – West GalleryThe Caves consist of a number of lofty hand-cut chalk galleries leading from a rectangularshaft, with other tunnels cut at right angles to them to form pillars of unworked chalk tosupport the ground above, a form of mining known as 'pillar and stall' or 'room and pillar'.At the end of the northern chamber a short passage leads to a well shaft more than 13mdeep, which also continues 8m upwards to the surface where it is capped. This passage alsogives access to the modern emergency exit stairs. The northern chamber also contains thebricked-up remains of an old entrance stairway. A low passage leads to a small circularchamber, which has another small passage that links with the north east gallery. The northeast gallery contains a small passage dug after mining had ceased, heading under thecircular chamber.Both of the western galleries have small blocked shafts in the roof that once opened to thesurface. The southernmost of the two western galleries has a modern iron utility pipe (asewer) crossing the roof.One of the western galleries has suffered minor roof falls over many years to the extent thatthe soffit has migrated up to within a few centimetres of the top of the chalk stratum.The two western galleries are linked by a short tunnel excavated post extraction.Off of one of the western galleries a small round chamber has been excavated in the floor ofwhich is the entrance to a former ovoid-shaped ice well.The other western gallery contains the entrance to a second ice well and has a series ofshallow recesses cut into the walls, which may have been associated with the use of theCaves as a wine cellar. The two ice wells are linked together by a small tunnel at a lowerlevel and joined to the main caves by a similar short passage.At the end of the two eastern galleries are deep alcoves dug post extraction and almostcertainly associated with the tourist industry. Old guide books describe one of the easterngalleries as having a fossil ammonite in the wall. There is, sadly, no trace of it now. It issuspected that it was removed by an unscrupulous visitor sometime in the past. Wall ArtOver the course of some two centuries the walls have been boldly decorated with paintingsdepicting various animals, soldiers, old kings, an icon, a giant and a hunting scene. Visitor CentreThe present entrance to the Caves is via a long, sloping, relatively modern passage from thevisitor centre. Plan of CavesMethod of WorkingA spot was chosen near to where the chalk was required. Initially a rectangular shaft, 1.7mby 1.0m, was sunk through the overlying Brickearth and topsoil into the chalk.After leaving approximately 2m for roofcover, three galleries were started, headingroughly north, east and west. A fourth to thesouth was started slightly lower down.The use of a rectangular shaft is somewhatunusual; a circular shaft is by far the mostcommon form, although other rectangularshafts have been recorded at Way nearManston5and at Brambling.6The chalk was hauled to the surface in stoutbaskets using either a simple windlass or apulley suspended from a stout wooden tripodor frame, and the rope attached to a horsewhich would walk away from the shaft topand thus pull up the heavy load. Original Haulage ShaftThe mining team would have consisted of two or three men on the surface to unload thebaskets and transport the chalk to the kilns and two men working underground: one to cutout the chalk from the working face and the other to barrow it to the shaft bottom.Smaller agricultural chalk mines known as chalkwells that were being dug in Kent around thesame time as Margate Caves had a smaller team of two on the surface and only one manworking underground. The cost to the farmer at that time was up to £10 for a mine that wouldyield around 350 tons of chalk, enough to give a heavy top dress of 60 tons per acre toabout six acres of farmland to neutralise acidic soil.7The principal headings at Margate Caves are in the order of 8.0m to 9.0m high and 2.5m to3.0m wide at floor level. The galleries were dug in stages, the miner first cutting a passage tothe height he could easily swing his pick (approx. 1.9 - 2.0m). Great care was taken inshaping the profile of the roof to give a strong load bearing cross section. This task wasalways undertaken by the most experienced of the underground team.To increase the output of the mine without extending its surface footprint, the shaft bottomwas lowered around 1.3 -1.4m and the floors of the galleries were progressively excavateddown to that level outwards from the shaft. This process was known as 'bottoming' and theamount removed known as a 'lift'. The bottoming was repeated several times at Margateuntil the galleries were about 6.8m deep.The northern and western galleries remain at this depth. This level can be discerned as afaint horizontal line in the walls of the other deeper galleries.Approximately 1150 tonnes of chalk were removed at this time.In a second phase of working the floor levels in the other galleries were taken down another2.6m, removing a further 760 tonnes and leaving gallery heights of 9.4m.A small remnant of the penultimate floor level can be seen as a platform 0.8m high at theend of one of the eastern galleries. Many chalk mines have these benches which have, inthe past, led to exotic tales of Druid's altars etc. At the ends of both eastern galleries aredeep recesses excavated post mining and thought to be associated with the tourist industry.The reason the miners did not take down the level of the northern and western galleries isnot clear. The commonest reason for a miner not to continue excavation in a particular set oftunnels was safety. If he considered that there was a possibility of roof falls or collapse, thearea was left, and no further work carried out in the immediate vicinity.Towards the west of the shaft the thickness of the chalk roof diminishes making the rooflevel vulnerable to failure.Crossing the northern gallery is a geological fault which may also have influenced thedecision to stop working in this area.Another possibility is that the shaft was reopened and the mine reworked at a later date and,noting the possible stability issues, the new miners only removed chalk from what theyassessed as the sounder areas.Tool marks are abundant throughout the caves and show that the excavation was dug usinga short-headed iron pick typical of underground mining work.The long gallery lengths indicate that some form of underground transport must have beenused to convey the chalk from the working faces to the base of the shaft. In chalk mines ofthis size a simple wheelbarrow was usually employed. As barrows were not generally usedin vertically accessed mines in Kent until sometime after the 14th century, the old guidebook8claim that the Caves were extant in Saxon times may be regarded as doubtful. In theroof at the base of the shaft are a number of shallow grooves cut by the rope as the heavyloads of chalk swung from side to side during haulage to the surface.The north east gallery has experienced sporadic roof falls and has also been used as adumping area by various lessees to deposit cleared chalk rubble from minor falls. It may alsohave been used to dump excavated chalk during some of the post-mining alterations.The relatively modern entrance passage was dug down from the Northumberland Housecellars but nearly missed the Caves. A short link tunnel had to be dug at right angles from anexisting alcove in the southern gallery to intercept the new tunnel. Before the top end of thepassage was stabilised as part of the remedial works, a rubble filled passage could be madeout heading west. It is possible that this was where the spoil from excavating the longsloping passage was taken to the surface, as it was unlikely that several tons of chalk wouldhave been taken up through the cellar.The layout of the Caves and the mining techniques employed would suggest they were dugin the mid to late 18th century, which would have made it a convenient source of chalk to beburnt for lime for the mortar used in the construction of the nearby Horizontal Mill, Hooper’sHouse and Bryan / Northumberland House.When chalk extraction ceased the mine was abandoned and the shaft was capped with abrick arch, set a little way down from the surface, and back filled to ground level.Post-Extraction HistoryThe history of the site as given in old guide books9states that in the latter half of the 18thcentury, a gentleman named Francis Forster built a large red-brick house on the site, whichhe called Northumberland House. In 1798 his gardener, whilst digging behind the building,discovered the Caves by having the ground give way beneath him. Another version refers toa rabbit hole under a pear tree which was found to enter the caves. The mention of a peartree is interesting, as in northern France it was common to plant a pear tree over a blockedmine shaft to mark its position.10One of the more recent guide books after April 1995, (drawing on a 1917 newspaperarticle14) gives the following description of the rediscovery of the caves:"Somewhere near the close of the 18th Century, a man of eccentric habits, namedFrancis Forster, built a large house which he named after the county of his birth —Northumberland House. In or about the year 1798 his gardener, digging behind thehouse, made the discovery of the Caves. A private entrance was cut. It was duringthis time that the cave murals were created. According to local folk-lore the pictureswere painted by a local artist named Brazier, who unfortunately destroyed manyinteresting and valuable tool marks on the great chalk walls in order to obtain asmooth surface on which to execute his handiwork."Research by archivist Chris Pearson has shown that the given discovery date of 1798 isextremely dubious.The red brick mansion was probably built sometime in the 1780s by Captain Hooper, and by1791,11 was in the occupation of Mrs Margaret Bryan, who ran a girls’ boarding school on thepremises, which was named Bryan House at that time. In 1798 she moved the school toBlackheath12 and records of the Sun Fire Office13 show the property was sold to ThomasBrett, who in turn sold it by auction to Francis Forster (1771-1835) in 1807. Up to that timethere were no references to any caves or underground features on the property.In 1917 a local historian named Charles James Fèret (1854-1921) visited the Caves andwrote several articles in the Isle of Thanet Gazette:14“Passing through a small archedpassage, we reach the entrance tothe small dungeon. On a wall hardby, cut somewhat deeply into thechalk, are the letters C.F.F. andthe date 1808, probably the initialsof a member of the Forster family.Mr Forster's name was FrancisForster. The letters and the dateare twice repeated, and in smallerand less distinct form, are thecharacters F R S T R”. Historic GraffitiThe initials were probably those of one of Forster's sons, Charles Francis Forster, whowould have been around 13 years old in 1808. The letters F R S T R could be simply Forsterwith the vowels removed. The date coincides with when Forster acquired the property andstrongly suggests the rediscovery of the Caves occurred soon after he took up residence. Itwas at this time that the house was renamed Northumberland House, after the county whereForster's family were based. Therefore if the Caves had been discovered in Forster's time itcould not have been before 1807.After the Caves were re-entered following their discovery, Forster had a proper entranceconstructed consisting of two sets of stairs from the surface, which entered the northerngallery, making a more convenient method of descent.Once the new entrance was in use, Forster began to commission some alterations to theunderground structure for his own use and amusem*nt, including the addition of a number ofmurals on the chalk walls.A set of steps was cut from the northern gallery to the lower floor level and a similar set wascut from the western gallery to give easier access to the lower level.A short passage was excavated from the northern gallery to break into a 1.0m diameter wellshaft that descends 8.0m from the site of the stables above. The shaft descends a further13.7m from the passage floor where it reaches the local water table. The full depth of theshaft cannot currently be determined because of the amount of detritus and fill at the bottom.A little way up the well shaft is an opening on the north side which has caused severalrumours of the existence of a smuggler's tunnel at this point. However, when investigated bymembers of the Kent Underground Research Group (KURG) in 1993,15 the opening wasfound to lead into the bottom of an old cess-pit. At some time in the distant past, probably toavoid the cost of emptying, the wall of the cess-pit had been knocked through so that anyeffluent would drain into the (hopefully disused) well shaft. There is mention of the well in adescription of Northumberland House garden in 1854 in The South Eastern Gazette for the15th August p. 8:“Under a portion of the garden is a curious cavern, part of which is fitted up as a winecellar; it also contains an ice-well, and well of excellent spring water, &c. &c.”A small chamber was constructed to the right of the main western gallery and an ovoidshaped pit, to be used as an ice well, was dug in the floor.At some point, another ice well was excavated in the adjoining western gallery and a numberof recesses were cut into the walls of this gallery at the same time.A sketch plan of “The Vortigern Caves”,dating to about the time the property wasadvertised for sale in 1865 and 1866,shows only the northern ice well, which isclearly labelled as such. As the secondone is not depicted on the plan, thesouthernmost ice well was most probablyconstructed at a later date. Both of the icewells have small drainage sumps sunk intheir sloping bases to drain off melt water.Unlike a county estate, where ice collectedfrom lakes or compacted snow would havebeen used to fill the wells, Forster wouldhave had to purchase imported icesourced from America or Norway. Theimporting of ice to Britain was a bigbusiness; in 1888 the U.K. imported340,000 tons of ice from Norway alone.16Forster was said to have used the Cavesnot only as his private grotto but also tostore wine. At some time post mining asmall round chamber, similar to that abovethe northern ice well was dug to Early Sketch Planthe east of the main northern gallery. A small passage links this chamber to the north eastgallery where a short, seemingly unfinished, passage heads under the circular chamber. Thepurpose of these excavations is unclear although it is possible that a third ice well wasplanned but never constructed in this position.Both of the western galleries have small blocked holes or shafts in the roofs that onceopened to the surface. Their original use is unclear but may have been utilised when fillingthe ice wells with ice. It is also possible that one of them was the result of the minersbreaking into the bottom of a Bronze or Iron Age pit.Forster had the chalk walls of the Caves decorated with many paintings using distemperpaint. The images are thought to be similar to those that can be seen today, although, overtime some have faded away and have been lost.After Forster's death in 1835 his family and subsequent owners of Northumberland Houselargely ignored and neglected the Caves.In 1863, a flamboyant local shopkeeper, John Norwood, (1815-1889) rented the Caves fromEdmund Firkins. Edmund Firkins (c.1807-1880), was a builder and gentleman, formerfishmonger and licensed victualler, from London. When he actually purchased theNorthumberland House Estate is not certain; it could have been as early as the auction salein August 1854. However, in 1861 he married Margaret Daly, the housekeeper atNorthumberland House, and moved in with her. The mansion and rear garden, effectively,had been divided into two properties, and he occupied the west part, the part under whichthe Caves lay. Firkins had been trying to sell the Northumberland House Estate from 1862.He finally sold it around 1868 and moved out.The extent of Firkins’ involvement with Norwood in the “Vortigern Caves” project is uncertain.Perhaps it can be compared to the nearby Shell Grotto, when, three decades before,schoolmaster James Newlove saw the structure that lay under his garden as an asset to beexploited as a business venture by remodelling it as a visitor attraction, not necessarily torun himself, but to receive rental income, from a tenant. In Newlove’s case, James Stodartran the attraction for several years. Firkins may also have taken some responsibility for theremodelling and decoration of the Caves.Norwood was a well-known local entrepreneur who owned a hardware and grocery store inCecil Square, Margate. He was also a local postman and a bill-poster. He would have beenan excellent candidate to front and promote the “Vortigern Caves” venture.A small cottage, ticket office and shop were erected next to the Caves entrance and the sitewas open to the general public for the first time under the name “Vortigern Caves”.17Fèret, in the two articles published in the Isle of Thanet Gazette,18 mentions that work hadbeen carried out on the Caves in the years just prior to their opening, by his friend JohnGeorge Bushell (1842-1922)He quotes Bushell as saying:"When a boy, my friend and his uncle were employed by Mr. Forster to makeextensive alterations and excavations. He tells me that they excavated a greatquantity of chalk, which was carted away to the lime kilns.” (1917).Possibly resulting from the fact that he was illegitimate, there is a little confusion, as in the1919 version he states that his friend worked with his father not his uncle:“When a boy, assisted his father in connection with work at the Vortigern Caves”As Fèret's friend was born in 1842 it is unlikely that they were employed by Forster himselfas Forster died in 1835, although two of his daughters lived in Northumberland House until1855/6. Exactly when this work in the Caves was done cannot be accurately determined atthis time.If these excavations were done a little before 1863 they would coincide with the building of arow of seven houses, (nos. 5-11 East Crescent) and also no.17, which all formed part of theNorthumberland House Estate. It is possible that the 'chalk carted to the lime kilns' was usedin the construction of these properties. There is also a possibility that it was at this time thatthe second phase of excavation took place.Lighting for Norwood's visitors was initially provided by candles in sconces on the walls. By1866 the lighting was provided by gas jets and it was probably at this time that a smallventilation shaft was constructed through the main shaft capping. It is still possible to seesmall patches of soot on the walls from this naked flame illumination.The alcoves at the ends of the eastern galleries, at least one of which is said to have held areligious icon, were probably from this period.The illustrations on the walls from Forster's time were, by now, much degraded and veryfaint and most have been lost, overpainted, or repainted and enhanced, whilst completelynew ones were also added.It was Fèret’s friend, Bushell, through the filter of Fèret, who had claimed that a local artist,named Brazier (or Brasier), was responsible for at least some of the paintings, suggestingthat they had been done at the behest of Forster. As this is the only source for the name,Brazier, and, given that Bushell was not even born when Forster died, but had done work inthe Caves around Norwood’s time. The possibility cannot, therefore, be ruled out that“Brazier” may have been responsible for work done on the murals, for Norwood, or theCave’s then owner, Edmund Firkins, rather than Forster, and that he was not responsible forthe original “Forster” paintings.“When a boy, my friend and his uncle were employed by Mr. Forster to makeextensive alterations and excavations. He tells me that they excavated a greatquantity of chalk, which was carted away to the lime kilns. In those days they werecalled Forster’s Caves. The proprietor employed a clever workman, named Brazier,to paint some of them. Thus, one panel would represent a postchaise, the next a denwith a tiger, and a third a landscape. In all, Brazier embellished the caves with somethirteen or fourteen scenes. The last one depicted a prisoner in the care of sentrieswith fixed bayonets, chains enveloping the limbs of the unhappy man. In working in aroom just above, the boy and his uncle had a slight accident – they broke through thefloor into the recess occupied by the painter’s prisoner!”A description of the Caves a short time after they were opened can be found in an 1866 localguide book of the area19 which states:“There is an exhibition in Margate which goes by the name of the Vortigern Caves,and is a good deal patronised by courting couples and nurses with young children,simply, we suppose, because it offers to the juvenile mind the attraction of a faintkind of horror. We find it mentioned in print that "the antiquity and use of these cavesbeing recorded in history, any attempt to describe them would fail to convey to themind the ingenuity and labour bestowed on their construction. These caves are themost extraordinary that have yet been discovered; and there can be no doubt,sheltered the Saxons from the ruthless cruelty of the Danes” We need hardly tell thereader that there is no foundation whatever for these statements, and that no oneknows when and by whom the excavations were made.“They were discovered by a mere accident by an old gentleman who owned the landabove, and he being of a whimsical turn of mind had them decorated in the absurdfashion in which we find them at present. We should mention that the entrance intothe so-called Vortigern Caves is by a narrow turning beside the schools belonging toTrinity Church. You enter a little shop where ginger beer and barley sugar, andLondon Journals and Family Heralds are retailed, and are ushered down a flight ofsteps when, by the dim light of a few jets of gas, you discern a series of excavations,and gradually recognise some wretched paintings in distemper on the flat surfaces ofthe chalk.”It is also highly probable that many of the myths and stories about the Caves can be sourcedback to Norwood's time. Despite being a popular site for visitors, after only five years, theenterprise foundered and the site was put up for rent as the following advertisem*ntappeared in a local newspaper;“TO BE LET - The celebrated V0RTIGERN CAVES, MARGATE, together withCOTTAGE, containing Three Rooms.—For Particulars apply to Mr. Firkins,Northumberland House, Margate.” 20No tenants were found to take over the business and the site remained closed, althoughsome access was still possible, as a letter in Keble’s Gazette in 1902 stated:“…there is a large cave or series of caves running under the garden of the HolyTrinity Vicarage. The caves are entered from a cottage at the rear of the TrinitySchools and although now closed to visitors, permission can be obtained from theowners of the adjacent stables to explore them.”Several years later the western half of Northumberland House was taken over as thevicarage for Holy Trinity Church, which had been constructed to the north west of the siteand was consecrated on 11th June 1829.The Reverend Michael Pryor (1857-1929) was inducted to Holy Trinity on 16th October 1902and became a hardworking, dedicated vicar known for his driving forward restoration workand alterations to the church. In 1906 he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree and theparish presented him with a cheque for £50 to defray the cost of his robes. In 1915 he wasappointed to an honorary canonry at Canterbury. He died on the 11th June 1929.21Dr Prior developed a great interest in the Caves and in 1907 re-opened the old entrancestairways and started clearing out the accumulated debris from the Caves with a view torestoring them to public view.In 1908 he found the tops of the ice well or wells during clearance in the western galleries.Most accounts state that it was he who had the lower level passage dug to access thebottom of the pits and link them together. He may possibly have even gone further, and havebeen responsible for the second pit, constructed to enhance the visitor experience.He set about cleaning up and revitalising the Caves as a tourist attraction, instituting manyimprovements, such as upgrading the stairways and possibly cutting the new entrance fromthe vicarage cellar.During this time two sets of photographic postcards were produced, one set dating to nolater than 1908, when some bear that post date.Some of the photographs seem to include workmen. Thesecond set, originally photographed by Edwin MajorDungey (1871-1963), are probably a little later, betweenabout 1912-1914. Together they are a useful source fortracing the development of the Caves – for instance oneof the 1908 postcards the ‘Thanet Hunt’ mural has beencut through by a large recess in the position of themodern entrance passage. As the arch was supposedlymade as part of Pryor’s new entrance from the vicaragecellars, usually dated to 1914, it suggests that the newentrance may possibly have been earlier.One of the noticeable features of the photographs is thatthe paintings, executed up to 100 years before, are barelyvisible. Ghost images of some of these older paintingscan still be discerned today.The passage to the well was cleared by 1910 and theenterprising vicar opened the Caves to the publicwhereupon they quickly became a popular Margateattraction once again. 1908 PhotographIn a letter dated 6th September 1912, addressed to The Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, theReverend Michael Pryor, Miss Grace Brookes (1859-1929), Francis Forster’s great granddaughter gives an account of the circ*mstances surrounding the discovery of the Caves.22She writes:-6th September. 1912.To the Rev. M Pryor."Sir,—On visiting the Vortigern Caves this evening I learnt from the Verger that thefrescoes adorning the walls were supposed to have been executed by smugglers. Ishould like to correct this error. My great grandfather, the late Francis Forster, ofNorthumberland House, Margate, was, I believe, the discoverer of these caves, hisgardener, while digging, chancing to come upon a hole which, on investigation,proved to lead down into the Caves; he opened them out to a certain extent, and hadthe walls adorned with pictures. He used to take his friends down and used to lightthem up, but the Caves were not open to the public till after his death, when theproperty passed out of the family.Francis Forster died in the year 1835, aged 63 and had been living inNorthumberland House for some years prior to his death. He named the house afterhis county, he being a member of the Forster family of Etherston and Bamborough,Northumberland. He was the last of his family to own the Northumberland Estates,the entail of which was cut off, and the estate sold to pay his debts. My late motherwas a Miss Forster.I am, faithfully yours, Grace Brooks"The old guide books and othersources23 state that in 1914 a slopingpassage was cut from the cellars ofthe Vicarage so that the incumbentscould quickly gain the safety of theCaves during the air raids of WorldWar 1. It is probable that the generalpublic were allowed access throughthe ‘tourist’ entrance in the Vicaragegarden.This date for the digging of the tunnelis a little questionable asNorthumberland House had strongcellars, which would have been seen,at the time, to be adequate as ashelter. This was confirmed when, inWorld War 2, the then vicar elected toshelter in the cellars when thevicarage was damaged by enemy bombing in 1941. Entrance PassageThe mid-Victorian plan of “The Vortigern Caves” does not show this entrance and, althoughone of Dungey’s 1908 photographs shows an alcove in the position of the lower end of thetunnel, it is by no means certain that the alcove connected to the tunnel at that time.The digging of air-raid shelters (or dug-outs as they were called locally at the time) did notcommence in earnest in Thanet much before 1917, when concentrated raids by Germanheavier than air Gotha bombers became more frequent.In 1917 the local authorities in Thanet held joint discussions that resulted in civilians beingasked to volunteer to help in the digging of shelters.24 On a list of proposed shelter sites theCaves are noted as Vortigern Cave. Nearby, a new shelter was excavated in the south eastcorner of Trinity Square. In the 1930s when the likelihood of another war was growing, aplan of locations of the First World War public dug outs was produced by Bayly, a localsurveyor.25 This shows the position of the Trinity Square shelter but the Caves are not shownas a shelter site.After the First World War the Caves were re-opened for tourism. However, by 1938 theywere closed again as the area was scheduled for improvement under a scheme called ‘TheZion Place Redevelopment Plan’.At the outbreak of the Second World War the Caves were used as an air-raid shelter for thevicarage. On Sunday 21st September 1941, Northumberland House was severely damagedby enemy action, as was Holy Trinity Church, on Tuesday 1st June 1943.26During site clearance the entrance stairs were filled with rubble and covered with concreteslabs.The severely damaged shell of the Vicarage / Northumberland House and the remains of thechurch were finally demolished early in 1958. The entrance passage to the Caves from thevicarage was blocked by demolition debris filling the cellar.In the spring of 1958, James Geary Gardner (1903-1987), the proprietor of ChislehurstCaves and other underground tourist caves in Kent, became interested in the site andsought to relocate the entrance into the Caves. Permission was sought and granted from theBenefice of Holy Trinity Church, who still owned the land.A concrete slab at the top of the old vicarage garden was lifted to reveal Forster's originalentrance steps.Having gained access, Gardner enlisted the help of students, many from the Margate Schoolof Art, to clear the rubble from the Northumberland House cellar entrance.A set of modern covered steps was constructed from the surface to reach the newly-clearedchalk passage and two wooden huts, for use as a ticket office and gift shop, were erected.Electric lighting was installed in the Caves, the paintings retouched yet again, and the Cavesonce more opened to the paying public on Saturday 24th May 1958 with an admission priceof l/6d (7.5p).27At around this time the image of the ‘Thanet Giant’ which glowed in ultraviolet light, wasadded by James Gardner. 28For the first time, a small guide book,29 was produced, written by George E. Clarke, F.L.A.,Borough Librarian and Curator, and Chairman, Isle of Thanet Archaeological and HistoricalSociety. It was based on Chapter 12, “Vortigern Caves” from his 1957 publication “HistoricMargate - Reprints of a series of articles published in the Isle of Thanet Gazette - Illustratedwith contemporary prints”. The “Isle of Thanet Gazette articles” were those of Charles Fèret,written 1917-1919. Also a set of four photographic postcards of the Caves’ interior wasproduced at this time, by the Central Press Margate. The VistaScreen Co Ltd also produceda booklet, (Series H120), containing a set of ten 3D stereo view cards, which gave a 3Deffect when viewed through a special viewer. Based on contemporary photographs, bothshow how the Caves looked in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The photographs used forthe set of postcards were also reproduced in Clarke’s booklet.In August 1962 Gardner had to relinquish the lease with the Church authorities, when thesite of the old vicarage, together with Caves underneath the garden, was compulsorypurchased by Margate Council in view of the proposed development of nearby Zion Place.Gardner was then granted a renewable fourteen-year lease from Margate Council (TDC)from April 1974.In the period 1st April 1980 to 31st March 1981, takings for the Caves totalled £5929, with atotal net loss of £99.In the next year takings totalled £5697 with a loss of £4. Ticket prices at this time were:Adults 30p, Children 15p. The Caves were open daily during the summer, 10am-6pm.30In around 1984, artist Karol Edward Osten-Sacken spent a few weeks working on restoringthe Caves murals. It is thought that he restored all, or nearly all, of the paintings, and that headded some works of his own. The painting of the head in the horned helmet is possibly aself-portrait. He almost certainly worked in emulsion paint.31Gardner wanted to purchase the freehold of the site from the council but in 1987 a localnewspaper32 reported that Thanet District Council would not sell to Kent Mushrooms Limited,the Gardner family company running the Caves, and so his plans were thwarted.In September 1987 James Geary Gardner died and the managing of the Caves wascontinued by his son, also named James Gardner. In 1988 a new wooden ticket office andgift shop were opened. In that year the Caves had attracted some 20,000 visitors betweenApril and October with an adult fee of 60p. It was estimated that 10% of visitors were fromoverseas.33Kent Mushrooms Ltd relinquished the lease with TDC when it expired on 24th March 1991,thus reverting control to TDC. After this time the site was only leased out on shorter-termlets.In January 1992 Wolfgang and Eileen Heigl took on the lease for the Caves and nine monthslater were complaining of the lack of help from Thanet District Council as a newspaper articlein September of that year records:34“Last year (1991) Mr Heigl decided that there might be benefits to be had fromgetting a greater presence in Margate's tourist industry. The lease on the councilowned Margate Caves came on the market, and Mr Heigl took it. Those who arefamiliar with caves are unlikely to be much impressed by Margate's version, withcave paintings which, far from being prehistoric, are said to date from the beginningof the 19th century. However, the Caves have now been embellished by the stories oftorture and smuggling which so delight young visitors and are a reasonable additionto a holiday itinerary for a wet afternoon.… But he does suggest that the local council might do a little more to help him in hisendeavours to entertain Margate visitors. He wanted to install a proper lavatory at theCaves and was told that he would need the landlord's permission."The landlord is the council and it said that it would charge £75 to give permission,"he says. So there is no new loo, or other improvements he would like to make at theCaves. "If I owned them, then it would be different," he says, a fact of which he hasalready apprised several councillors… He keeps the entrance fee down to 80p, lowby comparison with most tourist attractions. "Because I want as many people aspossible to see it."A year later in 1993 members of the Kent UndergroundResearch Group (KURG)35 volunteered to clear the well shaftof accumulated rubbish and debris.The top of the debris was 4.5m below the passage floor andconsisted of fine dry soil and much litter thrown down byinconsiderate visitors.After several visits 6m of fill was slowly removed, the majoritybeing thought to be debris from when the Church andNorthumberland House were demolished in 1958. Well ShaftAt that time it is possible that the top of the well shaft was open or had a simple cover on thesurface and it became a convenient void to get rid of rubble.Several hundred coins dating back to the mid-1880s were recovered as well as old oil lamps,green glass fragments and numerous Victorian and later bottles and pottery.At a depth of 13.7m the digging was abandoned after encountering the water table.The opportunity was taken to examine the supposed entrance to a smuggler's tunnel locatedin the side of the well shaft between the cave entrance and the surface. This opening wasfound to lead into the bottom of an old cess-pit associated with the former livery stablesabove.The KURG team then turned their attention to the melt water sumps in the two ice wells.These were cleared of rubbish and found to be 1.5m and 0.6m in depth. No notable artefactswere recovered.Sadly lack of investment from subsequent lessees over the following decades led to poormaintenance of the visitor infrastructure causing a number of safety concerns.ClosureIn 2004, following a complaint from a member of the public to the landowners, ThanetDistrict Council, the Caves were visited by an officer of the Health and Safety Executive whoissued a Prohibition Notice36 dated 6th September 2004 to the landowners and Mr Safaa F.Al-Khudairi, the lessee. The Caves were then closed and entry forbidden until remedial workwas carried out.Following the closure, Thanet District Council commissioned a structural survey of the Cavesfrom a specialist company, Atkins, who produced a detailed report on the condition of theCaves in 2005.37 The report also gave Atkins’ recommendation of the work required to bedone to make the site safe and thus have the Prohibition Notice lifted before any re-openingof the site to the public.Six years later in 2010 a planning application for a residential development, consisting ofseven two and three-story buildings, with ancillary parking and the creation of vehicularaccess on the southern part of the site, was submitted by TDC.38 In order to build over theCaves entrance passage it was intended to fill the tunnel with concrete, thus renderingaccess to the Caves impossible. The application was not proceeded with following stronglocal objections to the potential permanent loss of the Caves.In March 2011 the Friends of Margate Caves (FOMC) submitted a concept proposal to TDCfor the future of Margate Caves.In early 2011, following a number of break-ins, workmen from TDC demolished and removedthe two old wooden ticket office and gift shop huts and covered the entrance with a concreteslab. Access was retained via a welded shut manhole cover. At the same time othermeasures to make the surface area safe were undertaken including placing a large concreteraft over the area where the Caves roof was considered to be most vulnerable to collapse.RebirthIn October 2011 the FOMC commissioned Graham Daws Associates Ltd (GDA) to carry outan inspection of Margate Caves and make recommendations for remedial works whichwould be required in order to re-open the Caves.39 GDA is a firm of Rock MechanicsConsultants that specialises in assessing the stability of underground excavations, includingmines and tunnel projects, and have extensive experience working on tunnels excavated inchalk.Late in 2013 some committee members from the Friends of Margate Caves formed TheMargate Caves Community Education Trust (TMCCET), a registered charity. The moverecognised the great deal of work required to ensure that the Caves site was developed withthe best interests of its community at heart.TMCCT continued the Friends’ work to secure a long lease on the site from Thanet DistrictCouncil, develop plans for the site and raise the funds needed to re-open the Caves.Specialist contractors, High PeakGeotechnical Ltd., were engaged to carry outthe recommended underground work whichincluded stabilisation of some areas and theexcavation of a new emergency exit from thenorthern chamber.At the same time, architects Kaner Olette,were appointed by the Trust to submit aplanning application40 and design a newmodern single-story visitor centreincorporating a ticket office, café, communityrooms and an interpretation room that would Remedial Workgive the full history of the Caves and their context in the local landscape.When all the underground work was completed to the satisfaction of the Health and SafetyExecutive the Prohibition Order was lifted. The visitor centre was finished in August 2019and the Caves finally reopened to the public on Thursday 22nd August 2019. More than5000 people visited the Caves in the first two weeks.On 11th June 2020, Margate Caves was declared the winner of the South-East Region RICS(Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) Social Impact Award for Heritage.The Wall PaintingsBefore the Caves were opened to the public by Norwood in 1863 the original paintings,allegedly completed by Brazier in Forster’s time, had deteriorated and faded. They arebarely made out in Dungey’s photographs. By the time customers were paying their 3dadmission to enter, many of the frescoes had been repainted including an elephant, acrocodile, a lion, a tiger and some Chinese prisoners in chains. Only faint traces of theprisoners and the tiger have survived to the present day.Over the years the paintings have been repainted and retouched many times, so much so,that some of the animals have become a little stylised. Some of the early works can be seenas faint, almost invisible, ‘ghost paintings’.Rob Smith, a conservation specialist, worked on the paintings to clean and preserve themprior to the Caves opening to the public.Some of the paintings found on the walls include: a hunting scene (The Thanet Hunt); acrocodile; a fox; Vortigern; ‘God Bless the King’ and two figures; the Thanet Giant; a bear; adonkey; the Virgin Mary; an elephant; a rearing horse; three deer; a boar; a hippopotamus; alion; remnants of an older representation of possibly the Virgin Mary or some other religiousicon; a running horse; and soldiers on sentry duty. Location of PaintingsExamples of the Wall Art Donkey and Virgin Mary Fox Lion King George Crocodile and King Vortigern The Thanet Giant Monkeys Elephant Stylised Hippopotamus Soldiers The ‘Thanet Hunt’Other Local Underground sitesIn September 1959, a chalk cavity was discovered under the site of some 17th-centurycottages at Flint Row, Margate on the south side of Northdown Road, opposite the Cavessite. The cottages had been demolished the previous year to prepare the ground for theerection of a three story ‘L’ shaped block of apartments to be known as Flint House.Reports of the discovery stated that an 18inch manhole had been lifted to reveal a domedchamber 26ft (7.9m) deep and 36ft (10.9m) across with several tunnels leading off. All of thetunnels were said to be blocked after a short distance. The cavities were filled in and madesafe prior to the building works.41The layout of the caves suggested that they may have been excavated or adapted in theFirst World War as an air-raid shelter.Another World War 1 shelter or 'dug-out' was excavated in the south east corner of TrinitySquare. A photograph appeared in a 1929 publication that shows a descending flight ofsteps into a hand-cut chalk tunnel.42 There has been some speculation that this shelter mayhave connected with Northumberland House cellars at the junction where the Caves entrytunnel commenced. What appeared to be a rubble-filled passage was once visible before themodern improvements were made, although it was more likely to be a spoil extraction tunnelfrom when the long entrance passage was dug.There is some evidence for chalk-cut tunnels to the north east of the Caves site, as an 1832newspaper article43 reported that officers of the Margate custom house had searched aproperty occupied by a man named Cook.“…at the back of Zion Place near the Fort. They discovered, hidden by a secretentrance”, a tunnel which was: “…just large enough to admit a man crawling upon hisknees”.The officers followed the sloping tunnel down towards the sea shore, passing under severalhouses for about “200 yards” until they reached the lower entrance on the north-west side ofClifton Baths. This entrance was boarded over and had rammed earth and chalk covering itto conceal it from view. Inside the tunnel were found several wheeled trucks:“…and implements for the conveying of smuggled goods through the tunnel toCook’s house”.Apparently this was the second such tunnel that had been dug under the same house withintwo years.In 1888 another cavity was found to the west of Northumberland House whilst workmenwere erecting a telephone pole:“On Friday, whilst a hole was being dug for the purpose of sinking an anchor to holdthe stay of the telephone post on the east side of the green adjoining Trinity church,the workmen, after they had got about five feet below the surface, broke into a cavitythat, upon exploration, was found to be one of the old smuggle holes. The cavern isabout sixteen feet deep, circular in form, and has a tunnel running in a northerlydirection, probably towards the sea, or, perhaps, connecting this cave with someothers which abound in the neighbourhood. On the floor of the cave a quantity ofbones, in a good state of preservation, were found, which were at first thought to behuman, but, during the week, they have been examined by several local medicalgentlemen, who all agree that they are the bones of some animal, but of what precisespecies they are unable to form an opinion”. 44The Lido TunnelIn Margate library is an undated, crude sketchof a passage running from the Clifton Baths tothe Vortigern’s Caves. A copy of this plan usedto be displayed on the wall of Gardner's ticketoffice. This and other documents were lostwhen the wooden huts were demolished in2011.Exactly when the story of a tunnel from the Lido,some 330m to the north, to the Caves was firstcirculated is not known for certain. One versionof the legend is that boats laden withcontraband were, at high tide, floated along atunnel from the coast that connected with thebottom of the well shaft. The smuggled goodswould have then been hauled up the shaft andhidden in the chalk caves. The 1993 clearanceof the well found no evidence of any suchpassage above the local water table level.Guidebooks and newspaper articles describingthe Caves written before the 1960s do notmention any such connection with the coast. Lido Tunnel SketchThe later guide books/leaflets suggest that the tunnel entered the Caves to the left of thesteps leading up to the northern gallery but ‘is now bricked up’. The writers suspect that thestories have been encouraged as a means to attract more paying visitors.James Gardner was a knowledgeable underground explorer and had experience of locatingand digging out backfilled passages in the large chalk caves at Chislehurst and elsewhere inthe county. If he had thought that there was a possibility that the tunnel existed he wouldcertainly have attempted to locate it and open the entrance up, as it would have been anextra feature to show to visitors. The legend of a tunnel, however, is almost as good as thereal thing and the story started to appear in guidebooks of the 1970s and later.Technically the excavation of a tunnel from the Caves to the coast is possible, as thesmuggling tunnel found at nearby Zion Place in 1832 proves.The Caves are managed and run by The Margate Caves Community Education Trust. Moreinformation on the Trust and the Caves can be found on their website:www.margatecaves.co.ukEndnotes1 R F LeGear A Desk-top based Archaeological Assessment of the Margate Caves Site,Cliftonville, Kent commissioned by The Margate Caves Community Education Trust, 20142 Canterbury’s Archaeology 2011-2012 36th Annual Report of the Canterbury ArchaeologicalTrust 2013, p38-423 SWAT Archaeology Assessment of the Archaeological Strip, Map and Sample of MargateCaves, Northdown Road, Margate, Kent Swale and Thames Archaeological SurveyCompany, June 20184 Whereas a conventional wind-powered mill was driven by vertical 'sails', the horizontal millconsisted of a tall tower 60 feet high and 16 feet in diameter in which fixed 40 vertical sailblades were mounted on horizontal wheels. The tower had louvered sides which could beadjusted to allow the prevailing wind through the tower to turn the blades. A central iron shaftattached to the horizontal wheels simultaneously powered up to three pairs of overdrivemillstones on the milling floor.5 John Archibald A Denehole at Hammhill near Eastry Archaeologia Cantiana LXVII (1935),p2166 D J R Ogilvie Denehole at Brambling Arch Cant LXXIV 1960, p1907 John EL Caiger Some Early Chalkwells in N.W. Kent Arch Cant LXXIV 1960, p828 The Margate Caves, Northdown Road, Cliftonville, Central Press (Margate) Limited, HighStreet, Margate, 19589 The Vortigern Smugglers’ Caves and Ancient Dene Holes, Margate, Clarke & Knapp,Printers, Margate, c.1912-1914 (copy in Margate Library)10 Pers. Com. Abbé Pierre Nollent at the Joint Symposium of Subterranea Britannica and TheSociété Française D’ Etude des Souterrains Cambridge, 197411 Kentish Gazette 11th Feb 179112 Kentish Weekly Post 4th May 179813 Sun Fire Office London metropolitan archives CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/431/767685 from1804-180614 Charles James Fèret, Bygone Thanet, Extracts from the Isle of Thanet Gazette, (1913-1920), Margate Library, pp103-104 (11th August 1917), 152-155 (25th August 1917), 157-158 (1917), and 215 (c.1919)15 Ken Linsey and Paul Rapley The Margate Caves Kent Underground Research GroupResearch Report 11, 1994, p9-1416 S P Beamon and S Roaf The Ice Houses of Britain, Routledge, 1990, p4717 Belfast News-Letter, Tuesday 7th April 1863, p318 See note 1419 All About Margate and Herne Bay Kent and Co London, 186620 Thanet Advertiser - Saturday 20 April 1867, p.2 - 18 May 1867, p221 Hugh Merscy Walton A short History of Holy Trinity Church Margate 1835-1932, publishedby author, 193222 Charles Fèret, Bygone Thanet, Extracts from the Isle of Thanet Gazette, (1913-1920),Margate Library, pp152-155, 25th August 191723 Granville Squiers, Secret Hiding Places and Descriptions of English Secret Hiding Placesused by Priests, Cavaliers, Jacobites and Smugglers. Stanley Paul & Co Ltd London, 1933,pp272-27424 Thanet in Wartime, J T Huddlestone (Chairman of Ramsgate ARP Committee) Published ininstalments in the Thanet Gazette ‘Thanet Troglodytes’ Chapter VIII, 14th June 193825 Plan held in Margate Museum26 The Thanet Advertiser Friday 26 September 1941, p2 (Vicarage)The Thanet Advertiser Friday 23 July 1943, p1 (Holy Trinity Church)27 British Caver: A Netherworld Journal, No.30, 1958, p8628 Richard Joy (1675-1742) was a Gentleman, a strongman known as “The Kentish Samson”and reputed famous smuggler who was over 7 feet tall (2.13m) and weighed 25 stone (159kg.) He died in May 1742 and is buried in St Peter's churchyard, Broadstairs.29 The Margate Caves, Northdown Road, Cliftonville, Central Press (Margate) Limited, HighStreet, Margate.30 Gardner papers held in Caves archive.31 The source of this information is Paul A. Hazelton, a recognised British artist based inMargate, and a colleague of Karol Edward Osten-Sacken in the 1980s. However, he did notwork with him on the Margate Caves murals.32 Thanet Times, 2nd September 1987, p333 Tourist Information Board – Survey of Visits to Tourist Attractions – 1988, Return dated 22February 198934 1 September 1992 - Daily Telegraph - Going for the Hard Shell - Patience Wheatcroft35 Kent Underground Research Group Research Report 11 1993, pp9-1436 Prohibition Notice number PN040906KAW237 Margate Caves Structural Survey and Feasibility Study Atkins, 200538 Planning Application ref. F/TH/10/054639 Report on an Inspection of Margate Caves commissioned by the Friends of Margate CavesGraham Daws Associates, 201140 Planning Application ref. F/TH/15/012141 CSS RECORDS 6 1974 p37, KURG Newsletter 99 p1-2 2009, also R F LeGear,Underground Thanet, Trust for Thanet Archaeology pp22-24, 201242 Mrs. C. S. (Charles Steers) Peel, O.B.E., How We Lived Then - 1914-1918, A Sketch ofSocial and Domestic Life in England During The War, London: John Lane, The Bodley HeadLtd. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1929, Chapter X, War Comes Home To Us —Bombardments, Zeppelin And Aeroplane Raids, pp138-14043 The Times Newspaper 19th January 183244 Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald Saturday 8th September 1888, p5
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Paul Tritton of the Kent Defence Research Group investigates how a Kent market town prepared to confront a Nazi invasion during Britain’s darkest Hour.
12ContentsForewordBy Paul Cuming, Historic Environment Record Manager, Kent County CouncilIntroductionChapter One: ‘The Gathering Storm’ 6Chapter Two: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ 13Chapter Three: ‘Defended village and river lines in all directions’ 19Chapter Four: Town’s wartime battle front, then and now 23Chapter Five: Manpower and materials 31Chapter Six: Ironside attacked and sackedChapter Seven: ‘Monty’ takes command of invasion defence 34Chapter Eight: Tonbridge becomes a ‘fortress town’Chapter Nine: ‘Scorched earth’ plan for retreating Army 41Chapter Ten: Tracing town’s forgotten battle lines 55Chapter Eleven: A town at peace 69Chapter Twelve: Why Hitler could not have captured Tonbridge Fortress 73Appendix: Anatomy of a pillbox 78. Tonbridge School. 2. Hildenborough.Index 993ForewordAlthough the origins of the phrase ‘total war’ are disputed, there is no doubt that it was the SecondWorld War that most clearly represents the concept. The vast scale of the forces deployed in thatconflict required the mobilization of whole populations, not only to provide the military personnel,but also the logistical support on which they depended.Added to this was an array of ancillary services - transport, medicine, intelligence, science,civil, agriculture, etc. - without which modern industrial warfare could not function.They were organized and controlled by the state and correspondingly became targets forattack by an enemy that, thanks to air power, could strike more or less anywhere and at any time.For the first time, therefore, it was not only the territories of the combatants that had to bedefended but their populations too.Within the UK there was no more intensely militarised landscape than in Kent. Closest to theenemy, it was both a likely location of a German invasion and a departure point for the later Alliedinvasion of continental Europe, and its towns, villages and population were vulnerable to attackfrom airfields in France, just a short distance across the English Channel.Many thousands of structures were built between 1939 and 1945 to defend Kent againstinvasion and bombing. Radar stations and observation posts provided information about enemyaircraft. Bunkers, pillboxes, gun emplacements and anti-tank defences stood ready to defend againstinvasion. Training camps, drill halls, hospitals and fire stations were constructed or adapted to fulfil awartime role and air-raid shelters, ranging from the communal to the domestic, protected thepopulation.For five years these were fixtures in the Kent landscape and townscapes. When the warended, most were demolished and today only a very small proportion survive. Those that do survive,however, are important as markers of a time when the very existence of the country, its liberties andtraditions were at stake.During the 2000s, Kent County Council attempted to record as many as possible of thesurviving structures from the Second World War, to protect them from destruction, makeinformation about them available via the Kent Historic Environment Record (www.kent.gov.uk/HER )and use them in education and research projects. We did this through an initiative called theDefence of Kent Project.Although the main project has come to an end, a number of researchers have continued tostudy the surviving structures of the Second World War and show how they can be used to connectpeople with their past.Paul Tritton’s work in Tonbridge is an outstanding example of this. Tonbridge was a typicalsmall town in Kent, and its experiences were like those of other communities across the UK. Bylinking careful study of the surviving buildings and structures with social history and local memories,he has been able to tell the story of a dramatic time in the town’s recent past and, hopefully,contribute to the protection of Tonbridge’s wartime heritage for future generations.Paul CumingHistoric Environment Record ManagerKent County Council4IntroductionIn the late spring and summer of 1940, when Britain lived in constant fear of a German invasion, Kent’s serenecoast and countryside and bustling market towns were being transformed into a battlefield-in-readiness,centred on strongholds whose defenders were under orders to hold out indefinitely and ‘kill every Germanwho succeeds in setting foot in this country’.Tonbridge’s main-line railway junction, River Medway crossings, navigable waterway to the ThamesEstuary, and arterial roads to London and north Kent’s military establishments and industrial towns, wereobvious vital objectives for any Panzer units that succeeded in establishing beachheads 40 miles to the southand from there embarking on a blitzkrieg across the county and onwards to the capital.Paul Tritton of the Kent Archaeological Society’s Historic Defences Group tells how Tonbridge’sdefences were developed during Britain’s ‘darkest hour’ and asks ...Could Hitler have captured Tonbridge Fortress?‘I shall not shrink from war with Britain if it isnecessary. Where Napoleon failed, I shall succeed.Today there is no such thing as an island. I shallland on the shores of Britain. I shall destroy hertowns from the mainland. Britain does not yetknow how vulnerable she is today’.Adolf HitlerConversation with Hermann Rauschning, 1934‘We shall defend our island, whatever the costmay be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shallfight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in thefields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender’.Winston ChurchillHouse of Commons, 4 June 19405Railway staff and volunteers who met 620 special trains at Tonbridge Station during the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.More than £1,000 was collected at the station to buy fruit, chocolates, cigarettes and postcards from local shops for about5,000 soldiers every day, for four days. In the front row are station master E G Collard and Mrs Collard who organized therelief effort. (Tonbridge Free Press)Soldiers rescued from the Dunkirk beaches receiving their first food for four days at Paddock Wood, near Tonbridge.(Tonbridge Free Press)6Chapter One: ‘The Gathering Storm’On Friday 25 August 1939, when all hope of preventing a war in Europe had been abandoned and the Germanarmy was preparing to invade Poland, the Kent and Sussex Courier reported: ‘Yesterday everyone went quietlyabout their business without dread of any possible alarm. Everywhere one came across optimistic peopledisplaying a calm characteristic of the Britisher’.A week later, on the first day of the invasion, the newspaper again reassured its readers, with a reportheadlined: ‘Tonbridge is largely normal’. The normality was short-lived; before most readers had even scannedthe headlines, ‘Operation Pied Piper’ had started to evacuate thousands of school-age children, pregnant womenand mothers with pre-school children from London – many of them destined for Tonbridge, where noteveryone welcomed them. William Oliver (a bank official and special constable) and his wife Hilda of No. 15Hadlow Road were told to expect to have several evacuees from Westminster School billeted on them.Their daughter Jessica Havard, who was eight at the time, told the BBC’s ‘People’s War’ programme in2005: ‘My mother refused as she already had four permanent lodgers in the house. The officious BilletingOfficer informed her that she could accommodate the boys on the floor in the entrance hall. Dad thought allthe extra work the evacuees would entail would be too much for Mum to cope with; therefore, to overcomethe problem, they decided to move to a smaller house’. They found one remarkably quickly, a house named‘Bethersden’ in Barclay Avenue, two miles from the town centre.On Tuesday 3 September, Britain declared war on Germany but for the next eight months, untilFrance capitulated, a state of ‘phoney war’ existed, despite skirmishes with U-boats and other warships of theKriegsmarine which preceded the full-scale Battle of the Atlantic. Then came Dunkirk. Most of the 338,226members of the British Expeditionary Force and their allies who were evacuated began their journeys homefrom the Channel ports on 620 special trains that halted at Tonbridge Station, where volunteers plied themwith cigarettes, tea, buns and sandwiches, and accepted letters and postcards to forward to their families.Boys from ‘the Free Grammar School of Sir Andrew Judde, Knight’ (commonly known as TonbridgeSchool) helped-out, those who could speak French acting as interpreters for French soldiers.By 4 June, when the last troops left Dunkirk, complacency on the home front had dispelled. Aninvasion of England by the world’s most ruthless Army now seemed both imminent and inevitable. All effortsquickly turned to protecting the civilian population from the air-raids that were certain to precede andaccompany seaborne onslaughts on Kent and Sussex’s heavily barricaded beaches.Measures to deal with alerts and emergencies had been planned and in some cases set in train a fewyears earlier, particularly after the ill-judged 30 September 1938 Munich Agreement, which soon turned out tobe a cowardly act of appeasem*nt. At about this time, Tonbridge started receiving its allocation from the 38million gas-masks distributed nationally. The Luftwaffe had been carrying out reconnaissance flights overEngland since before the war and in November 1937, at Observer Corps Monitoring Post 19/R2, on Quarry Hill(National Grid Reference TQ587448), on the southern outskirts of the town, volunteer ‘spotters’ began topractise their aircraft recognition and plotting skills.After the Luftwaffe ceased bombing the Dunkirk beaches it was certain to turn its attention to targetsin southern England. No doubt with this in mind, the Observer Post’s officer-in-charge, Colonel A Fitzgerald,sought a better vantage point for its post, and asked the Clerk of Tonbridge Urban District Council forpermission to relocate to the top of Tonbridge Castle’s 13th century gatehouse (NGR TQ589466), adjacent tothe Norman motte-and-bailey fortress built by William the Conqueror’s kinsman Richard Fitzgilbert to controlthe Medway crossing.The Council considered this at its monthlymeeting on 4 June 1940 (perhaps at the verymoment Winston Churchill was delivering his stirring‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech in the Houseof Commons, 40 miles away) but churlishly resolvedthat ‘the applicant be informed that there are othermore suitable sites’. The Council objected becauseThe Gatehouse , Tonbridge Castle, in 2019.7the castle was already the headquarters of the Air-Raid Precautions (ARP) Report and Control Centre – anopportunity, one would have thought, to facilitate closer liaison between the two services.Exactly where the ‘more suitable’ sites were to be found was notspecified but the Observer Corps’ application soon prevailed and by Julythey had moved to the gatehouse, after damaged stonework had beenrepaired with reinforced concrete. Each of its twin towers had room on itssummit for one observer equipped with field-glasses, whilst the flat roofabove the gate’s archway provided ample space for staff operating theirstate-of-the-art RB Pullin P1 pantograph and pointer and Micklethwaitheight corrector. Air-raid sirens were installed here and on Comono House,complemented by the siren at the fire station in Castle Street and thesteam whistle that in normal circ*mstances summoned workers to a localbrickyard every morning.The local factories kept working after general air-aid warnings were sounded but the observers hadan alarm switch with which to alert them when they were in danger of imminent enemy attack. The observersconducted training exercises with the RAF and with the 4th Battery of the 1st Regiment of the Royal Artillery,whose HQ was in what is now Sackville School, Hildenborough and whose troops, based at Gaza Barracks inScabharbour Road, operated six searchlight sites in what was known as the West Malling Nightfighter Box.Among the first enemy aircraft spotted from the observers’ new lookout were bombers droppingpropaganda leaflets on 3 August, the 25th day of the Battle of Britain. They bore an English translation ofHitler’s sabre-rattling speech A Last Appeal to Reason, delivered to the Reichstag on 19 July: ‘In this hour I feelit to be my duty before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense, in Great Britainas much as elsewhere. I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquishedbegging favours, but the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can see no reason why this war must go on.Possibly Mr Churchill will again brush aside this statement of mine by saying that it is merely of fear and doubtin our final victory. In that case, I shall have relieved my conscience in regards to the things to come’.The reaction of those who found the leaflets was, ‘Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?’ InTales of Old Tonbridge (Froglets Publications, 1995) Frank Richardson recalled hurrying to recover a bundle atPostern Sewage Farm, Capel. Thousands more were collected in and around Tonbridge and sold for a fewpence each to raise money for the local Spitfire Fund, part of a national campaign that raised about £13 million(approximately £650 million in modern values, according to Greig Watson of the BBC News website). It costabout £12,000 to build a Spitfire in 1940.In letters to his family, Frank reported all of the air-raids suffered by Tonbridge during the Battle ofBritain: ‘Bombs and guns, and our windows shook’ (16 August); ‘empty cartridge cases rattled on roof likeshrapnel’ (25 August); ‘[air raid] 9.15pm to 4.30am’ (26 August); ‘air battle overhead ... till 4am waves ofplanes over to London’ (30 August);’terrific air battles ... AA [anti-aircraft] gunfire and bombs’ (1 September);‘Tonbridge bombed at last [sic], one dropped in Dr Tucket’s garden in Yardley Park and upset his house a bit’(5th September); ‘dog-fights right overhead, high in the clouds’ (9 September); ‘2.30 – 3.55pm. We countedmore than 100 go over and from Chatham all the way over shells were bursting all around them. Then ourplanes came over and what an air fight ...they brought a lot down and chased the others off ...it was grand’ (27September); ‘heard 16 bombs during the day and they tried to get the railway, waterworks and gasworks butthey failed. 7 dropped on Tonbridge’ (4 October). A purpose-built air-raid shelter can be seen to this day, afive-second dash from the back door of 2 Yardley Park Road. After nearly 80 years it is in remarkably goodcondition, its roof, walls, entrance, internal blast wall, air bricks and emergency exit intact.Below: Air-raid shelter at 2 Yardley Park Road pictured in 2019. Below right: a shelter of similar design after anair-raid c.1941. (®Lincolnshire Archives)A Second World War Observer Corpspost.(® ROCA Heritage Team)8The leaflet drops and bombing raids were intended to ‘soften up’ the civilian population in advance ofan invasion; but stoicism prevailed. Tonbridge kept calm and carried on, although later, in preparation for whattoday would be called a ‘worst-case scenario’, posters were distributed in the town and other threatenedareas to help civilian resistance fighters distinguish between enemy and British armoured fighting vehicles(AFVs). ‘Smash ‘em up, but theirs not ours’, the poster warned (referring to vehicles captured at Dunkirk),‘don’t fall for Nazi tricks’.9Thousands of these leaflets were dropped around Tonbridge and elsewhere, only to be ridiculed by those who found them.10‘Beware! Don’t fall for Nazi tricks’. A warning to resistance fighters. (®Tonbridge Historical Society)11Three-hundred yards north-east of the Observer Corps’ post, the tower of St Peter and St Paul's, Tonbridge’sparish church (NGR TQ591467) afforded similar panoramic views for a Home Guard and firewatchers’observation post. During the five years of the war, 2,619 alerts and incidents were recorded, and 4,600incendiary bombs and 971 high-explosive bombs of various categories fell on the town and its rural district.The next item on the Council’s 4 June agenda couldnot be challenged. The Clerk read a letter from thePrincipal Officer of No 12 (South Eastern) CivilDefence Region, whose headquarters were inTunbridge Wells, which stated that powers existedunder the Defence Regulations ‘by which LocalAuthorities may be required to undertake works of amilitary nature’. These were rapidly taking shape allover southern England.Stables in the Council yard in The Sladewere converted into a decontamination centre forthe ARP, whose Wardens’ Posts around the townwere managed from an office at 214 High Street.The ARP was established in April 1938, by when Leslie A Le May (chief warden) and 22 head wardens for thewhole of urban Tonbridge had completed Home Office training courses. Other public-spirited bodies such asthe Women's Voluntary Service (WVS), Red Cross, Special Constables, Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) were trainingnew recruits; members of the British Legion signed-up to be stretcher-bearers, and there was an enthusiasticresponse to War Secretary Anthony Eden’s broadcast on 15 May, appealing for men to join the Local DefenceVolunteer Force (LDV) and prepare to attack Naziparachutists.To comply with government instructions, all direction and destination signs and place-name indicatorsoutside the town’s built-up area were removed.At Tonbridge Castle the steep bank on the east side of the inner bailey’s curtain wall was cut away tocreate a level surface on which to build a Civil Defence Control Centre. This comprised two standard street airraid shelters accessed from the High Street, with brick walls and a flat reinforced concrete roof; entry wasthrough a ‘light-lock’, to comply with black-out regulations. Communal shelters of this and otherconfigurations were built at 145 and 153 High Street, the Pavilion Cinema, Bradford Street and St Stephen’sStreet, capable of accommodating 1,440 people, eight per cent of the town’s 18,000 population.Residents were encouraged to erect indoor steel-mesh ‘Morrison’ shelters and outdoor corrugatediron ‘Anderson’ shelters, using materials supplied free-of-charge by the Council to those unable to pay. Wirenetting and timber were offered for protecting windows. Digging back-garden ‘bolt holes’, 2ft wide and 3ftTonbridge parish church, pictured from the site of thewartime Observer Corps post on Tonbridge Castle’sGatehouse.Left: Tonbridge’s wartime firefighters’ HQ in Castle Street,now a restaurant and, above, the site of the town’s CivilDefence Control Centre near the castle. Pictured in 2018.:12deep trenches, was also encouraged, subject to care being taken not to fracture buried drainpipes! ARPwardens travelled around the town distributing Home Office advice on how to carry out these measures. TheOliver family, which had moved to Barclay Avenue within two days of being told to accommodate severalevacuees in their house in Hadlow Road, was one of the first to attempt to build a shelter. Jessica Havardrecalled: ’The day after war was declared Dad and his neighbours started to dig air-raid shelters at the bottomof their gardens. That night it rained, so next morning when he saw that the hole had filled with water, he gaveit all up as a bad job. So did his neighbours!’Underground shelters were constructed at Slade Junior Boys’ Council School. Later, when the town’santi-invasion defence works took shape, it found itself unnervingly close to a road-block and a formidablecluster of tank-traps. At Tonbridge School a plan to build a single air-raid shelter under the ‘Upper Hundred’sports ground for all its pupils was scornfully dismissed by Ferdie Eames, housemaster of Hill Side House.Instead the Works Staff was instructed to build separate shelters for each house. One of these, near the northend of Havelock Road and Lodge Road, was also used by local residents.To obstruct landings by gliders carrying infantry troops, obstacles were erected on Tonbridge School’s150-acre playing fields and Tonbridge Council scattered scrapped heavy machinery and vehicles, and steeldrums filled with earth, around its sports ground, formerly a racecourse. Many other open spaces weresimilarly barricaded, including Poult Wood Gold Course, Higham Lane. In the midst of hop-farming country,hop-poles and their steel cables were readily available for improvised ways and means of protecting potentiallanding zones.The Wehrmacht’s VII Army Corps, (‘VII Armeekorps’), stationed in northern France, was assigned tooccupy and control the Tonbridge area. Somewhere in the Third Reich archives in Freiburg/Breisgau are said tobe papers asserting that had a German invasion succeeded, Tonbridge School would have become Hitler’sUpper Medway Regional Headquarters, in which case the playing fields would have been a convenient landingground for Storch light aircraft ferrying high-ranking Nazi officials. The RAF base at West Malling, 12 milesaway, would have been commandeered for offensive air operations against regions of Britain yet to beconquered.Clockwise from top left: (1) Tonbridge School’s vast playing fields. (®Tonbridge School) (2) Artist’s impression of TonbridgeSchool in Nazi occupation. (©Steve Sullivan, www.blighty-at-war.net).(3) Escape hatch at Slade School’s air-raid shelter,revealed in 2007. (©Nick Catford, Subterranea Britannica) (4) Slade School in 2019.13Chapter Two: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’After Dunkirk, the British Army was neither equipped nor fit to fight a war on itsown territory. More than 68,000 of its soldiers had been killed, wounded orcaptured. Most of the BEF’s motor transport was abandoned in France, alongwith more than 600 tanks and nearly 2,000 artillery pieces. Only one battalion(the 2nd Hants) returned with all its small arms (rifles, pistols and light machineguns). The Home Forces, who had remained in Britain, relied heavily on the rawrecruits of the LDV (renamed the Home Guard on 22 July 1940) to man beachdefences within range of the enemy’s amphibious fleets and patrol zones whereparatroops were likely to land.A desperate situation demanded imagination and improvisation, tomake the best use of limited manpower and shortages of heavy weapons.Responsibility for Britain’s first anti-invasion defence plan was entrusted toWilliam Edmund Ironside, who had gained his first taste of military life 46years earlier, when at the age of 14 he became a pupil at Tonbridge Schooland joined its Volunteer Corps.After nine terms at Tonbridge he went to the Royal Military College atWoolwich where, being six feet four inches tall and weighing seventeen stone,he was inevitably nicknamed ‘Tiny’. In June 1899 he was commissioned intothe Royal Artillery, serving with distinction in the Second Boer War, when hisadventures as an intelligence officer are said to have inspired John Buchan tocreate the character of Richard Hannay in The Thirty-nine Steps.In and after the First World War he pursued his career as aprofessional soldier, returning from time to time to Tonbridge to visit his oldschool, delivering a lecture in 1921, attending the dedication of the First World War memorial in 1925, andinspecting the school’s Cadet Force on several occasions. His visits probably became quite frequent from 1938until 1940 when his only son, Edmund Oslac, was a ‘Tonbridgian’; together they attended Sunday morningchapel, father in ‘mufti’, son in school uniform. In his memoirs, bookseller Tim Waterstone recalled what wasprobably Ironside’s last visit to the school before he died in 1959, aged 79. He judged the annual literary prize,which Waterstone won. At Speech Day in June 1957, Ironside presented him with his prize, a cloth-boundvolume of Somerset Maugham’s collected short stories. ‘You’re a bit young for this, aren’t you?’ he muttered. * * *In 1939, by now a General, he was appointed Chiefof the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the most seniorpost in the British Army. He was none too pleasedand wrote in his diary: ‘I am bitterly disappointedthat I am not to command an Army in the field ... Iam not suited in temperament to such a job as CIGSbut my whole life has been based on doing whatI’m told, and there it is’.Before Dunkirk, Ironside had liaised withthe BEF and the French Army during their futileattempt to halt the German advance, returning toLondon to hand over the post of CIGS to General SirJohn Dill and become Commander-in-Chief, HomeForces.Top of page: Ironside, and his memorial inthe Library Cloister at Tonbridge School. Left:Ironside inspecting Tonbridge School’s CadetForce in 1925 and a Home Forces unit, c.1940. (®Tonbridge School)14His predecessor, General Sir Walter Mervyn St George Kirke, had initiated a degree of anti-invasionplanning but believed the threat of a German invasion was being exaggerated. Ironside dissented and wrote:‘When one considers how the Germans have worked out their plans for the conquest of other countries, theymust have considered how to get at us. Parachutists, troop-carrying aeroplanes, tanks in flat-bottomed boatsand the like. The essence of the problem is information and instant action. Delay is fatal’.He feared Germany might attempt to bring Britain to its knees by aerial bombardment alone – astrategy that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, told Hitler was entirely feasible andwould preclude the need for an invasion involving land battles.On Friday 10 May, four days after his 60th birthday and on the day Churchill became Prime Minister(and the Nazis invaded France and the Low Countries), Ironside was instructed to preside over a new HomeDefence Executive. He noted in his diary: ‘I was told I had to take over the Command in England and organizethat. I am to be made a Field Marshal later ... an honour for me and a new and most important job. One muchmore to my liking than CIGS in every way. The next few months may show whether we can stand in England byourselves. All a matter of the Air Force. If we can keep that in being, all is well’.He was told the RAF expected 4,800 tons of bombs a day could be unleashed on Britain and wrote,’the Bosches [sic] have sufficient aircraft to transport 9,750 lightly-armed men in one flight. The number offlights will vary from 1½ per day for East Anglia to three [a total of 29,250 men] for Kent ... seaplanes andgliders may add to these numbers. Such airborne expeditions will be followed by seaborne expeditions pushedforward with the utmost brutality ... the Germans will make a determined landing the minute they are able todo so ... it will be no amateur affair. It will be well and carefully prepared’.The Air Staff in London estimated that 5,000 parachutists could seize the RAF’s ‘vitals’ and effectivelyground Fighter Command. Heavy bombing raids would create such a diversion that more transport ‘planescould land reinforcements, and if the Germans tried to bring 20,000 men and tanks across the English Channel,the Royal Navy would be powerless to stop them.On Sunday 26 May, when resistance at Dunkirk was increasingly doomed to failure, Ironside attendedSunday Chapel at Tonbridge School. Prayers were offered for the deliverance of the BEF but he told his son’shousemaster, ‘Hoffy’ Arnold, that there was little hope of saving it. He was concerned at the ease with whichthe Wehrmacht had advanced across the Continent because of the absence there of defences of the kind hewould soon recommend for England. Next day, 27 May, his appointment as CIC Home Forces was made public,although by then he or the War Office had already started planning the anti-invasion defences that even todayare evident in the most unexpected places. On 27 and 28 May he visited Sir Auckland Geddes, Commissionerfor Civil Defence for the South-East Region, at Tunbridge Wells; inspected work-in-progress on coastaldefences, and met the 50 members of the Home Defence Committee, afterward swiftly cutting through thered tape to reduce this unwieldy body to four.Over dinner next day, Churchill told him: ‘We all depend upon you because [during the last fewmonths] you have shown that you don’t lose your head in a crisis’, and repeated his promise to make him aField Marshal (‘in a few days’).In May and June 1940 the depleted Regular Army relied heavily on the Home Guard to keep watchfrom ‘static’ defences on the coast for seaborne invaders, and on the skies for parachutists. Anthony Eden’sappeal had within 24 hours brought forth 250,000 volunteers (equal in number to all the men in the peacetimeRegular Army), many of whom were still queuing to register at midnight, the response in Kent (dubbed‘invasion corner’) being particularly strong. By the end of June more than 1.4 million men had joined,exceeding the spontaneous wave of patriotic fervour of August and September 1914 when half a million menjoined Lord Kitchener’s New Armies.After February 1942, when all men aged 18 to 51 were obliged to join the Home Guard and attend upto 48 hours of training a month, the force’s numbers peaked at 1.7 million. Norman Longmate, a private in the3rd Sussex Battalion, wrote in his book The Real Home Guard: ‘[It] was an enormous bargain, the cheapestarmy of its size and firepower any nation had ever possessed’. This was because its members were unpaid,15lived at home and did not require a permanent supporting ‘army’ of cooks, drivers, telephonists and so forth.The annual cost to the country for each member was about £9 compared with £360 for a Regular soldier. TheHome Guard’s national budget was only £16.6 million a year, roughly equivalent to a single day’s expenditureon the war.Tonbridge was under the protection of more than 1,000 members of the 21st Battalion of the KentHome Guard, commanded by Col H H Bateson, whose drill hall was in Avebury Avenue. They shared a depotwith the Royal Army Ordnance Corps at Horns Lodge, off Shipbourne Road. The RAOC was responsible forweapons, armoured vehicles, ammunition and other essentials and had another depot in the former Crystalategramophone record factory at Town Works, Cannon Lane.16Above: The Tonbridge Home Guard battalion marching through the town in 1944, led by James Stredder, a teacher atTonbridge School. (®Tonbridge School) The photograph below of the battalion’s officers was probably taken to mark theofficial disbanding of the Home Guard on 31 December 1945, a year after being ordered to ‘stand down’.Judging how to make the best use of his limited assets, Ironside created a ‘coastal crust’ to confine invaders tothe beaches and their hinterland. It included infantry and artillery posts, minefields, anti-tank obstacles androad-side ‘flame fougasse’ ambushes of drums of tar, to be exploded in the path of the advancing Wehrmacht.17Another type would flood the road with petrol, ignited at the right moment with a carefully aimed handgrenade.On 30 May Ironside, who had fewer than200 mobile anti-tank guns at his disposal, wrote: ‘Ifthe Germans ever attempt a landing here they willput the utmost energy into establishing abridgehead. All our energies must be put intostopping this. No waiting for more troops to comeup. Our mobile forces must attack at onceregardless of losses and nip the landing in the bud’.To hinder invaders breaking through the ‘coastal crust’ and establishing inland salients, and tocounter-attack aerial landings, Ironside proposed forming mobile groups, each operating three motor carsequipped with Bren light machine-guns and to be known as ‘the Ironsides’. Six-pounder and 12-pounder fieldguns mounted on lorries were also part of his plan. ‘They may not be tanks’, he wrote (only 963 were availablein the whole of the British Isles), ‘but they may get a shot and knock the gentleman out. Our people must actjust as the Germans do and go straight in and attack. Gradually perhaps I shall get some tanks’.For anything less than a full-scale invasion, he hoped enough armoured cars would become availableto molest motorboat landings and that buses requisitioned from the East Kent Road Car Company, Maidstoneand District Motor Services and other operators would transport infantrymen around the countryside toround-up paratroops. A similar idea occurred to Major-General Bernard Law Montgomery, then a rising star inthe military firmament, who immediately after Dunkirk was posted to Sussex to head Southern Command’s3rd Infantry Division (known variously as the ‘Iron Division’, the 3rd [Iron] Division’ and ‘Monty's Iron Sides’).On 2 July 1940 Montgomery met Churchill for the first time and complained that his combat-ready troopswere dug-in at static positions on the coast and should be replaced and held as a mobile reserve.‘Why was I left immobile?’, wrote ’Monty’ in his Memoirs, ‘there were thousands of buses in England.Give me some and release me ... so that I could practise a mobile counter-attack role ... the Prime Ministerthought this was the cat’s whiskers ... I got my buses’.Two weeks after meeting Churchill, Montgomery was promoted to command 5 Corps. ‘From thistime’, he wrote later, ‘begins my real influence on the training of the Army in England ... the corps gave a leadin these matters which had repercussions far beyond the corps’ area of Hampshire and Dorset’.With his ‘coastal crust’ plan resolved, Ironside identified, while touring Kent (his most vulnerablesector), a perfect role for the Home Guard: ‘static defence in every village by [road] blocks ... thousands ofMolotov co*cktails thrown down from the windows of houses ... that might well settle tank columns’.He subsequently formalized a strategy, approved by the Chiefs of Staff and the War Cabinet on 25June, for waging war against columns that succeeded in overpowering mobile reserves that had failed to blockbreaches in the coastal crust. This was a final position and last resort stop-line of pillboxes, road-blocks, tanktraps and anti-tank ditches, officially called the GHQ Line but commonly known as ‘The Ironside Line’. It ranalmost due east from Bristol, then veered south towards Basingstoke and on to Maidstone, thus covering thesouthern approaches to London. From Maidstone the line ran north to the Thames and from Essex toCambridge and The Wash.Subsidiary stop-lines, called Command Lines and Corps Lines, were built behind anti-tank ditches inthe hinterland between the ‘coastal crust’ and the GHQ Line; there were also defensive grid-lines, devoid ofditches and instead lined with obstacles. The hundreds of miles of anti-tank ditches were by far the greatestsystem of defensive earthworks ever built in Britain.Above: tar barrels at a road-block on the outskirts ofTonbridge, c. 1940. (®Tonbridge Historical Society)18Montgomery was decidedly underwhelmed by all this. ‘When I asked what troops were available toman the stop-lines’, he wrote, ‘I could get no clear answer. There were no troops’.Wherever possible the lines exploited natural obstructions in the landscape. In Kent’s case the RiverMedway, spanning the entire county, and its western tributary, the Eden, became, when reconfigured wherenecessary to military specifications, an expedient anti-tank ditch, with on their north banks massive reinforcedconcrete emplacements for 2-pounder and 6-pounder tank-buster guns, and smaller pillboxes for rifles andmachine-guns.‘I am very lacking in gun power’, wrote Ironside, ‘and I can see no immediate prospect ofreinforcement. I have called into being every available gun I can find’.Encountered today, Ironside’s pillboxes pose the question, ‘how effective would they have beenagainst a Panzer attack?’ The answer is that they would not have fought alone but would have been in themidst of an array of thoroughly camouflaged fire trenches, barbed wire fences, mobile anti-tank guns, ‘flamefougasse’ batteries (of which there was at least one near Tonbridge), machine-gun nests, weapon pits,minefields and all kinds of barriers and obstacles - exemplified by concrete tank-traps of various shapes andsizes.Precisely which pillboxes on the GHQ Line were armed, and for how long, cannot be confirmed,although it is known that the Royal Engineers installed 16 6-pounder guns between Tonbridge and Rochesterduring one hectic week in mid-summer 1940, and many others elsewhere during the next few months. HadlowPark, three miles from Tonbridge, became the HQ for 922 Defence Battery, which maintained the guns atmajor river crossings in the Tonbridge district; but for most of the war the GHQ Line’s fortifications wereunmanned or at best only lightly patrolled, mainly by the Home Guard, pending an invasion - ‘Cromwell’ beingthe codeword for ‘invasion probable within 12 hours’. In December 1940, 922 Battery’s guns were moved to astop line running from Dover to Seasalter. Had the ‘coastal crust’ been overpowered, infantry reserves, tanksand mobile artillery would have hastened to the stop-lines, behind which first-aid posts, ambulance depots,ammunition dumps, field kitchens and all the other military accoutrements of war would have been set up.The ensuing battles would have resembled those which became only too familiar four years later when theGerman Army tried to stem the allied advance from the Normandy beachheads and when the US Army’s 101stAirborne Division was besieged in Bastogne.The GHQ Line’s pillboxes along the rivers Medway and Eden, mapped in the 1970s for Pillboxes (Henry Wills, Cooper/Secker &Warburg 1985). Right: sites of surviving pillboxes west of Tonbridge, plotted by Clive Holden using War Office map references.19Chapter Three: ‘Defended village and river lines in all directions’No records now exist to establish how many pillboxes and other ‘hardened’ field fortifications (tank-traps,road-blocks and so forth) were built during preparations for a German invasion, but estimates for the pillboxesrange from 10,000 (WW2 Forums http://ww2f.com) to 28,000 (Pillbox Study Group http://www.pillbox-studygroup.org.uk/). About 6,500 survive, according to the Council for British Archaeology’s Review of The Defenceof Britain Project (http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk). Given that Ironside’s scheme was approved on 25June 1940, and that the GHQ Line alone would extend over nearly 500 miles, it is astonishing that most of thestructures were completed in the remaining months of 1940 and the rest by February 1942. Much preliminarywork on designing the pillboxes and planning their positions must surely have been carried out under GeneralKirke before Ironside’s appointment as CIC Home Forces was announced on 27 May. In his seminal bookPillboxes. A Study of the UK Defences 1940 (Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985), Henry Wills noted that by 12June, England had already been ‘divided into lines of defence, with defended village and river lines in alldirections’.‘Pillboxes’ in the military sense date back to the blockhouses of the battlefields of ancient Greece.Their first manifestations in modern warfare were the blockhouses built by the British during the South AfricanWars and the German army’s concrete strongholds along the First World War’s Western Front. Similarstructures, including circular concrete gun emplacements, were erected around and near England’s southernand eastern coasts, when the prospect of an invasion by the Kaiser’s army was being taken very seriously.Soldiers called these circular objects ‘pillboxes’ because their shape superficially resembled the smallcardboard boxes in which Carter’s Little Liver Pills and other patent medicines were dispensed. By the SecondWorld War the term was being used in official military communications and everyday language to describesmall battlefield fortifications, regardless of their shape.The pillboxes for England’s anti-invasion defences were designed by Branch FW3 of the War Office’sDirectorate of Fortifications and Works; consequently they are known by their drawing numbers, which rangefrom FW3/22 to FW3/28. They were designed to be constructed quickly and to be capable of withstandingbullet and shell fire.Along the Medway at Tonbridge, and elsewhere on the GHQ Line and its subsidiary stop-lines, themost common type was the FW3/24 hexagonal pillbox, designed to house infantrymen armed with riflesand/or Bren light machine-guns (LMGs). This had five 8ft-long faces, with a weapon embrasure (aka ‘loophole’,though few if any were loop-shaped) in each one,and a 13ft-long rear face with a 2ft-wide entranceand two embrasures. There were several variants ofthe FW3/24, including one with walls 15 inches thickwith built-in rifle embrasures, and another with 24inch walls embodying preformed embrasures formachine-guns.The behemoth of the range was the formidablerectangular FW3/28 (aka ‘gun-box’), facing riverbridges and other strategic positions where Panzerdivisions could be expected to direct their mainthrust en route to London. The FW3/28 also came inseveral configurations, housing a 2-pounder or 6-pounder Hotchkiss anti-tank gun aimed through alow, wide embrasure. Their overall dimensions werered in 2018,n (left) and20a minimum of 20ft wide x 19ft x 7ft 6in. high, with walls and roofs 42 inches and 12 inches thick respectively.Some versions accommodated two anti-tank guns or had an additional firing chamber for infantry weapons.There were two anti-tank gun emplacements (evidently FW3/28s) at Tonbridge Castle (NGRTQ590465 and TQ589465). These were its first new fortifications for nearly 700 years and were the mostimportant of all the defences along the Tonbridge sector of the Medway, with the town’s Big Bridge (aka GreatBridge) only yards away. Each emplacement comprised 60 cubic yards (about 110 tonnes) of reinforcedconcrete and stood on the sites of the 13th century Water Tower and, to its west, the Stafford Tower. Theyfaced the river from the corners of the inner bailey’s south curtain wall, into whose surviving core and ashlarmasonry they were integrated. This work resulted in the complete disappearance of the curved western cornerof the wall shown on early Ordnance Survey maps; the Water Tower had been plundered for its stonework inthe 18th century.Tonbridge’s two other Medway crossings - Cannon Bridge (NGR TQ597465) on Cannon Lane, half amile east of the town centre and, a similar distance to the west, over the main-line railway to London (NGRTQ580466) - were also guarded by FW3/28s. Both bridges would have afforded AFVs swift access into thetown if Big Bridge withstood attack or had been deliberately blown-up by its retreating defenders.At least one of the castle’s FW3/28s was completed by 3 September 1940, since on that dateTonbridge Council resolved to ‘draw the attention of the appropriate military authorities to the practice of thetroops now on duty at the emplacement [in the castle grounds] approaching the position by way of therockery on the wall, instead of by the pathway, and thereby causing unnecessary damage’. The troopspreferred to scramble up the rockery (probably after visiting the nearby Chequers pub in the High Street) toavoid the two minute walk involved when using the path. They should of course have been aware that, eventhough there was a war on, by-laws must be obeyed! In due course 20 soldiers were in charge of the castle’sdefences. Below left: the rockery, beneath the site of the castle’s eastern FW3/28 pillbox, in 2018. Below right: the faint‘footprint’ of part of the pillbox.The curtain wall at Tonbridge Castle. A Type FW3/28 pillbox stood above both corners of the wall,, positioned to attacktanks approaching the town from the south. The River Medway (foreground) formed a ready-made anti-tank ditch..21Midway between the castle’s FW3/28 pillboxes stood a 10 ft 6in x 10 ft 6in x 6ft 6in. brick andconcrete gunnery observation post. Below it, in Riverside Gardens (NGR TQ589465), close to TonbridgeSchool’s Boer War Memorial, there was a sandbagged revetted weapon pit housing a ‘Blacker Bombard’, alsoknown as the 29mm Spigot Mortar, an anti-tank weapon devised by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Blacker.Issued to the Home Guard in 1941, it was capable of lobbing 20-pound armour piercing anti-tank shells on totargets up to 400 yards away; the Big Bridge was well within range. The memorial was dismantled and itsplinth and pillar placed flat on the ground to give the gunners an unobstructed field of fire. Shallow weaponpits were also excavated on top of the curtain wall.It is possible that explosives were concealed under Big Bridge to enable it to be blown up by remotecontrol if all efforts to prevent the enemy capturing it failed. Before August 1940, key bridges along the GHQLine were equipped to be demolished in this way; subsequently, this policy was not applied to bridges whosesteel and concrete obstacles were considered to be as capable of delaying the enemy as blowing them up. Aswill be seen in the next chapter, Big Bridge had formidable defences. In some districts, plans were made toflood water meadows in dire circ*mstances, to make them impassable to AFVs. The many sluices and locksalong the Medway around Tonbridge would have facilitated this.Above: foundations of the eastern FW3/28 pillbox at the topof the rockery. (©Clive Holden) Right: site of the gunneryobservation post on the curtain wall, with the Big Bridge inthe background.Above left: the spigot mortar weapon pit and thedismantled Tonbridge School Boer War Memorial inRiverside Gardens in 1948. (©The Francis Frith Collection)Above: the site today. Left: a Home Guard unit practisingwith a ‘Black Bombard’ spigot mortar.22All that remains today of Tonbridge Castle’s Second World War defences are concrete fragments ofthe FW3/28 pillbox whose squaddies displeased the Council, and the ‘footprint’ of the observation post. Animpressive concrete-faced FW3/28 containing an extra chamber for a machine-gun survives eleven milesdownstream from the castle, alongside the A26 at Teston (NGR TQ710536), opposite the entrance to BarhamCourt. It dominates Teston Bridge and the Medway Valley railway and was one of a cluster of pillboxes thatsupported a nodal point at Wateringbury.Among the FW3/28s still to be seen in the pillbox-rich country upstream from Tonbridge Castle is oneoverlooking the bridge that carries the Tonbridge to Redhill railway over the Medway at Little Britain Farm,and another at Ensfield Bridge which spans the Medway near Leigh (NGR TQ547454). Some years ago anattempt was made to blow-up this one, resulting only in external damage to one of its embrasures - proof thatpillboxes were capable of withstanding serious assaults.Above: FW3/28A pillbox at Ensfield Bridge, Leigh, showingembrasures for an anti-tank gun and (right) an infantryweapon. (©Susan Featherstone) Above right: FW3/28 pillbox at Teston, showing embrasures for anti-tank gun (left) andinfantry weapon. (©Clive Holden)23Chapter Four: Town’s wartime battle front, then and nowTop picture: massive reinforced concrete road-blocks on the Big Bridge. A soldier, perhaps walking home from TonbridgeStation looking forward to a few days’ leave, makes his way past a stack of rails that would have been fixed in slots in theroad to hinder AFVs approaching the blocks, between which horizontal barricades would have been secured to formadditional obstructions. The picture was taken by the Tonbridge Free Press on 9 June 1944 – three days after D-Day, bywhen the slots had been filled and the barricades removed because the danger of invasion had long since passed. Above:the bridge in 2019, with iron bollards protecting pedestrians from passing traffic.24Concrete pyramids (aka ‘dragons’ teeth’ or ‘pimples’) withsteel spikes were erected outside the Rose & Crownalongside road-blocks and on other pavements elsewhereto hinder infantry soldiers rampaging up the High Street,although they did not deter housewives on shopping trips!(®Tonbridge Historical Society) Right: the Rose & Crown in2019.25In 1940 it was feared that paratroops would attack inland towns ahead of an invasion by armoured columns and infantryunits. Barbed wire barricades like this one at the north end of Tonbridge High Street (top picture) were erected to hampertheir progress, with a few small gaps to allow pedestrians (and stray dogs!) to cross the road. (Tonbridge Free Press) Above:the street in 2019.26Pillboxes and weapon pits proliferated within Tonbridge, including one in Swanmead AllotmentGardens, Garden Road (NGR approx TQ596468), measuring 20ft x 17ft 6in. x 7ft 6in. and comprising 70 cubicyards of solid concrete; and two in Lower Castle Field (aka Lower Playing Field), in 5 ft deep revetted pits, one16ft x 10ft, the other 10ft x 6ft, each composed of up to 20 cubic yards of solid concrete. One of these mayhave been on the site now occupied by Tonbridge’s miniature railway (NGR TQ587466). A hexagonal pillbox,measuring about 20ft x 17ft 6in., was built ‘on the footpath to the open air swimming pool at the north-westcorner of the castle’. To establish the precise positions of Tonbridge’s abundant ‘gunnery’ and tank-trapswould require systematic archaeology; with few exceptions, all the evidence lies under the ground.Out of town, pillboxes ran in both directions along the GHQ Line, following the Medway. The first onestill to be found downstream from Tonbridge is beside a footbridge (NGR TQ605471) a mile from CannonBridge. In the opposite direction, even now there are at least five, spaced about 300 yards apart on thesouthern channel of the Medway. The channel is a man-made 18th century ‘cut’ intended to be part of a canalfrom Tonbridge to Edenbridge that was never completed. The original channel, the ‘Medway proper’, flows tothe north. The two channels encompass the site of Tonbridge Racecourse which since the 1920s has been a 69-acre sports ground whose suitability as a landing zone for enemy gliders or paratroops would not haveescaped 1940’s anti-invasion planners. The aforementioned riverside pillboxes were links in a chain thatintersected a subsidiary stop-line that ran northwards from the River Eden at Penshurst.Other pillboxes can be found some distance from the GHQ Line, including one, brick-faced, about twomiles east of Tonbridge Station in a chestnut coppice at Tudeley (NGR approx. TQ615457), overlooking themain line railway from the Channel Ports to London. Tudeley was one of eight ‘Defended Villages’ in the Kentdefence plan. Another pillbox (at NGR TQ591470) was revealed only recently (2017) at Ironside’s old school,during the construction of a new science centre adjacent to Dry Hill House. It had been veiled by trees andundergrowth for most of the post-war years and was part of a defence complex at the High Street’s junctionwith London Road and Shipbourne Road.Below and on next page: the pillbox at Tonbridge School , as revealed in 2017.27In 2018 another pillbox was seen concealed in a shrubbery at 44 Stocks Green Road, Hildenborough,two miles north-west of Tonbridge. Fully revealed during 2019, it was found to be in remarkably goodcondition. This and the Tonbridge School pillbox are discussed in detail in the Appendix.Above: entrance to the pillbox at 44 Stocks Green Road, Hildenborough, in February 2018. (© Gary Coppins MRICS)Right: the pillbox, as revealed in May 2019, showing two of its embrasures. (©Susan Featherstone)28Road-blocks and associated tank-traps were set up all over town, often supplemented with railwaysleepers, derelict farm machinery, wrecked cars and other makeshift obstacles. Contemporary records,residents’ memories, press pictures and RAF aerial photographs taken in October 1947 indicate that amongthe places where these were located were the Big Bridge; Shipbourne Road and Hadlow Road; the High Street(at the Rose & Crown and Westminster Bank), Portman Park and The Slade. This Victorian and Edwardiansuburb, named after the road that borders two sides of the castle’s outer bailey (now known as Upper CastleField), is a little knot of 14 narrow streets and is bisected by the only substantial surviving section of themedieval Fosse, an earthen rampart built when Tonbridge first became a fortified town. Now only about 12 fthigh, it had a road-block at its southern end (NGR TQ589467) in Stafford Road which was part of a urban stopline to be held if enemy land forces overwhelmed the GHQ Line’s riverside defences or landed airborne troopsin the fields. The line ran from a row of 176 pyramidal tank-traps ranged along Hilden Brook (NGR TQ588466),past Tonbridge electricity generating station and Slade School, along part of Stafford Road and up HavelockRoad to Lansdowne Road. Another stop-line, including 5ft cubic tank-traps placed at the Castle Street andSlade entrances to the castle grounds, ran eastwards from the Stafford Road road-block to the High Street.On the east side of the town, a stop-line of about 20 cylindrical concrete tank-traps ran due northfrom the Medway near Town Lock (NGR TQ592464) to Lyons Crescent and possibly from there to East Street.(The various stop-lines are explored in more detail in Chapter Ten: Tracing town’s forgotten battlelines.)* * *‘Putting tank-traps everywhere was all the rage’, recalled Jessica Havard. ‘We even had three in ourback garden. There were supposed to be four but after the workmen had measured and marked out the fourpositions with stakes and gone home, Mum and Dad re-measured and re-positioned the stakes so that therewere just three! If there had been four, they were so big that it would have been impossible to squeeze awheelbarrow or lawn mower between them. Some workmen returned next day with a concrete mixer andbuilt the three (!) six-foot monstrosities, without comment. They stayed there until the end of the war’.The garden in question was at ‘Arnos’, 23 Hadlow Road. The Olivers bought the house on 14 June1940 (the day Germany occupied Paris) to be closer to William’s office in the town.George Fry, who lived with his parents, Jack and Kate, at 143 Shipbourne Road during the war,recollected in 2018 that a road-block was set up outside their house, with one of its concrete cubes, about 7fthigh x 4ft x 4 ft, in their front garden (NGR TQ592478), intruding on to the pavement. Another was placed onthe opposite side of the road, near the entrance to Tonbridge Boys’ Club. Sockets were cut in the interveningcarriageway to accept supports for a scaffold barrier that would have been erected during an emergency.This was a strange choice of location because a few yards to the north there was, and is still, a widegrass verge with ample space for-road blocks. Air Raid Wardens’ Post No. 1 was built there c. 1940; there wereother posts at Cemetery Lodge, Bordyke, Higham Lane, Barden, No. 3 High Street, Pembury Road, Priory Roadand Ashby’s Garage, Quarry Hill (close to one of the town’s several First Aid Posts).Above: tank-traps in the grounds of Red Roses, Portman Park.(®Tonbridge Historical Society) Right: anti-tank defenceswere often erected in front gardens, as seen in this sketch ofa road-block made by a Norfolk resident in 1943. FromPillboxes: A Study of UK Defences by Henry Wills(Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985).29As a wartime pupil at Bank Street Infants’ School and Slade School, George remembers playing amongmany of these wartime obstructions including, in Upper Castle Field opposite Slade School, six tank-traps and aV-shaped anti-tank ditch with poles (perhaps hop-poles) fixed into its base. In 2012 another of the school’swartime pupils, Dick Millis, recalled similar adventures among tank-traps behind Hawden Road and in UpperCastle Field. After the war George Fry witnessed the demolition, by an iron wrecking-ball swinging from acrane, of a row of tank-traps arranged along the Cattle Market wall in Stafford Road. Forty-five years later,George played a small part in protecting one of the town’s defence relics; as head gardener at TonbridgeSchool for 36 years, until 2001, he planted shrubs to cover the aforementioned pillbox at the Dry Hill House,sealing its entrance with a steel grille to exclude vandals but leaving room for hedgehogs and bats to enter.Previously, one of the school’s teachers had kept rabbits in hutches placed in the embrasures.During the war another Fry family lived in The Slade at 21 Havelock Road. Reminiscing for the authorsof the Slade Area Residents’ Association’s History of The Slade , published in 2012, Donald Fry recalled that onMonday 4 September 1939, the day after war was declared, he and all the other pupils at Slade School weretold not to attend that day because their teachers were helping to distribute gas-masks and ration books.Donald remembered that the tank-traps in Stafford Road were about 5ft 6in. high, and that barbedwire barricades extended along the east side of Havelock Road, from the junction of Lodge Road and StaffordRoad, as far as Ebenezer Cottage (11 Havelock Road), and from there on the west side to No 21, at the farnorth end of the road. Gaps in the barricade, providing access to the various houses, could be closed quickly inan emergency.Tank-traps similar to those in Stafford Road were built in the gardens of Nos 20 and 21 HavelockRoad. The Fry family was dismayed to be warned that in the event of an invasion they would be evacuated sothat a machine-gun post could be set up in Donald’s bedroom, which overlooked playing fields and farmlandacross which tanks and infantry could fight their way into the town’s western outskirts. According to DonaldFry, trenches in which to conceal an ambush of land-mines were created in some roads, including HavelockRoad, near Ebenezer Cottage and the corner of The Avenue.Inexplicably, the Home Guard stored ‘Molotov co*cktails’ in an air-raid shelter in Lansdowne Road, onthe north-east outskirts of The Slade, regardless of the obvious hazard this would impose during an air-raid. Infact, the store was destroyed not by enemy action but by a suspected local vandal; two fire appliances werecalled to extinguish the blaze.All the aforementioned works were designed to defend the town street-by-street in the event ofincursions by AFVs and infantry forces. During, or soon after, the construction of the GHQ Line and associatedstructures, much of north Tonbridge became surrounded by a continual heavily defended outer perimeter,comprising a combination of anti-tank ditches, barbed wire barricades and concrete tank-traps. These weremade in various sizes and shapes, including cylinders (called ‘buoys’, which could be rolled into position);cubes; blocks (aka ‘coffins’) and flat-topped pyramids (aka ‘dragons’ teeth’ or ‘pimples’). Within the perimeterthere were stop-lines and massive concrete road-blocks, between which steel girders and rails were placed(for example, on Big Bridge). Like 21 Havelock Road, many houses along the perimeter were assigned tobecome ‘defended buildings,’ concealing machine-gun posts.Most of the concrete obstacles were cast on site but the cylinders were apparently fabricated from‘spun -concrete’, the nearest manufacturer being William Griffiths and Company’s South Coast Pre-Cast Works,whose 15-acre site flanking the Ashford - Thanet railway at Milton, near Canterbury, stocked nearly 20 miles ofspun-concrete pipes of various diameters and lengths – enough for 30,000 tank-traps 3ft high. The pipes wereconverted into tank-traps simply by placing them upright where required and filling them with concrete orrubble.30The South Coast Pre-Cast Works, source of concrete pipes for cylindrical tank-traps. (®Derek Butler). Below: anti-tank ditchconfigurations. From Pillboxes. A Study of UK Defences by Henry Wills (Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985).The outer perimeter was essential because althoughan invasion was most likely to come from the south,towards the GHQ Line, attempts to captureTonbridge from other directions could not be ruledout - for example by a ‘pincer manoeuvre’ orfollowing an unexpected full-scale invasion fromnorth Kent. The perimeter ran mainly throughgardens and other open spaces, with road-blocks atintervening main roads. Its construction would havedemanded a large labour force, using excavators,‘bulldozers’, dump-trucks, mobile cranes and otherearth-moving machinery from Army depots or hiredfrom quarrying companies and others equipped tomove large volumes of soil.Much of the perimeter can be traced on thepost-war RAF aerial photographs kept at the KentArchives in Maidstone and accessible on-line on theKent County Council’s Kent Heritage Maps website.Although most of the defence works had beendemolished by 1947, some of the photographs show what appears to be a weapons pit in the garden of No. 23Hadlow Road, the Oliver family’s home; and the zigzagging course of the anti-tank ditch and clusters of itstank-traps yet to be removed. In many cases demolition costs were avoided simply by bulldozing them into theadjacent anti-tank ditch and covering them with earth removed when it was dug.Today, recognizable traces of the perimeter on accessible land are hard to find, although a shortlength of anti-tank ditch on Tonbridge School’s playing field north of North Path is revealed as a ‘parch mark’ inthe turf in dry summers. (A bonfire was lit in the ditch during the school’s VE-Day celebrations.) Post-warcommercial estates off Cannon Lane, and residential estates in the Portman Park neighbourhood andelsewhere, have been the principal obliterators of evidence of where, if the worse came to the worst,desperate battles would have been fought and many lives lost.31Chapter Five: Manpower and materialsAdequate recognition has yet to be given (and it is probably too late now) to the amazing achievement of thebuilders, surveyors and military engineers who, in a few desperate months, planned and constructed the tensof thousands of pillboxes along the GHQ Line, its subsidiaries and Ironside’s ‘coastal crust’ – and the anti-tankditches, road-blocks and tank-traps that went with them. This was accomplished at the same time as otherpillboxes plus ‘ack-ack’ batteries and bomb shelters were hastily built at munitions and aircraft factories,harbours, docks, airfields and military bases all over much of the UK, as well as civil defence bunkers andcommunal air-raid shelters in dozens of towns and cities within range of Luftwaffe bases in occupied Europe.The sheer volume of materials procured and delivered to the construction sites is incalculable; norwill the number of men employed there ever be conclusively established. By the third week of June 1940,according to research by Ian Todd of Subterranea Britannica (http://www.subbrit.org.uk), 150,000 civilians, inaddition to soldiers, were engaged in building the defences, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk. The troopsincluded members of the Pioneer Corps and Royal Engineers.Shortages of materials and manpower were inevitable but one factor was in the project’s favour.Since the 1920s, 4.3 million new houses had been built in Britain (including 700,000 in London and thousandsmore in urban Kent). The boom came to an abrupt halt in the summer of 1939, putting many building workerson the dole. A positive consequence was that an efficient building industry, whose suppliers had for manyyears been delivering substantial quantities of such basic necessities as sand, gravel, cement, bricks, metalproducts and fabricated timber, was ready to accept orders for defence works – and skilled workers andlabourers were readily available in the building trade, and on Labour Exchange registers.Kent’s pillboxes were built by numerous contractors, under Army supervision. One of the firstcontracts was placed on 24 June (the day before the Chiefs of Staff and War Cabinet approved Ironside’s homedefence strategy). Under Regulation 50 of the 1939 Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, landowners wereobliged to permit defence works to be built anywhere on their property and were compensated for any loss ofincome incurred - for example, diminution of crop yields. In the case of the GHQ Line through Tonbridge,Regulation 50 applied mostly to owners of grazing land in the Medway flood plain and compensationpayments were probably modest; elsewhere in the town, the defence works arose on Council-owned land atand near the castle.To erect a pillbox typical of those around Tonbridge, up to 70 cubic yards of concrete had to be mixedon site for its solid concrete floor slab (aka raft), reinforced concrete roof and walls, and the central columnsupporting the roof, in a ratio by volume of one part cement, 2-3½ parts sand and 4-8 parts aggregate (gravelor crushed stone). Kent’s pillbox builders were fortunate in that the county had abundant resources of sandand gravel in the alluvial deposits in the Medway and Stour valleys, and on Romney Marsh. Sand was requirednot only as an ingredient for concrete and mortar but to fill the hundreds of thousands of sand-bags needed toprovide additional protection for the pillboxes, enclose weapon pits, make blast-walls for street shelters andpublic buildings, and offer to householders for their air-raid shelters and trenches.Before the war, sand and gravel quarrying on an industrial scale was being pioneered in the Stourvalley at Canterbury by Robert Brett and Sons Ltd and at Lydd, on Romney Marsh, by Ace Sand and Gravel.Both companies were supplying defence contractors in east and south Kent; even if they had sufficientproduction capacity to fulfil orders from Tonbridge as well - and enough lorries to deliver them - petrol usage(rationed since September 1939 and typically 1s.9d a gallon) and haulage costs would have been prohibitive.Each delivery trip of up to 50 miles would have taken two hours or more and the lorries would then havereturned empty to collect another load.To obviate relying on faraway quarries, it is likely that ‘borrow pits’ (temporary sand and gravelexcavations) were opened in the Medway water meadows close to where the pillboxes were being built.Conveyors, lorries or perhaps barges carried the gravel from pit to site.Tonbridge’s quarrying industry did not expand until after the war, when vast pits were opened atHaysden and Postern, but in 1940 sand and gravel merchant G E Farrant Ltd of High Brooms no doubt hadsome local sources to help meet defence contract demands. Haulage contractor H J Goodman and Sons of32Avebury Avenue owned a fleet of steam and motor lorries and had road-rollers for hire, and was likely to havedelivered aggregates and other heavy loads to the GHQ Line, and rolled tarmacadam or bituminous surfaceson roads serving military sites.Kent was also rich in the raw materials required to make cement – chalk, quarried in the North Downsand clay, dredged from the Thames and Medway estuaries. ‘Portland’ cement (thus named due to itsresemblance to Portland stone) was being mass-produced on Thamesside and in the Lower Medway Valley atthe time war was declared. APCM’s ‘Blue Circle’ works at Holborough was about 15 miles from Tonbridge byroad and rail; delivery by barge along the Medway Navigation would also have been an option.Mixing and placing concrete was labour-intensive and time-consuming, even with mechanical mixerswhich produced batches of about 120-litres (0.15 cubic yard) at a rate of one every 5-10 minutes. One batchequalled two wheelbarrow loads. To build a pillbox’s walls and central supporting column, the loads had to beemptied into a bucket-hoist, lifted to heights of up to ten feet and poured into temporary shuttering (usuallyplanks or corrugated iron) built around helical bars or other forms of steel reinforcement, shortages of whichwere sometimes overcome by using iron railings (officially purloined from parks and gardens to be forged intoweapons of war) or even Slumberland bed springs!The concrete embrasures in the walls were cast on site in timber patterns, or pre-cast at SouthernRailway’s factory at Ashford where in peacetime fencing, footbridge components, gradient indicators, lampposts, lineside gangers’ huts, mile-posts, platform slabs, station name boards and much else were made forthe region’s railways. The factory was well placed to despatch embrasures to Tonbridge and other placeswhere railways ran close to the GHQ Line.Up to 500 batches (1,000 wheelbarrow loads) of concrete had to be made for each pillbox. Today,nine ready-mixed concrete trucks could deliver and pour 70 cubic yards (sufficient, say, for one of TonbridgeCastle’s FW3/28 pillboxes) in a few hours.Left: Concrete reinforcement and an embrasurerevealed during the demolition of a FW3/24 pillboxafter the war. From Pillboxes. A Study of the UKDefences 1940 (Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985).Above: FW3/24 pillbox on the Medway upstream fromTonbridge. (©Clive Holden)33Concrete reaches maximum strength after 28 days but it would have been safe to remove itsshuttering after only a few days for use elsewhere. The horizontal strata still evident on the outer and innerfaces of some of the pillboxes upstream from Tonbridge Castle were imprinted by the edges of the shutteringand reveal the number of successive ‘pours’ required to build the walls up to the required height. Whereshortages of timber and corrugated iron shuttering occurred, permanent brick external shuttering wassubstituted, the bricks being laid as a single ‘skin’. Nearly 80 years later some of the brickwork is in surprisinglygood condition, considering the haste at which it was built.Bricks were readily available in Tonbridge, whose seams of brickearth and Wealden Clay had beenplundered by brick makers since the 19th century. Punnett and Sons’ works off Woodfield Road (which had acapacity of 300,000 bricks a year as early as 1858) and at Quarry Hill (capable of making 100,000+ a week)would surely have met the needs of long sectors of the GHQ Line.The efficiency of the whole pillbox project depended on the site supervisors, who as well asoverseeing the work had to ensure the serviceability of cement mixers and the constant availability ofequipment and consumables, including metal rod benders and cutters; petrol and lubricating oil; paint (forcamouflage); shuttering; baulks of timber (for temporary access roads across soft ground); nails, screws, wire,nuts, bolts and washers; tarpaulins; hand-pumps; buckets; small hand-tools, picks, shovels, spades and saws;padlocks and keys (for site huts), water trolleys ... the list is almost endless.And the cost? About £150 - £400 per pillbox, or £9,300 - £25,000 today (this and subsequent costcomparisons are based on historical inflation rates published on http://inflation.iamkate.com andwww.thisismoney.co.uk ).34Chapter Six: Ironside attacked and sackedDespite Churchill’s endorsem*nt of his ‘stop-lines’ concept and encouraging comments over probably severalbrandies after their dinner on 29 May, Ironside was soon being criticised by the Chiefs of Staff and other seniorofficers. He was said to be encouraging a ‘Maginot mentality’, recalling France’s formidable bunkeredfortifications along its western borders that Germany had recently circumvented simply by invading throughthe Low Countries. He was told that any invasion battle should be fought and won on the coast, and that hisGHQ Line was so far from the beaches that too much of Kent and Sussex would be sacrificed while retreatingto it.Ironside argued that the line was a final fall-back position, not one to which to retreat as soon as the‘coastal crust’ was penetrated. He appreciated the importance of mobile forces but emphasized that thosepresently available were still untrained and inadequately armed, and could not be relied upon to halt advancesacross the hinterland. Hence his stop-lines.Among Ironside’s fiercest critics were Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, who on 26 June 1940 wasappointed Southern Command’s General Officer Commanding-in-Chief. Brooke begrudged the time and effortexpended on ‘static defences’ (pillboxes and stop-lines) and instead demanded stronger investment in mobilereserves; he was particularly distrustful of road-blocks, considering them as likely to impede his own forcesduring a counter-offensive as much as they would hamper the enemy.He was supported by Montgomery, who would play an increasingly imperative role in anti-invasiondefence before embarking on his offensive campaigns in North Africa. He wrote, ‘my whole soul revoltedagainst allowing troops to get into trenches and become “Maginot minded” and incapable of offensive action’.Montgomery argued his case with Churchill, who heard the same from Brooke while visiting SouthernCommand on 17 July. On 19 July Ironside was summoned to meet Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War,who told him he was to be replaced as C-in-C Home Forces by Brooke, who had greater battlefield experience.Ironside retired after more than 40 years’ military service with the rank of Field Marshal and was ennobled as‘1st Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in the County of Aberdeen’. He left GHQ after only 54 days inoffice, his stop-lines incomplete but his place in the annals of home defence assured, although history has nottreated him kindly; static defences were about all he could advocate at during his time at GHQ.Brooke cleared his desk at Southern Command HQ on 20 July and embarked on inspections of thedefences he had inherited. In a post-war addendum to his 1939-1945 war diaries he wrote, ‘much work andenergy was being expended on an extensive system of rear defence, comprising anti-tank ditches andpillboxes, running roughly parallel to the coast and situated well inland. This static rear defence did not fall inwith my conception of the defence of the country. To my mind our defence should be of a far more mobile andoffensive nature ... a light defence along the beaches, to hamper and delay landings to the maximum, and inthe rear highly mobile forces trained to immediate aggressive action to concentrate and attack any landingsbefore they had time to become too well established’. He added that he had every intention of sprayingmustard-gas along the beaches.He partially halted the construction of stop-lines in favour of ‘nodal point’ defences (aka ‘anti-tankislands’) at towns and villages on critical road and rail junctions; an invading army would be forced to capturethese before it could advance. Tonbridge and Maidstone, on the GHQ Line, and Ashford, Canterbury, Doverand Folkestone, on or close to subsidiary lines, were selected as ‘Category A’ nodal points, to be defended tothe last man and the last round.35Kent’s strategic anti-invasion defences in 1940/41. (©Victor Smith, 2001)The supplanting of Ironside’s policy for Brooke’s came at the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Thesewere dangerous times in which to build pillboxes in remote countryside, far from any air-raid shelters. Germancivil aircraft carrying spy cameras had started photographing war targets in Britain in 1936 and by the summerof 1940 the Luftwaffe had 1:10,000 scale maps on which were marked hundreds of pillboxes and otherpositions; their pilots were well aware of the defences being erected in the fields below their flight-paths andhad many opportunities to strafe and bomb them.On 16 July, Hitler indulged in another bout of sabre-rattling in his Führer Directive No. 16, declaring:‘As England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, still shows no willingness to come to terms, I havedecided to prepare and if necessary to carry out, a landing operation against her. The aim of this operation isto eliminate the English mother country as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued and,if it should be necessary, to occupy it completely’.His Operation Seelöwe (Operation Sea Lion) envisaged an invasion along the Kent and Sussex coast.On 7 September, from their eyrie on the gatehouse, Tonbridge’s Observer Corps counted 200 German aircraftheading north-west; they were part of a force of 350 bombers and their fighter escorts that became engagedin a tremendous dog-fight in which the RAF shot down 88 enemy ‘planes and lost 22. It was the first day of theLondon Blitz.William Oliver was one of the observers. ‘His duties were between 6pm and 6am’, his daughterJessica recalled. ‘There always had to be two men on duty together but owing to a shortage of trainedvolunteers sometimes each man had to complete a double duty. Some of this training involved me, because heoften asked me to help him by holding up recognition cards showing the silhouettes of British and Germanaircraft’.The 7 September raid prompted the Home Guard to issue the ‘Cromwell’ alert and, as a pre-arrangedwarning, church bells were rung all over England. Nevertheless ‘Cromwell’ proved to be a false alarm. On 17September, realising he would be unable to defeat Britain in the air, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion,finally abandoning it in June 1941 to embark on Operation Barbarossa; what Churchill called ‘Britain’s darkesthour’ (the 12 months following Dunkirk) had passed.‘It was a new phase of the war’, wrote Brooke. ‘As long as the Germans were engaged in the invasionof Russia there was no possibility of an invasion of these islands. It would now depend on how long Russiacould last and what resistance she would be able to put up. My own opinion at the time and shared by mostpeople was that Russia would not last long, possibly 3 or 4 months. It certainly looked as if Germany would be36unable to launch an invasion of England until October [1941] and by then the weather and winter would beagainst any such enterprise. It therefore looked as if we should be safe from invasion during 1941’.Nonetheless, invasion defence planning continued apace, since the progress of the war wasunpredictable and if Hitler conquered Russia he would likely have revived Operation Sea Lion. By the end of1940 the Home Guard was a strong, efficient force – the comical capers of the likes of Captain Mainwaring’splatoon were now just amusing memories – and capable of accepting more responsibilities at home, whileBrook devoted his energies to converting his professional forces into armies capable of attacking the Germansin territories they occupied in Europe and North Africa.37Chapter Seven: ‘Monty’ takes command of invasion defenceIn June 1940 Eastern Command’s 12 Corps became responsible for defending Kentand Sussex, establishing its headquarters in requisitioned houses at 2, 10, 16, 21 and32 Broadwater Down, a residential street on the edge of Hargate Forest, TunbridgeWells. The corps’ first General Officer Commanding (GOC) was Lt-Gen. AugustusFrancis Andrew Nicol Thorne and its badge (pictured left) was tenuously linked to hisname, featuring an oak, ash and thorn, evoking the chorus from Rudyard Kipling’s A Tree Song - ‘Of all thetrees that grow so fair/Old England to adorn/Greater are none beneath the Sun/Than Oak, and Ash, andThorn’. The fact that Tunbridge Wells is close to Kipling’s ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’ country may also have inspiredthe badge’s designer. While at 12 Corps, Thorne formed the ‘12 Corps Observation Unit’, the prototype for the‘Auxiliary Units’ guerrilla organization, prosaically called 203 GHQ (Reserved) Battalion, Home Guard. Shortlyafter he arrived at Broadwater Down, Thorne asked members of Lt-Gen. Andrew McNaughton’s 1st CanadianDivision to camouflage and fortify his HQ. Later, specialists in anti-tank warfare arrived to select sites forartillery and infantry positions for what eventually became part of the Tunbridge Wells nodal point.Initially, post-Dunkirk, 12 Corps comprised the 1st London Infantry Division (later renamed 56th[London] Infantry Division) and, until October 1940, the 45th Division, but within a few months the corps’Order of Battle (its units and formations) also consisted of the 44th (Home Counties) Division; the 43rdDivision, the 44th Division (withdrawn in April 1942 and replaced by the 53rd [Welsh] Division); and the RoyalArtillery’s 60th (North Midland) Army Field Regiment, 88th (2nd West Lancashire) Army Field Regiment and74th Medium Regiment. As the war progressed, the Canadian Corps became attached to 12 Corps, as did the1st New Zealand Division for a short time in 1940.The 1st London had four brigades with three battalions from the Queen’s Royal (West Surrey)Regiment, two from the Royal Fusiliers (City of London) Regiment and one each from the Oxfordshire andBuckinghamshire Light Infantry, the London Scottish Regiment, the London Irish Rifles, the Royal BerkshireRegiment, the Welch Regiment, the Coldstream Guards and the Grenadier Guards.The 43rd Wessex Division had one brigade, the 128th Infantry, whose units were the 1/4th, 2/4th and5th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment and the 128th Infantry Brigade Anti-Tank Company.The 44th Home Counties, transferred from Northern Command’s 1 Corps, marshalled regiments fromthe home and southern counties into three brigades among which were three battalions of the Queen’s RoyalWest Kent Regiment, three battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment, two battalions of the Queen’s RoyalRegiment and one battalion of The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment).Together the three divisions could muster about 50,000 troops to provide professional support forthe rapidly expanding Home Guard battalions, which at full strength each averaged 800 men. Major-GeneralClaude F Liardet’s ‘56th London’ and Major-General Robert Pollok’s ‘43rd Wessex’ were front-line forces, toattack along the corps’ right (west) and left (east) flanks respectively, and had HQs at Leigh Green (two milessouth of Tenterden) and Wye. The ‘44th Home Counties’, based at Stede Court, Harrietsham, was held inreserve under the command of Major-General Brian Gwynne Horrocks, later chiefly remembered as thecommander of XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden.Billets and buildings were acquired all over Kent for Army living accommodation and offices,augmented by increasing numbers of Nissen hut camps when, from 1943, more and more troops arrived asthe training policy switched from preparing to defeat Germany in southern England to invading occupiedEurope. In Tonbridge, Fossian Hall in the High Street, Yardley Lodge in Yardley Park Road and houses in LondonRoad were among the properties requisitioned.In February 1941 changes in the Army’s structure led to the formation of South-Eastern Command totake over Eastern Command’s territory south of the Thames - Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.At about this time, 12 Corps handed over responsibility for defending Sussex to 4 Corps. In April, Thorne wassucceeded at 12 Corps by Montgomery, now a Temporary Lieutenant-General, whose personal quarters wereat 69 Warwick Park, half a mile from Corps HQ.38On 7 May he wrote to his friend Major Christopher (‘Kit’) Dawnay, saying: ‘I rather fancy I burst intoKent like a 15in. shell!’ Evidently he was none too impressed by Thorne’s command of the corps.From Broadwater Down, Montgomery imposed the same rigorous physical fitness and training regimehe had enforced at 5 Corps – ‘hard and tough’, he wrote in his Memoirs, ‘carried out in all conditions ofweather and climate; in rain, snow, ice, mud, fair weather or foul, at any hour of the day or night – we must beable to do our stuff better than the Germans. Commanders and staff officers at any level who couldn’t standthe strain were weeded out. Total war demanded total fitness from the highest to the lowest’.In one of his first directives to his senior officers Montgomery wrote: ‘They [their troops] will be madeto understand that the only thing that is certain in battle will be uncertain. They will be taught to grasp rapidlythe essentials of a military situation and do something about it quickly. They will be taught to act on verbalorders’.Montgomery’s military enclave at Broadwater Down was only yards from a complex of tunnels andunderground chambers built for 12 Corps nearly 100 feet below Hargate Forest. The corps’ activities, and theexcitement of a visit by King George V1 on 13 June 1941, were the subject of much gossip in the town. Afterthe war it was rumoured that the tunnels, in a part of the forest known locally as ‘The Wilderness’ (NGRTQ575375), led to a secret bunker, intended to be Montgomery’s D-Day HQ.In 1969 the local Courier newspaperreported that a builder had discovered an entrance to the tunnels. This prompted readers with long but notnecessarily reliable memories to ‘reveal’ their secret purpose. Asked by the Courier if he knew what the bunkerwas built for, Montgomery replied: ‘I know nothing whatever of the underground D-Day HQ. It was not builtfor me and I never gave any orders for it to be built. I do not believe in such a Headquarters, they are wrongand bad for morale’.Also in 1969, Mrs Hilary Finch, who lived at 10 Broadwater Down, wrote to Montgomery asking him toconfirm that he had used her house during the war. He answered: ‘I did indeed have my Corps HQ at No. 10Broadwater Down in 1941, from 12th April to 17th November. On return from Dunkirk ... I was given commandof 5 Corps, commanding all the troops in Hampshire and Dorset. That was in 1940. Then in 1941 the War Officebecame alarmed about a possible German invasion in Kent, so I was transferred to command 12 Corps and hadunder my command all the troops in Kent, which was then known as Invasion Corner’.Research by Steve Sullivan, published on www.blighty-at-war.net in October 2018, finally disclosedthe ‘secrets’ of the bunker, 77 years after it was built. Montgomery had been economical with the truth in1969 (mid-way through the Cold War) when he spoke to the Courier. Perhaps he assumed the bunker was stillsubject to the Official Secrets Act and the less said about it, the better, but the War Diaries of the RoyalEngineers’ 172nd Tunnelling Company recorded on 11 May: ’No.1 Section proceeded to Tunbridge Wells asadvance party (approx. 30 men from Aldershot)’; on 19 May: ‘The work on the 12th Corps dug-out atTunbridge Wells was officially taken over by 172nd Tunnelling Company’; and on 19 July: ‘Tunnellingoperations on the 12th Corps shelter at Broadwater Down is now completed’.Right: 21 Broadwater Down, the corps’ main HQ,pictured in 2018. Next page: 12 Corps’ premises inTunbridge Wells. (©Steve Sullivan, blighty-at-war.net)39In September 1941 the company moved to Sarre, on the Isle of Thanet, to construct undergroundheadquarters for a Canadian Army brigade assigned to South-Eastern Command. The fitting-out of theBroadwater Down bunker was completed by 12 Corps and occupied by its Signals Division in 1942.Montgomery was CO of 12 Corps for eightmonths (from April to December 1941) and it isinconceivable that he was not aware of the bunker.It was an element in Lt-Gen. Brook’s new strategyfor the defence of southern England, in whichMontgomery had a vital role, and would have beenessential to the corps’ operations had the enemysucceeded in advancing this far inland, only eightmiles south of the GHQ Line. The bunker was in aclearing directly alongside the road (guarded, nodoubt, by the Military Police) and its entrances andspoil heaps would have been camouflaged toprevent detection from the air.There was probably a large Army camp within the forest, unless the sappers were billeted in nearbyhouses. Up to 120 men worked in the tunnels at any one time, while vehicles hauling machinery and carryingheavy construction materials - cement, aggregates, bricks, steelwork, timber props - were continually turningoff the arterial roads skirting Hargate Forest (the A26 Eridge Road and A267 Frant Road) and passingMontgomery’s HQ. He and his officers would have had meetings with their Royal Engineers opposite numbers,possibly entertaining them in their mess at 10 Broadwater Down, and the other ranks would surely havesocialised at the local pub! The tunnels are not the only legacy of the Army’s occupation of Broadwater Down.As recently as April 2019 a cache of hand-grenades, Home Guard, for the use of, was found in a nearby garden.The Royal Logistic Corps disposed of them in a controlled explosion.Right: Generals Brook and Montgomery with WinstonChurchill.(®IWM)40* * *Top of page: one of the three blockhouses that defendedthe entrances to 12 Corps’ bunker. Left: top of the stairsleading from the blockhouse into the bunker. Above: theflooded main tunnel in 2002.(© Nick Catford, Subterranea Britannica)41Chapter Eight: Tonbridge becomes a ‘fortress town’Montgomery’s immediate superior was Lt-Gen. Bernard Paget, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-inC) of South-Eastern Command, who on 13 October 1941 issued his South-Eastern Command Appreciation forthe Spring of 1942 to his corps commanders - Montgomery; Lt.-Gen Francis Nosworthy (4 Corps) and Lt.-GenAndrew McNaughton (Canadian Corps). Germany’s armoured divisions were now four months into theirinvasion of Russia and advancing rapidly on Moscow. Brooke’s view that Russia would be defeated in 3-4months still prevailed, so he and his commanders revised their plans, in which in a subtle change of emphasisthe troops were told their duty was to ‘counter-attack’ in the face of an invasion; the accent now was on‘offence’ instead of ‘defence’. The words ‘defend’ and ‘retreat’ were seldom mentioned by Paget andMontgomery.Paget’s stated objective was to prevent the enemy establishing a bridgehead through which its mainattack could be supplied and reinforced; and if that failed, to break up its main thrusts towards London andcounter-attack to recapture the bridgehead.Several ‘nodal point’ towns under Paget’s command had already been developed into ‘fully tankproof localities’. He now announced that Tonbridge and Maidstone would be similarly upgraded as ‘fortresstowns’, with augmented defences within perimeters defined by tank-traps and anti-tank ditches. ‘The object ofthe nodal point system’, Paget wrote, ‘is to delay the enemy’s advance, if he should obtain a temporarysuccess, until our reserve formations can be brought into action ... there will be no withdrawal in anycirc*mstances and all ranks must be determined that every German who succeeds in setting foot in this countryshall be killed’.Tonbridge Council was briefed on the town’s role in this scheme, resolving that because itsinhabitants would not be allowed to leave the nodal point during ‘military operations’ it was imperative toprovide them with shelters. It was further decided, rather unnecessarily it would seem, that ‘within the nodalpoint, protection must be provided for 100% of the civil population without any regard to their financialposition’.On 4 January 1942 estimates were published for completing defences already approved andaugmenting them with others in order to create ‘Tonbridge Fortress, with the castle as garrison HQ. The newworks were marked out on a 25-inches to the mile plan, dated December 1941, showing where they were tobe positioned along and within the town’s defended perimeter.The total cost, excluding work to be done by Army labour, was estimated at £16,000 (about £768,000today). The allocation for the perimeter covered 150 anti-tank concrete cubes (£3,000); four more pillboxes(£1,600); modifications to three existing pillboxes (£150); 13 road-blocks (£650), and tree-felling (£200). Theanti-tank ditch was to be extended by 1,200 yards, and 500 yards of the river deepened.Additions to ‘The Keep’ (aka castle) were itemised as 100 concrete cubes (£2,000); two pillboxes(£800); nine road-blocks (£450); modifications to two pillboxes (£100), and a ‘tunnelled HQ at Command Post’(£300). Anti-tank obstructions were to be enhanced by digging a 140 yard ditch and deepening 90 yards of theriver (doubtless the stretch south of the castle).‘Spurs’ to the defences consisted of 150 more cubes (£3,000); 11 road-blocks (£550) and three ‘minor’blocks (£150), while east of the town provision was made for one road-block (£50) and a 750-yard anti-tankditch.The total number of road-blocks in the estimates came to 39. A year earlier, 14 had already been setup; Tonbridge Council noted on 2 January 1941 that the cost of lighting them with 101 hurricane lampsamounted ‘to no less than £8 a week’.One of the contractors for the 1942 works was Chittenden and Simmons Ltd, who on 3 Februaryasked Tonbridge Council for permission to operate concrete mixing depots on parts of the carriageway inPortman Park, in north-east Tonbridge, and The Crescent, in The Slade area north of the castle; and to erecttwo small offices for their foreman and clerk in the castle grounds opposite The Slade School. Permission wasgranted, ‘subject to arrangements being made to the surveyor’s satisfaction, the contractors making good anydamage, lighting any obstructions during the hours of darkness and the site being cleared at any time upon42demand by the Council’. The depots’ purpose was clearly to produce concrete for tank-traps and road-blocks.A demand by the Council to ‘clear the site on demand’ would surely have been met by a frosty refusal from theCIC Home Forces!Chittenden and Simmons, whose head office was in Maidstone, was founded by Edmund BarrowChittenden and Percy A. Simmons and carried out large road-building contracts for Kent County Council andLondon County Council.Not all the defences in Paget’s ‘appreciation’ went ahead. In December 1941, the very month in whichit was being drafted, Brooke succeeded Field Marshal Sir John Dill as Chief of the Imperial General Staff andPaget became Commander-in-Chief Home Forces. A few weeks later, In February 1942, Brooke ordered thatpillbox construction should cease, affecting most, probably all, of those in the 4 January estimates forTonbridge Fortress. However, post-war aerial photographs show that the anti-tank ditch along the perimeterwas completed, in most respects following the lines marked on the plan.Any pillboxes completed for 12 Corps along the Medway and elsewhere before Brooke issued hisorder had to meet a higher specification than their predecessors by having walls at least 3ft 6in. thick, capableof withstanding onslaughts by 37mm anti-tank guns. Selected anti-tank pillboxes had 8ft thick walls; existingpillboxes were brought up to standard by having a 3ft 6in. wall built on their most vulnerable side.In December 1941, Montgomery succeeded Paget as CO of South-Eastern Command, which to evokea more aggressive intent than ‘command’ was renamed (with his enthusiastic approval and possibly on hisinitiative) the ‘South-Eastern Army’ and was responsible for Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Contrary to what he toldMrs Finch in 1969 (‘at no time ... did I ever have an HQ underground’) his centre of operations occupied anetwork of tunnels under Reigate Hill, as well as houses in Underhill Park Road and Beech Road; Montgomerywould certainly have known about this complex and visited it regularly in the early months of the war andwhen it was extensively enlarged in the winter of 1940.The proposed ‘tunnelled HQ at Command Post’ at Tonbridge Fortress would have been needed onlyin the most dire circ*mstances imaginable, with 12 Corps’ HQ at Broadwater Down and other forwardpositions under enemy attack or even control, and Tonbridge’s garrison of professional and Home Guardsoldiers desperately following orders to hold out to the last man and the last bullet.In a memo to GHQ dated 4 February 1942, requesting permission to build the HQ, Montgomery said:‘It is proposed that this should consist of a single chamber 50ft long, situated under the central area of thecastle mound [the Norman ‘motte’], where the cover will be approximately 40-50 ft. It would be approachedby two horizontal slits 90ft long from the path bordering the Moat.‘The Keep area of this Garrison is very small and contains few buildings. The only suitable place for theconstruction of a Battle Headquarters is the Castle Mound. The castle is an ancient monument but it isconsidered that the tunnel would not affect [it] at all. If approval is given, this aspect of the case will be takenup with the Office of Works [the government department that requisitioned property for wartime use] andtheir approval obtained before work is commenced’.This is a surprising proposition, considering Montgomery’s opposition to tunnels, but the mound wasnot violated.43Montgomery’s successor as CO of 12 Corps was Lt-Gen. James Gammell, whose divisions and varioussubsidiary units were training for offensive operations overseas but nonetheless, like the Army everywhere,had strategies in place in case Hitler sprang a surprise in 1942 by reviving Operation Sea Lion. On 26 March1942 Gammell issued his 12 Corps’ Plan to Defeat Invasion, emphasizing that east Kent was ‘the mostattractive area’ for an invasion. Offensive action was to be taken against any penetration of beach defences orairborne landings. In the event of infiltration inland, six vital ‘fortresses’ [the strengthened ‘nodal points’ or‘anti-tank islands’] were to ‘hold firm indefinitely’, acting as ‘hinges or pivots of manoeuvre’ for forcesengaging in counter-offensives.Folkestone and Dover, the coastalfortresses, were to be held by an infantry brigade,Tonbridge and the three other inland fortresses by‘special garrisons’.The Home Guard was assigned a vital rolein the plan and would restrict enemy movement bydefending its own towns and villages throughoutKent; setting up observation posts and smallscouting parties to report air landings, andassembling a pool of ‘expert local guides’ at everyvillage post office for the Regular Army.Gammell stressed: ‘These plans will not becalled Defence Schemes since this is liable to inducea defensive mentality. They will be called “Plans toDefeat Invasion”’.Tonbridge Castle’s Norman mound, where Montgomery proposed to build a tunnelled HQ.Left: Montgomery’s proposed ‘tunnelled HQ.44Left: What-might-have-been. An imaginary enactment of aguard on duty at the entrance to Montgomery’s proposedtunnelled HQ beneath Tonbridge Castle’s Norman motte.Staged at New Tavern Fort, Gravesend, by Home Guard reenactor Bill Simmons. (©Victor Smith)By January 1941 Tonbridge was within 12 Corps’Maidstone Sub-Area, whose subordinate units andHome Guard battalions received on 13 April 1942 a52-page manual, headed Maidstone Sub-Area Planto Defeat Invasion, to guide them when preparingtheir own defence plans for their sectors. Many ofthe tasks demanded would have been carried out bythe Home Guard, while behind enemy lines theircompatriots in Churchill’s secret Auxiliary Units wereconducting acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfareagainst enemy-occupied territory.In his preface, the area’s brigade majorwrote: ‘The enemy cannot hope to succeed insubduing this country until he has established alarge and secure bridgehead covering a short andwell-protected sea crossing. Enemy action oninvasion is likely to include parachute or airbornelandings, probably at night, with the object of ... capturing aerodromes ... attacking coast batteries from therear ...securing landing grounds ... attacking HQs; and heavy attacks by armoured and infantry formationslanded by sea and directed on London’. The primary role of the area’s troops were: To hold the Fortresses, Nodal Points, Defended Localities and Defended Villages. To protect vulnerable points. To maintain aerodromes intact. To deny resources likely to be of use to the enemy, and To locate, contain and destroy airborne troops.‘All ranks must be imbued with the offensive spirit and trained to regard the defences as: A means of inflicting heavy losses upon the enemy in his first rush. A means of denying to the enemy avenues of approach through which he must NOT pass. Pivots round which reserves can manoeuvre to exploit enemy failures and temporarydisorganisation.The underlying principle will be that every German who sets foot in the Maidstone Sub-Area will bedestroyed. There will be NO WITHDRAWAL AND NO SURRENDER’.The battle stations throughout the sub-area (redesignated ‘Maidstone Sub-District on 15 May 1943)were defined, those within the Tonbridge Home Guard battalion’s district being: Kent Fortress 2 (Tonbridge), commanded by Lt-Colonel H R Phipps and manned by Regulars and380 Home Guards. Kent Nodal Point 8 (Pembury), a ‘strongly defended locality’ capable of withstanding isolation for3-6 days. DL 39 (Southborough), a ‘Defended Locality’ less important and less strongly held than NodalPoint 8. Eight ‘Defended Villages’. where a small Home Guard force would be ordered to delay the enemy.The villages and their HG strength were: Ashurst (16), Bidborough (23), Burrswood andGroombridge (28), Five Oak Green (51), Fordcombe (26), Langton Green (27), Speldhurst (28) andTudeley (33).45A Triumvirate of Army, Police and Tonbridge Council leaders was ready to direct emergencyprecautions in Tonbridge and Pembury when enemy forces were reported to be advancing, and wasauthorized to commandeer premises and control essential services and supplies. Tonbridge’s new TelephoneExchange in Avebury Avenue, opened in 1939, was identified as a category VP4 (Vital Premises) property, to beprotected by the Home Guard from sabotage and airborne attack.The railway through the town would be both an asset and a liability in an invasion, enabling reserveforces and munitions to be moved quickly across the county but, if captured. allowing the enemy to dolikewise. Armoured trains allocated to the 43rd Wessex and 56th London divisions would be sent to placeswhere airborne troops had landed, with orders to attack them before could form organized bodies. An assaultalong Tonbridge’s railway lines would have been opposed by the 56th London’s trains, based at Ashford.Despite Gammell’s order that there should be ‘NO WITHDRAWAL AND NO SURRENDER’, contingencyplans allowed for a tactical withdrawal if enemy columns captured the town’s southern approaches, acrosswhich run railway lines from the Channel ports, the Sussex coast and Surrey.The plan, appropriately code-named ‘Action Stations’, made ‘L’ Company of the 1st (SouthernRailway) Battalion of Kent Home Guard, based at 232 Shipbourne Road, responsible for closing and protectingTonbridge Station. All its locomotives were to be evacuated or immobilised, to prevent them falling intoenemy hands, rolling stock to remain in place since without engines they would be of no value. Beyond thestation, rail-blocks would be erected to prevent tanks making detours around road-blocks and advancing alongthe railway tracks. The defending troops were under orders to be ready at not more than one hour’s notice toman the rail-blocks, which would be closed only in the ‘immediate face’ of the enemy or when localcommanders received instructions from 12 Corps, the guard of the last train or the driver of the lastlocomotive on the line having handed a ‘Last Train’ order to the rail-block’s commander, who would thennotify the sub-area’s HQ that the line was closed.The railway was Tonbridge’s last line of defence south of the GHQ Line and the invaders would havefaced heavy opposition from field guns positioned on bridges, cuttings and embankments. Had they capturedthe road bridge alongside Tonbridge Station and pressed on up the High Street towards Tonbridge Fortress,600 yards away, the battle would have been fought from barricades, barbed wire entanglements andimprovised infantry positions in adjacent properties. Heavy armoured vehicles would have been confined tothe main street; the contiguous twisting, narrow side roads, unsuitable for tank warfare, would have becomethe scene of infantry incursions and desperate street-by-street resistance. Weapon embrasures cut into thewalls of buildings for this purpose can still be found in some towns in southern England, but not Tonbridge.If in the final moments of Tonbridge Fortress’s defiance the Big Bridge could no longer be defended itwould have been blown-up.Tonbridge Station in 2019: in 1940 the railway tracks would have been a last line of defence south of the GHQ Line.46Exercise ‘CASTLE’The long awaited Second Front demanded by Stalin to divert German forces from the Eastern Front waslaunched by an Allied assault on the Fortress of Europe in July 1943.‘General risings of the civil population in occupied countries coincided with this attack and by the endof June the Axis situation had become such that a diversion to relieve the pressure of the main Allied thrustwas essential.‘On 6 July intelligence reports indicated that the German High Command had decided to strike at SEEngland with the object of disrupting communications, destroying port facilities, airfields and ships, in anattempt to strangle the Allied effort at its source.‘On 10 July a large proportion of the remaining Luftwaffe reserves were committed and a heavy andsustained air attack on SE England occurred. Considerable damage to road and railway communicationsbetween London and SE Coast resulted.‘During the night of 13/14 July enemy raids on a large scale were attempted in SE England. About oneDivision, largely mechanised, landed between HASTINGS and RYE and a similar force effected a landing inWHITSTABLE BAY.‘Small numbers of paratroops were dropped at the same time at scattered inland points in KENT andat first light on 14 July numbers of Junkers bombers, Messerschmitts (323) and towed troop-carrying gliderswere intercepted crossing the KENT coast.‘In spite of heavy casualties the airborne attack was pressed home and landings in force were effectedin areas WINGHAM (6,875), ASHFORD (4,461), MAIDSTONE (1,862), PADDOCK WOOD (1,063) and EDENBRIDGE(8, 865). At 1000 hrs on 14 July, Triumvirates in KENT assumed their invasion plans on orders of the RegionalCommissioner and at 1630 hrs on 14 July the MSD authorised closing of road blocks and disruption of petrol inTONBRDIGE and elsewhere at discretion of local commanders’.* * *The above extract from the War Diaries of 12 Corps’ Maidstone Sub-District (MSD) set the scene for Exercise‘Castle,’ held at Tonbridge from 8 – 11 pm on Thursday 15 July 1943 to test the ability of the town’sTriumvirate to respond to an imminent invasion. MSD officers controlled the exercise and appointed DirectingStaff and Umpires, who held a planning conference in Tonbridge on 2 July.The exercise indicates that even after the tide of war had turned against Germany, invasionprecautions remained in place in southern England – in this case, to resist a counter-attack against forcesmustered there to support an assault on occupied Europe.The Triumvirate’s Army, Police and Council representatives ran the exercise from the CouncilChamber at Tonbridge Castle, liaising with military commanders at Tonbridge Fortress HQ and its outposts,and with Police HQ in Bradford Street, Civil Defence HQ’s Control Room in the High Street, and National FireService control rooms at Castle Street and Quarry Hill.All incidents, irrespective of the Service involved, were coordinated by Fortress HQ and initiatedeither verbally or by messages by the Military, Police, CD or NFS member of the Directing Staff, according tothe Service affected. Military incidents were instigated both at Fortress HQ and its outposts.Police incidents were initiated ‘as and when required’; others requiring Police action ‘arose during thecourse of Military events’ and were dealt with through ‘normal channels’.CD incidents were also initiated ‘as and where’ required, whilst NFS incidents were initiated at theservice’s HQ.The following instruction was issued to all participants: ‘To avoid unreality, the incidents produced willbe such as might occur during an isolated period of three hours under Invasion conditions and NO attempt willbe made to achieve a “happy ending”.No such attempt was made. More than 23,000 airborne troops were assumed to have landed acrossthe county. The exercise’s final communiqué, issued at 6pm on 15 July, stated that they had been reinforcedby AFVs that had penetrated as far inland as Paddock Wood and Edenbridge. Battles were being fought at47Hever and Beltring and because the Regular Army’s reserve troops had been diverted to the coast, none couldbe expected in Tonbridge in under 24 hours. The town was now considered to be a vital enemy objective.Exercise Castle: the final communiqué. (Maidstone Sub-District War Diary)*The ‘disruption of petrol in TONBRIDGE’ ordered during Exercise ‘Castle’ applied to Tonbridge sector’sfuel depot at Hall Place, Leigh and 12 Corps’ Command Petrol Depot (CPD). The latter was in SomerhillPark (NGR TQ608451), the extensive grounds of Somerhill, a Jacobean mansion 1½ miles south-east ofTonbridge. The Army occupied the park from 1940 until 1949, for part of which time it was a prisoner ofwar camp for German and Italian interns as well as a petrol depot.Exercise ‘Castle’ confirms that even while plans to invade occupied Europe were reaching anadvanced stage (and would be implemented within a year), a strategy had to be in place to confront aGerman counter-invasion of our shores. In pursuit of this, on 18 January 1944 (less than five monthsbefore D-Day), staff officers of Maidstone Sub-District issued a Defence Plan for the CPD.Its purpose was ‘effectively to protect the whole area’ and ‘clearly to lay down the action to be takenin emergency by its personnel’.The ‘type of enemy action to be expected’ was defined as ‘an attack in strength with the object ofcapturing the CPD intact and only likely in the event of full-scale invasion’, and ‘local limited attack by airtroops to destroy stocks of POL [petrol and oil liquids]’.The CPD was to ‘continue to function during operations. It will be defended and kept working untilthe enemy has been defeated’. Stocks of POL will NOT be destroyed except in the circ*mstances set out inOperational Instruction No. 18, issued on 20 October 1943’ [a revision of the 13 April 1942 Maidstone Subarea Plan to Defeat Invasion].Warning of an attack was to be passed by word of mouth, and three ‘states of readiness’ weredescribed: ‘NORMAL – Invasion unlikely but raids or sabotage always possible. ‘STAND TO’ – Conditions favourable and invasion considered imminent. Complete state ofreadiness for all Reg tps [Regular troops] and certain HG [Home Guard]. All troops will be at halfan hour’s notice. Leave personnel will NOT be recalled but further leave will NOT be granted.Battle HQ will be established in the Dep [depot] office and will be manned at all times,maintaining 24hr phone watch. Unfinished defence works will be completed ... all troops willcarry, or have immediately available, steel helmets ... rifles ... and respirators’.48 ‘ACTION STAS’ – Ordered when there is an immediate threat of invasion. Complete state ofreadiness for all Services. Action on receipt of warnings: as for STAND TO with the addition of OPS[observation posts] and Def [defence] posts will be manned continuously ... fire-fighting party willstand by and deal with any outbreak of fire within the depot. The normal working of the depotwill continue and POL will be issued on demand in the usual way.In the event of an invasion, ‘Air-troops landing in the CPD or in the immediate vicinity will bedestroyed by the depot mobile reserve before they are able to reorganize. If their strength is too largeto enable this operation to be undertaken, they will be contained by fire until such time as a reliefcolumn can be send to destroy them. Enemy approach to the CPD will be denied by fire. If destructionof stocks takes place, remaining personnel will move to TONBRIDGE and come under FortressCommand’.Eighty years later, no traces of Somerhill’s wartime past survive. In 1945 some of the Armyhuts were taken over by squatters, until the estate was reclaimed by its pre-war owners, thed'Avigdor-Goldsmid family; John Betjeman, Hugh Casson, David Niven and Enoch Powell were amongtheir distinguished house guests. The mansion and grounds are now occupied by three schools,known as ‘The Schools of Somerhill’.49Chapter Nine: ’Scorched earth’ plan forMaidstone Sub-Area’s Plan to Defeat Invasion included detailed instructions for ‘Denial of Assets to theEnemy’, a schedule of disruption, destruction or evacuation intended to prevent advancing invaders acquiringessential supplies abandoned by the defenders; these ‘scorched earth’ commands were somewhat at oddswith Paget’s instruction ‘there will be no withdrawal in any circ*mstances’.Petrol and oil were a priority, the aforementioned petrol and fuel depots being especially vulnerable if theenemy seemed likely to capture the GHQ Line. In this case, full ‘Jerrycans’ were to be evacuated, ‘timepermitting’, otherwise ‘destroyed by burning’; Army and commercial petrol pumps to be disabled and thepipes from the storage tanks beneath them sealed with concrete and lead wool; manhole covers to be locked(and their keys hidden); and the sludge-co*cks on overhead tanks to be opened, allowing their contents to bedrained to waste, ‘special care’ being taken to avoid contaminating water supplies.Tonbridge South Suburban Gas Company’s gas works at Old Cannon Wharf were to maintainproduction unless damaged, in which case all surface tanks of gas oil motor fuel, one of its by-products, wereto be burned in-situ or discharged into a bund or pit and set ablaze. Underground tanks were to be blown up.Gas works also stored Benzol motor fuel, known to be used by German AFVs, so this was to be mixed with tarand thus rendered unusable. Farmers were to drain their surface tanks of Ferosence tractor fuel to waste andseal their underground tanks.Road tankers should be operated ‘until the last possible moment’ and then immobilised, drained andeither overturned or punctured. One of Kent’s largest fleets of tankers was operated by South-Eastern TarDistillers (‘SETAR’) of Vale Road, Tonbridge, and Broad Oak Road, Canterbury. The firm bought crude tar fromgas works in Kent, Sussex and Surrey and converted it into road tar, creosote and hop fumigant.Rail tankers of motor spirit were to beoverturned (after opening their filling hatches) byraising their sides by ‘2ft 5in’ [sic], using ‘manpoweror block-and-tackle’. Alternatively they could beemptied to waste through their drain-co*cks orpunctured ‘in about 15 minutes with a cold chiseland hammer’, although ‘the simplest method’ wouldbe to ‘throw a sticky-bomb grenade at its end-plate’.Top picture: a ‘SETAR’ road tanker, photographed in 1938. (®Brett Group) The Gas Works (right) were to be blown up ifdamaged by enemy action. The Telephone Exchange (left) was to be protected from sabotage and airborne attack.50Tonbridge Council’s electricity generating station at The Slade, housing three steam-powered generators and a100kW diesel generator, was to be ‘denied’ if damaged by enemy action or ‘for other reasons [was] no longercapable of serving the civilian population’. Wood, wool, straw, ‘tar torches’ and other flammable materialswere stored there, to start fires in its buildings.Below: Tonbridge electricity generating station’s engine room, built in 1901 and decommissioned in 1951.The town’s river craft, which ranged from rowing boats to 90-ton seaworthy barges, were to remainmoored at specified collecting points, ready to be scuttled if likely to be appropriated by the invaders to makepontoon bridges or to ferry troops along the Medway. Vessels needed to carry goods, passengers, soldiers andemergency service personnel were exempt. Although not mentioned in this plan, at the last resort Town Lock –the highest on the Medway Navigation from the Thames Estuary – would surely have been destroyed, toprevent it being seized by the enemy as site for a temporary bridge if its infantry and AFVs had been unable tocapture Big Bridge and Cannon Bridge, respectively upstream and downstream from the lock.51All troops including the Home Guard in the sub-area were under orders to defend the localities in whichthey were quartered against parachute and airborne troops. By day, the aggressors were to be located anddestroyed quickly, before they had time to become an organized force; at night they should be located,contained ‘and destroyed at first light’.Primary road-blocks (those at Tonbridge Fortress and nodal points) and Secondary road-blocks (at theless important Defended Localities and Defended Villages) would be manned by at least one NCO and fourmen. Demolition parties were given precise instructions as to when and how bridges should be demolished.A chilling appendix to the directive covered evacuation procedures to be implemented in places facedwith imminent enemy occupation: ‘It is impracticable to clear the entire civil population from all areas wherefighting may take place. Pre-evacuation schemes are therefore confined to areas which are most likely to bebeaten by the fire of our own and the enemy’s weapons, such as ... certain nodal points’.One of these was, of course, Tonbridge, newly upgraded to Fortress status, where the civilianpopulation was to ‘stand firm, even when operations are in progress and an emergency organization hasalready been set up to allow civilian life to continue in some form under these conditions. When bombing orfires make it impossible for the population to remain in their homes any longer they will be directed by thecivil police to the nearest available Rest Centre and absorbed locally’.At Tonbridge a ‘bolt’ (exclusion zone) 200 – 500 yards deep would be formed around a defendedposition defined by the local military commander, from which civilians would be evacuated to other parts ofthe town. Those made homeless by the battle ‘will be shepherded by the civil police to the nearest rest centre’[of which there were more than 300 in 12 Corps’ area] ‘where food, shelter and sanitary facilities will beavailable ... homeless civilians will if possible be billeted or otherwise absorbed in the vicinity.’The object of these plans is to help homeless civilians on the ground by providing the necessities oflife and to prevent them from getting on the roads and becoming refugees.‘Under no circ*mstances will local arrangements be made for the evacuation of refugees or for refugeeroutes’.Clearly, the authorities were anxious to prevent refugees from fleeing in the face of the enemy, as hadbeen the case in Holland and Belgium two years earlier.* * *These plans were impressive in scope and detail but some of the ‘denial of assets’ aspects would have beenderided by General Montgomery, who wrote in his Memoirs: ‘I rebelled against the “scorched earth” policywhich had advocates in Whitehall; their reasoning was that as the Germans advanced inland towards London,Town Lock, collecting point for river craft to be denied to the enemy at all costs, pictured in 2019.52so we would burn and destroy the countryside as we retreated. I said we would not retreat, nor would theGermans advance inland. Thus our confidence in our ability to defeat the Germans was built up, at any rate inthe area under my command’.The brigade major who issued the ‘scorched earth’ plan to Maidstone Sub-Area was the chief of staffof one of the 12 Corps’ brigades, whose CO reported to General Gammell, commander of 12 Corps – andGammell’s immediate superior was General Montgomery at South-Eastern Army HQ. So despite ‘Monty’s‘rebellious’ opposition to ‘burn and destroy’, it became a contingency against failure to prevent the Germansadvancing inland.In April, when the plan was conceived, ‘Monty’ was preoccupied with scheduling the followingmonth’s Exercise ‘TIGER’ (not to be confused with the 1944 D-Day rehearsal of that name), a programme ofprotracted anti-invasion manoeuvres in which 100,000 troops were involved. This, perhaps, is why he did nottake time to veto the plan. In any case, it became obsolescent almost as soon as it was created, as did theestimates for reinforcing Tonbridge’s defences and Montgomery’s proposed tunnelled HQ at the castle. InDecember 1941 America had declared war on Germany; by the time General Gammell and his commandersissued their plans to defeat invasion, thousands of US troops had already arrived in England to prepare toinvade occupied Europe.Soon their numbers would reach 1.5 million. Fears of an invasion of England were further dispelledlater in 1942 when Hitler, fighting on two fronts and abandoning all thoughts of invading England, launched hisill-fated onslaught on Stalingrad and was defeated by Montgomery’s ‘Desert Rats’ at the Second Battle of ElAlamein - a victory described by Churchill as ‘a glorious and decisive victory ... not the end ... not even thebeginning of the end ... but perhaps the end of the beginning’.For more than two years England’s church bells had been silent, to be pealed only when invasion wasdeemed imminent, but on 15 November 1942 the ban was lifted. The bell-ringers at St Peter and St Paul's andthousands of other parish churches celebrated the victory from belfries in the very towers from which theHome Guard had kept watch for parachutists, day and night, in all seasons and weather conditions.Preparations for the invasion of Europe now succeeded those for defying invasion, one consequencebeing the demise of Tonbridge’s Angel Sports Ground, a popular venue for club and county cricket since 1869.It was requisitioned for use as a military motor transport compound and although the Army’s lorries wereoccasionally moved to make way for cricket matches, these had to be abandoned after German bombersbegan to jettison bombs over the town. After the war it was deemed too expensive to restore the ground andeventually the Pavilion Shopping Centre took its place.As for the town’s various reinforced concrete defence works, a schedule (pictured below) has survivedshowing that 13 close to the town centre were demolished by Tonbridge Council soon after the war at a costof more than £4,000 (probably about £168,000 in today’s values). From 1951, further pillboxes owned by theCouncil were demolished, using explosives where pneumatic drills proved inadequate.Other defence works, such as some of the tank-traps along or near the outer perimeter’s anti-tankditch, survived for a few years after the war (and, in Lyons Crescent, until the year 2000) but were eventuallyremoved to make way for residential and industrial developments. In some places (Tonbridge School’s playingfields, maybe) the cost of breaking them up and removing tons of rubble was probably avoided simply bypushing them into the ditch and covering them with the earth that had been excavated to create the ditch.Sydney Simmons, who as the Council’s senior engineer and surveyor for 23 years until 1982 was incharge of the post-war restoration of Tonbridge Castle, argued unsuccessfully for the preservation of one ofthe pillboxes on the curtain wall .Today it would be a fascinating feature among the castle’s older fortifications but in the post-waryears public opinion favoured the removal of such ‘blots on the landscape’ to help expunge memories of agrim era in the town’s history.5354Above: demolishing ‘dragons’ teeth’ tank-traps outside the Westminster Bank on the corner of Castle Street and High Streeton 10 November 1944, in ‘pre-Health and Safety’ days! (®Kent Photo Archive) Below: the corner today.55Chapter Ten: Tracing town’s forgotten battle linesAbove and above left: proposed layout of TonbridgeFortress, December 1941. (War Office Archives). Above right: simplified map of Tonbridge Fortress defences, showing theouter perimeter, stop-lines within the perimeter, and the GHQ Line along north bank of River Medway.With hindsight we know that by the end of 1941 there was no longer any prospect of a German invasion, eventhough at that time South-Eastern Command was proceeding to develop Tonbridge into a Fortress Town, asshown on the above ‘secret’ proposal for additional defence works. Not all of them were completed but56nevertheless many of these now forgotten ‘battle lines’, constructed between June 1940 and February 1942,can be traced when walking around the town today and are shown on the RAF aerial photographs taken inOctober 1947.Anti-tank defences east of Tonbridge High Street(from Mill Stream to Shipbourne Road)Legend: TT = Tank-Traps D = Anti-tank ditch ?WP = Weapon Pit at 23 Hadlow Road.The town’s outer perimeter enveloped much of north Tonbridge and comprised anti-tank ditches up to 18ftwide, rows of tank-traps, and barbed wire barricades. Royal Armoured Corps troops, machine-gunners andmobile artillery would have counter-attacked invaders from positions behind the ditches. Properties along theperimeter were designated to become supplementary anti-tank obstacles and infantry posts as required.The perimeter can be seen running from the Mill Stream (NGR TQ594465), south of Town Mills, toCannon Bridge, Cannon Lane. Tank traps are visible west of the bridge and, on the opposite side, what may bea partially demolished FW3/28 pillbox. The defence line crosses the Medway flood plain, then runs NE through← BIG BRIDGE ← MILL STREAM← TOWN LOCK↗ TTTTTT← CANNON BRIDGERIVER MEDWAY →↗ D TT ↗↙ GARDEN ROAD↙ TT← HADLOW ROAD↙ ?WP‘RED ROSES’P’← TT↙ TT← D↓ DLYONS CRESCENT →← TT← LOVERS’ WALK←HIGH STREET← GAS WORKS←CANNON LANETOWN MILLS →← SHIPBOURNE ROADPOWELL’S YARD ↓← ?FW3/28 PILLBOX57Swanmead Allotments and along the south side of Garden Road. Here the last in a long row of tank-traps stoodonly a few feet from the gable wall of 12 Garden Road, the end cottage in a terrace of 12. This and the shop onthe corner of Hadlow Road would themselves have been commandeered to obstruct advancing tanks andprovide improvised defended positions for infantry and artillery troops. By this time it is likely that many ofTonbridge’s residents would have fled, despite instructions to the civilian population to stay-put to prevent theroads leading out of the town becoming congested with refugees who would hinder the arrival of British Armyreserves.From the junction of Garden Road and Hadlow Road the perimeter ran NNW, through theaforementioned garden of No. 23 Hadlow Road (NGR 594469). The curious circular structure seen here may bea weapon pit or other defence work. There may also have been a pillbox hereabouts, identical to the one atTonbridge School and demolished when the Castle Court retirement complex at 25-29 Hadlow Road was builtin 2004/2005, but this cannot be verified. From Hadlow Road the perimeter ran through other gardens toLovers’ Walk (NRG TQ594470); then along the boundary of the grounds of Red Roses in Portman Park; upLovers’ Walk again for about 100 yards; then due north to form two sides of a rectangle (NRG TQ594471)containing about 40 tank-traps. It next veered south, past ten tank-traps, to the south-east corner of Elm Laneplaying field (NRG TQ593471) and from there to the south-west corner of the playing field (NRG TQ 592471),where there was a weapon pit or defended building. The nearby junction of High Street, Shipbourne Road andLondon Road (NRG TQ591471) would have been one of the most heavily ‘defended in north Tonbridge;covering fire from road-blocks, defended buildings and the pillbox in the grounds of Tonbridge School’s Dry HillHouse would have been directed against columns heading north after capturing Big Bridge, or advancing fromother directions.The junction of London Road (left) and Shipbourne Road (ahead), pictured here from the High Street in 2019, would havebeen secured by road-blocks, defended buildings on the outer perimeter, and the pillbox at Dry Hill House.58Above: Garden Road, looking north–west towards HadlowRoad. Tank-traps on Tonbridge’s outer perimeter defences ranfrom this corner, through where there are now a front gardenand outbuildings, to No 12 Garden Road (the gabled house inthe mid-distance). Above right: Nos 1 (foreground) - 12 GardenRoad. These buildings would have been defended by machinegunners and infantry troops if invaders attacked the perimeterat the south-east end of the road. Right: the south-east end ofGarden Road, looking towards Cannon Lane. The lamppost andtrees are on the site of the tank-traps.59The stop-line from the Medway to East StreetBecause the perimeter could not be construed as invincible, contingency measures were taken to impede anyattempt to capture ‘The ‘Keep’, at the heart of Tonbridge Fortress, whose defenders were under orders to‘hold firm indefinitely’. These measures included a stop-line of tank-traps running due north from the Medwayat Powell’s Yard (NGR TQ592464), beside or close to the site of the town’s medieval wall, The Fosse, to LyonsCrescent, and from there through private gardens to East Street, possibly joining another series of tank-trapsor defended buildings extending to High Street in one direction and, in the other, to the perimeter at thejunction of Hadlow Road and Garden Road.Until sold for redevelopment in early 2019, Powell’s Yard (named after one of its first owners) was thelast survivor of the many light industrial premises established along Tonbridge waterfront in the late 19th andearly 20th centuries. Among it premises were a boat shed, forge, livery stable, and workshops forwheelwrights, carpenters, bicycle repairers, various engineering specialists and, finally, Duncan Welch’s motorengineering business in the former stable.These buildings and others in Lyons Crescent and East Street would have provided cover for forcesmanning the stop-line. The above December 1941 proposal shows a weapon pit or defended building betweenEast Street and Lyons Crescent, a road-block outside Powell’s Yard and a pillbox downstream from thesouthern end of the stop-line, from where it could concentrate formidable firepower along the riverbank andacross the river at Town Lock, Baltic Saw Mills and other wharfs and warehouses on the opposite bank.Derelict boat shed and other premises at Powell’s Yard in 2019.Site of southern end of stop-line oftank-traps from river to East Street.↓Above: boat shed at the southern end of the stop-line oftank-traps. Right: site of the stop-line on the eastboundary of Powell’s Yard, now marked by a graveltrack leading down to the river.60Above: Duncan Welch on the site of the tank-traps in Powell’s Yard in 2019; Lyons Crescent is in the background. Aboveright: Duncan Welch with a reinforcement bar salvaged when the tank traps were demolished in 2000.Left: site of road-block in Lyons Crescent and, in thebackground, trees on the site of the stop-line of tank-trapswhich continued to East Street. Above: back gardens in TheLyons, on the site of the tank-traps that continued the stopline from Lyons Crescent to East Street.61Anti-tank defences west of the High Street(from Tonbridge School to The Slade and the River Medway)Legend: TT = Tank Traps D = Anti-tank ditch PB = Pillbox concealed among trees at Tonbridge School.West of the junction of Shipbourne Road and London Road, Tonbridge School’s dormitories and otherproperties facing London Road would have become defended buildings. The perimeter then continued as ananti-tank ditch and tank-traps in the school grounds (at NRG TQ590472), running almost due west, parallelwith North Path, to NRG TQ589471, then turned sharply south-west to follow the boundary between The Headand The Fifty, the school’s playing fields. This section was lined with more than 30 tank-traps. The ditch turnedsouth-west at NRG TQ588470, crossed Pot Kiln Path (a footpath from Lansdowne Road to Hilden Bridge),CASTLE← BIG BRIDGE← RIVER MEDWAYD →TONBRIDGE SCHOOL →SHIPBOURNE ROAD →←HIGH STREET→SLADE SCHOOL →THE FOSSE ↓←TTTT →‘THE HEAD’PLAYING FIELD‘THE FIFTY’ PLAYING FIELDHILDEN BROOK →D →TT and D →PB →ELECTRICITY WORKS →LONDON ROAD →POT KILN PATH →← OUTER BAILEY (akaUPPER CASTLE FIELD andUPPER PLAYING FIELD)HAVELOCK ROAD →← THE AVENUE62meandered through allotments west of The Slade’s narrow streets and across the fields beyond, eventuallyreaching the Medway less than a mile from its eastern starting point at Mill Stream. Donald Fry recalled thatThe Slade section of the ditch was 18-20ft deep and lined with brushwood.Above: The Head playing field, viewed from the site of the anti-tank defences at North Path. (©Tonbridge School)Above: these trees on the boundary between The Head (right) and The Fifty playing fields mark the site of the anti-tankdefences where they ran southwards from North Path. Above right: the site of the anti-tank defences where they emergedon to Pot Kiln Path is now flanked by the groundsman’s store (left) and a sports pavilion.63From Pot Kiln Path the anti-tank defences ran through The Slade’s allotment gardens behind Havelock Road and TheCrescent and across farmland to the River Medway. This curve on the Wilmot Athletics Track is on the site of the allotmentsand defences. Havelock Road is in the mid-distance.The Slade stop-line from Hilden Brook to Havelock RoadThe northern area of The Slade, showing locations of defence works. (®Kent History Forum/Kent Heritage Maps)This stop-line was to be held if enemy forces breached the GHQ Line along the Medway, penetrated the outerperimeter, and advanced on Tonbridge Castle and its environs. The line ran from Hilden Brook (NGR64TQ588466), along which 176 pyramidal tank-traps were ranged; past Tonbridge electricity generating stationand Slade School, and across Stafford Road to the south end of the Fosse, where tank-traps about 5ft 6in. highwere erected. Barbed wire barricades extended all along the east side of Havelock Road as far as EbenezerCottage (11 Havelock Road) and from there, on the west side, to Pot Kiln Path. No evidence survives inHavelock Road of the trench in which land mines were concealed, but the passage of war is marked by stumpsof railings removed from the front garden of Ebenezer Cottage during the 1940 ‘scrap iron for munitions’campaign. There are similar stumps at No 9 Bank Street.The Slade stop-line and the perimeter converged at Pot Kiln Lane and Nos 20 and 21 Havelock Road,in whose back gardens tank-traps were erected. The arc of fire from the proposed machine-gun at No.22would have extended across the anti-tank defences and allotment gardens. On the December 1941 ‘TonbridgeFortress’ proposal, all the houses in Havelock Road were designated ‘anti-tank obstacles using existingbuildings where possible’. The proposal also shows another stop-line of tank-traps, with weapon pits and apillbox, running from a road-block at the corner of the High Street and Castle Street to The Slade. The onlyevidence that this stop line was built is the photograph of ‘dragons’ teeth’ being demolished in Castle Street in1944.Left: This footpath follows the site of 176 pyramidal tanktraps erected beside Hilden Brook (among the trees on theleft) to defend Tonbridge Castle if the enemy succeeded inbreaching the GHQ Line (aka Ironside Line) and theperimeter.Above: the overgrown site of the west end of the line oftank-traps along Hilden Brook. Its width and depth at thispoint suggest it was reconfigured to form an anti-tankditch in front of the tank-traps. Tonbridge Leisure Centre ison the right bank.65From Hilden Brook the stop-line ran west of Tonbridge Castle’s moat and outer bailey (aka Upper Castle Field), its coursenow marked by a sheltered housing development and an embankment (above) that was part of the outer bailey. Below:Slade School (right) and Upper Castle Field, opposite, where there were tank-traps and a V-shaped anti-tank ditch on thestop-line.This house in Stafford Road and the parking spaces mark thecourse of the stop-line. The trees stand where there was agroup of tank-traps at the south end of the Fosse. Right: theonly surviving substantial section of the Fosse, running fromStafford Road to Fosse Road.Left: Havelock Road, looking north towards Pot Kiln Path.A barbed wire barricade ran along its east (right-hand)side as far as Ebenezer Cottage.Above: the site of the land-mine trench in Havelock Roadnear the corner of The Avenue, from where the barricaderan along the west (left-hand) side of the road to Pot KilnPath.66Above: view south from the site of the land-mine trench inHavelock Road. The second house on the right is EbenezerCottage. The corner of The Avenue is in the foreground.Right: stumps of the railings removed from the front gardenof Ebenezer Cottage in 1940.Nos 20 and 21 Havelock Road and (right) Pot Kiln Path, where the stop-line and the outer perimeter defences converged.67Bedroom windows in Havelock Road, from which machine-guns would have had a field of fire across the perimeter’s antitank defences.The ‘Doodlebug’ raidsSoon after D-Day, Tonbridge School was on the front-line in ‘Operation Diver’, the RAF and Anti-AircraftCommand's attempt to protect London against V1 flying-bomb (aka ‘Doodlebug’) air-raids, Nazi Germany'sdesperate attempt to turn the tide of the war as the Allied armies fought their way across northern Europe tothe Rhine. AA Command constantly shifted its 40mm Bofors guns and other artillery around Kent and Sussex toconfront constantly changing lines of attack. The Kentish Gun Belt came into being on 17 June 1944 and wasdivided into four areas, controlled from operations rooms in military accommodation or requisitionedbuildings. Tonbridge area was populated by the guns of the Royal Artillery’s 127 Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment,commanded by Lt. Col. Albert Holdridge, whose HQ was at a house called ‘Lealands’ in London Road,Tonbridge. His Operations Room was in an Army hut near the school’s cricket pavilion, the adjacent playingfield being an ideal site from which to observe and fire at V1s. The other ORs were at the Drill Hall, Lingfield;Buston Manor, Hunton, and The Kennels, near Norton, Faversham. The retaliations were partially successfulbut Kent (‘Doodlebug Alley’) suffered much death and destruction during the onslaughts.68A cricket match on Tonbridge School’s playing field, The Fifty, showing the pavilion (far right).(©Tonbridge School)Tonbridge School as Ironside knew i®Tonbridge School.Artist’s impression of a Second World War Bofors anti-aircraft gun on Tonbridge School’s cricket field. ©Steve Sullivan,blighty-at-war.net)69Chapter Eleven: A town at peaceTonbridge 24 years after the warAerial photographs published in 1969 in the Tonbridge Free Press show the town when it wasemerging from post-war austerity, with much of its war-damage repaired and its anti-invasiondefences removed.Tonbridge Castle, hub of the wartime ‘Keep’ area of Tonbridge Fortress. Slade School is at top left, Big Bridge at bottomright. The weapon pit in Riverside Gardens and the pillboxes on the curtain wall of the castle’s outer bailey have beenremoved and Tonbridge School’s Boer War Memorial has been restored.70Looking east across the High Street and Big Bridge. Tonbridge Castle, Castle Fields and part of The Slade are in theforeground. Beyond the High Street is the town’s rapidly expanding industrial and commercial district. This and residentialdevelopments off Hadlow Road and Shipbourne Road had by now obliterated most traces of the wartime outer perimeterinvasion defences. Tonbridge Gas Works had closed and its two gasometers by the river (top, centre) stored gas piped fromMaidstone.71Tonbridge School and The Head playing field, bordered by trees (top left) running along the site of the wartime anti-tankditch. The trees to the left of the north end of the High Street (top right) conceal the pillbox on which preservation workbegan in 2018.TREES CONCEALING PILLBOX →72The entire length of the High Street, seen from above the railway. In the foreground, Barden Road and Avebury Avenue areon the left; the Angel Hotel (on the corner of Vale Road) and the Congregational Church are on the right. The Big Bridge, thecastle and the parish church and Tonbridge School are in the distance.73Chapter Twelve: Why Hitler could not have captured Tonbridge FortressWould the anti-invasion plans conceived by Home Forces commanders ‘Tiny’ Ironside and Alan Brooke havesucceeded in defeating Hitler’s Operation Seelöwe in September 1940? Could the invaders have penetrated asfar inland as the GHQ Line? Would the defenders on the stop-lines of pillboxes, anti-tank ditches and roadblocks, and the mobile forces deployed around them, have repelled advances by armoured columns, andattacks by airborne troops? Could 12 Corps’ divisions, reserves and the Home Guard have routed them in landbattles and forced them to retreat to their landing beaches and surrender or flee to France?These questions were far from most minds five years later, on VE Day - Tuesday 8 May 1945 - when at3pm Winston Churchill officially announced the end of the war with Germany and Tonbridge, bedecked likeevery other town and village in Britain with Union flags and red, white and blue bunting, began celebrationsthat continued throughout the night and into the following day.An attempt to answer the questions was made 29 years later, at a war game conducted at the RoyalMilitary College, Sandhurst.Artist’s impression of Tonbridge Castledecorated for VE Day celebrations.(®Martin Laws)74Above: German invasion plan from the Third Reich archives. (®Steve Sullivan, blighty-at-war.net)Above: interpretation of German invasion plan from Pillboxes. A Study of the UK Defences 1940, (Henry Wills,Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985).75The exercise in 1974 was based on the known plans of the German and British forces and on Admiraltyweather records for September 1940. Each side was played by serving officers and the moves of the opposingarmies were plotted on a scale model of south-east England.Two teams of four players each took part, representing air, sea and land commanders and politiciansof the respective sides.The German team comprised Rudolf Rothenfelder, ex-Luftwaffe officer and President of the GermanFighter Pilots’ Association, playing Hermann Göring; Professor Rohwer, Director of the Military Institute inStuttgart (Admiral Erich Raeder); Colonel Wachasmuth, Bundeswehr liaison officer at Sandhurst (Field MarshalWalther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army during the Nazi era). They were supportedby Admiral Francis Schuenemann, Defence Attaché at the German embassy in London.Brigadier Page, Assistant Commandant of the Royal Military Academy, played Winston Churchill butthe names of those who played the British military commanders responsible for home defence in September1940 (Hugh Dowding, Air Officer Commanding, RAF Fighter Command; General Alan Brooke, Commander-inChief, Home Forces, and Admiral of the Fleet Dudley Pound) are not recorded.The panel of umpires included Adolf Galland (62), who fought 705 combat missions with the Luftwaffeand was credited with 104 victories; Admiral Friedrich Ruge (80), holder of Nazi Germany’s Knight's Cross ofthe Iron Cross (Nazi Germany’s highest military award) and first post-war commander of the German Navy; AirChief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris (57), wartime Hurricane pilot and squadron commander; RearAdmiral Edward Gueritz (55), recently retired after 40 years’ service in the Royal Navy; General Heinz Trettner(67), wartime CO of Germany’s 4th Parachute Division, and General Glyn Gilbert (54), one of only twoBermudians to land on the beaches of NormandyThe invasion was deemed to have started on Sunday, 22 September 1940, the main problems facingthe Germans being that the Luftwaffe had yet to win air supremacy, and constraints imposed by weather andtidal conditions. Also, it had taken until late September to assemble the necessary shipping.At dawn, elements of nine divisions comprising the first wave of a planned force of 330,000 men*stormed the beaches between Folkestone and Rottingdean, near Brighton, whilst the 7th Fallschirmjaeger(paratroop) Division landed at Lympne airfield, overlooking Romney Marsh seven miles west of Folkestone.Motor torpedo boats of the Royal Navy inflicted minor losses on the Kriegsmarine invasion fleetduring the night but one of our heavy cruisers and three destroyers were sunk. Another cruiser and twodestroyers were damaged while sinking three German destroyers.The beach defences (Ironside’s ‘coastal crust’) were overwhelmed within hours and reserveformations were despatched to Kent. Of the Army’s 25 divisions in the UK, only 17 were fully equipped andonly three [the 1st London Infantry Division, the 43rd Infantry Division and the 44th Home Counties Division]were based in Kent. However the defence plan relied on the use of mobile reserves, and armoured andmechanised brigades were committed as soon as the main landings were confirmed.Meanwhile air battles raged overhead; the Luftwaffe flew 1,200 fighter and 800 bomber sortiesbefore noon. The RAF even sent up trainer aircraft, hastily armed with bombs, to attack the invaders on thebeaches but the Luftwaffe was already having problems deploying enough Me 109s to counter-attack, despitecramming as many as possible into the Pas de Calais.On 22 and 23 September the Germans had yet to capture a major port. Shipping unloading on theshore suffered heavy losses from RAF bombing raids and further losses at their ports in France.Germany’s U-Boats, surface ships and the Luftwaffe lost contact with the Royal Navy until a cruisersquadron with supporting destroyers entered the Channel narrows and had to run the gauntlet of long rangecoastal guns, E-Boats and 50 Stukas. Two heavy cruisers were sunk and one was damaged, but a diversionaryGerman naval sortie from Norway was completely destroyed and other raids by motor torpedo boats anddestroyers inflicted losses on other enemy shipping milling about in the Channel.German shipping losses on the first day amounted to more than 25 per cent of their invasion fleet;their barges proved to be desperately unseaworthy.76On 23 September, between dawn and 14.00 hours, the RAF lost 237 of its force of 1,048 aircraft (167fighters and 70 bombers) and the navy suffered such heavy losses that it held back its battleships and aircraftcarriers, but large forces of enemy destroyers and heavy cruisers were massing; air reconnaissance showed aGerman naval build-up in Cherbourg.The Kriegsmarine was despondent over its losses of barges but preparations to embark the nextechelon of seaborne invaders and 22nd Division’s Fallschirmjaeger troops continued, despite Luftwaffe lossesof 165 fighters and 168 bombers, out of only 732 fighters and 724 bombers. Both sides overestimated lossesinflicted by 50 per cent.22nd Division landed successfully at Lympne, despite damage to the runways by long-range artilleryfire directed by a stay-behind commando group. The first British counter-attacks halted the German 34thDivision in its drive on Hastings and the 7th Panzer Division was being hampered by extensive anti-tankobstacles and assault teams armed with ‘sticky bombs’. Meanwhile an Australian division had retakenNewhaven (the only port in Germans hands) but a New Zealand division arrived at Folkestone only to beattacked from the rear by 22nd Division’s Fallschirmjaegers, who fell back on Dover having suffered 35 percent casualties.Between 1400 and 1900 hours on 23 September the Luftwaffe put up a maximum effort of 1,500fighter and 460 bomber sorties, but the RAF persisted with its attacks on shipping and airfields. Admiral ErichRaeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine, appealed to the Luftwaffe for more air cover over theChannel.However, the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet had pulled out of air range, leaving the fight in the hands of 57destroyers, 17 heavy cruisers and a number of motor torpedo boats. The Kriegsmarine could pit very littlesurface strength against this. Waves of destroyers and heavy cruisers entered the Channel and although twowere sunk by U-Boats (one of which was destroyed), they did not stop. The German flotilla at Le Havredespatched three destroyers and 14 E-Boats and at dusk intercepted the British but were wiped out, losing alltheir destroyers and seven E-Boats.By now the Germans had 10 divisions ashore but in many cases these were incomplete and waitingfor their second echelon to arrive. The weather was unsuitable for the barges however, and the decision to sailwas referred up the chain of command.At 1800 hours on 23 September, Hitler called a conference of his commanders that broke out intobitter inter-service rivalry. The Wehrmacht wanted to send their second echelon, the Kriegsmarine protestedthat the weather was unsuitable and argued that the latest naval defeat rendered the Channel indefensiblewithout air support.Göring countered by saying this could only be offered by stopping the ‘terror bombing’ of London;Hitler vetoed the suggestion. The Kriegsmarine was ordered to stand by.Between 1900 hours on 23 September and dawn on the 24th, the RAF lost another 97 fighters,leaving only 440. The airfields of 11 Group were cratered ruins and once more the threat of defeat, which hadreceded, loomed. The Luftwaffe had lost another 71 fighters and 142 bombers.On the ground the Wehrmacht made good progress towards Dover and Canterbury but sufferedreverses around Newhaven. At 21.50 Hitler decided to launch the second wave, but only on the short crossingsfrom Calais and Dunkirk. By the time his order reached the ports, the second wave could not possibly have hadtime to arrive before dawn. The Wehrmacht’s divisions at Newhaven, supplied from Le Havre, would not bereinforced at all.At dawn on 24 September the German fleet set sail in calm weather, supported by U-Boats, E-Boatsand fighters, but as the sun rose the invasion barges were spotted in mid-Channel by a destroyer flotilla. TheLuftwaffe committed all its remaining bombers to the invasion and the RAF countered with 19 fightersquadrons. The Germans disabled two heavy cruisers and four destroyers but 65 per cent of the barges weresunk.The attempted crossing failed, leaving the divisions that had landed in a desperate situation. They hadsufficient ammunition for up to seven days but without extra men and equipment they could not extend their77bridgehead, which included only two ports – Folkestone and Newhaven – and extended only 12 miles inland,less than halfway to the GHQ Line. As the British hemmed them in tighter, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht toprepare to evacuate. The retreat was completed by 28 September.Of the 90,000 troops who had landed six days earlier, only 15,400 succeeded in escaping to France.The rest were taken prisoner, killed on land or in the English Channel. The war game’s umpires deemed theinvasion a resounding failure.*More than twice the number of Allied troops deployed on D-Day in 1944.* * *Detailed accounts of the Operation Seelöwe war game, on which the above summary is based, are published inSealion by Richard Cox (Thornton Cox, 1982) and onhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_(wargame)The only tank to breach Tonbridge Castle’s defences was this British Mk 1V, 20 years before the Second World War. Itfought in France in 1918 and was displayed in the inner bailey from 29 July 1919 until 1938, then sold for scrap for £52 10s.(®Tonbridge Historical Society)78Appendix: Anatomy of a Pillbox1: Tonbridge SchoolBy Victor Smith*, with contributions from Paul Tritton.In December 2018 Kent County Council and Tonbridge School asked me to historically record the SecondWorld War pillbox located near the north-east corner of the school grounds (see Chapter Four). Theinvestigation followed initial concern about the future of the pillbox, this having been earlier seen by membersof the Kent Archaeological Society, enclosed by contractor’s fences adjacent to works for the building of a newScience Centre. Enquiries at the school established that the historical significance and value of the pillbox wasalready known to them and that they had decided upon its retention and historical display for the interest andeducation of students, staff and visitors as well as for the local community.Removal of obscuring bushes and vegetation has made the structure highly visible both from the school and tothe public outside. A historical assessment and survey of the pillbox to help the school with their aims tookplace in 2019. The recording work undertaken contains the following elements which are included in thisreport:• A measured survey to create a set of drawings.• A photographic survey.• A written survey.• A limited study of documentary sources.79No historical reference to this structure, its date or purpose, has yet been found in documents, whetheramong those examined by Paul Tritton (for his foregoing study of Tonbridge during the early years of theSecond World War), by Tonbridge School’s archivist, Beverley Matthews (in her research of school records) orby me. Nor have any memories of its construction come to light. Its existence and position show it to havebeen an element of the measures adopted to create the Tonbridge ‘nodal point’ defences (subsequentlyupgraded to Fortress status) following the defeat of the Franco-British army and the withdrawal of itsremnants from the coast of France from 26 May – 4 June 1940 and, mid-1941, when a German invasion ofEngland was most feared.A perimeter of anti-tank defences enclosed Tonbridge on three sides, the fourth side being the River Medway,along which ran the GHQ Line of pillboxes. At various places along its length the perimeter was breached byroads passing through the town. To the north of Tonbridge these included London Road and Shipbourne Road.Close to the school these converged and joined Tonbridge High Street and, if undefended, this would havegiven an invader access to Tonbridge itself. In consequence, these roads, as well as Portman Park east of theHigh Street, were to be given road-blocks and other protection which, if provided, could have been overseenfrom the embrasures of the pillbox at the school.The pillbox has special significance for Tonbridge School because one of its alumni, General (later Field MarshalLord) William Edmund Ironside (1880 – 1959), served as Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, in the last weeksof his distinguished military career, during which time he directed the construction of the GHQ Line, popularlyknown as ‘the Ironside Line’. This static defence ‘stop-line’ consisted of thousands of pillboxes, road-blocks andtank-traps, crossing much of southern England and running northwards from the Thames through the easterncounties. It was intended to impede Nazi invaders advancing inland towards London and the Midlands frombeachheads on the Channel and North Sea coasts at a time, post-Dunkirk, when the British Army lackedsufficient mobile artillery and professional soldiers to defend the coastal hinterland.Although to this day many pillboxes can be seen along the River Medway sector of the GHQ Line east and westof Tonbridge, the one at the school is the only survivor within the town.DescriptionSome 10m east of the new Science Centre, this brick and concrete structure surmounts the top of an earthenslope from the school down to a boundary wall at the side of a footpath running along the west side ofTonbridge High Street. Its form is absent from the range of designs of pillboxes contemporarily designed by theFortifications and Works Branch of the War Office.It is of rectangular design, having a 3.16m x 2.20m plan and a height of 2m to a flat concrete roof. Its long rearwall contains the entrance. The front and side walls are pierced with embrasures. These, in varying degrees,face (a) south down Tonbridge High Street towards the Big Bridge over the River Medway; (b) east across theHigh Street to Portman Park and (c) north to the convergence of Shipbourne and London Roads. Embrasuresare absent from the rear wall which faces the school buildings and was without a threat of direct fire by anenemy.80The walls are built of 9½ in. x 2½-in. smooth orange brick, except for the lower half of the right side where theyare laid in rougher-faced yellow stocks. Perhaps no special significance is to be deduced from theseunmatching colours, other than reflecting constraints on the availability of bricks of consistent colour at a timeof wartime shortages. The brickwork combines elements of English, Flemish and Garden Wall bond. The rearwall, pierced with a 60cm undoored entrance, is 22cm thick, the front wall 35cm and the sides are 38cm. Thereinforced concrete embrasures in the side walls appear to be pre-cast, around which the bricks were laid. AsPaul Tritton has suggested in Chapter Five, these may have been made at the Southern Railway’s pre-castconcrete factory at Ashford. Much of the concrete content of the castings is fine-grained but does containsome 1cm stone. The single front embrasure is brick, topped by a concrete lintel.Internally, and 16cm below the side embrasures, are 66cm wide tables faced in brick, probably encasing aconcrete fill. Their tops are surfaced in fine-grain concrete. The tables are built against, or integral with, thestructure. There is a standing space of just 1.07 m between them. Some 46cm below the front embrasure is anarrow concrete ledge. The inside of the structure is otherwise bare, without internal fixtures and fittings. Inplaces the walls display traces of a white coating, whether resulting from the leaching of lime, the use ofwhitewash, or both, is uncertain. Judging from the disturbance to a magnetic compass noted during thesurvey, the poured concrete floor is reinforced.The entrance to the pillbox is protected against the ingress of surface water by a small lip above the floor andthere is a 7cm diameter hole in the floor, perhaps a sump. The floor is likely to be the visible part of a largerconcrete raft on which the walls were built, extending externally 30cm or so beyond them.The concrete roof is 12-13 cm thick, its aggregate content being variable but with stone up to 1.5cm. It hadbeen laid on 9in. (23cm) wooden scaffolding-type boards which, after removal, left imprints in the ceiling.Embrasures facing south to Tonbridge High Street and(above) east to Portman Park pictured during early stagesof preservation.Left: the pillbox, partially revealed in February 2018 and,above, in January 2019. Tonbridge School’s new ScienceCentre is on the left.81Externally and at eight places slightly set back from the edge of the roof, protrude small and now truncatediron or steel fixings. Also at various places along the edge of the roof are, at 15-20cm intervals, the exposedends of what appear to be reinforcing rods. It has been suggested that a section of railings which had beenremoved locally as part of a wartime scrap-metal drive was used to reinforce the roof. Diagonally across thecorners of the outside surface of the roof are shallow imprints of a once-existing frame or structure of somekind, with a transverse imprint across the middle.Other than very small finishing facets, the embrasures are not splayed to guide angles of fire as is usual forpillboxes, being straight-through apertures with right angles. The front embrasure is 60 x 16cm, those in theside walls closest to the rear wall being 42 x 30cm and 80 x 30cm where, adjoining the front of the structure, itwas cut out to give a greater angle of vision. Spalling of concrete from the embrasures in the side walls revealsmetal reinforcement.The ground-level around the structure is variable, in part reflecting its situation on a mound. There has beenearlier and recent landscaping around the structure and the exact original ground profile in not preciselyknown.Above: right (south) elevation of the pillbox. Right: south elevation, showing reinforcement exposed due to spalling of theprecast concrete embrasure facing the High Street.Above: left (north) elevation. Right: north elevation before conservation, showing reinforcement exposed due to spalling ofthe precast concrete embrasure facing junction of High Street, London Road and Shipbourne Road.82Above: front (east) elevation. Right: east elevation, showing main embrasures and central 60 x 16cm embrasure with line offire across High Street to Portman Park.Above and right: rear elevation, showing 60cm wide entrance.Above: roof plan. Right: the roof, showing truncated fixings and transverse imprints at corners.83Above: interior plan, showing wide benches to side embrasures and narrow shelf to front embrasure. Right: wide bench tosouth-facing embrasure.Above: Victor Smith and Sara Normand (PA/Operations Assistant, Tonbridge School) during survey of pillbox, April 2019.Right: Rear and north elevation, June 2019.84Above: section a-o. Right: section x-y.* * *As has been mentioned, the pillbox appears to be a non-standard structure resembling, by coincidence, asRoger Thomas , Co-ordinator of the Pillbox Study Group, has remarked, one of the coastal and riverine minewatching posts of the Second World War - and, it might be added, fire-watching posts, to be found at somekey industrial premises during the same period.Roger Thomas further commented: ‘I have not seen a pillbox of this design before. It is probably an ad hocdesign that was suited to its location. The width of the side tables seems a little excessive just for riflemen andperhaps were for the use of a light machine-gun of some sort, resting on a bipod, with boxes, magazines ordrums of ammunition to hand, whereas the narrow shelf to the front embrasure would have been sufficient torest an elbow on when taking aim.‘The alignment of the pillbox in relationship to the roads shows that the side walls were the principal defendedaspects that covered the High Street in both directions, which would explain why there was a single narrowembrasure and shelf in the less important front wall that was most likely for observing a checkpoint at a roadblock at the junction of the High Street and Portman Park.‘One feature that is of interest is the relatively thin rear wall, akin to the wall thickness of the First World Warsquare pillboxes on the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire. These structures were built as formers for asandbag covering, much the same as the Norcon and Croft pillboxes of the Second World War, but of course,in the case of this pillbox, the side and front walls are 11 inches (28cm) thick, which would be considered asbeing bullet-proof and, to some extent, blast proof, but I suppose sandbags may still have been added to it,both for protection and to break up the profile. In fact, I suspect that when in use, the large embrasures wouldhave been reduced in size by sandbags or removable concrete blocks’.The eight iron or steel fixings around the edge of the roof may have been places for the attachment ofcamouflage nets drawn down to the ground. As to the imprints in the concrete on top of the roof, RogerThomas has suggested that these might be the ‘tell-tales’ from a once existing timber frame as part ofcamouflaging.As mentioned earlier, this pillbox should not be seen in isolation but as part of a larger suite of defences toimpede road access from the north into Tonbridge. Although it has not been confirmed that all the defenceson the War Office’s ‘Proposed Layout of Tonbridge Fortress’ published in December 1941 were actually built,the proposal did provide for a road-block at the junction of Portman Park and the High Street and two more85just to the north, on the outer perimeter where the High Street joins London Road and Shipbourne Road, aswell as two weapon pits or defended buildings. If provided, it is likely that the road-blocks were also defendedby two nearby Spigot Mortar positions or a Smith Gun to fire on tanks and other vehicles, or perhaps even afougasse and other positions for hand-grenade bombers, riflemen and machine-gunners.Certainly a pillbox is also shown on the December 1941 plan as envisaged for erection on the north-east cornerof the triangular traffic island where these roads meet. For some reason Tonbridge School’s pillbox is notmarked, though there is every reason to assume that it existed at the end of 1941. Even if the evidence hasvanished it is likely, or at least possible, that there were supporting extemporized firing positions in theschool’s windows.Although primarily relating to defence against enemy penetration into Tonbridge from the north, had theenemy got through the perimeter across the Big Bridge on the south side of the town, the embrasures of thepillbox facing in that direction down the High Street would have been brought in action.If that stage had been reached fortress would have been lost.Unless there is an as yet unknown dimension to this structure, its design is not beyond reproach in relation tothe limitations of its internal space and the form of its embrasures.Detail from 1941 ‘Proposed Layout of Tonbridge Fortress’, showing defences at High Street/Portman Park junction and (topleft), junction of High Street, London Road and Shipbourne Road. The plan shows an intended enhancement of defencesthat already existed and not all the elements shown can be confirmed as having been built. (See Chapter Eight and ChapterTen)Conservation and displayPillboxes were an iconic feature of home defence during the Second World War and it is commendable thatthe Tonbridge School authorities not only recognize and value this structure as a heritage asset but have begunsteps for its display. These have taken the form of the clearance from its walls of obscuring vegetation and thecarrying out of some gentle landscaping, combining to make the pillbox strikingly visible. An electrical supplyhas been installed to enable the embrasures to be illuminated from within at night. The entrance is closed forsecurity purposes by a timber barrier which, with the use of tools, may easily be removed for access.Use of a spirit-level has shown that the pillbox is exact in both its vertical and horizontal planes, the structurecontinuing to be stable despite recent groundworks and landscaping. Few repairs to the brickwork appearnecessary. However, spalling of the concrete (notably of the embrasures of the side walls but also, to a smalldegree, of the roof) needs early attention to prevent further decay from the penetration of rainwater which86risks corrosion and damaging expansion of the metal reinforcement. A conservation architect might beconsulted by the school but sand-blasting and sealing of the reinforcing steels where exposed, andreinstatement of missing concrete to keep out the weather and preventing further deterioration, seemsadvisable.The school has already decided to enhance display of the pillbox by means of a heritage panel at the foot ofthe slope down from the pillbox to the High Street, where a suitable position has been found by the school’sperimeter wall, providing ease of visibility and readability from passers-by on the pavement. For their benefitand education this would, ideally, contain several related informational and interpretational components,based on images and short supporting explanatory texts. The primary image might be of the pillbox itself(perhaps a cut-way drawing ,with figures inside), set into a background plan of the Shipbourne Road/LondonRoad/Portman Park/High Street road convergence and junction, with road-blocks marked to make theplacement and significance of this structure instantly explicable. The remainder of the panel could include adrawing of the Tonbridge Fortress to place this in context plus an image of Edmund Ironside, explaining hisimportance in British home defence at a critical period in the Second World War and, not least, his links andassociations with the school.A small commemorative plaque has already been installed and it has also been suggested that an educationalpackage should be created for students at the school, based on Paul Tritton’s research.87Overshadowed by Tonbridge School’s new Science Centre, the school’s earlier buildings and an electrical sub-station, thediminutive Second World War pillbox is pictured here in June 2019 in its new landscaped setting.Above: commemorative plaque installed at the site in June 2019. Right: late 19th century or early 20th century hydrantmarker plate unearthed during landscaping work around the pillbox in 2019. A relic of Tonbridge’s first mains waterdistribution system, it was probably thrown over the High Street wall beside the pillbox during maintenance work on themains. ’E’ denotes the type of coupling installed at a distance of 6ft 6 in. from where the marker was erected. © TonbridgeSchool.88This Royal Naval Auxiliary Service Mine-Watching Post at Breakwater Fort, Portland, Dorset (NGR SY7075276231) hascorner embrasures similar to those in Tonbridge School’s pillbox but in this case for observation. (©Roger J C Thomas,Pillbox Study Group)89Sources consultedNo reference has been found in any documents but, for general context, several formation War Diaries in TheNational Archives have been consulted, including: WO166/521, the War Diary for 44 Division, General Staff(GS), responsible for the defence of the Tonbridge area in 1939-40; WO166/1216, and the War Diary for theKent home defence area, 1 January – 30 November 1941.* * *Victor Smith and Paul Tritton thank Wendy Rogers of the Heritage Conservation Group of Kent County Councilfor her encouragement to carry out this survey. Sara Normand and Tonbridge School have shown greatinterest and support for this investigation and on several occasions made access available. We are also gratefulto Beverley Matthews, the school’s archivist, for her search of school historical records. George Haysom tookphotographs for the authors at an early stage. Roger Thomas, co-ordinator of the Pillbox Study Group, kindlycommented on some of the findings from the survey.*Victor Smith is an independent historian and investigator of historic defences in Britain and the Caribbeanand was a co-ordinator for Kent County Council’s 20th century Defence of Britain Project. He is past-chairmanof the Kent Archaeological Society’s Kent Historic Defences Group.* * *902: HildenboroughThe preservation of Tonbridge School’s pillboxcoincided with the exposure of a contemporarystructure that had been almost completelyconcealed by trees and undergrowth for at least 30years in the front garden of No. 44 Stocks GreenRoad, Hildenborough, unrecorded in nationalsurveys of anti-invasion defences and known only tolocal residents, the Hildenborough History Societyand few others.In 2018, No. 44 Stocks Green Road (above) was offered for sale for £563,000, advertised as ‘a detached house,in need of modernisation or replacement (subject to planning permission), with 4/5 bedrooms, large gardens,ample parking, and close to Stocks Green School’. At this time Tim Asquith of the Hildenborough HistorySociety became concerned that the pillbox - an important relic of Hildenborough’s wartime history - could bein danger of being demolished to make way for redevelopment of the site, or simply because the new ownermight regard it as an eyesore to be removed forthwith.Permission to clear the undergrowth and inspect the pillbox was refused by the executors of its lastowners but in 2019 the new owners, Lynn and Marcus van Nieuwenhuizen, instructed landscaping contractorsworking on the garden to carefully uncover the structure; later they removed the previous owners’ householdrubbish that had accumulated within it. The structure was then measured and photographed.This done, two questions arose: why was the structure located in a suburban front garden (whenthere were open spaces only a few yards away), and for what purpose? In the absence, so far as is known, ofany contemporary records, we have to indulge in a degree of speculation in seeking answers.Location, location, locationSituated one and a half miles north of the GHQ Line along the Medway, and a similar distance from the antitank ditch and tank-traps on the sector of Tonbridge’s outer perimeter that crossed Tonbridge School’s playingfield, the pillbox is barely visible on an RAF aerial photograph taken in October 1947 and even less evident inlater views.No 44 Stocks Green Road was built in 1925 in the fashionable mock-Tudor style of the period, andnamed ‘Oakfield’. In about 1930 it was purchased by distinguished Kent and England cricketer Frank Woolley,who previously lived with his wife Sybil and their family at ‘Yew Tree Cottage,’ Southborough. Among the fewneighbouring properties in Stocks Green Road at that time were the Old Barn Tea Rooms, opposite No 44,patronized by local residents out for a country walk, and the first generation of leisure motorists taking theirfamilies for a Sunday ‘spin’ in their Austin and Morris motor cars.In 1931 Frank wrote to the Courier, Tonbridge’s local weekly newspaper, saying that visitors to the tearooms might be wondering about ‘the large green shed’ in his garden. It had, he explained, been built for hiscricket coaching school and indoor tennis court, which he now intended to become ‘a practice club forcricketers’, open every weekday evening. A new badminton club was also accommodated there.The venue became very popular, and after retiring from professional cricket in 1938 Frank had moretime to nurture his gardens and enjoy the company of the sports enthusiasts using his pavilion.However, the Woolleys’ happy days at ‘Oakfield’ were numbered. At the outbreak of war the propertywas acquired by Johnsen and Jorgensen Flint Glass Ltd, one of Britain’s leading manufacturers of industrial andhousehold glassware, which decided to move from Charlton, south London, to the relative safety of the Kentcountryside. Production lines were initially set up in the sports pavilion but later extended into two factorybuildings erected on a vacant plot adjacent to the large front garden of ‘Oakfield.’Frank, Sybil and their 22-year-old daughter Joan moved from Hildenborough, never to return. ByNational Registration Day (29 September 1939), when every civilian in Great Britain had to apply for identitycards and ration books, the family was living at 25 Princes Gardens, Margate, with Mabel Day, their domestic91servant. Frank’s occupation was ‘cricket coach’, Sybil was listed as being engaged on ‘domestic duties’ andJoan was an ARP and Red Cross volunteer.The prospect of their popular sports facility becoming a factory upset Hildenborough’s residents, whosought assurances that the pavilion would be restored for its original use after the war. Imagine their surpriseand apprehension when, in Britain’s ‘darkest hour’ after Dunkirk, they witnessed a pillbox being constructed inthe garden, and no doubt subsequently camouflaged, and the neighbourhood rapidly being transformed into amilitary zone within a complex of wartime defences, of which the ‘Oakfield’ pillbox was one.Although not within Tonbridge Fortress, it would have been in the thick of the action during aninvasion of the town. The presence within a few miles of various military establishments, including a RoyalArtillery regimental HQ in what is now Sackville School, Hildenborough (NGR TQ563486) and Gaza Barracks inScabharbour Road (NGR TQ531505) may have necessitated the construction of this pillbox and others in whatnow seem unlikely locations.The rear boundary of ‘Oakfield’ is about 50 yards from the southern edge of West Wood, in which it ispossible that some kind of military establishment was concealed. The pillbox’s entrance was only a few yardsfrom the glassworks’ factory’s extension. Post-war, the factory site was redeveloped for housing and is nowoccupied by No. 42 Stocks Green Road. The east wall of the pillbox stands exactly on the boundary of Nos 42and 44.ConstructionThe pillbox is approximately 11ft x 10ft in plan, with a ceiling height of 79in. Its entrance is ’notched’ into thenorth-east corner. The walls are of standard ‘English bond’ brickwork of good quality, dense with sharpcorners, and do not appear to contain a concrete infill. There is a brickwork embrasure under a taperedprecast concrete lintel in all four walls. These enabled small arms fire to be aimed directly south to Leigh Roadrailway bridge (NGR TQ568478) and west to Stocks Green Road railway bridge (TQ563481), bothapproximately 300 yards away; north towards West Wood, and east to the north end of Leigh Road.An enemy formation that breached the GHQ Line, captured the main line railway from Tonbridge toLondon, and then approached the main road (now the B245) to Tonbridge and London at Hildenborough,would have been fired on from the south and west embrasures. The north and east embrasures covered zonesfrom which attacks were less likely.An unusual feature of the embrasures is that the surrounding brickwork partially intrudes into thefiring aperture, narrowing the gunner’s view and restricting his arc of fire. An internal baffle wall would havedeflected bullets fired through the entrance into the pillbox.The pillbox has a reinforced concrete floor and a concrete roof slab. This is 5½in. deep and has a 2in.drip overhang to deflect rainwater on all sides, although not above the entrance. Nails in the roof, along itsedges and above the entrance probably once secured camouflage netting. The ceiling is spalling due to rustingof the reinforcing bars in the roof slab.The handbook for the Council for British Archaeology’s Defence of Britain Project, published in 2002,shows a variety of structures similar to the one in Stocks Green Road under the general heading ‘posts andsmall observation posts’. Police posts were built at the entrances to military establishments; firewatchers’posts were generally sited on industrial premises; minewatchers’ posts were near harbours and ports. MikeOsborne's regional series of '20th Century Defences in Britain' books just calls them observation posts.The Stocks Green Road pillbox may have been a forward observation post, guarding a roadside checkpoint. The glassworks factory was unlikely to have been of sufficient importance to justify its own purposebuilt defences, although the possibility that vital military assets or clandestine activities were concealed in thefactory cannot be ruled out.Further research is merited.92Below: exterior of south wall, showing embrasure with line of fire to Leigh Road railway bridge. Below right: internal view ofembrasure. (©Susan Featherstone)‘Bricks of good quality, dense with sharp corners ‘. The south-west corner of the pillbox. (©Susan Featherstone)Above : the west embrasure with a line of fire to Stocks Green Road railway bridge. (©Susan Featherstone)Above right: internal view of the west embrasure, also showing damage to the ceiling caused by spalling due to rusting ofreinforcing bars and hole in roof (probably post-war damage). (©Susan Featherstone)93Above: the east wall, with embrasure with line of fire across neighbouring properties to the north end of Leigh Road. Thewall stands exactly on the boundary of Nos 42 and 44 Stocks Green Road. Above right: interior view of east embrasure.(©Susan Featherstone)Above: the north wall of the pillbox and its entrance notched into its north-east corner. Right: internal view of the northembrasure, showing brickwork restricting the gunner’s view and arc of fire. (©Susan Featherstone)94Construction details, showing (above left) drip overhang on roof and (above), nails in edge of roof to secure camouflagenetting. (©Susan Featherstone)Aerial view of location of pillbox, October 1947.Author’s AcknowledgementsMy thanks to my wife Pat who in December 2017, from the top deck of a 401 bus, drew my attention to apillbox had been exposed by contractors clearing a building site at Tonbridge School. This led us to embark onan investigation into the pillbox’s origins that has now culminated in the publication of this book, substantialaspects of which are the result of Pat’s diligent research and editorial assistance.Immediately after we reported the revelation of the pillbox to the Kent Archaeological Society, localmember George Haysom hurried to the site to take photographs just in case the structure became an95‘endangered species’. Subsequently the society’s Kent Historic Defences Group liaised with the schoolauthorities and Kent County Council’s Heritage Conservation Group to preserve and record the structure andbring it to public attention.Thanks also to my mentors and collaborators Clive Holden and Victor Smith of the Kent HistoricDefences Group for their guidance and advice, and for consulting War Diaries and other military records at TheNational Archives for me, to KAS colleagues Shiela Broomfield, Deborah Cole, George Fry and Mike Clinch fortheir help during this project, to Paul Cuming, KCC Historic Environment Record Manager for his cartographicalassistance and for writing the Foreword, and to his colleague Wendy Rogers; also to Beverley Matthews(archivist) and Sara Normand (PA/Operations Assistant) at Tonbridge School, Derek Butler, Wendy Akast(bracketts.co.uk), Gary Coppins, Steve Sullivan, Lynn and Marcus van Nieuwenhuizen, David Walsh and DuncanWelch, and to the following organizations: Harrietsham History Society (Peter Brown); Hildenborough HistorySociety (Tim Asquith); Imperial War Museum, Duxford (Stephen Walton, Senior Curator); Kent Archives; Leighand District Historical Society (Joyce Field); Pillbox Study Group (Colin Anderson, Roger Thomas); RoyalEngineers Museum, Library and Archive (Rebecca Blackburn); Royal Observer Corps Association (Keith Arnold,Neville Cullingford, Edwina Holden); The Slade Area Residents’ Association (Jacquie Wyatt); SubterraneaBritannica (Nick Catford), Tenterden and District Local History Society (Dr Jack Gillett), Tonbridge HistoricalSociety (George Buswell, Pat Hopcroft, Anthony Wilson), Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council andTonbridge River Trips.Identifying the location of the town’s outer perimeter defences and the stop-lines within it thatsurvived after the war would have been impossible but for Kent County Council’s superb Kent Heritage Mapswebsite and its facility to compare maps dating from 1871 with current Ordnance Survey maps, and aerialphotographs for 1947, 1900 and 2008.I gratefully acknowledge the many local historians from whose books and websites (included in thebibliography below) I gleaned many details about civilian experiences and military activities in and aroundTonbridge and Tunbridge Wells during what Churchill called Britain’s ‘darkest hour’ – the period between theFall of France in June 1940 and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.Most of the photographs I have published are my own or, to the best of my knowledge and belief, arefrom the public domain. Wherever possible I have acknowledged sources of images. I apologize for anyunintentional oversights and will correct these accordingly in any future editions.96Bibliography and recommended further readingAlanbrooke, Field Marshal, Alanbrooke War Diaries 1935 – 1945, Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, 2001.Alexander, Colin, Ironside’s Line, a Guide to the Defence Line planned for Great Britain in response to the threatof German Invasion, 1940-1942, Storrington/Historic Military Press, 1999.Bates, Ann, Tunbridge Wells in the Second World War and the Years of Austerity 1939 – 1953, Royal TunbridgeWells Civic Society Local History Monograph No. 11, 2009.Brown, Ian, and others, 20th Century Defences in Britain, Council for British Archaeology, 1996.Buswell, George/Wilson, Anthony, Tonbridge Through Ten Centuries, Tonbridge Historical Society, 2015.Chalklin, C W (Ed.), Late Victorian and Edwardian Tonbridge, Kent County Library, 1988.Chapman, Frank, Tales of Old Tonbridge, Froglets, 1995.Cox, Richard, Operation Sea Lion, Thornton Cox, 1982.Dobinson, Colin, ‘Operation Diver,’ Historic England, 2019.Featherstone, Susan, 1940 and the Pillboxes around Leigh, Leigh Parish Magazine, July 2002.Goodsall, Robert H, A Third Kentish Patchwork, Stedehill Publications, 1970.Hamilton, Nigel, The Full Monty: Montgomery of Alamein 1887-1942, Allen Lane, 2001.Hennessy, Peter, Never Again: Britain 1945-51, Penguin Books 2006.Holden, Clive, Kent: Britain’s Frontline County, Amberley Publishing, 2017.Hylton, Stuart, Kent and Sussex 1940: Britain’s Front Line, Pen and Sword Military, 2004.Ironside, Edmund Oslac, Ironside: the authorised biography of Lord Ironside, 1880-1959, Stroud: The HistoryPress, 2018.Kent: The County Administration in War 1939 – 1945, Kent County Council, n.d.Khan, Mark, Kent at War 1939-1945, Pen and Sword Military, 2014.Longmate, Norman, The Real Dad’s Army, Amberley Publishing; 2016.McKinstry, Leo, How Britain Crushed the German War Machine's Dreams of Invasion in 1940, John Murray2018.Montgomery, Field Marshal Bernard Law, The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery, Pen and Sword Military,2005.Orchard, Barry, A Look at The Head and the Fifty: A history of Tonbridge School, James & James (Publishers)Ltd, 1991.Schenk, Peter, Invasion of England, 1940: Planning of Operation Sea Lion, Conway Maritime Press Ltd, 1990.97Simmons, Sydney, Tonbridge Castle: further observations on an ancient castle, Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 116,Kent Archaeological Society, 1966.Slade Area Residents’ Association, A Little Knot of Narrow Streets, a History of The Slade, Tonbridge, 2012.Smith, Victor, Front-line Kent: Defence against invasion from 1400 to the Cold War, Kent County Council, 2001.Tonbridge Free Press, Tonbridge Free Press Centenary, 1969.Tonbridge Historical Society, Tonbridge’s Industrial Heritage, 2005.Wade, Stephen, Air-raid shelters of World War II: Family stories of survival in the Blitz, Barnsley: RememberWhen, 2011.Walsh, David, A Duty to Serve: Tonbridge School and the 1939-45 War, Third Millennium 2011.Waterstone, Tim, The Face Pressed Against a Window, Atlantic Books, 2019.Wills, Henry, Pillboxes. A Study of the UK Defences 1940, Cooper/Secker & Warburg 1985.Wynn, Tanya, Kent at War 1939-45, Pen and Sword Military, 2019.Wynne, G C, Stopping Hitler: an official account of how Britain planned to defend itself in the Second WorldWar, Frontline Books, 2017.* * *The Kent Archaeological Society has published the following papers on the Chatham ‘nodal point’ (part ofMedway’s twentieth-century military and civil defences) and ‘Canterbury Fortress’:Smith, Victor T C, Kent's Twentieth-Century Military and Civil Defences Part 2 – Medway, ArchaeologiaCantiana Vol. 131, 2011.Smith, Victor T C, Kent's Twentieth-Century Military and Civil Defences Part 3 – Canterbury, ArchaeologiaCantiana Vol. 132, 2012.These can be read on-line at https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant* * *Recommended Websiteshttp://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveshttp://webapps.kent.gov.uk/KCC.ExploringKentsPast.Web.Sites.Public/Default.aspxhttp://webapps.kent.gov.uk/KCC.HeritageMaps.Web.Sites.Public/Default.aspxhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/storieshttp://www.castlesfortsbattles.co.uk/south_east/tonbridge_castle.htmlhttp://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/indexhttp://www.kentphotoarchive.comhttp://www.pillbox-study-group.org.ukhttp://www.southeast-defencephotos.comhttp://www.southeast-defencephotos.com/gallery/http://www.subbrit.org.ukhttp://www.subbrit.org.ukhttp://www.tonbridgehistory.org.ukhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_anti-invasion_preparations_of_the_Second_World_War98https://hildenboroughhistorysociety.weebly.comhttps://www.blighty-at-war.nethttps://www.leighhistorical.org.uk/history/1940-and-the-pillboxes-around-leighhttps://www.quora.com/Why-did-Nazi-Germany-never-actually-invade-the-UK
History Jacob Scott History Jacob Scott
1No. 009The Deal Boatmen - Heroes orVillains?Dr.Jacqueline BowerThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. The author hasplaced the paper on the site for download for personal or academic use. Any otheruse must be cleared with the author of the paper who retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyright clearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes thesubmission of papers. The necessary form can be downloaded from the website atwww.kentarchaeology.ac2 The Deal boatmen were portrayed during the nineteenth century as anythingfrom the noblest of heroes to the blackest of villains. Their work, attendingshipwrecks in order to save lives and salvage cargoes, or assisting ships in danger ofwreck to safety, required a high degree of skill and courage. It could easily beinvested with a touch of heroism or romance to appeal to the sentimental Victorianmiddle classes; ‘the high drama of disaster at sea with its connotations of man’s frailtyin the face of the elements held a peculiar, almost morbid, fascination for theVictorians.’1 The many journals and magazines which existed then were ideal vehiclesfor articles on this theme. Dickens’s Household Words, Chambers’ Journal and thePall Mall Magazine all featured the Deal boatmen at various times.2 Even Kelly’sPost Office Directories departed from their normally sedate prose to describe ‘the ...daring intrepidity of the Deal boatmen... for which they are justly celebrated.’3In 1873, John Gilmore, Rector of Ramsgate, published a collection of accountsof rescues on the Goodwin Sands. It was chiefly concerned with the Ramsgateboatmen, but one chapter was devoted to Deal. ‘Few places in the world, if any, haveproved the scene of more daring sailor-life than Deal beach,’ Gilmore claimed.‘Certainly the boatmen of Deal beach are not now, and probably never have been,surpassed for skill and daring... no hurricane daunts them.’ Gilmore’s work was usedin penny readings, and his style tended to be dramatic; ‘it would not be well to refrainfrom bearing testimony to how readily, how gallantly, the men of Deal, ofBroadstairs, of Walmer and Kingsdown as well as of Ramsgate man their respectivelifeboats... and race out to the scene of action, full of hardihood, of skill, of courage.’4Our Sea Coast Heroes, published in 1889, also devotes a chapter to Dealbeach.‘The race of boatmen now existing at Deal has never been surpassedfor those generous qualities which have rendered their forefathersfamous.... There is no danger to themselves which they do nothabitually incur in their endeavours to save life or property. They areindeed a race of heroes who go forth on their mission of mercy withtheir lives in their hands.’5Other writers used equally florid prose; ‘nothing can exceed the coolunflinching bravery of the hovellers as a rule. An instance of a hoveller hesitating fora moment when there is a chance of saving life has, we believe, never been known.The howling storm and the raging sea seem to have no terrors whatever for thesefellows... the greater the storm, the more ready and willing they are always to face it.’6 The Revd. Thomas Stanley Treanor was Chaplain to the Downs branch of theMissions to Seamen and Honorary Secretary of the Downs branch of the RoyalNational Lifeboat Institution. He therefore probably had as great a knowledge of theDeal boatmen as was possible for someone outside their class. He described theboatmen as ‘wild and daring fellows,’ wrote of their ‘skill, bravery and humanity,’and asked, ‘when the boatmen of Deal hang back in the storm blast, who else darego?’7 Among the exploits he described was the saving of the vessel Royal Arch inMarch 1878. The Deal lifeboat was launched to the aid of this ship when she wasdragging her anchors in a gale and heavy sea and in danger of being driven ashore. Asthe lifeboat came abreast of the Royal Arch, five of the lifeboat crew sprang‘over the yawning chasm, on the chance of gripping the shrouds, andsome of them... had to swim on the decks of the labouring vessel....3The captain now hesitated to slip his ship [i.e. cast off anchors andcables to enable the ship to be manoeuvred] lest she might pay off onthe wrong tack and come ashore; but as the vessel was steadilydrifting and... mountainous seas wallowed over both the lifeboat andthe vessel, the Deal lifeboatmen said “If you don’t slip her we will.There’s death right astern for all of us if you delay.”... The spirit andenergy of the Deal men infused new life into the wearied crew, andall hands worked together with a will.... And just within the veryjaws of the breakers, the ship’s head payed (sic) away, to thesouthward, and she escaped - saved at the last minute, and safe to theopen sea.’8 The boatmen’s own statements of their services, submitted to the Cinque PortsSalvage Commissioners, are written in more matter of fact language. Nevertheless,they demonstrate that the lifeboat work described by Treanor differed little from theevery day experiences of the boatmen.‘Being afloat on the lookout it Blowing a strong wind from about thewest... saw the said vessel in great distress with his foremast andBowsprit gone and his colours flying in his main Rigging Uniondownwards.... With difficulty we got our Lugger’s Mainmast andMainsail on Board the vessel Rigged it and got it up with ourmainsail for a foresail in the meantime our Lugger took an Hawserfrom the vessel to tow her.’9‘Cruising in our lugger Sea Flower in the Downs, blowing a terrificgale about NNW and a very Heavy Sea we saw a schooner ridingnearby... we... made towards her... at great personal risk of our livesjumped on board the sea running over the schooner... the anchorswould not hold... the schooner driving down on a Barque... [we]slipped the starboard chain then hoisted the jib put the helm hard aport and slipped the port chain wore ship and made sail for Dover.’10‘Blowing a gale of wind about NE... we were on the lookout on theBeach when... we saw a schooner go right athwart hawse of a Galliotlying in the Roads... We then got our boats ready for launching atgreat personal risk of our lives, there being so much sea on the beachwe made an attempt to launch the boat Watch but could not succeedunfortunately filling it full of water we being all washed out of herdoing her great damage... we then made the second attempt and...succeeded in launching the boat Tyne through heavy sea andproceeded... with two of our crew continually bailing to keep theboat free from water.’11 These first hand accounts justify Gilmore’s description of the Deal boatmen as‘true storm warriors, ever ready to dare all and do all that they may rescue thedrowning from a watery grave.’12 Others, however, especially those in officialpositions, regarded the boatmen quite differently. It was said that ‘a long tradition offraud, robbery and violence attaches to them as a community.’13 The Collector of4Customs at Deal described ‘the thieving propensities of the desperate characters inthis neighbourhood,’ and said that ‘this place has long been notorious for the lawlesscharacter of persons who flock by hundreds to disasters merely for the sake ofplunder.’14 These views arose due to the boatmen’s involvement in smuggling, theft ofsalvaged goods and fraudulent or exaggerated claims for services to ships. In the eighteenth century, Deal was probably the most notorious smugglingtown in England.15 Government action ended large scale smuggling after 1815, butsmall scale smuggling, chiefly of spirits and tobacco, continued at Deal throughoutthe nineteenth century, to the extent that the Collector of Customs there believed that‘scarcely a boatman lands without a pound or more of tobacco concealed about hisperson.’16 William Stanton, a boatman who later qualified as a Cinque Ports Pilot,made ‘several good voyages’ in 1827, bringing in tea, silk and ribbons. He apparentlyhad no qualms about the illegality of his activities, but worried about the number ofpeople who knew of his voyages. ‘I could not do it without employing a great numberof people, and you cannot stop people’s tongues, and after a few voyages you are atthe mercy of so many, that the risk increased tenfold with every voyage.’ Finally,Stanton’s boat, with contraband on board, was seized by the Customs, acting, hebelieved, on definite information. Fortunately for Stanton, none of the Customs meninvolved could swear that he had been in the boat, so although the cargo wasconfiscated, he escaped prosecution and the boat was returned to him. Thecontraband, on this occasion satin ribbon, was auctioned by the Customs for £1700.17Stanton’s ‘several good voyages’ therefore might have made him between £5000 and£10,000. Twenty seven cases of smuggling involving Deal men were reported at Dealbetween 1848 and 1881.18 The number of cases is too small for any firm conclusionsto be drawn, but it may be significant that five occurred in 1858 and 1859, when theboatmen are believed to have been suffering particular hardship. The Collector ofCustoms speculated in 1851 that ‘the distressed and fallen state of the culprits’ wasthe cause of continued smuggling at Deal.19 Treanor also suggested that poverty drovethe boatmen to smuggling.20 The number of cases declined from the mid 1860s, butthe Collector suggested in 1865 that this was no reason for the authorities to relaxtheir vigilance; ‘I do not for a moment doubt that if the force in this locality wereweakened so the chances for successful smuggling became greater than they nowpossibly can be, systematic smuggling once so rife here now only dormant wouldrevive.’21 Most incidents involved attempts to smuggle tobacco. Contraband spirits werereported on only three occasions, in 1851, 1865 and 1876. The most significant casewas in 1865, when the galley punt Providence was found to have 21 tubs containing66 gallons of spirits concealed under fishing nets.22 The largest seizure of tobacco wasof 1200 lbs on board the lugger Earl Grey in 1852.23 Other big seizures were made in1858 when the open boat Lark was found to have 370 lbs of tobacco concealed in herballast bags and the open boat Gem had 248 lbs of tobacco similarly concealed.24 Tobacco, when run in large quantities, was believed to come from Nieuport inBelgium. The Collector of Customs believed that the Deal lugger Fawn, which wasrun down with the loss of her crew in 1864, had been on a voyage to ‘Nieuport, thereto ship a quantity of tobacco to be landed somewhere in the Isle of Thanet.’25However, the majority of cases involved small amounts of tobacco, brought ashorefrom ships in the Downs, often concealed in a boatman’s clothing. In 1851, ThomasCottle was found to have 6 lb of ‘segars’ in ‘a pair of stays very ingeniously made.’5His crewmate John Osborne had 6 lb more in his hat and boots.21 In June 1853, aboatman named Wicks on coming ashore was observed by a Customs boatman to be‘unusually bulky about the legs.’ When searched, he was found to have 4½ lb ofcigars concealed on his person.27 Once landed, the small quantities of tobacco were collected together. In 1859,John Thompson, a local baker, was arrested in Beach Street carrying a basketcontaining 26 lb of tobacco. The Coastguard who made the seizure was alerted by ‘thesuspicious look and furtive glances of the prisoner when passing him... As the tobaccois in very small pieces,’ continued the Collector, ‘I infer that it has not been run at onetime but has been purchased from the boatmen who may have managed to conceal apiece about their persons when landing from vessels in the Downs.’28 It might then besent away, as in 1864, when the Coastguard seized a box of 33 lb of cigars at DealRailway Station, which was believed to have been ‘smuggled from time to time insmall quantities by the watermen.’29 The box was being sent to an address inChatham. Alternatively, smuggled tobacco might be disposed of in the town by theboatmen. In 1859, Thomas Foster had about 1¼ cwt ‘in large and small blocks,’which he was offering for sale at three shillings a pound.30 Convictions for smuggling were not easy to secure. For a prosecution tosucceed, it was necessary for the Customs or Coastguard men who made the seizureto identify the boatmen seen with boat on that occasion. This they were frequentlyunable to do. William Stanton escaped prosecution because, realising his boat wasabout to be searched, he walked away from her before the Customs men were nearenough to identify him positively.31 Even when a case came to court, conviction wasnot certain. In the Earl Grey case in 1852, ‘from the loose and contradictory mannerin which Brinkly and Vallack [the two officers] gave their evidence... themagistrates... could come to no other conclusion than acquit the prisoners.’32 InSeptember 1858, 40 one pint bottles of geneva were found concealed on board theopen boat Ann. The four men who had been on board ran away, but three, WilliamBeecham, John Gardner and James Ellenden, were later arrested and charged. Beforethe trial, John Gardner was able to show that he had been at Folkestone Regatta on theday in question, so only Beecham and Ellenden were proceeded against. However,‘when White [the Coastguard] was again put on his oath he could not swear positivelythat he recognised Ellenden in the boat, and... the evidence of Hocking the principalwitness was of the most contradictory and unsatisfactory nature.’ The case wasdismissed.33 In May and June 1860, the Customs were relying on the evidence of aninformant, Richard Winder, a marine store dealer of Charlton, Dover. Winder wasapparently motivated by the fact that he owed money to Thomas Robbins, a Walmerwatchmaker, ‘who acts as a sort of legal adviser to the boatmen, and,’ the Collectorhad no doubt, ‘is indirectly concerned in all their smuggling transactions.’34 Winderhad given Thomas Foster a bill for £6 to pay for some smuggled tobacco. Robbins hadcashed the bill for Foster and was now suing Winder for that amount in the CountyCourt. Foster was charged with smuggling on Winder’s information, but ‘through theconflicting evidence of Richard Winder... the prosecution terminated in favour of thedefendant.’ Winder was, said the Collector, ‘very much alarmed when he went intothe court as the boatmen are all highly incensed against him.’ This, the Collectorbelieved, ‘tended very materially to intimidate and confuse him in making hisstatement before the magistrates.... Even after the dismissal of the case, the mobthreatened to tar and feather him, and made such a demonstration that the police were6obliged to detain him at the station adjoining the Town Hall.’35 When a conviction was secured, the normal penalty was £100 fine or sixmonths imprisonment, with confiscation of the boat involved. In the Collector’sopinion, ‘the boatmen seem to care less for the loss of their liberty than their boats.’36The seizure of a boat would almost invariably be followed by a petition from theowner requesting its return, stating that it had been taken without the owner’sknowledge and that he or she would never have consented to its use for smuggling.When in 1853 the owners of the galley-punt Friends appealed for her return, Lt. Battof the Coastguard reported ‘any boat on Deal beach with her head toward the sea canbe taken from the beach by any of the Hobblers so that a boat cannot be takenclandestinely away this is a plan the smugglers have adopted of late, that is you cantake the boat and if you succeed in your illegal purposes you pay so much for the boatand if seized she was taken clandestinely from the beach without the owner’sconsent.’37 If the owner or owners could demonstrate some particular hardship, so muchthe better. In January 1851, Richard William Robinson, alehousekeeper, owner of theGipsy Girl, ‘disabled by lameness from the more active concerns of life...endeavoured to improve his means of living by investing his savings in the purchaseof a boat.’38 The return of the Earl Grey, seized in 1852, was petitioned for byElizabeth Petty, widow, aged 82, Sarah Pettitt, widow, aged 60, and Mary Petty,widow. ‘The boat... has been a support to us in our aged days in bringing in a fewpounds a year assisting vessels in distress in the Downs and saving lives fromshipwreck on the Goodwin Sands.... Honorable gentlemen you must be aware the boatbeing taken we nothing to support us in our Old Days.’39 The Collector dealt with thispetition fairly briskly; ‘we have no knowledge of the petitioners being part owners ofthe boat as she was licensed at this port on 17 August 1848 and Bond given by JohnFoster one of the men that was in the boat at the time of the seizure and he declaredhimself as sole owner.’40 The Mayor of Deal then submitted a memorial on behalf of‘these poor and unoffending widows.’41 A note of exasperation is detectable in theCollector’s subsequent report to the Board; ‘the widows named in the memorial havea small share of her but they are not the principal owners but are only named toexcite... sympathy.... The boat is very old and only fit for smuggling and I have nodoubt that if she was again restored, the same owners would be very soon engaged inthe same illegal traffic.’42 On the same day, Lt. Batt reported ‘that the lugger was builtby D. Petty and others of smuggling notoriety... that the ownership belongs to JohnFoster, Abraham Sneller, James Buttress, with Elizabeth Petty and Mary Petty,widows, who it appears have a very small proportion of her and their husbands werealways notorious smugglers.... The widows are not in kneedy (sic) circ*mstances onekeeping the King’s Head in Beach Street, the other having houses and property, whichMr Reakes the Mayor perfectly well knows.’43 Even if the boat was not returned upon the owners’ petition, there was noguarantee that it would not come into their possession again. Smuggling boats seizedby the Customs were sold at auction, and ‘the tradesmen here [at Deal] and atRamsgate will not bid against the owner of any seized boats.’44 The Collector alsocomplained of ‘the sympathy which when detected and punished the boatmen receivefrom those in a superior position in society - very many of whom have been pointedout to me as owing their position to the fortunate contraband speculation of theirimmediate ancestors - some too of whom I have heard spread their opinion that thereis not much harm either in smuggling or wrecking.’45 Another difficulty was the7nature of the coastline at Deal; boats were ‘drawn up at intervals on the beach,extending over a distance of four miles ready for launching at any moment, andtherefore we cannot have that control over their movements which we mightotherwise have if moored in harbour.’46 The clandestine landing of goods from wrecked ships may have been evenmore common than smuggling at Deal at this time, and was just as difficult to detectand prevent.‘Deal might have been built for smuggling, which is the same assaying it is exactly constituted for wrecking... so easy is it to dispersefrom its beach through its numberless alleys large quantities ofgoods, such facilities are there for the rapid and secret dispersal ofthem in Deal and circulating them through the county and beyondit.... The streets run parallel to the beach, and close to it, and areconnected by numerous narrow alleys, out of which open doors,leading into yards and sheds. The beach extends some miles, and atvarious parts of it, on the shingle itself, stand roomy wooden sheds,belonging to the boatmen. The cargoes of a whole fleet of ships,once landed on the beach, might be so effectually disposed of inthese yards and sheds, in a few hours, that not a trace of them wouldremain.’47 The Collector of Customs observed of the Customs Boatmen at Deal inJanuary 1850 that ‘the greater part of the duty of these men at this season of the yearis preventing the salvagers from running wrecked property... upwards of twentyluggers sometimes make the shore at the same time and the beach [is] literallycovered with valuable goods.’48 In 1858 the Collector remarked that ‘in cases ofwreck... when valuable ... goods are washed on shore for miles along the coast, itrequires an officer of no ordinary courage and determination to resist the thievingpropensities of the desperate characters in this neighbourhood, who are taught fromtheir earliest infancy to look upon wrecked property as a Godsend and plunder as amatter of right.’49 When five ships were wrecked on Deal beach in one night inFebruary 1870, the Collector wrote ‘I have employed a number of extra officers, allbeing Coastguard pensioners.... This I considered imperative, knowing the habits ofthe beachmen here and their ideas regarding wrecked property.’50 Despite theseprecautions, the Collector reported a few days later that ‘the coast was strewn formiles with wreckage, many hundreds of people have been daily collecting propertysince the wrecks, the Coastguard not being sufficient to prevent wrecking. TheInspecting Commander had to obtain assistance from the Marine Depot.... Even withthis force, pilfering went on to a great extent and the Coastguard made manyseizures.’51 The most notorious incident of this type was that of the North, wrecked on theGoodwin Sands in August 1866. The North was abandoned by her crew, and as shelay on the Sands she was visited over the next few days by boats from Deal, Walmer,Kingsdown and Broadstairs. The boatmen stripped the North of everything that couldbe carried away, leaving, according to two Broadstairs boatmen, ‘not enough rope tomake a mop with,’ or enough canvas ‘to tie round your finger if it had been cut.’52Some property was surrendered to the Receiver of Wreck, but ship’s stores andcrewmen’s property worth about £400 were not recovered.8‘About two tons of canvas and three quarters of a ton of rope... haveto be accounted for, and the deficiency in running rigging andhawsers is about four tons. None of the ship’s instruments ever cameinto the possession of the Receiver... the carpenter’s tools... havenever been recovered.... The vessel had at least 12,000 poundsweight of copper on her [hull].... She was stripped on both sides forseven or eight feet down.... The metal thus stripped would weighabout 35 cwt, and only 10 cwt has been returned to the Receiver.’53 Some rope from the North was traced to a paper mill near Dover, and a marinestore dealer named Foster was charged with handling stolen goods. He was acquitted,but The Times the next day reported that ‘The whole of the evidence was of the mostextraordinary character and proved conclusively that “wrecking” is the profession of alarge number of the Deal boatmen.’54 The newspaper referred to ‘the robbery of theNorth [which] represented nothing, it was said, but common practice.’55 Of Foster’strial it said ‘the evidence for the prosecution was given very unwillingly.... Does allthis point to a local impression that taking property from a wreck is not stealing? Isthere any general impression at Deal that the relics of a castaway are commonproperty?... If taking these stores from the North was theft, and the Deal boatmenwere seen to take them, was there no authority competent to stop the thieving? Wouldit be very surprising if men should really imagine they had some right to do what theywere at any rate allowed to do... without any action on the part of the law?’56 What The Times seemed unable to appreciate was that the removal of propertyfrom a wreck was not in itself illegal - quite the reverse. A ship on the Goodwin couldbe swallowed completely in two tides, and if no attempt was made to remove herpossibly valuable cargo, bring ashore any salvageable rope or sails, rescue the crew’sproperty and strip the copper sheathing from the hull, a major loss would result for theship’s owners or insurers. This was a normal and potentially profitable part of theboatmen’s work. As long as they were occupied in removing the property from awreck and stowing it in their own boats, they were acting entirely properly. Wherethey often transgressed was when they returned to shore. The correct procedure wasthat on landing, boats were searched or ‘rummaged’ by the Coastguard on duty on thebeach, any salvaged goods being declared and not concealed in any way. TheReceiver of Wreck kept account of what was recovered and reported to the owners orinsurers. In due course the boatmen were paid in proportion to the value of the goodssalvaged. Sometimes, however, the boatmen disposed of wrecked goods to ships inthe Downs, or attempted to land them without the Coastguards’ knowledge and sellthem themselves, as had allegedly occurred in the case of the North.The Times report of Foster’s trial initiated a protracted correspondence.Opinions in support of the boatmen and against them were expressed strongly. Onecorrespondent, signing as ‘Veritas’, alleged that ‘The [Deal] men actually plunderedthe chests of the whole of the crew...appropriated the contents, and then, as if to addinsult to injury, had the audacity to deliver... the empty chests to the Receiver ofWreck.’57 The Rector of Deal wrote to refute this allegation against ‘certainindividuals who... are sufficiently designated by the fact of their having handed overthe only seamen’s chests which were brought ashore... to be readily identified by allpersons living in this place.’ The Rector enclosed an affidavit by the two men inquestion, Jarvist Arnold and Thomas Edward Bingham, that the chests had all beenempty when they found them and ‘the accusation in The Times that we plundered the9chests is false and untrue.’58 Another correspondent was the Secretary of the Salvage Association atLloyd’s, who wrote that he had been ordered by his committee to carry out aninvestigation into ‘this great robbery.’ He had been ordered to do this with strictimpartiality, and it was his duty to obey this instruction.59 Despite this assertion, hisreport was far from being a reasoned assessment of the evidence, and in places vergeson libellous. Of the Rector’s letter and the affidavits of Arnold and Bingham, thereport says‘There is no doubt that the chests of the crew were delivered up tothe Receiver of Deal empty. Who emptied those chests? Did the seado it? Will the rector suggest that the sea broke open the locks,cleared out the contents and deposited the chests... on the ship’s deck- or that he co*ckroaches did it?... There is an old saying - “A mandoes not pick up a squeezed orange.” These boxes not worth ashilling appear to have been carefully salved and delivered to theReceiver, by men who did not steal their contents.... It was a verywise thing for [Arnold and Bingham] to make that affidavit, becausethe persons handing over the boxes ran a great risk of beingsupposed to know something about their contents.’60 The Board of Trade held an enquiry into the affair of the North which reportedin June 1867. The marine store dealer Foster was interviewed; ‘his books were verybadly kept, indeed he could not himself read or write, and trusted to a chance comeror his wife to make entries for him. Inability to read or write seemed to me to beconsidered a desirable qualification for a marine store dealer in Deal, Walmer orDover.’ Although Foster had been acquitted of the charges against him, the Board ofTrade Inspector, Mr Bere, reported that ‘his answers were given in a way thatconvinced one of his untruthfulness, and I have no doubt that he was perfectly awarethat the rope and canvas came from the North and, if he had chosen, could havementioned the name of the person who sold it to him.’61 Of the boatmen who gave evidence to the enquiry, Mr Bere noted that ‘therewas a general strong desire to exculpate themselves and their fellow townsmen, andwhile their recollection of what they themselves did at the time of the wreck was clearand explicit, it was, as to the conduct of anyone else, confused and indistinct. None ofthem could remember the name of a single Deal beach boat other than their own, orboats that went out to sea or returned with them [or] seen by them at the wreck, andinability to give any description of the state of the ship, as to its canvas or its rigging,was to be remarked in the evidence of most of them.’62 Many of the potentialwitnesses were conveniently absent at sea during the course of the enquiry, and theirevidence therefore never heard. In addition to the North, cases of misappropriation of wrecked goods werereported in 1849, 1857, 1861, 1870, 1873, 1875 and 1882. In October 1857 anAmerican ship, the A.B. Kemball, was wrecked on the Goodwin; the Collector ofCustoms’ report demonstrates the apparent ease with which the boatmen evadeddetection when landing wrecked goods. ‘42 sails were taken out of her by the crews ofDeal boats and only seven delivered to the Receiver of Wreck.... The sails which werevery large and in a wet state must have required ten or a dozen men to drag them outof the boats on to the beach and yet they were landed without the knowledge of theCoastguard.’63 It was alleged elsewhere that ‘the day after the loss of the ship herprovisions, stolen by boatmen, were hawked around the streets of Maidstone for10sale.’64 Disagreements between boatmen and the owners or insurers of ships as to thevalue of the services rendered by the boatmen were quite common. Sometimes it wasalleged that the services claimed for by the boatmen had been unnecessary orunwanted or had not been performed at all. In 1876, John Cook, Edward Griggs andother crew of the lugger Devastation claimed for services to the French barque MarieAlexandrine. Cook and Griggs originally boarded the vessel in order to pilot her intothe Downs, but‘the gale increasing, gave orders to take the main Topsail off herwith great difficulty proceeded... into the Small Downs brought theBarque up... in Five Fathoms with Sixty fathom of chain, about 3pmthe wind veered into the NNW and blew a Hurricane, bore awayChain to 90 fathom, Barque continued driving... close alongside aBrig, compelled them to slip to avoid a collision... made sail,hoisting signals of distress for tug, none came... our sails blewaway.’65 The crew of the Marie Alexandrine in response stated that, during the time thebarque was attempting to anchor in the Small Downs, ‘the pilots were in the Galleyand had nothing whatever to do with the control of the ship... all orders were given bythe captain, and the pilots had nothing whatever to do with the operations.’66 Moreseriously, the first mate of the Marie Alexandrine made a separate statement that, theday after his ship had been towed into Dover Harbour, the boatmen came ‘to make theproposal... that he should have £5 if he would say that the Boatmen saved the ship.’67The Salvage Commissioners do not appear to have pursued this allegation. Theirjudgement was that the Marie Alexandrine ‘did receive aid and assistance from JohnCook and others of the lugger Devastation... in bringing her to anchor in the Downsand afterwards... slipping the cables and piloting her through the shipping there,’ forwhich they awarded the boatmen £70.68 There seems to be no reason why the Marie Alexandrine’s mate should haveinvented the story of the bribe, and Cook and Griggs might consider themselvesfortunate to have got away with it. In the previous decade, the question of the Dealboatmen’s fraudulent claims for salvage services had received nearly as muchattention as had their wrecking activities, again culminating in a Board of Tradeenquiry. In April 1867,William Spears, on behalf of the crew of the lugger Briton’sPride, of which he was part-owner, made a declaration of services performed by thelugger for the American ship Olivia. According to Spears, while cruising among the shipping in the Downs, thelugger’s crew observed the Olivia apparently in imminent danger of collision withanother vessel. They boarded the ship, and the captain employed them to assist her outof her dangerous position, which they did by setting sail and slipping the anchor andchain. When the ship was in a safe position, they took the captain ashore to arrangewith the agents for a new anchor and chain, which they then took off in the luggerAlbion. For these services, the boatmen were awarded £420. The Board of Trade became suspicious of this transaction and ordered anenquiry, which was carried out by the same Mr Montague Bere who had carried outthe North enquiry. He found that the crew of the Briton’s Pride had first encounteredthe Olivia off the South Foreland, when they put one of their crew, WilliamMiddleton, on board to pilot her into the Downs. The Briton’s Pride had also agreed11to bring another man off from Deal to pilot the ship into the North Sea. Middletondecided to anchor the Olivia in the Downs, although ‘it is doubtful whether thecaptain had agreed to allow the vessel to be anchored.’ Under the strain of the windand tide, the Olivia’s anchor chain broke. The report alleges that this was due either toMiddleton’s poor handling of the ship, or a deliberate act on his part. The lugger then returned with George Baker, the North Sea pilot. Mr Berefound that, contrary to Spears’ statement, the Olivia was not then in any danger ofcollision, and far from the crew of the lugger rendering assistance, it was doubtfulwhether any of them apart from Baker had actually boarded the ship. Baker refused totake the Olivia into the North Sea without a new anchor and chain. He maintained thathe was told the anchor had been slipped. If this had been the case, the insurers wouldpay for replacements; if the chain had broken, they would not. The captain of theOlivia claimed that he told Baker that the chain had parted, upon which Baker replied,‘make it slipped.’ The suggestion was that Baker, Middleton and Spears wished tomake it appear that the ship had been in danger and the anchor had been slipped sothat they might claim for salvage services and for bringing out a new anchor andchain. In order that the Olivia’s log would support their story, they persuaded thecaptain to join in the conspiracy, promising £60 as payment for his cooperation.69. Asa result of the Board of Trade investigation, Spears, Middleton and Baker wereprosecuted in 1868, convicted and sentenced to six months each in Maidstone Gaol.In passing sentence, Mr Justice Wallis observed that ‘this, he feared, was noexceptional case, and indeed this species of offence appeared to be nothing to theconscience of the Deal boatmen.... he had talked to nautical men in different parts ofthe world and all had some tales of the Deal boatmen. He held a book in his handwhich told of the dread entertained of Deal by foreign ships.’70 Mr Bere implied that the boatmen might often succeed in fraudulent orextortionate claims due to the deficiencies of the system whereby salvage awardswere made. Many cases might be settled by arbitration between the parties. Onlywhen agreement could not be reached was the Salvage Commission involved, andeven then ‘there is no sifting of the evidence, and no real examination of the parties.’71Other cases investigated by the Board of Trade in the late 1860s included the ships KitCarson, Bazaar, Gravin Kuyphausen and Iron Crown, all of which were alleged tohave been victims of extortionate demands for salvage by Deal boatmen.72 Thisaccumulation of allegations may have had an impact on the boatmen’s fortunes; earlyin 1870 it was reported that several ships’ captains had refused to employ Dealboatmen in a gale, with the result that five ships were lost which the boatmen claimedcould have been saved.73 If the boatmen exaggerated their claims for salvage money, this was becausethey knew that the sum awarded was likely to be less than that claimed. Out of fortyawards to Deal boats reported in the Deal Telegram in 1859, the boatmen receivedless than they had claimed in ten, the amount awarded being only 53% of the totalclaimed. In the remaining thirty cases, it was not stated what the original claim was.The total awards reported in 1859 amounted to just over £8,600, or about £24 to eachboatman. William Stanton’s opinion in the 1820s was that ‘there never was an awardgiven anything like justice.... They seemed determined that a poor man should nothave the possession of money, as if it were to keep him in a servile condition.’74 Thisbelief was probably shared by subsequent generations of boatmen. One of the most serious charges brought against the Deal boatmen in thesecond half of the nineteenth century was of piracy, made against the crew of thelugger Princess Royal in December 1869 by the captain of a Dutch pilot cutter. It was12alleged that men from the lugger had boarded the cutter at sea one night anddemanded tobacco and hollands and when refused had violently assaulted the captain.The Deal men agreed that they had asked for tobacco and hollands, but said they hadbeen willing to pay for it. A fight certainly broke out on board the cutter, but the onlyserious casualty was a Deal man, who suffered a severe concussion. The lugger’screw had no clear explanation of why the fight occurred. The case was dismissedbecause the Dutchmen could not say which of the Princess Royal’s crew had actuallyboarded the cutter and which had remained in the lugger. Indeed, because of thecustom at Deal of boats having no regular crews and the boatmen’s habit of usingnicknames among themselves, it was not entirely certain that the men summonsed inthis case were actually those who had been in the Princess Royal on that voyage.75 Ashore, the boatmen seem to have been reasonably law abiding. Only threecases of theft involving boatmen were prosecuted at Deal between 1858 and 1883; oneach occasion, the magistrates remarked how rare it was for a boatman to be chargedwith theft.76 An offence that was common among the boatmen was fighting orbrawling, often under the influence of drink. A magistrate once observed that‘boatmen were apt to be too ready to use their fists.’77 These brawls often resultedfrom disputes over ‘the custom of the beach’ and the sharing of earnings. In 1876,James Bailey and George Porter appeared at the Petty Sessions charged with fighting.Porter alleged that Bailey had ‘robbed him in the Lord Paget,’ and that he, Porter, wasas good a man in the North Sea as Bailey was in the Westward. Porter allegedly saidto Bailey ‘you ----, I will eat you on a biscuit.’78 The boatmen attached greatimportance to fair dealing among themselves; as William Spears once said, ‘if I make£1,000 I share it equally, that is being a Deal boatman.’79 Some criticisms of the boatmen were undoubtedly justified, but others camefrom a lack of understanding of their work, as in the case of the North. In May 1864,for example, ‘three gentlemen enquired of one of us boatmen the charge for takingthem from the shore to the Admiral’s ship and wait to bring them back. The priceagreed for was 15s.’ The gentlemen then went to a stationer’s shop where theyenquired if it was a fair price, and were told it was ‘an imposition.’ The boatmencomplained of ‘Mr Busybody’ trying to regulate the Deal boatmen’s charges ‘ofwhich he must be entirely ignorant.... The 15s in question would have been dividedinto six shares, and we sometimes go many days without earning even that sum - afact which is not taken into consideration by persons unacquainted with a boatman’soccupation.’80 An anonymous correspondent of The Times in 1866 probably gave the mostaccurate assessment of the Deal boatmen’s character. ‘The Deal boatmen are as fine aset of men in their speciality as an be found anywhere, and are entitled to any praisethat may be given them, but their faults are as patent as their virtues. They are at oncethe most hardworking and the laziest set of men. They would sacrifice anything tosave a life, and they think anyone fair game of whom they can make a shilling. Theyare generous, hearty and loyal, and the most determined smugglers when they havethe chance. They would wreck a ship and risk their lives to save one with equalreadiness.’8113Notes1. David M. Williams, 'James Silk Buckingham: Sailor, Explorer and MaritimeReformer,' in Studies in British Privateering, Trading Enterprise and Seamen'sWelfare, 1775-1900, ed. Stephen Fisher, Exeter Papers in Economic History No. 17(1987), p.107.2. Household Words and Chambers’ Journal quoted in E. C. Pain, The Last Of OurLuggers And The Men Who Sailed Them, (Deal 1929), pp. 61, 68; Sydney Gerald,‘Deal Beach’, The Pall Mall Magazine, (1893), p.367.3 . Kelly’s Post Office Directory of Kent, 1866.4. John Gilmore, Storm Warriors, or Life-Boat Work on the Goodwin Sands (1873),pp.192, 195, 202.5. Achilles Daunt, Our Sea Coast Heroes: or, Stories of Wreck and Rescue by theLifeboat and Rocket, (1889), pp. 210, 214.6. George Byng Gattie, Memorials of the Goodwin Sands, (1890), p. 100.7. Thomas Stanley Treanor, Heroes of the Goodwin Sands, (1892), pp. 41, 42. Otherbooks by Treanor are The Log of a Sky Pi1ot and The Cry From the Sea and theAnswer From the Shore, publication dates unknown but c.1895.8. Treanor, Heroes, p.164.9. East Kent Archives Centre (E.K.A.C.) CPw/AP 1854/1. The lugger' s crew wasawarded £100 for these services.10. E.K.A.C. CPw/ACp 1862/5. For these services, £65 was awarded to the boatmen,to be divided into twelve shares.11. E.K.A.C. CPw/ACp 1869/6. £100 was awarded, to be divided among eighteenmen.12. Gilmore, op. cit., p.202.13. Public Record Office (P.R.O.) MT9/105A/75, Report on the Subject of Wreck andSalvage on the Coast of Kent. MT9/105A is a bundle of material containing a numberof reports and documents relating to salvage cases in the Deal area.14. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 8 Mar 1858; CUST 53/2 10 Jan 1861.15. P. Muskett, ‘Deal Smuggling in the Eighteenth Century,’ Southern History 8,(1986).16. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 5 Jan 1858.17. William Stanton, The Journal of William Stanton, Pilot of Deal, (Portsmouth1929), pp. 54-57.18. This is the period covered by the letterbooks of the Customs port of Deal, P.R.O.CUST 53/1 - 53/419. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 15 May 1851.20. Treanor, Heroes, p.50.21. P.R.O. CUST 53/3 Jan 186522. P.R.O. CUST 53/3 13 July 1865.23. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 8 June 1852.24. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 1 May 1858, 12 June 1858.25. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 6 May 1858, CUST 53/3 Jan 1865.26. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 7 Feb 185127. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 17 June 185328. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 5 Oct 185929. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 5 July 185430. P.R.O. CUST 53/5 28 May 186031. Stanton, op. cit., p.55.32. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 11 June 18521433. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 16 Sept 1858, 23 Sept 1858. Gardner’s alibi was suspiciouslywatertight, for he had been seen on the way to Folkestone by Admiral Vincent, amagistrate.34. P.R.O. CUST 53/5 28 May 186035. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 19 June 186036. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 3 Feb 186037. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 10 June 185338. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 Jan 185139. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 20 June 185240. Ibid.41. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 Aug 185242. P.R.O. CUST 53/1 26 Aug 185243. Ibid.44. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 2 Aug 185945. P.R.O. CUST 53/3 Jan 186546. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 14 Mar 185747. P.R.O. MT9/105A/75 Report on the Subject of Wreck and Salvage on the Coastof Kent.48. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 10 Jan 185049. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 8 Mar 185850. P.R.O. CUST 53/3 16 Feb 187051. P.R.O. CUST 53/3 19 Feb 187052. P.R.O. MT9/105A Report of Inquiry into the Wreck of the North, p.2.53. Ibid., p.154. The Times, 19 Oct 1866, p.755. Ibid., 24 Oct., 1866, p.656. Ibid.57. The Times, 29 Oct 1866, p.4.58. The Times, 26 Oct 1866, p.10. Jarvist Arnold was coxswain of the Kingsdownlifeboat.59. The Times, 22 Oct 1866, p.7.60. P.R.O. MT9/105A/75 Report on the Subject of Wreck and Salvage on the Coastof Kent.61. P.R.O. MT9/105A, North enquiry, p.362. Ibid.63. P.R.O. CUST 53/2 8 Mar 185864. P.R.O. MT9/105A/75 Report on the Subject of Wreck and Salvage on the Coastof Kent.65. E.K.A.C. CPw/ACp 1876/266. Ibid.67. Ibid.68. E.K.A.C. CPw/ACa3 22 Mar 1876.69. P.R.O. MT9/105A Report of Inquiry into the Accident to the ship Olivia.70. The Times, 29 July 1868, p.1171. P.R.O. MT9/105A, Olivia report.72. P.R.O. MT9/105A.73. The Deal Telegram, Jan & Feb 1870, various issues.74. The Deal Mercury, 2 Apr 1870, p.3; 16 Apr 1870, p.2; Pain, op. cit., p.71.75. Pain, op. cit., p.71.76. The Deal Telegram, 24 June 1865, p.7; The Deal Mercury, 6 Nov 1869, p.3; ibid.,1516 Oct 1878, p5.77. The Deal Telegram, 23 Sept 1865, p.7.78. The Deal Mercury, 13 May 1876, p.2.79. Ibid., 16 Oct 1880, p.2.80. The Deal Telegram, 14 May 1864, p.7.81. The Times, 23 Oct 1866, p.9.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Paper No. 020Sir Edward Dering, lst bart., of SurrendenDering and his 'Booke of Expences'1617-1628Laetitia YeandleThis paper has been downloaded fromwww.kentarchaeology.ac. The author has placed the paperon the site for download for personal or academic use.Any other use must be cleared with the author of thepaper who retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for detailsregarding copyright clearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity223382) welcomes the submission of papers. Thenecessary form can be downloaded from the website at A note on the manuscript and this transcriptionDescription of the volumeThe Booke of Expences is a tall folio volume, measuring 444 by 185 mm., bound invellum, the top and bottom edges folded inward to a depth of 20 to 40 mms. The bindingwas attached to the paper block with five thongs, one of which is now missing, and isreinforced with tacking stitches along the spine. The volume was foliated in recent timesand numbers 95 leaves and three uncounted stubs between ff. 1 and 2, ff. 56 and 57, andff. 7l and 72, taken from two stocks of paper, a gathering of smaller size having beeninserted between ff. 50 and 62. The collation is: [1] [212] (-21 ) [3-416] (-41) [516] (57 +([612] (-67)) [716] (-72) [810]. The first and last leaves seem to have served as pastedowns. The predominant paper measures 446 by 175 mm., suggesting the vellum hasshrunk over the years, and has a watermark of a crowned shield resembling no. 264 inW.A.Churchill’s Watermarks in Paper (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger & Co., 1935).Despite some damage around the edges and a few holes, some stains and smudges, a littlefading and bleed-through of the ink, the paper is in fairly good condition and the writingfor the most part legible. The worst damage occurs on f. 28 where several lines have beenso heavily scored through that it is now in two pieces. The inserted gathering, gathering6, consists of twelve smaller leaves tipped in between 57 and 58 (ff. 50 and 62),measuring 388 by 159 mm. The paper is thicker and has a watermark of what appears tobe a crowned eagle bearing some resemblance to no. 439 in Churchill. It is in goodcondition. In addition, a loose unfoliated fragment of paper measuring 142 by 150 mm. isnow inserted between ff. 90v and 91r. It has a portion of a watermark showing the hindlegs of a quadruped, possibly a horse or a unicorn. It is a rough list of a few sweet meats,only the last entry being in Dering’s hand. Ff. 2v, 3v, 26r, 45v, 56v, 85r to 91r, 93v to94v, and 95v are blank. There is no obvious gap in the written record. Both the vellumcover and the paper of the volume have a horizontal crease in the centre, most noticeableat the front of the volume.The pages are ruled into six columns in red ink: the first on the left is for the month andday, the second for the entry; the four narrow ones on the right are respectively headed‘li’’ or occasionally ‘Li’’, ‘s’, ‘d’ and, at the beginning of the volume, ‘ob’’. With a fewexceptions, Dering heads each page with the year and the number of the quarter or halfyear. He usually leaves a sizeable blank space at the end of each full year.Dering wrote a mixed hand, using both secretary and italic forms; he preferred the italichand for names.Dering’s accounting methodsThis volume of his expenses seems to be Dering’s fair copy. Once he refers to his otherbook of expenses for more details (4v), once to the purchase of ‘3 bookes for expences,whereof this is one’ for 7s. 6d. (6v). There are some deletions and corrections, especiallywhen he is adding up sums of money, but on the whole the volume gives the appearanceof being his most up-to-date copy. It incorporates the expenses his father, or brothers, orservants incurred on his behalf. These are copied in in a block and bracketed together. Hestarts by entering his various expenses on a quarterly basis in January 1618/19 (4r),giving the total of each quarter’s expenses at the end of each quarter. In keeping with theusage of the time Dering uses the Julian calendar: the first quarter begins on 25 March(Lady Day), which he once refers to as ‘our Lady day of old’ (59v), the second quarter on24 June (Midsummer’s Day), the third on 29 September (Michaelmas) and the fourth on1 January (New Year’s Day). He does not start to include the month and day whenparticular payments were made until December 1619 after his marriage (7r). On 25March 1620 (8r) he switches to a half yearly basis to enter his accounts, the first halfbeginning on 25 March and the second on 29 September. This is the pattern he followsfor the rest of the volume. He gives the total of the expenses entered on a page at the footof that page, the total spent in a half year at the end of each half year, and the total spentin a full year at the end of each full year. Sometimes he gives the total cost of bracketeditems or of items comprised in making, for example, a coat. Near the beginning of thevolume (3r) he notes each year’s total from 1618 to 1626/27, but not that for 1627 to1627/28 even though the Booke of Expences stops at the end of this year.The entries are generally entered chronologically though one cannot assume that the dateof the entry is the date the item was purchased. The date given can be the date of thereckoning as he clearly states in the entry for 28 November 1623: ‘supper yesternight anddinner too day’ 3s. 4d. (34r), and as is evident when certain payments incurred in one halfyear are paid in the next half year (see for example 62r).One year Dering tried a different method of keeping his accounts. From March 1625 toMarch 1626 he decided to divide his expenses into two categories, Household Expenses(46r-50v, 62r) and Foreign Payments (51r-56r). The latter begin on the first leaf of theinserted gathering. In this year, consequently, there are two sets of expenses, HouseholdExpenses for the first half year and the second half year being followed by ForeignPayments for the first half year and the second half year. On the last two pages for thisyear (56r and 57r, 56v is blank) Dering catches up on his book-keeping and entersexpenses from both categories, all apparently incurred earlier in that year. He gives thetotal sum of each category at the end of the year as well as the total of both categories forthe whole year (56r).Editorial conventionsThe manuscript has been transcribed as literally as possible with certain exceptions.Capital letters, spelling and punctuation, though not diphthongs, have been kept. Thisincludes the long ‘i’, which Dering very occasionally uses within a word and which hasbeen transcribed as a ‘j’, and the sign which looks to the modern eye like an equal sign,‘=’, though this sign has been ignored when it is used in a word break that is not neededin the transcription. Superior letters have been silently lowered except in the case ofsums of money denoting pounds, shillings and pence when superior ‘li’’, ‘s’ and ‘d’ havebeen kept and, the few times they occur, in Latin ordinals as ‘1mo’ (57v). Commonabbreviations like ‘It’’ for ‘Item’, ‘mr’ for ‘master’, ‘yt’ for ‘yat’ (that), ‘pd’ for ‘paid’,and ‘p’ with a horizontal line through the stem standing for ‘per’, have been silentlyexpanded. However, when Dering uses such a ‘p’ as a regular ‘p’ as he often does thehorizontal line through the stem has been ignored, as in ‘passe’ (9r) and in ‘supp’ (34r).Abbreviations for Christian names, names of the months and days have also been silentlyexpanded. Less common abbreviations have had the missing letters added within squarebrackets. Certain abbreviations for weights and various measures have been retained, anapostrophe taking the place of the mark of abbreviation whatever the one used. Thus‘ob’’ stands for obolus (halfpenny), ‘bb’’ or ‘bush’’ for ‘bushel’, ‘dim’’ for ‘dimidium’(half), ‘yd’’ for ‘yard’, ‘qrter’’, or occasionally ‘qter’’, for ‘quarter’, and ‘qrts’’ or ‘qrtes’’for ‘quartes’. In the case of ‘qr’’ it may denote ‘quadrans’ (farthing) or ‘quire’. When itstands for ‘quire’ it has been expanded as ‘q[ui]r[e]’. In the case of two potentiallyconfusing measurements this means that ‘7 li’’ stands for 7 lb avoirdupois, and ‘7 li’’ for£7 sterling, while ‘2 d’ when used to indicate the weight of a nail stands for 2penny[weight], and ‘2d’ for 2 pence in money. ‘Viz.’, ‘&’, ‘&c’ and ‘dd’’ (here oftenstanding for ‘delivered’) have been kept.No attempt has been made to distinguish between Dering’s mixed secretary and italichand, and his italic hand. It is not always easy to be sure about the actual spelling of aword or about a mark of punctuation, nor whether a letter is a capital or not. In the case ofsome initial double ‘f’s written in italic it is difficult to know whether he was writing ‘FF’or ‘ff’. I have chosen the latter interpretation. ‘1’s and ‘2’s, ‘d’s and ‘e’s can also beconfusing.Editorial emendations have been placed within square brackets. A question mark inparentheses has been added after a doubtful reading. Broken brackets enclose deletions, aquestion mark being added if the reading is uncertain. Hyphens indicate illegible letters,words or numbers. Corrected letters have usually been ignored. A caret on either side of aletter or word shows that the letter or word was inserted.Marginal marks have been reproduced or approximated if possible but not most of thepencil dashes in the first column that seem to have been added relatively recently, oftento draw attention to entries about books and plays; a few in pencil that may have beenadded by Dering have been noted (e.g. 57v). The horizontal line drawn between the lastword of an entry and the corresponding sum of money has been ignored, except towardthe beginning of the manuscript where it is sometimes crossed and here indicated by aplus sign. These seem to highlight expenses relating to his wife and to tips and ‘givens’.Bracketed lines have been indicated by using a small bracket at the beginning and/or endof each line bracketed. In several cases Dering uses pencil for his brackets as on ff. 51vand 55r. Folio numbers and the few textual notes have been added in bold type withinsquare brackets.Note of caution when using the search feature in this on-line editionSpelling was not static in Dering’s day and consequently may appear erratic to themodern eye. Anyone wishing, for example, to look up references to people, places andobjects in this literatim transcription, whose spelling may also incorporate Dering’scorrections, must bear this in mind. Thus ‘diamond’ appears as ‘diuamond’,‘greyhound’ as ‘greewhound’, ‘farthingale’ in its variant form ‘vertingale’, ‘hasp’ as‘hapse’, ‘haps’ or ‘happes’, ‘sieve’ as ‘siue’, ‘suet’ as ‘suite’ or ‘sewitt’, ‘tweezers’ as‘twizes’ or ‘etwizes’, and so on. The references to ‘master Dawes’ and ‘maasterDEaues(?)’ probably both refer to Simon D’Ewes who was knighted shortly after thedate of the second entry. 1[Transcription of Sir Edward Dering’s Booke of Expences, U350 E4, Centre for Kentish Studies][f.1] [stub][f.2r]A Booke of expences from ye yeare 1619. (being halfe a yeare before I was first marryed), vnto ye yeare [blank].[f.2v] [blank][f.3r] 1617 li' s d ob' In ye latter halfe of this yeare, beinge from Michaelmas vnto our Lady day, and beinge ye first halfe yeare of my beingeof ye society of ye middle temple, my fathers charges - amounted vnto ye summe of fourescore and ten pounds, and vpwarde, all of itt peace=meale com= minge out of his purse, and I owinge for notheinge. memorandum: I had two suites of apparell, and one plaine blacke cloath cloake lin'd with velluett 90 00 00 2 1618 This yeare I made 4 suites, 5 cloakes and one coate, and a cloake for ye boy: which came to aboue 67li': and in ye last quarter I was knighted wherevpon with the fees and collaterall occasions I spent 232 2103li' - 87?3s - 83d so that this yeares expences amount vnto [blank?] whereof in ye last quarter 283-0-2-ob' and in ye 3 quarters befor 105-14-9 388 14 11 01 1619 The whole yeares expences beinge ye yeare 287 06 10 wherein I was marrided 548 10 02 which sett me in debt 110li'. 1620 The whole yeares expences 300 01 04 1621 The whole yeares expences 4008 140 0103 3 1622 The whole yeares expences 426 17 03 5246 --17 013 1623 The whole yeares expences 323 02 03 1624 The whole yeares expences 591 10 10 1625 The whole yeares expences 6844 .5 11 16276 The whole yeares expences 721 08 11 714 09 03- 572-13-4[f.3v] [blank][f.4r] My -----prodigall ---yeare The last quarter anno 1618, and ye three first anno 1619. 1618. Last quarter 4 from newyeares day vnto our Lady day./ Price of Knighthoode Ian: 22. 160 00 00 Hnighthood [sic] fees 43 00 00 voluntary gratuities 2 18 06 Horsemeate and dyett att London, Puckeridge, ware Newmercat Cambridg, Dartford and Maidestone, for my selfe and horse and for 5 s? more by ye space of 13 dayes 06 19 09 A supper bestowed on sir ffrancis Beaumont mr shelden &c: february 1715 01 12 00 Dyett and Lodginge att my cosen Thomas Deringe's 03 11 00 A Cloake for my boy 00 15 06 Otherwise spent on ye boy 01 14 05 Giuen away att Boughton and els where 01 05 06 7 yds and a qrter' of blacke wrought vellett att 24s per yd to make a suitecloake. 08 14 00 9 yds of blacke french silke plush att 35s per yd to line the cloake 15 15 00 8 yds 3 quarters of blacke furger'd satten, att 18s per yd to make a suite 07 14 06 Ell ett qrter' of coloured taffaty, to line the doublett 00 16 08 2 dozen and 10 yds of imbroidered satten lace att 20s ye dozen 02 2l6 08 5 The taylours bill for this suite 02 056 04 Summ of this suite 38-3-2. Alteringe two cloake 02 18 08 Chamber=rent att ye temple for a whole yeare 06 00 00 Other expences whereof most were very necessary 14 00?1 08 01. Summ of this quarter 283 00 02 01[f.4v] 1619 first quarter from our Lady day vnto midsommer day./ 4 yds of oliue coloured kentish broad=cloath att 16s per yds to make a cloake and breeches 03 04 00 4 yds half qrter' of turky chamlett 01 0410 00 14 dozen of galloune lace for two in a seame and 12 about ye cloake att 2s-4d ye ounce [blank] And 2 ounces 3 quarters of silke 02 18 00 Ell, and qrter' of taffaty to line ye doublett 00 16 06 A grosse of buttons 00 04 00 4 yds of bays to line my cloake as [sic] 4s per yd 00 16 00 The taylours bill 0l 18 02 6 Summ of this suite 11-6-8 Turninge two silke grogarum suites, and makinge them vp with taffaty bought to cutt vpon &c 03 16 09 New makinge my satten=guarded cloake 00 12 00 3 yds dim': of blew kersey to make a suite for ye boy 00 17 06 Crimson silke lace in graine and silke 00 08 00 9 dozen of buttons 00 03 00 Lininge &c and makinge vp this suite 00 15 03 summe of this suite: 2-3-9 In bookes 04 17 10 A clocke with an allarum 04 03 00 Amblinge my dunne' mare a fortnight 00 12 00 The boy stoode me in besides 00 15 08 Giuen away att Boughton and els where 03 01 04 In other expences and those also necessary, as they are specifyed in my other booke of expences 16 053 05 Summ of this quarter is 407 142 5 7[f.5r] 1619 2 quarter. ffrom Midsommer vnto Michaelmas. 8 yds of french greene turky grogarum for a suite att 6.s per yd. 02 09 06 Taffaty to line ye doublett 00 16 05 Canuas, silke, lace, lininges, buttons, bays &c 02 03 00 3 dozen of riband pointes. 00 11 06 makinge this suite 00 18 00 summ of this suite and pointes 6-18-5 ___________ 2 per of gloues 00 02 00 3 per of bootes 0l 10 00 per of spanish leather shoes 00 04 00 Dyett and horsemeatte att diuers places 01 15 04 Lost att play, gleeke and tables 04 0?818 07 2 per of gloues 00 03 02 2 per of gloues for cosen K. Bell 00 03 00 Carrier had 00 01 09 A peache coloured and greene scarfe 00 19 00 A blacke beauer 01 16 00 per of willow=coloured silke stockins 01 11 00 per of blacke silke roses with siluer lace 00 10 00 per of carnation silke stockins for my mistress. 01 04 00 8 per of garters for her 01 05 00 per of roses for her 00 12 00 per of gloues 00 01 08 Ordinary att Allington court 00 01 08 giuen Iacke Tuffton his ordinary there 00 01 00 giuen my boy 00 06 03 giuen poore 00 03 00 giuen att Boughton 01 01 00 giuen att Hothfeild 03 02 00 giuen away els where 02 08 06 Suite att Allington court 00 00 06 Dyett for man and horsemeate 00 01 06 Lost 00 01 03 Iourney for cosen Kate Bell when I did fetch her from Tunbridge 01 04 00 Summ of this qrter' is 32-5-7[f.5v] 1619 My desperate qrter' The 3d qrter' from michaelmas 9 vnto Newyeare'ds day. 5 yds qrter' of Scarlett coloured satten for a doublett, and to line my Cassocke att 16s per yd 04 04 00 5 yds halfe qrter' of fine Scarlett att 55s per yd to make hose, cassocke and Cloake 14 00 00 7 yds dim': of blacke rich velluett att 24s per yd 09 00 00 22 ounces of blacke galloune lace 02 15 00 Taffaty to line the doublett 00 17 00 5 grosse of buttons att 8s ye grosse 01 04 00 pinkinge and racinge the doublett and lininge of ye ropell 00 08 00 for embroideringe doublett, ropell and scarfe 02 10 00 5 dozen of small buttons 00 01 08 Stichinge and sowinge silke 00 14 00 ffor cuttinge ye scallopt?s 00 02 00 Holland to line the hose 00 05 06 Dutch bays for ye hose 00 04 06 Pocketts to ye hose 00 00 010 2 dozen of checker=riband=pointes 00 12 00 Drawinge ye peeces in ye suite and cloake 00 05 00 Canuas and stiffninge to ye doublett 00 03 06 ffor makinge the doublett and hose 00 18 00 makinge ye ropell 0l 08 00 makinge ye Cloake 00 09 00 10 Summ of this suite. 40-2-0 4 yds 3 quarters of ashcolour spanish cloath to make cloake and hose att 16s - per yd 03 18 03 2 yds dim': of ashcolour sattin for doublett att 15s 01 17 06 4 yds of scarlett bayse to line ye cloake att 9s 01 16 00 13 ounces of crimson g^a^lloun in graine att 3s-2d 02 02 11 stickinge and sowinge silke 00 08 08 An ell of taffaty to line the doublett 00 18 00 5 dozen of small buttons to ye doublett 00 02 06 15 dozen of buttons to ye p?doub suite and cloake 00 11 03 holland to line ye hose 00 05 06 Bays to line ye hose 00 04 06 Cuttinge ye scallops 00 00 06 pinkinge ye doublett 00 02 06 2 dozen of checker riband crimson pointes 00 14 00 Drawinge ye peeces in ye suite and cloake 00 03 06 Makinge doublett and hose 00 18 00 makinge ye cloake 00 08 00 2 yds more of the same spanish cloath to make a ropell and per of stockins 01 16 00 11 ounceds dim: of galloune more 01 18 02 Stichinge and sowinge silke 00 07 02?0 14 dozen of buttons for ye cassocke 00 10 06 11 Crimson taffaty to line itt 01 -1?01 06 qrter' and halfe of Crimson velluett to face the toppe of my stockins 00 09 00 ffor makinge ye ropell 0l 08 00 Summ of this suite, cloake, ropell, and stockins Lace for stockins 00 02 04 sowinge silke 00 00 04 drawinge peeces 00 00 03 makinge stockins 00 02 06 Summ of this suite, cloake, ropell and stockins. 22-7-2 2 yds dim': qter of french greene broadcloath 02 00 00 Taffaty to line my coate 01 12 06 4 dozen, 6 yds. of gold galloun att 5s-8d ye ounce 04 16 04 ffrench greene galloune 00 02 06 ffrench greene stichinge and sowinge silke 00 03 00 20 dozen of gold buttons 01 00 00 Cuttinge ye scallops 00 00 08 drawinge ye peeces 00 01 06 Silke to sett on ye gold lace 00 01 00 makinge this coate 00 12 00 Summ of this coate. 10-9-6 12[f.6r] 1619 3d qrter' 2 yds halfqrtr' of oliue coloured cloakethe to make doublett and ho-se 01 14 00 4 yds of bays to line a cloake for this suite which I had made before in ye first qrter' of this yeare 00 15 08 Canuas and stiffninge to ye doublett 00 03 06 Ell of taffaty to line ye doublett 00 17 00 4 dozen of galloune 00 13 08 Stichinge and sowinge silke 00 13 06 5 dozen of small buttons for doublett 00 01 08 Homes fustian to line ye hose and pocketts 00 05 00 Bays to line ye hose 00 04 06 5 dozen of buttons to ye sides of my fe hose 00 03 09 cuttinge ye scallops 00 00 06 Claspes 00 00 04 drawinge peeces 00 01 06 Silke to sow ye lininge of my cloake and makinge itt vp 00 02 06 makinge doublett and hose 00 14 00 Summ: of this suite. 5?6-11-1 A crimson taffaty plaine scarfe 00 16 00 Lace and riband of blacke silke and settinge itt 13 on 4 dozen of crimson and gold pointes 01 06 08 A cappe 00 03 04 A silluer girdle 01 00 00 A ruffe and per of cuffes 01 08 00 Another ruffe and cuffes 01 02 00 A cuttworke fallinge band and cuffes 01 10 00 A satten coller 00 04 00 12 handkercheifes 00 08 00 4 handkercheifes 00 03 00 per of french garters crimson and silluer with knotts. 03 05 00 2 dozen dim': of pointes sutable of silluer'd riband att 15s - ye dozen 01 18 06 mending spurres 00 00 06 A wollen wastcoate 01 02 00 Changinge my last blacke beauer 00 08 00 An earinge with Rubyes 00 10 00 A small, deepe, greate saddle with furniture 04 018 06 Dyinge feather 00 01 06 A sworde damaske hilt 03 06 00 A scabberd and cleaninge old sworde 00 01 06 white felt 00 09 00 A silluer hattband 00 18 00 Dressinge and lininge beauer 00 04 00 Scowringe silke stockins 00 01 00 6 yds of riband 00 02 00 14 157 per of gloues 00 10 02 per of stagges leather gloues quilted in ye seame with crimson silke &c 00 09 00 per of such gloues of bucks leather with crimson and bl[ack]. 00 07 00 per of oyld gb?loues 00 01 08 4 per of plaine boote hose 00 04 08 3 per of boote hose with wrought topps 00 19 00 per of white spanish leather bootes with h?greate galoshaes 01 01 00 2 per of spanish leather shoes with one per of galoshaes 00 09 06 per of russett bootes and galoshaes 00 13 00 2 per of blacke bootes 01 00 00 per of gamashoes to ride in, of leather 00 09 00 price of these wearinge thinges. 31-15-6 per of Gloues for my Lord Hobart 01 011 00not per of gloues for ye Earle of Exester 02 05 00off- 2 per of gloues for my Lady Hobart and myred mother 01 19 00but 2 per of gloues for K.Bell and ffr:kept Tufton 021 04 00refu-2 per of gloues for Sir Iohn Tuffton 00 10 00sed 3 per of gloues for women 01 01 00and per of gloues for Lidia 00 05 00kept 7 per of gloues for men 03 03 00 15 per of gloues for I. Tuffton 00 10 00 26 per of gloues for my sisters and my wiues sisters 00 18 00 price of weddinge gloues 3 13-6-0 besides a paire giuen to my Lady ffr: price 24s. but I paid nott for them. Licence to marry 00 13 04 A cabinett for my mistress 03 00 00 A per of twizes 00 08 00 gilt paper 00 02 00 pens and wax 00 00 09[f.6v] 1619 ` 3d qrter' Seeinge a play with my mistress and ye reste 00 18 00 A sett of counters in a silluer box 00 10 00 per of braceletts of Amatysts 02 10 00 A ringe of gold 00 00 04 6 per of gloues 00 07 00 24 Amatysts 00 08 00 An amber howre=glasse 01 08 00 A purse for cosen Kate Bell 00 08 00 12 per of gloues for her 00 014 00 16 giuen my Lord of Excester's man for bringinge plate 00 10 00 giuen Lady Ruttlands man 00 06 00 giuen my fathers man 00 05 00 giuen for my wife, to Iacke and Charles 00 04 00 giuen co*ketts maide 00 01 00 giuen ffr: Lambart 00 01 00 giuen maides att Hothfeild 00 10 00 pitch and pins 00 00 01 Tobacco 00 00 02 Oyle of cloues 00 00 02 Quinces and mermalade 00 08 06 Enamellinge a ringe 00 01 00 Settinge a stone in her diuamond ringe 00 01 00 Lemmans 00 00 08 Laid out for my wiues vse 13-6-0 To mistress Paddy for her s husbands bookes of heraldry 20 00 00 2 paper bookes 00 05 00 27 playbookes 00 09 00 Sir Iohn Harringtons booke of epigramms 00 00 06 Aquinas his Catena aurea 00 08 06 Yorkes booke of heraldry coloured 02 04 00 An Escocheon of my father's and mothers armes 00 10 00 An Escocheon of our armes for my aunt Skeff: 00 06 08 The country farme 00 08 00 17 3 bookes for expences, whereof this is one 4-6 00 07 06 Treasure of moderne times 00 08 06 2 Allmanackes 00 00 04 Bookes 25-0-6 2 pewter dishes 00 03 03 Wax candle 00 00 06 pens 00 00 02 porters att seuerall times 00 04 09 Surgeon for dressinge Iames his legge 00 02 06 Dyatt att diuers places and times 00 1-8 08 BoteteBoate=hire 00 09 00 Horsehire 00 08 06 Horsemeate 00 09 06 Arras powder 00 00 02 powder and boxes 00 05 09 Boatehire 00 01 00 Barber 00 02 02 A trunke 00 11 00 A yd of riband 00 00 02 Needeles 00 00 01 A box of pomatum 00 00 06 Sugar candied 00 00 04 2 per of gloues for my mother 00 02 04 A key to my box 00 00 08 Landresse 00 10 00 A brush 00 00 06 18 paid for vse of mony 02 18 04 mistold in reckoninge of mony 00 01 06 Lost in changinge gold 00 02 00 2 flowers for my sisters 00 03 00 A box combe 00 00 06 fflaske and powder 00 00 06 worme and scowrer 00 01 00 per of mouldes 00 00 06 Corde 00 01 00 Lost 00 05 02[f.7r] 1619 3d qrter' Tauernes and fidlers 01 01 09 ffruite 00 00 02 my mother had of me 00 01 00 2 bands for ye boy 00 01 10 A hatt and band for him 00 04 06 2 shirtes for him 00 05 00 Solinge boyes shoes 00 00 10 mendinge his stockins 00 00 02 Giuen ye boy 00 02 05 torches and linkes 00 03 08 19 Giuen mistress Elyatt mistress Spice her Christninge 00 10 00 giuen ye nurse and keeper there 00 03 00 giuen away 01 11 00 giuen Sharpe ye Lawyer 00 11 00 giuen att Boughton 00 06 00 giuen att Hothfeild and Raynham 02 13 01 ob' giuen att Sir Iohn Tufftons att London. 01 15 01 ob' giuen poore 00 02 09 giuen away in all 6-19-0 Spent this qrter' before I came married home./ 179-5-1December Layd out since I was married and came home.fryday. 17 Carryer had of me 00 02 06saturday. 18 pins for my wife + + 00 00 10 Laces for her + 00 00 02Tuesday. 21. giuen a wench that brought a cake fromm goodwife moulton + 00 01 00wensday. 22 3 qrters' of yd of blacke riband for my selfe 00 00 03 yd of blacke riband + 00 00 06 yd of willow riband + 00 00 06 yd 3 quarters of tinsell riband + 00 00 06 4 yds of fillettinge + 00 02 00 20 23 giuen att Boughton 00 00 06 24 giuen Gadsby's daughter for bringinge a cake 00 01 00 giuen Sir Nicholas Tuffton's boy for bringinge fish 00 00 06 Carrier had 00 08 00 26 Nicholas my boy 00 00 06 28 A pounde of birdline 00 00 08 2 linkes 00 00 08 31 giuen my wife, who lost itt att cardes + 00 13 03 giuen Linley's man for bringinge d?2 Capons 00 01 00 I Lost att Cardes this Christmas 00 15 07 Left wvnpaid for a per of shoes for my Cosen K B 00 00 06 24 per of gloues for ye boy 00 02 00 A shootinge gloue for my selfe 00 00 08 A shootinge gloue for ye boy 00 00 04 pPayd Sir Thomas Wotton on a wager t?when I was marr[ie]d 02 15 00 Summ of this quarter. 185-12-0 Summ from newyeares day, Last 1618 vnto this 1619. 185li'/12s/0d 21 Summ of this yeare./ 548 10 02 Beside horseflesh and horsemeate, iourneyinge in my fathers Company, and some other by thinges which my father att seuerall times payd for: And beside my dyett att home and my boyes ^man's^, att seuerall times 140 dayes. viz: circiter a quarter of a yeare, or more. Item per of gloues to my Lady ffrances somme preissents to my wife, 3 weekes Dyett and lodginge for me and my horses in London, and his owne for my sake &c./[f.7v] 1619 Last qrter' from Newyeares day vnto owr Lady day./ Ianuary. 2 Lost att Cardes 00 00 06 3 giuen att Hotfeild 00 023 00 11 Lost 00 00 02 13 giuen sir Nicholas Tuftons boy for 22 bringinge some of my wiues linnen + 00 00 06 17 giuen b?my brothers I[ohn] et Ch[ar]l[e]s. 00 02 00 my wife gaue them + 00 02 00 19 my wife gaue ye midwife att my Lady wottons Christeninge where she was a god=mother + 01 00 00 She gaue the nurse there + 01 00 00 20 per of shoes for my selfe 00 02 08 26 giuen ye boy 00 00 04 29 giuen att Boughton when I and my wife were there 00 07 06 February 2 giuen some fellowes that came a maskinge hither 00 05 00 3 giuen by my wife att goodwife wooltons Christninge to ye midwife where she was a godmother + 00 06 00 She gaue there to ye keeper + 00 02 06 4 paid ye Carrier for all 00 01 00 paid for false haire for my wife 07?3 00 00 8 Giuen att Boughton 00 01 00 giuen att Hottfeild 00 00 06 mendinge my Clocke 00 02 00 Pedler's ware for my wife. + 00 0?129 00 13 giuen att Boughton 00 00 04 23 19 giuen by bmy wife att hothfeild + 00 05 00 The boy's dinner att Ashford 00 00 06 20 giuen ye boy 00 00 06 22 Oates att Rochester 00 00 06 wine there 00 03 06 GYi-uen there 00 001 00 giuen att Lady Leueson's 00 00 06 ffrost=nayles there 00 00 04 23 giuen att Alysford 00 03 06 Shoinge there 00 00 04 24 giuen att Maidstone 00 00 06 Ordinary att ye starre 00 02 06 25 wine 00 03 02 giuen att Maidstone 00 01 010 28 giuen ye boy 00 00 03 ________ March: ________ 1. giuen att Boughton 00 09 06 giuen Lady Darell's coachman for bringinge vs from Boughton 00 03 00 4 A wheatstone 00 00 03 7 giuen Iohn ye gardener when he first shewed me how to graft 00 01 00 11 per of Cloath stockins for ye boy 00 02 04 paid for ye boyes ordinary att Ashford 00 00 08 24 14 giuen master Carlile, for bringinge thinges from Hothfeilde 00 02 00 giuen one that tooke vp my greewhound for me 00 00 06 16 A per of gloues 00 01 06 17 my wife gaue att Hothfeld + 00 02 06 She gaue there more + 00 06 00 18. paid for ye vse of 50li' for fosixteene weekes 02 10 00 19 To ye Carrier for letters and a box brought for my wife + 00 00 078 To ye Carrier for letters for me 00 00 04 2 per of washinge gloues for my wife + 00 01 00 1000 of pins for her + 00 00 10 giuen ye boy 00 00 02 20 A Chaine and Collar for ye grewhounde 00 01 01 21 giuen my Sister Margarett 00 02 06 my wife gaue her + 00 02 06 she paid my Cosen Kath: Bell for tiffany, and for drawinge and silk for an apron + 00 18 00 24 2 per of russett bootes 00 19 00 per of shoes for my wife + 00 02 04 giuen 00 00 08 giuen poore + 00 00 06 mendinge bootes 00 02 00 25 per of greene worstead stockins for my wyife + 00 05 00 giuen the boy 00 00 04[f.8r] Last quarter 1619. I lost att Cardes, tables, Boules &c 00 04 032 my wife lost att Cardes this quarter + 06 16 03. per of shoes for ye boy 00 01 08 Solinge per of shoes 00 00 08. ________ Summe of this quarter 21 16 10 ________ ___________________ Summ of totall of this yeare 1619 ____________ 287-6-10 ____________ 26 1620 ffirst halfe yeare. March. 25 Imprimis paid to my wife her halfe --- yeares allowance ffirst qrter' 1620. 25 00 00 Aprill. 1 wine att Ashford 00 02 02 giuen 00 00 02 ye Boyes dinner att Ashford 00 00 08 +++ 10 Giuen old Roydon our kinsman 00 01 00 --- 11 Giuen my wife this quarter, which besides her allowance, which she lost att Cardes + 01 03 08 15 Giuen att Hothfeild 00 05 00 18 Giuen my foote=boy Nicholas. 00 00 09 Ordinary att co*ckes hoath 00 02 06 Boyes ordinary there 00 00 06 pd S 19 -oGiuen att Boughton 00 07 00 25 giuen fidlers 00 01 00 26 giuen Thomas wyles 00 01 00 .May. 2. giuen my footeboy Nicholas 00 00 06 giuen att Offam 00 00 06 giuen a boy yat brought a letter from my wife + 00 00 06 27 5 paid Iames for his dinner att co*ckes hoath 00 00 06 paid him for our horse roome there 00 00 04 giuen him 00 00 02 6 per of shoes for ye footeboy Nicholas 00 01 08 14 poore + 00 00 04 4 birdboldtes 00 00 08 26 A Coller and line to leade a greyhounde in 00 01 02 30 3 gally potts 00 01 01 To Goodman Lane for measuringe lande after 1d per acre 00 07 06 Iune. 3 Horsenayles 00 00 01 giuen Nicholas ye footeboy 00 00 06 giuen goodwife Bull att Dymchurch 00 01 00 4 giuen att Hothfeild 00 00 06 6 giuen att Boughton 00 02 06 9 giuen my sister Margarett 00 02 00 12 paid Elisabeth Bankes her halfe yeares wages 01 05 00 giuen my footeboy Nicholas 00 00 06 Spent Att Rochester as I went to London 00 01 06 29-13-11 28[f.8v] 1620 ffirst halfe yeare Iune. 13 Horsemeate att Grauesend 00 07 011 Dyett att Grauesed when my wife and I lay there 00 014 00 Spent by ye way att Dartford 00 01 02 poore + 00 00 04 Barber att London 00 01 00 14 Bringeinge my trunke to London 00 06 00 A per of Bay Coach geldinges bought in Smithfeild 36 00 00 A per of Coach=harnesse with all furniture 04 00 00 A per of Coach bytts [blank] 2 blacke snaffle bridles 00 003 04 giuen Iames and Iohn for ridinge to London 00 04 00 giuen hims man that I bought my coachorse of 00 02 06 giuen my footeboy Nicholas 00 00 06 6 per of gloues 00 07 06 15 A ruffue and per of Cuffes 01 04 00 per of stockins for ye footeboy Nicholas 00 03 06 29 wine 00 01 06 16 A white sprigge feather for my wife + 01 04 06 Purchase his pilgrimmage 00 12 00 Bill his booke of merchandise accounts giuen to Sir Roger Twysden 00 00 10 giuen footeboy Nicholas 00 00 04 Bottle ale 00 00 02 goinge by water 00 00 06 giuen my brother Iohn 00 02 00 A per of bootes 00 10 00 poore + 00 00 02 17 Conueyinge of Letters 00 00 02 giuen 00 00 01 A knife 00 01 04 Dressinge, Dyinge and lininge my hatt 00 04 06 per of Bootehose 00 07 00 18 giuen 00 01 00 19 Mendinge Locke of Coacbhbox 00 00 03 Spent by Thomas for his supper and by ye way 00 01 04 Horsemeate two nights 00 07 00 giuen 00 00 03 ffor hey 00 06 08 ffor Custome in Smithfeild 00 00 00 ob' 4 trusses of Strawe 00 01 00 ob' 30 Bringinge itt to ye stable 00 00 08 A bolt for ye Coache 00 00 06 1 li' of grease for ye Coach 00 00 04 to one for helpinge Thomas to grease ye Coache 00 00 02 Shoinge 00 00 08 Garters for ye footeboy Nicholas 00 00 06 Giuen him 00 00 06 Girdle for him 00 00 06 Giuen 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 02 20 Sc?einge a play 00 09 08 21 Cuttinge ye Cornes on my feete 00 02 00 poore + 00 00 03 22 Goinge by water 00 01 00 hire of a Coach + 00 02 00 A Coach whippe 00 01 00 A mane Combe and spunge 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 04 Bill his booke of merchandise 00 00 10 The vicars plea for tithes 00 01 00 ten playbookes 00 08 00 giuen 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 02 per of gloues 00 07 00 A blew silke wastcoate 03 04 00 31 A per of worstead stockins 00 07 06 47-9-6[f.9r] 1620 ffirst halfe yeare: Iune 23 Oates 00 08 06 Shoinge 00 01 04 Lodginge for Thomas and ye boy 00 02 04 Settinge vp our horses att London 00 00 06 giuen 00 00 06 per of shoes for ye footeboy Nicholas 00 02 00 4 per of shoes for my selfe 00 11 06 paintinge armes vpon our Coach 01 00 00 A board painted with our armes giuen my Cosen T.D. 00 10 00 pencells and painte 00 04 06 Boy?Goinge by water 00 01 00 Boy goinge by water from London to grauesend 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 02 2 bodkins 00 03 00 giuen att Sir Iohn Tufftons 00 15 00 32 A Case of kniues giuen to Sir Thomas Wotton 00 11 00 per of gloues for my Cosen Mary Bell 00 08 00 A trench bridle 00 01 06 A baskett 00 00 08 Dyett for men att Rochester 00 02 06 horsemeate there 00 04 02 24 Dyett att Grauesend when I and my wife lay there 00 13 04 Horsemeate there 00 08 00 Giuen 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 06 25 poore + 00 00 06 Giuen 00 00 08 paid Iames for horsemeate to and from London and for mens dyetts 00 14 03 Giuen him att his goinge away 00 02 09 26 Giuen att Maydestone 00 04 06 poore + 00 00 03 mendinge irons about ye Coach 00 01 00 Giuen 00 01 00 Horshoe 00 00 06 Baytinge horses 00 04 00 Giuen 00 00 02 Goinge by water 00 00 04 washinge boyes bandes 00 00 02 33 27 Giuen Thomas for beinge with vs in London 00 05 00 Giuen Sander Harte for ridinge to London 00 02 00 Giuen Iohn for ridinge to London and backe 00 02 00 29 Nayles 00 00 06 Giuen 00 00 06 30 paid my aunt ffysher for 2 Conyes and two liue rabetts 00 05 00 paid ye Carryer for bringinge trunke from London 00 06 06 Cherryes for my wife att London + 00 10 05 Lost in gold that wanted waite 00 021 00 ----- Iuly 2 poore + 00 00 06 5 giuen Iohn Gardiner for teachinge me to inoculate 00 01 00 9 poore + 00 00 06 giuen att Boughton when I and my wife lay there 00 06 00 11 Giuen to my Cosen Darell maide for my wife + 00 00 06 Giuen Ginninges his boy when he brought birdes to my wife + 00 00 03 6 pound of Cherryes + 00 01 00 34 14 one old white Doe 00 03 04 2 white rabetts 00 01 00 Giuen Nicholas footeboy 00 00 06 15 Giuen 00 00 03 20 Giuen att boughton 00 04 08 24 Scowringe my pistoll 00 00 04 An iron hatchett 00 01 04 ---------August. 4th Giuen att Douer Castle 00 06 02 Beere 00 00 02 5 A passe from my Lord Warden's Sec to go into france, ye fee to his Secretary 02 00 00 12-2-0[f.9v] 1620 August ffirst halfe yeare 5 Registringe my Lords passe 00 02 06 7 Registringe ye names of vs that went ouer 00 03 00 Maintainance of ye hauen 00 04 00 fferryinge of 6 of vs vnto ye shippe 00 03 00 35 ffrerryinge from ye shippe to Callice in a Shalopp 00 09 06 Giuen 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 06 Supper att Callice for 6 00 08 00 8 mendinge my bootes 00 00 10 A knife 00 02 00 giuen 00 00 06 2 braceletts 00 03 00 10 Threede bought att Grauelin 00 00 06 Beere there 00 00 02 giuen 00 00 10 ffrerryinge Crosse to Grauelin 00 00 03 Seeinge oyle mill 00 00 03 Dyett att Callice from tuesday morninge to thursday night 01 08 10 hyiringe a waggon for 5 to Grauelin and backe to Callice 00 12 00 N L 00 00 062 11 12 Angelott cheeses 00 01 08 giuen Iohn Daniell 00 05 06 passage, h?viz: hiringe a shippe from Callice 02 08 00 meate and wine to Carry on shipboarde 00 02 00 faringe boate from ye shippe to Douer 00 03 00 Giuen 00 04 00 36 Custome att Callice 00 02 00 Dyett att Douer before I went ouer 00 12 00 Horsemeatt att Douer before I went and whilst I was att Douer for 4 horses. 00 16 00 Shoinge by ye way 00 00 06 _________________ All my Expences from ye time -I Came to Douer and returned home are 10li'-0s-8d ----- 14 Supper att Sandway with William Tuffton 00 03 08 15 paid Anne Benett her wages for 6 weekes 00 05 00 18 12 ells of holland to make me 4 shirtes att 4s per ell 02 08 00 22 A per of pincers 00 03 00 26 pacthreade 00 00 06 30 giuen att Godmersham 00 01 06 31 ffor mendinge my Clocke 00 01 00September. 2. packthreade 00 00 08 matche 00 00 01 paper 00 00 03 4 Shoinge 00 01 07 horsemeate att Maidston 00 01 11 Dinner for Richard 00 00 06 37 5 A tablebooke 00 00 10 Giuen att Maideston 00 01 00 goinge by water 00 00 06 A hatt edged with silluer lace 00 09 00 A hatt=band 00 04 00 6 A knife 00 01 00 3 girtes 00 02 00 A whippe 00 00 06 Stuffinge two saddles 00 01 00 3 strappes 00 00 06 per of bootes 00 10 00 poore + 00 00 02 giuen 00 00 10 A false scabberd 00 00 06 A redd feather 00 04 06 A per of bootehose 00 06 06 14-4-10[f.10r]September 1620 ffirst halfe yeare./September. 6 horsemeate att London 00 04 00 Oates att highgate 00 00 08 38 A male pillion for a Cloake=bagge 00 00 10 poore + 00 00 02 wine att highgate 00 00 08 7 Dyett att Dunstable 00 04 10 giuen 00 00 06 shoinge 00 00 01 8 Dyett at Couentry 00 05 05 horsemeate there 00 002(?) 001 giuen 00 00 10 11 Shoinge att Skeffington 00 00 06 12 Giuen att Skeffington 00 02 00 Drinke att Northampton 00 00 06 horsemeate there 00 00 09 Giuen 00 00 02 Saddlecloathe 00 02 00 13 Dyett att Brickhill 00 03 08 Horsemeate there 00 01 10 giuen 00 00 10 wine att highgate 00 03 066 Supper att London 00 03 02 14 An orrange coloured silke scarfe 01 02 00 A riband for itt 00 00 06 Crossinge ye water 00 01 00 Seeinge a play 00 03 00 wine 00 02 08 A per of stockins 00 07 00 39 15 Giuen my sister and brothers 00 15 00 Dr Fulke on ye Rhemish testament 00 16 00 A hatt and band for Nicholas 00 03 04 Boe?yes his Comminge by water 00 00 06 The boy his supper att Grauesend 00 00 06 Giuen 00 01 06 Barber 00 01 00 Crossinge ye water 00 00 06 horsemeate att London 00 02?4 08 giuen 00 00 04 poore + 00 00 04 16 horsemeate att Maidston 00 02 00 Giuen there 00 01 10 23 paid Richard what he layd out Dinner and his supper att Canterbury 00 01 04 Shoinge att Newenton 00 00 06 horsemeate when I was att Dunstable 00 03 06 giuen ostler 00 00 04 his supper and horsemeeate there att his returne 00 02 02 A gallon of oates att Stony Stratford 00 00 04 baytinge horse att Barnett 00 00 04 his dyett att London 00 00 08 Horsemeat there 00 01 04 horsemeate att Northfleete 00 00 04 horsemeate att Maydston 00 00 06 40 ______ per of stockins for Nicholas Aspoll 00 02 06 giuen him 00 00 04 5 ells of Lockarum to make him 2 shirtes 00 06 08 25 Suite att Allington court 00 00 06 Ordinary there 00 01 00 my man's ordinary 00 00 06 horsemeate there horseroome for theire standinge. 00 00 04 27 Giuen att Bougchton 00 06 00 Giuen Nicholas Aspoll 00 00 06October my wiffe gaue Anne Catesby 00 02 00 my wife gaue my Cosen Mary Bell 00 05 00 my wife gaue besse Hills 00 00 06 1 7-18-9[f.10v] 1620September ffirst halfe yeare. Lost this halfe yeare att Cardes, tables &c 02 03 09 Giuen 00 00 06 41 paid ffowler the taylour his bill vpon ye 23d of October, viz: inprimis --- ffor mendinge two per of my breeches 00 00 07 ffor makinge a suite for ye Nicholas Aspoll 00 03 06 ffor an ell of holland 00 02 00 ffor buttons and silk 00 02 04 ffor Canuas 00 02 00 ffor Callico, Clapses and inkell 00 02 01 ffor fustian for my hose 00 00 06 _____ paid my London taylour's bill for all due vnto him vntill Michaelmas day 07 00 00 8-14-0 Summ totall of this halfe yeare beinge ye only full halfe yeare wherein I and my wife disd board with my father, is li' s d 120 - 3 - 0 -------- 42[at foot of page] Summ is 113 - 3 - 3[f.11r] 1620 Second halfe yeare beinge ye first, Since I kept house. 1 paid my wife her halfe yeares allowance 25 00 00October. 2. Giuen 00 05 00 3. halfe a bushell of oysters 00 00 06 4. A gallon and halfe of white salt 00 00 06 7. giuen for bringinge peares 00 00 04 paid Richard Vsmer his wages for one whole quarter after his Comminge, vnto Michael=ma^s^ day 01 00 00 paid ffrank Blechenden all her wages from her first Comminge, May.l9. vnto Michael=mas day 001 04 09 9 Giuen Arrowes for Cuttinge my Cornes 00 00 06 10 A touett of oysters 00 00 06 Giuen Nicholas Aspoll 00 00 04 11 Giuen 00 00 03 12 halfe a touett of oysters 00 00 03 13 60 bushells of lime att 4d ye bushells 01 00 00 43 paid for bringinge of itt 00 03 00 14 2 bushells of old oates bought of Iohn Posse. 00 02 04 egges 12 00 00 04 Giuen for bringinge a baskett of Quinces 00 00 06 10 gally potts 00 02 10 A smoothinge iron 00 00 10 Bitter allmonds 00 00 03 Oatemeale 00 00 04 giuen Iohn for bringinge thinges from Ashford 00 00 04 Scowringe my pistoll 00 01 00 ++ 16 Giuen our old Cosen Royden + 00 02 00 giuen master Brodnie his boy for bringinge a dog 00 00 06 18 paid Thomas Odium for 4 seames of seede wheate att 23s 6d ye seame, 04 12 00 paid him for bringinge ye same in 00 02 06 Giuen Iames Godwin for vse of mony 03 00 00 paid him that which I borrowed -22 00 00 Bought of Goodman Markettman 19 sheepe att 11s 6d ye sheepe 0?10 18 06 I lost N L a peece of gold. 00 10 06 Bought fiue? ^six^ welsh beastes att Charinge faire att 24s ye bsteere 07 04 00 44 A siue for ye stable 00 01 00 A lanthorne for ye stable. 00 01 06 20 paid Erasmus Giles for a quarter of mutton 00 01 10 paid Susan Norman her wages att her departure for allmost three weekes 00 02 06 21 paid sir Nicholas Tuffton for two seames of seede wheate att 24s ye seame 02 08 00 25 Oysters 00 00 09 paid Arrowes ye shomaker all his worke viz: a per of shoes for my selfe 00 02 10 and 3 32 per of shoes for ye boy and a per of bootes new vamp'd for him and mendinge his shoes 00 011 01 26 10 gallons of Butter bought of Daniell Smart att ten gr-oates ye gallon 01 13 04 28 pitch 00 00 06 2 bushels and halfe of oates 00 02 06 2 iacke-ropes to turne ye spitt 00 00 06 Oatemeale 00 00 04 giuen Iohn for bringinge thinges from Ashford 00 00 04 Changinge 12 li' of tallow for Candles 00 01 00 30 ffor eggs 00 00 06 31 giuen 00 02 00 45November. 1 paid Henry Auery for composition mony 00 02 00 2 Shoinge a horse 00 00 04 3 paid Bess Hills for a weeke 00 01 00 paid Huggett's widow for a seame of oates 00 08 00 4 giuen for bringinge medlars 00 00 04 paid George Gadsby for all his smithes worke 00 16 06 37? 2? 10 24 1?6 4 6-?-10 01?-2-10[f.11v] 1620Nouember Second half yeare. paid Iames Goodwin for bringinge --- 5 poore + 00 00 04 Starch and oatemeale 00 00 08 Giuen Iohn for bringinge things from Ashford 00 00 02 Herringes 00 00 04 8 giuen for bringinge thinges from Hotfeild 00 00 04 7 Bought six welsh beasts att Sandway 46 faire att 36? 37s ye bullocke 1?11 02 00 9 paid for 6 chicken 00 01 02 paid for all worke to Browne ye smith 00 04 00 -- paidgiuen Anne Catesby for her helpe 00 01 00 paid goodwife Mercer for her helpe 00 00 06 Bought of widow Daue?y eleuen score pounde of cheese beinge ye quantity of one way of cheese att 2d ob' ye pound 02 06 08 10 paid Iohn ye Gardiner for 6 dayes worke 00 01?3 0-6 14 blacke silke riband 00 02 01 16 per of gloues for Nicholas 00 00 04 paid for markinge my bullockes and for passturage of my sheepe one afternoone 00 01 00 paid Harper for Drenches 00 02 02 paid Dine for 25 per of palinge rayles att 7d ye paire 00 14 07 18 paid ffranke Blechenden all her wages from michaelmas vnto her departure 00 08 00 22 Pu^r^chas his microcosme 00 02 06 Sutton's 3 bookes 00 07 06 Childbirth 00 02 06 practise of piety 00 06 00 A play booke 00 00 06 47 paid Goodwife mercer for her helpe and for eggs 00 00 08 broomes 00 00 01 redd herringes 00 00 02 oysters 00 00 04 paid for a lookinge glasse 00 05 06 30 paid ye shomaker for all 00 06 10 two burninge iron markes 00 01(?) 04 A wooll marke for sheepe 00 01 00 Nayles for Court wheeles weighinge 28 li' 00 08 02 Shoinge ye Court wheeles 00 02 00 A bill and an axe 00 02 04December 2 paid for a per of Court wheeles to ye wheeler 00 16 00 paid for a per of shoes for Michel ye kitchin boy 00 01 10 4 paid ye fee for half a doe withhich sir Thomas Wotton sent 00 06 00 7 Dischargd Rics?hard Vsmer: and paid him all his wages for this whole quarter 01 00 00 paid Harper ff?or a well rope he bought 00 12 01?0 2 halters and a fotheringe line 00 01 00 48 paid Richard Vsmer for his epxpences to London and in returne home 00 07 06 12 giuen 00 00 04 15 giuen poore + 00 01 00 18 ffetters per of ffetters 00 02 06 two wedges 00 02 00 22 paid Ruttinge and his partner for 13 dayes worke att digginge vp of ^12^ great trees 01 02 00 paid Bishop for hi-mself 14d ye day and for his boy 12d for 4 days 00 08 06 22-16-1(?)[f.12r]December 1620 Second halfe of ye yeare 23 paid Milksteed for cleaninge out making 200 pale wantinge eleauen pales 00 01 06 -- paid Iohn ye gardener for 9 dayes 00 04 06 paid Kingst?snoth for a weekes worke 00 03 00 25 giuen poore + 00 08 06 27 giuen 00 00 08 49 a Couple of Chesells 00 01 04 30 A mattocke 00 03 00 A hatchett 00 01 06 2 augors 00 01 06 2 Chessells 00 01 00 A goage 00 00 04 A drawsheare 00 00 08 A Saw 00 01 02Ianuary paid Bishop for Sawinge and Cuttinge of elmes 00 04 00 1. paid my vifes booke vntill ye last of Nou^Dec^ember ^9uember^ 00 08 06 paid my wifes houshold booke for ye whole month of December 02 00 00 5 paid Kingsnoth for a dayes worke 00 01 00 7 giuen 00 00 06 8 paid vnto Georg Sotherden for all his bill for beefe &c' fromm october 7. 06 18 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 Giuen my brother Charles 00 02 00 per of gloues for Nicholas 00 00 06 paid ye sexton his quarter wages 00 00 08 paid Ihon Gardener for 5 dayes worke 00 05 00 10 paid Anne ye Cooke all her wagers 00 13 04 ffor 10 small bookes 00 02 03 13 paid Ihon' ye gardiner for 5 dayes 50 worke 00 05 00 19 paid G. Pout for 5 dayes worke 00 02 06 20 Giuen mistress Hayman ye midwife 00 10 00 Giuen Sander Hart 00 02 00 22 ffor Canuas for drawers and apron for ye kitchin boy Michill 00 02 06 Cloath for a shirt for him 00 01 06 pulletts and co*ckes 00 01?2 08 leather for ye kitchin boyes shoes 00 01 00 Giuen att Boughton 00 00 06 paid Arrowes ye shomaker all his due 00 03 00 27 horsemeate att maistone 00 01 00 3 quartes of sacke 00 023 00 5 quartes of Clarett wine 00 03 04 12 pound of Candles 00 05 00 2 stone potts for beere 00 01 10 giuen my Lady Sydley's man for bringinge things 00 02 00 giuen master Copley's man for bringinge 2 pigges 00 00 06 28 paid Iames Goodwin for a dayes helpe 00 01 00 29 paid mistress Hayman ye midwife for 3 weekes helpinge my wife, and 04 08 00 paid for 4 yds of holmes fustian att 16d ye yd. to line ye Curtaines of my wiues Childbed 00 18 08 51 6 yds of fustian att 15d ye yd 00 07 06 whitinge 00 00 02 6 pound of Candles 00 02 06 A bottle of muscadine 00 01 06 oyle of lillies 00 00 03 20-2-4[f.12v]Ianuary 1620 29 A yd and half of stamell bayes 00 07 06 2 yds of Cotton att 20d ye yd 00 03 04 yd halfe and half quarter of redd Cotton 00 02 08 ob'.February 3 4 horse padlockes for gates 00 02 00 4 A fa*gott bill 00 01 00 mendinge an axe new steelinge 00 01 00 A hedginge bill 00 01 00 4 yards of course Canuas for a horsecloath 00 04 00 8 giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 giuen att Boughton 00 06 00 9 gffor 2 yds dim' of ffrise att 3s a 52 yd to make Nicholas a ierkyn 00 07 06 ffor silke inkle and makinge ye ierkin 00 01 08 ff-or Claspes and other mendinge of his cloathes 00 00 11 ffor makinge ye Childes mantell and mendinge of my owne cloathes att diuers times 00 05 09 10 a gallon of salt 00 00 04 13 paid George Pout for helpe in ye kitchin 00 01 03 14 Giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 paid my Cosen Ihon' Darell for a wastcoate which I bought of him and X gaue my wife 05 15 00ffeuersham 16 paid vnto George Sotherden all hisbill.vide bill for beefe and suitemarch: 18. vnt?from ye last payment 02 0?15 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 00 06 17 paid my wiues houshold booke from ye first of Ianuary vnto ye 16 of Ian: 01 01 07 18 paid vnto Feild for a bacon hogge 01 00 00 20 Giuen ye Cooke att Hothfeild 00 02 00 paid Goodwife Fox for beinge my wiues keeper ye month she lay in 01 00 00 23 nayles bought of Browne 00 05 06 400 nailes att 5d ye 100. 00 01 08 53 500 nailes att 4d ye 100. 00 01 08 24 A per of stockins for Nicholas 00 03 06 25 paid Robert Bishop for ye settinge of ye new postes raile and pale att ye Changinge of ye high way in pluckley land: att 1s ye rodd for 13 rodds dim' 00 13 06 paid vnto him for 23 postes hewinge att 1d ob' ye post 00 02 10 ob' paid vnto him for 7 rodds and halfe of palinge (postes and railes vtt supra) 00 07 06 paid vnto him for a dayes worke 00 01 04 paid vnto him for a day and halfe for his boy 00 01 06 paid vnto him for Cuttinge downe two oakes 00 00 06 28 ffor makinge of 2 horsecloathes and hoodes 00 04 00 poore + 00 00 01 paid Erasmus Giles for all his worke viz: eleuen sheepe and 3 calues killed att 1d ob' apeece. a porker att 3d and a beast? ^boare^ att 6d 00 02 06March 54 1. Seeinge a play att Maidstone 00 01 08 Ordinary there 00 02 06 ffidlers there 00 01 00 2 per of stirruppe leathers 00 01 00 3 gai-uen poore + 00 00 03 per of gloues 00 05 00 per of boote hose topps 00 05 00 5 giuen the poore + 00 00 07 2 per of gloues 00 10 00 A pendant for my sister Mary Tuffton 00 03 06 A quart of white wine 00 00 06 goinge by water from westmester 00 00 06 17-14-2[f.13r]March 1620 6 2 Collers and a slippe for greyhounds 00 02 06 A beauer hatt 02 04 00 7 2 per of bootes 00 19 08 per of spanish leather shoes 00 03 06 giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 A yellow Coate and petticoates for 55 Anthony 00 13 00 2 per of stockins 00 10 00 Horsemeate att London 00 10 08 giuen horse keepers there 00 00 08 shoinge 00 00 08 ffor makinge Cleane ye Coach and harnesse and oylinge them 00 02 06 ffor a new poale 00 02 06 ffor 2 washers 00 01 00 A poale staple, loope plate and grease 00 01 06 A sumach tree from virginia 00 01 00 A duke Cherry tree 00 01 06 A may Cherry tree 00 01 04 A white Cherry tree 00 01 00 A Cluster Cherry tree 00 01 00 giuen att sir Ihon's Tufftons. 00 08 00 paid for a Cradle, a hamper, and Cloathe to trusse itt in 00 14 00 A hollande Cheese 00 02 09 graftinge tooles 00 04 06 8 packthreade 00 00 02 giuen att my Cosen Th: D 00 00 10 giuen poore + 00 00 04 Shoes for Anthony 00 00 04 2 per of stockins for Anthony 00 01 02 9 giuen att Rochester 00 00 04 56 quarte of white wine 00 00 06 ffor a vertingale for my wife 00 09 00 10 paid Ihon' Gardener for all his worke viz: 12 dayes 00 13 08 12 paid Harper for Brownes shoinge 00 05 00 12 yds of Canuas att 11d ye yd 00 11 00 1000 5d nayles 00 04 02 A horselocke 00 1?01 00 A gate locke 00 01 00 3 touetts of beanes 00 03 00 13 paid my wiues houshold booke from ye first of ffebruary vnto ye ffirst of March 00?1 17 10 Giuen att Maidston 00 05 02 16 paid Ihon Gardiner for fiue dayes worke in my hopyarde 00 05 10 ffor Nicholas his goinge by water 00 01 00 horse hire for him 00 01 00 6 bottles 00 01 06 Corke 00 00 01 white doe 00 02 06 18 paid william, which he ly? laide out for shoinge ye blacke 00 00 01 giuen Nicholas 00 00 03 Bought att ffeuersham faire. powder sugar 12s pound 00 11 00 57 Currants 6 pound att 5d ob' 00 02 09 ffigges 6 pound att 3d 00 01 06 13-10-3[f.13v] 1620 Allmonds. 62 li' att 16d 00 02 08 Raisons of ye sunne 2 li' att 4d 00 00 08 16 Couple off Codd at 15sd ye Couple 01 00 00 2 Couple of Codd att 18d ye Couple 00 03 00 Halfe a barrell of white herringe 00 15 00 Redd herringe a qrter' of a Cade beinge 140 00 02 10 3 touetts of bay salt att 18d ye bushell 00 02 03 A touett of onyons 00 01 00 A touett of rootes 00 00 09 Giuen Alexander Hart for buyinge these 00 02 02 Summ of ffeuersem Expences. 3-5-7. 22 2000 of nailes att 5d ye 100 00 08 04 58 per of kniues 00 01 00 paid Simon Mathewes for 8 seames of oates att 7s ye seame 02 16 00 Item' for 75 li' of beefe att 2s 10d ye score 00 10 08 23 paid Robert Ruttinge and [blank] Ihonson for 48 rodds and 3 qrters' of hedginge in longeford mill feild next ye streate 00 10 02 paid woodward ye Confectionary of maidston his bill, for sweete meates att ye Christ-heninge 02 05 06 27 paid Gadsby his bill 00 11 068 paid him his bill tally, for ye beast which Barton kept with him for shoinge ye oxen and plough irons 01 12 02 30 paid Ihon' Barton Cheife husbandman his wages for half a yeare 02 15 00 paid Ihon Luccas petty husbandman 02 00 00 paid Richard Butcher warrener 02 00 00 paid william [blank] Coachman for 2 monthes 00 12 00 paid Iames Samson plough boy 01 00 00 paid Katharine [blank] my wiues Chambermaide for a quarter and 7 weekes 00 19 06 59 paid Bennet [blank] ye dayry maide for h-er quarter wages 00 10 00 31 paid my wiues houshold booke from ye first March 00 10 04 __________ 21-12 4?8 ___________ Summ of this halfe yeare is. 179-18-4 157-18-84 _______________ Summ totall of this yeare 1620 -------300-1-4 [Last two lines possibly added later over the flourish][f.14r] 1621. Our Lady day 60 ffirst halfe yeare./March 25 paid my wife her halfe yeares allowance 25 00 00 27 giuen att Boughton 00 01 00 29 paid Harper for all ye worke which Browne had done for me and for hallters 00 09 05 paid George Poute for six dayes worke 00 03 00 30 paid [blank] Milkstead for Cleaninge 350 pales of 5 foote att 16d ye C 00 04 08 paid him for 200 pales of 4 foote att 12d ye C 00 02 00 paid him for 9 f per of railes Cleaninge and hewinge att 2d ye per: and 2d abated 00 01 04 paid Butcher for what he layd out for me viz: Scowringe a birdinge peece 00 01 06 A pound of Gunpowder 00 01 00 4 pound of shott 00 00 10 Shoinge as he went to Allington 00 00 04 mendinge his Cony=hay 00 01 08 31 paid Robert Bishop for palinge in 7 rodds of my Close 00 06 08 paid him for 7?3 dayes for him selfe and 53 and halfe for his boy in 61 railinge in Brents meade hole 00 057 06 paid him for a day and his boy for a day hand halfe in railinge in ye Close. 00 02 10 paid him and his boy a dayes worke about ye lime house and sh?laughter house 00 02 04 paid his boy a dayes worke when I was att London 00 01 00 paid ^Ihon'^ Bayly ye sawyer for 300 foote of Elme, sawed att 2s-6d ye C 00 07 06Aprill 5 Giuen att Bougchton when my wife and I lay there 00 17 00 Giuen att ye nurses, to her mayde 00 01 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 7 paid my hedgers, (Trowell and his fellowes beinge two more) for 55 dayes worke ^betweene them^ in fencinge att Circens pasture and Longe Dane: viz: 16d ye day. 03 13 04 wine sugar &c att Ashford 00 06 08 Giuen there 00 00 04 13 paid Harper what he laid out viz: 600 nailes 00 02 00 per of shoes for my selfe 00 02 06 62 per of shoes for ye kitchin boy 00 01 08 14 paid Ihon Collins ye gardiner for a weekes worke 00 07 00 paid him for pott hearbe seede 00 01 00 18 Spent att Dartford 00 00 10 Crossinge ye water 00 00 06 Supper 00 04 09 Giuen att London 00 02 01 19 A seruice booke in quires, in folio 00 03 06 41 orenges for my wife to preserue 00 01 10 A baskett 00 00 05 Dinner 00 01 08 -34-3--8[f.14v]Aprill 1621 ffirst half yeare. 19 Goinge by water 00 01 00vide. 5 yds dim' of fine french greeneseptemb: 29. C?broade crloath att 20s yebayes for yd: to make me, Cloake suite,cloake boote hose topps and saddle 05 00 00forgotten. Two small bookes viz: one call-d Hispanus reformatus and ye other, ye 63 polonians speech 00 00 09 per of boote hose topps 00 05 06 Paid vnto my brother Robert as followeth viz: ffor ^gold^ waites and graines and wax 00 05 00 ffor Clay pelletts 00 01 00 ffor 6 quire of paper 00 01 06 ffor 4 paper bookes 00 14 10 ffor 2 paire of gloues 00 14 00 ffor Dr Boys his Expositions on ye english liturgy 00 13 00 ffor a seruice booke 00 05 00 ffor deliuered to Dicke skeffington to bestow in tokens for his sisters 01 00 00 ffor 8 yards of ^brlack^ turky grogarum to make me a suite att 7s per yd 02 16 00 ffor taffaty to line ye doublett 00 16 06 ffor 5 ounces of galloun lace att 2s-6d 00 12 00 ffor Canuas and stiffninge, for buttons and silke, for fustian and bayes, for buckles and Claspes. &c 00 17 02 ffor makinge the suite 00 10 00 Summ of this suite 5-11-8 ffor alteringe a greate ridinge Coate into a small 00 13 00 64 20 ffor riband for my scarfe and sowing 00 01 00 wine, sugar and lemmans 00 03 09 21 2 dozen of orenge Coloured silke pointes 00 07 06 Dyett 00 02 04 I?A plaine ruffe and Cuffes 00 14 06 22 goinge by water 00 00 06 wine 00 00 08 23 Bitter allmons 00 00 03 Bottle ale 00 00 10 A grew houndes Coller 00 01 06 goinge by water 00 01 00 Supper 00 04 00 24 per of bootes 00 10 00 Dinner 00 01 04 giuen 00 00 02 25 Ale and sugar 00 00 03 per of stirrups 00 01 06 poore + 00 00 03 Dinner 00 01 03 Supper 00 00 10 [smudge] ffor mendinge ye handle and scowringe my sword 00 02 00 ffor Nicholas his goinge by water to grauesend 00 02 00 Horsehire for him home and backe 00 04 06 65 giuen Nicholas 00 00?1 06?0 his supper 00 00 06 1(?)8-9-8[f.15r] 1621Aprill. ffirst half yeare.26 et 2726. ffor ye tree, pillowes, strapps and stiffninge of ye skirtes with makinge vp of my saddle 00 13 00 ffor gold lace and silke to sett itt on 00 12 00 ffor gilt nayle for ye saddle 00 04 00 ffor an vndercloath of leather penyston lined with leather 00 04 00 A per of stirrup leathers 00 01 00 A sett of wollen webb girtes 00 02 00 A Couer of leather lined with Cotton 00 04 00 my saddle Cost beside ye Cloth: 40s. A Case of kniues 00 11 06 A single knife 00 01 00 A s?greate knife 00 01 06 horsemeate att ye bell silluedge 01?01 01 04 giuen there 00 01 02 Bottle ale 00 01 02 66 goinge by water to grauesend 00 04 06 Diett att grauesend 00 17 10 horsemeate there 00 02 00 giuen there 00 01 02 Dine?ner att London 00 03 00 paid my Landresse att London 00 02 09 giuen ye Cuttlers boy 00 00 06 a small black and white picture or deuise 00 00 03 Shoinge 00 01 04 giuen my Cosen Skeffington's man 00 0?01 08 To a porter 00 01 00 Spent I haue forgotten how 00 09 01 28 paid for a leane sheepe which my doggs killed 00 06 06 paid vnto Richard Spice for 100 li' of beefe 00 16 08 paid vnto Old ffreind for makinge of fa*gotts att 20d ye hundred 00 06 08 30 paid vnto master Copley for small thi tithes this halfe yeare from michaelmas 00 11 00May 2 paid Browne ye smith ^his tally^ for all his worke vntill this day 00 08 04 3 paid Harper for all that he L[ai]d out 67 for me viz. for Cheese to widow Dauy 02 01 00 ffor ten weathers att 10s apeece 05 00 00 To one for helpe to bringe them 00 01 02 A bottle of wine 00 00 10 Nayles att Charinge faire 00 02 00 6 paid Harper for that which he l[ai]d out viz. To Ruttinge and Ihonson' for 12 rodds of dike and quicksettinge 00 06 00 To Maytam(?) for fa*gotte?inge 300 fa*gotts att 20d ye 100 00 05 00 ffor halfe a bushell of salt 00 01 00 _____ paid ffranceis Ianuary for 6 wodco*kes att my boyes Christninge 00 04 00 Item for other thinges 00 02 06 17-0-5[f.15v] 1621May ffirst halfe yeare 8 Giuen Nicholas and att Rainham and elswhere 00 02 06 68 Giuen my Cosen Ihon' Dering's man, when I bought my sorrell horse of my Cosen 00 02 00 9 paid for a Conger 00 02 06 paid my wiues houshold booke vntill ye first of May 01 00 04 11 paid old ffreinde for makinge 300 fa*gotts att 20d ye 100 in Circens 00 05 00 giuen 00 00 03 12 paid goodman Bishop for 9 rodds of palinge of 5 foote pale, att 16d ye rodde, and for makinge 3 gates one for 18d and 2 for 18d. and for a dayes worke 00 0?16 00 13 Giuen 00 00 09 16 paid vnto George Sotherden for all ye beefe and other meate att any time heeretofore had of him 04 06 06 19 paid Ihon ye gardner for a weekes worke 00 07 00 paid william Franke his wages att his discharge and partinge 00 12 00 paid him for all think?ges by him laid out for. 00 04 06 20 paid Harper for all thinges by him laid out. 69 viz. for wine 00 08 06 A quarter of Lambe 00 01 06 8 Chicken 00 02 08 3 Congers 00 01 00 A happes and staple 00 00 02 2 halters 00 00 06 paid Trowell and his partners for a dayes worke in Longe Dane 00 04 06 paid them for halfe a day in Circens 00 02 03 paid Goodman Pell for porke 00 01 08 I began my iourney into Ireland 22 giuen att Boughton 00 01 00 poore 00 00 03 wine att Rochester 00 02 09 giuen there 00 00 04 paid my Cosen Richard Skeffington &c 23 Imprimis for Layd out for a sword 04 10 00 2 bridles 00 03 00 A seruice booke 00 06 00 A note of pye parliament k[nigh]ts 00 02 06 A leather for a pistoll 00 00 06 mapps 00 04 06 A shirt 01 13 00 per of stockins 00 02 06 24 A knife 00 01 00 per of male girthes 00 00 08 70 Lemmans 00 00 04 per of spanishe leather bootes 00 16 00 giuen 00 01 08 poore + 00 00 03 mendinge my scarfe 00 00 02 2 per of bootehose and one of tapps 00 10 00 horsemeate 00 05 04 Riband 00 01 00 25 horsemeate att St Abbans 00 03 03 poore + 00 00 05 Dyett there 00 005 00 Dinner att Brickill 00 04 00 26 poore + 00 00 03 18-17-9[f.16r]May 1621 ffirst quarter. 28 giuen 00 00 06 mendinge bootes 00 00 04 per of bootes for Nicholas 00 07 00 30 poore + 00 01 01Iune 4 giuen 00 02 06 71 5 giuen 00 01 00 Cloath for a shirt for ye boy 00 03 04 A sheath for a knife 00 00 02 paid for all Charges between B?Dauentry and Leuerpoole 02 16 00 paid for Nicholas his Charges 00 07 08 giuen 00 01 05 6 R?Mendinge ye boyes bootes 00 00 04 giuen 00 00 06 Wine sugar and lemmans 00 01 01?7 Horsemeate att Leuerpoole 00 10 00 7 Shoinge horse 00 00 04 wine 00 00 10 8 giuen 00 00 10 9 paid laundresse 00 03 06 horse hire 00 01 00 Lace and Cloath for Cuffes 00 04 02 giuen 00 06?02 06 horsemeate 00 03 10 poore + 00 00 08 passage for me and my horse to ye shippe 00 00 06 paid my Cosen Deringe which he gaue away 00 00 06 makinge of Cuffes 00 00 09 Dyett att Leuerpoole and victualls to 72 Carry a shipboard 001 05 06 A Sea Cappe 00 06 03 poore + 00 00 05 11 wine 00 00 09 giuen 00 01 06 giuen Nicholas 00 01 08 12 wine and sugar 00 02 08 -o?Bought of master Gerard -my Lords brother a white nagge 05 00 00 giuen when I bought him 00 02 06 13 washinge linnen 00 01 03 giuen Blanchard 00 02 06 horsemeate att Leuerpoole 00 02 06 giuen 00 02 01 Dyett for me I. Deringe and my boy 00 12 00 poore + 00 00 04 milke wine and beere 00 02 06 Leffft with Nicholas to beare his Charges att Leuerpoole vntill he Came into Ireland 00 12 00Iuly. 7 Dyett and horsemeate, and all other Chardge and expences for my selfe and my Cosen I. Deringe in our iourney, thorough Scotland and Ireland vntill we Came from 73 Leuerpoole in Lancashire vnto Iun?ne 13. vnto Dublin in Ireland Iuly 7. 10 03.11: 8 wine and sugar att Dublin 00 03 02 giuen 00 00 02 24-16-6[f.16v] 1621Iuly ffirst halfe yeare 9 Deliuered to my Cosen I.D. to beare his Charges into Kent 04 00 00 Bought a mare of my Cosen G. Hawle 02 00 00 Dyett 00 03 00 poore 00 00 06 10 Dyett att Dublin and horsemeate there and in all my Iourney into Mounster and backe to Myllefont and altogether with ye Charges of shoinge &c 04 14 04 Giuen away on this iourney 02 06 05 besides Lent or giuen vnto my Lady Alice Barrey I may say giuen. [last 74 four words added later] 01 02 00August 2 Gipaid my Cosen I. Deringe of Myllefont for my boyes suite brought into Ireland 00 05 00 8 Dallington's aphorismes 00 07 00 Q. Curtius 00 01 00 2. handkercheifes 00 02 04 Dyett and Charges fromm Myllefont vnto August. 6. vnto Leuerpoole August. 12 03 16 04 poore + 00 01 08 giuen in this iourney 02 01 04 Lost att Cards and tables &c 01 05 00 poore + 00 01 08 paid for bringeinge my 3 horses ouer from Ireland 01 10 00 paid for my owne passage and 2 more 00 15 00 12 Giuen my Cosen Ihon' Dering of Myllefont 03 00 00 20 per of buckes leather bootes 00 11 00 per of bootes for Nicholas 00 07 00 Dyett and Charges of iourney from Leuerpoole August. 14 vnto Pluckley August. 31 03 08 00 post horse hire 01 05 00 75 giuen away 02 01 06 poore + 00 00 02 30 A yard 3 qrters' of ffrench greene satten att 14s per yds 01 18 00 An ell Dim' of taffety 01 00 00 A yd and hallfe of ffrenche greene broadClos? Cloath for hose 01 06 00 Gold lace 10 ounces att 6s per ounce: 5 dozen 03 00 00 4 per of gloues 00 19 00 A ruffe 01 04 00 2 shirtes 04 06 00 Morryson's trauayles 00 10 00 ffiscus papalis 00 00 04 Bringinge two horse out of Lancashire 01 01 06 2 dozen of silk and gold pointes 01 08 00 A girdle 00 19 00 A girdle and hangers 001 02 00 A Scarfe 03 10 00 Giuen 00 01 00 57-10-1 Layd out from ye 21 of May vnto ye last of August, in all manner 57 10 01 of Expences, whilst I was abroade in this iourney Sum. 92-2-3 76 -------------------------------- Whereof giuen away 10-11-11--------------------[f.17r] 1621 ffirst quarter halfe yeare. A note of what hath been expended ffor me by my father ^and Harper &c^ &c, in my absence. I paid before I went for a sorrell stone horse bought of my Cosen Ihon Dering 22 00 00 paid George Pout for 4 dayes worke 00 02 00 paid ye nurse Simonson for 20 weekes nursinge of Anthony from ye bi?irth 02 10 00 paid Arrowes for all his worke 00 06 00 paid my seffe for ye belles and repaire of ye Church 04 00 00 paid and discharged Ihon' Luccas 01 00 00 paid for a lambe 00 05 00 paid for 6 chicken 00 02 00 paid for a letter 00 00 06 paid Richard Butcher att his discharge 01 00 00 77 paid for powder and shott 00 01 00 giuen him att his deliuery of his Cloake 00 10 00 paid weekes of Charinge for 2 seames dim'. malt. 01 10 00 paid Kate and? and discharged her 01 06 00 giuen her 00 05 00 Layd out for shinglinge and mendinge ye our Chapple att Willisborough 07 01 06 paid for my Subsibdy 01 00 00 paid Sotherden for beefe taken in my absence 00 19 09 Giuen my Cosen Ihon' Deringe of Myllefont 05 00 00 Layd out by Harper in my absence. paid master Copley his quarter for small tithes 00 05 06 to Goodwife mercer for worke 00 05 00 To lamberts mayde 00 01 00 To Trowell and Ruttinge for mowinge att 18d per acre 00 18 09 To old freinde for ^ffa*gotts, hay and pease makinge^ haruestinge and other worke 01 10 00 Layd out for ye kitchin boy 00 06 00 paid Browne ye smith 00 03 03 78 paid May ye taylour for worke for Nicholas and ye kitchin boy 0700 07 00 paid Gadsby ye smith for worke in my absence 00 12 00 paid Erasmus Giles for worke in my absence 00 00 06 L[ai]d out by Harper A Coller for my horse 00 01 06 pastornes 00 01 06 for houshold prouision 00 02 04 meshes and drenches for horse 00 08 06 paid old freinde, Snoade, Ihonson, Smith and polle for weedinge and reapinge 02 07 08 1000 of nayles 00 03 04 Paid Mathewes for 6 seames and halfe of oates 02 05 06 ffor Carryinge and stackinge of 8 loade of woode 00 08 00 ffor Carryinge of 60 loade of dunge 00 07 06 ffor stirringe the fallow att 4s per acre 001 12 00 ffor Ihon' Bartons boarde att 3s 4d ye weeke 02 06 08 Abated? ffor Barly and Carryinge, of tares, 79 wheate and woode 02 03 10 65-16-1[f.17v]september 1621 ffirst halfe yeare Since I Came home. 4 wine att Canterbury 00 00 08 giuen there 00 00 02 6 wine there againe 00 01 10 giuen 00 00 02 2 per of bootes made by ffoxe 01 02 00 7 Giuen my brother Charles 00 01 00 9 paid Iames Sampson and discharged him 00 10 00 11 giuen ffidler 00 00 06 13 giuen att Mersham 00 01 00 21 paid the pauers for 115 yds of pauinge, in ye Causeway, beside ye forestall where I remoued the highway, viz: att 2d ob' per yd 01 04 00 paid them for ^digginge of^ 6 loade of stones 00 03 00 23 paid? To a breife + 00 00 04 Giuen Thomas wiles for buyinge thinges 00 00 04 80 [blank] of poldauis to packe my hoppes in 00 04 08 24 Giuen att my vncle Christopher Deringes 00 03 00 Ordinary att Aldington 00 01 00 Giuen my Cosen ffranceis Dering his ordinary 00 01 00 Suite att ye Court there paid 00 00 06 Shoinge att hieth 00 00 04 25 Shoinge att Douer 00 00 09 Dyett there 00 06 02 horsemeate 00 04 00 giuen there 00 01 05 27 lost att tables 00 00 08 Giuen in ye feild att huntinge 00 03 06 28 Giuen att my Cosen Bargar's 00 06 00 wine att Canterbury 00 01 00 horsemeate and giuen. 00 00 10 Shoinge att my Cosen Bargar's att &c 00 01 06 29 paid Goodwife mercer for all worke &c 00 05 06 --- paid Goodwife Gadsby 00 00 08 paid for Bottominge of a siue 00 00 06 paid Ihon' ye gardener for all manner of worke, from ye time I went into Ireland vnto ye 13 of Nouember 04 04?5 00 paid Ihon' Hunt for all his worke att 81 ye two stilles and for raylinge, att ye new way 00 06 00vide. aprill 19 paid Hamley my taylour for gold lace for my greene Cloath suite 04 08 00 ffor 20 dozoen of broade flatt buttons 02 00 00 ffor taffaty for lininge 00 17 00 ffor a dozen and halfe of longe gold buttons v?for my Cloake 022 015 00 ffor makinge suite 01 00 00 ffor makinge Cloake, stiffinings lininges, silke &c 01 10 00 Summ - 12li' - 0 - 0 paid and discharged Clarke my taylour, ffor makinges my french greene suite with my sattin doublett for silke, buttonss, stiffnings and lininges 02 02 00 Lost att Cardes &c 00 10 00 paid Paine ye pedler for all thinges had of him vnto ye 14 of Nouember 00 04 05 paid Fowler's widow for all her husbands worke 00 05 05 245 - 00 - 10 Summ: totall of this half yeare. 261 - 15 - 0 82 beside other thinges as Barton's wages &c': and Harper's diett &c'.[f.18r] 1621 Second halfe yeare.October 2 Giuen my brother Henry 00 05 06 paid my Cosen ffr[ancis] D[ering] for halfe a bushell of Saffron heades 00 01 04 paid for Carriage of them 00 02 06 3 paid to master Copley his quarters Due for small tithes: due att St Michael last 00 05 06 8 paid and discharged old ffreinde, for 6 acres of pother, reaped att 3s 4d per acre 01 00 00 14 paid Daniell Smart for his Crockes 00 01 00 22 Att maidston Giuenn there 00 05 00 Shoinge 00 00 06 Horsemeate 00 02 00 wine 00 02 09 Stockins for my Anthony 2 per 00 01 08 83 giuen Nicholas 00 01 00 26 paid Browne ye smith for all 00 04 03 paid for Composition 00 02 00 giuen Harper for his Dyett in my absence 01 10 00 giuen Harper 00 11 00 29 Giuen 00 02 08 6 yds half qrter' of spanish Cloath to make suite and Cloake att 18s per yd 05 10 00 4 yds of bayse to line ye Cloake att 3s 6d per yd 00 14 00 11-18-9 11 ounces of gold galloune lace for one in a seame 03 09 00 ffor insides and silke and stiffninge 01 08 00 ffor 4 dozen and halfe of gold buttens att 10d ye dozen 00 03 09 ffor makinge ye suite 00 10 00 ffor makinge ye Cloake 00 04 00 ffor mendinge Cloathes 00 10 00 30 ffor a watch 07 00 00 A hatt 00 10 00 A hattband 00 11 00 2 dozen of pointes 00 15 00 per of gloues for my Cosen M. B. for good newes 00 11 00 A brush 00 01 04 84 riband 00 01 00Nouember 2 Shoes and garters for Nicholas 00 03 04 A ringe 00 03 06 2 allmanackes 00 00 04 3 Riband 00 01 00 5 Mendinge sSword and for a false scabberd 00 11 00 Laundresse 00 02 06 per of bootes 00 10 00 per of liquored bootes 00 12 00 goinge by water 00 00 06 Dyett att this time beinge in London and by ye way 01 07 00 Horsemeate in London and by ye way 01 07 03 Giuen 00 06 06 Spent from the time I went to London vntill I returned home. 20li' - 3 - 0 __________________ 9 paid Ihon Hunt for gatheringe of apples att 1d ye bushell 00 06 00 11 to a breife + 00 01 00 15 paid nurse Simonson for 20 weekes nursinge my boy att 2s 26d ye weeke, from ye last payment, Iune. 85 ye 9th. vnto October 27. 02 10 00 17 Giuen Ihon' Barton for a skine of a pollcatt 00 00 06 19 Giuen att Boughton 00 04 00 22 paid old Hall for all his worke 00 05 00 35 - 8 - 2[f.18v] Second halfe yeare.Nouember 1621 2330 Giuen att Cole=hill 00 00 06December 1 24 paid Ihon' Barton his wages due att Michaelmas 02 15 00 Giuen him 00 05 06 paid for shirtes for Nicholas 00 06 03 paid for quitt=rents for Sothreton's due to Conningbrooke 00 19 06 paid for suite 00 00 04 paid for Composition 00 04 10 paid for Cloath to make Cuffes of 00 08 00 Lost out of my pockett 00 04 00 paid Arrowes ye shomaker for all his 86 work 00 03 01 25 paid Elmer ye taylour for all his worke for me 00 01 02 paid him for worke for Nicholas 00 04 04 paid Harper for A Coller for my horse 00 02 00 paid for shoinge my mare 00 01 04 ffor ropes to packe my stuff in 00 01 06 paid goodman Milkestead for Cleaninge 400 of 5 foote pale att 15d ye 100 00 05 00 paid him for fellinge an oake 00 00 06 26 Giuen att my fathers 00 10 10 27 Dyett att Rochester 00 12 08 horsemeate there 00 06 06 giuen there 00 01 03 poore by ye way + 00 01 00 28 per of spurres 00 07 00 Breakefast 00 00 08 Giuen Nicholas for dyett 00 01 08 29 for horsemeate 00 09 00 giuen 00 00 06 Giuen Thomas 00 05 00 paid for his dyett 00 02 00 3 yards qrter' dim' of spanish frise att 13s-4d per yd = to make a Coate and per of stockins 02 04 00 A red scottish embroidered saddle with 87 furniture 02 04 00 Ouids metamorph: English 00 01 00 Giuen 00 00 06 Barber 00 02 00 A stone and muller for Colours 00 05 00 2 paper bookes in fol. for Commonplaces 02 02 00 30 per of shoes for Nicholas 00 02 06 paid ye painter for armes 00 02 00 A trunke 00 11 00 Giuen 00 00 06 porter 00 00 04 mendinge hatts 00 04 06December. 1 pillion. Cloath. and furniture 02 04 00 pens and blacke=leades 00 01 06 A pistoll 00 11 00 + A bible for my wife + 00 11 00 2 mendinge bootes 00 00 11 Giuen 00 01 03 paid and discharged Thomas Hamley my taylour for all his worke, 06 00 00 3 Horsemeate in London 01 02 00 Giuen 00 01 00 + paid ffoster my wiues taylour for her 04 09 00 + my wife layd out in London for silke stockins, scarlett kersy. &c 04 14 00 88 + A hatt for my wife 00 10 00 giuen att sir Ihon tuffton's 01 07 00 poore + 00 00 10 Giuen In London 00 12 00 4 Dyett by ye way from London 5 6 to ffisherwicke for me and my 7 wife, one maide and 5 men 04 00 06 8 42 - 5 - 3[f.19r]December Second halfe yeare 1621 Horsemeat by ye way for 4 horses 00 14 07 Giuen by ye way. 00 06 054 poore by ye way. + 00 02 08 Greasinge ye Coach 00 01 00 5 paid Iames Goodwin for all thinges L[ai]d out by him for me, In and for this Iourney 00 19 04 6 ffidlers 00 02 00 7 paid for ye hire of 4 Coache horses and and man from London to ffisherwicke 07 05 00 89 Giuen ye Coachman and his brother 00 06 00 for billetts for 4 horse to go with 00 02 06 8 paid for bringinge a trunke to ffisherwik 00 13 06 giuen 00 00 06 paid Iames Goodwin againe for other thinges by him L[ai]d out 00 13 08 Giuen to him for his iourney 01 02 04 11 Oyle and wine 00 01 01 A surcingle 00 00 08 12 starch and soape 00 01 00 ffreecze for a Ierkin for Nicholas 00 05 00 + 14 my wife L[ai]d out for a Coyffe 00 01 04 paid for bringinge 2 trunkes, an hamper, and 3 bundles of beddes att [blank] ye hundred 05 06 00 Giuen 00 00 04 15 A pounde of shott 00 00 03 16 Giuen 00 00 05 Settinge my peece straight 00 00 06 19 A letter from ^to^ london 00 00 02 22 ffidlers 00 01 00 24 per of gloues 00 00 10 + paid Besse for thinges L[ai]d out for my wife 00 05 06 paid Besse for threede 00 00 03 90 giuen 00 00 06 25 ffidler 00 01 00 + 26 Riband for my wife 00 00 03 27 per of gloues 00 01 00 29 paid Ihon Ferriear for dressinge my horse and lettinge two bloude 00 03 00Ianuary. 2. paid ye shoemaker for bootes and shoes 00 16 06 + paid him for a per of shoes and goloshaes for my wife. 00 04 06 giuen 00 00?1 06 3 giuen 00 00 06 4 riband and inkle 00 01 08 5 ffidlers and dauncers 00 02 00 + my wife laydout in riband 00 01 06 6 ffidler 00 01 00 7110 giuen 00 02 06 N L 00 01 04 11 paid for 4 horse loade of lime att 14d 00 04 08 12 4 strike of oates att 13d 00 04 04 Giuen 00 00 01 Carriage of letters 00 00 03 Shott 00 00 03 17 poore + 00 00 04 18 paid a Carpenter for 9 dayes worke about Horton stable 00 07 06 91 ffor Noggins and piggins 00 01 00 19 paid ye thatcher 00 02 00 + giuen by my wife for anchoues sent 00 00 06 20 medicinses for my horse 00 03 00 21 Carriage of thinges from London 00 01 04 23 ffidler 00 01 00 A buttery knife 00 00 03 + per of kniues for my wife 00 00 11 + riband for my wife 00 00 06 22 - 0 - 6[f.19v]Ianuary 1621 Second halfe yeare23 19(?) paid Ihon Ferrier for dockinge my horse 00 02 00 L[ai]d out by will[ia]m Cowper. for beefe 00 02 06 for 6 pound of Candles 00 02 00 oatemeale, salt &c 00 02 01 for 200 of nailes 00 01 00 X 22 paid Marler for helpinge ye thatcher and for thatchinge rodds 00 01 02 23 paid Cotton for shoinge 00 02 01 X 24 Bringinge thinges from London 00 04 06 92 ffidlers 00 01 00 X An iron racke for Coales 00 10 00 X Giuen att ffisherwicke 001 12 00 25 paid Cowper for meate &c bought att Lichefeild markett 00 15 08 26 2 pounde of butter 00 00 08 Breade 00 01 08 26 Giuen my Cosen Pyott's man fo-r bringinge things 00 00 08 X 28 paid Raff m-ody Moody for 18 dayes worke att 6d 00 10 00 29 Giuen Wall 00 00 06 X 31 paid William Whateley for a beadstedd 00 16 00 X paid him for remouinge another 00 00 06 + my wife layd out for aprons 00 10 00 X ffor 12 yards of scottish pyed wollen Cloath, 3 qrters' broade att 16d ye yarde 00 16 00 + per of kniues for my wife 00 01 00ffebruary X 1 paid Marler for 2 dayes worke 00 01 00 per of shoes for Nicholas 00 02 00 X 2 paid for bringinge A trunke, and ye striped dornex from London, where of ye dornex fwas ye weightiest 00 16 04 Giuen him yat brought itt from Tamworth 00 00 06 93 Giuen Richard Grenley 00 02 06 3 Giuen poore + 00 00 04 5 paid William Astell ye taylour for makinge vp of my wiues redd sattin wastcoate embroidered with blacke 00 10 06 paid him for mendinge thinges for me 00 04 06 X paid ye Cowper for 2 barrells 00 12 00 X ffor 2 halfe barrells 00 08 00 X ffor a Chimnell 00 07 06 X ffor a paile and a o? 00 01 00 X ffor a gallon 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 02 00 02 06 6 paid ye shoemaker for mendinge for me 00 03 00 paid him for mendinge for Nicholas 00 00 08 Giuen my Lady Bowyers man 00 02 06 Giuen 00 01 00 X paid Smith for 5 dayes worke and his partner for 4 aboute ye garden and sinke 00 04 06 + 108 a per of shoes for my wife 00 02 06 13 ffidlers 00 00 06 X paid preston ye smith for all his worke viz: X ffor hinges to ye stable windowes 00 00 10 X ffor 10 tenter hookes in ye Larder 00 00 05 94 X ffor two hookes for ye kitchin ^potts^ range 00 01 00 X ffor a locke for my study doore 00 00 08 X ffor 2 barres and stayes in ye kitchin ^range^ 00 01 09 X ffor a locke for ye stable doore 00 01 06 X ffor three Curtaine rodds 00 03 00 X ffor frostnaylinge &c 00 00 08 18 my wiues bookes for ye house for ye first weeke, vt sequitur. X A Chaffinge dishe 00 00 09 X A smoothinge Iron 00 00 08 A siue 00 00 08 11 - 6 - 5[f.20r]February Second halfe yeare. 1621 A lane siue 00 01 00 two boules 00 00 04 A rene siue 00 00 03 4 Crockes 00 00 08 ffor meate and other thinges 01 15 05 95 my wiues houshold bookes for ye 2seconde weeke ----- whereof, A siue for beere 00 00 06 ffor meate and other thinges this weeke 02 04 11 my wiues houshold bookes for ye thirde weeke, whereof, ffor 2 scuttles 00 00 09 X A Canne for beere 00 00 05 X A kettle 00 06 08 X A fryinge panne 00 03 00 for meate and other thinges 00 19 05 paid for mendinge Nicholas his Cloathes 00 01 00 20 Giuen 00 00 10 shoinge 00 00 02 22 Giuen 00 01 00X paid for pickinge vp of stones for ye wateringe place in Hademore 00 02 09 paid Raff Moody for his worke there. 00 01 06 my wiues houshold booke for ye 4th weeke &c: 02 03 10 ffor two loade of fa*gotts. 60 in a loade 00 04 04 X A gridiron 00 00 10 X A whiskett 00 00 06 ffor shoinge my horses 00 02 08 96 X A band pott 00 00 03 poore + + 00 02 00 ffor meate, and houshold prouision 01 13 06 23 paid for two loade of hay bought a month before of master Hill's's deceased 01 16 08 7 yds and half of threade riband 00 00 06 Giuen 00 01 00 X 26 paid Preston ye smith for two spitts 00 06 00 X ffor a fire=shouell and a per of tongues 00 03 06 X ffor a kettle=bule 00 00 04 X ffor mendinge ye Iacke, for a weight, pulleses, and settinge itt vp, 00 05 00 X ffor a Choppinge knife 00 01 08 27 paid goodwife Moody for hee?mpseede 00 01 00March 1. paid for strappes for my saddle 00 00 10 giuen ye sadlers man 00 00 03 2 giuen for ridinge rodds 00 00 06 My wiues houshold booke for ye fift weeke, &c. Bringinge a peece and Cruell from London 00 02 00 ffor Caririage of letters.. 00 00 05 4 strike of oates att 17d 00 05 08 97 for a Muzzell for my horse 00 02 00 for oyle of wormes 00 00 04 + Laces for my wife 00 00 02 poore + 00 00 0210 giuen 00 00 03 2 drinkinge beere glasses 00 01 06 Carriage of a letter 00 00 02 3 Crossinge Elford water 00 00 06 4 A per of white stockins for my selfe 00 02 08 + 2 per for my wife 00 05 04 Expences for houshold prouision this fift weeke 03 04 05 17 - 12 - 0 15 - 8 - 2[f.20v] 1621march Second halfe yeare 5 poore 00 00 06 6 Shoinge my white nagge 00 01 04 Shoinge my sorell horse, 2 shoes 00 00 08 ffor strawe 00 01 00 A bande for my selfe 00 01 02 98 2 thimbles 00 00 02 A band for Nicholas 00 01 02 Claspes for him 00 00 02 2 per of Cuffes for him 00 01 00 Another band for Nicholas 00 01 04 ffor a wheele 00 01 02 7 Giuen Cowper 00 01 05 Oyle of wormes 00 00 06 A halfe strike measure 00 01 00 A gallon 00 00 04 A lanthorne 00 01 00 15 pounde of flaxe 00 0^5^85 08 A wooden platter and two dishes 00 00 10 per of stockins for Nicholas 00 02 06 A dozen of trenchers 00 00 08 giuen Nicholas 00 00 04 8 my wiues booke for houshold prouision this 6th weeke 03 04 10 9 14 ells dim', of holland att 2s 2d ye ell 01 11 00 whereof for my wiues vse 12 yardes of Scottish Pladd, att 16d ye yd 00 16 00 A brine tubbe 00 03 08 A tunnell 00 00 10 X paid ye glasier for glasinge att Horton 00 02 00 99 4 strike of oates bought att Tamworth, to pay my Cosen Richard Skeffington a lost wager 05 05 04 48 strike of oates more, bought there ^att Tamworth^ att, 16d ye strike for my horses 00 0510 07?8 ffor a leadinge Corde for my horse 00 01 00 Carriiyinge a letter 00 00 02 11 6 per of white gloues for my selfe 00 06 06 + 2 per of gloues for my wife 00 01 10 A per of gloues for Nicholas 00 00 08 A per of stirropes 00 01 06 A sett of girthes 00 01 00 12 A per of bootes 00 08 00 giuen ye shomaker 00 00 06 Another wheele 00 01 02 13 A yarde of houswifes cloathe 00 01 00 paid Raff Moody for all his worke 00 02 06 12?4 paid Preston for an axe 00 02 00 ffor a locke for ye Closett doore and a key 00 00 10 165 my wiues bookes for houshold prouision this 7th weeke 02 14 00 16 mendinge Cloathes for Nicholas 00 01 00 Carryinge letters and graftes to and from London 00 00 07 100 Giuen ye Carrier 00 00 03 Shoinge my dunne mare 00 01 04 20 12 yds of houswifes Cloath att 13d 00 012?3 00 4 strike of Oates att 18d 00 06 00 2 buckles 00 00 02 poore + 00 00 03 A strike of beanes 00 03 04 22 giuen Nicholas to go to ye barbers 00 00 06 Giuen William Cowper 00 01 00 paid Thomas Martin for hay for -my Sorrell horse whilst he had him to amble 00 02 00 paid him for teachinge my Sorrell horse to amble viz. 10. dayes 00 06 00 A letter from London 00 00 02 Giuen him that brought itt from Tamworth 00 00 01 paid my Cosen Richard Skeffington for oates yat I lost 6 vnto him 00 023 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 00 06 A letter to London 00 00 02 13 - 14 - 11 101[f.21r] 1621March Second halfe yeare. My wiues booke for houshold prouision, for this last weeke of this yeare 01 14 08 paid William Astell of Couentry for all his worke 00 01 06 Carryinge of 21 loade of woode from Hademore to Horton att 00 11 06 250? kidds--- f--- ffor Kiddinge 250 kidds. att 9d ye 100 00 01 10 2 pewter Candlestickes 00 03 00 A tinne drippinge pan 00 01 06 2 pewter sallad dishes 00 01 06 A possnett 00 02 060 + my wife lost att ffisherwicke att Cardes 01 14 04 4 - 11 - 10 Summ of this second halfe yeare. 1446 - 159 - 31 ____ 102 1621 Summ totall of this whole yeare is. _________________________ 4068 - 14 - 31. _______________________[f.21v]March 1622 ffirst halfe yeare. 27 8 yds of sacke cloath for sackes att 7d ye yd 00 04 08 Riband 00 01 06 A pound? A herringe barrell 00 01 00 Taylour for worke 00 00 04 30 paid my vnkle Skeffington for 16 loade of ^hard^ woode att 3s-4d a loade 02 13 04Aprill 1 Giuen att Skeffington 00 04 06 2 Dyett att Northampton 00 03 08 horsemeate there 00 02 02 giuen there 00 00 08 A male pillion 00 00 08 103 5 Dyett att Brackley 01 02 06 ffidlers there 00 04 00 A Coursinge saddle with all furniture 00 13 04 A Coller for a horse 00 01 04 horsemeate at Brackley 00 15 00 6 Dyett att Brickhill 00 02 00 horsemeate there 00 023^3^ 02 Dyett att Barnett 00 03 00 horsemeate there 00 01 06 7 bringeinge Cloakebagge from Brackley to London 00 02 06 8 Lyames and Collers 00 05 00 Barber 00 01 06 Loopes for Cloakebagge 00 00 02 poore + 00 00 02 Dyett for William 00 03 02 Giuen sir Ihon Tuffton's mayde fromm my wife 00 05 00 horse medicines 00 05 06 mendinge spurres 00 00 06 ye Boy of Billson 00 00 06 ye Fauourites chronicle 00 01 00 A l?pewter squirte 00 01 04 Borrowinge a ruffe 00 01 00 paid ffoster my wiues taylour vt sequitur. 104 7 yds dim: of tuff=taffaty att 9s ye yd 03 07 064(?)-7-0 4 yds dim: of say att 2s 4d 00 10 06 an ounce, dim: and dm' qrter' of lace att 3s 8d ye ounce 00 0506 11 makinge of itt ye petticoate 00 03 00 Buckarumm, Collers, Canues etc: 00 0 9 porter 00 00 06 horsemeate att London 00 11 03 Dyett and Breakefaste in London 00 04 00 12 post horse from London to Bearstead 00 14 00 11 Giuen att Boucghton 00 09 00 fforgotten to sett doinwne in this iourney 00 17 03 12 paid my father all that he th?, hath layd out for me since Michael=mas vt sequitur paid Kinge for reapinge of Chalky att 3s-6d per acre 00 17 06 ffor reapinge of pod ware 00 07 00 Carryinge in of pease 00 01 06 Cuttinge of oates 00 05 00 Iames his Charges from Stafford[shi]r[e] 00 10 00 400 of 5d nayles att ye way 00 01 08 paid G: Goodwine for mendinge Corne 105 loft 00 02 02 paid for Charges of reparation att Willisborough 03 08 08 7 rayles for ye way 00 02 04 200 of 5 foote pale for ye way 00 13 00 3 poastes for ye way 00 0011 02 quitt rent to sir Robert Darell for little Chart=landes 00?1 03 05 ob' quitt rent for Sotherton's to Conningbrooke 00 19 06 ffor suite of Court 00 00 04 Composition for Surrenden landes 00 04 10 Sadler att Maidstone 00 03 00 paid Barton a quarters wages 01 07 06 more from Christmas to Candlemas 00 10 00 22li' - 15s - 7d - ob'[f.22r]Aprill 1622 ffirst halfe yeare paid Ihon Hunt for settinge 18 roddes of pale 01 07 00 paid him more about ye way 00 13 10 paid Harper for Composition in Chart 00 02 00 106 paid quitt rent to Boughton Court for 5 acres in broademeade 00 02 00 paid for worke in my hop=grownde 00 14 00 more for setts 00 09 00 paid Coueney for Willisborough, for part of Hinxhill lands vnto Biglsington 00 07 04 300 4d nailes 00 01 00 paid master Boothby 50 00 00 paid him for a yeares vse 04 00 00 ffor Cuttinge of hop=poales 00 05 04 paid Thomas Robins his bill for for my wife 01 10 02 paid him his part of ye bill for little Anthony 00 05 00 _____ paid for Charges of reparation of willisborough. A loade of tile 00 16 00 4 redge tile 00 00 08 halfe a loade of lime 00 08 00 ye mason for 12 dayes worke 00 08 00 paid ye glasier for new leadinge of windowes 01 12 00 paid ye plummer for soderinge ye gutter 00 04 00 107 19 giuen boy for goinge on attn E?errand 00 00 06 20 white wine, oyle, and hony for horses 00 02 08 Bringinge trunke from London 00 04 00 per of sizzers 00 00 06 21 paid Nurse Simonson for 20 weekes nursinge 02 10 00 23 riband 00 01 04 horsemeate att Maydstone 00 03 06 Ordinary att ye co*cke 00 02 06 ffor standinge for my horses 00 01 00 25 Giuen att Boucghton 00 14 00 paid master Copley for halfe a yeares small tithes 00 11 00 26 paid Beeching's bill for all thinges hitherto 01 02 06 paid Mathewes for Barton's boarder 18 weekes 03 06 00 ffor 9?5 bushells of oates whereof 8 for ye parke 00 016 03 giuen him in reckoninge 00 00 09 paid Mathewes for ploughinge ^and sowinge and harrowinge.^ ye parke att 6s per acre beinge 19 acres 05 14 00 Giuen Harper 00 06 00 Shoinge bay mare 00 01 08 108 medicines for yat mare 00 04 04 paid my father for 4 bushells dim of tares 00 12 00 Item for 9 bushells of pease 01 10 00 ffor 7 bushells of oates 00 08 06 paid Thomas Hart for 3 seames of oates att 9s 6d 01 08 06 paid goodwife Codwell for 2 seames of oates 00 19 00 paid Ianuary for 3 seames of oates att 9s 6d 01 08 06 paid Moter for 3 seames of oates att 10s 01 10 00 ffor hony 00 01 00 to a boy for keepinge rookes 00 09 00 27 Giuen att my fathers 00 06 06 beere 00 00 02 29 paper and wax 00 02 02 an inkehorne 00 00 04 An orbe or globe terrestriall 00 02 00 3 per of gloues 00 11 06 + 2 per for my wife 00 13 06 Sir ffrancis Bacon's history of Henry 7 00 06 06 Dinner 00 02 00 30 2 bridles 00 03 00 109 5 play bookes 00 02 00 A scarlett Cappe 00 11 00 90 - 5 - 0 40 10[f.22v] Aprill 1622 ffirst halfe yeare 30my suite ffor 8 yds of turky gragarum, and a Cost. 8li'. qrter', att 7s 02 17 09 3 dozen of embroidered satten lace att 16s a dozen 02 108 00 ffor all other thinges, as lininges, fustian's, and makinge &c 02 14 03 paid a porter 00 00 06 Supper on munday night 00 02 00 A hatt and band and box for my wife 01 01 06 poore + 00 00 07 mendinge girdle 00 00 02May A shirte giuen to my Cosen Richard Skeffington 03 10 00 1. poore + 00 00 07 110 mendinge stirrup 00 00 01 horsemeate 00 04 05 Dyett att st Albanes 00 04 04 giuen there 00 01 03 paid ye smith for dressinge my bay mare 00 06 06 A male pillion and loopes 00 01 00 Dinner and horses att Rochester 00 04 00 William's dinner 00 00 06 Saddle and Cloath 001 00 00 Stuffinge a saddle 00 01 00 2 3 horses att hay 3 nightes in London 00 06 00 2 bushells dim' of oates 00 06 08 william Laide out for me 00 02 02 L[ai]d out by william for my horses 00 05 00 2 Beere att by ye way 00 00 04 Sb?hoinge 00 00 05 Dyett att Dauentry 00 004 00 horsemeate 00 02 04 Giuen in this iourney otherwayes 00 08 09 _______ _____ 3 Giuen to a breife 00 00 06 4 A strike of oates 00 02 10 Carriage of a letter 00 00 02 my wiues houshold booke for 4 weekes whilst I was in Kent 003 12 03 111 7 poore + 00 00 03 8 paid for all shouinge vntill this time 00 02 04 10 paid my brother Robert for all ye mony by his My brother Robert disbursed for me att London. Imprimis for a peece 01 05 02 ffor bringinge houshold stuffe to London out of Kent 00 15 00 A bible bound in folio 01 02 00 63 yds of Dornex att 20d ye yarde 05 05 00 Canuas to packe vp ye Dornex in 00 01 03 A round horse brush 00 01 00 2 necke buttons for a Cloake 00 01 03 A Ia^c^ke, and baskett to putt itt in 01 04 06 Carriage of itt to ye Carrier 00 00 02 A bottle and pint of Dr Mountfordes Cordiall 00 04 04 9 ounces of Cruell att 4d ye ounce, and 4 ounces of Crimson in graine att 8d ye ounce 00 05 08 2 ells of Canuas to worke on 00 02 10 Striped stuffe 3 yardes broade att 5s 6d per yd 00 07 00 2 per of shoes, and a per of goloshaes 00 09 00 Charges about fetchinge my trunke from 112 st Albanes 00 02 05 portage of Dornex and letters to and from ye Carrier, att sundry tymes 00 03 02 my wife paid Elisabeth Sharpe her wages from Michaelmas ^Christmas^ vnto midsommer 001 00 00 33 - 2 - 2[f.23r] 1622May ffirst halfe yeare 10 Carrier from London 00 05 00 Carrier to London paid to my aunt. 00 09 00 3 yds of white cotton for Nicholas his breeches 00 02 00 2 yds of Buckarum 00 01 04 an old skin 00 00 11 11 Giuen ye Cooke of ffisherwicke 00 02 06 12 Crossinge Elford water 00 00 06 16 pfor purses bought att Congleton, for one purse 00 06 00 ffor 3 purses att 4s a peece 00 12 00 ffor 5 purses att 1s 00 05 00 113 ffor 2 purses att 1-s 00 01 00 17 Giuen att Knypersley 00 08 06 Giuen b in valew for light gold 00 00 03 my wiues houshold booke for 7th weeke 01 07 00 18 paid for 2 yardes of greene say serge to make Nicholas a doublett 00 06 10 paid ye taylours bill for makinge itt 1-2-3 and 2 per of breeches, a per of stockins, and a girdle 00 06 06 Lininges silke buttons Canuas &c 00 05 06 Giuen 00 00 06 19 poore + 00 00 08 20 Giuen ye vicar of whittington 00 01 00 22 Bringinge thinges from London 00 03 00 3 strike of oates 00 06 00 paid my wiues houshold booke for ye 8th weeke 00 17 03 25 poore + 00 00 02 bandstringes 6 per 00 01 00 Shoinge dunne mare and white nagge 00 02 08 Oyle for ye Coache 00 00 06 ffor strawe 00 00 06 paid my wiues houshold booke for ye 9th weeke 01 06 11 _________ 28 paid Preston for a key 00 00 06 114 paid him for iron=worke about ye Coach 00 03 00 29 2 strike of oates 00 03 04 Shoinge my horse 00 00 08 30 A letter from London 00 00 04Iune 2 giuen 00 001 02?0 3 paid Moody for all worke 00 03 00 Left mony with Richard Greeneley to pay ye shomaker of Lichfeild for all his worke 00 06 06 paid and discharged Nell ye Cooke 00 11 03 giuen her 00 03 00 giuen Richard Greeneley 00 02 06 giuen Ihon' Iones 00 02 06 A snaffle 00 01 00 ffor Couentry blew threede att 6d ye ounce 00 05 00 + ffor mendinge my wiues gowne 00 00 08 ffor Coales bought att Elford 00 07 08 25 li' et dim' of beefe 00 04 03 lost 00 00 02 4 grease for ye Coach 00 00 06 Stuffinge of a saddle 00 00 08 paid for Coachire hire from ffisherwicke to London 07 00 00 Giuen ye Coachman 00 05 06 115 mendinge ye Coach 00 02 06 5 3 iron boxes att 16s a peece 02 1?08 00 paid and discharged William Cowper 01 06 08 giuen him 00 13 04 my wife in ssSacke 00 01 00 22 - 8 - 8[f.23v]Iune 1622 ffirst halfe yeare 7?6 Giuen Sander Hart when he came to London 00 05 00 7 Giuen Thomas 00 05 06 + my wife layde out att London 00 08 00 grease for Coach 00 00 04 8 ffor three washers 00 01 00 ffor mendinge Coach 00 01 06 Giuen ye poore in my iourney from Horton to Surrenden in six dayes 00 03 00 Dyett by ye way from Horton to Surrenden in 5 dayes beside London dyett 03 01 05 Horsemeate by ye way from Horton to Surrenden in 6 dayes 02 08 11 116 Giuen by ye way 00 11 00 paid Harper for all that he laid ---- out. 12 ffor salt 00 02 04 A temse sieue 00 00 07 giuen idle Ihon' 00 00 02 halfe a bushell of oatemeale 00 01 06 A Crocke of butter 00 05 03 Carryinge of a loade of stuffe to ffeuersham 00 12 00 ffor ye towne draught 00 00 04 Giuen one to watch itt 00 00 02 Giuen fro?or bringinge duckes and Chicken 00 02 06 poore + 00 00 06 ffor5 51 ordinary hopopes att 2s a hoope 00 08 06 ffor worke about ye Coole=fatt 00 02 00 ffor puttinge in of 8 heades of barrells 00 00 08 ffor settinge on 7 newe Chines 00 00 07 ffor mendinge a kilder kine heade 00 00 02 ffor a newe heade of a hog=sheade 00 01 00 ffor one oaken hoope vpon ye hogwash tubbe 00 03 04 paid ye hopman for worke 00 010 00 117 A weekes pasturage for my mare att grauesend 00 03 06 paid ye fferrier there for her dressinge 00 03 04 paid Powte for 8 dayes worke 00 08 00 paid Hunt for palinge 00 07 06 ffor egges 00 01 00 A handle for ye peele 00 00 04 Giuen Nurse Simonson 00 05 06 15 A small round nett with a hoope 00 01 06 my man's dinner there att Ashford. + my wife laide out for inkle and pins 00 00 06 A sin(?)e of lace 00 01 00 ___________________ ___________________ Bringinge thinges from Ashford 00 00 02 16 A little paper booke 00 01 05 17 paid old freind for makinge 265 fa*gott att 20sd ye 100 00 04 03 houshold expences 00 07 07 more 00 07 03 19 Spent att Dartford 00 01 09 poore + 00 00 02?3 2 per of silke stockins for Lettice and Cisley Skeffington 02 00 00 2 per of worstead stockins for my selfe 00 12 00 118 A booke of ye glory of England 00 01 04 20 2 Candlestickes 00 05 00 6 porrengers 00 03 06 A greate iron barred Chest for 04 08 00 21 per of bootes 00 10 00 20 - 11 - 11[f.24r] 1622Iune ffirst halfe yeare. per of bootehose topps 00 06 00 Heyward's Norman K[ing]s 00 01 06 2 Iuory boxes 00 05 060 poore + 00 00 04 porter 00 00 04 topothpickes and a case 00 01 06 22 per of goloshaes 00 03 00 giuen 00 00 04 Dyett att London 00 14 04 23 horsemeate 00 06 08 giuen 00 00 06 giuen G. Smith 00 02 00 goinge by water to Grauesend 00 06 00 post horse to Rochester 00 04 06 119 giuen post boy 00 00 06 hire of a hackney for Nicholas to maidstone 00 02 06 horsemeate and giuen att Rochester 00 03 06 Giuen ye poore of Pluckley + 01 00 00 Giuen master Bennett ye phisitian 01 02 00 Giuen master Doctor Moseley(?) for his funerall sermon 03 00 00 Banquett from maidestone 03 03 00 Banquett frl'?om Ashford 01 19 00 Giuen a woman sent from Hothfeild 00 01 00 Giuen Lydia 00 10 00 Giuen ye poore att Surrenden house + 00 17 06 Giuen mistress Benett 00 06 00 Giuen ye sexton for tollinge ye bell and digginge ye graue 00 10 00 goodwife Maresface and goodwife Hill's for helpe 00 02 00 paid Thomas Robins for lendinge of blacke Cotton to hange escocheons on viz to hange all ye Church except ye greate Chancell, 3 times Downe ye body. and my fathers hall 00 07 06 3 blacke liueryes and a pulpett Cloath which master Copley had to make a Cloake of 06 03 04 120 for ye hire of a velluett hearse cloath 01 00 00 Riband for ye liueryes 00 04 04 ffor Carrijng(?) ye hearsecloath backe to London 00 01 00 ffor Carri?yinge and recarrijnge of itt in London 00 00 10 2 dozen and 6 escotchens in mettle 04 07 00 16 escocheons in paper 01 04 00 more to ye poore att Surrenden 00 03 00 Coffin and embalminge 01 06 08 Nicholas his Charges vp and Downe between London and home 3 times 00 18 10 A blacke Cloake for my selfe att 35s per yd 04 11 10 2 per of gloues, garters, and ribandses 00 16 06 A hatt and band 00 11 06 A Ruffe and Cuffes 01 01 10 3 dozen of pointes 00 13 06 per of stockins 00 12 00 per of spurres 00 01 02 per of hangers 00 07 06 _____ 25 2 paper bookes for expences 00 04 06 paid and discharged Besse Sharpe 00 10 00 121 she laid out for vs 00 03 00 giuen her aboue her wages 00 12 00 Nicholas his Charges out of London home 00 03 08 giuen him 00 02 06 30 per of bootes 00 09 06 per of shoes 00 02 06 spent in stafford, butt not sett doune 00 04 04 402 - 9 - 9 42 - 14 - 1[f.24v] [1622]Iuly 1 paid for bringinge 1400 weight ^dim'^ of stuffe from London to ^London to^ ffeuersham to Surrenden 00 10 00 Dressinge and poalinge my hopyard 00 06 06 paid G. Pout for all his worke att Surrenden 01 00 00 paid for bringeinge a loade of stuffe from ffeuersham to Surrenden 00 10 00 Towne draught 00 00 04 Wharfa*ge 00 01 00 122 4 firre poales for fishinge netts 00 01 04 2 paid Paine's bill 00 03 08 3 paid Sotherden for all ye meate I had of him hitherto 02 04 06 8 paid G. Goodwin for all his worke 00 0?12 03 paid master Copley for all small tithes past and vnto Michaelmas next 00 02?4 00 paid him for his tith hay in broade reede 00 05 08 12 paid Browne ye smith 00 00 06 paid Iohn Hunt for worke 00 02 06 13 Cleaninge a birdinge peece 00 00 06 14 paid G. Pout for 7 dayes worke 00 07 00 two gate lockes 00 01 00 16 giuen Nicholas att seuerall times 00 02 02 paid ye taylours bill for Nicholas 00 11 00 paid ye maltman for 2 seames of malt 01 16 00 giuen 00 00 07 Iron wire 00 00 02 19 12 ells of holland att 3s per ell 01 16 00 paid G. Pout for worke 00 03 00 20 paid ye thatcher 00 02 06 per of shoes for Nicholas 00 02 06 paid ye Carrier 00 01 02 my man's dinner att Ashford 00 00 08 123 horses there 00 00 03 powder aattnd shott 00 00 06 nuttmegges 00 00 02 21 poore + 00 01 01 ob' Layd out att London by my brother 27 Robert vt sequitur: viz: Inprimis for diuers letters. 00 01 00 ffor 5 1/2 yardes of mottley for Cloake baggs 00 11 04 ffetchinge my mare from St Albons 00 03 04 paid there for here 00 03 06 for her meate att London and Conueyinge to Grauesend 00 05 03 A kegge of sturgeon 00 17 00 paid for bringinge stuffe from staffordsh[i]r[e] to London att 4s 6d ye C 02 19 00 paid porters for loadinge and vnladinge 00 02 06 paid ye water=bayliffe for wharfa*ge &c 00 01 04 paid a porter to Carry a letter from London to Surrenden in hast when my Cosen Skeffington was sicke 00 07 06 Dyett when I was in London and lay att my Cosen Bringborn's 01 05 06 Letters 00 03 00 124 18 - 8 - 11. ob'.[f.25r] 1622Iuly ffirst half yeare A silluer sugar=chest weighinge 18 ounces 1/2 and 3d which att 5s 10d per ounce is 05 08 06August. 5 Giuen my brother Robert 05 00 00 Barber 00 02 00 9 Paid G Pout for all his worke about greate Pickenwell pond, 01 02 06 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke there 00 03 06 paid G. Pout for all his worke about ye stew 00 04 00 Giuen att Boughton 00 00 06 10 paid for Mowinge and makinge of 143? ^13^ acres 3 qtrs' of hay att 2s 8d per acre 01 13 00 12 Giuen ye nurse and midwife att my Cosen Edward Dering's sonnes Christneinge beinge my Godsonene 01 02 00 16 --- Giuen att ye takinge say of a deere a peece of gold 00 04 04 125 Giuen Charles who lett my grey hounde slipp 00 01 00 --- lost att tables 00 02 06 17 Spent att Ashford 00 05 06 more for my man and horses 00 01 00 18 Giuen Thomas 00 00 06 paid ye nurse for ye last 21 weekes nursinge of Anthony 02 12 06 Giuen ye nurse 00 05 00 Giuen her maide 00 02 06 19 Giuen att Hothfeild 00 00 06 20 Giuen att Iohn Awco*ck's 00 00 06 paid G Pout for all his worke whereof yfor ye stew 1s-6d 00 06 00 25 per of stockins for Nicholas 00 03 08 deliuered in part of wages to Simon Barwicke 00 10 00 27 Giuen Barwicke 00 00 04 his Charges when he went to ffayrelane 00 02 04 my sister Marg[aret] had 00 01 00 29 paid Harper for all by him layd out vt sequitur: paid ye Cowper for makinge two tubbes, and for hoopes. 00 05 00 A sneue(?) bought of Adgore 00 00 04 paid Bentley for once brewinge att 126 Surrenden 00 04 04 meate bought att lenham and att Harrisom before Midsommer 00 06 02 Sugar 00 02 06 Butter and Cheese 00 05 03 milke and Creame bought 00 01 03 paid Browne ye smith for all his worke 00 08 05 paid Gooden ye mason for stoppinge the barnes(?) 00 04 06 6 dishes and a ladle 00 00 08 goodwife Maresface for eggi?es 00 00 10 Carryinge of 9 loade of hay from broade reede to Surrenden att 14d ye loade 00 10 06 weedinge of my Corne in ye parke 00 13 04 30 S?Giuen ye phisitian for Barwicke, when he was sicke 00 10 00September 5 Giuen att Mersham 00 03 00 6 Giuen 00 00 04 Ordinary att Bearstead 00 02 06 Stirruppes attnd leathers 00 02 00 my man's ordinary there 00 00 08 his ordinary att Ashford 00 00 08 my horses there 00 00 04 Nicholas lost and spent 00 01 10 127 7 Giuen Vaunt 00 00 04 23 - 19 - 5[f.25v]September. 1622 ffirst halfe yeare. 8 Giuen att Bougchton 00 13 00 9 Giuen ye Waters ye phisitian for Barwicke 00 06 00 10 Giuen Nicholas 00 02 06 1 li' of galles 00 00 10 42 ounces of gumm Arabicke 00 00 06 A tinne box 00 00 04 Riband bought of Paine 00 01 04 12 Giuen Goodwife Pay for Barwicke 00 06 00 13 paid ffuller for a loade and halfe of lime, annd for bringinge 3s. per loade 13s-4d 01 03 00 14 Spent att Ashford in wine &c 00 09 00 paid ye phisitian for Compositions for Barwicke 00 05 06 Settinge my horses att ashford 00 00 06 my man's ordinary there 00 00 08 paid old ffreinde for makinge 100 Copp 128 of bondes att 4d 20 Coppe 00 01 08 paid him for drawinge of bo?and Corne 00 01 04?0 paid G Pout for settinge vp rayles and post in Longe dane 00 04 06 paid him for haruestinge in my parke 00 03 00 16 Giuen Ihon Lucas for helpe in haruest 00 01 00 2119 Giuen att Wy 00 00 06 21 my man's ordinary and my horses att Ashford 00 012 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 00 06 23 Giuen ye Clerke of ye marshe for a Coppy of ye Surueyours and Lordships which he geaue me 00 02 06 my man's dyett and horsemeate att Aldington 00 00 12 25 paid Raff steward ye glasier for threescore and 15 foote repayringes: viz: burnishinge soderinge, and bondes att 2d per foote 00 12 06 for new leadinge of 5 foote, att 3d per foote 00 01 03 Threescore and 16 quarryes of glasse att 1d per quarry 00 06 03 27 paid Pout for all his worke 00 07 00 129 28 paid Ihon Hunt for 4 dayes workes in makinge and layinge a new penstocke to my Pickenwell stew 00 04 08 paid him for all worke beside 00 0233 06 _______________2 half yeare 2 lockes bought att Maidstone 00 06 06 29 paid Goodman Butcher for all his worke 00 08 00 +++_______________________ paid Hickes ye shomaker for a per of shoes for Nicholas 00 02 04 paid of bootes for him 00 08 06October. 7 paid Sander Hart for all he had lDisbursed for me. ^viz: paid for mowinge and makinge hay 00 03 00^ for Corde and pacthreade 00 01 00 for 2 lockes 00 01 04 Trayne oyle 00 01 03 Nicholas his dinners and horsemeate att Ashford 00 02 00 Giuen him 00 00 02 ______________________________ 4 dozen of buttons 00 01 08 sti^t^chinge and sowinge silke 00 00 07 Claspes 00 00 03 Buckarom for ye winges 00 00 03 130_______________________________ paid my Asses for ye poore of Charte 00 03 06 paid Georg Gadsby for all between him and me for worke 00 04 08 for A grate to my stew 00 04 00 for ye a halfe yeares schoolinge beforehand vnto our Lady day for f George Elton 00 06 00 An Accedence for him 00 00 04 George Gadsby his Charges of his iourney to place him att schoole 00 06 08 10 paid Iohn' Hunt for worke in ye Corne loft 00 02 00 11 paid George Pout for 6 dayes whereof 4 in Castinge Pluckley Land pond 00 06 00 12 7 yds of stuffe for Anthony att 21s 8d per yd 00 11 08 13 poore 00 00 06 15 Pout 3 dayes pluckley land pond 00 03 00[f.26r] [blank] 131 [The entries on ff.26v and 27r, up to and including the one for October 15, repeat all the entries on f. 25v, usually more fully][f.26v]Iuly 1622.September ffirst halfe yeare. 78 Giuen att Boucghton 00 13 00 9 Giuen waters ye phisitian for Barwicke 00 06 00 10 Giuen Nicholas 00 02 06 1 li' of gall's to make inke 00 00 10 4 ounces of gumm arabicke 00 00 06 A tinne box 00 00 04 Riband bought of Paine 00 01 04 12 Giuen goodwife Pay for Barwicke 00 06 00 13 paid Fuller for a loade ^and halfe^ of lime and for bringinge att 3s. att 13s 4d per loade 01 03 00 14 Spent att Ashford in wine 00 09 00 paid ye phisitian for Compositions for Barwicke 00 05 06 Settinge vp my horses att Ashford 00 00 06 my man's ordinary there 00 00 08 paid old freinde for makinge 100 Coppe of bondes att 4d ye 0?20 Copp 00 01 08 paid him for drawinge of band Corne 00 01 00 132 paid G. Pout for settinge vp rayles and postes in Long dane 00 04 06 16 Giuen Ihon Lucas for helpe in haruest 00 01 00 19 Giuen att Wy 00 00 06 21 my man's ordinary and my horses att Ashford 00 01 00 Giuen Nicholas 00 00 06 23 Giuen Kennett ye Clarke of ye marsh for writinge a Coppy of ye Lordshipps and surueyours 00 02 06 my man's dyett and horsemeate att Aldington 00 01 00 my ordinary there 00 01 00 25 paid Raffe steward ye glazier for 75 foote of repayring. viz. burnishinge, sodering, and lea?dbondes att 2d per foote 00 12 06 ffor new leadinge of 5 foote att 3d per foote 00 01 03 76 quarryes of glasse new putt in att 1d ye quarry 00 06 03 [total of sums bracketed in right-hand margin entered at right:] 20s 0d 27 paid Pout for all his worke 00 07 00 28 paid Ihon Hunt for makinge and layinge a new penstocke of elme to 133 my stew old stew att Pickenwell 00 04 08 paid him for all other worke 00 03 06 29 paid Butcher for all his worke 00 08 00 paid Hickes ye shomaker for a per shoes for Nicholas 00 02 04 per of bootes for him 00 08 06 ______________________________ 6 - 17 - 10 ______________ Summ totall of this first halfe yeare 278 - 15 - 46[f.27r] Second half yeare. 1622October 7 paid Sander Hart for his disbursments for me viz: ffor Corde and packthreade. 00 01 00 2 lockes 00 01 04 Traine oyle 00 01 03 Mann's meate and horsemeate att Ashford 00 02 00 Giuen him 00 00 02 paid my Asses for ye poore of little 134 Chart 00 03 06 paid George Gadsby for worke 00 04 08 more for a grate for my stew 00 04 00 for half a yeares schoolinge before hand from Michaelmas vnto our lady for Georg Elton 00 06 00 An Accedence for hism 00 00 04 George Gadsby his Charges of his iourney to place him att schoole 00 06 08 10 paid Iohn Hunt for 2 dayes worke in ye Corne loft 00 02 00 11 paid Pout 00 02 00 12 7 yds of stuffe for little Anthony att 1s 8d 00 11 08 13 poore + 00 00 06 15 paid Pout for 7 dayes worke att Pluckley land pond to Cast itt paid00 07 00 16 7?8 bushells of haire for morter att 6d per bushell 00 04 00 A Corne rake 00 00 06 Bridge for mowinge of oates one day 00 02 00 Butcher for 2 dayes 00 03 04 Barnard for 2 dayes 00 03 04 Kingsnoath bindinge &c 5 dayes 00 08 04 Fidge for reapinge of pease and bindinge of oates 00 11 06 135 Fowler for reapinge tares &c 00 07 09 Iohnson for 9 dayes dim'. 00 13 04 4 ewes bought of Markettman att 6s 4d apeece 01 05 04 2 sheepe ^ewes^ of Harper att 7s 4d 00 14 08 2 Rammes att 13s 01 06 00 when I paid Harper this reckoninge I gaue him 01 13 01 paid Christopher Butcher for 4 dayes dim'. att Pluckley land pond 00 04 08 Item for other worke 00 02 1?00 paid William Snellinge for All worke 01 03 10_________ N L 00 00 03 19 Idle Iohn for bootes? Lace? and 5 yds of bla[ck] bayes to line my cloake att 4s 6d per yd 01 02 06 7 yds of bl[ack] sattin for a suite, att 14s-4d per yd 05 07 06 gloues for my selfe 00 11 00 20 poore + 00 00 04 per of spurrs 00 01 04 21 A planire(?) ruff 00 11 00 2 per of plaine cuffes and banstringes 00 01 06 6 handkercheifes att 8d a peece 00 04 00 22 paid master Clarke my taylour his 136 bill &c: for a mourninge suit of bl[ack] Philjpp and cheiney, lined with taffaty &c 03 19 04 for makinge my cloake, drawinge ye peeces, and ribands 00 07 06 for a girdle 00 01 00 for puttinge a lininge into my cloake 00 01 06 for a paire of Sattin hangers and gerdle, lined with plush 00 15 03? 00 For taffaty lininges for my satten doublett, for holland for ye hose, for pocketts, silke buttons, and all 10s for makinge ye suite and for buckarum, straite lininge, stiffnings, gallowne, loopelace, and a flannell betwene ye outside and ye Inner. for all 02 14 04 So this bl[ack] satten suite 27 - 16 - 5. standes me(?) in/8-1-10./[f.27v] October Second halfe years. 1622. 22 2 bands for Nicholas 00 01 08 137 A velluett scabberd, and sanguininge my rapier 00 06 00 Argenis and playbookes 00 14 00 23 4 per of bootes, goloshaes and spanish leather shoes 02 06 00 A beauer hatt 02 03 00 A bl[ack] Cypresse hattband 00 02 00 A hatt for Nicholas 00 04 00 Selden de Dijs Syris for master Perde 00 02 00 4 dozen of bl[ack] pointes 00 11 00 24 Giuen my brother A turky grogarum suite 05 05 00 Seeinge ye seuerall places in ye Tower 00 05 06 25 Lysander and Calista 00 03 00 new bindinge itt 00 01 00 26 Dressinge of 2 hatts for Nicholas 00 01 06 27 A steele padlocke 00 03 06 An ounce of powder of Corrall 00 04 00 Babyes for Anthony 00 01 00 27 Goinge by water 00 00 06 Seeinge tombes att Westmester 00 01 00 28 The Arcadia 00 09 00 29 Geiuen Hart of Ireland 00 10 00 Astrea 00 01 00 A Case of kniues 00 011 00 per of stockins bl[ack] 00 07 00 138 3 per of stockins for Anthony 00 02 06 per of stirrupp stockins 00 02 06 31 5 playbookes 00 02 06 paper 00 00 02 Seeinge a play for my selfe and others 00 03 06Nouember. 1 A torche 00 00 10 N L 00 00 06. 3 Goinge by water 00 0-30 006 5 mendinge my watch 00 02 00 Giuen Phillpott the herald 00 11 00 7 A Combe 00 00 10 8 A Catalogue of All ye knights' made by ye K[ing]. 01 02 00 A brasse ruler 00 05 006 16s-6d A per of Compasses with, pen, and bl[ack] leade &c 00 08 00 A per of Compasses 00 03 00 Goinge by water 00 00 06 per of bootehose topps 00 06 00 Wither's his workes 00 03 10 pens 00 00 02 9 Cloakebagge stringes 00 00 08 per of plyers 00 01 01 A vice 00 01 08 2 per of Compasses 00 02 06 139 A vice with a winche 00 02 10 A hand=vice 00 01 10 3 files 00 00 04 2 per of plyers 00 02 00 2-3-5 3 per of Compasses 00 03 00 3-19-10 A graftinge saw with 2 blades 00 07 00 A graftinge knife 00 01 00 A rasour 00 01 06 A sett of iron letters 00 01 02 E D in iron letters 00 00 04 A padlocke 00 04 00 4 stocke locke 00 02 00 paper and pens 00 11 00 11 Giuen att ye heraldes office 00 02 06 wax 00 00 04 Sweete powder 00 03 08 3 per of gloues 00 03 06 20 - 19 - 3[f.28r] 1622Nouember Second halfe yeare./ 12 Collers and terretts, 2 per 00 01 08 Aaron Rab?thborns his Surueyour 00 05 00 140 The Surueyours dialogue 00 01 04 Shoinge my horses 00 01 00 A wax Candle 00 00 06 14 2 quire of paper with escocheons printed 00 02 08 per of bootes and goloshaes 00 12 00 per of bootes 00 12 00 15 4 Allmanackes 00 00 06 Single Coates with mantle and Creast att 18d 00 08 00 Redd inke, bottle, and pens 00 00 06 pensells 00 00 06 halfe a pounde of gumm Arabicke 00 01 00 A box 00 01 00 NL? Laundresse 00 05 00 16 Land? A false scabbard 00 01 00 To a porter 00 00 06 Horsemeate in London and by ye way 01 06 02 Chamber rent for a fot?rtnight, viz. 3 Chambers att 16s per weeke 1 12 00 My dyett and my mens beinge a month in London 04 02 04 N L 00 09 06 poore + 00 03 04 Giuen 00 0311 0410 18 paid vnto my Lady Wotton, as a legacy, 141 from my vnckle Edward Dering who dyed att Venice, in [blank] last, past. there were present my Cosen Edward Dering of Egerton and his brother Iohn Deringe 20 00 00 29 paid --- [deleted entry. Leaf now broken in half along this heavily inked deletion; writing mostly illegible]--- 29 of his money(?) --- 19 Shoinge my mare 00 001 00 20 paid Bishop of fford mill, before I went to London/. for [blank] 21 paid Iohn Hunt and his boy for one dayes worke in ye Corne loft 00 01 02 paid Butcher for 2 dayes worke att pluckley land pond 00 02 06 paid Iohn Gardner for weedinge my saffron 00 01 00 Composition in Pluckley 00 05 10 Composition in little Charte 00 02 10 22 Lost last halfe yeare att boules and Cardes 00 03 00 22 paid Kinge for Carryinge one loade of hay 00 00?11 02 paid him for bringinge 2 loade of drift sand 00 02 04 142 paid him for bringinge 2 loade of other sand 00 02 04 23 Giuen my sister Margarett 00 01 00 25 paid Elisabeth Hills for tendinge of Brarwicke when he was sicke 00 04 00 26 paid Lanes ye gatherer for quittrent, due vnto ye K[ing]s lordshipp of Conningbrooke for landes in Willisborough 00 19 09 Item for releife a thirde part of ye rent 00 06 07 1-11-3 Item for fealty 00 00 02 Item to ye Clarke of that Court to enter ye releife 00 01 00 Item quittrent to ye Lordship of Westwell for part of Dunmersh 00 01 10 Item for releife halfe ye quittrent 00 00 11 Item to ye Clarke of that Court to enter ye releife 00 01 00 29 Giuen Simon Barwicke 00 01 00December Giuen Iohn Hunt when I driu'ed a pinme(?) 00 02 00 1 paid Christopher Butcher for threshinge of Coppe of oates [blank] att - 12d per diem for 8 dayes 00 08 00 paid Abraham Butcher for 12 dayes 143 threshinge of pease, att 12d per diem. viz. abot?ut 60 Copp 00 12 00 paid him for 3 dayes worke in haruest 00 04 00 paid him for 3 dayes worke about pluckley land pond 00 03 00 Giuen my sister Margarett 00 01 00 5 paid Ihonson my hopdresser in part of payment 00 010 00 6 ffrise to make Nicholas a ierkyn 00 05 02 nayles 3?136 - 4 - 11.[f.28v] 1622December Second halffe yeare. 9 Giuen because Lent 00 00 06 12 Dinner and wine att maidstone 00 13 00 Horsemeate there 00 01 00 Giuen att to Berwicke 00 01 00 16 Giuen att Boucghton 00 11 06 19 paid to Smith for a blacke Coate I bought of him 02 00 00 Giuen ye sexton of Beatherisden 00 00 06 21 paid ye Carrier for bringinge thinges 144 from London 00 04 00 Giuen Ihon Lucas for Cleaninge Oates 00 00 06 22 paid my asses 00 05 00 To Nicholas 00 00 02 23 Giuen my Cosen Mary Bell 00 00 06 Barbe?ar 00 02 00 28 paid Christopher butcher, for 3 dayes the?reshinge for himselfe and 3 for his brother 00 06 00 29 paid Barwicke for all layd out by him 00 01 00Ianuary 1 Giuen Musitian att Boucghton 00 02 06 Giuen att Boucghton 00 17 06 paid Butcher and his brother for threshinge 00 06 00 measuringe of land att 2d per acre 00 02 02 Nicholas his Charges to London 00 03 06 176 Dyett and horsemeate att Douer and Canterbury 01 0-4 00?3 Giuen ye warren s? keeper 00 02 06 ffidlers 00 01 06 18 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke att 14d per diem 00 10 00 29 Spent att Maydeston and Bearstead 0011 11 06February 4 Giuen att Boucghton, vlcombe, and Maydeston 00 16 00 8 Giuen fidlers 00 02 00 145 Horsemeate att Canterbury 00 02 08 Giuen there 00 01 04 A baskett and Corde 00 02 00 10 Giuen att Boucghton 00 02 00 poore + 00 01 00 6 playbookes 00 02 00 A male pillion 00 02 06 Spent 00 03 06 Goinge ---[leaf broken in half along heavily inked deletion; parts missing] 00 00 06 paid vnto Harper vt sequitur Imprimis for pitch 00 01 00 2 gate lockes 00 02 00 ffor shoinge and a per of ffetters att Brown's 00 08 02 paid ffowler for grubbinge vp of trees 01 05 00 paid Ihonson for digginge of gritt in ye south shoue of ye parke att 3s 4 per 100 00 03 00 2 ewes bought of goodwife Codwell 00 16 00 20 ewes bought of George Gadsby 07 00 00 tapps &c 00 00 04 12 paid Sander Hart 400 of 5d nayles 00 01 08 400 of 4d nayles 00 01 04 3 qrters' of a yd of fustian to mend 146 my gowne 00 00 07 18 giuen att Boucghton 00 11 00 my brother Robert layd out for me att London &c ffor letters 00 01 00 ffor heades of haire and beards 00 17 06 paid my father for Ihon Hunt 00 11 04 paid ye Butcher's for 2 dayes threshinge 00 04 00 paid Hernden for digginge of stones 00 08 00 paid Ihon Hunt for all manner of worke due vntill ye 14 of ffebruary 01 07 00 a per of sizzers 00 00 06 21 paid Ihonson in part of paiement which makes itt vpp. 20s 00 10 00 22 paid ye 2 buttchers for a day's threshing 00 02 04 3?23 paid vnto Simonson an asses and half for ye poore 00 10 00 26 Nicholas his dinner 00 00 08 paid Georg Gooden for digging of 18 loade of stone att in Chaltagh att 6d per loade: viz. 3 foote square sett 00 09 00 27 Giuen a messenger Came from boughton 00 00 06 paid master [blank] Carington for 147 writing out ye play of HK[ing] Henry ye fourth att 1d ob' per sheete and giuen himore(?) 00 04 00 26 - 19 - 6[f.29r]March. 1622 Second halfe yeare 1. Giuen ye gardiner att Boucghton for Cutting some graftes 00 02 00 2. Giuen master Iackson a poore minister sometime Chaplain vnto Doctor Hampton Archbishop of Armacgh 00 010 00 ______ Stolne out of my pockett 00 13 00 8 paid Harper for all he layd out for me vt sequitur: 2 working oxen 08 00 00 keepinge them vntill I had them att 4d per weeke apeece 00 048 06 per of hinder wheeles for my waggon 00 16 00 Shoing of those wheeles att 2d ob' ye pound 01 14 08 2000 of 5d nayles 00 08 04 148 ploughing of Long dane att 5s per acre 01 05 00 paid wood for digging of gritt in ye parke att 3s ye 100 01 07 00 paid Browne ye smith for shoing 00 03 11 Happes and staples 00 01 06 A staple and a linke for an enebb yoake 00 01 00 A per of traces 00 00 06 A spade 00 01 06 ______ paid Ihon Hunt vt sequitur. Imprimis att Mosewell spring ffor 1000 settes of Quicke att 6d per 100 00 05 00 ffor settinge of 19 rodds and halfe of double rayle att 4?6d per rodd 00 09 06 6 dayes he and his boy makinge ye dike and laying ye setts, he att 16d per diem, his boy att 8d 00 12 00 18 rodds of single rayle about ye spiringe being 2 dayes whorke for him and his boy 00 04 00 _______ more for a daiyes worke att ye forestall 00 02 00 _______ 149 Giuen Sir Thomas Wotton's footeman 00 01 00 9 Giuen att Boucghton 00 00 06 13 paid for wine when Sir Thomas Wotton was heere 00 04 00 paid for petticoates for Anthony 00 10 06 paid a taylours bill for Nicholas 00 07 03 paid ye Charges for Nicholas a night in East Kent beinge sicke 00 05 06 14 -paid ffowler for worke about hedges 00 03 00 paid ffowler for grubbing a hedge 00 03 04 more for Charges when Nicholas was sicke 00 05 00 Thread &c 00 00 07 17 Giuen att Boughton 00 14 06 Spent att Berstead 00 05 06 18 Dyett att Rochester 00 04 02 horsemeate there 00 05 00 male girtes and Surcingle att London 00 01 06 To a porter 00 00 06 19 To a barbar 00 02 06 20 A bridle 00 01 04 A play booke 00 00 06 A box 00 02 06 pens and paper 00 00 02 horsemeate 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 03 150 Threade 00 00 01 21 Going by water 00 01 00 Shoinge 00 00 10 A hatt for my selfe and band 00 11 00 Gloues for my selfe 00 14 00 An inkehorne 00 00 06 wax of ye best att 8d per ounce 00 00 08 Blacke riband 00 01 06 22 per of bootes 00 11 00 per of spanish leather shoes 00 03 06 To a porter 00 00 04 per of bootehose 00 07 00 A ruffe and Cuffes 00 13 00 A dinner with my bbrothers 01 00 00 per of slipperes 00 02 06 Carrying of letters t 00 01 07 A Coller for my horse 00 02 04 23 Giuen att mistress Kinge's 00 02 00 14 - 17 - 4?10[f.29v]March 1622 24 The spanish proclamation 00 00 10 Dyett att London for my self, my 151 brother Henry and my two men 02 02 00 horsemeate there for 4 horse 01 12 08 poore + 00 00 04 Giuen 00 00 06 Lost this halfe yeare att Cardes, boules &c 06 01 00 paid Simon Berwicke a yeares wages vpon ye 7th of Aprill 02 010 00 giuen him when he went away 01 00 00 Giuen Nicholas ^Aspoll^ when he went from me 0044 00 00 paid Ihon Woulton for lace march: 15 00 015 07 paid Butcher for threshing 00 02 04 paid Elmer for worke for Nicholas 00 07 03 18 - 12 - 6 Summ of this halfe yeare 040?5 - 10 - 5 145 - 10 - 5 ________ 1622 Summ totall of this whole yeares expences 152 5426 - 17 - 3 5029 050 - 1100[f.30r]march: 1623 25 Dyett att St Alban's 00 07 04 Horsemeate there 00 04 11 poore + 00 00 06 26 Giuen att Sir Arthur Throckmorton's 00 01 00 27 Dyett att Torcester 00 06 10 horsemeate there 00 07 06 poore + 00 01 02 Giuen att Sir Hatton Farmer's 00 02 00 Dyett att Brackley 00 13 00 ffidlers 00 01 00 mending bootes for Nicholas 00 01 00 my mens diett there 00 01 06 28 horsemeate att Brackley 00 04 06 poore + 00 02 00 29 Dyett att Knoll 00 04 06 horsemeate ther 00 04 00Aprill. poore + 00 00 03 2 Standing for my horse att Sutten 00 00 04 poore + 00 00 02 bought att ffisherwicke 4 bushells of 153 oates att 22d 00 07 04 horse standing and meate att lichfeild 00 00 06 4 mending and stuffing of saddles 00 01 03 letter from London 00 00 03 5. paid for bringing thinges from London to ffisher wicke att 1d ye pound 00 06 00 A Collar to lead a horse in 00 02 00 6 Crossing of Elford water 00 00 06 7 horsemeat 00 04 00 lost of mine by Nicholas 00 06 00 8 Shoing my horses 00 04 06 9 Spent att Sutton 00 00 06 Giuen att Sir Thomas Holt's 00 00 06 10 paid ye taylour for Nicholas after he went 00 01 00 A letter brought 00 00 03 4 bushells of oates 00 08 00 giuen Richard Greenly 00 00 06 12 giuen att Wistaston 00 02 00 giuen att Crew house 00 01 00 15 Giuen att Knipersley 00 05 00 16 Giuen att Rushall 00 00 06 19 Shoing my horse 00 01 06 giuen Iordaine 00 00 06 23 giuen att Arbery 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 03 154 24 giuen att Croxhall and att Elford 00 01 00 25 mending bootes 00 00 06 11 per of gloues 00 11 00 26 giuen att ffisherwicke 00 11 06 28 giuen att Skeffington 00 02 06 29 Dyett att Northampton 00 07 00 horsemeate there 00 02 09 30 Dyett att Dunstable 00 08 00 horsemeate there 00 02 08Mary 1 little boxes and a whettestone 00 01 03 2 per of bootes 00 11 00 per of boote hose 00 08 00 per of spurres 00 02 00 2 b?play bookes 00 01 00 2 per of knitt linnen stockins 00 07 06 Camdens remaines for my aunt Skeffington 00 02 00 Spanish mandeuill for my Cosen Biddulph 00 02 00 horsemeate att Bellsauage 00 05 00 3 Lemmons 00 00 03 going by water 00 00 06 Sei?eing a play 00 01 00 ffidlers 00 01 06 A Coppy of my mothers picture 01 10 00 11 - 17 - 9 155[f.30v]May 1623 4 mending my rapier 00 05 00 per of shoes 00 03 06 Going by water 00 00 06 5 Gi 6 per of gloues for master Lyne 00 12 00 2 per for my selfe 00 02 00 A bracelett for my sister Marg[aret] 00 07 06 Rhenish wine att ye stillyard for my lady Wotton 00 02 06 6 an escocheon of armes 00 01 06 7 Seing a play 00 01 00 2 seales and ye Cutting 00 01 00 paid Thomas Dering for an angle and for fishing roddes and lines 00 12 10 paid him for horsemeate and letters 00 03 00 Giuen att mistress Ksing's 00 02 00 8 Seeing a play 00 00 06 12 Giuen Sir Thomas Wotton att ye mermaide in ye old bayley, before --- Doctor Bargar, master Partherich, master Bradshaw and Robert King, vpon this Condition that when he is 156 Lord warden of ye Cinque portes I may be his leifetenant 01 02 00 13 2 bookes of gardening 00 02 00 14 Mariana de Rege &c 00 02 00 de iure regio Samuelis prophetae 00 01 00 15 A gilt sword 04 01 00 Carrying a letter 00 00 02 17 Barclayus de potestate Papae 00 01 00 Bruti vindiciae contra Tyrannos giuen master Perd 00 05 00 B. Morton, causa Regia 00 02 00 B. Abbot, de suprema Potestate regis 00 01 06 G. Barclayus de regno et regali potestate 00 03 02 G. Barclayi ius regis 00 01 04 Machiauelli princeps Bruti vindiciae contra tyrannos de iure magistrat[uum] in subditos 00 01 00 Iamblicus Proclus Porphyrius Psellus mercur[ius] Trismeg[istus] 00 01 00 per of pearle Colour silke stockinegs 01 12 00 2 per of worsteade stockins 00 17 00 157 2 inke hornes 00 01 00 3 per of gloues 00 06 00 per of garters, roses and 2 dozen of orange Colour psilke pointes 00 17 00 bl[ack] silke pointes 00 04 06 A silluer seale 00 12 00 A feather with 3 falles 00 11 00 Seeing a play 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 06 18 poore + 00 00 04 19 A false scabbard 00 00 06 A white Canuas doublett 03 08 00 whashing 00 06 00 A fortnights vse of a Chamber 00 0?16 00 lost in light gold 00 01 00 Dyett whilst I was att London 03 02 04 giuen there 00 10 07 per of shoes 00 03 00 Horsemeate in London 001 05 00 A knife 00 01 00 Bables for little Anthony 00 00 06 paid for bringing my horse from London to grauesend 00 02 00?9 21 - 18 - 0 158[f.31r]May 1623 20 Horsemeate att Grauesend 00 02 06 Spent this iourney from ye 16th of march vnto ye 20 of May - 59 - 2 - 6. 25 paid G. Gooden for digging of stones 00 04 00 27 paid Potkins what he layd out for a Coate for Anthony 00 14 00 Item for Conserue of roses for my aunt Skeffington 00 07 00Iune 1. paid master Copley for 3 quarters of a yeare, for all small tithes 00 15 00 3 paid Harper for all he layd out for me viz. ffor threshing of 9 seames of oates att 10d per seame 00 0808 00 paid ffowler for Cleaning of wood 00 14 00 paid Wood and his brother for hedging and ditching and Cutting bushes 03 00 00 paid Taylour for Catching of molles 00 06 00 per of shires, an augur and tarre 00 01 07 A halter and per of traces 00 00 11 per of working steeres of 4 yeare old 08 01 03 2 stocke lockes 00 02 08 159 A bottle for drinke for Barton 00 03 00 4 giuen 00 00 06 5 giuen 00 00 10 6 Dyett att Douer when master Perd was with me. 00 09 03 Horsemeate there 00 02 06 Giuen att ye Castle there 00 02 06 7 Giuen att Sir Ihon Sydley's 00 02 10 9 Giuen 00 00 06 10 paid Lucas for Cutting my Sorrell stone=horse being of 5 yeares old 00 05 00 Giuen him 00 01 00 11 paid for ye reparations of Willisborough to my father 02 18 00 paid Butcher for threshing 00 07 00 paid Campion for bringing horses from London 00 03 08 14 paid Miles for Carrying 2 Cloakebagges to London 00 03 04 Spent att Ashford 00 00 06 16 Giuen 00 00 06 17 paid Elmer ye taylour 00 00 10 18 paid Stephen, for his lodging att New Romney 00 00 04 4 horses standing att Dimchurch 00 00 08 Spent on ye way 00 00 02 160 2 ordinaryes att Ashford 00 00?1 04 horses twice there 00 0-1 00 Giuen, stephen toward ye trimming of his Cloake 00 01 08 my sister Margarett had 00 04 00 19 paid my Hopman his last payment of 30s for this half years dressing my hopgarden 00 10 00 21 Spent att Ashford 00 03 08V. 22 P-eit to Sir Francis Barnham' for Hinchell lands 00 07 06V. my halfe assesse to ye poore 00 06 08 23 paid G. Gadsby for shoing of 8 toxen 00 08 00 paid him for Cloathes which he bought for George Elton 00 07 04 paid him which he layde out for G. E. schooling vntill Christmas 00 09 00 his owne Charges going thither by water from London 00 01 02 25 ffor oyle to vsed about my Coach 00 010 03 ffor 2 yds of fustian for Anthony 00 02 04 my man's ordinary att Ashford 00 00 08 horsemeate there 00 00 04 Shoing my nagg 00 00 07 his dinner att Harriotsham fayre 00 00 08 27 Spent in dyett this fortnight being in 161 London for my seflfe and man 023 19?^01^ 10 Giuen away. 00 10 06 poore + 00 02 10 28 A trunke 00 08 00 Chamber rent for a fortnight 00 15 00 28 - 4 - 2[f.31v]Iune. 1623 28 halfe a pound of sweete powder for my heade 00 08 00 ounce dim' of Corall powder for teeth 00 04 06Iuly. 2. porter 00 00 02 mending my saddle 00 00 08 3 girthes 00 01 00 3 boxes 00 00 04 paper 00 00 01 Hire of a Coach for an afternoone 00 06 00 3 7 yds of blacke satten att 15s per yard 05 05 00 Ell dim' of taffaty 01 00 00 4 dozen dim of silluer edging for one in a seame ye doublett being Cutt in 162 panes, and 2 downe ye side of ye hose, att 5s per ounce, weighing 811-1-0 ownces 02 00 00 4 ffor 11 dozen of buttons 4 for ye doublett 7. for hose 00 12 10 ffor straight liyninges, stiffning, buckarum, silke, holland, fustian, C-laspes(?), pinking &c 01 03 02 ffor making my suite 01 00 00 This suite Cost 115 - 1 - 0 fforgotten to sett downe 00 02 01 4 washing 00 01 00 porter 00 00 08 A Callico halfe shirte 00 10 06 A ruffe and per of Cuffes 00 19 00 redd wax and blackel Leades 00 00 06 5 pens inke horne and paper 00 00 06 A silluer hattband and new lining my hatt 00 11 00 Barber 00 01 00 A wax Candle 00 00 06 per of silluer girdle and hangers 00 11 00 per of white spanish leather shoes 00 03 06 2 per of sockes 00 01 00 7. going by water 00 00 06 toothepickes and Case 00 01 0-8 163 9 A sword hatcht with silluer and 2 swordes 02 05 00 10 3 per of gloues with silke and silluer lace 00 11 00 per of silke and silluer roses 00 11 00 per of gold and silluer hangers without a girdle 01 019 00 mending a per of hangers 00 01 00 A hattband 00 05 00 Riband 00 01 11 mending trunke 00 00 06 to a porter porter 00 00 03 mending stockins 00 00 03 2 dozen of blacke and white pointes 00 07 06 11 Giuen Stephen 00 01 00 A laced fulling band 00 02 00 A playne falling band 00 01 04 Bought 41 bookes Cost 03 14 07 bables for Anthony 00 00 10 boate hire 00 01 06 horsehire 00 01 00 horsemeate in London for 2 horses a fortnight 01 10 06 _______ 123 paid Ihon Hunt for all his workes? done 01 10 00 164 paid G. Pout for 2 dayes worke 00 02 00 To Idle Ihon 00 00 043 18 Dyett whilst I was att ye assises and spent, in wine and Cherryes, and fidlers and my mans dyett 00 14 02 giuen att G.H 00 02 00 poore + 00 00 03 20 paid for 12 ells of Canuis to Thomas D[ering] 00 10 06 To a porter for Carrying my trunke 00 00 06 21 paid wood for making of fa*gotts 00 06 00paid vnto paid him for 4 dayes workes 00 04 00Harper ffor washinge my sheepe 00 02 00 ffor shearinge 00 05 00 30 - 8 - 1[f.32r]Iuly. 1623 ffor oyle for sheepe 00 02 00 ffor tarre 00 01 00 ffor two hoopes 00 02 08 ffor oyle for my horse 00 01 00 ffor a greate b?timber rope and a topp rope 00 10 04 165 ffor a new little Court 00 05 00 paid Browne ye smith for ploughe irons and for shoing ye ploughing ( mare 00 09 00 paid him for shoing my other horses 00 03 00 paid King for Carrying of timber 5 dayes att 5s per day 01 05 00 Paid master Copley for tith hay of 4 feildes 00 15 00 paid ffidge for mowing and making of Pluncton's hay att 18d per acre each 00 12 00 paid for mowing of mill Croft, pluckley land and mare hams, being 17 acres att - 18d per acre 01 05 06 paid for making all ye hay there att 17d per acre 01 04 01 Cherryes 00 01 00 22. 23. Spent att Canterbury 00 03 06 24. 25. Shoing 00 00 06 Giuen att sturry and oasten hanger 00 17 06 Giuen att Canterbury 00 01 00 26 Spent att Ashford 00 02 06 horse reoome there 00 00 04 my man's ordinary 00 00 08 27 paid Arrowes for a per of shoes for Nicholas before he went away 00 02 06 166 paid him for 3 per of shoes for little Anthony 00 02 04 28 paid Gadsby for shoing 6 beastes 00 06 00 31 Giuen ye midwife att Ihon sydley's christning 00 15 00 Giuen the nurse there 00 15 00 Giuen master Smith's man of oasten hanger 00 02 00 Giuen Thomas wyles 00 01 00 ffor a scoope to la-de water with 00 01 00August 2 hire of a horse from Ashford to Oasten hanger 00 02 06 Buttons and threade 00 00 02 Giuen 00 01 00 8 nayling my horse shoe 00 00 01 Laying thinges vp att Eastwell 00 01 06 9 Dyett and wine after dinner, and ordinary att Ashford for me and my man and for my horses standing 00 09 11 A ho-aer(?) for my garden 00 02 06 bringing of Letters 00 00 04 giuen to tumblers 00 00 06 16 Carrying of a letter to Oastenhanger 00 00 06 17 paid Ihon Hunt for all due vnto him viz for mending plough and wheelebarrow 00 02 04 167 And for Carrying hay 00 00 10 paid Butcher for spreading 38?0 330 loade of gritt in ye parke att 18d ^00 04 11^ per loade 100 00 05?4 00 ffor Casting ye pound in my Close 00 01 04 ffor helping att ye shoing of my oxen 00 00 03 paid Miles ye Carrier for all due vnto him 00 07 00 15 Bought ye 15th of August of Wattle of Sellinge a roane ambling gelding and paid 14 00 00 16 Giuen att Oastenhanger when I Came away ye 16 of August to ye seruauntes 00 17 00 17 my sister Marg[aret] had 00 01 00 22 Giuen ye keeper of Eastwell parke when my dogg kill'd a bucke and I tooke say 00 06 00 Giuen him that held my dogg 00 01 00 Giuen to him that shewed ye house 00 01 00 27 - 11 - 1[f.32v]August. 1623 168 23 Spent att Ashford 00 05 00 lodging for my dogges and horse roome and stephen's breakefast att ye alehouse by eastwell 00 00 08 per of sizzers 00 00 06 A surcingle 00 00 06 stephen's ordinary and horses att Ashford 00 01 00 29 wine att wrotham 00 04 00September 1 A slipp and Collers for my doggs 00 04 00 bables for Anthony 00 00 06 2 yds 3 qrters' of ash collour spanish Cloath att 12s per yard 01 13 00 4 ounces qrter' dim of Crimson galloune att 3s per ounce 00 13 00 3 ounces of Crimson silke 00 09 00 2 2 dozen of pointes 00 06 08giuen giuen my taylours men 00 03 00in this Barber 00 02 06iourney Riband 00 00 0631s-6d 2 sermons by Thomas Scott 00 02 00 Dinner with Sir Ihon Milliscent 00 05 08 9 Giuen att st cleeres 00 09 06 10 Giuen ye nurse that nurst my Good God=son- my Lady Sydley's child att chart 00 02 06 169 11 Giuen att chart 00 05 06 12 Giuen George my Cosen Malton's boy 00 01 00 Giuen Gabriell hall because I tooke say of --- bucke which I killed with my dogg 00 06 00 Giuen other wayes 00 04 00 13 wine att Ashford 00 02 00 my horses standing there 00 00 03 stephen layd out att Berstead 00 01 00 N -L 00 03 08 15 horse att Ashford 00 00 06 14 paid for 600 of 5 foote pales att 7s ye 100 with ye Carriage 02 02 00 21 giuen 00 00 06 22 Dyett att Aldington 00 01 00 23 Giuen att Sir Norton Knatchbull's 00 09 06 26 Giuen att sterry 00 09 06 giuen 00 00 06 N L 00 0-0 02 paid stephen for his ordinary att Aldington 00 00 08 horseroome 00 00 06 nayling and shoing 00 00 06 spent 00 00 04 paid Stephen Kennard all his wages vntill from ye time he Came 170 vntill Michaelmas being a month? aboue? ^month aboue^ a qrter' 01 13 04 27 Giuen my sister Margarett 00 05 02 28 paid Harper for all vt sequitur: for 3 basketts 00 03 10 paid ffreinde for mowing of oates 00 05 00 paid him for worke 00 05 06 paid Hunt for worke 00 00 06 for 7 ells qrter' of Canuas 00 04 03 paid ffidge for binding of oates att 18d per acre for 4 acres dim' in Long dane 00 06 09 ffor knitting of l8 lambes 00 01 06 ffor 1 seame 2 bushells att 38s per seame of seede wheat 02 07 06 ffor 2 seames of seedes wheate 04 00 00 ffor one seame more 01 018 00 ffor 2 seames more 03 18 00 Giuen Harper 01 02 00 - paid Georg Gooden for pauing ouer ye graue 00 02 06 paid him for pauing ye bottom of ye pond in my Close 00 05 00 paid Ihon Hunt for Chepping ye plough 00 00 08 26 - 13 - 1 171[f.33r]September 1623 ffirst halfe yeare. paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke and his boyes 01 03 10 paid him for setting vp and paling of 18 rodds between ye Close and orchard att 18d per rodd 01 07 00 ffor Cleaning 2 pistolls 00 02 00 ffor a screw pin 00 00 03 29 Giuen Thomas for drying my hopps 00 02 00 Supper att London 00 02 00 ______ paid Ihon Barton from ye 6th of ffebruary all his wages 03 09 00 paid mihil wood - from ye 12 of march all his wages 01 01 08 Giuen Ihon Barton 00 01 00 Giuen mihill 00 00 04 7 - 9 - 1 Summ totall of this halfe yeare. 154 - 1 - 3. 172[f.33v]September 1623 Second halfe yeare. 30 Barber 00 00 06 per of spurres 00 001 06 Seeing ye Elephant 00 00 06October poore + 00 00 02 1. Giuen att Perry 00 01 00 2 ffidlers 00 01 00 Giuen ye postboy 00 02 00 poore + 00 00 04 Seeing a play 00 01 06 3 mending hangers 00 00 03?4 Barber 00 00 06 going by water 00 00 06 Seeing a play 00 01 06 4 per of bootes 00 09 00 3 bookes 00 01 00 Seeing a play 00 01 00 Dinner with my Lord Mordaunt and Sir Thomas Wotton 00 10 06 mending spurres 00 00 06 A hatt for ye Child 00 05 00 173 5 Giuen Laundresse 00 01 00 Seeing a play with my Lady Wotton 00 07 00 6 Shoing of my horse 00 00 025 ffor sadlers ware 00 09 02 meate for doggs 00 00 03 To ye Cryer for Crying my lost doggs in fleetestreet 00 00 08 Shooing 00 00 02 7 my dyett and my man's and wyne this iourney (beside 12s 6d before sett downe) 01 14 09 Horsemeate this iourney being out from Michaelmas day vnto ye 7th of October, to meete Sir Thomas Wotton and to bring him home out of Northamptonshire 01 05 01 Horsehire when I rode poast this iourney 00 14 10 N L. in this iourney 00 04 07 Spent in all this iourney to meete Sir Thomas Wotton. 7li' - 0s - 3d besides Layd out for Robert Honywood which he fonde hand repayd vnto me again 00 13? 00 13 Beere 00 01 06 14 Giuen att Sir Ihon Sydley's 00 08 00 174 18 Giuen att Boucghton 00 12 00 N. L. att greate Chart when Thomas Bettenham lay with me 00 03 06 21 paid master Copley his qrter' for small tithes vnto Michaelmas 00 025 00 22 paid for Composition in Chart 00 02 10 Giuen Gabriell Hall when I tooke say. of a doe att Boucghton 00 04 00 25 Giuen att Boucghton 00 11 00Nouember 1 paid my assesse for ye poore in Chart 00 03 06 2 paid Harper, for shoing my oxen 00 04 00 paid Browne for sall shoing 00 07 06 paid him for all mending of plough irons 00 12 06 A key for my stable doore 00 01 06 paid Ihon Hunt for ^halfe^ a dayes worke in ye wineseller 00 00 08 paid him for Thomas Hamms driuing ye plough in ye parke for 20 dayes att 8d per diem. 00 13 04 8 bought of my brother Harry D. 5 weather lambes att 4s 4?d6d ob' apeece 01 02 00 bought of him 5 ewe lambes 00 15 00 9 paid Ihon Elmer for making a Couer to my Coach 00 01 00 175 ffor mending my doublett 00 00 03 paid Anne Catesby for thinges for ye Child 00 00 07V. paid vnto Lanes for Quittrent vnto Conningbrooke 00 19 09 paid vnto him for Quittrent vnto Westwell court 00 01 10 paid ye sueite groutes for ye 2 Courts 00 00 08 paid Georg Goodaen for all worke 00 02 08 paid Arr-owes ye shoemaker for all his worke 00 03 09 --- 10 wine att Rochester 00 02 00 horsemeate there 00 02 04 11 horsemeate att London 00 02 10 12 Going by water 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 02 13 Dyett for me and my man 00 04 04 14 poore + 00 00 03 15 - 7 - 6[f.34r]Nouember. 1623. 176 Second halfe yeare 14 8 yds of bl[ack] figured sattin, figured in stripes like lace att 16s per yd to make a suite 06 08 00 7 yds qrter' of greene, [blank] to make ye Child a coate att 13s 6d per yd 04 14 00 2 dozen of silluer lace to go twice about his Coate att 4s 10d per ounce. 2 ounces 3 qrter' 00 12 11 8 yds more weighing [blank] Seing a play with my Lady Sedley 00 02 00 per of kniues 00 02 00 15 Dyett 00 03 00 17 A beauer hatt (and band 4s) 02 06 00 dyett 00 01 06 18 poore + 00 00 03 giuen 00 00 06 giuen George Smith 00 02 06 Supper with Sir Ihon Milliscent, Sir Walter Waller, Master Crofts, master Tyrwhitt, master shelden, my cosen Honywood, master Dawes 00 05 06 per of boote=hose 00 08 00 19 Seeing a play with master Perd and H[enry] D[ering] 00 03 06 177 paid my brother Charles for mending an houreglasse 00 04 00 paid ye taylours bill for ffustian Canuas stiffning taffaty and silke 00 08 00 paid him for making itt 00 06 00 20 Seeing a play with Sir Ihon Hobart 00 01 06 21 5 playbookes 00 02 00 Pancirollus both parts 00 05 06 Drexelius de aeternitate 00 01 00 A ruffe and per of Cuffes 00 15 00 per of stockins for ye Child 00 00 10 paid stephen when he went to Battersey to G. E. 00 00 10 Supper 00 02 04 22 breakefast 00 00 02 giuen 00 00 04 seeing a play with my lady W[illia]m Tuffton, and my sisters Ffranc[es] and Mary Tufftons 00 06 06 poore + 00 01 00 24 3 yds 3 qrters' of bl[ack] vncutt velluett to make a per of breeche 04 of breeches att 23s per yd 04 06 00 giuen 00 01 00 25 ffor washing of linnen 00 06 05 ffor 2 greate basketts to Carry 178 bottles of wine downe into ye Country [blank] A sett of seales for Richard Spice 00 05 00 A blew Cassocke for ye Child 00 04 00 supper 00 03 06 26 2 per of bootes 00 018 06 A per of winter liquored shoes 00 03 06 giuen 00 00 06 setting vp my horse a while 00 00 02 Giuen att my Cosen Thomas Dering's 00 02 00 dyett 00 02 08 27 16 playbookes 00 09 06 20 playbookes 00 12 11 dinner 00 01 06 paid for Stephen's Lodging in gracious streete 00 02 00 giuen there 00 00 06(?) porter yat brought my trunke 00 00 08 Candles 00 00 04 Stephens dyett 00 00 08 28 paper 00 00 01 12 playbookes 00 06 00 supper yesternight and dinner too day 00 03 04 12 playbookes 00 07 11 2 playbookes 00 00 07 30 playbookes 01 00 00 179 poore + 00 00 01 29 15 playes 00 10 02 blacke leades 00 00 02 dyett 00 0104 08?0 30. dyett 00 08 06 Giuen. 00 01 06 Giuen my taylours man 00 01 00December 1. washing of Linnen 00 01 08 6 quire of paper 00 02 00 29 - 13 – 0 [f.34v] 1623December Second halfe yeare 1 2 padlockes 00 01 06 Boissard de diuinatione et magicis praestigijs 00 07 00 Mason of ye Consecration of Bishops &c 00 03 06 binding a volume of play bookes 00 00 10 Going by water 00 00 06 Toothepickes and Case 00 01 06 poore + 00 00 06 2 18 playbookes 00 10 00 binding 2 volumes of play bookes 00 01 08 180 stephens dyett 00 02 08 supper 00 05 06 9 playbookes 00 04 06 dyett 00 02 00 3 Sugar Candy 00 00 02 4 dozen of quart bottles att 2s 6d per dozen 00 10 00 7 pint bottles 00 01 00 A grosse of Corckes viz. 12 dozen att 4d 00 04 00 porter to Carry these 00 00 03 Stephen's dyett 00 00 02 Giuen 00 00 02 Seneing a play 00 001 06 Giuen little Thomson there 00 02 06 dinner and supper 00 07 06 9 playbookes 00 06 00 4 6 playbookes of Band Ruff and Cuff 00 01 00 Dinner 00 023 060 Seeing a play 00 01 06 supper with R.Moulton and A.C. 00 06 00 5 A Case of kniues for Sir Thomas Wotton 00 12 00 A box of mermal-ad 00 01 00 binding a psett of playbookes 00 00 10 A letter to Cambridge 00 00 02 Candles 00 00 02 181 2 meales for Stephen 00 01 04 2 playbookes 00 01 04 A whistle and a brush 00 01 02 A sett of seales and a bable 00 01 00 2 vices and a Cupp 00 02 06 per of bootehose 00 10 00 going by water 00 00 06 giuen 00 00 06 dyett 00 10 06 Seeing a play 00 01 06 2 volumes of I Sa?hakespear's playes 02 00 00 Ihonson's playes 00 09 00 Drexelius his meditations 00 01 00 6 per of russett stockins 00 04 06 binding 2 volumes of playbookes 00 02 00 breakefast 00 00 02 Giuen 00 00 02 6 yards of greene riband 00 00 06 A white Cornelyan ring 00 02 06 Seeing a play 00 01 06 Giuen little Borne ye boy there 00 02 06 Dyett 00 06 10 7 Going by water 00 00 06 Supper 00 05 06 8 Barber 00 02 00 182 ffpaid my taylour for all his worke. viz: ffor making my ashcolour Cloath suite with one galloune Crimson lace and opened with flopps 00 16 00 ffor holland to line ye hose with 00 05 06 eull' dim' of taffatty to line doublett and face ye pocketts att 14s 001 01 00 ffor strayte linings fustian &c 00 05 06 ffor a box to putt itt in 00 01 00 12-19-7 ffor making my bl[ack] satten suite beside a(?) Coate(?) 04 05 00 Ell qrter' of Taffaty att 14s 00 19 12 - 19 - 7. ffor all other thinges [blank] ffor half an Ell' of taffaty 00 06 08 ffor 9 yds of galloune 00 02 00 ffor all other thinges &c 00 05 00 halfe a yd of satten 00 07 00 blacke fustian to ly vnder ye suite 00 06 00 silke to sett ouer ye lace 00 08 08[f.35r] 183 16223December Second halfe yeare 28 ounces 1/4 of blo[ck] naples lace being 16 dozen, att 2s 6d per 03 10 08 ounce, to lace a suite all ouer 04 16 00 5 dozen of buttons 00 01 08 ffor making this suite laced all ouer 01 05 00 ffor halfe a yd of satten 00 07 00 ffor silke to sett on ye lace 00 08 08 ffor russett fustian to ly on ye inside of ye satten 00 06 00 9 yds of galloun 00 02 00 halfe an ell of taffaty 00 06 08 straight linings, stifning, buckarum, silke &c 00 05 00 This suite Cost. 6 - 13 - 0 ffor making my blo[ck] figur'd satten suite 00 10 00 Ell' qrter' dim' of taffaty 00 19 00 holland to lyne ye hose 00 05 06 Cloath to go with ye outside of ye hose 00 04 00 Buttons, silke hookes fustian, buckarum &c 00 11 06 This suite Cost with ye price of 184 ye stuffe beinge 6-8-0 / 8-18-0 memorandum: paid my Taylour William Henley for all his bills 7 - 19 – 0 paid Sinolphus Bell for 3 grosse and 4 dozen of Crimson purl'd scotch buttons 00 13 04 ffor Crimson(?) in graine galloune lace 00 04 06 1 ounce 1/4 of silluer edging lace for ye Child 00 06 00 paid Laundresse for all her washing 00 11 00 wine Clarett old: 14 gallon's and a quart att 7d ye quart 01 13 05 Giuen him that bottled them 00 01 00 ffor bringing bottles and Carrying backe to ffanchurch streete 00 01 04 2 yds of Canuas and pacthread 00 01 02 A letter to staffordshire and a porter 00 00 04 dyett for Will. King 00 00 06 binding 5 uolumes of playbookes 00 04 04 A boy 00 01 00 Supper 00 05 06 Stephen's supper 00 00 09 9 seing a play 00 02 00 9 binding 2 volumes of playbookes, 00 02 00 185 ffor smoothing out my Cloath of gold 00 03 00 ffor a new Christall and putting itt in, into my watch 00 05 00 Seeing a play 00 01 06 10 Soling my bootes 00 01 00 giuen shoemaker's boy 00 01 00 giuen 00 03 08 fa*gotts 00 04 00 4 bottles and 47 Corckes 00 01 00 giuen a whistling fellow 00 02 00 horsemeate in London 00 06 00 giuen ostler 00 00 06 Dyett 00 10 10 A false beard 00 01 00 Oyle and vinegar 00 03 00 wine in bottles to send into Kent 00 05 00 11 Dyett and horsemeate att Dartford 00 08 10 wine att Maydstone 00 02 00 12 horsemeate att Maydston 00 02 06 Giuen att my Cosen G. Hawle's 00 03 06 Redd wine and a bottle 00 01 00 -To porters att London 00 01 00 Dyett there for Stephen 00 01 00 Giuen 00 00 02?3 Bought 10 tame Conyes 01 02 00 13 Giuen Mihil when he fetched them 00 00 06 186___________________ 18-1-11 N L in this time being att London 030 065 017 _________________________21-168-0 paid Iackson for all ye gloues and pointes &c that I haue had of him 03 00 06 Will King when he fetched a horseloade of bottles with wine from London, and brought my horses to London and giuen him. 7d 00 08 00 21 - 16 - 0 ________________________ Spent this time being in London. 65 - 1 - 6[f.35v]December 1623 Second halfe yeare. 14 paid Miles ye Carrier for all 00 11 00 18 Giuen att Boucghton 00 11 06 24 paid my father for Quittrent to ye mannour of Boucghton, for 4 acres and more of land in willisborough Called Broad mead 00 01 00 187 paid (which he Layd out) for Composition for for my Landes in Pluckley. 00 04 10 paid Harry for ye hopman's worke 00 10 00 paid for fetching my horses from London 00 06 01 paid George Gooden for digging and for setting of 26 loade of stone in Chaltaglyh(?) and little Pikenwell 00 13 00 paid Ihon Bayley ye sawyer for sawing of 2411 foote of timber att 2s 4d per 100 02 16 03 paid Ihon Hunt for him and his boyes for all theire worke 01 1211 0007 26 My Cosen Mary Bell had 00 02 00 27 Little Anthony gaue his nurces daughter 00 00 06 28 paid Thomas Masters my asses vnto ye Church 00 06 08 29 Giuen master Partherich his boy 00 00 06Ianuary 2 Giuen ffidler 00 00 06 3 A handkercheife 00 01 03 7 Giuen att Canterbury and sturry 001 005 05 wine att Canterbury 00 05 09 barber 00 01 00 188 Dyett att Canterbury 00 047 00 8 horsemeate 00 04 0610 Three girthes 00 01 00 mending my saddle 00 00 06 9 Giuen Sir Ihon Sedley's man 00 01 00 10 paid for bottoming a siue 00 00 06 N. L. 00 03 00 paid George Gooden for digging of stone 00 04 00 11 Wine att Maydstone 00 03 00 12 Horsemeate there and for my owne horses and my men when I went to Chuse Sir Nicholas Tuffton knight of ye shire. and att Sandway for 2 00 046 06 16. Giuen att Boucghton 00 12 00 17 7 yds of stuff to make ye child a coate att 18d 00 10 06 18 paid Steward ye glasier for new glasse att 6d per foote 00 04 03 ffor mending of old glasse 00 06 03 ffor two new casem*nts for barton's Chamber windowes 00 05 00 a linke att madyston 00 00 04 my man's dyett att Ashford 00 01 042 horsemeate there and giuen 00 00 08 189 hire of a horse 00 01 00 21 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke 00 1912 024 paid Ih?acke Dauy's for attending on ye Child whilst he was att London 00 07 06 paid Browne ye smith for 9 scoare barres of iron for my Cony hutch att 15d per scoare 00 11 03 hookes and staples for ye same 00 00 08 500 of 2d nayles for ye same 00 01 02 ffor 5d nayles for ye same 00 001 10 ffor shoing, ploughirons &c 00 09 01 Laid out for Sir Nicholas Tuffton att Ashford in wine vpon ye gentlemmen there, ^on Saturday ye 17.^ as he appointed me: which was offered to me againe on munday ye 19 but I refused itt 01 01 06 5 yds of pyed thread riband 00 00 07 Tobacco 00 00 03 16 - 6 - 6 190[f.36r]Ianuary 1623 Second half yeare 27 Giuen my sister Margarett 00 02 06 31 paid Payne for a pound of broune thread 00 02 04February 2 Broomes 00 00 02 giuen 00 00 01 8 My sister Margarett had 00 02 00 9 Giuen nurse Simonson for attending my boy when he was sicke 00 05 00 A wine glasse 00 00 06 11 paid Ihon Hunt for Cleaning of pales 00 10 00 paid him for Cleaning ye iacke, and for wisping the trees about in ye beane garden 00 01 00 paid for 4 dozen dim' of moles? moales kiledde att 12d per dozen 00 04 06 paid Simon Mather?wes for ye peece of ground I haue taken from him 00 06 08+ 12 Giuen my Cosen M. B. NL. 00 02 06 13 Cambricke, and bone lace for my ruffes, bought by my mother 00 16 10 28 Giuen att Boucghton 00 11 00 Giuen there for seeing ye Church bookes 00 01 00 191 ffor help in ye gardein 00 01 00 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke and his men 01 11 00 paid Bayly ye sawyer for all his work 02 13 00 29 paid my assesse to ye poore of Pluckley 00 06 08March 1 paid Harper for all yat he layd out viz: ffor a horsecombe 00 00 08 ffor pitch and tarre 00 02 00 ffor blacke soape and quicksilluer 00 01 04 ffor a pully roape for timber 00 09 04 ffor ye topp roape, a halter, and a fothering line 00 01 04 ffor 40 bushells of oates, viz. 5 seames for seede for Circens 02 00 00 ffor bringing them home 00 03 04 ffor a per of working oxen 11 07 06 paid Tilghman for 10 dayes worke 00 10 00 paid him for worke for Ihon Barton when Ihon Barton was sicke 9d+ Giuen my Cosen M B. NL. 00 02 06 5 Riband 00 00 03 6 Giuen att my Cosen George Hawle 00 03 00 6 Aquavitae and tobacco, and masticke 00 00 043 A porter had 00 00 10 192 A trunke 00 09 00 10 Drawing a Coate of armes 00 02 06 paid master tTaylour also for other worke 00 02 06 11 Laundresse 00 05 00 A Reame of royall paper 01 03 06 other paper 00 03 00 A knife 00 02 06 Seeing a play with my Lady ffrances &c 00 01 06 11 ffa*gotts 00 02 00 Going by water 00 00 06 A linke 00 00 04 Threade 00 00 01 132 12 yds of striped Dornex for Bertyn's Chamber att 20d per yd 01 00 00 12 dozen of Curtaine rings att 3d per dozen 00 03 00 Inkle 4 dozen 00 01 03 Tape 2 dozen for ye topp of ye hanginges 00 00 09 A brush 00 01 02 A torche 00 00 10 A ^double^ seale att armes of silluer double 00 12 00 15 per of boote hose 00 10 00 193 26 - 1 - 7[f.36v] 1623March. Second half yeare 15 per of gloues buckes leather 00 04 04 per of Kidds leather gloues 00 02 00 27 yds 3 qrters' of double tufted mockado greene all?nd yellow att 2s 6d per yd 03 08 09 Loss in bad gold 00 00 03 19 ounces of redd and white Cruell ffringe with a silke Cawle of greene for Bertyn's Chamber att 15d per ounce. 01 03 09 16 Binding a volume of playes 00 01 00 3 playebookes of ye Woman-Hater 00 02 00 A stamp with my h? armes in steele 00 05 00 18 A print Cutt in wood for to print blanke Escocheons in paper royall 00 10 00 Bookes 00 01 06 Canuas 00 02 00 porter 00 00 08 194 Going by water 00 00 06 A Curry-Combe 00 03 00 little bables for ye Child 00 01 02 19 Gieuen att Sir Ihon Tufftons house 01 00 00 Giuen els where in this iourney 01 04 05 per of bootes 00 10 00 Barber 00 02 06 Horsemeate this iourney 02 01 02 fa*ggotts 00 00 03 A porter 00 00 04 ffidlers this iourney 00 05 00 Dyett for me and my man 02 15 10 4d yds half qrter' of oliue Coloured broad=Cloath att 17s per yd to make b?one suite and Cloake 03 08 00 4 yds of Deuon[shi(?)]r[e] bayes to lyne my Cloake att 3s 4d per yd 00 13 04 5 dozen of Chaine gold lace for suite and Cloake bweighin 7 ounces qrter' att 5s 8d per ounce 02 01 00 2 dozen of haire coloured and gold pointes to this suite att 14s per dozen 001 08 Canuas and stiffening 00 02 06 An ell qrter' of taffaty to line doublett 00 16 04 195 two yds half qrter' of satten to edge this suite and Cloake att 13s 4d 01 08 00Summ of 3 ounces of stitching and sowing silke 00 06 00this suite An ell and half of holland to ye hose 00 04 0013-17-0 Pocketts 00 01 08_______ Galloune to bind ye doublett and hose 00 01 00 hookes to ye suite 00 00 02 Drawing ye peeces of ye Cloake 00 01 08 Stiffning to ye Cape 00 00 04 ffor making this suite and Cloake edged and bottoned doune ye armes, and batc-ke, and with stripes before on the hose 01 00 00 9 dozen of oliue colour and gold baskett buttons att 14d per dozen 00 10 06 15 dozen of larger buttons of ye same making att 18d per dozen 01 02 06 1 dozen of gereate buttons for ye Cloake 00 10 00 A loope button with a gold head for ye Cloake 00 02 00 27 - 19 - 5 196[f.37r] 1623. Second half yeareMarch. [a smudged mark?] 3 dozen of gold and silke lace for my Cloath of gold doublett and ye hose to itt, weighing allmost 11 ounces att 4s 4d ye ounce 02 07 04 2 dozen of purple and gold pointes att 16s 01 12 00 10 dozen of buttons for ye suite 00 09 04 Taffaty to line ye doublett 00 16 04 ffor pointing ye doublett and for razing ye hose 01 00 00 ffor necessaries in other particulars 00 14 04 ffor making this suite 00 11 00 This suite Cost me beside ye outside of my doublett which was Cloath of gold giuen me by my mother, 11-16-4. ye breeches were vncutt velluett, which Cost 4-6-0- of ye price. Giuen poore + 00 00 06 Nott sett downe spent NL 03 08 03 this iourney being lesse then 3 weekes cost me 45 - 4 - 0 b?whereof part is not yett sett 197 douneMarch. 22 paid Arrowe the shomaker for all his worke 00 02 10 27 paid Stephen Kennard his wages 02 10 00 paid Mihill and discharged him when he went away 01 00 00 Binding of 2 volumes of play=bookes 00 02 00 paid for printing of 14 quire of royall paper viz: printed with blanke escocheons 00 08 06 A print Cutt in brasse for to presse my armes on my bookes 01 00 00Iune 9 paid Iohn Barton his halfe yeares wages 02 15 00 18 - 17 - 5 Spent this half yeare. 169 - 1 - 0 _________________ Summ totall of all this yeare 198 323 - 2 - 3[f.37v] 1624.March. ffirst halfe yeare. 27. 13 gallons, 1 pinte, and halfe of white wine, Clarett, and Maligo sack bought of Simon Willimott 01 15 00 giuen his seruants there 00 01 00 giuen to porters 00 01 06 ffor packthreade 00 00 043-7-0 Going by water 00 03 00 ffor horsemeate att Grauesend 00 03 06 my man's expences for 4 dayes 00 06 002 4 dozen of quart bottles, and 7 pint bottles, and Corckes to them 00 12 00 Giuen Stephen for all this iourney 00 02 03 Giuen att Boucghton 00 01 00 paid ye smith's bill for all his worke 00 11 03 paid him more for Curtaine rodds for Bertyn's Chamber 00 07 04 paid ye hopman 00 10 00 paid Ihon Hunt for Cleaning 200 5 foote pale 00 02 00 199 Item for 300 of 4 foote pall 00 02 06 paid him for himselfe and this 2 boyes about ye timber 00 12 09 paid him for other worke about stiles, and about ye barnes, &c harrowing 00 11 08 paid ye Mason about ye house 00 01 03 paid for Carrying a box to ye Carriers 00 00 06 per of stockins for Anthony 00 00 10 paid for 6 ridge tyles 00 01 00Aprill. 13 Giuen att Boucghton 01 03 00 paid for oates att Boucghton 00 01 06 my ordinary att co*ckes hoath 00 02 06 Horses there and man's meate 00 012 04 15 paid Browne ye smith his bill 00 09 00 paid Bayly ye sawyer for sawing of 1204 foote of boarde placke, and rayles 01 08 00 Mending of my parler glasse windowe 00 01 06 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke, about mending and new making of my gates Item for making a slide, and a rowll &c 0-1 06 03 paid him for hewing of timber 00 11 08 16 Giuen att Hoathfeild. 00 00 06 200 paid ye masons about ye barnes 00 02 06 paid for 14 ridge tiles 00 02 04 paid ye painter for all his worke, viz: painting ye parlour, and Barton's Chamber white and greene 01 10 00 24 Giuen att Boucghton 00 12 00 Stephen gaue ye taylour's man 00 00 06 he gaue vnto Sir Nicholas Tuffon's boy 00 01 00 Horsemeate when he went to London for to buy blacke for Sir Iohn Tufton's funeral 00 03 04 Dyett for him there 00 05 06 Going by water 00 01 04 His lodging att London 00 01 00 He gaue att his lodging 00 00 04 per of mourning gloues 00 01 06 4 dozen of black wouen silke pointes 00 13 00 per of spanish leather shoes 00 03 06 Bandstrings 00 01 00 A redd leather bagg 00 01 06 buttons and taffaty 00 01 06 his dyett 00 00 08 Giuen Stephen 00 01 04 25 per of spanish leather shoes 00 03 04 Giuen for sending a letter 00 00 04 201 16 - 00 - 07[f.38r] 1624Aprill. ffirst halfe yeare. 25. paid may ye taylour for worke 00 01 00 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 24 dayes work 001 04 00 paid goodman Beeching for all his worke and 00 04 11 paid -l?him for 2 new gate lockes 00 02 00 paid him fo-r one new horse=locke 00 01 04 paid him for 1000 5d nayle 00 04 02 paid him for 1000 4d nayle 00 03 04 27 Giuen att Hoathfeild when I lay there att Sir Iohn Tuffton's funerall 00 09 00 Giuen att ye ostlering there 00 05 00 Giuen Thomas Weild(?) 00 01 00 Giuen Anne Catesby att her marriage to Alexander Hart for tending my boy 02 00 00May 1. Giuen att Boucghton 00 11 00 2 Giuen 00 00 02 202 paid miles ye Carrier 00 01 00 5 paid Bayly ye sawyer for 959 foote of timber sawed into boardes, topp=rayles &c att 2s 4d per foote 01 02 04 paid for shoing my oxen 00 06 00 paid Iohn Hunt for half a day's worke setting vpp my boardes in ye barne 00 001 01 paid for ratts bane 00 00 06 Giuen Sutton's man for bringing a dogg 00 02 06 paid for a bushell of barley 00 02 08 paid H[enry] D[ering] when hee went(?) to Dower Charges for me 00 04 02 18 Giuen att Boucghton 00 12 00 19 Giuen ye seuerall s?Clarkes of 3 Churches 00 01 06 20 Giuen Richard Kenward of Dymchurch for &c 00 02 00 Giuen Andrew Hills for taking Care for my bitch 00 00 04 212 Giuen a boy that brought me word of my oxen 00 00 03 22 Giuen one for going from boucghton to Pluckley 00 00 06 Horsemeate and man's meate att Dymchurch 00 01 00 203 Shoing 00 00 02 25 paid Elnar ye taylour for mending Cloathes 00 02 00 paid him for making my mourning goune and hood. 00 03 06 29 Spent att Ashford 00 03 00 30 paid master Copley for small tithes, due from st michael. 1623. vnto St michael 12624. viz: for one whole yeare wh?for my selfe and my brother H[enry] whereof -- 20s. whereof my brother payes and. 01 00 00 paid for 6 yds of white tufted Can^uas^ att 15d per yd to make Anthony two Coates 01 01 04 31 Giuen my sister Margaret 00 05 00Iune 1 paid for 16 yds of white tufted ^Canuas att 15 per yd^ to make ye Child two Coates. 01 01 04 7 Giuen att Boucghton 00 13 00 9 paid Harper for all by him layd out for me viz: ye last payment to ye keeper of my hop=grownd 00 10 00 ffor 150 hop=poales and for bringing them 00 12 00 204 ffor hemp=seed 00 09 00 ffor shearing my sheepe 00 02 03 ffor other things 00 04 09 paid Stephen and giuen him 2d 00 021 00 paid Browne ye smith for all his worke 00 07 05 paid Bayly for sawing of 597 foote of boards &c 00 13 11 paid Taylour for sawing of ye roote endes of ye trees 00 01 02 Giuen Iohn Lucas for helping home ye timber 00 01 00 paid for rushes 00 00 06 ffor bringing tarre, pitch, and oyle &c 00 00 04 paid for oyle for my Coache 00 01 04 Giuen Thomas for dressing ye Coach 00 00 08 paid for a summe of priggs 00 11 00 10. this day I beganne a iourney into staffordshire, Darbyshire, Lecestershire &c and returned home on saturday August. 14. 11 Padyd Campian ye Carrier 00 05 00 To a porter 00 00 03 12 4 Combes and Cases 00 03 08 15 - 18 - 0 205[f.38v] 1624. ________Iune ffirst halfe yeare. 12 Dubrauius de Piscinis 00 00 06 3 yds 3 qrters' dim' qrter' of fine scarlett to make Cloake and hose att 3li' per yd 10 02 06 - 1 yd 3 qrter' dim' qrter' of of bastard scarlett att 30s per yd to make a Coate 02 16 02 1 yd dim' ell of fine scarlett to make a Coate att 30?li' per yd 04 17 06 3 yds of seagreene velluett sattene att 13s 4d per yd to make ye doublett 02 00 00 1 ell, qrter' dim' qrter' of taffaty att 13s 4d per ell to line ye doublett 00 18 04 6 yds 3 qrters' of sea=greene velluett att 22s per yd to line ye Cloake 07 08 00 - 3 yds dim' of scarlett bayes att 7s per yd to line a Coate with 01 04 06 206 paid ffor making vp a girdle and per of hangers suitable I finding scarlett, lace and velluett 00 05 00 2 dozen of scarlett and gold pointes 01 10 00 ffor half a qrter' of velluett more for ye Cape 00 02 06 master(?) Draper ye taylour's bill for suite, and Cloake 01 15 04 - master draper ye taylours bill for making my worse coate 00 07 00 ffor drawing ye peeces of itt 00 02 00 5 yds ^dim^ of dim' of greene silke wrought grogarum to line my best Coate att 10s 02 15 00 ffor marking that Coate to be laced 00 02 06 ffor making that Coate laced all ouer in spaces(?) 01 00 00 27 ounces of greene and gold Chaine lace for best Coate 07 16 10 7 doz: of greene and gold Chayne buttons for itt. att 18d per doz: 00 18 03?-66 ffor silke and galloun 00 09 08 31 ounces 1/2 dim' of seagreane and gold lace for Coate suite and Cloake 09 04 00 - 4. doz: 1/2 of buttons for my Coate 00 11 02 207 14 doz: of buttons for my doublett att 18d 01 01 00 5 doz: 1/2 of buttons for my hose att 20d 00 09 02 21 greate buttons for my Clo?oake att 2s 6 00 04 06 silke and gallown &c 00 11 02 Suite and Cloake. 31-16-6 best Coate 18- 0-0 Second Coate 7- 0-0 58-11-6 girdle and hangers 0- 5-0 pointes 1-10-0 14 A booke of ye art of glazing 00 01 04 A greeke testament in quires 00 01 08 Doctor Anthony's booke of Aurum potabile 00 00 10 2 shirts 01 06 00 Handkercheifes, Cuffs and bandstrings 00 12 00 needles 00 00 01 Lining and mending my hatt 00 02 06 15 A new scabbard, new Chape, scowring and new hatching my gilded rapier 00 14 00 penns and inkhorne 00 00 06 3 bookes 00 02 10 mending my watch 00 02 06 208 A suite of Cloathes for G. Elton 00 09 02 paid halfe a yeares schooling past att midsommer 00 06 001-1-8 paid for a qrter' to Come vntill st Michaell, to teach him to write and to find him paper pens, and inkes 00 04 06 paid for boa^a^te=hire, Clapses, and inkhorne &c 00 02 00 18 2 per of bootes and a per of shoes 01 03 00 4 per of gloues 00 13 00 A sett of knotts and a Chaine of Riband for my sister M[argaret] D[ering] 00 03 06 64 - 18 - 3[f.39r] 1624.Iune A hattband 00 13 00 A double seale of silluer 00 12 06 A mapp of England 00 00 06 19 paid my Landresse for washing 00 02 06 ffor dying a per of silke stockins 00 01 06 209 Seagreene riband for hangers 00 01 00 A surcingle 00 00 06 ffor Letters 00 00 06 mending my saddles 00 01 00 Barber 00 02 00 Blacke leades 00 00 01 An almanacke 00 00 02 Riband 00 00 04 to a porter 00 00 02 pinnes 00 00 01 Buckarum 00 01 01 Chamber-rent for a weeke 00 08 00 To a porter 00 00 02 21 Shoing 00 00 06 22 ffidlers 00 02 00 26 Shoing my horse 00 00?2 04?8 Oates 00 00 08 30 Oates 00 05 02Iuly. 2 Giuen Cisley skeffington a Chaine cost 00 15 00 ffor a letter receiued 00 00 06 Shoing 00 00 04 Stirrup leathers 00 00 10 mending my bootes 00 00 02 2 A per of bootes 00 2?10 00 6 ffidlers 00 01 00 210 washing linnen 00 00 08 173 ffor a Chamber att Darby 00 2?10 00 17 ffor a Chamber att Lecester 00 05 00 20 Oates 00 02? 08? mending my saddle 00 00 06 23 12 per of gloues 00 12 06 Shoing 00 00 08August. 4. 14 yd dim' of linnen att 2s per yd being a yard in breadth to make shirtes 01 09 00 6 Oates 00 04 00 A lime and Coller 00 00 06 A halfe Cheeke bitt 00 01 00 9 Sohoing my horses 00 04 06 R[ichard] Skeffington had of mine 00 01 00 12 2 playbookes 00 01 00 mending Cloathes 00 01 00 Going by water thrice 00 01 06 Seeing a play 00 03 00 paid ye Carrier of staffordshire 00 03 08 to a porter 00 00 08 paid Campian ye Carrier in part 00 02 00 letters 00 00 04 bables for little Anthony 00 01 04 Spent in dyett all this iourney my 211 Cosen H. Hawle being with me 06 17 08 Horsemeate all this iourney 04 01 03 Giuen ye poore + 00 09 08 Giuen in all this iourney, (whereof att my Lord Gray's 12s. att skeffington 10s. att sir William Bowyers 10s. att ffisherwicke. 1li'-14-6. att stafford 1li'-0-6d I say giuen in all beside to ye poore 06 00 11 Spent N. L 00 --14 05 26 - 2 - 8[f.39v] 1624. ffirst half yeare. Layd out by my father, my brother and by Harper whilst I was in this iourneyAugust 16 paid for a loade of lyme vsed att willesborough Iune. 25 00 13 00 ffor laying in ye sc? cells of ye 212 barne 00 03 00 ffor vnder pinning about ye barne 00 15 00 ffor another loade of lime 00 15 00 ffor a loade of tyles 00 15 06 ffor ridge tyles and Corner tiles 00 04 00 23 paid my father which he layd out for me viz: ffor one entire subsedy vnto ye treasurours &c 012 00 00 ffor one fifteene for all my Lands belonginge vnto Surrenden lying in Pluckley 00 04 05 ffor one fifteene for all my lands belonging vnto Surrenden lying in little Chart 00 03 02 ffor making of 22 acres of hay att 1s 4d per acre 01 09 08 ffor spreading 300 loade and a qrter' of dunge 00 04 04 ffor making of 1003 rodds of dike about Circens att 2d ob' per ye rodd 01 01 01 ob' ffor 2 per of stockins for my Child 00 02 00 ffor a lok locke 00 01 02 paid Long for mowing 00 01 04 paid Hamms for 12 dayes worke 00 00 0-810 213 paid ye hopman ye remainder 00 00 02 paid Tilghman for mending ye hedge about Circens pasture 00 07 00 paid him for threshing of oates 00 04 00 paid him for day labour 00 04 02 ffor rushes 00 00 06 A per of sto?ockins yfor ye Child 00 031 00 paid for 3 per of shoes for him 00 02 08 ffor shooing of my oxen 00 06 00 ffor drawing of 8 score shocke of hempe 00 01 00 paid Wood for mowing of hay 17 acres dim' att 1s-4d per acre 01 03 04 paid him for Cutting of sedge 00 00 02 paid him for helping to Carry hay 00 00 07 paid him for spreading of 300 loade of gritt in Long dane, att 1s-4d per 100 00 04 00 ffor a whorfe for ye mare to draw by 00 00 11 ffor hookes and rides for ye doore going vp into ye Church leades 00 01 08 paid for Shoing 00 01 06 paid for mending husbandmen's tooles 00 03 10 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 22?7 dayes et dim', att my new ponde att 214 mosewell spring 01 02?07 06 paid Ihon Wood for 19 dayew?s worke there 00 19 00 ffor weeding my parke 00 03 06 ffor pitching of wheate 00 00 07 ffor making of bonds 00 01 00 ffor reaping of all ye wheate in my parke be being 20 acres att 3s 8d per acre, paid 03 0911 0002 paid fo?reinde for mowing of 10 acres of oates in Ceircens att 1s 2d per acre 00 11 08 paid for bindinge ye same oates att ye same rate 00 11 08 paid Longley for knitting of eleauen lambes 00 01 00 19 giuen att Eastwell 00 07 06 giuen att Trappam 00 00 06 27 Stephen layd out for him selfe and his horse 00 01 04 mending a saddle 00 00 04 giuen att Eastwell 00 02 00 mending ye stable siue 00 00 06 g[iu]en att Calehill 00 00 06 28 SOrdinary and my mans and horse att Ashford 00 02 03 215 29 paid Iohn Hunt for his worke and his men att Pluckley Church wheouer ye porch where I Changed ye way going vp into ye Leades 00 13 11 19 - 11 - 11. ob'.[f.40r] 1624.August ffirst half yeare. 29 paid Ihon hHunt for ye Cloath hedge &c 00 01 00 paid him for worke att mill=Croft gate 00 01 04 paid him for mending my waggon 00 001 02 30 Giuen Susan my mother's Cooke when she went away 00 05 00 Giuen att ye taking say of a deere 00 05 00 giuen 00 00 03September 2 Giuen att Boucghton 00 13 06 5 A per of shoes for my self 00 03 00 Soling my bootes 00 01 00 paid Ihon Hunt for more worke about ye Church 00 01 04 216 paid G. Gooden for worke att Surrenden 00 02 06 6 bought a goose(?) for my greyhound 00 02 00 11 Shoing 00 00 06 paid Champian ye Carrier 00 00 06 Stephens Ordinary and my horse att Ashford 00 01 01 2 yds of peniston Cotten to make ye Child a petticoate 00 05 00 1 Ell of bayes Cotten to make another 00 02 00 13 Giuen att Hoathfeild 00 12 00 roome for horses att Kennington 00 00 06 Spent att Ashford on Saterday before 00 03 00 15 Shoing 00 00 05 Giuen Stephen 00 00 06 Giuen my sister Margarett 00 03 00 16 Giuen att Walter Mund's 00 00 06 17 Giuen Iack Dauy 00 00 02 Giuen my Cosen Honywoode, boy 00 00 06 Giuen one that tooke vp my hatt for me 00 00 06 18 Stephen's dyett and my horses att Ashford 00 01 01 Riband for Shoestringes 00 02 00 20 paid Ihon Bocher for his house and Land which I bought of him in part of payment 90 00 00 23 paid Harper for medicining my sheepe 00 02 00 217 26 Giuen one that found my hattband att Boughton 00 02 00 Spent att Ashford 00 04 01 per of shoes for my Child 00 01 00 paid my asses to ye poore 00 13 04 27 Ordinary att Aldington 00 02?1 001(?) my man and horses there 00 01 01 30 Giuen att Maydstone 00 05 00 Giuen ffidlers there 00 02 06 per of stockins for ye Child 00 01 00 Horsemeate there 00 04 06 giuen att Eastwell 00 03 00 giuen Andrew hills 00 00 06 paid Ihon Hunt seuerall worke whereof halfe a day about ye Church leades 00 05 00 paid G. Gadsby for shoing of 6 oxen 00 07 06 --- paid Edw: for hil?s halfe yeares wages 01 00 00 paid Stephen his wager?s for this last halfe yeare 02 10 00 paid Ihon' Barton his halfe yeares wages 02 15 00 paid vnto Tilghman for worke which he did for Ihon Barton when his eye was soare, which Ihon Barton was to pay but yat I forgaue itt him 00 09 00 218 102 - 14 - 10. Summ totall of this half yeare. ________ 245 - 6 - 3 ob'[f.40v] 1624October Second half yeare 4 Giuen att Eastwell 00 14 00 7 paid for black serge which made me a suite for mourning 1622. itt being left vnpaid by ye reason of my Cosen G. Hawle's borrowing of mony of me. 01 10 00 8 Giuen Ihon Lucas for helping att my new pond 00 02 00 10 paid Ihon' Hunt about ye Courtes 00 04 04 paid him and Hamms for hewing and setting vppe postes and rayles in farther Br(?)e?ant's meade 00 04 00 paid him for Cutting ye Cloath hedge 219 and for helping to fish a pond 00 00 08 paid him for 6 Conyes aliue 00 02 06 Giuen Thomas' for drying my hopps 00 01 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 5 dayes worke in mosewell pond 00 05 00 ffor drawing of Seede hempe 00 01 00 paid Ihon Hunt for 6 dayes worke for himselfe and 5 dayes for Hamms, about hewing of a logge for a penstocke to mosewell pond, for sawing of ye planke, for sawing and making ye bracers &c, and for laying him into ye dyke there 00 12 02 Ordinary and my man and horses att Ashford 00 02 06 mending a bridle 00 00 04 giuen Stephen 00 00 03 paid vnto Lanes quittrent due to Conningbroke 00 19 09 paid suite groa(?)te 00 00 04 11 Giuen att Eastwell 00 00 01 16 Giuen att Boughton 00 01 00 17 Giuen Harper 00 10 00 paid Harper which he had Layd out, viz: A per of fore=wheeles for a wagon 00 14 00 220 A per of wheeles for a horse=Court 00 11 00 ffor 2 villowes 00 01 08 ffor 2 spoakes 00 00 04 ffor a Cart saddle 00 03 00 paid vnto Long for mowing which was forgotten before 00 05 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for worke about ye bay and penstocke, and 00 04 00 paid Ihon Hunt and Hamms for worke there 00 10 10 paid Ihon Hunt and Hamms a day about my pound 00 02 02 paid Tilghman for 3 dayes about ye bouling ground 00 03 00 paid Walter Mund for 40 ridge tyles 00 06 08 paid him for 50 Corner tiles 00 02 06 20 Giuen att Eastwell 00 14 00V. + 23 paid Quittrent due vnto Sir Francis Barnham' for Hinxell lands due 1623. 00 07 06V. paid Mathewes rent for Mosewell acre 00 06 08 Spent between October 25. and Ianuary 16?5, whilst I was att London, itt being ye time wherein I was ma^r^ried, and my stay in London being not a fortnight long after 221 marriage 26 A ruffe and 2 per of Cuffes 01 13 00 per of bootehose 00 11 00 mending my hangers 00 00 02 Lipsalue 00 00 02 27 Astrologomania 00 00 08 28. ffidlers 00 02 00 paid ye carrier for bringing my trunke to London 00 05 00 ffor Letters 00 00 04 paper 00 00 02 going by water 29 ffidlers 00 03 00 30 ye discription of Lecestr' by Burton 00 09 00Nouember 2. A looking glasse 00 02 04 ffor Cutting my Cornes 00 01 00 3 A siluer seale for Cisley Skeffington 00 10 00 per of bootes and galoshaes 00 13 00 Sealing per of bootes 00 01 00 5 A saddle Cloath 00 02 00 14 - 7 - 1d[f.41r] 222Nouember 1624 6 4 Combes of tortois shell, whereof one: 6s 8d 00 14 00 3 playbookes 00 03 00 penns 00 00 06 Lamberts perambulation of Kent 00 05 00 9 A beauer hatt 02 02 00 A hatt band 00 12 00 Dressing and Lining --? hatt 00 04 00 A stamp for silluer with [sketch of mark shown] 00 05 00 giuen Doctor Baskeruill ye phisitian a fee 00 10 00 10?9 A silluer seale with [same mark as above] 00 03 00 1?23?0 mending bootehose 00 00 06 2316? Seeing a play 00 02 06 1?274 Vincents Corrections of Errors in York 01 00 00 Theater of Honour and knighthood 00 16 00 A Common prayer booke with ye consecration of bishops &c. in folio 00 11 00 paid for enamelling of a ring for Cisly Skeff[ington] 00 01 00 29 Seeing a play with my sister &c 00 05 00 2 per of buckes leather gloues 00 09 00 paper royl?all 00 11 04 223 A laced ruffe and a per of Cuffes 01 18 00 per of bootehose 00 11 00 A laced Capp 00 02 00 A per of buckes leather gloues fringed with silluer 00 09 00 A per of thinne inner(?) gloues 00 01 00 2930 Binding of Lamberts perambulation of Kent 00 01 02 Binding of 2 paper bookes in folio for heraldry viz. in pastboard without leather 00 03 04December Riband 00 00 06 Candles 00 00 06 263 Stirrup leathers and mending my saddle 00 01 08 A warrant for to search in London 00 02 00 paper 00 00 06 mending bootes 00 00 02 blacke lead pencells 00 00 03 274 A per of etwizes 00 06 00 2?6 Seeing tombes att westmester 00 02 00 Sweete powder 00 02 02 7- Sweete meates viz: dryed sucketts &c for my sisters Frances and Mary Tufton att my chamber 00 08 00 Seeing a play with them and my cosen 224 bess Cecill and for a Light home 00 08 00 Mending and Cleaning my swordes 00 11 00 Candles 00 01 00 Curling irons 00 01 00 9 paid master Taylour for drawing 2 escocheons in colours 2 patternes for prints in brasse, and one sheete of pedegree 00 10 00 Drexelij Horologium 00 01 06 Lysander and calista in french in quires, 4s, and binding vp gilded 6s - 6d for my cosen Luce wentworth ruling with red lines. 2s 00 12 06 10 A Comb brush 00 00 02 paper 00 01 06 13 Going by water 00 01 00 15 Sweet powder 00 01 06 16 paid ye scriuener for engrossing ye ioynture 00 06 00 Candles 00 00 06 mending galoshaes 00 00 02 17 Bootes shoes and galoshaes 01 13 00 A hatt band 00 15 00 Mending watch 00 01 00 binding my greeke testament 00 01 00 20 Softe wax 00 00 02 225 ffor making of two bondes when I borrowed mony 00 02 00 21 Giuen Herbert ffinch for engrossing 2 parts of indentures about ioynture 00 10 00 19 - 1 - 1[f.41v] 162[4]December Second half yeare 22 A hatt for my little boy 00 05 09 mending bootehose 00 02 02 23 A greate leathered Chest 00 18 00 24 mending my pistoll 00 00 04 6 per of sockes 00 03 00 2 printes in brasse to sett armes on bookes 01 15 00 29 A my wedding ring 01 14 00 31 Riband 00 01 06 mending galoshaes 00 00 01 Ianuary 1. A new scabbard and mending siluer swoord 00 05 06 5 A Comb for my wife 00 01 04 226 12 per of gloues for my wife 00 11 00 8 A paper booke and brasse inkhorne 00 02 00 Candles 00 00 06 Sent vnto my little boy in single pence 00 00 06 10 giuen in? gilding armes on my bookes 00 02 00 11 6 silluer spoones att 5s 7d per ounce 02 11 06 1 silluer spoone for a sugar Chest 00 03 06 12 4 dozen of quart bottles att 2s 4d per dozen 00 09 04 6 pint bottles 00 01 00 4 dozen dim' of Corckes 00 01 06 13 gallons 3 pints of Clarett and white wine 01 11 02 7 quartes of Canary 00 07 00 packthread 00 00 03 giuen ye vintners man that drew itt 00 01 00 Carrying vp my basketts by water 00 00 04 porter in London to Carry and remoue them and the wine 00 02 00 paid for Ihon Lucas and ye wine Comming downe by water 00 01 06 horsemeate att grauesend 00 01 08 Ihon's dyett so long: viz. 5 weaks 00 03 04 giuen him for 3 dayes paines 00 02 06 The wine and bottles and Charge of 227 bringing besides ye horse is. [blank] 13. going by water for stephen 00 01 06 A horne and a sving for Anthony 00 01 02 A fanne for my wife 00 05 06 2 per of gloues for my little boy 00 0l 00 A false scabberd 00 00 06 2 bed ropes to Cord by trunke 00 01 04 packthread 00 00 01 ten(?) to-- A girdle and dagger for my little boy 00 03 06 [paper torn and smudged] --- -so(?) for going by water whilst I was att L[ondon]. 00 04 00 ffor torches and linkes 00 05 00 To porters 00 07 03 Barber had of me whilst I was there 00 10 00 paid Laundress for washing 001 05 00 grauing armes vpon ye plate giuen vs att marriage being 8 peeces viz. 16 coates 00 12 00 grauing a [same mark as shown on f.41r] on 7 spoones 00 02 00 grauing of 8 coates vpon a sugar Chest 00 05 06 paid for printing my white satten doublett 00 08 00 A blew silke wast Coate 03 06 00 per of pearle colour silke stockins 001 12 00 228 A gold and siluer embroiderid girdle 00 14 00 A per of silluer embroidered hangers and girdle 01 12 00 A red satten Capp laced ouer with siluer lace 01 02 00 2 white Capps laced 00 09 00 1 yd qrter' dim' of fine scarlett to make per of hose att 3li' per yd 03 18 00 40 yds of gold parchment galoun, weighing 15 ounces 3 qrters' att 5s 8d per ounce, to lay two in(?) a seame for my white satten doublett and scarlett hose. 04 0509 03 6 oun[c]es of gold parchment more for one about ye c[lo]ake(?) 01 14 00 5 doz: of gold paris buttons 00 05 00 6 doz: of gold velom buttons att 3s-4d 01 00 00 A scarlett neck button with a gold head for ye cloake 00 02 00 32 - 18 - 10[42r] 229 Second halfe yeare. 12624 77 ounces qrter' of black and silluer t(?)isshew lace att 4s 8d per ounce (puto) 13 dozen. 18 00 00 for 2 in a seame, pointes on ye hose and 15 on ye cloake. [blank] 5 doz: of bl[ack] and silluer parris buttons 00 05 00 14 dozen and half of bl[ack] and silluer Cheine(?) buttons att 20d per dozen 01 02 00 A bl[ack] and silluer necke button for ye cloake 00 02 00 so ye silkman had of me toward these two suites of Cloathes. 26-19-3. paid master Iackson for one per of scarlett and silluer garters and knotts for my selfe 02 15 00 1. yd of scarlett and silluer riband 00 02 00 2 dozen and two pointes of scarlett and gold att 16s per dozen for my second suite 01 14 08 43?^5^ dozen of scarlett and silluer pointes for my wedding pointes att 16s per dozen 04 00 00 4 dozen more all giuen away att 15s 03 00 00 230 a per of gloues bound about with scarlett and silluer 00 04 04 1 per of pinke Colour and silluer r-garters of ye very best ^for^ my Lady Mary ^Villers^ and my Lady Elisabeth Feilding 02 17 00 3 per of riche white and silluer garters to giue away 05 12 00 6 per of white Cipres garters embroidered with silluer att 10s per 03 00 00 per of bl[ack] and silluer garters of ye very best knotts, 2 yds of riband, and 2 dozen of pointes all alike, for my selfe after my wedding garters and pointes were gone 06 10 00 this ware besides others gloues and girdles and hangers &c, Comes to 29-15-0 whereof giuen away. - 21-4-0 7 diamondes added vnto some of my old ones, att 15s a peece, and 05 05 00 ffor setting of them into a forme of a heart which I gaue vnto my mistress, and for some ouerplus of gold more then he had 01 00 00 ffor a pointed dyamond putt in a ring 01 10 00 231 ffor gold and setting that dyamond betweene? ^and^ 4 other in a ringe 00 18 00 ffor a table dyamonde sett into a ring 01 15 00 The ieweller had 10-10-0. ffor my second suite. 3 yds 1 qrter' of white florence satten att 15s 6d 02 10 06 1. ell qrter' dim' qrter' of white taffaty att 13s 4d 00 18 06 6 yds 3 qrters' of riche Crimson plush att 32s 10 16 00 -- 1 yd qrter' dimq' of fine f- scarlett to make ye hose att 3li' 03 18 00 18 - 3 - 0(?) ffor my best suite ye silke mans bill. 10 yds dim' of rich black florence satten to make a Cloake and hose att 16s per yd 08 08 00 more of ye same to lay vpon ye outside of my cloake, bec as farre as ye vpper most lace because in worke ye other satten was raced 02 00 00 3 yds of qr' half qrter' of white tisshew(?) att 6li' 18 15 00 7 yds qrter' of rich black French 232 plush att 28s per yd to line ye Cloake 10 03 00 1 ell qrter' dim' qrter' of white taffaty att 13s-4d 00 18 04 the mercers bill for this 40-4-4 The taylours bill for making this suite and Cloake and buying other particulars. 01 19 06 ffor making ye Cloake with 15 silluer laces about and lined with plush 01 00 00 ffor silke for to sett on all ye lace, and for stiffning to ye cape &c 00 07 00 paid him for my other suite and Cloake 01 15 06 paid him for other worke 00 12 06 123 - 13 - 10.[f.42v]Ianuary Second half yeare 1624 Chamber rent att seuerall places whilst I was in London 03 08 08 ffiringdon' 00 11 04 Horsemeate 07 12 07 Shoing of horses 00 09 00 233 mending my Coach 01 01 10 Coach=hire and horse=hire 01 03 00 Dyett for my self and my man, and for another man 3 weekes, and for my wife 10 dayes 18 14 03 Giuen ye poore + 00 07 10. Giuen att my Lady Maydstones by me and by my wife 12s 03 03 06 Giuen my sister 10s. ye bellringers 10s, by my 00 10 00 my wife gaue master Temple 00 10 00 Giuen ye bellringers when I came to Pluckley 00 10 00 dd’ to my wife in mony 01 05 00 Giuen seuerally att London 04 17 09 dd’ to my wife in old gold 01 02 00 Giuen att my Lord Dukes att whitehall, and among his seruaunts att Wallingford house 11 05 00 Giuen all manner of wayes in ready mony beside to ye poore. 23-3-3. Spent butt forgotten wherein 05 0311 08 Layd out in all this time of my being att London. 258 - 3 – 0 wherein note(?) 1-18s-0 lost att 234 cardes and 13li'-14s paid Master Draper, not sett downe within this compasse. so ye true expence of this time hath beene. 242 - 11 – 0 Nouember _____________________________ --- 14. paid Hill ye free mason for a tombstone 02 00 00 paid him for in part of payment for [blank] foote of a cesterne, att 8d per foote, and for pauing att [blank] per foote 001 06 00Ianuary 20. dd’ my wife 00 05 00 ye prayers and catechisme made by Edw[ard] Dering giuen to my aunt Hawle 00 01 06 Allmanackes 00 00 06 giuen Andrewes my brother Ashb[urnham]s man 00 05 00 paid master Draper ye taylour, whilst I was now att London for all due vnto him, and for a blacke satten suite all? and all ye particulars belonging (except pointes) and for making vp a mourning Cloake vnto 235 itt, for Sir Iohn Tufton's funerall. circiter Aprill. 21. 07 07 00 paid him for 2 long buttons for Cloakes 00 01 08 Disbursed by my brother Harry for me whilst I was att London. per of shoes for Anthony 00 01 00 6 yds of Lace for a ruffe for him 00 02 00 paid dim', dimqrter' of Cotton for ye Child 00 03 10 1. ell of greene bayes 00 02 02 3 yds of fustian for ye boy 00 03 06 A new hammer for Barton 00 00 06 600 of 2d nayles 00 01 00 paid ye smithes bill 00 10 00 paid Tilghman for 34 rodds of dike about broade reede att 2d per rodd 00 05 08 paid ye mason about Surrenden 00 08 08 Composition for lands in Chart 00 02 10 ob' mending ye leades att Surrenden 00 00 06 To ye poore of little Chart 00 03 06 paid Theophilus Tilghman for spreading of 430 hills in Spring acre, and att 1s-2d per 100 and for 230 hills att 1-4d in Circens 00 08 00 making of a new racke for my cosen 236 in ye cloase 00 17 04 paid Ihon Hunt and Tilghman for all worke 01 00 08 78 - 1 - 2 ob'[f.43r] Seconde half yeare 1624Ianuary paid ye thatcher for 7 dayes worke att I and his boy att Ihon Bucher's house 00 14 00 200 of withes vsed there 00 01 00 5 welsh beastes att 53s ye bullocke 13 05 00 [small gap] __________ 31 paid ye smith for shoing 00 04 10 paid him for worke about ye house 00 04 08 paid for shoing 6 oxen Ianuary 15 00 07 06 paid Hamms for 7 dayes about reparations 00 05 00 paid Hunt for 4 dayes about reparations 01?0 04 08 giuen Ned Dering, Robert D[ering]s 237 sonne 00 01 00 Layd out for me by Stepha?en a London. Imprimis for a peece of mockadoe att 2s 6d per yd 01 15 00 A horsecloath 00 03 00 A sett of girthes 00 01 00 A letter 00 00 02 paid for George Elton 00 06 06 A per of breeches for him 00 09 00 A booke for him 00 03 00 A white bagge 00 01 00 ffor Currance, Sugar, Raysins, prunes, nutt meggs, Cinnamon, mace, Cloues, ginger, loose Sugar, orange confetts, and Carowayes 03 10 01 ffor a box and baggs 00 00 08 ffor a Corde 00 00 06 bought att ffeuersham, by Stephen halfe a bushell of bay salt 00 00 09 A gallon of white salt 00 00 03 A Couple of salt fish 00 01 01 halfe a bushell of onyons 00 00 09 A Cheese att 3d q' 00 04 04 Bought att London 22 of Ianuary of Thomas Smith in new pewter 54 li' 238 1/2 att 12d 1/2 per li'. 02 16 09 Item 6 porrengers 00 04 00 Item 6 sawcers 00 02 00 baskett, and Cordes 00 00 09 A firesheouell and per of tongues 00 03 06 -- 2 steeles and a smoothing iron 00 05 06 2 stuppe netts sh' sk' 2 skelletts 00 06 06 paid for Stephens dyett 13 meales 8s 8d. going by water 1s-6d, horsehire. 9s. bringing thinges by water to ffeuersham. 5s-8d. bringing home 12s. wharfa*ge, towre draught, and porter'(?)s in London &c: 6s 1d: in all. 2-2-11. whereof my fathers part was. 5s 01 17 11 Giuen att London 00 01 00 Giuen Stephen this iourney 00 02 06 paid more for 2 dozen 1/2 of Candles att 5s 2d 00 12 11 A ferkin of Soape 00 07 00 12 li' of starch 00 04 00 porter 00 00 03 ffebruary 1. paid Hamms for 4 dayes about postes 00 02 08 paid George Gooding for 2 dayes and 239 his boy about tyling 00 04 08 5 A bedde matt 00 021 08 2 halters 00 00 04 paid Beeking his bill for ianuar[y]. viz: nayles for ye wheeles of a Court 28 li' 00 07 00 ffor shoing of them 00 01 08 A per of tuggs 00 01 02 1000 of 5 d' nayles 00 04 02 A hay cutter 00 02 00 6 paid my sesse for ye Church 00 13 04 paid for an hatchett 00 01 04 32 - 10 - 0[f.43v]ffebruary Second half yeare 1624 7 paid Iennings ye Cowper for 3 barrells 00 18 00 paid him for 2 Kilderkins 00 08 00 paid him for a brine tubb and couer 00 09 00 Item for 18 hoopes 00 03 00 paid steward ye Glasier for worke att Surrenden: viz: for new glasse att 240 7d per foote, new leading att 3d ob' per foote for Sodering and bonds att 2d per foote and for panes 1d per quarry 00 15 06 paid Ihon Hunt for himself and for Hamms 00 09 08 8 my wife gaue Mary Puttney when she bargained with her 00 01 00 12 paid ye Hopgarden=dresser 00 11 00 paid Ihon Hunt for a weekes worke 00 08 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman 00 03 00 13 dd’ to my wife 00 05 00 paid a fifteenth in Pluckley 00 04 05 paid a fifteenth in Chart 00 03 02 Composition in Pluckley 00 04 05 paid mathewes his rent att ^vntill^ St Michaell last 00 03 04 paid Bayly ye sawyer for all his worke 00 12 00 paid for 3 li Cloath for 3 Lininges 03 12 00 15 3 gallons 3 pints of Crock butter bought of Richard Hall of Hoathfeild 00 12 06 1 gallon dim': more bought of Danyell Hills 00 105 06 1. Cheese att 2d ob' per pound 00 01 04 6 pulletts bought of Thomas Lamben 00 04 00 241 Stephen spent when he went about my busines 00 00 04 Giuen att my fathers when I Came away 01 13 00 16 A Couer of ye meale tubb 00 01 00 A loine of veale 00 01 04 Bought att ffeuersham fayre ffebruary Imprimis 160 Couple of Codd att att 16d 00 13 04 6 Couple more att 20d 00 10 00 200 of redd herring 6 score to ye hundred 00 05 04 half a barrell of white herring 00 15 00 7 score and 13 li' of Suffolk Cheese att 3d ye li' 01 18 03 half a bushell of Carretts 00 00 10 A haire siue 00 00 08 2 pound of rice 00 00 08 half a pound of pepper 00 01 00 A basting ladle of brasse with an iron hande 00 00 06 2 l? pounde of figgs 00 00 06 half a pound of Almonds 00 00 08 paid a porter 00 00 02 his Stephens Charges and his horses 00 03 00 Loss in badd gold 00 01 00 242 giuen Stephen 00 01 01 A Cheshire Cheese weighinge 6, dim' 4d ye pond 00 02 02 21 paid Browne ye smith for all his worke viz. ffor Shoing 00 00 07 for a yexst---ger(?) 00 01 00 ffor a gridiron 00 01 10 ffor hookes and rides, and lockes and keyes &c 00 02 02 22 paid goodman mason for fetchng 16 Couple of fish from ffeuersham 00 01 04 paid for a bushell of bay salt 00 01 06 paid for a gallon of white salt 00 00 03 paid him for bringing other thinges home 00 03 03 23 Brimston 00 00 03 blacke threade 00 00 03 giuen Ihon Hunts girle that brought a Capon 00 00 04 24 paid Stephen Robert Pell for half a weather 00 07 00 paid him for half a barren 00 04 00 18 - 7 - 5. 243[f.44r] Second half yeare. 1624 paid Bayly ye saweyer 01 01 00ffebruary 27 Giuen captaine chalchroft's boy 00 01 00 dd' to my wife 00 05 00March. 1. Giuen ffidlers att home 00 02 06 Layd out for me by Stephen att London. ffebruary 22 et 23. ffor 6 ells of holland for my wife 01 04 00 ffor 3500 of pinns some black 00 05 06 ffor 2 dozen of trenchers 00 03 00 ffor 12 yds of greene linsey wolsey for Curtaynes for ye parlour window. 00 13 06 my wife sent Ioane my Lady Wentworthes ^mayd^ 00 02 06 1 li' of greate yellow nayles 00 02 04 1 li' of small nayles for Chayres 00 02 02 12 yds of girt=webb 00 01 08 A bedd Cord 00 00 07 10 peeces of Course hangings for our owne Chamber att 11s-2d 05 11 08 244 5 yds of blacke buckarum 00 05 00 2 li' of Allmonds 00 02 04 1 li' of pepper 00 02 00 6 li' of rice 00 01 010 100 of small square nayles for Chaires of iron 00 00 03 100 of small tenterhookes 00 00 03 100 of greate tenterhookes 00 00 06 A per of iron snuffers 00 00 10 A per of new Collers, or breast peeces for my Coach=harnes 00 12 00 A per of hand raines 00 04 00 A per of Coupling raines 00 01 08 A per of barring raines 00 01 08 Stephens, Charges my father bearing half: 00 05 05 paid miles ye Carrier in part 5s. Giuen Stephen 00 01 02 4 dd' my wife 00 10 00 5 2 ells of Cambricke to make me Cuffes 00 13 00 7 2 redd and blew Couerletts 01 04 00 A quarter of veale 00 04 00 8 giuen one that brought hither a black gelding vpon liking 00 01 00 12 paid Iennings ye Cowper for a water tubb to empty the buckett into when 245 they brew 01 00 00 _____ paid him for a Cleansing tubb 00 10 00 paid Ihon Sotherden for all ye meate I had of him before Lent 01 07 00 Bought att Wye fayre a stock locke 00 01 06 A little box locke and Charnells 00 01 09 800 of 6d5?d nayles 00 04 00 900 of 5d nayles 00 03 09 2000 of 4d nayles 00 06 08 giuen Ihon Hunt 00 00 04 4 yds and more of sacking att 9d per yd 00 03 00 ffor thread 00 00 11 A per of bellowes 00 00 06 Standing for horse att Ashford 00 00 02 A shoe on ye dun mare 00 00 04 paid Ihon Adman for halfe a weather 00 07 00 paid him for a Calues head and feete 00 00 10 14 paid vnto Ihon Markettman my last fifteenth for 85 acres in little Chart 00 03 02 17 paid Ihon Bayly for sawing of boardes for ye best garden knott 00 12 00 paid him for other sawing 00 01 04 Giuen Arrowes his boy for bringing a dog 00 00 06 246 19 paid Ihonson ye second payment for my hopgarden 00 09 00 per of stockins for ye Child 00 01 01 ffor a legg of poorke 00 01 10 A yd of hairecloath 00 01 00 horsemeate att Ashford 00 00 02 paid Ihon Hunt for a co*cke 00 01 00 6 wodden dishes and a boll 00 00 09 ffor eggs 00 00 06 20 - 5 - 5[f.44v] Second half yeare 1624March. 21 paid Iennings for a hnew hogshead 00 08 00 22 paid Ihon' Elmer ye Taylour for all his work Imprimis for making and mending of houshold stuffe 00 01 00 ffor worke for my little boy 00 05 00 ffor work for my wife viz: for fustiand &(?) Canuas 00 01 04 ffor silke to a goune and doublett 00 00 06 247 ffor making a loose goune and doublett of a straite bodyed one 00 03 00 ffor worke for my selfe 00 00 08 23 paid Browne ye smith for all his worke 00 06 04 paid him for mending and making of houshold stuff 00 03 00 25?4 paid Simon Mathewes for 100 li' weight of beefe 00 016 08 ffor 2 bushells dim' of pease 00 07 06 A touett of tares 00 01 00 12 yds of inckle for my wife 00 00 06 A Comb=brush 00 00 02 horsemeate 00 00 02 2 li' of shott 00 00 04 one paile 00 01 00 Another paile 00 00 09 A little gallon paile to take vp hott water 00 00 03Aprill. 4 paid Stephen Kennard his halfe yeares wages 02 10 00 12 paid Edward Southern for all his wages and discharged him. 01 02 06 6 - 9 - 8. 248 Summ totall of this half yeare. ________________________ 346 - 4 - 6. ob'. Summ totall of this whole yeare 1625?4. __________________________ 591 - 10 - 10. ______________________[f.45r] [whole page deleted; most entries are repeated with some differences on f.51r] ffirst half yeare. 1625.Aprill 2 Giuen Doctor Rowzer for aduice vpon watere showed him 00 05 00 ffor wine 00 01 04 my horese and man att ashford 00 01 04 249 3 paid Thomas Tylghman for 3 dayes worke 00 03 00 paid Myles ye Carrier for all due to him 00 10 06 5 going by water att London 00 01 00 6 poore 00 00 02 7 Barber 00 02 06 paid porter 00 00 06 A false scabberd 00 00 10 paid ye farrier for dressing my gelding 00 04 00 Chamber rent and fa*gotts att London 00 04 00 Dyett att - d by ye way home 00 07 10 Horsemeate this iourney 00 10 00 Giuen this iourney 00 09 08 Spent this iourney. 2-0-6. 9 Horse att maydstone 00 00 06 wine there 00 02 00 Giuen att Boucghton 00 03 06 12 per of shoes for my boy 00 01 00 paid Arrowes ye shoemaker for all due to him 00 01 04 2 drinking glasses 00 01 00 15 Giuen mihill wood a poore man and his wife, of Lenham' 00 02 00 250 giuen a poore man of Charing 00 00 06 2 bushells of beanes 00 06 08 A qrter' of veale 00 02 06 A quart of hastefers 00 00 03 16 paid Andrew Bentley for brewing for me and 00 02 06 paid him for barme 00 00 06_________________________________________________________________[f.45v] [blank] [For the next year 1625 Dering tries an experiment: he divideshis expenses into Household expenses and Foreign payments, theformer on ff.46r-50v and 62r, the latter on ff.51r-57r, the firstleaves of the inserted gathering. In 1626 he reverts to hisearlier method of combining the two sets of accounts starting onf. 57v.][f.46r] 1625 _______ ffirst half yeare. Houshold expences. ___________________ 251Aprill 3 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 3 dayes --- worke 00 03 00 12 2 drinking glasses 00 01 00 15 2 bushells of beanes to sett and sow 00 06 08 A quarte of hastefers 00 00 03 A quarter of veale 00 02 06 16 paid Andrew Bantley for brewing for vs 00 02 06 paid him for yest 00 00 06 22 18 yds of Course sacking att 8d ob' per yd 00 12 09 - 27 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 9 dayes fa*gotting &c 00 09 00 29 paid my wiues houshold booke from ye f? our Lady day vnto ye last of aprill 02 07 09May --- 5 A salt stone to stand in my Doue=house 00 04 00 6 paid Payn, for Brimston 00 00 04 Thread bought att Charing fayre 00 00 10 7 paid Browne ye smith for shoing ye plough=mare 00 01 00 ffor forging of plough irons 00 01 07 ffor steeling and setting a pitch=forke 00 010 03 Layd out by William Harper. viz: ffor 4 hogsheades bought att Ashford 01 04 00 252 ffor 4 barrells 01 00 00 ffor fetching them home 00 04 00 ffor one seame of wheate 02 00 00 ffor 2 bb' of pease to sow 00 06 00 ffor a bushell of beanes to sowe 00 03 00 ffor 22 bushells of barly att 20s per seame to sowe in Longdane, which I fetched from Lenham 02 15 00 10 paid master Copley for all small tithes due to him ffrom my self and from my brother Harry viz: due between Michaelmas and our Lady 00 10 00 15 paid Stephen Pell for all: viz: for 2 weathers 01 16 00 6 for 300 li' of beefe att 4s 8d per 20 li' in 5 weekes 03 09 06 69 for a qrter' of mutton 00 03 04 for 2 li' of sewett 00 00 08 5 ____ per stockins for ye kitchen boy 00 01 08 [The numbers above written outside the brackets, presumablysummarizing Pell’s expenses, are written vertically.] ffor mackarell 8 ^8 mackarell^ 00 01 00 20 A new key for my trunke 00 01 06 4 Lobsters 00 05 00 2 Lemmons 00 00 06 253 -- per of kniues for my wife 00 05 00 -- Bables for ye Child 00 01 02 23 paid Ihonson for dressing my -- hopgarden to ye full of 28s viz: 20ds before, and now 00 08 00 26 Bought att w(?)y by Ihon Hunt of 4d and 5d nayles 00 05 03Iune. 5 paid Danyell Smart for a Cowe 05 00 00 7 -- paid ye smith for shoing ye bay mare 00 01 04 for mending ye husbandry irons 00 01 10 ffor bayling of a paile 00 00 06 ffor mending ye grapple hooke 00 00 06 paid ye tinker for mending ye kettles 00 00 06 16 paid Elmer for worke for my wife 00 09 1?0 paid him for worke for ye Child 00 04 00 paid for a sowe and 7 pigges 01 02 00 ffor 2 stone iuggs for beere 00 01 08 -- paid Tilghman for worke 00 05 00 ffor shoing of 6 working beast 00 07 06 for 600 of 4d' nayles 00 02 00 paid Iennings for a new hogshead 00 08 00 Item for a keeler 00 02 06 Item for mending ye ashford barrells 00 01 06 - 18 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 6 dayes worke 00 06 00 paid ye taylour for ye Kitchin boy, 254 viz: for making his Canuas breeches and apron and po(?)cketts 4d 00 01 02 ffor bulling of a Cow att Sherland 00 00 06 ffor mending my wiues petticoate 00 00 06 25 - 16 - 9 28 - 10? - 6 27 - 1 - -[f.46v] 1625. _______ ffirst half yeare Houshold Expences. _________________Iune. paid my wiues houshold booke from ye first of Aprill vnto midsommer day 02 17 00 whereof lost by her att Cardes - 1li'-2s.6d. paid Susan ffowler for half a yeares wages on midsommer day 02 00 00 paid Mary Sharpe for so long as since she Came, vntill midsommer day 00 14 00 paid Mary Rutting in like sort 00 15 00 255 28 paid Arrowes for a per of shoes for ye Child 00 02 00 Item for a per of shoes for ye kitchin boy 00 02 00 paid Browne ye Smith for plates and bradds 00 00 10 A hay forke 00 00 10 ffor mending a staple 00 00 02 ffor shoing 00 03 08 Charges att ye fetching of Priscilla 00 001 04 per of stockins for ye Child 00 00 110? greene stuff for Anthonyes Coate 01 04 00 greene silke and gold lace 4 ounces 01 04 00 ffor 3 bb' of Char=coale 00 01 00Iuly. 1 paid Danyell Fuller for 60 bushells of lime viz. a loade dim': att 12s per loade, and 5s for bringing itt home 01 03 00 2 paid Andrew Bentley for 2 brewings 00 05 00 paid him for sissing twice 00 00 06 paid master Copley for all my tith hay in pluckley 01 08 00 11 A setting stiele 00 00 10 A pipe for ye Child 00 00 02 20 yds of linnen to make sheetes 01 01 00 15 Bought att Maydstone by Stephen 256 Imprimis: 5 gallons of wine att 8 per qrt' 00 13 04 1. loafe of sugar att 16d per pound weighing 12 li' dim. 00 16 04 6 pound of starch 00 01 09 half a ferkyn of soape 00 08 00 6 pound of sugar 00 06 00 20 li' of Candles att 5d per li' 00 08 04 4 ounces of white thread att 4d per ounce 00 01 04 A pottle of Linseed oyle 00 01 04 Browne thread and black 3 qrters' of a pound 00 01 09 4 glasses for preseruing 00 01 02 mending my mans saddle 00 02 00 A sleeke stone 00 00 04 horsemeate and man's dyett for those busines 00 01 00 24 paid Beeching for 4d' 5d' and 6d' nayles 00 13 04 21 paid Priscilla Pinion her wages and discharged her 00 13 04 26 paid Stephen Pell for all due to him, from May. 15. vnto. Iuly. 10th. viz: Imprimis 480 li' of beefe att 14s and att 13s 6d per 20 li' being for 8 257 weekes att 60 li' of beefe per weeke 05 010 06 0 ffor Lamb 00 04 06 |ffor an inward 00 03 06 2 ffor one sheepe and qrter' and a shoulder 00 19 06?8 | ffor 12 li' of sewett 00 04 00 7 [The numbers outside the brackets intended to give the totalamount owed Pell are written at right angles] 28 paid my cosen Ihon Dering for 12 seames of malt att 18s 8d per seame, viz: 2s 4d per bushell; which serued for 6 brewings, beginning att ffebruary ye second and ending ye first of August. 11 04 00 memorandum: there Came in two seames of malt Iuly 19. to begin breade? withall. August 1 and these are vnpaid? for paid him for 250 hoppoales sent in att 8s 6d per 100: May. 20: 01 01 00 37 - 1 - 9 312 - 5 - 6 258[f.47r] 1625 ffirst half yeareIuly. Houshold expences 28 Reckoned with Harper, and paid vt sequitur: ffor tarre, oyle, pitch, and a pott 00 03 07 ffor help to wash my Sheepe 00 01 00 ffor Shearing of 62 Sheepe att 12s per 20 00 03 02 A new payre of wagon ropes 00 02 06 A gallon dim' of ^Crocke^ butter att 3s 4d per gallon 00 05 00 2 Cheeses att 2d per pound 00 06 04 A touett of bay salt 00 01 00 A pecke of white salt 00 00 08 A pottle of vineger 00 01 00 paid Doctor Moseley for tith hay in Daneford 00 08 00 paid for a Cowe bought about ye begining of Iune 04 13 04 paid and discharged Owen Iones for 5 weekes 00 09 00August. 27 paid Ihon Marden for a meale bagg 00 02 00 259 Item for all other &c 00 09 08 paid Danyell Gadsby for a ring and new Casting of a weight of 50 li' 00 02 06 ffor a new weight of 20 li' 00 03 00 ffor mending 2 weights of 30 li' and 10 li' 00 01 00 ffor shoing of beast 00 06 04 ffor 2 pitchforkes 00 101 120 ffor mending a little bill 00 00 03 ffor a flaskett 00 02 06 paid ye Cowper for all worke 00 02 08 paid for bringing of Cheese att 10d per 100 li' from feuersham 00 01 08 ffor 243 li' of Cheese att 2d qr' per li' 02 05 06 paid Browne ye Smith for all his worke 00 05 00September 8 ffor lining my hatt 00 01 08 217 paid Ihon Sotherden for 7 score pound of beefe att 3s 8d paid 20 li' 01 05 06 24 paid Ihon Tyle ye mason for a monthes worke att 12d per diem for himselfe, and 6d per diem for his man(?), beside theire dyett wanting one day 01 10 08 paid Iennings ye Cowper for putting in 3 staues and mending of ye 260 hogwash toubb 00 02 00 ffor lining my tow hatts with russett taffaty 00 03 08 ffor 8 ells of hopse Canuas for 2 hopsackes 00 08 00 ffor pacthreade 00 00 02 25 paid for bringing in of 3 loade of tyles viz: 1500 att a loade, from walter Munds to surrenden 00 09 00 27 paid master Copley ffor all small tithes due between Michaelmas and our Lady day ^our lady --day and michaelmas^ 00 10 00 paid Arroes ye shomaker for shoes for ye Child 00 01 02 ffor mending my bootes 00 03 00 ffor shoes and mending for Bocher 00 03 04 28 paid Sotherden for 70 li' of beefe att 3s 8d 00 12 06 paid Walter Mund for 11500 of tyles att 10s ^8d^ per 1000 06 02 06?0(?) Item for 100 of Corner and Gutter tyles 00 05 00 Itpaid ffrankwell for 2 bedd matts 00 04 06 paid Stephen pell October 2. for 6 weekes v?beefe from Iuly. 29. to 261 September 8. att 4s 4d. att 4s. and att 3s 8d per scoare. being ye last payment due to him. being viz: 388 li' of beefe. 03 17 06 ffor mutton 00 0?12 00 Sewett one pound. dim' 00 00 06October 4 Reckoned with Harper and paid vt seqquitur: Imprimis paid for mowing and making of hay this sommer att seuerall places &c 03 12 01 paid Robert Iourdaine for 6 weeks att 1s 6d per weeke 00 09 09 ffor oyle 00 00 06 ffor salt a bushell 00 02 00 A per of stockins for ye Child 00 00 10 A reast augar. 00 00 06 A bowe wimble 00 00 02 An oxe yoake 00 02 06 ffor broomes 00 00 02?4 25 - 12 - 4 17 - 4 - 10?2 16 - 10 - 2? 10 262[f.47v] 1625 Second half yeareSeptember 30 paid Iohn Sotherden for 80 li' of beefe att 3s 8d per 20 li' score 00 14 06 Item for 3 li' of beefe sewett 00 01 00 paid for 2 Couple of rabetts 00 02 04 1625 ffirst half yeare.October 4 ffor mowing of Barly att 1s 8d per acre 00 04 00 paid Ihon Battherst for 3 weekes viz: for all his worke vntill Bartholmew day 00 12 00 ffor 5 gallons of butter att 3s 4d per gallon 00 16 08 ffor mustardseede 00 00 02 ffor a touett of bay salt 00 01 00 ffor 3 welsh runts and 2 heyfares att 2li'-9s-0d apeece bought August 23. 12 05 00 ffor a blacke mare of 4 yeare old, bought of [blank] Hall of [blank] for ye Coach 05 10 00 263 Giuen vnto Harper 01 00 00 _________ paid vnto Theophilus Tylghman for all worke done by him from ye later end of Iune vnto Michaelmas day att 3s 6d per weeke broake and whole in haying and haruesting. 02 025 06 paid my wiues houshold booke for all this qrter' from midsommer to michaelmas 02 00 02 paid more for mowing 00 05 00Nouember 4 paid Mary Rutting her wages due from midsommer vntill Michaelmas 00 12 00 Item paid Susan ffowler for ye like 01 00 00 15 paid my cosen Ihon Dering for 6 seames of mault att att 2s 4d and 2s 2d per seame which serued for 3 brewings from ye first of August vnto ye Michaelmas day. 05 09 04 25 - 10 - 10 Summ totall of this half yeare for houshold expences 264 98 - 14 - 11[f.48r] 1625 Second halfe yeare.September 30 paid Ihon Sotherden for 80 li' of beefe att 3s 8d per score 00 14 06 Item for 3 li' of beefe sewett 00 01 00October 3 paid for 2 Couple of Rabetts 00 02 04 4 paid for 2 seames dim' of seede wheate att 30s per seame, bought of Robert Vergen att Leneham to be sowen in Chaltagh' 04 10 00 ffor bottoming a seiue 00 00 06 ffor making of a gutt for ye brewhouse 00 02 00 ffor a tonnell 00 02 04 ffor a hoope 00 00 02 ffor a Couer to ye hop=tubb. 00 01 00 Bought att Maydestone fayre: october 6. 8 ffor 3 pottle bottles 00 01 06 ffor 7 quart bottles 00 01 11 ffor 6 gallons and a pottle of Ch?larett wine, filled into [blank] bottles of quart size, and 3 pottle 265 bottles att [blank] per qrt' 00 17 04 ffor 3 pottles ^and a quart^ of white wine in ^.6.^ quart bottles att [blank] per quart 00 04 08 ffor 3 pottles and 3 pints of sacke att [blank] per quart, filled in 6 quart bottles 00 07 06 A sleekestone 00 00 04 63 yds of white ^inkle^ Cotton to make blanketts 00 00 03 6 li' of starch 00 01 09 1 li' of Allmonds 00 01 02 silke riband 00 01 03 12 ells of holland to make my wife smockes and ye Child shirtes att 2s 8d per ell 01 12 00 2000 of pinnes. 00 02 02 horsemeate when I sent for these things 00 02 00 Stephens dyett then paid goodman Tylghman for 3 dayes this week 00 01 06 9 paid vnto Thomas Moater for 2 per of Course sheetes for seruingmen 00 10 00 paid vnto Ihon Woulton for halfe a seame of seede wheate for Chaltagh 01 00 00 paid Ben[iamin] Browne ye smith for 266 pforging of ploughirons &c 00 02 10 ffor nayles for a ^new^ gutt in ye brewhouse 00 00 06 ffor all shoing 00 03 02 11 paid for hastefers long since 00 00 03 12 paid Ihon Sotherden for 80 li' of beefe taken in on ye 7th of October att 3s 8d per 20 li' 00 14 06 15 paid Theophilus Tylghman for a weekes work 00 03 00 16 Shoing of oxen 00 02 06 A piper key for ye parke lodge 00 00 08 paid Richard Bocher for brewing 3 times 00 06 00 18 paid goodman Mason vt sequitur: Imprimis for 2 deale boardes bought att ffeuersham to make a gutt in ye bree?whouse of 00 03 00 ffor bringing them 00 00 06 2 bushells of bay salt, water measure 00 04 00 ffor bringing itt home 00 00 10 paid Ihon Sotherden for 60 li' of beefe 00 11 00 22 paid for vnto [blank] Den for 20 leane weathers of 3 yeare old apeece 11 00 00 25 paid vnto Simon Mathewes for 9 bb' of 267 seede wheate to sowe in Chaltagh att 4s 9d per b' 02 02 09 paid Danyell Smart for 6 gallons, one quart, and a pint of butter, att 3s 4d per gallon 01 01 00 29 1400 of 4d nayles 00 04 08Nouember 4 paid Ihon Sotherden for 80 li' of beefe att taken on ye 29 of october' att 3s 8d per score 00 14 06 Item paid him for ye like qrtit' quantity taken Nouember 4 00 14 06 A qrter' of porke 00 03 00 ffor herrings 00 00 04 12 paid Richard Bocher for brewing 00 02 00 ffor Syssing 00 00 06 A qrter' of veale 00 03 06 3 li' of butter 00 01 01 25 - 13 - 3[f.48v] 1625Nouember Second half yeare paid Iennyngs for a new hogshead 00 08 00 268 4 paid Ben[iamin] Browne for hogg=ringles 00 00 02 Item for mending ye husbandman's irons 00 01 05 15 paid Ihon Sotherden for 100 li' of beefe taken in on ye 11 of Nouember att 3s 8d per score 00 18 00 16 paid my cosen Ihon Dering for 6 seames dim' of mault att 2s-2d and att 2s per seame which serued for 3 brewings beginning from Michaelmas day. 05 10 00 memorandum that 20 bb' of mault Came in Nouember since ye last brewing which was ye last weeke. so itt is ready for ye next time, but paid for now. 18 103 li' of beefe att 3s 8d per score 00 18 08 a qrter' of porke 00 03 04 20 A new iron hoope for ye well buckett weighing 7 li' dim' att 4d per pound 00 02 06 paid Harper for 5 welsh beast bought on tuesday last. viz: 4 steares att 1li'-13s4-4d a peece, and one heyfar att 36s 08 09 00 Item one working branded ^pyed pye-d^ steere of [blank] yeare 269 old bought of Barling of Egerton 06 09 00 14 pulletts and co*ckerells 00 04 06 A Cleauer and two axes 00 03 08 A sledge and one ^sockett^ wedge att 4d per pound 00 06 00 ffor 5 Chicken bougt by Stephen 00 01 06 2 Couple of fish att 1d per pound 00 03 00 Herrings 00 00 04 mending of ye Candlesticke 00 00 04 A Couple of rabetts 00 01 02 26 paid Miles ye carrier for bringing downe from London wine, stourgeon &c. att ob' per li' glasses, Lemmons &c att ob' per pound 00 08 00 paid hIohonson in part of payment for dressing my hop=ground, ye first payment 00 12 00 Bought by my cosen bringborn att London for me, Nouember 22. A dozen of pottle bottles and corkes 00 05 00 Nouember 23. A kegg of stourgeon 00 15 00 Nouember 24. 6 lemmons 00 02 00 ffor portage of thinges 00 00 07 27 paid ffrankwell for Carrying a letter into ye mersh to Bateman for fowle 00 00 08 24 bought of master Willnott att ye signe 270 of ye K[ing]s head in Leaden hall streete. 5 gallons. 3 qrtes' of Canary att 4s per gallon 01 03 00 A little rundlett to bring itt downe in 00 01 04 5 gallons, and 5 pintes of Clarett, and and of white in ten bottles att 2s 2d per gallon 00 12 02 one gallon and a pint of Ipocrist?e in two bbottles, att 6s ye gallon 00 06 09 30 80 li' of beefe att 3s 8d per score 00 14 06 6 welsh steeres att 3li' 13s 4d per steere 22 00 00 D?Carre and watching of them 00 00 02 paid Marden for sowing leather for flayles 00 00 06December 2 mending of ye buckett hoope 00 00 03 A Sockett wedge and a ring 00 02 06 A ring for a nother wedge 00 00 03 4 paid Iennyngs for a hoggeshead 00 08 00 6 Giuen William Bateman his boy for bringing wild foule out of ye mersh which his master gaue to me 00 04 00 7 24 Conyes bought of Sir Th[omas] 271 Culpeper his warrener 00 16 00 52 - 13 - 3[f.49r] 1625December Second half yearebetween 8 et Bought by my Cosen ffrancis Bringborne 12. att London december i. and spent att Surrenden december 8. 9 et 10. vt sequitur: 12 duck and Mallard 00 12 00 12 teales 00 06 00 18 Snites 00 09 00 A baskett Cord and portage 00 00 11 paid ye carrier for bringing these downe [blank] halfe a ferking of soape and portage 00 07 07 A box for Candles 00 01 00 5 dozen pound of candles att 5d ye pound 01 05 00 ffor a Cord and portage 00 00 03 A sugar loafe off []8d[]att 16d per 272 li' 00 11 08 12 li' of Currants 00 04 00 2 ounces of mace 00 01 06 12 li' of prunes att 2s 3d 00 02 03 dim' li' of nuttmeggs 00 02 00 4 ounces of Cinnamon 00 01 04 Dim' li' of ginger 00 00 08 2 ounces of best Cloues 00 01 00 6 li' of sugar att 13d per li' 00 06 06 5 li' of sugar att 13d ob' per li' 00 05 07 Annyseedes 00 00 06 12 li' of butter 00 04 06 Onyons 00 00 04 ffish 00 00 04 A per of bellowes for ye kitchin 00 00 06 4 Capons 00 05 10 3 neates tongues att Ashford 00 02 00 5 neates tongues att ye buchers heere 00 05 00 Giuen Sander Hart for helping things bought 00 00 06 A qrter' of porke 00 04 06 A qrter' of veale 00 02 08 A bullockes inward 00 02 06 Giuen G.Pout for help in ye kitchin 00 00 08 8?494 li' in one fortnight att 3s 8d per score whereof 3 Chines 04 10 04 273 Sewett 12 li' 00 02 00 A veale 01 00 00 A piggs harslett 00 00 08 5 yds of Kersey to make ye kitchin byoy a suite. 00 11 00 paid Richard Bocher for ridding of 12 trees 00 08 00 A Couple of rabetts 00 01 04 Stephens iourneyes to inuite guestes 00 01 04 paid Thomas Woodward of maydstone for all ye dry sweete meates att ye banquett 07 14 00 12 mending a stuppenett 00 00 02 paid Danyell gadsby for shoing of 2 ^per of^ beast 00 05 00 paid ye Carrier for bringing downe 110 li' weight of soape and Candles &c 00 04 06 paid ye other Carrier for bringing wild foule 00 02 06 13 paid Deward and Wood for grubbing vp ye part of ye Shaue in hennills without ye pale 02 00 00 Giuen december 10. to Robert Sir Thomas Wotton his cooke for helping allmost a weeke 01 00 00 giuen his man for ye like 00 10 00 274 19 Shoing my 2 steeres 00 052^2^ 010 25 - 1 - 11[f.49v] 1625December Second half yeare. 20 paid Goodwife Hills for helping in ye chamber and kitchin 5 weekes att 2s 6d per weeke 00 13 00 23 paid and discharged Mary Sharpe 01 00 00 paid for 80 li' of beife taken in on ye 16. december. 00 14 06 24 paid Iennings ye cowper 00 01 06 paid Oldfathers for helpe in ye Kitchin att Ned's Christning 00 01 00 paid Richard Bocher for help in ye buttery 00 00 06 paid him for brewing december 12 00 02 00 4 beere glasses 00 02 00 4 wine glasses 00 01 06 A per of shoes for ye kitchin boy 00 02 02 mending shoes for him 00 00 10 26 2 dozen dim' of candles at? 275 1-26-6d bought att Ashford, whereof abated for 30 li' of tallow 10s att 4d per li'. 00 12 06 half a ferkin of best soape december 3 00 08 06 paid more for help att ye Christning of Ned 00 01 00 27 paid [blank] of Smarden, for 4 dozen pound dim' of Candles att 4s 6d per dozen, all spent before december 01 04 06 30 paid Ihon Sotherden for 50 li' of beefe 00 10 00 paid him for 2 sides of small nutton 00 08 00Ianuary 13 paid Nicholas Pemble for 60 bushellsvid Ianuary of oates att 16d ob' per bushell 24. viz. 11s per seame, 7 seames dimd': brought home 04 02 06 paid Browne ye Smith for a new Coulter and a sheare 00 07 08 Irons to a yoake 00 01 00 mending a forke 00 00 02 mending of a mattocke 00 00 04 paid Elmer for making a suite, for Canuas, lininges, buttons, pocketts, and stiffning for a suite for Bocher 00 07 06 276 14 paid for 6 bpottle bottles of Clarett wine bought December 12. 00 09 04 Charges of bringing itt 00 00 06 ffor yest 00 00 02 paid Ihon Lucas for help aboutt ye Christning time 00 03 06 paid December 26 for 3 ells of canuas to make ba?ocher two shirtes 00 04 00 16 Giuen att my fathers when we came thence 00 04 00 19 ffor 3 gallons dimd' of Butter from mistress Spice att 3s 4d per gallon 00 11 08 ffor a Crocke 00 00 04 paid Richard Bocher and George ffreind for fa*gotting of 470 of fa*gotts att 5 groates per li' l00 In Henfellds shaue 00 07 10 paid them for Cutting of ye topps and rootes of ye same wood att ye same price 00 07 010 paid them for ridding a part of ye same shaue 00 15 00 paid Richard Bocher for Brewing this day 00 02 00 21 paid Ihonson his second payment ye full of 20s for dressing my 277 hopgarden 00 08 00 23 paid ye Bucher Ihon Sotherden for 3 weekes beefe viz. l080 li' att 4ds per score 01 16 00 Item a qrter' of mutton 00 02 06 24 paid Sir Thomas Culpeper's warrener for 2 dozen and 6 conyes aliue to store my groune with att 10s per dozen 01 05 00 18 - 0 - 4[f.50r] l[625]Ianuary Second half yeare 24 paid my wiues houshold booke for all houshold expences from Michaelmas to Christmas 01 15 11 28 Giuen a boy that brought word about my haysta^c^ke that itt was falling downe 00 00 02 ffor red herringes 00 00 04 paid Ben[iamin] Browne ye smith for forgeing ploughirons 00 01 10 278 ffor plates and bradds 00 01 00 ffor a bayle and iron hoope to ye bottome of ye stable paile payle 00 01 00 ffor hobnayles for ye kitchin boyes shoes 00 00 02 31 paid Frankwell for going to maydestone to fetch conyes 00 01 00February 20 paid Sotherden for 142 li' of beefe att 4s 6d per score 01 11 10 Sewitt 9 li' 00 03 00 A bullockes inward 00 04 00 24 ffor forgeing of ploughirons 00 04 00?44 mending a stuppenett. 00 00 04 A haps and 2 staples 00 00 02 28 6 wodden dishes, one boll, one drinking Cupp, and 12 Spoones 00 01 06March 7 paid for carrying of hopps to feu^r^esham 00 07 00 A grindstone for husbandmen's tooles 00 05 00 paid Deward and Wood for making of 46 rodds of hedge and dike between ye two Pickenwells and grubbing ye trees that grew out along there, att 16d per rodd 03 01 00 10 paid Harper vt seqquitur 279 Imprimis for a touett of bay salt 00 01 00 Att Ned's ffor 6 whinder's att Ned's christning 00 03 00 christning ffor 3 eeles 00 01 02 ffor egges 00 00 06 8 geese att 17d per goose 00 11 04 3 Ladles 00 00 04 A gallon 00 00 05 2 fothering lines 00 00 07 2A sowes one att 16s another att 11 01 07 00 5 gallons 3 pints of butter bougy?ht of goodwife Pell att 3s 4d per gallon 00 17 10 1?0 118 li' of Cheese att 2d per li' 00 19 08 A branded steere bought of Potkins 06 00 00 6 gallons of butter att 3s 4d bought of Knocke. 01 00 00 100 li' of Cheese att 2d per li' 00 016 08 ffor catch of [blank] moules 00 02 00 ffor pitch 00 00 08 ffor a dayes worke about ye haystacke 00 01 00 ffor a spade 00 01 06 300 of quicksett for my east feild 00 01 06 ffor ridding ye hedge along ye walnutt trees 00 05 00 paid to Richard Bocher and George Frend for ridding of Henfeildes 280 shaue 02 02 00 paid them for ridding a little peece of a shaue within ye parke 00 15 00 paid them for fa*gotting vp that peece of shaue, and for cutting itt out being but 200 and odd fa*gotts 00 09 00 greene cotton to make Anthony a petticoate 00 04 08 paid Edw[ard?] Nower for 2 steeres a pyed one and a branded 12 10 00 paid Gadsby for shoing of beast 00 05 00 36 - 11 - 5[f.50v] 1625March Second half yeare ______________ A pound of hayle shott 00 00 02 A touett of Oatemeale 00 01 00 2 gallons of oatemeale 00 00 10 paid for making 4 bushells of oates into a bushell and a halfe of Oatemeale, and a peck of itt into 281 gratts 00 01 00 A Seame of wheate bought of Lawty 02 00 00 half a seame of wheate of ffowler 01 00 00 paid Iames Henman for 2 seames of wheate 03 18 00 paid Him more for 15 bb' of wheate 03 13 02 giuen Harper in this reckoning 00 00 04 13 12 li' of starch and a box 00 04 08 half a ferkin of Soape 00 07 06 6 gallons and 3 pints of vineger 00 06 04 A vessell for ye vineger 00 01 00 A baskett, Cord, and hay kto pack vp in 00 00 08 14 paid the? Harper, for 2 seames of wheate bought of [blank] ffox 04 00 00 A touett andof pease bought of master Bettenham 00 01 08 paid Deward and wood for 2 dayes worke in felling of Pickenwell shaue 00 05 00 12 bb' of oates bought of [blank] King 00 15 00 paid my father which he had disbursed for me. Imprimis to Sotherden for 180 li' of beefe for 3 weekes whilest I was 282 att London 01 17 10 ffor suett 00 00 08 ffor Mutton 00 04 04 fforItem paid to Sir Thomas Culpeper's warrenner for 24 conyes att 10s per dozen to store my parke 02 00 00 paid for 7 qrts' of sacke bought att London 00 08 09 20 the Charge of Carrying of my old broken pewter vp to London by water from ffeuersham, 00 01 06 paid ye Charges of sending fower sackes of Hopps to London. Imprimis to ye Hoyman for ye fraight 6s. Item towards his a(?)ckett 8d. for wharfa*ge waterbale and howsing 2 nights --- 1s-8d to porters for loading them 8d. for Cartage to haue them wayed. 8d. to ye weighers for weighing them ls-6d. giuen theire men. 2d. for groundage of them att Summers key. 4d. spent in ye sale of them. 3d. Summ of all Charge 00 11 11 paid to master sSmith for ye Exchange of old pewter (^he^ allowing but 6d per li' for ye 283 mettall of chamberpotts.) for new pewter att 2d ob' per li' for ye exchange of 71 li' 3/4 00 10 10 paid ye Carrier for bringing downe sugar [blank] Item for bringing of picture frames [blank] 212 ffor sweeping 4 Chimnyes 00 01 08 paid Richard Bocher for brewing 00 02 04 paid Gadsby for shoing of beastes 00 03 00 paid Elnor for making ye kitchin boy a doublett and for mending his breeches and for buttones 00 2?02 111 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 30 dayes ending March. 20 00 15 00 paid Ihon Lucas for 10 dayes 00 05 00 24 Candles 7 li' 00 02 06 Currantes 2 li' 00 00 09 Brimston 2 li' 00 00 10 garden seedes 00 01 02 100 li' of 3d' nayles to matt a Chamber 00 00 03 A quart of pease 00 00 06 23 - 7 - 7 [At this point the gathering of 12 smaller leaves, now 284consisting of 11 leaves (numbered ff. 51r - 61v) and a stubconjugate with f. 56, was inserted into the volume. The aboveHousehold expenses for 1625 continue on f. 62r where they end.Dering then starts entering his Foreign payments for 1625 on thefirst page of the new gathering, f. 51r.][f.62r][March] 1625 Second half yeare _____________________ 24 ffor forgeing of plough irons 00 02 06 ffor 2 keyes and mending of a locke 00 01 02 ffor bringing downe of wine 00 01 06 paid and discharged Susan Fowler for one half yeares wages when she went from my wife to serue ye duch*ess of Buckingham 02 00 00 giuen her ouer aboue her wages 00 05 00 hemp 12 li' 00 06 02 Moules 2 dozen and 48 caught by taylour 00 02 08 Stephen's dyett and horsemeat att ffeuersham 00 03 00 paid my wiues houshold booke for this last qrter' 00 16 010May 3 paid Harper for la-yd out by him, 285 viz: In March and february vt sequitur: paid Fox for 3 Crockes of butter att 3s 4d per gallon 01 08 07 Item for fothering 6 beastes in Daneford per 15 weekes 00 07 06 paid master Bettenham for 1 bush' dim' of pease 00 05 00 paid Richard Bocher and George Freinde for fencing and fa*gotting 01 00 00 paid [blank] for 17 rodds of fence in broade ford mill feild 00 05 08 paid goodwife Codwell for 24 bb' of tares att 2s 4d per bush' 02 12 00 paid Harper for 16 bushells vt supra 0?01 14 08 paid Harper for 12 bb' of -pease att 3s 4d per bb' 02 00 00Feuersham - 15 Cowple of fish att 15d 01 02 06bill. 315 li' of Cheise att 2d qr'. 02 19 05february 2. halfe a Cade of redd herring 00 05 00 2 bb' of salt 00 06 00 13 - 12 - 5 ffor bringing these 00 04 10 giuen Sander Hart 00 02 0018-12-2 286 Sum of this halfe yeare ____________May 204?200 10 60 18?95 - 0 - 02 6 paid Simon Matheuewes for 11. Seames of Oates att 10s per Seame 05 10 00 Item for ploughing of 6 acres wanting 27 pererches 01 09 00 Item for a gallon of pease 00 00 056 _____________25-11-8 this half 206 - 19 - 6 yeare ____________ Summ totall of this yeares Expences in houshold Charge _________________________ 298305 - 143 -16 ______________________ [The Household expenses for 1625 that started on f. 46r endhere. The Foreign payments for this year start on f. 51r and endon f. 57r. See note at beginning of f. 46r.][f.51r] 1625. 287 ________ ffirst halfe yeare.Aprill'. fforreigne payments 2 Giuen Doctor Rowzer for aduice vpon water 00 05 00 Horsemeate and man's meate att Ashford 00 01 04 Wine there 00 01 04 3 paid Myles ye Carrier for all due to him 00 10 06 Att London. 5 Going by water there 00 01 00 6 Giuen ye poore + 00 00 02 7 Barber 00 02 06 paid vnto porters 00 00 06 A false scabberd 00 00 10 ye ffarrier had for dressing my gelding 00 04 00 Chamber=rent and fa*gotts there 00 04 00 Dyett by ye way home 00 07 10 Horsemeate this iourney 00 10 00 Giuen this iourney 00 09 00 Spent this iourney 2li' 6d. 9 Horsemeat att Maydstone 00 00 06 Wine there 00 02 00 10 Giuen att Boucghton 00 03 06 12 per of shoes for Anthony 00 01 00 288 paid Arrowes ye shoemaker for all 00 01 04 15 Giuen Mihill Wood a poore man of Lenham 00 02 00 Giuen a poore man of Charing + 00 00 06 20 Giuen att Boucghton when ^I and^ my wife lay there 001 00 06 21 Giuen att Sir Norton Knatchbulls 00 06 00 Giuen master Lamb ye towne=clarke of Hethe, when I was made free there 01 02 00 White wine and Sugar bestowed vpon ye Mayour and Iurates and freemen of Hethe, vpon ye same occasion, I then being Chosen Burgess of that port 03 06 00 Giuen att Oestenhanger 00 00 06 my ordinary att co*ck's hoath vpon ye 19 of April 00 02 06 my man's meate and horse roome there 00 02 00 Sir Thomas Wotton had of me 00 00 06 22 paid Barrett for mending of my Clocke 00 04 06 paid and discharged Henry Norrington att his parting all that was due and more being lesse then a quarter's wages for less then a quarters seruice 001 00 00 23 Giuen a poore man of Herriottsham + 00 00 06 289 24 paid for 6 yds of gold and silluer lace for my wiues best gowne 00 17 06 29 ffor Riband for knotts for my wife 00 04 08May 6 paid for my horses att Hethe Aprill 21 00 01 04 paid for Shoing there, ^&c^ att Boucghton May 3 00 01 -10 Horses att Maydston. 00 01 06 Stephens dyett att Maydston. 00 01 06 Wine att Maydston and Berghsted 00 04 00 Giuen att Sir Thomas Wottons May. 34 00 14 00 Giuen att my Cosen Hawles May. 2 00 05 00 3 ells of holland att 2s 4d per ell: bought att Ashford 00 07 00 500 of 4d nayle bought att Ashford fayre 00 01 04 200 of 6d nayle 00 01 00 Stephens dyett and horsemeate there 00 00 10 7 paid Browne ye smith, for shoing and remouing 00 04 02 paid Harpers charges att Maydston when he went with me, att Choice of ye knights for this shire 00 03 04 15 mending my saddle 00 010 08 horse and man att Ashford 00 00 04 horse att way may. 11. 00 00 0-6 290 14 - 4 - 4[f.51v] 1625. fforraigne paymentsMay. ffirst half yeare. ____________________ 16 poore + 00 00 03 Remouing my trunke + 00 01 04 Thread + 00 00 01 20 Chamber rent att London 00 02 06 Laundresse 00 00 06 A knife for my selfe 00 03 06 Going by water about London 00 02 00 Horesemeate 00 15 02 Dyett for my self and men att London &c 01 13 01 Dyett att Dartford when my Lady Ashbornham and my Lady Dixy Came downe &c 01 00 00 Giuen this iourney 00 09 04 N L. 00 10 00 Stephen had of me in reckonings 00 00 05 26 Giuen att Boucghton 00 01 00 28 Bought a lattine booke, de Iesuitismo 00 01 00 291 Dyett and wine this iourney between 27 of may and 2 of Iune when I went to Bulloine in ffrance and returned home yett I dyetted most meales with ye countesses of Buckingham and Denbigh' &c - viz. for me and 2 men 02 18 06 Horsemeate 01 07 08 Giuen 00 14 09 poore Irish man att Bulloine + 00 00 06 A bridle per of stirrups and leathers 00 03 00 ffor shoing this iourney 00 01 00 Thread and pins 00 00 02 paid for my passage by shipp from Bulloine to Douer 00 15 00 giuen the boatesman brought me on shore 00 00 06 N L. his iourney 00 068 08 ffor my Chamber rent att bulloine 2 nights 00 08 00Iune. 56 paid for shoing my gelding 00 01 08 7 paid Leonard ffoster for his dyett and for horsemeat when I sent him from London 00 02 10 15 between ye 9th and ye 15th of Iune 292 when I and my wife, Sir Peter and my sister &c were att Douer and Canterbury attending vpon my promise to wayte on ye Duke and Countess of Buckingham &c. viz: spent in all - 8 6-17-0 whereof Sir Peter paid 2li'. 04 17 00 20 Giuen Richard Spice for making of a bond 00 01 00 paid Ihon Barton for 3 qrters' of a yeares wages, and so Discharged of him 004 02 06 paid and discharged Robert King for all his time and 2s giuen him 00 12 00 22 paid master Gibbert Kinder for one halfe yeares vsance of 100li' 05 00 00 7 yds of dymety and ye drawing of itt and blacke worstead to worke itt to make my wh wife a petticoate 01 08 0023.et 26. ye Sergeants fee to ye parlyament house 00 02 00 ye Chlearkes fee 00 02 06 giuen ye vnder Clarkes 00 01 00 A Catalogue of ye Knights burgesses and barons 00 05 00 293 Chamber rent att London 00 07 00 Going by water to and from London, and there 00 16 00 Hackneyes and posthorse fromm Grauesend home 00 16 00 Chamber rent att London 00 skere(?) 00 03 00 30 - 15 - 55[f.52r] 1625 fforraigne Payments.Iune. ffirst halfe yeare Dyett for me and my man 00 12 08 Horsemeate 00 03 06 Giuen 00 06 10 N L. this iourney 00 03 00 28 A new spring for my watch 00 10 00 giuen Andrew Hills 00 00 06Iune 4 Giuen for 2 mastiffes a?bt?ought att feuersham, to be giuen to my Lord Duke of Buckingham his grace 01 01 00 giuen Ihon Hunt for fetching them 00 01 06 dd' of a letter about them 00 00 06 294 11 A booke of ye orders appointed in time of pestilence 00 00 06 Dyett, and going by water and other Charges for stephen to London and backe 00 13 00 Giuen him 00 01 04 paid for Charges for schooling &c of George Elton vntill michaelmas 00 13 06 dd' master Royden before hand 00 05 00 An assesse for ye poore of Ashford when ye infection of ye plague was there 00 00 06 An assesse for ye poore of Pluckley 00 13 04 20 Giuen ye poore of Ashford ! att a generall fast 00 01 00 25 Giuen Ihon Lu^c^us Luccas att his marriage 00 11 00 26 The booke of ye forme of prayer, and orders for fasting this time of visitation &c 00 01 00 28 paid for making a bond: to Richard Spice 00 01 00 Giuen att Eastwell parke gate 00 01 00 Dd' to my wife to pay master Iacques vpon a bargaine made before ^we^ were marryed: viz: for a little 295 Clocke giuen her 10?8 00 00Iuly: 29 Spent whent I went to ye parliamentAugust 15. att Oxford between Iuly 29. and August 15. viz: In Dyett 02 015 00 Horsemeate and shoing 01 06 10 Lodging in Oxford for one night 00 10 00 Giuen in this iourney att Peckham, att Brasen nose College, att Merton College, to ye library keepers, and by ye way 02 06 08 poore by ye way + 00 01 08 poore of London + 00 05 00 The Catalogue of ye bookes in Oxford Library 00 02 04 Syngenia Caroli Butler 00 00 06 N L. 01 09 06 Sum: totall of this iourney. 8li'.-17s-6d.August 10 paid master William Bradshaw vpon his returne from fflorence 5 for one viz: rec[eiue]d of him in may 20s 1623. 20s. and paid now vnto him 5li'. so in all 04 00 00 17 Giuen att Eastwell when my wife lay there 00 18 00 18 Giuen Thomas wild 00 01 00 296 22 wine att Wye etc 00 02 00 Giuen Sir Timothy Thornhill his boy 00 01 00 25 Spent and giuen att Eastwell when my doggs killed a bucke and I tooke ye say 00 05 06 paid for 5 per of gloues for Nicholas Aspall 12620 00 03 00 paid Ihon Marden for all Chlarkes wages due till midsommer Last 00 03 02September 2 Giuen att Eastwell 00 01 00 8 Strapps to my saddle 00 00 10 3 gyrthes for my saddle 00 001 00 Giuen on munday last att my Lord Tenhams' 00 01 00 ffor shoing of my oxen 00 04 010 poore + 00 01 00 10 Giuen att Eastwell to ye Keeper when I tooke say and my doggs killed a brace of buckes 00 05 00 29 - 7 - 6[f.52v] 1625 297September ffirst half yeare 18 paid master moter for dim' seame of oates taken of him in Iune 1622. which he neuer asked for vntill now att 15d per bushell 00 05 00 paid him for a looking glasse 00 07 00 24 paid for 6 yds of Cobweblane att 2s 6d for my wife 00 15 00 Giuen ffrancis Ianyuer(?) for veiwing of ffishpoole wood 00 01 00 Giuen att eastwell 00 01 00 25 paid for liuery Cloath bought long since 001 10 00 26 Halfe a bushell of Tarras 00 01 06 paid for bringing of itt to Surree?nden 00 00 06October 6 paid and discharged Leonard ffoster from the time of his Comming march [blank] vnto this day being halfe a yeare and 3 weekes 02 05 00September 24 paid Ihon Tyle ye mason for a months worke att 10d per diem for himselfe, and 6d per diem for his man beside theire dyett, wanting one day 01 10 08 25 paid for bringing of 3 loade of tyles viz: 1500 att a loade, from walter 298 mund his ke?oll to my house 00 09 00 28 paid Walter Mund for 11500 of tyles att 10s 8d per 1000 06 02 00 Item for 100 of Corner tyles and gutter tyles 00 05 00October 4 per of stockins for ye Child bought by Harper 00 00 10 paid for a blacke mare for ye Coache bought of Thomas Hall of Hoathfeild then 4 yeare old and ye vayle 05 10 00 paid this half yeare but vncertaine when. viz.may. 20 A per of kniues for my wife 00 05 00 Bables for Anthony. 00 01 04Iune. 28 greene stuffe for a Coate for him 01 04 00 greene silke and gold lace for itt 4 ounces 01 04 00Iuly. 1. paid Danyell ffuller for 60 bushells of lime viz: a loade dim': att 12s per loade, and 5s bringing 01 03 00 11 A setting steele 00 00 10 22 yds of linnen to make [blank] per of course sheetes 001 01 00 28 paid and discharged Owen Iones for 5 weekes 00 09 00September 28 ffor 2 beddmatts 00 04 06 299 _____________ paid for 3 per of shoes for Anthony 00 03 02 A per of stockins for him 00 00 11 paid Theophilus Tylghman for all his worke beside hay making and haruesting 01 03 00Nouember 4 paid Harry ffisher all wages due vntill michaelmas 02 00 00 paid Stephen Kennard half a yeares wages due att Michaelmas 02 10 00 paid Ihon Hunt for all his worke, due to him att our Lady day 01 05 00 Giuen william Harper october 4 01 00 00 Item paid him for one full halfe yeare 05 10 00 giuen William Harper october 4 01 00 00May. 20 A new key to my trunke 00 01 06N L Iune paid ye taylour for worke for my wife 00 09 06 Iuly. Item for worke for Anthony 00 04 00 August Charges when we sent for priscilla 00 01 04 September mending my mans saddle 00 02 00 ffor lining one hatt 00 01 08 ffor lining 2 hatts with russett 00 03 08 ffor mending bootes 00 03 00 paid ye smith for shoing 00 06 00 4d. 5d. and 6d nayles this half yeare 01 00 07 300 41 - 1 - 6. ___________________ Summ totall of forraigne expences this half yeare. 115 - 8 - 9[f.53r] 1625October Second half yeare. 8 3 yds of white Cotton att 1s-8d per yd to make Childrens blanketts 00 05 00 6 yds of Dimittee att 2s 4d per yd to make 2 wastcoates for my wife 00 14 00 A psalter for Anthony. 00 01 00 13 paid goodman Hills for 3 dayes worke for himself and his boy in setting of ye Cesterne att Mosewell Spring 00 04 00 15 paid Ihon Tyle for 12 dayes worke in mending and repayring ye house vt supra September 24 00 16 00 16 A per of stockins for my wife 00 05 06 A per of stockins for my boy 00 01 04 8 12 ells of holland to make smockes 301 for my wife and shirts for Antho[n]y. att 2s 8d per ell 01 12 00 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 3 dayes worke 00 01 06 15 paid Theophilus Tylghman for a weekes worke 00 06 00 17 Giuen Leonard ffoster for his Cloake when he went away 00 14 00 paid Ihon Tyle and his man for one dayes worke 00 01 04 18 Giuen mistress Hayman ye midwife for being heere 3 whole dayes 00 10 00 21 Giuen att Eastwell 00 02 00 22 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 5 dayes 00 02 06 paid Richard Bocher for 5 dayes work 00 02 06 paid for my first subsedy due to K[ing] Charles 01 00 00 29 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 5 dayes work 00 02 06 paid Richard Bocher for 5 dayes work 00 02 06 paid for my first fifteene to K[ing] Charles 00 04 00 30 paid ye charges when I sent to] Chelsy for my Lady Ashbornham 00 10 00 Giuen to George Elton's vse ! att Battersey + 00 05 06 302 ffor wallnutts att 4d per 100 to sett in ye best garden 00 02 02Nouember 4 A knife for ye Kitchin boy 00 00 04 giuen Whitelockes boy for going of an errand 00 00 02 7 giuen att my Cosen Hawles 00 03 10 giuen att Berghsted 00 00 08 Spent in wine there 00 04 00 paid vnto Bess ffisher for vse of mony due vnto her Nouember 29 04 00 00 memorandum: paid vnto her likewise by my Cosen H. Hawle, about ye middo?le of may for halfe a yeares vse of 100li' dperue May. 29 04 10 00 12 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 11 dayes worke 00 05 06 paid Richard Bocher for 8 dayes worke 00 04 00 Item for brewing 00 02 00 13 paid Ben[iamin] Browne for all shoing 00 04 03 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04October 8 6 yds of white inkle 00 00 03 silke riband 00 001 03 9 ffor shoing 00 03 02 A pipe key for ye parke lodge 00 00 08 29 1400 of 4d nayles 00 04 08Nouember 303 16 paid for 550 of quicksett att 8d per 100 taken vp about Charing hill, for my east feild 00 03 08 20 2000 of 4d nayles 00 06 08 Shoing my roane gelding 00 01 08 A round nett for ye warrenner 00 01 06 yearne to mend ye Cony=hay 00 00 02 19 - 5 - 1[f.53v] 1625Nouember Second half yeare 22 4 gilt knobbs for ye bedd in ye parlour chamber 00 10 00 -- 6 Venice beere glasses and ye box 00 11 00 A Case of kniues 00 10 00 Giuen att Knoll att ye E[arl] of Dorsetts 00 04 00 23 -- Giuen att Peckam att Sir William Twisdens 00 05 06 Spent att Maydstone 00 00 06 Barber th?here 00 01 00 27 paid Ionas Parker for 3 dayes vse of 304 his mare 00 02 00 -- Giuen a messenger that brought a letter from Sir Roger Twisden 00 02 00 30 paid ye glasyer for 58 quarryes of glasse 00 04 06 ffor Sodering of 37?1 foote of att 2d ob' per foote 00 05 002 New leading two casem*nts 00 01 00 paid goodman Simonson for 25 yds ^dim':^ of linnen to make sheetes att 1s per yd 00?1 05 00 A hatt for Anthony 00 05 00 Letters 00 00 03 2 padlockes with 3 keyes apeece 00 04 06 paid Ihon Marden for 6 skinnes 3 tand 3 white 00 04 06December 1 Giuen att Mersham. 00 00 06 poore + 00 00 06 2 3000 of 4d nayles 00 10 00 paid ye smith for other worke 00 00 092 paid stephen vt sequitur. Imprimis gloues for my wife 00 02 00 Horsemeate 00 02 08 ffor nayling 00 00 04 ffor 1?-0?^5^ meales 00 1403 004 ffire 00 00 04 305 giuen 00 01 04 5 Giuen att Mersham 00 05 06 giuen att Eastwell 00 00 06 giuen the midwife mistress Ely, and ye nurse att Eastwell when Sir Wiilliam Twisden, my mother and I did Christen George ffinch this day to each of them 22s 02 04 00 5 Giuen att Kennington Church 00 00 06 8 Giuen mistress Ely ye midwife for bringing my wife to bedd of there? a sonne 03 00 00 giuen master Ashborne that brought a gilt Cupp from my Lord Gray to ye Christining of ned 01 02 00 giuen William Esday who brought a gilt pott from my Lady Wentworth then 00 10 00 M.B.NL: 00 05 06 10 Giuen goodwife Rutting for keeping in my wife 5 weekes 01 05 00 13 100 of nayles 00 00 04 2 yds dim' of shagg bayes to make my wife a petticoate 00 10 00 4 yds of Cobbwebb lane for my wife when she lay in 00 08 00 306 Oyle for ye Coache 00 01 00 Blanketts for ye Child 00 06 00 3 yds ^more^ of white Cotton att 20d per yd 00 05 00 A paid ofTheophilus Tilghman for all worke ended december 4 00 02 06 A per of shoes for my wife 00 02 00 15 Giuen att Eastwell 00 00 06 8 - 13 - 3[f.54r]December 1625 16 2 Course tykes for seruingmen's bedds 00 16 00 Tyke for 2 bolsters 6 yds att 16d per yd 00 08 00 17 paid Browne ye Smith for shoing 00 02 05 ffor iron pinnes for a bedd 00 00 03 3000 of 4d nayles 00 10 00 18 paid to ye watching att shorne Cliffe 00 01 06 bringing a letter from London 00 00 04 20 paid Richard Spice for halfe yeares vse of 100li' 04 00 00 21 Giuen ye poore prisoners of Maydstone 307 goale + 00 02 00 paid Ihon woulton for 14 yds of white stuffe to make my wife a gowne att 2s 2d 01 10 00 24 3 yds of yeallow cotton att 19d per yd to make Ned his first coate 00 04 09 2 yds of fine peneston att 2s 4d to make him petticoates 00 04 08 paid Theophilus Tylghman for all his work 00 08 03 24 Almanackes 00 00 04 Inkle for stooles 00 00 06 4 dozen beere glasses 00 02 00 4 wine glasses 00 01 06 paid Arroes for 2 per of shoes for Anthony 00 02 04 ffor thread 00 00 02 A per of giuen to ye shoemakers box 00 00 06 26 14 ells 3 qrters' of Canuas att 15d per ell to make 2 bedds and 2 bolsters 00 18 06 3 ells of Canuas att 16d per ell to 00 04 00 2930 Giuen att Eastwell 00 01 00 giuen helpers when ye coach was ouerthrowne 00 001 00 31 Giuen to make vp ye fee of a Doe sent me from Eastwell vnto my fathers 308 house, he paying 11s 00 04 00Ianuary 3 Giuen Sir Norton Knatchbull'svid. Ianuary 24. messenger 00 02 06 4 paid for Composition in Pluckley 00 05 06 Composition in little Chart 00 02 10 5 Assesse to ye poore of Pluckley 00 06 08 9 Supper att maydestone 00 05 00 Giuen att moate 00 02 00 11 per of Course stockins 00 04 06 12 giuen in Canterbury Church 00 00 06 giuen att Chillham Church 00 00 06 giuen att master Deane Bargraues 00 04 00 Horsemeate att Canterbury 00 05 00 13 paid Browne ye smith for 1000 4d nayles 00 03 04 ffor shoing 00 03 02 paid Ihon Ellmer ye tayler vt sequitur: Imprimis for making 2 dimittee wastcoates for my wife 00 01 04 ffor making her white gowne and wastcoate 00 03 00 ffustian for ye stayes and to bordure yat gowne 00 00 08 ffor making Anthonys greene coate 2s 6d silk 7d canuas 4d 00 03 04 ffor making my wife a shagg 309 p-eticoate 00 00 08 for making little Ned a coate 3 wastcoates and for fustian &c 00 04 08 N L ye Last iourney 00 03 02 14 A yd of w[hi?]t[e?] Cotton for Ned 00 01 04 A band pott 00 00 10 A per of hose for ned 00 00 06 pinnes 2000 00 01 06 13 - 3 - 0[f.54v] 1625Ianuary Second half yeare 15 A per of gloues for Anthony 00 01 00 paid Ihon Lucas for a iourney to Douer 00 03 00 Giuen Robert Pell when He brought me my mastiff dogg whickh his father had kept 00 01 00 19 paid ffrankwell for leading a mastiffe to Douer 00 02 06 20 Giuen att Eastwell 00 02 00 dd' to my Lady Ashbornham, to pay for a gowne for my wife bought a greate 310 while since viz. 10 00 00 24 paid Thomas Tilghman for 1100 of quicksett att 6d per 100 00 05 06 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 19 dayes ending vpon January 21 00 09 06 _______ paid these things layde out by my wife but not belonging to ye houshold booke, last qrter' Imprimis Giuen to Goodwife Rutting october 7. 00 02 00 Needles and laces October 31 00 00 04 Item yd dim' of bone lace 00 00 06 giuen my fathers Coachman 00 00 06 giuen Meg Codwell for working a breadth of my wiues petticoate. Nouember 16 00 02 00 powder blew Nouember 22 00 00 01 A maske for my wife 00 01 08 Blew thread 29 00 00 02 ffor Rushes december 3 00 00 04 Giuen Stephen Pennard by my wife december 12 00 02 00 dd' to nurse Simonson ^markettman^ for soape and candles 00 05 00 giuen nurses mayd then. december 17 00 01 00 311 pder of hose and per of sleueues for Ned 00 00 08 per of shoes for him 00 00 06 3 qrters' of lace for him 00 00 09 3 qrters' of tufted Canuas for him 00 01 04 25 paid [blank] Long for 300 of quicksett 00 01 06 paid him for 400 more 00 02 00 paid [blank] Price for 250 of quicksett 00 00?1 093 Giuen goodman Sutton's man for comming from douer to me about ye doggs 00 02 00 26 paid [blank] Long for 300 of quicksett 00 01 06 Giuen Stephen 00 01 00 27 paid Thomas Tylghman for 200 of quicksett 00 01 00 28 paid ye widow champneys for half a yeares vse of 1?100li', and ye principall paid in 04 00 00 paid Stephen vt sequitur: Imprimis for shoing 00 01 06 Giuen in my iourney about ye knights of ye shire by him 00 00 08 ffor a linke 00 00 04 ffor horsemeate 00 01 02 ffor going by water 00 00 02 312 paid for dying of an old damaske petticoate of my wiues 00 04 06 paid B. Browne for 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04 Item for shoing 00 01 05 paid [blank] Deward and [blank] Wood for making 45 roddes of double dike att 8d one and 1d ye other as they reckoned itt, but rather 7d one and 2d ye other and for laying 3 rowes of quicksett and setting one other vpright: att on ye south and East side of my east feild there being 19 roddes on ye south, and 15 rodds on ye east from ye middle gate to ye corner, and 11 rodds from that corner to ye hedge and stile by greate pickenwell hedge. which eleuen rodds they made in 2 dayes dim' 01 13 06 18 - 19 - 2[f.55r] 1625 313Ianuary Second half yeare 29 Giuen Thomas and Andrew Hills 00 00 09February poore 00 00 07?9between 1. A fiddle for little Anthony 00 01 00and ye 20. Roome to see ye K[ing]s going toatt London. parliament 00 13 04 A beauer hatt 02 02 00 paid for my white satten doublett Cutt in panes razed, without any lace, and for all ye stuffe satten, taffaty, bla? buttons &c, and making. whereof ye satten and taffaty 3-14-0 05 04 00 A booke of ye monuments in Paules 00 00 06 Barber 00 03 06 A per of riding bootes 00 12 00 Soaling a per of bootes 00 01 00 paid for new hatching of my guilt rapier, for a new veluett scabberd, a Cappcase and false scab[er]d 01 16 00 5 bookes att ye second hand 00 16 00 paid Laundress 00 05 00 A linke 00 00 04 Cloake bagg stringes 2 per 00 01 06 A booke for mustering 00 00 06 A Coppy of ye names of ye parliament 314 men 00 05 00 6 per of gloues for my wife 00 06 06 A purse for her 00 02 06 A little silluer locke and key to hang in her hair 00 05 00 other toyes for her 00 00 06 pens 00 01 00 blacke leades 00 00 03 A generall bill of ye plague 1603. et 1625 00 00 03 Another booke of mustering 00 00 08 4 large new pewter Candlestickes 00 09 00 A bandpott, 2 Chamberpotts, and 2 flagons for beere 01 04 00 A Close stoole without a pan 00 06 06 A fiddle for Anthony 00 01 00 bought of master Crofton att ye signe of ye bl[ack] Eagle - -nerere popes head ally, february l7. Imprimis 6 high table Chaires att 16s 04 16 00 [the cost of each chair was added in pencil] one greate Chaire with wodden armes 01 10 00 6 high stooles att 10s 03 00 00 one Cupboard Cloath 03 05 00 A side board Carpett 03 05 00 All these of turky worke with white 315 ground. Buckarum Couers to all ye Chaires and stooles 01 10 00 Matts to packe these in. 00 04 02 4 peeces of matt to matt a Chamber being 30 yds a peece att 4s 6d per peece 00 18 00 2 pound of packthread 00 01 04 2 needles 00 00 06 Mending my white doublett 00 04 00 A white fustian wastcoate buttoned 00 14 00 A knife 00 01 02 Chamber rent att master Hydes for 17 nights 01 00 00 ffire there 00 05 00 A booke of ye postures of souldiers 00 02 06 4 ounces dim' of ashcolour lace att 2s 4d per ounce to lay vpon my wiues petticoate 3 doz. 8 00 10 06 1 ounce dim' of coloured silkes for my wife 00 03 00 Toyes for Anthony 00 00 06 A booke of armes of ye baronetts painted 00?2 10 00 39 - 1 - 0 316[f.55v] 1625 Second half yeare Charge of portage. 6d. Candles 00 00 10 Going by water 00 04 00 Giuen att this time being in London 00 16 00 Dyett for me and my man 18 dayes 04 06 05 Horsemeate there 01 11 06 porter 00 01 00 per of stirrup leathers 00 01 00 mending my saddle 00 00 08 Shoing 00 00 04 Giuen att Sir Peter wrothes 00 05 00 20 Giuen Thomas 00 01 00 24 Shoing 00 03 04 2000 of 4d nayles 00 06 08 25 paid for Carrying of my trunke to London 00 05 00 bringing downe a vessell of vineger 00 02 06 28 Giuen poore + 00 00 09 6 dishes, one boll, 12 spoones, and a cupp Cupp all of wood 0 01 06 317 Giuen Thomas and Andrew 00 00 08march: 4 paid ye Carrier for bringing a box of 44 li' weight 00 02 06 Giuen Sir Nicholas Tufton's man that brought A Coate for Anthony 00 01 00 5 Giuen to a messenger with a letter 00 00 06 7 paid for bringing houshold stuffe from London to ffeuersham by Water 00 10 00 bringing ye same from thence home 00 12 00 Giuen nurse Simonson for tending Anthony 00 02 06 11 Giuen Marden ye glouer for keeping a dogg for me 00 02 00 paid for bringing downe from London 2 bands and Letters for my wife 00 01 00 13 paid my Cosen Bringborn vt sequitur: Imprimis for one peece of matt for a Chamber being 30 yds 00 04 06 2 per of bellowes 00 03 00 A Close stoole pan of pewter weighing 6 li' att 1s. ob' 00 06 06 ffor portage of these and other things 00 00 11 A?ffor wharfa*ge and water bale 00 01 00 --14 paid and made euen with my father vt seqquitur. 318 for ye Conducting of Souldiers doune into sussex 00 05 00 paid for making vp of tw tiffany ruffes for my wife, and starching them 00 08 00 paid for a box to bring them downe in 00 00 06 20 paid for generall bills of ye plague for haldf a yeare 00 02 00 ffor sending a letter to Sir Thomas Wotton 00 00 02 ffor bringing a trunke from ye water side to my cosen Bringborne 00 00 02 21 paid ye Carrier for bringing downe a muskett 00 00 08 giuen ye Carriers boy 00 00 03 22 paid my brother Henry for all by him L[ai]d out viz: Imprimis for his charges and Ihon Wotton's when they went to Canterbury and Sandwiche on my busines 01 04 00 per of stockins for Anthony 00 01 03 paid Ihon Lucas for going to London 00 05 00 ffor fustian to make ye Child a wastcoate and for making itt 00 01 00 ffor making Anthony a petticoate 00 00 03 319 ffor making my wife a petticoate 00 05 00 for altering a gowne for my wife 00 01 00 13 - 18 - 4[f.56r] [The first two letters of “Iuly” are written at the top of the verso of the stub conjugate with f.56, the last two at the top of the left-hand column of f.56r] 1625Iuly paid vnto Ihon Bocher of Maundfeldes ye last payment due vnto him, being the remainder of 190Li', for his house and land in Pluckley called maundfelds alias Maundeuiles. 100 00 00 paid my part of ye Charges of the fine he paying for ye dedimus potestatem, and for once renewing 20s. as by agreement he was to do, so I payd 001 02 06 Giuen vnto Mary Bocher wife of Ihon, for her Consent in leuying ye fine 01 00 00 pdGiuen Richard Spice for making ^drawing^ and engrossing ye 320 writings belonging to this sale and purchase 00 11 00 paid [blank] Bridge for thatching there he and his seruaunt att 2s per4d per daie?iem 01 10 00 paid him for wiftes 00 02 00 Sent thither 5 loade of strawe worth 00 16 06 105 - 2 - 0. ------- Houshold booke this yeare. 305 13 06 fforraigne payments 378 12 05 Totall of all this yeare 1625 684 - 5 - 11[f.56v] [blank] 321[stub][stub verso]Iu [see note at beginning of f.56r][f.57r] 1625March Second half yeare. paid [blank] Long for 400 of quicksett 00 02 00 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 12 dayes 00 06 00 paid Ihon Lucas for 4 dayes 00 02 00 _______ paid goodwife Pollard for worke for my wife 00 03 00 giuen a messenger from Eastwell 00 00 06 34 yds of riband for shoestringes of watchett and of Crimson 00 08 09 3(?) yds of he?aire colour for my wife 00 02 00 blacke string for my wife 00 00 02 23 giuen att Eastwell 00 02 00 24 per of gloues for Anthony 00 00 04 paid Bayly ye Sawyer in part of 322 payment 00 12 00 paid Richard Rickard his half yeares wages 01 10 00 paid Ihon Batherst from Bartholmew tyde to michaelmas 00 10 06 paid him his half yeares wages, att 5li' 10s per annum 02 15 00 paid ye Smith for shoing 00 03 00 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04 paid Stephen what he layd out viz: for dyett and horsemeate when he went to find a blacke gelding but Could not with Norman in his Company 00 09 10 25 paid master Rowley for a part of ye visitation of Kent tricked in colours 01 00 00 paid him for drawing two draughtes of all my Armes vncoloured with Creastes 00 08 00 _____ 2 per of sleeues for Ned 00 01 02 Tape, laces &c 00 00 04 giuen Thomas wild 00 00 06 gpaid master Cuddington for worke done att Surrenden this lent, viz: ffor my first wiues picture att length 11 00 00 323 ffor my owne picture 06 00 00 ffor my wiues picture 06 00 00 ffor my brother H[enry] D[ering] picture and frame 02 00 00 ffor frames for ye other pictures 01 15 00 giuen to his man 00 05 00 beside my father paid for Anthonys picture and ye frame 5? 5-10-0 and for my grandfathers - 1-15-0 _____ paid Ihon Hunt ye remainder of his wages 04 05 00 April 22 paid H.Fisher his half yeares wages 02 00 00 24 paid Stehen Kennard his wages 02 10 00 May 3 paid Harper vt sequitur: for oyle for ye coach 00 01 10 paid Admund for 2 per of shoes for my Lady 00 04 00 Item for a per for ye Child Ned. 00 00 06 ------------------------ -457? - 0?1?1 - 8?9. ____________________________ Sum of this half yeare. 157 - 11 - 8 324 _____________________ Summ totall of this halfe ^whole^ yeare for in forraigne payments. 273 - 10 - 5[f.57v] 1626. ffirst half yeareMarch 22?8 paid for new hwhiting ye seeling in ye wainscott Chamber, and of ye stayre Case there, and for new Colouring ye window there in oyle 00 09 06 paid Bayly ye sawyer for 950 01 02 06April 1 paid Isaack Lariman for 4 dayes dim' att 17d 00 06 06 ffor bringing downe frames for pictures from London 00 03 00 ffor bringing downe a vessell of oyle 00 00 06 4 Giuen ffrankwell for going to Canterbury 00 01 00 6 4 yds of Cobbwebb lane for my wife 00 10 00 325 4 tinne pannes, a dredger, an apple roaster and &c 00 06 00 A brasse Candlesticke 00 02 06 paid Ihon Hunt for 6 dayes worke 00 08 06 paid him more for 9 dayes dim' 00 121(?) 08 Item for a stone pott 00 01 00 Item for quicksett 00 00 03 8. 9. 10. A ruffe and 2 per of Cuffes 01 09 00 A dozen of handkercheifes 00 13 00 12 quire of Venice demy paper 01 00 00 A feather black and yellow giuen to H. 00 05 06 Dyett and horsemeat this iourney 00 14 00 Giuen this iourney 5s. [blank] [cost added in pencil] going by water 00 00 06 13 paid Frankwell for going to Canterbury 00 01 00 14 paid [blank] for Cutting out an old tree 00 02 00 paid him for making of 1600 of shingles att 12d per 100 00 16 00 16 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 20 dayes 00 10 00 paid my assesse to ye poore of little Chart for last yeare viz: 1625 00 03 06 Item paid Nicholas Mason for bringing downe 80 li' of pewter ^a^ 00 00 10 Item for bringing itt by water to 326 feuersham 00 00 08 paid Thomas Norman for a black Mare aet. 9. for ye Coache 10 00 00 17 paid stephen Newenden his - wages for being Sexton 8d and giuen him 4d 00 01 00 Giuen Ihon Hunts wife for attending little Ned Ned before she was married 00 05 00 19 Lace and Ffustian to my wyues petticoate 00 02 06 Iohn Hunt for 4 dayes att 17d per diem 00 04 03 20 paid my second Subsedy granted vnto K[ing] Charles. A[nno] 1mo. 01 00 00 21 paid ffrankwell for going to Canterbury 00 01 00 22 paid Tyle ye mason for making ye arch att ye penstocke of Mosewell pond 00 10 00 paid him for a weekes wo^r^ke att 18d per diem and for his boy 12d per diem 00 15 00 paid Bayly ye Sawyer for Sawing 700 C foote att 2s 4d per C 00 16 04 paid Ihon Hunt for 5 dayes att 17d 00 07 01 23 paid for shoing 00 00 06 24 paid stehen his bill for Carryng 327 Susan vp to London 00 13 02 24 - 16 - 9[f.58r]Aprill 1626 ffirst half yeare 24 4 gallons of trayn oyle for ye Coachad att qrt' 00 06 04 A vessell for itt 00 01 04 ffor new lines for my Clocke 00 01 06 horse hire 00 01 00 25 Giuen away by my selfe att Goddenten and att Charing 00 01 06 paid ye Carrier for bringing bookes 00 02 06 26 Giuen ffrankwell for going to Canterbury 00 01 00 27 Giuen att Boucghton 00 00 06 29 paid Bayly ye Sawyer for 643 foot att 2s 4d per C 00 15 00 paid Ihon Lucus for 29 dayes att 00 18 04 paid Ihon Hunt for 5 dayes 00 07 01 30 500 0f 3d nayles 00 01 03 per of stockins for Anthony 00 01 04 328 paid Theophilus Ti?ylghman for all worke 00 05 06May 1 paid [blank] Cadman for a blacke Mare 07 07 00 Giuen Stephen when he bought her 00 01 00 Giuen att Eastwell 00 02 00 6 paid Gardener ye sadler for 2 new liuery sadd[l]es furnished, for 2 bridles, and 3 setts g of girthes, stirrupps and leathers for ye saddles 01 10 00 paid Bayly ye sawyer for 761 foote att 2s 4d per 100 foote 00 17 08 paid Tully ye shingler in part of payment viz: for ^making^ 1000 li'(?) of shingles att 00 10 00 paid Barrett for ye iron topp of a leading staffe made [mark?]in forme of [smudged mark?] 00 03 00 8 paid Tully for making 2000 of shingles 1?01 00 00 Charges between ye 8th and ye 24 of May when I and my wife went to London. Lace, linn? Tiffany, and cyprus for my wife and Cobbwebb lane 329 french wyers and french ^04 02 03^ band. 0-4 070 02 200 white Cornelians for a Chaine &c 01 06 00 6 per of gloues for my wife 00 07 00 per of bodyes for her 00 11 06 paid for setting new 3 diamonds and for an enamelled heart to sett a Locke of my Lady Mary w(?)illers haire in for my wife 00 12 00 Knotts and riband 00 10 04 5 yds of pearle colour damaske att 13s 6d 03 07 00 5 yds of Incarnadine Satten att 124s 56d 03 12 06 15 ounces dim' of silluer lace for ye satten Kirtle and bodyes att 5s 4d per ounce 04 02 04 2 yds dim' of bl[ack] satten att 14s 01 015 00 7 doz: 3 yds of bl[ack] Lace 01 09 09 5 doz: 3 yds of ashcolour edging att 1s 10d 00 09 07 ffor 5 ells' dim' of Taffata for ye gowne and 2 foreparts 03 02 00 A french roll 00 10 00 ffor sowing silke 00 14 00 330 ffor printing black satten 00 05 00 ffor printing ye Incardine?nadine satten 00 07 00 ffor dying a flame Colour gounee into black 00 10 00 42 - 8 - 1[f.58v] 1626 ffirst half yeare ffor making ye french gowne, kirtle and ye stomacher and sleeues 03 00 00 ffor making ye Incarnadine sleeues stomacher and kirtle 00 16 00 ffor making a loose gowne and wastcoate 00 16 00 paid Ed[ward] Muddiman for all other particulars belonging to these gownes and foreparts according to his bill viz: for Canuas, whalebones, ribband. &c 00 12 08 Memorandum he had in all. 13-17-0. ___________________________ 331 Memorandum: my wife hath this iourney Layd out for her self. 32-7-11 A per of forewheeles for my Coach 01 16 00 A new yeax tree 00 05 00 5 new boltes 00 05 00 paid ye Coachmakesrs bill more 00 14 00 paid for breade, and beere and meate this time 7-14-11. whereof [^] my father paid 2-9-10[^] and for horse meate 52s whereof my father payd 30s so I discharge 056 1?07 01 2 Ruffe bands for Anthony 00 11 00 per of bodyes for him 00 02 06 7 yds 3 qrters' of greene damaske att 12s 6d to make Anthony a Coate and a yd spare 04 16 00 ffor buttons and making and taffaty lining for skirtes &c 00 14 00 5 gallons 5 pintes, of wine white and Clarett, sent vnto Surrenden 00 11 00 soape and starch 00 00 09 A Coach whipp 00 00 06 per of shoes for Anthony 00 01 03 paid for 3 ordinareies for Stephen 00 02 00 paid for roome for horses 00 01 04 shoing 00 00 06 332 white boxes 00 04 06 barber 00 02 00 per of gloues for my selfe 00 01 06 A shirt 00 13 00 -An halfe shirt 00 11 00 A reame of paper 00 06 08 Another reame 00 03 04 6 qurire of royall paper in a booke 00 09 00 6 mappes of Kent 00 03 00 per of wollen stockins 00 04 00 2 per of knitt threed stockins 00 09 00 per of stockins for Ned 00 02 00 per of Spurr=rowells 00 00 06 2 q[ui]r[e] of paper att 20d per quire binding two far?ire paper bookes, with my armes on them &?in Turky leather 00 16 00 A plume of feathers yellow and black 01 09 00 poore + 00 01 06 going by water 00 04 10 porter paid +(?) 00 00 05 Giuen this iourney 6s 01?0 0?18 06 paid for a fortnights vse of 2 Chambers [blank] Giuen my aunt ffisher for rabetts 00 10 00 333 26 - 6 - 2[f.59r] 1626 ffirst half yeareMay 26 paid Tully for making 2000 of shingles 01 00 00 Expended for me by my brother. H[enry] whilst I was att London. paid Tyle ye mason for 8 dayes. 12s and his man for 7 about ye South side of ye stable. 00 19 00 paid Tyle ye mason for 3 dayes worke and a halfe on ye north side of ye middle barne 00 05 08 paid Ihon Hunt for 10 dayes 00 14 02 paid Th[omas] Tylghman for 11 dayes 00 05 06 paid Richard Bocher for a day dim' 00 01 09 paid Ihon Lucas for 4 dayes 00 02 08 Giuen a boy for going to Lenham 00 00 04 paid Browne ye Smith for all Shoing 00 03 04 worke and iron about ye coach 00 01 08 ffor a spudd to barke oakes with 00 00 10 ffor 2 hookes and 2 thimbles weighing 334 15 li' dim' 00 13 10 ffor a staple, linke and hapse for ye east feild gate next ye parke 00 00 10 paid Ihon Battherst his bill when he went with panniards and brought wine from London 00 05 08 27 paid ye Carrier for Carrying between Lond[on] and home. 00 12 10 Item dying of stuff for the child Ned 00 05 00 Item ofor scouring greene and silluer and ye white and silluer stuffes, for houshold stuff 00 17 00 It'A Curling bodkine 00 00 08 Giuen ye nurses mayd 00 01 00 paid Bayly ye Sawyer for sawying of 490 foote att 2s 4d per foote 00 11 06 paid Ihont Hunt for 3 dayes dim' 00 04 11 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 11 dayes 00 05 06 28 An old brasse Candlesticke 00 05 00 29 An ell of Cambricke for ye nurse 00 06 00 A bridle 00 01 04 A trenche 00 01 06 going by water 00 00 04 ffor a Coach whip 00 01 00 per of stockins for Andrew 00 01 08 Iune 3 paid Browne ye smith for shoing 00 03 03 335 500 of priggs 00 00 09 4 per of hookes and thimbles for ye two gates vnder ye Lodge wh?eighing 22 li' 00 05 03 poore + 00 00 06 6 Giuen [blank] who brought a Couey of eleuen little partridges 00 01 00 Giuen another who brought my wife a Lapwing 00 00 06 -8 - 15 - 5[f.59v] 1626. ffirst half yeareIune 6 paid Elnor ye taylour his bill for my wife 00 01 00 Item for little Ned 00 01 04 9 paid master Hannington for Anthonys scohooling 00 00 02 Item for Andrew for each a weeke 00 00 04 paid christopher ^Bocher^ for 5 dayes washing shepe standing? 00 05 10 336 paid Iohn Hunt for 9 dayes dim' 00 13 05 9 paid William Hodge quittrent to Wye court viz for one whole yeare ended att [blank] 00 02?1 00 ob' -- Item due att out?r Lady day of old for halfe a yeare 00 00 06 qr' Item for suite of Court 00 01 00 Item giuen ye gatherer 00 00 01 qr' 15 paid and discharged Richard Rickard 00 07 06 Giuen him ouer his wages 00 02 06 24 yds of fine Cloath bought of goodman Simonson to make one per of sheetes att 16 18d per yd 01 16 00 16 Shoing dunn mare 00 00 04 A barrell of beere giuen to my souldiers att Challocke Leas 00 13 00 giuen Ruff ye drummer there 00 02 00 paid for horses ther 00 01 02 17 paid for ye boyes schooling 00 00 06 paid for ye 5 dayes workes a peece of Ihon Hunt, and of Isaack Loryman att 18d and as much of Sampson Loryman att 16d per diem, about my greate pound 01 01 08 paid Iohn Hunt beside 00 01 06 22 horses att Ashford 00 00 06 337 mending my hatt lining 00 00 06 Stephen's ordinary att Ashford 00 00 08 24 paid ye shingler for making 3000 of shingles 001 10 00 paid Arrowes his bill for my selfe 00 00 05 ffor Bocher 00 06 00?10 ffor Anthony 00 02 05 paid Iohn Hunt for 4 dayes 00 06 00 Giuen one for Carrying ye doggs from Farthingloe to ye seaside which I sent for my Lord Duke to send into France 00 02 00 25 paid William Quersted and so euen till midsommer 00 05 00 Charges in sending a? ^a^ seare to London 00 00 08 paid Arrowes for a per of shoes for And[rew?] Hills 00 01 06 Mending ye h?Coach harnesse 01 01 02 28 paid b? a fortnight since for shearing of 30 sheepe ^Giuen att Boughton^ 00 01?0 00?6Iuly ----- paid for two weekes schooling 00 01 00 1 paid Ihon Hunt for 5 dayes 00 07 06 2 Cloath to make Andrew shirtes 00 04 01 horses att ashford 00 00 06 338 paid my Assesse to ye poore of ye parish 00 013 04 6 Giuen M B N L 00 05 00 disbursed by my wife between our Lady day and midsommer day. vt sequitur. Imprimis She Lost att Cardes. 00 187 00 She gaue Frank Bettenham' her sea Valentine 00 02 00 paid Franklwell for going to Bexley 00 04 00 mending a broken Corrall 00 00 06 2 per of gloues for Ned 00 01 00 11 - 5 - 00[f.60r] 1626Iuly ffirst half yeare 8 Giuen 00 00 06 paid ye Shingler 00 16 00 Irons about ye Coache 00 00 08 Shoing 00 01 10 paid Tilghman for 22 dayes 00 11 00 10 paid for beere att Challocke Lees when I mustered there, viz: a 339 barrell 00 11 00 Item more Cakes and beere for ourselues 00 01 06 Item giuen ye drommer Ioyne 00 02 06 Item giuen Payne ye fife 00 01 06 11 giuen att ye taking say of a deere att Boughton 00 05 00 Giuen?Ordinary att Maydestone 00 02 06 Giuen att Peckham 00 06 00 Giuen att Boucghton 00 15 00 Giuen att Eastwell 00 01 00 20 Giuen M.B. NL 00 02 06 22 Spent att Ashford 00 06 00 Barber there 00 01 00 24 paid Browne ye Smith for all 00 05 00 paid master Taylour vt sequitur: Imprimis for taffaty sarcenett to make my ensigne of, for silke, sockett, Cutting and sowing 06 00 00 ffor ye wood for a leading staffe of Snake wood ffor stringes att tassells to ye colours 00 05 00 -- ffor a staffe to ye Colours 00 05 00 pffor a staffe of Snake wood to make a leading staffe off. 00 10 00 340 ffor an iron topp made like [mark resembling the crown with three feathers] vnto itt 00 02 06 ffor ye gilding of that head and for a foote to itt, and for freinge and trimming ye Leading staffe vp 01 04 00 price of the leading staff. 1-16-6. A Leiuetenants partizan 01 08 00 2 halberdes 00 13 04 A gorgett of black and gold without lining or trimming but onely leather 00 14 00 [small gap] --- ffor Armes coloured in glasse viz 5 escochons 00 04 03 ffor a box to putt them in 00 00 06 ffor blacke Leades 00 01 00 ffor pinns 00 02 00 my cosen Bringborne goin by water for me 00 00 06 paid two weekes schooling for ye boyes 00 01 00 A maske for my wife 00 01 06 Horses when I was abroade 00 02 08 Stephen's dyett 00 01 08 341 25 256 Giuen ye Drummer att Kennington Lees 00 02 06 paid for a barrell of beere then 00 10 00 giuen ye sergeant there 00 02 06 Horses standing then and beeste(?) standing 00 02?3 06 26 Giuen att Eastwell 00 08 00 27 Giuen M B N L 00 02 06 29 paid Bess Fisher for vse of mony 04 00 00 Giuen M - N L 00 02 06 30 paid to Iohn Woulton for watch att Shorne cliffe 00 03 00August 1 Giuen Sir Edward Bishop's footeman 00 01 00 3 Spent att Ashford 00 01 00 5 paid Iohn Hunt all his worke 00 14 00 paid for ye boyes schooling 00 00 06 22 - 16 - 5[f.60v] 1626August ffirst half yeare 7 Lost att booredes End 00 01 00 8 paid steward ye glasier 00 07 06 Giuen M N L 00 01 00 342 giuen Ioyne ye drummer 00 02 06 9 horses att Challocke 00 00 08 12 paid Stephens Charges when ye went to Court about my busines 00 131 094 3 per of sockes for my wife 00 01 03 giuen Stephen 00 00 09 13 paid Thomas his Charges going to London 00 02 09 14 Charges of my men when they were abroad about my busines 00 02 02 Giuen Stephen toward ye making of his Liuery 00 06 00 paid for ye trimming of two liueryes attnd for ye making att 14s 03d per Liuery 01 08 06 21 paid ye Elmer ye taylour for buckarum' and silke 6d. and for lining of my Gorgett 2s 00 02 06 paid him for all other worke 00 042 059 6 yds of white worsted(?) Canuuas to make a Coate for Ned, att 1s 10d per yd 00 11 00 ffor fustian and making 00 02 02 A per of stockins for my wife 00 06 06 -Segagreene silke and mending ye Coache 00 01 01 343 A new key to a locke 00 00 06 A blacke and white picture of my Lord D. and A draught of posture 00 01 04 Giuen M N L 00 02 00 28 paid for a whole new suite beside making and silke for Andrew Hilles 00 12 09 per of stockins for him 00 01 10 Lodging, horsemeate, giuen and spent, when I went to dimchurch Lacy 00 07 02September 3 paid Iohn Batherst ye remainder of his whole yeares wages, due att Bartholmew tide, 01 04 06 memorandum that from Bartholmew day his new yeare now goes on att 5li' 5s per annum paid Iohn Hunt for setting out ye partition in my little parlour 00 02 06 5 paid Goodwife Pollard for worke done for my Lady Wentworth 00 05 00 ffor shoing horses 00 02 04 giuen poore + 00 01 00 12 Shoing 00 03 00 ffor 4 window barres weighin 15 li' 00 03 08I recd' 13 paid ye beneuolence granted to ye ________this againe King by way of free guift 01 02 00october 5. 16 Giuen [^]att[^] my Lady maydston 344 Mersham 00 04 06 // Charges when I sent Stephen to London 00 04?5 04 paid for a Casting nett 00 08 00 paid for yearne for my greate pond nett 00 02 00 18 paid goodman mason for bringing a loade of Firre(?) from Eastbridge wodeeare(?) 00 10 00 20 horsemeat att w(?)y 00 01 02 Giuen att Eastwell 00 00 06 21 ffor bringing master Taylours trunk to to grauesend 00 01 00 horsemeate then and dyett att fetching itt 00 02 02 22 mending strappes for saddle 00 00 02 Charges when I and my brother Henry alone went to London and came backe ye next day, viz: in dyett and horse meate and giuen att my Lodging 2s 01 03 03 11 - 2 - 1[f.61r] 345 1626September ffirst half yeare. L[ay]d out att London for a bed tyke for doume 03 00 00 A per of very fine blanketts of ye best 01 10 00 A per of ordinary good blanketts 00 12 00 paid for Crewell att [blank] per ounce 00 15 00 paid for Canuas to worke in att 16d per yd 00 06 06 per of stirrup leathers 00 01 06 Going by water 00 00 06 Lockes and staple etc' 00 12 06 N L 00 01 02 paid for Heraldry bookes part of ye library of master Brooke yorke herald which were not worth aboue 20 mark 18 00 00 ffor Canuas and cord to packe them vp and to ye porter for packing etc 00 04 06 24 paid an assesse for ye poore 00 10 00 26 Giuen when I went to Wye 00 01 06 28 paid ye Ioyner for 6 dayes att 12d diem and his dyett 00 06 00 29 Giuen M. NL 00 02 00 346 30 paid my dutyes to qrter' to ye Clerke 00 00 08 paid for schooling Anthony and Andrew 00 00 10October 2 Horsemeate, diett, Curbe for bridle etc 00 02 03 Charges when I sent stephen to London about taking a house for me 00 03 00 Giuen stephen 00 00 05 paid ye Carrier for 117 li' weight 00 05 00 ffor 2 Catechismes 00 00 03 6 // paid Nurse Markettman, for nursing of Ned, so she hath before hand 00s. 03 00 00 7 paid for Anthonyes and Andrewes schooling 00 00 06 paid Bayly ye sawyer for 5 dayes dim' sawing of firre att 3s per dimem 00 16 06 9 Shoing of horses 00 02 04 mending a key and keeper 00 00 04 A deuice for a doore 00 00 04 100 of 2d nayles 00 00 02 10 Giuen Harper 001 02 00 11 // paid william Lane rent due to Conningbrooke for lands in Willisborough 00 19 09 // ffor Dunmarsh to westwell court 00 01 10 Suite of both courts 00 00 08 347 13 A windowe casem*nt bought att maydstone 00 02 06 14 poore + 00 00 06 2 cordes 00 01 08 -- 17 A male pillian 00 00 08 per of male girtes 00 00 10 horsemeate att Canterbury 00 03 06 dyett there 00 02 08 giuen in ye Inne ^and^ att maaster DEaues(?) 00 002 06 12 giuen for searche in ye offices of wills 00 04 06 paid for writing out a weill att 6d per sheete 00 03 06 Lost att cardes 00 056 00 21 Giuen M N N L 00 02 00 22 paid Iohn Hunt 00 15 09 Cordes, to packe vp stuffe with 00 01 09 paid for Composition in little Chart 00 02 10 23 giuen att Boucghton 00 01 00 35 - 11 - 8 348[f.61v] 1626October ffirst half yeare 23 paid for Colouring ye new parlour and ye window 00 10 00 Item for colouring ye dyall post 00 00 04 24 2 per of shoes for my wife 00 05 00 paid an assesse for ye poore of little Chart att 1d per acre for 74 acres 00 06 02 paid Nicholas Mason for carrin?ying a loade of stuffe to ffeuersham 25 paid and discharged H. Fisher 02 00 00 giuen him 00 10 00 paid my Tutor for 2 collers for ye doggs that my Lord Duke sent ouer 00 03 00 ffor 2 chaines for them 00 04 00 giuen my boy Anthony 00 00 04 3 - 18 - 10 The totall of these leaues of this first half yeare 1626 186 10 05 349[N.B. The inserted gathering of smaller leaves, ff.51r - 61v,ends here. The above expenses continue on f.62v. The Householdexpenses on f.62r follow immediately on those of f.50v and aretranscribed after that page. See note before f.46r.][f.62v] 1626 ffirst halfe yeare.Aprill ffor sweeping 3 Chimneys 00 01 00 1 ffor bringing thinges from London 00 00 06 18 paid Sotherden for 144 li' of beefe 01 12 04 Item for 2 per of sewett 00 00 08 paid master Copley for small tithes for one whole yeare from Michaelmas to Michaelmas next 01 00 00 19 6 li' of Candles 00 02 03 23 paid Browne ye Smith for forging of Irons 00 03 00 Item for new tyning of a harrow 00 07 10 ffor a hammer 00 01 00 ffor a per of pincers 00 01 06 ffor 100 of hobnayles for ye Kitchin 350 boy 00 00 03 ffor shoing a beefe=forke 00 01 00 24 ffor qrter' of veale and ye feete 00 03 06 70 li' of beefe att 4s 6d per 20 li' 00 15 08 29 Affor a rippe axe for ye husbandman 00 01 06 ffor a peece to make a yoake of 00 00 02 ffor a shouell 00 01 06 ffor a Chissell and a gooche 00 00 10 30 paid Sotherden for 70 li' of beefe att 4s 6d per 20 li' 00 15 09May 2 4 li' of bacon 00 01 04 paid Mary Rutting her wages att her -going away but not sett downe yett february 3 01 00 00 5 paid ye bo?utcher for 50 li' of beefe att 4s 6d per 20 li' 00 11 03 Item for 2 li' of Suett 00 00 04 6 paid Erasmus Gyles for -killing 7 sheepe 00 00 06 paid Ihonson for dressing my hop?p ground So he hath 26s 00 06 00 7 3 horne Cupps for ye husbandmen 00 01 00May. 26 paid Ihonson ye totall of this yeare for dressing my hop-ground. viz. 30s 00 04 00 351 paid and expended by my brother Henry whilst I and my wife were att London, between May ye -8. and May. 202 paid Sarah . . . . her wages and so she was discharged May: 8. 00 10 00 giuen her 00 01 00 paid Richard Bocher for 2 brewings 00 04 00 Item for grinding mault 00 00 04 A qrter' of Lamb 00 01 03 2 li' of sewett 00 00 08 paid for 89 li' of beefe att 4s 6d and 4d?s 4d per 20 li' 00 19 00 A side of mutton 00 06 00 paid ye Smith for ye husbandman's tooles 00 00 08 27 paid goodman ffennour for Cleft wood ye remainder of ye greate Oake 02 10 00 ffor a breast of veale 00 01 03 paid Thomas Tylghman for making of 1800 of fa*gotts att l8d per C 01 07 00 paid for shearing of 7 sheepe 00 00 06 28 paid Richard Bocher for 4 dayes work about husbandry 00 04 08 60 li' of beefe att 4s 4d per 20 li' 00 13 00 29 per of stockins for Bocher 00 02 04 352Iune. 3 ffor mending and grinding ye Larder axe 00 00 03 9 paid for 4 gree(?)ne geese 00 02 08 Item for earthen panns 00 02 06 15 - 2 - 7[f.63r] 1626 ffirst half yeareIune. 6 paid Elnor for worke for ye kitchin boy 00 00 11 7 A touett of greene pease in ye podds 00 03 00 6 li' of Candles 00 02 03 9 paid Theophilus Tylghman for 7 dayes weeding ye wheate etce? 00 03 06 11 paid Thomas Posse for 5 seames dim' of oates att 18d per bushell 02 13 00 16 ffor ^gadsby^ shoing 6 beastes paid Gadsby. 00 07 06 ffor Clypses 00 01 06 22 paid Gadsby for shoing of 4 beastes 00 05 00 353 25 paid for a sith 00 03 06 Charges when I sold my blacke little mare 00 00 07 1 li' dim' of Cherryes 00 00 06 paid Richard Bocher for brewing 00 02 06 # paid about a fortnight since for shearing of 30 sheepe 00 01 08 Item paid Thomas Tilghman for making of fa*gotts att l8d per C. and for Cutting out of risor(?)s viz: 600 of fa*gotts 00 11 00Iuly 1 paid for Cherryes 00 00 06 paid Iohn Hunt for 5 dayes 00 07 06 2 paid for 8 Crabbs 00 01 00 paid my wiues houshold booke from our Lady day to Midsommer whor*of for butter 9s 9d 01 14 02 8 plates and bradds for ye wayne 00 04 00 ffor 2 new forkes 00 01 08 mending 4 forkes 00 00 06 10 paid ye bocher for a fortnights beefe viz: 113 li' att 4s per score 01 02 06 qrter' of Lambe 00 01 00 20 A per of bellowes for ye kitchen 00 01 00 6 wodden dishes 00 00 06 354 A wodden boll for a strayner 00 00 06paid Harper Soales damsells and Crabbs bought att feuersham 00 01 04 Oysters then 00 00 03 A blobster 00 01 06 100 of pranes 00 00 06 24 ffor husbandry irons 00 01 00August 1 paid And discharged Margar[et] Coddwell 00 12 00 ffor 12 milkbolles 00 15 02 paid ye t?Theophilus Tilghman for 16 dayes 00 08 00 paid Thomas Tilghman for 5 dayes dim' both for haying 00 02 09 3 bringing salt from ffeuersham 00 00 10 5 paid Iohn Hunt about haying and husbandry 01 02 00 paid and discharged Mary Rutting 00 16 00 paid Sotherden for 200 C 220 li' of beefe att 4s per 20 li' Score and a shoulder of mutton 1s 6d paid him 4s siluer remaines 7s 02 07 00 Bought of my brother Henry Dering 11 weathers att 12s apeece. 12 barrens att 8s. and 6 taggs att 5s 4d 13 00 00 355 paid Tilghman for 5 dayes 00 02 06 paid ye Cowper 00 02 00 10 2 drinking glasses 00 01 06 14 Sugar 4 li' 00 04 08 Salt 2 bb' 00 03 08 pepper a pound 00 01 10 A stockelocke 00 01 04 A Create 00 01 04 An axe 00 01 06 2 rubbers for a sithe 00 00 03 per of stockins for bocher 00 02 04 Charges in fetching Peere?ce Taylour 00 00 06 28 - 14 - 6[f.63v] 1626. ffirst half yeare 19 paid Sotherden for 105 li' of beefe att 4s per score 01 01 00 22 paid Bocher for brewing twise 00 05 00 Item for yest thrice 00 01 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for a fortnight haying 00 06 00 356 paid Thomas Tilghman for a day dim' 00 00 10 6 -li' of Candles 00 02 03 26 paid Iohn Hunt for 3 weekes haying and haruest att 18d per diem 01 07 00 paid for a fortnights schooling for Anthony 00 00 04 28 paid Goodman Simonson for 24 yds of new linnen att [blank] per yd to make one per of fine sheetes 01 16 00 29 paid a tinker for worke 00 02 06September 1 paid Sotherden for 6 score pound of be^e^fe att 4s per scoare 01 04 00 giuen my owne men for working vpon a holiday 00 01 00 paid Iohn Hunt for Haruesting 00 07 06 5 11 li' of sugar att 16d 00 14 08 Smithes bill for ye husbandry and Kitchin 00 04 02 butter bought of Goodwife Pell 00 05 00 12 ffor a new plough share weighin 18 li' att 3d per pound 00 04 06 ffor husbandry iron 00 01 08 paid Iohn Hunt for Haruesting 00 09 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for a fortnight 00 10 00 357 Giuen my Lady Maydstons keeper for bringing venison 00 10 00 16 paid Iohn Lucas for 7 dayes dim' haruesting att 12d per diem and board in ye howse(?) 00 07 06 4 li' of sugar att 13d 00 04 04 20 per of rabetts 00 01 02 24 2 lobsters 00 01 00 25 paid Robert Rutting for mowing of Plumptons att 1s 6d per acre 05?0 075^5^ 070 Item for 2 dayes ^dim'^ mowing att 18d per diem 00 03 03 paid Th: Tilghman for 11 dayes 00 07 04October 1 paid Sotherden for 60 240 li' of beefe att 4s per score for a month 02 08 00 paid him for an Inward 00 03 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 5 days 00 02 06 paid Ihon Hunt for 16 dayes 01 04 00 2 ffor killing of sheepe 00 00 06 Rootes 00 00 07 Changing of Candles 00 00 07 paid Idle Iohn 00 00 06 4 paid William Quersted a quarter wages 00 15 00 6 ffor forgeing of 2 coulters and a 358 sheare 00 01 00 ffor a new spindle 00 00 10 A Slop linke 00 00 03 A nebb linke 00 00 08 100 of hobnailes 00 00 03 9 paid Harper vtt sequitur: paid Tilghman for making of fa*gotts 00 03 00 ffor haruesting 04 15?4 05 ffor haying 00 04 00 ffor letting beastes bloud 00 01 00 ffor 4 podder hookes 00 03 00 ffor a s?Packsaddle 00 09 02 A bushell of salt 00 00?1 10 4 bb' of beanes 00 18 08 ffor bringing tares from Lenham 00 00?2 00 A temys siue 00 01 02 22 - 4 - 6[f.64r] 1626October 5 seames of oates all bought of Pell att 1s 2d 02 06 08 359 8 bb' of tares att 2s 62d per bb' 00 17 04 Tarre 00 00 10 ffor a boare 00 10 00 paid master Copley for tith Hay 01 02 00 ffor Cheese 03 01 05 20 Lambes att 6s 06 00 00 helpe to bring them 00 00 04 2 Crocks of butter 00 14 04 14 paid Theophilus Tilghman for a dayes worke 00 00 06 20 paid ye trugger for 6 dishes 00 00 06 paid goodman ffidge for 15 Lambes att 5s ye Lambe 03 15 00 232 for pitche 00 00 08 paid Mus. Giles 00 00 06 A pecke of oatemeale 00 00 10 - Bought att Charing fayre -6 welsh steeres 15 00 00 To a boy that kept them and for tarr 00 00 04 Pruning of my ^fruite^ trees 00 09 00 Traces and ropes 00 01 03 23 paid for 6 score and ten pound of beefe att 3[s] 28d per score 01 03 08 A qrter' of mutton 00 02 06 paid my wiues booke from Iune hither 0?11 14 00 360 357 - 701 - 8. ___________ Summ of this part of viz: of our ^of a halfe yeare^ 103 - 3 - 3. Summ of this halfe yeare and a month vt su supra - 103 - 3 - 3 Summ of the same time in Certeine Leaues before - 186 - 10 - 5 Totall of these 7 Monthes before I went to London. 289 - 13 - 8[f.64v] [blank][f.65r] 1626. 361 Second half yeare __________October Since I came to London __________________ 24 paid Nicholas Mason for carrying a Loade of stuff to London ffeuersham from Surrenden 00 12 00 Wharfa*ge and towne draught 00 01 00 Horsemeate and man's meate then 00 00 08 26 Dyett att Rochester 00 19 10 Horsemeate there 00 08 09 giuen there 00 01 09 Aquauitae for Thom' there 00 00 04 27 Nayles 00 01 00 ffa*gotts 00 00 06 A water tubbe 00 03 00 2 dozen of trenchers 00 01 00 2 per of bellowes, 2 candlestickes, a paile and a little boll 00 04 02 A stocke Locke 00 02 00 2 stocke Lockes 00 01 08 2 li' of Candles 00 00 09 2 deale boardes planed on each side for shelues in my study 00 04 00 A deale board for my beddsteds 00 01 08 A porter had for bringing them 00 00 03 362 paid ye Carpenter for a dayes worke 00 02 00 28 A table with drawing leaues 00 15 06 A Cupboard 00 05 06 paid a porter for bringing them 00 00 04 paid for all dyett from fryday and Saterday 00 12 02 30 paid for Cutting a seale for Robert 00 05 00 A quart of wine 00 00 06 Horsemeate att ye crosse keyes 00 14 06 31 A Cheese weighing 10 li' att 3d qr' 00 02 07 A linke 00 00 04 Horsehire to London 00 02 06 Shoing and remouing 00 01 04 ffire pan, tonges, potthookes, potthangers, gridiron, fire forke 00 07 00 drawe irons for a Co^a^le fire in ye kitchin 00 04 11 A Curling bodkin for my wife 00 00 00?6 Barber 00 02 00 A toy for Anthony 00 00 08 Beefe and mutton 00 03 04 Oatemeale 00 00 01 mending a Curtaine rodd 00 00 04 A per of Creepers weighing 14 li' att 3d per li' 00 03 06 A new spring locke and 3 keyes to ye 363 hall doore 00 04 00Nouember 1. paid att ye bell for for 2 horses 5 nights and for one 2 nights 00 06 00 Oates for ye same horses 00 04 04 giuen ye ostler 00 00 06 Lost att gleeke with my Lady Gray and Lady Wentworth 00 17 06 giuen ye porter of ye Charc?terhouse 00 00 04 2 giuen my Lord Dukes porter att Wallingford house 00 01 00 A new french band 00 04 06 -- Giuen my Lady Wentworths man when she sent my wife a band 00 01 00 To a porter that brought Chaires and stooles 00 00 06 more for ye same 00 00 04 Candles 00 0-44 004 ob' pipkins 00 00 02 paid ye Cooke for meate before Nouember 00 2?10 06 3 A grate for ye dining roome Chimny waeighing 51(?) li' att 3d per li' and a shilling ouer 00 2313^13^ 04 p[aid] ye smith for other work 00 00 06 4 paid ye Carpenter for worke heere 00 00 074 364 10 - 18 - 1 - ob'[f.65v] [16]26Nouember Second half yeare 4 A muffe for my wife 00 09 00 Knotts for her 00 02 06 A draught of ^my^ armes for Sir Iohn Skeffington 00 10 00 A draught of 12 coates for Robert 00 05 00 Riband for my wife 00 02 00 5 poore + 00 00 04 Giuen att Whitehall 00 01 00 ^Cutting of^ Another seale for Robert 00 05 00 6 A seale bought for Charles 00 05 00 boxes 00 00 10 ye Coach=maker's bill paid 00 011 06 A skillett 00 02 02 A basting ladle 00 00 08 A frying pan 00 02 04 Rosemary setts sent into ye Country 00 01 00 A torche 00 00 09 Giuen when my wife was att my Lord 365 Dukes masque 00 00 06 Soape 00 00 03 Bedstaues 00 00 06 7 per of bootes 00 11 06 blacke inke half a pinte 00 00 04 A glasse 00 00 01 A glasse bottles couered with leather 00 00 06 halfe a pint of redd inke 00 00 08 qrter' of a pound of redd soft wax 00 00 03 pens and quills 00 01 06 8 An old table with draw=leaues 00 16 00 A Court Cupboard for ye dining ro^o^me 00 06 00 to a porter for bringing them 00 00 03 6 leather Chaires 4 high and 2 lowe att 5s 6d per chaire 01 13 00 one greate chaire with armes 00 09 00 9 Giuen my Lord Dukes porter att White=hall 00 01 00 10 A heraldry booke of ye Dukes of Brabant with purtraicts and armes 00 04 00 Another of ye EE of Holland and Zeland etc 00 02 00 11 wax blacke leade in a brass quill etc 00 01 00 12 giuen att ye halfe moone 00 00 06 14 ffor starche 00 00 04 366 Brimstone 00 00 02 powder blew 00 00 02 A drumme for Anthony 00 04 00 A rattle for Ned 00 00 01 Shoing ye coach=horses 00 04 00 A band pott, beere pott and a glasse 00 01 08 other small earthen vessells 00 00 10 + giuen att my Lord Dukes Chambers 00 01 00 16 paid for 15 nights for two horses 00 15 00 Item for oates 2 bb' dim'. att 2s per b' 00 09 00 A baskett for ye house 00 00 10 paid master Taylour about armes 00 02 00 17 It Ouid's metamorph' in English 00 05 06 ye life of Almansor 00 00 06 giuen att my Lady Grayes 00 00 06 18 pder of spurres inlayd 00 04 00 2 yds qrter' of scarlett for a suite 03 00 00 Satten for sleeues and edging 00?1 138 100 mills' his catalogue of honour 01 15 00 giuen my Lord Dukes porter att Whitehall 00 01 00 A Close stoole and a pan 00 09 00 to a porter for bringing itt 00 00 02 20 A quire of paper 00 00 04 367 Giuen my sister E. Ashburnhams man for bringing of sweetemeates 00 01 00 Iuniper 00 00 02 17 - 3 - 0[f.66r] 1626 Second half yeare A mappe 00 00 06 21 A fee giuen to Doctor Haruy 01 00 00 22 A seale Cutt in brasse by co*ckson 00 05 00 23 A silluer selale of 6 coates for my father cutt by wodenett 00 07 00 24 wax an ounce 00 00 06 4 dozen of scarlett and silluer pointes att 12s 6d 02 0810 00 2 per of gloues 00 02 00 25 A wax Candle 00 00 06 giuen Sir Iohn Hobarts Coachman when I went to meete my Lady Maydstone 00 05 00 26 poore + 00 01 00 Giuen Sir Iohn Hobart's porter 00 01 00 Horsemeate in London 00 01 00 368 horsemeate when Stephen went into Kent 00 02 02 meate and drinke for him and a boy then 00 04 02 his Comming vp per water 00 00 06 27 A warming pan 00 06 00 An vrinall 00 00 03 wine 00 00 03 28 paper 8 quire to be ruled with redd Inke for an Alphabett of Armes att 2s per quire 00 16 00 ffor ruling itt with redd ink 00 04 00 other paper 00 03 00 my wife gaue to my cosen Ashbornhamms Coachman 00 01 00 Candles 3 li' 00 01 081 ob' giuen poore + 00 00 06 ob' starch 00 00 03 29 giuen master Peerd part of an old debt which he did owe vnto me, and which I will take out in counsell 05 00 00 paid Henley my taylour for making my suite 012 04 00 ffor silke buttons linings etc 01 03 00 silke and lacing ye cloake 00 04 00 A per of fustian drawers 00 04 00 Letting downe my black satten 369 breeches deeper in ye wast band 00 05 00 30 giuen my Lord Dukes footeman 00 02?1 00December giuen att whitehall 00 00 06 1 Seing a play 00 01 00 my wife gaue att whitehall 00 00 06 per of hind wheeles for ye coache 02 04 00 other worke about ye coackhe 00 06 00 2 paid ye dyer for that that was not vnto me worth 10s 01 04 06 giuen att white hall 00 00 06 giuen Richard Lanes 00 00 06 3 giuen att ye half moone 00 00 06 giuen my Lady Finch's man 00 00 06 paid my cosen Bringborne vt sequitur 2 dust basketts and 5 broomes 00 00 11 ffor bringing vp my houshold stuffe by water and to ye hoyman's boy 00 08 08 Wharfa*ge and waterbale 00 01 06 Cranage and Loading ye Cartes 00 00 05 Cartage to my house 00 02 06 5 dozen of Candles and for portage of them and ye soape 01 03 00 half a firkin of soape 00 07 06 Dyett that night I came to towne 00 05 07 216 - 2 - 4 370[f.66v] 1626[December] Second half yeare I--h 100 of fa*gotts and half a thousand of billetts 00 18 00 half a Chaldron of seacoale and Carriage of them 00 11 04 3 Chaldron of seacoale att 19s 6d 02 18 06 ffor Cartage of them at 16d per Loade Nouember 29 00 08 00 The historians of Normandy etc 01 00 00 giuen att my cosen Bringborn's when we lay there 00 03 00 4 for making a bill from my Lord Cheife Iustice to me of 1000li' to be paid 1628. 00 01 00 5 ffor making another 00 01 00 poore + 00 00 04 paid my apothecaryes bills 00 05 00 giuen att my Lady Maydstone 00 00 06 --ing of 76 wax 00 00 01 371 7 wine etc N L 00 01 00 paid Landress for washing last time I was in London 00 04 00 8 Spent N. L. 00 02 00 A greate pewter bason 00 04 06 6 sawcers 00 01 10 10 Spent N. L 001 02 00 11 Nayles 00 00 04 ob' Carpenters work 00 01 08 giuen 00 00 02 A loade of billetts and fa*gotts 00 010 00 13 Curtaine rods for a new bedstedd att 3d per foote. 00 04 06 paid master Taylour for worke heere one day 00 06 00 giuen ye vpholsterers man for hanging^imself^ []ye[] stuffe vp 00 01 00 paid a porter for bringing stuff hither 00 00 04 14 6 turky worke stooles att ye second hand att 5s 6d per stoole 01 13 00 // A faire turky Carpett at ye second hand being [blank] long and [blank] [] broade 06 10 00 15 yellow, blew, and russett silke att 2s 372 per ounce to worke armes 00 02 06 paid master Noakes his apothecary bill for my selfe 00 03 10 ffor 2 halters 00 00 08 A washing boule 00 05 00 paid Giuen a Coachman for breaking a new Coach gelding 00 02 00 pottengers and Candlestickes 00 00 03 A torche 00 00 09 A kettle 00 11 06 A spitt 00 02 00 A nhorse to saw wood on 00 01 06 Setting ye sawe 00 00 10 ffor a lanthorne 00 01 06 A dripping pan 00 01 08 A grater 00 00 10 A locke for my study doore 00 01 00 Bayes to make Ned a Coate 00 08 00 ffor a Iacke and lines and weight 00 15 00 Nayles and tenter=hookes 00 00 07 16 per of brasse Cobb irons 01 0?19 00 per of little andirons with brasse heades 00 05 00 per of tonges and a firepan with brasse heades and one brasse apeece more 00 04?5 00 373 22 - 9 - 6 ob'.[f.67r] 1626 Second half yeare 3 yds of tiffany for my wife 00 04 06 Gloues for her 00 09 00 A muff for my cosen Mary, giuen her by my wife 00 04 00 A Chaine giuen by her to my sister Fr[ances] Dering 00 05 00 Two Chinne bands for my wife 00 02 06 Shoing Coach=horse 00 05 06 Spice for a drenche for them 00 01 08 A letter 00 00 02 halfe a hundred of nayles 00 00 03 A torche 00 00 09 per of shoes for my wife 00 03 00 per of bootes and mending bootes for me 00 18 00 17 giuen and my Lord Dukes lodgings 00 01 00 giuen att my Lady Maydston's 00 01 00 18 to a porter for bringeing Chaires 00 00 06 374 giuen att Sir Iohn Hobarts 00 01 00 porter for bringing stooles 00 00 06 giuen ye shomakers box 00 00 06 mending lockes etc 00 00 04 paid Landresse 00 01 00 19 Giuen master Taylour for half a dayes worke 00 04 00 21 paid a fee for a doe to ye keeper of paules perry parke, giuen me by ye Lady Throckmorton 00 10 00 paid ye carrier for bringing itt vp 00 06 00 22 Venice glasses 6. 8s. square trenchers some att 18d others att 8d , round trenchers att 18? 16d per dozen, and a voyden knife 16d all together Cost 00 16 00 giuen little George Finch his nurse 00 05 00 giuen my Lord Tufton's man that brought me his patent of ye baronettship 00 01 00 25 paid? ^paid^ poore + 00 01 02 26 hay for my horse 00 00 04 to a porter 00 00 06 my wife and I lost att cardes 00 08 06 28 I lost att Cardes 01 08 06 giuen att my Lady Maydstones to ye 375 cooke 00 02 00 29 giuen att whitehall 00 00 06 paid for ye taffaty yat lined ye skirtes of my doublett and faced ye h?ends viz dim' yd dim' qrter' 00 08 00 Item 4 yds dim' of silluerd gragarum to make my wife a kertle and sleeues and stomacher att 19s 6d per yd 04 08 00 14 ounces 3 qrters' of silluer Cloud lace being 8 dozend dim' yardes to lay her gowne about att 5s per ounce 03 12 00 15 ounces dim' of silluer spangled lace edging, att 5s 4d per ounce being 6 dozen dim' to lay her bodyes and 8 couples downe ye kirtle 4004 05 00 30 paid for ye borrowing of 2 bookes of heraldry of master Kimby 00 05 00 giuen master Taylour for a dayes worke in heraldry 00 05 00 31 ffor Carrying of letters 00 01 00Ianuary 1. paid Stephen his bill. viz giuen ye bakers box 00 00 04 giuen my Lord Grayes foote man 00 00 06 376 giuen ye Coachmakers box 00 01 00 giuen ye Smithes men 00 00 06 gilding of mony for Antho[n]y 00 04 00 washing ye mens shirtes 00 01 06 bringing a Letter 00 00 04 to a porter for bringing things 00 00 03 20 - 15 - 1.[f.67v] 1626Ianuary Second half yeare 1 paid all due for hay 01 14 00 Item all for 9 bb' and a pecke of oates since ye 28 of Nouember 00 18 06 for coach=roome one weeke 00 01 00 giuen ye Ostler 00 00 06 my wife Lost att cardes 00 14 00 I lost att cardes 00 01 00 3 A Spanish ruff for my wife 01 04 00 2 se^ui^tts of suites of knotts 00 06 06 Riband 00 03 06 A blacke french Quoife 00 06 06 ffor pinnes 00 04 04 377 2 pendent pearles Counterfeited 00 05 00 knotts for shoes 00 01 02 4 giuen master Taylour for half a day's worke 00 04 00 5 Walsingham and Gemiticensis 00 09 00 Chronicle of Wales 00 01 00 Ayscue his history of England 00 01 06 Lambert's perambulation which I gaue to master Taylour 00 03 04 Suruey of Cornwall 00 00 06 A Saxon teareatise 00 01 00 Peacham of Limning 00 00 06 Heraldlry Triall of bastardy 00 01 00 Description of midd[lesex] 00 00 06 Newbergensis his history 00 01 00 pampheletts 6 and 2 MS 00 02 00 patterns of Coates and Supporters 00 02 00 giuen my Lady Wentworths foote-man that brought good newes 00 01 00 6 my wife gaue ye her taylours men 00 01 00 Lost att Cardes 01 06 00 8 giuen porter att my Lord Dukes 00 01 00 Changing a per of ^silke^ stockins for my wife 00 03 06 bobbin lace for her 00 00 06 A torch 00 00 09 378 A key for my pew in ye Church 00 01 00 giuen ye Clarke 00 00 06 A paper booke of 4 quire for Noble= mens pedegrees 00 10 06 6 quire of paper 00 02 00 A reame of paper to print with escocheons and mantles 00 11 00 A paper booke for ye Orders and degrees of ye nobility from a Duke etc 00 01 00 blacke leade in a sweete sticke 00 00 06 paid Richardson for Cutting a seale in brasse of my Creast 00 05 00 paid him for Caruing armes vpon plate 00 05 00 9 giuen att ye half moone 00 00 06 10 A paper book of 4 quire ^bought of master Kimby^ with mantle and escocheon's printed 4 on a side att 2s 6d per quire 00 10 00 giuen ye boy yat brought itt home 00 00 03 half a reame of royall paper 00 14 00 half a reame of troys demy 00 05 06 A quire of ye best royall paper 00 02 06 11 An ounce of silke for armes 00 02 00 A qrter' of a pound for ye same vse of bl[ack] 00 15 00 379 A qrter' of a pound of Crewell Crimson in graine att 10d per ounce 00 03 04 -A pound of white threed for ye same vse 00 08 00 An ^ounce(?)^ qrter' of an dim’ ounce of threed 00 023 00 ob' 12 Lost att Cardes 00 06 00 14 - 5 - 8[f.68r] 1626 Second half yeareIanuary 13 giuen 00 01 06 Lining of my hatt 00 02 00 Spent 00 00 06 14 giuen att White hall priuy garde 00 01 00 giuen Lady Richardson's coachman 00 02 00 15 paid master co*ckson for a print in brasse to sett my armes vpon my bookes, being ye Wyuerne holding my single coate, he sayd that ye brasse stood him in 4s 01 00 00 16 A loade of billetts 00 11 00 380 paid master Taylour for halfe a dayes worke 00 04 00 17 my wife gaue my Lady ffinches coachman 00 02 00 18 paid for ye silluer of a double Seale 00 12 00 paid f?master Woodenett for Cutting of 8 coates and a creast att one end and my single coate att ye other 00 18 00 starche 00 00 04 to a porter 00 00 03 spiggetts 00 00 01 A leaden standish 00 00 04 Cotton for my inke horne 00 00 02 19 Charges when stephen went downe with horses and brought other vp 00 07 09 dim' pound of yellow silke for armes 00 16 00 A redd box for my wife 00 04 00 A brass seale circ*mscribed 00 06 00 my wife gaue ye porter att my Lord Dukes 00 01 00 20 Giuen Dicke att my Lord Dukes 00 02 00 223 22 Giuen master Tauerner Secretary to my Lord Montgomery when he drew a warrantt for me to be sworne of ye priuy Chamber to the K[ing] 01 00 00 381 Giuen his man that writt ye warrant 00 02 00 Giuen Sir William Heydon's man that when his master tooke my oath 00 02 00 25 Gilt paper 00 04 00 A per of sky Colour silke stockins 01 16 00 A per of black silk stockins 01 10 00 A per of knitt thread stockins 00 04 06 A per of p?buckes leather gloues with topps of black plush 00 08 00 A per of plaine buckes leather gloues 00 05 00 A per 2 per of thinne inner gloues 00 02 00 A little Tiffany ruff for my wife 00 07 06 paid my Laundresse 00 03 00 giuen a porter for bringing stooles 00 00 06 giuen ye pages of ye backe stayres att White hall 00 02 00 giuen a boy that did light me home 00 00 06 A loade of wood 00 10 00 to ye smith for setting on a locke 00 00 04 A pott for ye folkes to drinke in 00 00 02 28 giuen a boy for lighting my Coach home 00 00 06 29 Lost in light peeces borrowed 00 05 00 paid Stephens for 6 baytes for Coach horse 00 03 00 Giuen Stephen 00 00 04 mending my watch 00 11 00 382 30 Barber 00 02 00 giuen my Lady Maydston's man 00 01 00 31 A light from Whitehall home 00 01 00february 2 I? giuen att Whitehall 00 02 00 A light home 00 00 06 paid my Lady Richardson for vse 01 00 00 14 - 15 - 9[f.68v] 1626February Second half yeare 7 Giuen nurse Markettman 00 02 00 Giuen N. L. 00 02 06 8 Giuen att my fathers 00 01 06 Giuen att Bexley 00 03 00 Giuen Thomas Wyld when I and my boy came vp from Bexley to London in ye coach 00 02 06 10 Giuen N L 00 05 00 A new half shirt 00 08 00 paid And discharged Thomas Russell all his wages 01 00 00 Giuen him ouer 00 05 00 383 A torche 00 00 09 Sending Thomas to Grauesend 00 00 06 Washing Thomas his shirts 00 00 06 A halter 00 00 03 horsemeate and ostler 00 01 01 11 Giuen my taylours boy 00 00 06 Giuen my Lord Dukes porter att Wallingford house 00 02 00 132 Tooth pickes and case 00 00 08 N L 00 02 00 143 ffor making a bond 00 01 00 paid master Taylour for binding 2 paper bookes for alphabetts of Heraldry 00 08 00 ffor stocking a print of armes 00 02 00 14 paid master Taylour for allmost a dayes worke in heraldry 00 04 00 15 2 grammers for Anthony 00 01 03 10 quire of paper for heraldry 00 05 06 16 paid a porter that brought things from Belinsgate 00 00 04 Barber 00 02 06 // A silluer rapier cutt in diamonds 02 10 00 17 Aesops fables in English for Anthony 00 00 06 paid my Taylour for all worke and lining about my plush suite and 384 Cloake 03 14 00 ffor a Cordeuant wastcoate and making 01 00 00 paid him for all other worke 00 154 00 paid Muddiman for all his worke for my wife vt patet per bill 06 16 00 A drumm for my boy 00 05 00 18 A new beauer hatt 02 05 00 paid a scriuener for making a bond 00 01 00 O? Item for helping me to ye mony viz: O. 100li' 00 05 00 14 yds of blacke vnshorne vellett att 24s per yd to make a suite and ye outside of a Cloake 16 156 00 9 yds 3 qrters' of black plush att 28s per yd to line ye Cloake 13 12 00 3 yds dim' of white satten to lyne ye doublett and skirtes and pocketts att 15s 02 12 06 1 yd dim’quter' of black sattin for edging ye suite att 16s per yd 01 00 00 Item ye mercers bill for this suite 3 - 19 - 6 ye Taylours bill for ye same vt supra 3 - 14 - 0 Totall of all this suite and Cloake 385 37 - 13 - 6 ____________ 55 - 12 - 2[f.69r] 1626 Second half yeareFebruary Sattin and taffety for a new per of sleeues 01 06 06 17 Supper in Apollo with Sir George Dawson Sir Thomas Walsingham, Sir Iohn Skeffington, and my brother Ashbernham 00 07 06 21 per of gloues for Anthony. 00 00 06 paid for all horsemeate 00 19 00?4(?) Item for a halter 00 00 04 Item more for horsemeat 00 02 02 per of stockins for Antho[n]y 00 01 02 Kersy to make Anthony a suite 00 10 00 Cloath to make him a cloake 00 16 08 dying my yellow silk stockins 00 01 06 giuen my Lord Dukes porter 00 00 06 giuen Stephen 00 00 02 386 paid Alice Browne a whole yeares Wages due vpon ye 26. of Ianuary last past 02 10 00 22 ffor a new print in wood Carued to print Escocheons with mantells of 9 in a side 00 14 06 ffor printing of 38 q[ui]r[e] of paper with that and other prints att 8d per quire 01 05 06 27 Dinner with Sir Thomas Shirley att a tauerne 00 07 06 :Charges when stephen went into Kent 00 04 08 100 li' of fa*gotts 00 10 06 giuen Stephen 00 00 02 28 A greate print of armes viz. 16 // coates with ye baronette hand, and a wiuerne holding ye esco sheild. Carued by master co*ckson, to sett vpon my bookes 04 15 00March 2 heraldry 00 01 00 paid my Landress 00 02 06 3 Giuen a fee for looking in ye office of Wills 00 05 00 5 riband 00 00 09 6 giuen att my Lady Maydstones 00 00 06 387 8 paid Miles ye Carrier for all 00 04 00 9 poore + 00 01 00 paper and Inke 00 00 06 10 paid ye taylour for all worke about a Cloake and suite for hAnthony 00 18 00 A reame of Italian royall paper for escocheons 02 08 00 A quire of ye best royall imperiall paper 00 04 00 A paper for booke for places in Kent 00 01 00?4(?) Hard wax 00 01 00 112 A button to Anthony's Cloake 00 00 06 13 giuen att denmark house 00 01 00 14 giuen Henr' Fisher 00 10 00 binding heraldry bookes 00 15 00 Typotius his worke of Hieroglyphickes 00 18 00 Giuen N L 00 010 00 15 Giuen by my wife to Doctor Foxs as a fee 00 10 00 paid for binding 2 bookes vp for heraldry 00 07 00 16 6 paper bookes of 5 q[ui]r[e] in a booke bound in parchment for history and Heraldry of Kent viz 4d per q[ui]r[e] et 4d per binding 00 12 00 388 giuen ffranklyn in part of payment for his iourney with ye horses 00 01 00 23 - 6 - 1.[f.69v] 1626March Second halfe yeare 17 paid these bills vt sequitur viz: Imprimis for shoing oates and hay for Coach=horse 02 07 04 ffor mending my saddle 00 02 04 A torch 00 00 10 paid ye Scauenger of London 00 01 08 more for shoing ye coach Coach horse 00 04 02 A ffanne for my wife 00 05 00 Riband for my wife 00 03 00 giuen by her to my cosen Ashbornham's Coahchman 00 01 00 A skreene for her 00 00 04 giuen to other Coachmen 00 024 00 A Carded band for my wife 00 05 00 mending and starcheing her ruffe 00 03 00 giuen by her 00 00 06 389 per of shoes(?) for Anthony 00 01 06 A drumme for Anthony 00 05 00 ffor tape 00 01 05 poore + 00 03 00 ob' Candles 8 li' 00 00?3(?) 030 ob' paid ye Vpholster master Grafton [blank] A french bedsted with pillers of wallnutt tree 01 15 00 1 peece of greene and yellow Velure 01 18 00 23 yds of fr? striped hangings linsey wolsey att 6s per yd 06 18 00 ringes hooke nayles et hanging vp 00 02 06?0 ffor a low stoole and two low halfe back't Chaire wee finding ye black Couering 01 07 00 ye stoole frame 1s 2d ye Chaires 4s-8d:ye bl[ack] A greate Chaire frame ^of beech^ 4s.wrought 2 low stoole frames of walnutt treevelluett 3s 8d. buckarom to lyne ye insidechaire and of ye stuffe 2s-3d. 4s ounces 3stooles qrters' bate one dram of black and orenge freinge turky top freinge att 3s per ounce for ye Chaire and 2 stooles. 14s. ye stuffe was our owne So these 2 stooles and Chaire Cost beside ye stuffe sackcloath, 390 girtwebb, nayles, towe, C(?)urled haire, redd leather, nayles etc 10s 6d. making them vp 6s 01 19 03?42 ffor making vp ye greene vellett 3 stooles and 2 C?low halfe backe Chaires. for ye frames and all butt ye Couering stuffe 02 00 10 19 A loade of wood 00 09 06 mending my silluer Can 00 03 04 20 2 li' of Candles 00 00 10d my wife paid for starching her band 00 01 06 ffor mending Andrewes shoes 00 00 05 paid ye Scauengers for all due att our Lady 00 01 08 paid master Kymbe in part for tricking ye armes of Kent 00 10 00 paid for 5 paper a brasse print of my single Coate and Creast for bookes 01 10 00 17 - 9 - 8[f.70r] 1626 391 Second half yeare 56 paper bookes of 5 q[ui]r[e] in a booke for notes of Kent by ye Lath bound in parchment 00 12 0[-] paid for binding vp 2 greate bookes and one in 4to marked on ye backe KENT 00 12 06 ffor binding other heraldry paper bookes 00 02 00 Item for binding 3 greate bookes with scocheon paper for Ordinaryes 00 15 00 Item for paper putt in them 00 00 06 paid ye Chirurgeon for letting me bloud 00 05 00 Giuen master Doctor Foxe 7 fees 03 10 00 paid All manner of Charges in passing my patent of Baronettship as // appeareth by ye particulars in a paper with in ye box where ye patent Lyes 84 16 00 30 paid Stephen a whole yeares wages due att our Lady day 05 00 00 paid ye Coachmakers bill 00?1 04 00 31 paid master Noakes ye Apothecary for all that I had of him in my last sicknes 00 17 08 392 Item for my wife 00 04 00 Item for Anthony 00 12 10 paid my half yeares assesse to ye poore 00 10 00April 10 paid for making vp a damaske suite for Anthony. 00 15 06 Horses in London 01 16 00 giuen there 00 01 06 Disbursed by my brother H[enry]Nouember D[ering] whilst I liued in London. 3 Charges in my seruaunts returne from London, themselues, and ye horses 00 07 05 paid Bayly ye sawyer 00 16 01 paid [blank] Kember of Harriettsham for a blacke gelding for ye Coach 08 00 00 9 dyett for 2 men att board wages for each a fortnight 00 16 00 13 paid and discharged Iohn Batherst 01 10 00 Giuen a drummer att a muster 00 02 00 Item a barrell of beere then spent 00 101 00 21 paid Alexander Hart for Loane of mony 131 13 0423 ffetching of horses too and f[]ro[] 2s 2s 6d 2s 1li(?) 6d 9d 4s-3s 19d. 00 16 05 26 paid Iohn Dering for mault 12 05 00 393December 17 p[aid] my cosen Elis: Fisher for loane of mony 04 00 00 An old Cloake bought of Thomas to make Andrew a per of Hills a 01 02 09 suite whilst he was att my fathers 00 15 00 more to make itt vp 00 03 09Ianuary 16 paid for a yeares loane of 100li' to my father due december 20 08 00 00 paid my father which he L[ai]d out for Composition 00 05 00February 4 A new plough bought 00 09 00 11 Giuen to Anthony 00 01 06 giuen nurse 00 02 00 14 paid goodman Carter for 28 qrters' of flockes att 16d per qrter' 01 17 04 ffor 4 traces 00 01 04 paid nurse Markettman in part 01 00 00 155 - 10 - 8[f.70v] 1626.February Second half yeare 14 A per of sockes for Antho[n]y. 00 00 06 394 dressing my bay mares foote 00 01 00 3 halters 00 01 01 A fothering line 00 00 04 18 ffor a messenger to douer viz: I.Lucas 00 02 00 A new plough 00 09 00 24 paid Elnor ye taylours bills 18s 6 pints of Hastifers 00 01 00March 18 3 ells of Holland 00 09 00 A new gett 00 00 10 24 paid Nurse Markettman ye remainder for all ye nursing for Ned: being 67 weekes att 2s 6d per week 01 09 00 paid Bayly ye sawyer for worke 00 16 01 paid in Smithes bills. for shoing and for husbandry irons 02 04 08 Candles 00 02 03 paid William Quersted and discharged 00 05 00 paid ye shoomakers bill for Anthony and Andrew Hill 00 16 00 december 26 paid William Sare in part of wages 02 00 00 paid Iohn Hunt for Carpentry 00 16 02 Item for worke in remoouing of trees 01 12 00 paid Him and others for worke att ye bouling 00 1211 09 o?b' ground 00 131 1010 10 395 paid ye two Tilghmans for all worke in my absence, Item, to [blank] Roberts and Richard Butcher for husbandry worke etc 02 01 05 Item more to ye 2 tilhgh Tilghmans for ploughing - 02 16 02 Item to them for Courting 01 07 01 Item to them for Threshing and Cleaning 04 00 1. ob' paid for ye remoouing of trees to others beside I. Hunt 00 11 5. ob' paid for 9 barrells of beere spent att London before our Comming downe 02 14 00March. paid att London for teaching Anthony to play on a drumm 00 05 00 memorandum paid my wiues houshold booke for dyett att London vst sequitur: Imprimis for all Nouember 03 15 00.ob' 25 - 12 - 2 Item for all december where of spent att one dinner - 3li'-10s-2?3d 08 06 06.ob'dyett Item for all Ianuary 07 19 10.qr’30li' Item for all February 04 18 1010s Item for all March 05 10 003d. other Charges beside dyett 00 05 01. 396 paid Doctor Fox. in 7 fees for aduise in phisicke 03 10 00 Chirurgeon 00 08 00 Brass prints for ^my^ armes on bookes 01 10 00 56 - 7?2 - 56 Booke binder for binding bookes for heraldry 01 10 00 Scauenger 00 01 08 __________ 63 - 7 - 2 __________ Summe of this halfe yeare whilst I lay att London which was but 5 monthes. 425?4 - 15 - 7. _____________ 431 - 15 - 3 _____________ Summe totall of this whole yeare. 721 - 8 - 11 ____________ 7145? - 9 - 3 397[f.71r] 1627 ffirst half yeareMarch 27 A handle to my silluer Chaffingdish 00 01 00 Washing a per of Sheetes 00 01 00 A loade of wood 00 09 10 31 paid ye smith's bill 00 09 00 paid for marking onf my new plate 00 05 06 A greate leather standard Chest 01 00 00 porter for bringing itt home 00 00 06 per of sthoes for Andrew 00 02 00 Giuen Iames Dering when he went ouer 00 05 00April 2 A booke print of my Creast viz alone 00 08 00 3 Letters 00 00 04 A skinne of Velom 00 01 02 5?3 bookes of Computation of yeares 00 02 04 writing of a warrant to search all offices without fee, to be signed by ye priuy counsell 00 02 00 supper 00 02 09 4 paid ye shomaker for all due vnto him for my selfe 01 09 00 Item for my wife 00 03 00 398 Mathaeus Parisiensis, et Florent' Wigorn' etc 00 10 00 Goodwin's suc^c^ession of BB, latin 00 04 00 Edmeri Historia 00 04 00 5 giuen att my Lady Maydston's 00 00 06 paid a Carrman for bringing Chaires and stoole 00 00 10 6 giuen att my Lord Priuy Seale's 00 01 00 giuen att my Lord Dukes to ye Porter' 00 01 00 to a boy that lighted me home 00 00 09 X my dinner 00 01 064 7 Giuen att my Lord of Canterburyes 00 01 00 going by water 00 01 00 Candles 00 00 05 Apples and a lemman x 00 00 05 8 giuen 00 00 06 A Chaine bought by my wife and giuen Nan my cosen Anne Cutts 01 05 00 Gloues for my wife 00 06 00 A ruffe for my wife 00 07 00 Riband 00 06 00 A per of garters for her 00 02 00 Knotts for her 00 03 00 9 giuen for Carrying a letter 00 01 00 giuen att Sir Iohn Hoberts 00 01 06 going by water 00 00 06 399 mending my hangers 00 00 04 10 going by water 00 00 06 giuen att ye Master of ye rolles 00 02 00 ffor writing a postscript in my warrant for search in offices 00 02 00 paid master Beale for dressing and lining my hatt 00 04 00 A hatt for Anthony 00 05 06 11 A scriuener for writing more in my warrant of search for Antiquityes 00 00 06 17 X paid ye Cooke his bill for all due vnto this morning 00 11 00 letters 00 00 04 X stephens Charges when he Came vp 00 01 06?4 to a porter 00 00 04 9 - 15 - 2[f.71v] 1627Aprill. ffirst halfe yeare. X ffor dyett 00 01 06 An vrinall 00 00 03 paid ye Smith for mending ye winedow 00 00 06 400 paid ye watchman that of ye Citty 00 02 00 giuen ye Coachmakers man when they brought a Coache home for Anthony 00 01 00 paid a voluntary assesse to ye minister for afternoone Lectures 00 10 00 paid co*ckson for Cutting a seale of my single coate and Creast 10s circ*mscribed Sig: Edvardi Dering milit' et Baronetti 00 18?7 06 Item ye silluer of itt 00 04 06 paid Wodenett for taking of my greate seale with 8 Coates and Creast, and for making a thimble to itt and s an Iuory handle 00 02 06 going by water 00 00 06 12 to a porter 00 00 06 Comming to grauesend by water 00 04 00 giuen 00 01 00 horsemeate and dyett 00 032 06 A hackney hired home 00 05 00 13 giuen att my fathers 00 09 06 14 Ordinary att Ashford for me and my X brother Henr[y] 00 03 00 giuen a poore man + 00 03 00 19 2 doz b' of Candles 00 09 00 giuen att Boughton 00 02 06 401 Corde 00 00 01 girthes 00 00 08 paid Sergeant Snowden for trayning my souldiers by Command from my Lord Leiuetenant 3 dayes 00 06 00 giuen him for his dyett 00 06 00 giuen a drummer for attending 00 05 00 paid by my brother H[enry] D[ering] whilst I was att London since our Lady day Last past.April 8 paid for more worke about ye bowling gro[un]d 00 12 00 day worke in husbandry by ye 2 Tilghmans and Roberts 02 10 00 paid Iohn Hunt for carpentry and making of pales 00 13 06 10 paid Thomas Wiles for horsemeat att Grauesend 00 14 04 Shouing 00 00 02 horsemeate when my wife Cam ^went^ home from London 00 10 08 my seruaunts 2 of them by water 00 01 00 mending a saddle 00 00 06 Giuen Thomas Wiles by my wife 00 05 00 paid Iennings ye cowper for worke 00 02?3 00 402 Layd out by my selfe att London. 23 per of bootehose 00 10 00 going by water whilst I was there [blank] giuen att ye exchequer 00 03 06 10 - 17 - 0[stub][f.72r] 1627Aprill ffirst half yeare 25 The Acts of Scotland printed 00 04 00 Candles 00 00 05 27 Satten for a doublett 002 12 00 Taffaty for lining 001 01 00 A ruffe and 2 per of Cuffes 01 04 00 2 dozen of silluer and Watchett pointes 01 04 00 bowles for ye Children 00 00 06 28 per of gloues 00 01 02 403 new hatching my gilt rapier 01 12 00 30 2 paper bookes 00 01 08 A reame of paper ffor Antiquityes 02 08 00 Item 4 quire more of ye same for ye same vse 00 10 00 A reame of paper 00 05 00 other paper 00 0-01 0610 pennes 00 01 00 Inkhornes and penknife 00 02 04 A pen knife 00 00 06 giuen master Deuicke's man that brought me a booke of ye mapps of ffrance 00 02 00May. 1. Iuniper 00 01 00 2 giuen att ye Rolles 00 01 00 paid master co*ckson for an Iuory top to my seale 00 02 06 paid for glasse Armes viz. 2 coates in single quarryes with creastes. each att 1s-6d. 2 without creasts att 1s. and for peeces of glasse to mend broken armes withall each be??ing att coate att 6d per Coate 00 10 00 3 p[aid] master Woodnett for Cutting my single Coate and for ye silluer added to another seale 00 03 06 404 giuen master Lilly for ye vse of his booke of visitation f? of Kent 00 10 00 paid master Taylour for a peece of Velom and for drawing some circles thereon 00 02 06 4 Inke of ye exchequer 00 00 06 5 paid H. Hutton a qrters' wages 01 00 00 // Giuen Sir William Segar 02 04 00 6 Landresse 00 02 06 7 Barber 00 02 06 ffa*gotts 00 01 09 An vrinall 00 00 03 An inke glasse 00 00 05 Chamberent for a fortnight in Kings streete 00 16 00 8 paid co*ckson for Cutting my Creast att one end of my double seale 00 06 00 9 2 per of socks 00 01 00 giuen master Hill for dressing my deafe eare 00 10 00 paid master Kimby for all worke in armory viz. for tricking coates and creast att 5s six score 00 14 00 Phisicke 00 07 04 An iuory boxe for an inkhorne 00 01 06 10 fTo a porter 00 00 06 405 19 - 0 - 2[f.72v] 1627May ffirst half yeare 10 going by water from London to Erill 00 05 00 giuen att my cosen Bringbornes 00 03 00 11 horsemeate att Grauesend 00 002 09 going by water whilst I was att London 00 04 00 poore + 00 00 06 Disbursed for me by my brother H[enry] D[ering] whilst I was att London In April and May. and att London whilst I was in KentApril 28. paid Hunt for 12 dayes worke about paling in ye Hopgarden and ye crosse pale that ioynes itt to ye east feild 00 18 00 paid Taylour ye moalecatcher for 4 doz and 8 moales att 1d ob' ye moale he findinge himeself 00 07 00 29 ffor a hamperre 00 02 00 406 giuen ye vpholsterers man 00 01 00 A looking glasse 00 05 00 ffor Cords 00 03 08 ffor packthread 00 00 04 bottles 00 02 00 wharfa*ge and waterbaile for my goods 00 02 08 paid a porter for heelping to packe vp my think?ges houshold stuff att London 00 04 00 paid ye Carman 00 05 00 paid my apothecary 00 02 00 ffor pinnes 00 04 11 A silluer fan handle 00 02 06 A bone knife for Ned 00 00 02 ffor for schooling of Anthony att Charter house 00 05 00 horsemeate in ye iourneying and staying about sending my stuffe home 00 14 02May 2 paid Iames Bunce for halfe an assesse to ye poore due in his times 00 06 04 4 Shoing att home 00 05 00 plough irons 00 06 00 6 paid for bringing downe my houshold stuff by water to ffeuersham 01 03 00 h----- se horsemeate att ffeuersham 00 00 08 407 stuffing my saddle 00 00 06 paid Nicholas Mason for bringing 2 loade of stuffe from ffeuersham home to my house 01 04 00 ffor water bale 00 00 08 8 paid steward ye glasier for work 00 03 00 paid ye mason for worke 00 00 08 A Canne for beere 00 00 08 paid for a matt att London 00 00 08 20 li' of white starch att 4d per li' 00 06 08 A boxe 00 00 10 8 - 13 - 4[f.73r] 1627May ffirst half yeare paid ye vpholsterers bill vt sequitur ffor a shagg matt for a bedd 00 02 00 ffor 60 yds of bullrush matt att 2d per yd 00 10 00 ffor 3 playne mattes 00 02 00 ffor two dayes worke 00 05 00 ffor Cordes 00 02 06 408 A french greate Chaire frame 00 03 06 3 french backe stoole frames att 2s 6d 01 00 00 2 low stoole frames 00 02 00 girtwebb' and sacke cloath to all these 00 06 00 14 yds of tike to make baggs for all these att 20d per yd 01 03 04 34 li' of ye best feathers to fill attll these att 12d per li' 01 14 00 Leather and lining to ye backes of all these 00 05 00 Drawing ye peeces of 9 yeards of old scarlett to Couer all these 00 07 06 1200 of bright boate nayles for them all 01 00 10 ffor blacke tackes for them all 00 03 06 15 oz 1/4 of willow colour turky topp freinge of silke att 2s 7d per ounce 02 00 05 14 yds 3/4 of yellow buckarum to make Couers for all these att 13d 00 16 01 ffor making ye greate Chaire and couer 00 02?4 00 ffor making ye 8 backe stoole att 2s each 00 16?2 00 ffor making ye 2 low stooles 00 02 08?0 10 - 60 - 210 409 ye o(?)dd 6s 8d was abated. 18 giuen Iohn Wolton his boy that brought me letters 00 00 02 23 paid Richard Kersby for threshing 00 05 04 giuen att Boughton 00 01 00 horseroome during a showrer 00 00 06 24 Andrewes Charges when I sent him to London beside dyett 00 021 06 giuen him 00 00 04 Charges att London about getting remouing my ^two^ trunkes from Westminster 00 02 02 Keeters? Paid Campion ye Carrier for all due may. 10?9. 00 09 10 Item a saddle downe 00 00 06 wine and oyle and spices for a medicine for my gelding 00 05 07 An ell of Cloath. for a Cheese Cloath 00 01 00 half a yard of Cloath for an ash Cloath 00 00 04 28 paid ye mason for worke att Surrenden 00 02 04 A wanty hooke 00 00 03 paid Iohn Hunt ye Carpenter for 4 dayes worke about my hops 00 06 00 4 dayes worke in ye east parlour 00 06 00 410 ffelling of timber and making of pales and rayles of itt 00 12 09 2 dayes worke att harrowe 00 01 06 paid Browne ye smith for shoing 00 04 00 fforgeing of plough irons 00 03 04 14 - 6 - 1[f.73v] 1627May ffirst half yeare mending a Cobbiron 00 00 03 nayles 00 00 01 Charnells hookes and rides for the East parlour 00 03 04 64 nayles for ye greate doore in ye East parlour 00 02 00 A per of sizers for ye stable 00 00 05 A Crocke broken and paid for vnto daniell Smart due 1621 but not askt for vntill now. 00 01 00 30 paid for Cloath to make Bocher a suite 00 15 00 29 paid vnto my Cosen Elisabeth ffisher for ye Loane of mony 04 00 00 411Iune 1 paid ye ioyner for worke in ye East parlour 00 02 00 paid stephen for washing his shirtes att London 00 01 00 Mending Andrewes shoes att London 00 00 05 Starching a band for my wife 00 01 06 2 paid William Sare for half a yeares wages ending att ye [blank] of May 02 00 00 Item for his paines whilst I kept no house 00 05 00 horsemeate 00 00 08 3 A new saddle bought for me by Sir Iohn Skeffington, with a bitt, bridle, stirrup, and girthes 02 10 00 paid an assesse for ye poore of little Chart made ye 4th of Iune // last past 1626. att ye rate of 1d per acre 6s 2d. where of half of itt repaid vnto me ^this day^ by ye ouerseer yat receiued. - viz: Richard Feild. because that many denyed payment to so greate an assesse being forreigners whereby the parish contented themselues with half ye proportion. memorandum itt was paid long since but not 412 sett downe 00 03 01 6 6 ells of Lockarum att 2s 8d per ell to make Anthony shirtes 00 16 00 1 ell of fine holland for my wife 00 06 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 13 dayes husbandry 00 13 00 paid Thomas Roberts for 9 dayes husbandry 00 09 00 paid Iohn Hunt for one 5 dayes Carpenter 00 07 06 3 iron Casem*nts for ye East parlour 00 09 00 paid ye Carryer 00 01 00 4 paid vnto Alexander Hart for halfe a yeares loane of 125li', due on ye first of May last past 05 00 00 paid and discharged Thomasin Maplesden for all her time being halfe a yeare 02 00 00 giuen her 00 02 00 ffor bring 2 young Cignetts from Conyers mill 00 00 02 6 paid goodman steward ye glasier for 41 foote dim' of new glasse for my East parlour att 7d per foote 01 04 02 Item for mending a Casem*nt 00 00 04 Item for Coulouring Casem*nts redd 00 01 00 413 9 paid. . . . Kingley for 4 yeares // quittrent due vnto my Lady Kemp, for her Manner of Bocton Aluph, out of 5 acres of land in Broadmead att 12d ob' per annum 00 04 02 Item for ye stewards fee vpon ye Exchange of my name for my fathers which my father sayth was not due 00 01 00 21 - 12 - 1.[f.74r]Iune 1627. 9 horses att Ashford seuerall times 00 01 06 14 paid for a per of stockins for Anthony 00 00 09 paid for a per for Andrew 00 01 06 15 paid master Copley for all his small tithe due from St Michael last, vntill next St Michael 01 00 00 16 paid for 100 li' of boate nayles for Chaires 00 01 00 packthread 00 01 00 mending watch 00 04 00 for a paile 00 01 024 414 per of Hose for Ned 00 00 09 giuen 00 01 04 worke in ye garden 00 00 06 Sand 00 00 06 broomes 00 00 04 needles 00 00 06 Barber for Anthony 00 00 03 per of garters for Anthony 00 03 00 2 beere glasses 00 01 04 tape 00 00 08 Riband 00 01 04 horsemeate and giuen att Ashford 00 00 10 3 ells 3 qrters' of Stuffe bought att Ashford to make a suite for Anthony, a coate for Ned, and a suite for Andrew and for ye Kitchin boy 02 08 11 Inkle bought there 00 02 00 paid Champian ye Carrier 00 02 04 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 11 dayes 00 11 00 paid Thomas Robertes for 12 dayes 00 12 00 paid Richard Bocher for 3 dayes 00 03 06 paid G. Gooding for 3 dayes dim' and 2 boyes for 3 dayes he att. 18d his boyes each att 14d per diem about mye walles of my inner study 415 for drawers 00 12 03 paid for 6 for bands for Antho[n]y one for Andrew, and another for ye Kitching boy 00 06 02 ffor a: steele 00 00 05 17 paid my assesse for beacon watch att Shorne Cliffe, and Westwell Downe 00 01 00 2018 A barrell of beere bestowed on my souldiers 00 11 00 20 paid steward ye glazier for glazing and setting vp my armes in ye east parlour 00 04 08 Item for glasse in my inner study 00 01 06 Item for Soader for ye leades 00 04 08 Item for otes worke 00 01 00 22 paid Bayly ye sawyer for 700 of board Cutt att 2s 4d per C 00 16 00 paid [blank] for 22 bushells' of oates att 15d per bush' measured per heape 01 07 06 Memorandum layd out between ye 23 of Iune and ye 2 of Iuly whilst I liued att Willisborough with my wife and family my father and mother etc. Imprimis ffor Letting my horse bloud 00 00 04 416 Shoestrings for Anthony 00 00 06 3 bands for Andrew 00 01 00 paid to a Labourer for a dayes worke in Casting of^att^ ye pond 00 01 00 10 - 11 - 0[f.74v] 1627[Iune] ffirst halfe yeare paid ye Carrier 00 00 06 paid ye two Lankfords for 7 dayes worke between them about ye two of dothe Dormant windowes in ye Granary 00 10 06 paid Iohn Hunt for 17 dayes 01 07 00 Giuen my cosen Pickering 00 02 00 fforgeing of plough irons 00 05 06 ffor a new plough sheare 00 04 08 ffor nayles 00 04 00?4 ffor mending ye coach 00 02 06 3 per of rides etc 00 03 06 Shoing 00 03 06 giuen Anthony 00 00 04 417 Lost att bowles 00 01 06 paid ye Glazier for worke att willisborough 00 0244 00 Item for setting vp giuen ye Sexton there 00 00 06 giuen ye Sexton att Ashford 00 01 00 giuen master Th:' Godfrey's man 00 01 00 poore 00 00 06 Linnen bought for my self and my wife 03 00 00 binding 2 paper bookes one in bl[ack] leather ye other in white Vellom marked KENT 00 11 00 Item for blacke leades etc 00 00 06 Item for letters 00 00 02 Item 4 quire of paper bound in Vellom with blew silke stringes 00 04 04 [Gap] Charges beside dyett att ye Assises.Iuly 8 poore + 00 00 06 giuen ye Cryers gloue 00 01 00 giuen ye fidlers 00 001 00 giuen att my Aunt Fisher's 00 01 00 Horsemeate there 00 05 00 418 paid ye sadlers bill 00 07 08 A hatt for Ned 00 02 06 Horsemeate att Ashford 00 00 08 paid Arrowes ffor ^per^ shoes for Bocher [^]2. Ianuary[^] 00 02 08 Item another per May. 20 00 02 08 Item for mending shoes for him 00 02 08 mending shoes for Andrew 00 01 00 per of shoes for Anthony 00 01 06 per of shoes for Ned 00 00 10 mending ye Coach=harnesse 00 01 04 ffor soaling my bootes 00 01 00 9 - 1 - 10[f.75r] 1627 ffirst halfe yeare.Iuly 9 per of stockis for Anthony 00 01 04 paid Iohn Hunt for 6 dayes 00 09 00 paid Richard Fowler for Cleaning out of rootes 00 10 00 paid Hopper for shoing of -8 per of beastes 01 00 00 419 paid Thomas Roberts for 6 dayes 00 06 00 Item more when he dyetted in ye house 00 06 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 17 dayes 00 17 00 paid for ye Clarkes wages 00 00 06 A per of traces 00 00 07 paid ye Ioyner for 6 dayes dim' about ye doore and drawers in my Vtopia 00 606 00 10 paid Elner ye Taylour for all worke 00 12 00 [small gap] paid Mistress Awsiter for halfe a yeares rent of her house ended att our Lady day past. I say paid by ye hands of my cosen Bringborne Iune 6th 11 00 00 Item paid and so discharged of ye house and all further rent. Iune. 25 07 00 00 paid ye Glasier for ye Armes in ye East parlour of my two wiues etc 02 12 00 4 latches for doores 00 05 08 halfe a summe of reparation nayles 00 05 10 6 dozen of corkes for my bottles 00 02 06 A key for my trunke att London 00 00 10 Portage there 00 03 00 paid [blank] 420 A ruler 00 022 06 Canuas to packe vp my suite and saddles 00 01 01 dd' Oliuer Marshall 00 05 00 Item to buy pencells 00 01 00 paid on ye 19th of May for ye vse of 100li' one quarter of a yeare vnto master Christopher Bowyer of Grayes Inne 02 00 00 11 mending a brass candlesticke 00 00 02 - 3 bands for Antho[n]y Andrew 00 01 00 12 giuen M.N.N.L. 00 02 06 14 paid Bayly for sawing of 300 foote att 2s 4d per foote 00 07 00 paid Iohn Hunt for worke about planking ye stable 00 06 00 Item for other worke 00 03 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman 6 dayes 00 06 00 paid Thomas Roberts for 6 dayes 00 06 00 paid Richard Michiner ye Ioyner for 5 dayes worke 00 05 00 paid for sheepe shearing 00 03 01 Item for tarre 00 00 10 paid Nicholas Mason for fetching of 30500 of shingles from beyond Tenterden 00 10 00 421 2 lockes 00 02 00 31 - 0 - 11[f.75v] 1627Iuly ffirst half yeare 24 100 of nayles for ye Iowyner 00 00 03 paid ye Carrier for all due 00 00 07 paid Richard Catesby for 5 dayes threshing 00 05 010 15 paid my Assess for ye church 1626 00 06 08 Item paid my Assesse for ye poore of Pluckley made ye 11th of May last 00 13 04 paid G: Gooding for all worke 00 06 00 paid Anthony Barnard for Fetching a load of fa*gotts out of fa*gothurst 00 01 09 17 paid Bayly ye Sawyer for 2 dayes worke 00 07 00 18 paid dd' to [blank] Tully to be paid vnto his brother Michael Tully for 3500 of shingles att 20s per 1000 03 10 00 19 A stone bottle 00 00 06 Redd Oaker 2 li' 00 00 04 422 horsemeate att Maydstone 00 00 04 Bone lace for my wife 01 03 00 Mending a siue 00 01 00 A preseruing glasse 00 00 03 giuen Thomas Wilds 00 00 06 20 11 yd dim' of damaske att 10s per yd of ye History of Holofernes to make a table Cloath, a Cupboarde Cloath, and a Side board Cloath 04 16 00 43 yds of damaske suitable att 2s 11d per yd to make napkins 3 dozen of napkins 06 04 00 6 yd of fine damaske of ye history of ye prodigall Child att 10s per yard to make one and one table Cloath 03 00 00 6 yds of diaper att 5s per yd to make one table Cloath 01 10 00 18 yds of diaper att 2s 2d to make [blank] napkins 01 19 00 22 yds of diaper att 20d per yd to make [blank] napkins 01 16 00 21 paid ye two Langfords for 5 dayes worke apeece att 18d per diem about making of a dormant windowe in ye groomes Chamber, taking downe ye ledge and making of an playne 423 doore 00 15 00 22 27 li' of leade et dim' att 1d ob' per li' bought att Ashford for ye last of my dormant windowes ouer ye stable 00 03 04 3 li' of redd' oaker for my study wall 00 00 06 horse att Ashford 00 00 02 31 Giuen ye Keeper att Eastwell wehen my dogg rann att a deere 00 02 06 27 - 3 - 10[f.76r] 1627.August ffirst half yeare 3 paid Bayly ye sawyer 00 05 00 paid [blank] Catesby for Cutting of grasse and haying 00 0?15 02 ffor a speciall(?) --lin(?)es 00 00 10 bottles and barrells 7.3. [blank] gunpowder 00 05 06 2000 4 li' nayles 00 06 08 4 shoes for ye roane gelding 00 01 08 424 hookes and hinges 00 06 04 plough irons 00 00 09 100 of hobnayles 00 00 03 Shoing 00 05 01 paid steward ye Glazier 00 16 00 paid for a per of bootes 00 12 00 2 stocklockes 00 03 02 100 of quills 00 01 00 A Iackline 00 03 00 2 buttery basketts 00 05 06 10 dozen of trenchers 00 05 10 4 dozen of wodden spoones 00 02 00 per of gloues 00 05 00 1?4 yds of striped stuffe for Curtaynes in ye East parlour 01 04 00 9 yds of linsey wolsey for a Carpett on my study table 00 10 00 9 yds of 4d riband for my wife 00 02 08 A key to my wiues watch 00 02 00 A baskett 00 00 04 horsemeate att Canterbury 00 00 03 200 of nayles for ye ioyner 00 00 06 A surcingle 00 00 06 horsemeatt att Ashford 00 03 04 giuen ye ostlers 00 00 05 giuen ye Chamberlaines 00 00 06 425 paid for letter to and fro 00 00 09 paid Samuell ye Cooke for 2 dayes help heere 00 10 00 - paid my taylours bill for making vp my white satten doublett and black plush hose 02 06 00 paid Robert Dering for halfe yeares vse of 50li' due 02 00 00 12 - 2 - 0[f.76v] 1627August ffirst half yeare. 5(?) - paid Mason for bringing of fish etc from ffeuersham 00 06 08 - Item for towne draught 00 00 02 paid ye Mason for all worke by himself and his boyes 00 08 09 - ffor helpe when a greate dinner was made heere 00 05 02 paid Iohn Lucas for helpe in ye garden 00 08?1 04 paid Iohn Hunt for 12 dayes work 00 18 00 426 paid Tullye's boyes 00 00 04 paid Iohn Hunt for more worke 00 02 03 paid Thomas Roberts for 18 dayes worke 00 12 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 17 dayes etc 00 11 04 7 paid for 54 li' wt brought downe from London 00 02 022 - A barell for Capers 00 00 02 - bringing downe 2 Cheeses 00 01 00 bringing other things 00 01 08 - bringing Artichockes 00 02 00 8 giuen 00 00 06 Giuen M. N. N L 00 05 00 11 Giuen N. M. N L 00 02 06 bringing a letter from greenway court(?) 00 00 06 giuen Thomas 00 00 06 13 horsemeate att Wy 00 00 04 A buckle 00 00 02 Shoing 00 00 02 A round hoope nett 00 01 06 18 li' of Candles 00 06 09 Nayles 00 00 03 14 paid vnto mistress Astell that which her brother had disbursed for me about a Coppy of an act of 427 parlyament Concerning ye hospitall of Sherborne in Durhan' 00 15 06 15 - paid Richard Bocher for 3 brewings 00 07 06 Item for one dayes worke 00 00 08 16 paid Henry Tully ye Shingler for making 1000 of shingles 00 10 00 Item paid him for laying of 15500 of Shingles vpon ye north side of my stable, att 10s per 1000 07 15 00 18 paid Richard Michiner for ye ioyner for 28 dayes worke beside dyett 01 08 00 So ye whole Charge of that sett of drawers next ye Chimny beside timber and Sawing was 1li'-16s-0 20 - paid for bringing two swannes 00 02 00 horses att Ashfor 00 01 00 stuffing saddles 00 00 08 21 paid my Assesse to ye reparation of Tunbridge bridges 00 00 08 15 - 12 - 2[f.77r] 1627 428August ffirst half yeare 26 paid ye Smith for rides and ioynts [00] 02(?) 00 ffor shoing 00 01 00 ffor plough irons 00 00 04 mending a per of pincers 00 01 00 A round iron hoope for fishing 00 02 06 ffor 4d and 6d nayles 00 05 00 ffor making Cloathes for Bocher 00 03 00 28 paid Marden for 3 per of gloues for Ned 00 00 06 6 per of gloues for Anthony 00 02 00 Sowing leather 00 00 06 5 bushells' of hayre 00 01 10 paid [blank] Milsted for 100 of Lathes 00 01 02 paid Iohn Hunt for 16 dayes August 26: 01 04 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 17 dayes 00 11 04 paid Thomas Roberts for 17 dayes 00 11 04 giuen N. M. N. L. 00 02 00 paid Hutton his wages for ye second qter' 01 00 00 29 3 doz' of Candles 00 13 04 1 ell of holland 00 04 00 A stone pott 00 00 04 30 giuen N. M. N L 00 02 00 429 31 paid to a woman for helpe in ye Kitchin 00 04 04 A pole for my round nett 00 00 06 Bringing things from feuersham 00 01 00 Nayles 00 00 06 A glasse to drinke in 00 00 06 Shoing ye oxen 00 04 00September 1 giuen to N.M.M.N.L 00 02 00 5 Charges of sending to sterborough and London in horsemeate etc 00 03 06 2 per of bootehose 00 10 06 4 yd of Cobbwebb lane 00 08 08 A blacke iacke 00 01 06 A little spring locke 00 01 02 8 paid Iohn Hunt for 9 dayes 00 13 06 Giuen for bringing home my greuhound 00 01 00 A halter 00 00 01 paid Thomas Roberts for 7 dayes 00 04 08 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 11. dayes 00 07 04 paid Richard Michiner ye ioyner for 17 dayes 00 17 00 Item for a pound of glew 00 00 06 Giuen att Eastwell 00 00 06 9 G[iuen?]. N. M. N. L. 00 02 00 10 paid Thomas Simonson for Canuas for a suite for Bocher 00 10 00 430 Item for an ash Cloath 00 001 00 Item for a Cheese Cloath 00 01 02 Charges att London for stephen 00 001 060 10 - 7 - 11[f.77v] 1627September 10 giuen att Throughley 00 00 06 giuen Sir Maximilian Dalison's man 00 01 00 13 paid Harper vt sequitur Imprimis for all my tith hay 00 07 00 Item for Oxe bowes 00 02 00 ffor mowing of 10 acres att 16d per acre 00 13 04 ffor reaping of 5 acres of Pease in Longdane att 4s per acre 00?1 00 00 ffor Cleaning of ye wheate 00 01 02 ffor 6 open basketts 00 03 10 ffor a baskett with double leaues 00 01 00 ffor 3 Lattices 00 04 00 Giuen N. M. N. L. 00 02 00 156 paid ye Carrier of Pluckley 00 00 10 horsemeate and going by water to 431 London for stephen 00 022 06 horses att Ashford 00 01 04 2 per of stockins for Ned 00 01 09 2 ells' of Cloath to make Andrew shirtes 00 023 05?0 Packthread 00 00 04 17 Giuen M. N. N. L. 00 05 00 18 paid Iames Bunce for 11 weathers att 12s each 06 12 00 Giuen mistress Ely for being midwife when Besse was borne etc 03 00 00 Giuen my Lady Maydstone's man who brought a peece of plate from her to Bess 01 00 00 x --------- 19 giuen N M N L 00 02 00 paid and discharged Margr?aret Codwell 01 00 00 giuen more then her wages 00 02 06 20 giuen att Eastwell 00 00 06 21 paid Frankwell for helpe in ye kitchin 00 00 06 25 paid for 2 bottles 00 01 00 broomes 00 00 08 ffor sand 00 00 05 2 beere glasses 00 01 00 432 giuen to Nurse Markettman for soape and Candles 00 05 00 giuen to Nurses mayde 00 01 00 giuen 00 00 04 26 paid Arrowes for per of shoes for Ned 00 00 10 Item 2 per of shoes for Anthony 00 02 11 Item a per of shoes for Bocher 00 02 10 Item a per of shoes for Andrew 00 01 10 paid for a new Cony hay of 40 fadom' att 5d per fadom' and one shilling ouer 00 17 08 paid Thomas Roberts for 8 days dim' 00 05 08 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 10 dayes dim' 00 07 00 200 of nayles 00 00 06 27 paid an assesse to beacon watch 00 01 04 paid Susan Lucas for helpe in ye kitchin 00 02 00 paid and discharged elis: White 00 02 00 Lost 00 00 02 giuendd' my wife 00 05 00 18 - 7 - 3 433[f.78r] 1627 ffirst half yeareSeptember 29 paid my wiues houshold booke for all meate and dyett this first quarter from our Lady day to Midsommer 18 16 06 Item paid ye same booke for ye same purpose from midsommer to St Michael, beside wheate mault and Sheepe 36 15 06 Giuen and discharged Andrewe Hilles 00 05 00 paid Henry Hutton all wages due vnto him Giuen him aboue his wages paid Oliuer Marshall for all his worke in heraldry vntill Michaelmas day. 02 16 08 Giuen him towards Charge of his iourney 00 05 00 Giuen him more 00 06 08 paid Stephen Kennard his wages 02 10 00 paid William Sare his wages 02 00 00 paid Alice Browne her wages and --- 02 050 00 paid Dorothy Pemble her wages [blank] 434 paid Richard Michiller ye ioyner for all worke before michaelmeas 00 06 00 paid goodwife Thunder for keeping my wife in 5 weekes 00 15 00 Giuen her 00 02 06 paid Doctor Moseley for tith of 14 acres of barley att 2s 6d per acre 01 15 00 paid [blank] Catesby for mowing of 14 acres of barley 00 16 04 69 - 8 - 2 Summ totall of this halfe yeares 287 - 16 - 11[f.78v] [blank][f.79r] Second halfe yeare Michaelmas l627. 435 Memorandum my father and mother etc' Came now to board with meOctober ____________________________ 4 paid Thomas Masters for 5 sheepe att 02 18 00 5 paid for 6 seame of seede wheate 08 18 00 7 paid ye Smith for all due to him ut sequitur Imprimis for nayles. 00 03 08 Item for shoing 00 07 10 Item for husbandry tooles 00 02 00 Item for ioynts for ye wineseller door 00 01 04 200 of horsenayle points f ye ioyner 00 00 02 8 paid for 6 welsh beastes bought att mayde stone fayre att 28s a peece 08 08 00 5 lesser beastes bought then att 20s 4d 05 01 08 Dinner and horse meate there for my man 00 01 00 paid ye Mason for hworke heere 00 03 06 Item in ye stable 00 00 06 paid for sending a horse backe to Rochester 00 01 00 paid for blanketts, say, fustian and cotton for ye girle bess 00 17 01 436 paid for two new Sacks 00 04 08 paid ye Ioyner for 6 dayes 00 06 00 Item for a pound of glew 00 00 06 Item for 100 of nayles 00 00 03 paid Theophilus Tilghman for worke 00 06 06 paid Iohn Lucas for worke 00 08 04 paid Thomas Roberts for worke 00 09 04 paid Iohn Hunt for all worke vntill October 7 01 07 06 2 per of stockins for Anthony 00 02 10 9 paid Steward ye glazier for all worke 00 03 00 Spent att London when I went vp about ye composition for ye Country: being then Threasurer From ye 11 of october to ye 13. of Nouember For horsemeate Giuen memorandum? this iourney 00 06 00 Going by water 00 05 00 A reame of ye best paper for heraldry 02 05 00 A booke of Speede's mappes 00 15 00 N. L ye last 00 07 06 paid Robert Dering of fleetestreete for vse of mony 02 00 00 paid Reeues ye Apothecary 00 03 04 437 per of knitt linnen stockins 00 04 06 Barber 00 03 00 going by water about ye composition 00 012 00 paid master Taylour for worke done in heraldry 01 15 00 paid him for charges of Comming downe 00 10 00 paid him for ^a^ weekes worke heere he and his boy 002 00 00 Blacke leades 00 02 00 Lockes and Compasses 00 05 04 paper pictures in black and white 00 06 00 paid my shomaker for all his work 01 01 00 42 - 17 - 4[f.79v] 1627 Second half yeare paid master Muddiman my wiues tayler for 2 coates of Taffaty another of damaske and all belonging 15 00 00 3 little boxes 00 00 06 new lining my hatt 00 01 06 going by water 00 00 06 438 paid for painting colours bought of seuerall sortes for armes 00 15 05 paid for Tith due whilst I liued in Aldersgate streete, neuer demanded before 01 07 00 6 handkercheifes 00 04 02 Mending my hangers 00 00 06 A combe brush 00 00 02 An vrinall 00 00 03 paid master Humble for 6 setts of # coppyes of all ye broade seales yat haue beene in England, printed vpon good paper att 1d per seale 00 17 00 A paper booke for country busines 00 04 06 A paper booke for a foule coppy of my pedegre 00 05 00 Waxe hard and soft 00 02 09 paid for tricking and colouring of seals att 2d per seale 00 06 10 half a reame of ye best paper but of a second size att 18d per quire for heraldry 00 15 00 A reame of 4d paper 00 07 00 per of kniues 00 03 00 paid master Nokes ye apothecary 00 03 00 paid for search in ye office of armes 00 03 06 439 Velom for armes 00 03 06 Mouth glew 00 00 06 Heraldry bookes bought of master Allen yat were master Collman's 02 00 00 Item more of Sir W[illiam?] S[egar?] 05 00 00 Item more for heraldry 00 02 10 poore + 00 00 10 2 waxe candles 00 01 00 per of Candlestickes 00 05 04 A single Candlesticke 00 00 09 2 halfe ferkins of soape 00 16 00 for 20 dozen pound of candles and ye chestes, and charge of deliuery of them to ye carrier att 5s 5d per doz ye l 2 boxes. 4s. etc. 05 09 08 An vrinall 00 00 02 Pennes 00 00 02 2 pumice stones 00 00 02 paid ye landress 00 00 02 Giuen in this iourney. 00 067 090 Horsemeate this iourney 01 01 08 giuen master Doctor Haruey in seuerall fees 06 -1010 00 // giuen his man for --- 00 14 06 paid his apothecary 01 17 00 X The price and totall charges of my 440 oliue coloured cloath suite and cloake lined with bayes, made vp with a satten edging and a silke lace, a per of stockings belt and girdle of ye same 12 04 00 57 - 12 - 10[f.80r] 1627 Second half [y]eare. Giuen a surgeon for helpe 00 10 00 Item paid for letting bloud 00 05 00 2 dozen dim' of silke pointes 00 05 06 per of garters and shoestringes 00 09(?) 06 scarlaett bayes of old 00 09 00 gold lace of old 00 03 00 Spent N L 15 10 04 So ye ---t? Totall of all expences this iourney beside 5li' - 7s - 0 in dyett amounteth to 674 - 4 - 6. 83 - 9 - 10 441 Layd out by my brother Henry whist I was att London. For composition in little chart 00 02 10 ob' A battery knife 00 00 06 Horses att Maydstone 00 00 06 paid Bayly ye sawyer for worke for Willisborough 00 04 03 paid ye remainder due for welsh beastes 00 10 00 paid Alexander Hart for 14 weather taggs att 10s 07 00 00 paid Erasmus Giles for killing of sheepe 00 01 00 Horsemeate att Ashford 00 00 04 paid --- per ye smith for shoing 2 per of beastes 00 05 00 paid Thomas Tilghman for 2 dayes 00 02 00 paid Thomas Roberts for 12 Tagges att .viz. 10 att 10s and 2 att 7s 05 14 00 paid Walter Mund for 20 20sheepe of 2 yeare old a peece 12 1?05 00 paid him also for 19 twelue monthing sheepe 09 00 00 reparation att willisborough 01 00 09 paid for 35 li' of leade 00 04 05 paid ye Carrier for a box 442 per of shoes for besse 00 00 08 paid ye Clarke his qrters' wages 00 00 06 2 quire of paper 00 00 08 2 b' of pitch 00 00 06 paid Simon Mathewes for making 3 akers of fallowe for wheate 00 15 06 paid him for stirring of 9 acres att 5s per acre 02 08 09 4 bushels of oates 00 004 0410 paid Nicholas Mason for ploughing of 9 acres of corne land 02 02 00 Item to a boy for 4 dayes dim' 00 03 00 for 3 hoopes 00 00 06 charges when stephen was sent to London beside dyett: 00 07?4 02 charges of sending my horse to London 00 04 06 Shoing my horses 00 06 06 for husbandry 00 02 02 for a key 00 00 06 charges in sending to willisboro' 00 00 10 ffor 5 hoopes 00 00 10 60 - 18 - 6 ob' 443[f.80v] [1627] Second half yeare 2 seames of wheate bought of Dauid Fidge 02 16 00 for needles 00 00 06 --- Broomes 00 00 04 charges of fetching horses from grauesend 00 02 00 2 doz: pound of candles 00 02 00 for a dish 00 01 00 giuen by my wife att my aunt Haules 00 01 06 for Laces 00 02 06 for bandstrings 00 00 08 for helpe in husbandry worke 00 09 06 paid Iohn Lucas for worke in ye garden 00 15 06 paid Iohn Hunt for worke where of 10s att willisbor' 01 04 06 ---paid Lanes for measuring 00 01 00 paid for Composition in willisborough 00 04 05 for a trace 00 00 04 paid ye carrier for br A boxe 00 01 06 paid for my wiues churching 00 00 03 paid for haire vsed att willisbor' 00 00 03 paid Mason for carrying a loade of Timber to willisboro' 00 08 00 444 more for nayles att willisbor' 001 01 05 ------------Nouember 18 paid Arrowes for all worke due 00 06 08 paid Neale ye carrier for bringing a chest 00 06 00 25 paid for 7 yds of Canuas to make a Couch Chaire 00 00?9 04 mending a per of gold seales 00 05 00 paid my Cuttler for Cleaning my sword and for a new scabberd 00 02 00 paid my Landresse 00 00 06 2 Allmanackes 00 00 07 an old Chest to packe vp things in 00 03 00 A dressing for my wife 00 00 09 Letters 00 00 02 Charges when I sent Hutton to London 00 07 03 29 paid Besse Fisher for vse of mony 04 00 00 30 For broonesmes 00 00 10 for Ladles 00 00 04December 2. paid my Assesse for reparation of ye Church 00 09 00 paid A bill layd out by my brother H[enry] Imprimis for 6 li' of Candles 00 02 06 ffor Rosen 00 00 02 ffor killing of Moaules 00 01 01 445 5 seames of Oates bought of Nicholas Pemble att 12sd per bu'. per heape 02 00 00 ffor bringing them home 00 02 06 200 of 5d nayles 00 00 10 100 of 4d nayles 00 00 04 paid [blank] Long for b?getting and bringing of 300 of quicksett for Bodiams meadow hedge 00 01 00 15 - 13 - 3[f.81r] [1627] Second halfe yeareDecember ffor sweeping 5 Chimneys 00 02 00 paid Iohn Hunt for 15 dayes most of itt gardening 00 17 06 paid Iohn Lucas for 16 dayes whereof 5 for gardening and 11. husbandry 00 16 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman 11 dayes hedging 00 11 00 paid Erasmus Giles for killing 3 446 porkers 00 00 09 Item for killing 8 sheepe 00 00 08 haire Curles for my wife 00 03 06 2 per of Charnells for ye stable binns 00 01 06 Mason worke about Surrenden 00 01 02 paid ye Taylours bill for worke about ye Children 00 06 06 Charges in sending to Willisb'. 00 00 07 4 paid and discharged Alice browne 00 15 00 An vrinall 00 00 03 Lace for two Capps 00 01 06 10 paid Hugh for looking to my land att willisborough' 2 monthes 00 10 00 An ell of Holland 00 03 00 13 Bought of Brent Dering his Chappell att Charing and payd him therefore 05 00 00 Item paid for drawing ye writings to master Wyuell 00 11 00 Item for walking my horses 00 00 04 Memorandum I found parchment and my man engrossed them memorandum also there was of itt nothing but ye walles. viz: no roofe. nor windowe ------------------------------------- 14 6000 of prigges 00 08 00 447 2 per of bellowes 00 01 08 2 Almanackes 00 00 04 2 ladles 00 00 04 paid for bringing fruite and spice from London 00 05 00 Item for 4 letters 00 00 08 horsemeate att Ashford and Wye 00 00 04 A horne booke for Ned 00 00 01 15 Giuen master Lilly for ye vse a a booke of pedegrees 01 00 00 ffor binding my booke of Kentish armes in tricke 00 03 00 A bridle and stirrupp leathers 00 03 00 A Mane Combe 00 00 09 6 pottengers, and 2 pewter potts one of a- pint ye other dim' pint 00 07 06 3 skinnes of Parchment 00 01 00 2 waxe Candles 00 01 00 A Canuas packing Cloath 00 01 00 Boate hire to and from London for Hutton 00 01 06 horsemeate then 00 03 010 Giuen Hutton then 00 01 09 22 paid master Taylour for 2 dayes worke heere in armes 00 16 06 paid him for leafe gold 00 10 00 448 Item for Velom 00 034 00?6(?) giuen his boy 00 01 00 Item giuen master Marshall the tombe c-utters boy 00 01 00 Item paid master Marshall ye tombe cutter for worke for me I[ohn] D[ering] [initials added later] 00 10 00 Item for worke for my aunt Haule 00 06 00 15 - 12 - 0[f.81v] [1627] Second halfe yeareDecember 24 A hatt for Anthony 00 04 02 A candlestick for willisborough 00 00 06 candles 00 00 10 An earthen basen for willisborough 00 00 04 giuen for surgery to my boues?yes mouth 00 01 00 horsemeate att Wy 00 00 03?5 shoing 00 00 04 per of pattens 00 01 00 449 mending a skillett 00 00 04 Shoing 00 06 06 Frize: buttons: silke. linings etc to make [blank] [small gap] 02 06 09 Item 2 yds dim' of kersy 00 14 00 Carpenter and mason att willisbor' 00 07 00 paid Iohn Hunt 00 12 03 2 new keyes and mending a locke att Willisbor' 00 02 00 halfe an ounce of silke 00 01 02 A little chaire 00 00 06 An vrinall 00 00 04 per of bellowes for willisbor' 00 00 10 Item a locke there 00 01 06 paid ye carrier for bringing downe of wine etc 00 15 00 400 of 6d Nayles att willisbor' 00 02 00 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 10 dayes 00 10 00 paid ye Couper 00 00 08 Item for killing a boare 00 02 06 per of stockins for betty 00 00 06 horse meate 00 00 02 per of stockins for bocher 00 02 04 horse combe 00 01 00 mending ye coache 00 00 06 450 mending per of tongues 00 00 04 200 of 6d nayles 00 01 00 200 of 5d nayles 00 00 10 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04 per of stockins for betty 00 00 08 per of stockins for Iames 00 01 06 paid for helpe in ye Kitchin 00 03 00 for Sand 00 00 04 giuen 00 01 00 --- gl? ---6 brasse candlestickes 00 05 00 mending a candlesticke 00 00 03 for Crewells of seuerall colour to worke in couche with 01 02 00Ianuary 4 paid Arroes ye shomaker for all his bills 00 09 04 paid Elnor ye Tayler for all his worke 00 04 09 paid The[ophilus] Tilghman for 3 dayes 00 03 00 8 - 17 - 9[f.82r] [1627] Second half yeareIanuary 451 mending a key 00 01 04 2 fothering lines 00 00 07 Altering a per of Pattens 00 00 04 Galles and Copperas 00 00 05 Ane? ell of Cotton 00 01 10 2 yds dim' of fustian 00 03 03 giuen in Heraldry 00 01 00 13 A Chaire for Ned 00 02 04 A flaskett for pewter 00 01 04 Silke laces for my wife 00 01 00 ffor helpe in ye kitchen 00 03 08 2 CateChismes 00 00 04 ffor helpe in ye kitchen 00 12 00 paid to Mary Nower for worke etc 00 010 00 Lost att Cardes this Christmas 001 04 00 Paid my father 15 Imprimis Layd out for Composition in pluckley 00 05 02 Item for 2 kine 08 00 00 Item for 10 sheepe 07 00 06 Item for half a seame of seede wheate 00 12 00 Item for 3 sowes att 18s per sowe 02 14 00 Item for 3 barrow hogs att 16s per hopgge 02 04 00 Item paid for haflfe a yeares vse of 100li' due in August last 04 00 00 452 20 giuen my Cosen Bettenham's boy for bringing home my greyhound 00 00 04 paid ye carryer 00 01 08 paid for killing 2 hoggs and 6 sheepe 00 01 00 paid Iohn for all worke in Christmas and since 00 12 06 paid Theophilus Tilghman for 11. dayes 00 11 06 paid for a pecke measure 00 00 09 paid for 2 li' of birding shott 00 00 04 21 A tire of haire for my wife 00 01 02 26 paid master Burton (per stephen) for all due vnto him for boarde and schooling of Anthony. since midsommer day .6.li' although he had beene there but away a 13. weekes from midsommer to this day. but I was to pay after 3 li' per qrter' 06 00 00 paid browne ye smith for nayles 00 12 06 for shoing 00 03 04 for other worke 00 00 10 27 paid Hutton's charges att Canterbury when I sent him to ye sessions 00 03 10 paid Iohn Hunt's charges then 00 01 00 Item for passing a bill against Francis Ianyoere(?) for taking 453 partridges 00 02 00 29 ffor letters 00 01 00 paid Iohn Hunt for 5 dayes workes 00 05 10 2 per of hose for Anthony and Ned 00 02 02 6 laces 00 00 05 horse meate 00 00 02 drenching of my Norman mare 00 05 00 paid Nurse Markettman for in part for Nursing of besse 02 00 00 39 - 6 - 5[f.82v]Ianuary Second halfe yeare 29 paid and discharged stephen Fennard 00?1 05 00 Giuen him aboue his wages 01 00 00 x my wife gaue him 00 06 00February 1. Heorsemeate in my iourney to and from London and there 01 01 04 giuen Dr Haruey in fees 02 02 00 x giuen his man 00 05 00 giuen my Lord Tufton's clarke 00 02 00 454 giuen otherwise 00 08 00 poore 00 00 06 ffor barbing once 00 02 06 boatehire 00 07 00 A key to my trunke 00 01 00 Giuen Lady Richardson's coachman 00 02 06 Chamber rent att master Taylors one weeke 00 05 00 Paid master Taylor for his boy being heere one month att Christmas 01 02 00 80 frames for ye escocheons of all our matches etc?to be coloured therein att 8d ob' per frame 02 16 00 paid Robert Dering for vse of mony due Ianuary .25. 02 00 00 paid and discharged Oliuer Marshall who wrought heere in heraldry att 13s 4d per month, for all worke done since michaelmas 02 16 00 Item giuen him more aboue his wages 01 00 00 Memorandum he came Iune ye 2. and had before receiued of me 3li'-7s-4d which added vnto this makes beside his dyett for 34. weekes, ye summe of 7li' - 3s - 4d 1654 Giuen Iohn Hunt for catching a couey 455 of partrisl?dges. 00 02 00 1615 paid Iohn Lucas for husbandry worke heer 00 11 00 Item paid The[ophilus] Tilghman for ye same 00 09 00 paid them both for worke att Willesbor' 00 14 00 Item paid for Carpenters worke there in fencing in barrow hill, where theire worke also was employd 00 0918 00 Item paid Iohn Hedgers work ther 00 07 00 so in all there yett not all done. lli'-19s-0 8 ells’ of Linnen for Bocher 00 10 08 Shoing of my bease 00 05 00 1000 of 6d nayles 00 05 00 3000 of 4d nayles 00 10 00 charges att willisb' 00 01 09 Letting my Morgan mare bloud 00 02 06 charges when my wife was sicke 00 05 06 carriage of things to and fro London 00 05 03 10?8 Giuen Doctor Dauy when my wife was sicke 02 10 00 - - - - - - - - - - - - - 00 03 00 13?5 giuen Doctor Dauy more in fees 03 00 00 16 A letter sent to London 00 00 04 456 Horsemeate att maydstone 00 00 02 going by water for my man to London 00 01 00 28 - 3 - 0[f.83r] Second halfe yeare.February 16 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04 1000 of 5d nayles 00 03 10 Mending of bucking tubb 00 001 00 Charges att grauesend 00 01 11 shoing 00 00 04 Workemen in fencing att willisbor' 00 15 10 Flaying a sle?heepe yat died 00 00 01 19 for bringing of 300li' of cheese from Feuersham att 10d per C 00 02 06 Item for bringing: a cheshire chiese 00 00 02 Item for 2 bb' and a touett' of salt 00 01 08 Item for 20 couple of North sea codd 00 01 08 Item for one couple of Ling 00 00 02 Item for 100 of redd Hering 00 00 01 Item for a bushell of oysters 00 00 03 457 Item for halfe a barrell of white herrings 00 01 03 Item for Towne draught 00 00 02 paid goodman Mason for helpe in ploughing Long dane 00 05 04 An vrinall 00 00 03 A sucking bottle 00 00 02 20 Giuen Doctor Dauy a fee 01 00 00 22 Giuen Sir Nicholas Gilborn's boy that brought an Asse hither 00 01 00 24 giuen my poore cosen Pikering 01 00 00 25 giuen to a breife offor a poore man in Chetham 00 00 04 2 peckes of sand 00 00 08 giuen by my wife to Anthony 00 00 06 giuen Nurse markettman's girle 00 00 06 giuen goodwife Thunder for helpe when my wife was sicke 00 02 06 Giuen master Doctor Dauy a fee 01 00 00 Giuen his Apothecary 00 10 00 26 Broomeses 00 00 09 1000 of 4d nayles 00 04 02 1000 of 5d nayles 00 03 04 29 Charges for horses att maydston assises 00 08 08 ffidlers 00 01 06 458 Giuen att master Dauy's 00 02 06March. 1 Giuen a fee to Doctor Dauy 02 00 00 2 1000 of 4d nayles 00 03 04 shoing 00 04 08 200 of braddes 00 00 08 fforgeing of H?Ploughirons 00 03 10 ffor hobnayles 00 00 02 medicines for horses 00 00 06 paid Iohn Hunt for 7 dayes 00 09 04 paid George Gooden 00 00 06 A spade and Shouell 00 02 10 Borrowing a pillion 00 01 00 per of shoes and galoshaes for my wife 00 04 06 ffor letters 00 01 00 giuen sander Hart 00 01 06 A button for my cloake 00 00 046 6 giuen N.M. N L. 00 02 00 10 - 12 - 8[f.83v] Second halfe yeare 1627. 459March. 11. giuen to a poore souldier 00 00 04 paid Iohn Hunt vntill saterday last for 6 dayes. 00 09 00 paid Iohn Lucas for 21. dayes dim' 01 00 06 paid Theoph[ilus] Tilghman for 22 dayes 01 02 00 12 paid my cosen I[ohn] Dering for 32 ewes att 8s 6d 13 10 00 paid him for 12 weathers att 12s 07 1?04 00 Item for 2 rRamms 01 00 00 Item for 6 lambs att 6s 8d 02 00 00 paid ye Sadler for mending about ye litter and litter Saddles 00 05 02 for girthes 00 02 00 Shoes and mending for Bocher 00 04 08 shoes and mending for Iames 00 03 03 shoes and mending for Anthony 00 01 09 smending for my selfe 00 00 01 paid G. Gooding for worke 00 08 04 Item his boy 00 03 06 13 mending saddle 00 00 04 horsemeate 00 00 04 Pinnes 00 01 10 Charges att London when my wife 460 was sicke. viz. from March 16. vntill ten dayes after our Lady day. going by water 00 01 00 3 falling bands with cuffes 00 16 06 A halfe shirt 00 07 00 2 per of cuffes 00 01 06 Barber 00 02 00 ffidlers 00 01 00 ye 4 euangelists in Saxon' 00 10 00 Apostolatus Benedictinoru[m] etc' 00 08 00 3 paper bookes in 4to for Heraldry 00 05 06 per of gloues 00 01 02 Grafton's Hall's Chronicle 00 08 00 Bal's centuryes 00 19 00 Froyssart in English 0-1 02 02 smalel bookes 00 03 00 Herologia Anglicana 00 05 00 Verstegan 00 05 00 Geneologia Ducu[m] saxon' 00 01 00 Geneologia Domus Nassauiae 00 06 08 Stemmata Gent[ium] Roman[arum] 00 03 00 All these Domus Leustonian'(?) 00 00 08 in quires Albizius de stem[m]at[a] Principu[m] 00 16 00 Genologia Austriaca 00 06 08 Affinitates o[mn]ium Principu[m] 00 05 00 461 Twinus de rebus Albionicis 00 00 08 Milsles his Nobilitas Politica et ciuilis 00 05 00 Logonomia Anglica 00 01 00 changing 6 silluer spoones 00 15 06 A staff for my wife 00 05 06 A staff for my selfe 00 02 06 Payd R[ichard] Dering of Fleetestreete for vse 02 13 04 Hilt and scabbard and cleaning a sword old and rusty that hath our armes an itt in ye armory 01 05 00 41 - 0 - 3[f.84r] Second half yeare 1627 A shirt 00 09 00 paid my booke binder for all his worke 00 07 00 paid my shomaker for all due 01 11 00 paid master Taylor for all worke in Heraldry paid master co*ckson about prints for 462 my bookes 00 08 00 A letter 00 00 02 paid ye carrier 00 01 06 A seale cutt in Iuory 00 05 00 2 seales more in Iuory 00 18 00 paid master Marshall for tombe worke in brasse 02 00 00 paid master Taylor for all worke in Heraldry 02 01 00 A silluer seale for my brother H[enry] 00 04 06 for other seale worke 00 04 06 Item More 00 00 06 5 yards of Spanish cloath to make a gowne for myselfe att 17s per yd 04 13 00 7 yds of deueons[hire](?) bayes to line itt 01 05 00 Buttons, loopes, and silke 01 10 00 Fustiaine, drawing ye peeces etc 00 04 00 making ye gowne 00 12 00 8l' - 4s - 0d ---------------- Landresse 00 10 08 3 qrters' of a yd of Ribband for shoestrings 00 00 02 ffor letters 00 00 034 463 Candles 00 02 00 fa*gotts 01 03 00 A box 00 00 03 per of compasses 00 00 02 A brush 00 01 04 glasses inke et silke etc 00 00 08 Dyett this time yett both going and returning we lay att master Doctor 14 15 10 Dauy's in Maydestone 09 07 10 Horsemeate 03 10 01 // To ye Phisitians Doctor Haruy and Doctor Foxe in fees 12 00 00 Apothecarys bills 05 10 03 ma? Giuen this iourney 00 16 00 wine bought formerly 02 04 00 Letters and portage 00 00 08 A wosted wastcoate for my wife 01 11 00 Maydstone apothecary's bill 2 19 10 Spent N.L. 0812 -- 00 giuen him 0 5 0 more bookes 00 01 04 per of spures 00 04 06 bridles-and a bitt 00 04 06 3 padlocks 00 04 08 1000 of priggs 00 01 04 464 1000 of reparation nayles 00 01 04 Poore 00 00 02 63 - 3 - 3[f.84v] 1627. Second half yeare paid ye two Tilghmans for ploughing 00 11 04 paid Iohn Lucas for Husbandry 00 15 02 paid for helpe to dleade ye litter to and from London 00 18 00 giuen aboue theire wages 00 04 00 2 tumblers and revells 00 03 00 Giuen ye midwife and nurse att ye Christning of Robert Bargraue 02 00 00 5 seames of oates to sow att 7s 6d 01 17 06 2 doz. 4 moales caught att 18d per doz: and he finde himself 00 03 06 ffor making 400 of fa*gotts 00 06 00 paid ye carrier for all worke 00 12 00 mending Iames his shoes 00 00 10 mending Ned's shoes 00 01 00 paid Arrowes and giuen him 00 00 06 465 A hop s?baskett for brewing 00 02 08 My wiues houshold booke fromm Michaelmas till Christmas 29 00 11 The Houshold booke from Christmas till our Lady day. 62 001 01 whereof memorandum mault for one whole yeare 28li'. Memorandum ye Totall of ye halfe yeare was. 92l' - 2s - 0 98 - 17 - 6 Summ of this halfe yeare 482l' - 14s - 9d ob' Summ tottall of this whole yeare. 770li' - 11s - 8d ob' [ff.85r – 91r] [blank] [A loose piece of paper with rough accounts for food isinserted between ff. 90v and 91r. Not in Dering's hand, except 466for the last entry.] Canded Erringas vs - 0 - 2 - 6 paid 1d 1 li' d' - 0 - 5 - 0 Suskets 1 li' - 0 - 2 - 8 peaches m(?)eckorons and peares of Ianea(?) 1 li' - 0 - 5 - 0 ambar Comfets vi li' - 0 - 2 - 6 prenellas q' li' - 0 - 0 - 8 muske Comfets q' li' - 0 - 0 - 4 sweete ffenkes(?) Com' q' li' - 0 - 0 - 6 waskars 1 li' - 0 - 2 - 0 ffor the vse of 3 dosen of glasse plate 2 - 0(?) - 1 - [-] muckarown(?)es .1 s. 1 - 2 - [-][End of paper with rough accounts][f.91v] A dinner att London. made when my L[or]d ande? Lady Richardson my sister ^E[lizabeth]^ Ashbornham, and Kate Ashb[ornham] 467 my brother Iohn Ashb[ornham] my cosen Walldron and her sister and Sir Iohn Skeffington were with me. att Aldersgate streete december 23. 1626. My sister Fr[ances] Ashb[ornham] and cosen Mary Hill did fayle of comming -------------------------------------- wine 00 03 10 stourgeon 00 07 00 A ioll of brawne 00 06 00 pickeld oysters a barrell 00 01 06 Viniger 00 00 03 Rabetts and --w a Cowple, larkes a dozen plouers 3. and stnites snites 4 00 07 00 Carrowaye Comfitts 00 00 06 A banquett and 2 dozen dim' of glasse plates to sett itt out in 01 03 00 half a doe which in ye fee and Charge of bringing itt out of Northampton 00 08 00 A warden py that ye cooke made we finding ye wardens 00 02 04 ffor A venison pasty we finding ye 468 ven Venison 00 04 00 ffor 2 minct pyes 00 02 06 A breast of veale 00 02 04 A Legg of mutton 00 02 00 Summ totall Expended 3 – 10 - 3 ------ The dinner was att ye first Course. --------- A peece of Brawne. + A boild ducke in whitebroathe A boild hanch of powdered venison 2 minct pyes. A boyld legge of mutton. A Venison pasty. + A roast ducke + A powdered goose roasted A breast of veale + A Cold Capon py. Second Course A Couple of rabitts. 3 plouers. 4. Snites. 469 12 larkes. pickled oysters 2 dishes. A Cold warden py. A ioull of sturgeon. Complement Apples. and Carrowayes. wardens ba-k’t and Cold. + A Cake and Cheese. ----------------------- A banquett ready in ye next roome. ---------------- Memorandum we had out of ye Country ye goose, the duckes, ye Capon py, ye Cake, and wardens. And ye Venison but that is allway paid for though giuen./[f.92r] My wife receiued att her marriage 470 ffrom Sir Iohn Tuffton as a gift 33 00 00 ffrom --- Sir Nicholas ffor weddinge apparell 10-7 00 00 ffrom my Lady ffrancis for linnen -- -- -0 She has of her owne 0(?)- -- 05 Summ of all - 160 - 18. - 5. The mercer's bill for ye out=side of two gownes, the one blacke silke and silluer, the other greene and silluer 51 00 00 4 dozen of silluer bone lace for ye blacke and silluer gowne, with a verdingale, att 5s 8d ye ounce 03 12 00 An ell of taffaty 00 14 00 Stiffninge, whalebones, and buckrome roundabout 00 03 00 ffor serge to border ye goune 00 01 04 Riband 00 02 03 Buttons and clapses 00 01 00 ffor silke 00 03 06 ffor makinge this gowne 00 16 00 Ell of taffaty to ye greene gowne 00 14 00 2 dozen of 8d riband y? to bordure ye gowne 00 08 00 471 halfe a dozen of 6d riband 00 03 00 Buttons and claspes 00 01 00 Stiffninge, and buckrom to strenghthen the gowne and kertle 00 03 00 Taffaty to ye stayes 00 01 00 stichinge and sowinge silke 00 04 00 24 ounces of silluer bone lace, viz: 5 dozen yds and 2 yds att 5s 8d ye ounce, for the doublett gowne and kirtle of ye greene and silluer 06 18 00 Summ of these two gownes 65 - 5 - 1 A crimson satten petticoate embrodered with gold and silluer, out of ye exchange 24 00 00 ffor quarter, and dim' and naile of satten to lenghthen 00 06 06 ffor 3 ounces dim' of gold and silluer lace to go about ye bo-ttom att 6s ye ounce 001 07 00 5 yds of serge to line ye petticoate 00 11 08 Riband 00 04 00 472 Buckrome and silke 00 02 06 makinge this petticoate 00 06 00 -- Summ of this petticoate - 26 - 17 - 8 7 yds dim' of watchett satten att 14s 6d per yd 05 08 00 27 ounces of gold and silluer lace an? 11 02 00 4 ounces of gold and silluer lace about ye bottom 01 04 00 Riband 00 04 00 5 yds of serge to line itt this petticoate 00 11 08 Buckrom to strenghthen itt 00 01 06 silke 00 04 00 Callico to make pocketts 00 01 04 Makinge this petticoate 00 14 00 -- Summ of this petticoate - 19 - 10 - 6 18s yds of black flanders wrought taffaty att 7s per yd 06 09 06 5 dozen of bl[ack] sattin lace att 6 - 8d 01 13 04 Taylours bill (Hart) (whereof 12s for for a per of bodyes) for this gowne 02 15 00 473 summe of this gowne and bodies - 10 - 17 - 10 7 yds qrter' of willow damaske att 612 per yd 00?4 09 00 gold and siluer lace for ye bottome 00 06 06 serge to line this petticoate 00 11 08 Buckrome 00 03 00 Riband 00 04 00 silke 00 04 00 Makinge this petticoate (with 3 broade siluer and gold lace which was againe taken of and sett on ye watchett satten petticoate) 00 14 00 Summ of this petticoate, - 6 - 12 - 2[f.92v] A blacke beauer and hattband 02 08 00 A maske 00 01 06 Cobweb Lane 00 03 04 S(?) --- le 00 12 00 A(?) --- finge 00 03 00 Bo[ne?] lace 00 03 00 Bobing lace 00 01 00 474 A muffe 00 02 06 Another ruffe 01 00 00 A chin 00 02 00 An apron 00 16 00 A caull 00 02 064 per of garters 00 02 08 powder 00 02 00 Settinge A wastcoate 02 10 00 A lace 00 00 01 Girdle chaine and knotts 00 13 04 A leather perfumed fan 00 05 00 per of kniues and riband 00 023 06 A bodkin 00 00 08 per of oyl'd gloues 00 01 04 per of double gloues 00 02 06 Dyinge and tufftinge feather 00 01 06 6 ells dim' of holland for smockes att 4s 6d 01 09 03 ffustian to line ye wastcoate of her old purple gowne when itt was made a loose=bodyed gowne 00 03 00 Stiffninge, buckrom and claspes 00 02 06 Silke 00 02 06 Riband 00 02 04 Alteringe this gowne in new makinge 00 10 00 475 Serge for ye backe of ye bodies 00 00 06 Summ of alteringe this gowne 1 - 0 - 410 per of greene silke stockins, with mony for changinge them againe for a new paire 01 02 00 6 ells dim' of holland for smockes 01 09 03 5 yds of bone lace 00 15 00 An ell of lace 00 03 04 more bone lace 00 02 04?6 Redd seaminge lace 00 01 00 2 suites of silluer riband chaine girdle and knotts 01 10 00 3 yards of blacke and silluer riband 00 06 00 A smocke 01 10 00 An apron 01 10 00 A quishion c?cloath 00 18 00 per of redd silke garters 00 08 00 A greate french maske 00 02 00 A maske 00 02 04 Blacke silke riband yd 00 00 02 A bodkin 00 00 08 A tiffany ruffe and cuffes with silluer and gold bone lace 00 17 00 A band box 00 00 06 2 per of plaine oyl'd gloues 00 02 08 476 per of lac'd oyled gloues 00 02 00 A blackworke quoife 00 03 00 A cutt worke handkercheife 01 03 00 yd of silk riband for girdle 00 00 06 Asky coloured fan and feather 01 02 00 3per of cuffes 00 05 00 3 per of shoes and 2 per of galoshaes 00 12 00 2 ounces of gold and siluer bone lace for dressi-nge 00 12 00 yd of riband 00 00 06 Tire woman for tires 00 02 00 per of roses 00 06 08 white dressinge 00 05 00 haire dressing 00 03 00 A dressinge 00 06 00 A dressinge of purles 00 04 06 A dressinge with siluer 00 11 00 halfe a dozen of handkercheifes 00 04 06 3 ounces of white powder and a box 00 02 09 An ounce of corrall powder for teeth 00 03 06 3 ounces of power?der 00 03 00 powder and a tuft of silke 00 04 02 Edward Dering ------------------ Elisabeth Deering [signature] 477[Written in margin at right angles:]Summ of all her expences 159 - 7 - 1. So there is ye giuen her the rest in mony 1 - 11 - 4 iust summ of what shereceiued and had: viz: 160 – 18 – 5.[f.93r]fforasmuch as that when Sir Nicholas Tuffton, and my Lady ffrancis came vp to London, they did bringe vp theire daughter, f?o alltogether vnfurnished of cloathes, of euery sort, I haue marked those thinges within a circle like a half parenthesis, which were allmost all bought and bestowed vpon her (as necessity (though no marriage had beene) required) before I married her: And yett neuertheles, I(?) (although att first Sir Nicholas spake as if he would haue allowed heer for cla?oathes 200li') these thinges amountinge to ye price of 28l'-16s-6d were, (I thinke not(?) with equity) cast vp amongst ye mony receiued for her cloathes: the summ whereof from Sir Nicholas was but 478 107li'. of which abatinge these th-inges, which in reason and equity ought to haue beene abated, vnlesse she had beene better prouided before, the summe indeede of her mony receiued from him was but threescore and eighteene pound, three shillinges and six pence. so there remaines due if he would make his worde goode of 107li' - I say there remaines, 28 - 16 - 6. But there is short of the first named 200li' the sume of 121 - 16 - 6./ beside ye 20li' my lady promised./ And heerein allso I Cast vp Sir Ihon Tuffton's 33li' which I tooke to haue beene a free gift. and ye mony which my wife had to her owne purse viz: 18s - 5d / So that deductinge all these ^which make(?)^ we haue then receiued but So yat deductinge these thinges. viz. Her necessary expences though she had not beene to be married 28 - 16 - 6 Sir Ihon's gift 33 - 0 - 0 her owne mony 0 - 1- - 5 61 - 16 - 6 ------------ we haue then receiued butt. 99 - 3 - 6. -----------[ff.93v – 94v] [blank] 479[f.95] [pastedown – no longer pasted down. Dering has added and later deleted this short account on the recto:] lemmons - 5s Oranges - 4s. Apothecary - 6s./ plate marking - 2s. 480 481
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Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
No. 022Clandestine Marriage in the Diocese ofRochester during the Mid-fourteenthCenturyDr. Andrew J. FinchHistory B.A. (Hons); M.A. (Study of ContemporaryJapan); D.Phil.1This paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. Theauthor has placed the paper on the site for download for personal oracademic use. Any other use must be cleared with the author of the paperwho retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyrightclearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes thesubmission of papers. The necessary form can be downloaded from thewebsite at www.kentarchaeology.ac2The twelfth century marked an important stage in the evolution of canon law,and the establishment of a functioning system of ecclesiastical jurisdictionsthroughout much of Western Europe. Both were crucial elements in the processwhereby the Church, acting under a variety of pressures, came to takeincreasing responsibility for the definition and regulation of marriage as well asa widening disciplinary role in the daily lives of the laity. In the area of marriage,the synthesis by Alexander III of existing sacramental and legal opinion in 1163produced a doctrine in which marriage was held to be a purely consensualunion. Any two legally entitled adults could form a marriage through words ofmutual consent with a two-fold distinction existing in the nature and intent ofthese words. A binding and immediately effective union was created through theexchange of words of present consent (per verba de presenti). Publicity,solemnization in facie ecclesie, and indeed consummation added nothing to theessential validity of such a contract. On the other hand, words of future consent(per verba de futuro) expressed only an intention to marry; but if these werefollowed by sexual intercourse they took on the status, and all the legalconsequences, of a de presenti contract.The Alexandrine synthesis was disseminated through conciliar andsynodal legislation, and a system of control and regulation was established bothto discourage the making of marriage contracts which circumvented theChurch's requirements of publicity and to monitor closely the process leading to3the exchange of consent. Canon 51 of the Fourth Lateran Council gave generaleffect to much of the existing local and provincial legislation on this subject.1Banns of marriage were to be published on three successive Sundays or feastdays to allow potential objections to be raised. Those ignoring this requirementwere to be excommunicated, and a priest blessing an unpublicized union couldbe suspended for up to three years. However, a marriage contracted withoutthese requirements remained valid unless a diriment condition was present. Thepresence or absence of the banns therefore became the acid test of whether amarriage was held to be clandestine or not. As such, clandestinity became alegal catch-all encompassing not only informal de presenti contracts whichlacked all forms of publicity, and which were possibly never intended to becomefully fledged unions, but also publicly solemnized marriages which infringed therequirements of canon law with regard to the place and time of the banns.2Although clandestine contracts were held to be valid, the whole thrustof subsequent Church legislation was aimed towards discouraging theirformation. The proper publication of the banns and exchange of consent in facieecclesie became crucial elements in this process. In England, a flurry of synodalactivity followed Lateran IV with the result that, by the close of the thirteenthcentury, the requirements of the banns and due solemnization were widely1 Such as canon 11 of the Provincial Council of Westminster (M. M. Sheehan, `Marriage theoryand practice in the conciliar legislation and diocesan statutes of later medieval England',Mediaeval Studies, 40 (1978), 412.2 P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, work, and life cycle in a medieval economy: women in York andYorkshire c.1300-1520 (Oxford, 1992), 240-3; R. H. Helmholz, Marriage litigation in medievalEngland (Cambridge, 1974), 29-30; M. M. Sheehan, `Formation and stability of marriage infourteenth century England: the evidence of an Ely register', Mediaeval Studies, 33 (1973), 244.4known.3 Nevertheless, such matters continued to preoccupy provincial councilsduring the fourteenth century. The Council of London held under ArchbishopMepham in 1329, reaffirmed canon 51 of the Lateran council, stating that itshould be explained to the people in the vernacular on solemn days. Thestipulation that priests should be suspended was repeated with the reminderthat suspension was to be imposed even if no impediments existed to themarriage. Archbishop Stratford's provincial council of 1342 added a new twistwhich demonstrates both the effectiveness of the banns as a deterrent to thosewhose marriages were barred by some impediment, and the lengths to whichindividuals might go in order to circumvent the system, or bend it to their ownadvantage. The constitution, Humana concupiscentia stipulated that all thoseinvolved in irregular solemnizations were to be excommunicated. This was inorder to `deny the veil of apparent marriage' to those who knew that the properpublication of the banns would make their union impossible.4The Church courts were one of the channels through which canonlaw was publicly mediated. These courts held two forms of jurisdiction: instanceand ex officio, corresponding loosely with the modern distinction between civiland criminal litigation. On the instance side, matrimonial litigation formed animportant element of the courts' work, and in later medieval England the bulk ofmarriage litigation was concerned with disputed, informal de presenti contractsand the ramifications arising from them.5 The study of the records produced as3 Sheehan, `Marriage theory', 412-13, 433-37.4 op. cit., 439-42.5a consequence of this litigation has led to a greater understanding of thedissemination and effects of canon law. In addition, questions relating to thepatterns of lay behaviour and attitudes with which canon law came into contactare now being increasingly addressed with the evidence found within witnesses'depositions proving to be a particularly fertile source.6 Depositions are, however,only one trace left by the progress of instance suits through the courts: Actbooks charted the stages by which instance suits, and other forms of business,entered a court, were prosecuted and (sometimes) came to a definitivesentence.7 Act books are terse and, at first glance, uninformative documentswhen compared with the depositions, since they fulfilled a different, thoughcomplementary, function within the court system; but insights into marriage canbe gained from their study, as Sheehen's analysis of the unusually detailedmatrimonial cases from a late-fourteenth-century Ely Act book demonstrates.8Furthermore, instance litigation was not the sole mechanism by which mattersrelating to marriage could come before the church courts: more direct methodscould be employed to ensure that the canon law requirements concerning itsformation were correctly observed. Ex officio actions - the second aspect of thecourts' jurisdiction - which provide much information on wider questions relating5 R. H. Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 25-73; Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 261-3.6 See for example: C. N. L. Brooke, The medieval idea of marriage, (Oxford, 1989); A. Cosgrove,`Marriage in medieval Ireland' in: Marriage in Ireland, ed. A. Cosgrove (Dublin, 1985), 25-50; C.Donahue, `The policy of Alexander the third's consent theory of marriage', in: Proceedings of thefourth international congress of canon law, ed. S. Kuttner (Vatican, City 1976), 251-91; C.Donahue, `The canon law on the formation of marriage and social practice in the later middleages', Journal of Family History, 8 (1983), 144-58; Goldberg, Women, work, and life cycle, chap.5; Helmholz, Marriage litigation; D. M. Owen, `White Annays and others', in Medieval women:dedicated and presented to Professor Rosalind M.T. Hill on the occasion of her seventiethbirthday ed. D. Baker (Studies in Church History, Subsidia i, Oxford, 1978), 331-46.7 Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 7-11, 19-20.6to the sexual behaviour of the laity can also shed light on the processes bywhich marriages were entered into and dissolved. Prosecutions for sexualmorality offences became a staple of many English and continentalecclesiastical jurisdictions during the medieval period. However, ex officioprosecutions against couples who had entered into clandestine marriages havenot been regarded as a typical feature of the judicial practice of the EnglishChurch courts.9One such body of Act book evidence survives from the Rochesterconsistory court in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Two distinctcaches of material remain. The first is a full record of consistory businessconducted between April 1347 and November 1348, during Mr. EdmundDigges's tenure as Official and Hamo Hethe's episcopacy. This section of theAct book includes both matrimonial litigation, and ex officio prosecutions relatingto the sexual delicts of clergy and laity. Some of this material has been used asbackground to a study of clandestine marriage in the works of Chaucer, and ageneral consideration of the theme of courtly love in medieval literature.10 Thesecond cache spans a slightly shorter period between June 1363 and May 1364during William Whittlesey's episcopacy, and with John de Swineshevedprobably acting as Official.11 Unlike the earlier document this is a rough draft of8 Sheehen, `Formation and stability'.9 Donahue, `Canon law', 148-9, 154 n. 40, 155.10 H. A. Kelly, `Clandestine marriage and Chaucer's Troilus', Viator, 4 (1973), 435-57; H. A. Kelly,Love and marriage in the Age of Chaucer (Ithaca and London, 1975), 169-71.11 `A consistory court from the diocese of Rochester, 1363-4', ed. S. Lee Parker and L. R. Poos,English Historical Review, 106 (1991), 652-65; Registrum Hamonis Hethe, Diocesis Roffensis7proceedings and records only the ex officio side of court sessions; because ofthis greatest use will be made of the earlier document.Several details concerning the context within which the courtoperated emerge from a scattering of references to seafaring, service, textileworking, agriculture, stock-keeping and dairying. A rough estimate of thepopulation of the diocese places this in the region of 20,000 of which 15,000were adolescents and adults.12 Strood had a hospital and Malling a scola in the1340s; the master of the scola was able to lend 43s. to a Hadlow man.13 Afurther reference to moveable wealth appears in the context of a matrimonialsuit. John Marchuant of Strood agreed to pay ten marks as a dowry for hisdaughter, while her mother promised 40s., and John Sampson, amicus eiusdem,pledged a total of 53s. 6d. to be paid in two instalments. At this date the value ofa cow was between 8s. and 10s.14 Wheat, barley and rye were grown, andthree millers found themselves in disputes over tithes. Other tithe disputesreveal that woods were coppiced.15 Sheep and cows were kept in possibly quitelarge numbers: a tithe of 30 calves was owed by an East Greenwich man. Hewas also to pay a tithe on the cheeses which he produced.16 In 1348 a manwas accused of stealing sheepskins from the sheepfold (domo ovium) of a local(1319-52), 2 vols. ed. C. Johnson (Canterbury and York Society, 48, 49 (1914-1948), 911-1043.For the Rochester Officials in general, and Digges and Swynesheved in particular, see A. L.Browne, `The medieval officials principal of Rochester', Archaeologia Cantiana, 43 (1940), 29-61,esp. 45-8.12 `A consistory court', 654.13 Registrum, 761-2, 985.14 op. cit., 955, 974, 976.15 op. cit., 985, 1043 (crops); 923, 945, 1042 (millers); 971, 1019 (coppicing).16 op. cit., 968 (dispute over livestock), 974, 976 (cows), 991 (cheese and cattle).8knight, while in 1363 a man confessed to having used a toad in a bag in anattempt to cure one of his sheep of scabies.17 In 1347, a Dartford man wascharged with adultery with his maid, and a maid at Ash reclaimed a couple’sbanns the following year. Between 1363 and 1364, four male and eleven femaleservants came before the court. Of these fifteen, no fewer than eight were inservice in Dartford. Alice servant of Henry atte Frisch of Dartford was describedas a spinster, and a Thomas `cissor' is recorded at Lee.18 By this date too, therecord reveals that elements of the population were highly mobile, and that theOfficial often had difficulty in securing their attendance in court.19 A Dartfordman had gone `overseas' when charged with fornication, and another was atsea (in mare) when cited. Several others had connections with London orCanterbury, or were not of the Official's jurisdiction.20 As was the case in other ecclesiastical jurisdictions, matters came tothe attention of the Rochester court in several ways: on the initiative of theparties concerned, either in the form of instance litigation or promoted officeactions; as a result of episcopal visitations; or through the existence of commonfame. The Official acted in person or through the commissary, the dean ofMalling.21 It is not clear if the court of the Archdeacon of Rochester took its17 op. cit., 984; `A consistory court', no.3.18 Registrum, 933, 1016; ‘A consistory court', nos. 1, 5, 6, 18, 40, 41, 42, 43, 68.19 op. cit., nos. 1, 7.20 op. cit., nos. 5, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 57, 62, 72.21 In October 1348, a commission was issued to the Dean of Malling to act as the official'sdeputy. He was to hear causes and matters arising from visitations of the bishop, ex officioactions and instance suits (Registrum, 1037). An episcopal visitation had occurred before Juneof that year.9share of ex officio and instance matters which would otherwise have been dealtwith by the consistory, or if it was solely concerned with cases deputed to it bythe higher court.22 In the 1330s, the Official and the Archdeacon wereseparately abjuring couples sub pena nubendi, and a number of individuals hadbeen `corrected' before the Archdeacon at some date prior to their appearancein the consistory.23 Although attempts had been made from the thirteenthcentury onwards to restrict jurisdiction in matrimonial suits to the bishop's courts,the actual effect of this varied with time and place. At Ely matrimonial litigationwas only removed from the Archdeacon's court in 1401, and in 1446, theArchdeacon's Official at Rochester had to be ordered to desist from proceedingin a matrimonial suit. Even in cases where jurisdiction was formally withdrawn,archdeacons were still able to become involved in matrimonial affairs by virtueof their office powers: requiring clandestine spouses to solemnize, investigatingreclamations and forcing habitual fornicators to abjure sub pena nubendi.24Even without the presence of an active, rival jurisdiction, it is unlikely that theOfficial dealt with every occurrence of culpable behaviour. Many clandestinemarriages would have probably passed unnoticed, either being quietlyabandoned by those concerned or else proceeding without hindrance tosolemnization in facie ecclesie, unless some dispute or other factor calledattention to them. Another point to be made is that the statements in the Act22 There was only one archdeaconry within the diocese of Rochester (A. H. Thompson,`Diocesan organisation in the middle ages: archdeacons and rural deans', Proceedings of theBritish Academy, 29 (1943), 165).23 Registrum, 946, 975, 987, 998, 992, 1004, 1039.24 Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 141, 143-6, 177; Kelly, `Clandestine marriage', 438 n.16;Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 232-3.10book represent little more than the bare bones of the matters at issue. This canbe seen in the case of John Turgys and Alice Melleres where the office actionwas followed by a suit brought by Alice. The two statements share certaindetails, such as Alice's allegation that the abjuration was made before theArchdeacon and John's contention that it was before the Official, but only thematrimonial suit records that the abjuration had been made eleven years beforeand that two children had been born since then.25 In addition to this naturalbrevity, the terms employed by the court may themselves be obscuring thenature of several of the contracts at issue in both the instance and officelitigation. The blanket term `contract of marriage' is possibly too crude a grid torecord the fine canon law distinction between a de futuro contract followed bysexual intercourse, and a de presenti contract. I Seventeen suits concerned with some aspect of marriage litigationhave left traces amongst the instance business dealt with between 1347 and1348. Three were petitions seeking annulments, but the majority sought toestablish the existence of a valid marriage, either in its own right or inpreference to another.26 Two of these had arisen as a direct result of officeactions against couples suspected of having formed clandestine marriages. Theinformation from these will be analysed when this particular aspect of the court'sbusiness is considered. Two of the remaining twelve reached no effective25 Registrum, 946, 976.26 op. cit., 931-2.11conclusion within the scope of the Act book, and a third was transformed from amatrimonial suit into one seeking alimony for the woman. Multi-party suits, inwhich a third party was challenging the ability of the defendants to marry,accounted for seven out of the twelve, while the remainder were petitory actionsin which the plaintiff was seeking to prove that a valid marriage had beenformed with the defendant. All but one of the multi-party suits had resulted fromreclamations of the defendants' banns.The instance litigation reveals details of the nature of the contractswhich were at issue and some of the circ*mstances which surrounded theirformation. Two of the five petitory actions centred on allegations of breaches ofabjurations made in forma communi, more widely know as abjurations sub penanubendi. Although these were effectively conditional de futuro contracts, inwhich a couple abjured on the condition that any future sexual congress wouldleave them as man and wife, they were imposed on those concerned and donot fit into the category of clandestine marriages.27 Nevertheless they are ofinterest when considering both the problems of proof associated with this typeof abjuration, and the sexual context within which marriages were formed. JoanBoghyre appeared in person to claim Walter Rokke as her legitimate husbandon the grounds that he had broken the terms of an abjuration in forma communithrough carnal knowledge in the house of Robert Homan. On her nextappearance she was able to produce five witnesses, including both Robert and27 See Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 172-81. Father Sheehan describes this as an `almostDraconian form of contract' which provided the courts with a `formidable instrument for dealingwith concubinage' (Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 255).12his wife. For his part Walter admitted making the abjuration and to having lainnaked in the same bed as Joan and `others', but he denied that sexualintercourse had taken place. Joan was able to produce two further witnesses,but the suit was left pending further action on her part.28 In the second action,Alice Melleres alleged that John Turgys had forsworn her eleven yearspreviously before the Archdeacon of Rochester. He had subsequently returnedto her and had two children. John admitted that he had forsworn her, butclaimed that this was before the Official. He denied any intercourse followingthis. Although Alice was able to produce four witnesses, including theArchdeacon, her claim was dismissed as being insufficiently founded. Alice hadmade an earlier allegation of a breach of an abjuration in forma communi aftershe and John had been presented on a charge of relapsing into fornication. Thishad been similarly unsuccessful, since she was unable to produce anywitnesses.29 A caveat was, however, added in the definitive sentence, leavingJohn to his own conscience as far as the contract was concerned indicating thatan element of doubt remained in the Official's mind.30 These two examplesdemonstrate the difficulties faced in establishing that sexual relations hadoccurred subsequent to an abjuration. Such problems of proof were one of thefactors which ensured that the use of abjurations in forma communi declined inthe English courts and had virtually disappeared by the end of the fifteenthcentury.3128 Registrum, 916-7, 921-2, 928.29 op. cit., 946.30 op. cit., 975, 979, 982, 996, 1014-5.31 Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 180-1.13The other petitory actions were straight-forward suits brought toestablish a marriage or promises of marriage. In April 1347, Joan Akermaninitiated a causa matrimoniali against Reginald Webbe which was to continuefor a little over a year. By July, it had been suspended until September sub spepacis. However, the parties next appeared in May 1348 when an award wasmade to Joan in a causa alimentacionis prolum. Reginald admitted having hadtwo children by her and he agreed to make provision for their maintenance.32The nature of the contract is clearer in the second suit. Ollaria Seuaresuccessfully sued Walter Pak on the grounds of a de presenti contract followedby sexual intercourse. Walter had initially confessed to the intercourse, but notthe contract. However, after Ollaria had produced one witness and had statedthat she would produce a second, Walter acknowledged its existence.33The final petitory action provides an insight into the negotiationswhich might precede the marriages of possibly relatively well-off individuals. InSeptember 1347, almost six months after a causa matrimoniali had beeninitiated against him, William Vyngerlith' agreed to marry Juliana Marchaunt ofStrood. This was on the condition that her parents should provide a suitabledowry. They were present in court and immediately agreed to his terms.34 Thereis no indication that the couple had slept together. The presence of allinterested parties in court and the ease with which agreement was reached32 Registrum, 915-6, 921, 929, 936, 943, 949, 1004. In May of the previous year Reginald hadbeen called to respond super alimentatione prolis in addition to Joan's petition for marriage.33 op. cit., 960.14makes it likely that the greater part of the negotiations had been conducted andsettled beforehand.Two of the multi-party suits show a similar degree of legalbrinkmanship, and give an impression of the extent of effective parental controlin the area of courtship and marriage. At the beginning of February 1348,Thomas Bard reclaimed the banns of Adam Pope and Agatha, daughter of JohnSlipes. He claimed that Agatha had been betrothed (affidavit) to his son Simon,then twelve-years old, before her contract of marriage with Adam. In his turnAdam, alleged betrothal followed by exchange of present consent. Agathaexpressly denied this and, although Adam was able to produce two witnesses,their evidence was held to be insufficient, and the judgement went againsthim.35 However, Adam was not finished: the parties were again in court beforethe end of the month after he had reclaimed Agatha and Simon's banns. Healleged that it was common knowledge (laborat publica vox et fama) in theparish that Simon's brother, John, had pre-contracted and slept with Agatha.Adam was able to produce four witnesses, including John, and his objectionwas upheld.36 The limitations of the source are particularly galling here as it isimpossible to know whether John had been acting with or without his father'sapproval.The issue in this legally untidy case revolved around the existence of34 op. cit., 914, 920, 927, 934, 942, 953, 955. For the terms of the dowry see above n. 14.35 op. cit., 980.36 op. cit., 991.15two clandestine contracts: a marriage made per verba de presenti by AdamPope, and a pre-contract followed by intercourse on the part of John Bard. Theremaining multi-party suits also reveal details of other clandestine contracts.Marion, daughter of William Taylour, reclaimed the banns of Richard Sampsonand Margaret, daughter of John Helere. She alleged that Richard had formed amarriage with her which had been followed with sexual intercourse. Marioncould produce no witnesses to this. Richard successfully denied the allegation,while admitting that he had formed a marriage per verba de presenti withMargaret.37 The banns of Hamo Cadel and Margery Patrich' were reclaimed byAlice Cothen, who alleged that Hamo had promised to take her to wife (duceretin uxorem suam legitimam) and had then slept with her. She could produce onlyone witness and Hamo successfully denied her accusation.38 Marion and Alicewere probably jilted lovers: Richard admitted that he had been punished forfornication with Marion, although this was seven or more years before, andHamo admitted that he had been `corrected' on a prior occasion on account ofhis relationship with Alice. The exact truth of the matter cannot be ascertainedfrom the sparse records, and was probably obscure even to the Official,especially in the case of Hamo who was left to his conscience regarding thesuitability of his match with Margery. Marion, servant of John Martyn, reclaimedthe banns of John Haneco*k and Margaret, daughter of Felicia Peucompe on thegrounds that John had formed a contract of marriage per verba de presenti withher and that they had pledged to have it solemnized. This does not appear to37 op. cit., 1031.38 op. cit., 1039.16have been a prelude to sexual relations. She could, however, produce only onewitness. The defendants denied the contract, but admitted that they had formeda contract of marriage between themselves which they had followed with sexualintercourse.39 In the final reclamation, John Thebaud challenged the banns ofJohn, son of George atte Noke and Joan, daughter of Simon atte Herste. Healleged that he and Joan had contracted marriage with his mother as solewitness. Joan flatly denied this stating that in no wise had she formed a contractof marriage with Thebaud or given her faith that she would do so. Thedefendants, however, admitted that they had formed a contract of marriage(contractum matrimoniale) which had been followed by sexual intercourse.40 Inthe final multi-party suit, it was found that Joan de Oakle, after forming acontract of marriage with John Wychard, had done likewise with William atteForde. John was able to bring two witnesses to support his claim and he washeld to be married to Joan. As only the final sentence survives, it is not possiblyto know whether John's claim was made via a reclamation of the defendants'banns.41Such reclamations were forcing defendants to acknowledge that theyhad formed valid contracts of marriage, and had therefore prejudiced theChurch's system of control. All the contracts were clandestine in the broadsense of the term, and the majority of those being alleged by plaintiffs inparticular lacked even the basic requirement of two witnesses. The Official's39 op. cit., 1016.40 op. cit., 990-1.41 op. cit., 917-8.17usual reaction was to order defendants to proceed to solemnize their union if nolegal impediment existed. However, the action taken in the case of JohnHaneco*k and Felicia Peaucompe provides a foretaste of what will beencountered when the ex officio business of the court in this period is examined.The couple, who had followed a contract of marriage with sexual relations,abjured the `sin' until they had solemnized their marriage, and were both beatenthree times around their parish church.IIInstance suits were not the only mechanism by which clandestinemarriages were brought to light. The Official took more direct action, through hisex officio powers to detect, examine, and sometimes punish those who hadformed clandestine contracts. The majority of these inquiries into suspectedclandestine marriages were initiated between 1347 and 1348. During this period,couples were called super contractu matrimoniali on six occasions and superfornicacione et contractu matrimoniali on a further sixteen. One of the mencalled super contractu matrimoniali was later questioned concerning anunfulfilled penance with one of his lovers. He was also questioned concerninghis intentions of marriage with this women and two other.42 In addition fourteenof the office actions brought in connection with fornication raised the issue ofthe existence of a clandestine marriage. In the later period only one referencesurvives to a prosecution relating to a clandestine contract: Margaret42 op. cit., 998-9.18Havedmans, confessed to both fornication and `contract'; she was beaten twicearound the church.43The precise circ*mstances which led to the initiation of these actionsare obscure. Where a couple were presented super fornicacione, it seems thatthey were either taking the opportunity to clear their consciences or one partyhad decided to force the issue. Community concerns must have played somepart in the first instance at least, since the tag ut dicebatur/dicitur is attached tomost. There is also a strong probability that some were, in fact, promoted officeactions, brought by the Official on behalf of a third party - possibly a disgruntledpartner.44 Other actions were brought against couples who, after an initialprosecution, had been slow to solemnize or whose behaviour was a source ofcontinuing concern.45 As with the records of the instance suits within the Actbook these office actions generally lack details regarding the status andoccupation of those involved, and the circ*mstances under which the contractsat issue were formed. The terminology employed by the court tends to obscurethe precise nature of the contracts as well. The blanket term contractummatrimonium may actually be concealing the presence of de futuro contracts,since they became binding if followed by sexual intercourse.4643 `A consistory court', no. 10. An investigation was started into the ability of James Bordon tomarry a certain Agnes quam tenet, after they had been presented on a charge of adultery.James claimed that his former wife had deserted him and was now dead and, as he could notremain chaste, he had remarried. There must be a strong presumption that his marriage withAgnes was in one way or another clandestine (op. cit., no. 69).44 See Case A in Appendix.45 See Case B in Appendix.46 See Case C in Appendix.19Despite such problems, certain patterns emerge. All the marriageswere clandestine, and the majority probably lacked even the basic requirementsof publicity stipulated by canon law. Five women and two men had no witnessesto the alleged contract.47 Another man was on only slightly stronger groundwhen he produced one witness, but only one of the contracts had beenadequately witnessed: Isabella Rogers was able to call three witnesses. Bothbecame the subjects of an instance suit.48 In twenty instances the contract wassimply described as a `contract of marriage'. Two of these were madeconditional on there being no lawful impediments (si de jure contraherepossent). Both were subsequently annulled on the grounds ofconsanguinity.49Another couple denied the existence of a marriage, butconfessed to having had sexual congress.50 The remaining examples are moredetailed. One revolved around the alleged infringement of the terms of anabjuration made in forma communi. The man categorically denied all sexualrelations since the abjuration, and the woman was left to her conscienceregarding marriage to another.51 Three were straightforward de presenticontracts, in two of which those involved denied having had sexualintercourse.52 In two others betrothal or trothplight had been followed bymarriage, although this was categorically denied by one of the womenconcerned.53 In the majority - twelve - promises of marriage had been followed47 Registrum, 918, 937, 947, 951, 969-70, 1016, 1022.48 op. cit., 962-3, 1015.49 op. cit., 924, 940.50 op. cit., 973.51 op. cit., 995.52 op. cit., 969, 992, 1015.53 op. cit., 947 (fideidacionem et matrimonium), 969-70 (affidavit et ipsam in uxorem suam20by sexual intercourse. Of these six were concerned with trothplight(fideidacionem) and one with betrothal (sponsalia).54 In another the man had`pledged himself' (affidando).55 Three men promised to take their partners `towife' (duceret in uxorem), one of whom made this conditional on his parents'consent.56 Another couple agreed to marry and solemnly bound themselves todo this (strinxerunt fidem super eodem).57In three cases where the existence of a contract had beensuccessfully denied by one of the parties, abjurations in forma communi wereimposed and penance enjoined.58 As in most examples of simple fornication thistook the form of a threefold beating around the church or market. Three of themarriages were found to be invalid on the grounds of consanguinity or affinity,and those concerned received penitential beatings. In one, the couple were tobe flogged three times around the church and once around the market, but inthe other two, the penances were no harsher than for simple fornication.59Likewise couples were flogged in a further three cases where the marriage wassuccessfully denied.60 In the majority - twenty - a valid and binding contract ofmarriage was acknowledged. Those concerned abjured the `sin' until themarriage could be solemnized on condition that no impediment emerged.cepit).54 op. cit., 918, 937, 951, 985, 1021, 1032.55 op. cit., 999.56 op. cit., 950, 967, 1026.57 op. cit., 945.58 op. cit., 951, 1016, 1021.59 op. cit., 924, 940, 1039.60 op. cit., 918, 947, 951.21Pledges of half a mark were imposed on two occasions to ensure compliance.61Where a time limit was stipulated this was usually between one and two monthsfrom the date of the court appearance.62 In twelve of the twenty, penitentialbeatings were enjoined as if those involved were guilty of simple fornication.63There was little consistency in the imposition of such penalties: sexualintercourse had occurred in half of the examples where no penitential beatingswere enjoined. It is possible that the nature of the record is acting to makeindividual cases appear alike, and that, in fact, different circ*mstances couldlead to different penalties. Nevertheless the Official was treating a significantnumber of the clandestine marriages which appeared before him as little betterthan sworn fornication. This strongly reflects the sentiments of the author of anearly thirteenth century English summa for confessors, Thomas of Chobham.Thomas felt that those contracting without due solemnity, and so circumventingthe system of safeguards approved by the Church, should not be considered asmarried until they had undergone solemnization in church.64 The action of theOfficial in punishing such couples is understandable given the legal confusionsand difficulties which might arise.65 However, it was only applied to one of theclandestine marriages which had been detected through instance litigation.Furthermore, this is a policy which tends to mark the consistory court out from61 op. cit., 946, 973.62 See Case D in Appendix.63 Registrum, 945-7, 950-1, 973, 981, 992-3, 1038. Two were, however, composed.64 It was stated that those contracting without due solemnity `non debt haberi vel dicimatrimonium inter eos donec iterum veniant ad ecclesiam et ibi coniungantur cum debitasollemnitate' (Thomae de Chobham, Summa Confessorum ed. F. Broomfield (AnalectaMediaevalia Namurcensia, 25, Louvain, 1968), 147).65 See for example: Registrum, 985, 998-9.22other English jurisdictions in particular its near contemporary at Ely. Here in the1370s and 1380s, most of those who had formed clandestine marriages werenot ordered to separate until solemnization could be effected. Penances werenot enjoined and there were no strict deadlines relating to solemnization as wasoften the case at Rochester. Only when the prohibitions of Humanaconcupiscentia, concerning abuses of the banns and church solemnization, hadbeen infringed was penance enjoined.66 The impression is that the Official atRochester was pursuing a stricter policy towards those who had formedclandestine marriages, and had been detected through office actions. This wasa policy much more in accord with the letter of both Mepham's and Stratford'sconstitutions.67III The disputes and prosecutions which resulted from clandestinemarriages can - despite their apparent brevity - illuminate several featuresconcerning the implementation of canon law and the underlying social practiceof marriage within the diocese. A pattern has emerged from other studies inwhich exchange of consent in whatever form was followed by a period ofcohabitation which usually, though not invariably, resulted in churchsolemnization.68 Such contracts often only came to light if the wider communitybecame scandalized, or if one of the parties became dissatisfied and sought to66 Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 250-1; cf. Kelly, Love and marriage, 170-73.67 A number of thirteenth English statutes, including one promulgated at Ely, had prescribedpenitential floggings for those who had formed clandestine marriages (Sheehan, `Marriagetheory', 437-8).68 Helmholz, Marriage litigation, 28-31, 59; Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 238, 243-50.23abandon the partnership or force the pace. In this case, a promoted officeaction would have been a cheaper alternative to the prosecution of an instancesuit.69 The Rochester material is itself suggestive of this pattern. Two contractsuncovered through office actions had been formed roughly eight months beforethey were detected, although another may have been detected in a matter ofweeks.70 Another couple had formed a contract of marriage shortly after theyhad appeared before the Archdeacon of Rochester at an unspecified date.71 Itwas necessary to excommunicate John Richard in order to compel him tosolemnize his marriage with Cecily Cam. He was absolved from the sentence ofexcommunication in March 1348, but ordered to regularise the marriage on painof 20s. It was also found that he was pursuing a sexual relationship with awoman with whom he had exchanged consent after his contract to Cecily.72 Awoman alleged a de presenti contract with a promise to solemnize. Themulti-party suits show that, through the use of reclamations, dissatisfiedindividuals were forcing defendants to admit that they had already formedbinding marriages before the publication of their banns. Likewise, a couple whowere called super contractu matrimoniali were found to have contractedmarriage before having their banns read.73A distinction may have existed in the minds of the laity between the69 Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 253, 261.70 Registrum, 956, 969, 992. The couple who appeared on 18 March 1348, claimed that theircontracted had been formed three weeks before the previous carniprivium. 71 op. cit., 967, 992.72 op. cit., 937, 993. John was to suffer a threefold beating around both church and market, whileJoan was to be beaten three times around the church.73 op. cit., 933.24effects of a de futuro contract, even when followed by sexual intercourse, and ade presenti contract. Although both were equally binding under the terms ofcanon law, several instances show that those involved did not subscribe to thisview. Cecily Cam and Joan Taylour, presented for fornication and contract ofmarriage, both confessed to being trothplighted to John Richard. For his part,John admitted that he had given his faith (strinxit fidem) to Cecily and had thenslept with her; at some later date he repeated the process with Joan. JohnLyndestede was questioned on the status of his relationships with three women.He was found to have contracted sponsalia with Denise Vayre which he hadfollowed with sex; he had pledged himself to Amice Teysy during her husband'slifetime; and he had made an unspecified contract of marriage with JoanCoaxes. He admitted that the contract with Joan had precedence over the othertwo. Sarah atte Longefrith had successively contracted with two men. Althoughno contract was at issue, John Beneyt slept with the cousin of the woman withwhom he had formed a contract of marriage.74These patterns of courtship and marriage can be set against theevidence of a high degree of sexual freedom provided by the office business ofthe court. The presence of persistent and durable relationships which lackedany form of contractual obligation, together with the use of abjurations in formacommuni, added a practical and legal confusion to the court's dealings withclandestine marriages. The exchange of words of future consent could have74 op. cit., 932-3.25acted as a cover for sexual relations giving them a formal, though notnecessarily binding, status in the eyes of those concerned. One couple admittedto intercourse both before and after their contract of marriage, and a man `often'(sepius) had sexual intercourse with a woman he had promised to take as hiswife.75 This state of affairs was clearly open to abuse: Richard Sandre initiallydenied forming a contract with Agnes Adam, but when placed on oath headmitted that he had promised to take her as his wife and had then slept withher. It is possible that widows and unmarried women may have employeddifferent courtship strategies with widows only becoming involved in de presenticontracts while other women were more often associated with promises ofmarriage. If so, this may indicate something about the relative experience ofwidows and the strength of their position on the marriage market.Such habits are seen as indicative of a situation in which parentalcontrol was not an overriding feature of marriage formation. This is especiallytrue with de futuro contracts which were a prelude to sexual activity.76 AtRochester in the late 1340s, parental involvement appears remote. The onlyreference to it among the office actions is in a conditional de futuro contract.Robert, son of Walter Webbe promised Juliana atte Wood that he would marryher if his parents gave their consent. His deference to his parents' wishes didnot prevent him from sleeping with Juliana, and subsequently being presentedon a charge of habitual fornication with contract of marriage. The court found75 op. cit., 950.76 Goldberg, Women, work and life cycle, 234, 243-47, 248-51; Sheehan, `Formation andstability', 263.26that there was no reason why they should not marry and ordered them tosolemnize.77 The instance suits reveal slightly more about the involvement ofparents in the marriages of their children. The two suits brought during February1348 by Thomas Bard and Adam Pope demonstrate both the practical controlthat could be exercised over the marriage plans of children by parents, and alsotheir potential limits. The precise circ*mstances of John Bard's contract withAgatha Slipes are not recorded, and so it is not possible to know if he wasacting with or without his father's consent. For her part, Agatha had been ableto form contracts with two brothers and was about to enter into another with athird man, which was an unsatisfactory state of affairs from both the point ofview of canon law and family interest. The second example shows theinvolvement of - possibly well-off - parents and friends in the negotiationssurrounding the financial aspects of marriage, though it is not possible toascertain what role they had played in bringing the couple together. Nomembers of the defendant's family appeared in court or were mentioned as partof the negotiations: the transaction was purely between the man concerned andthe woman and her family.The instance litigation brought between 1347 and 1348 demonstratesthat the system of banns was functioning, and that it was providing anopportunity for individuals to exercise their right of challenge. It wasnevertheless a system that could be circumvented and prejudiced; but, although77 Registrum, 967.27couples often acted to prejudice or pre-empt the stages of marriage approvedby the Church, they were willing to use the same system to legitimise theirunions or challenge the ability of others to marry. Something of an uneasyco-existence was present in which the court provided a forum for the pursuit ofdisputes, and where recognition by the court or due solemnization was probablythe final and most public act in a process involving several different stages andlevels of mutual commitment.78The Church was by no means a passive observer in all this andgeneral measures were taken to ensure that marriages were correctly formed.At Rochester between 1347 and 1348 - and possibly also in the later period -this took the form of the active pursuit by the Official of some of those who hadformed clandestine marriages. These office prosecutions do not appear to belinked in any way to parental pressure - which has been given as a possibleexplanation for their prevalence on the continent.79 Recorded instances ofparental involvement are few in both the relevant instance and office business,while the initiative for such prosecutions appears to have come from the Officialhimself or jilted lovers. At Ely too, parental involvement was negligible.80 Theimposition of penance on those who had formed a broad range of clandestinemarriages tends to set Rochester apart from the activities of other contemporaryEnglish jurisdictions. The contrast with Ely consistory is particularly striking.78 L. R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 140.79 Donahue, `Canon law', 147, 155-57; C. Donahue, `The case of the man who fell into the Tiber:the Roman law of marriage at the time of the glossators', American Journal of LegalHistory, 22 (1978), 51-2.28Here couples found to have contracted clandestinely were not punished unlessthey had misused the system in order to add a dubious legality to theirmarriages. In more general matters, however, the Rochester Officials wereadhering to general canon law principals in assigning penances for offencesagainst sexual morality. A distinction was made between fornication, incestuousfornication and adultery were punished, with the latter two on the wholeincurring harsher penalties.81 This was the case in both periods for whichevidence survives. With regard to clandestine marriages, the Official was usingthe discretion allowed to him under canon, to assign penance in some casesand not in others. This is a point already noted by Kelly in his comparison of theRochester and Ely material.82The picture which emerges from the Rochester Act book is a familiarone in many respects, and it shares many common features with what is knownabout marriage litigation in other English ecclesiastical jurisdictions. AtRochester, as elsewhere, fully fledged clandestine marriages were at issue inthe litigation rather than disputes over betrothals. A high degree of freedom inthe choice of marriage partners is apparent as are differences in theunderstanding, between Church and laity, of the legal consequences ofcontracts. Yet, the Official's treatment of a number of the clandestine marriages- mostly detected through office actions - leads on to less familiar terrain, at80 Sheehan, `Formation and stability', 263. 81A. J. Finch, ‘Sexual morality and canon law: The evidence of the Rochester consistory court’,Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 273.82 Kelly, Love and marriage, 170f.29least within an English context. At Rochester, office actions played a leadingrole in the detection of clandestine contracts, as they did to a lesser degree atEly. However, the Official went further in treating a significant proportion ofotherwise valid marriages as little more than sworn fornication. The impositionof penances in these cases demonstrates an awareness of the problems whichmight result from clandestine contracts, and a close adherence to the letter ofcanon law on such matters.30APPENDIXCase ARobert Chaloner and Agnes Taylour were called super contractu matrimonialiafter it had been alleged (ut dicebatur) that Robert had broken the terms of anabjuration sub pena nubendi. The suspicion must be that Agnes had a part inbringing the action as she alone was willing to admit to subsequent sexualintercourse. Although she was unable to prove her case, she was left to herconscience regarding marriage to another which shows that her claim was seenas having some substance (Registrum, 998). John de Stokebery and Alice Proisadmitted before the court that they were married; but this contract wasimmediately challenged by Ralph Lawrie who was also present in court (op. cit.,924-5).Case BOn July 10 1347, Robert Pertrich and Sarah widow Longefrith' confessed to acharge of fornication and contract of marriage. They were ordered to solemnizebefore Holy Cross day. However, on 30 July, Sarah was called on a charge offornication and contract of marriage with John Taylour and an inquiry wasinitiated into which of the two marriages had precedence (op. cit., 946-7, 956).On June 18 1347, John Richard, Cecily Cam and Joan Taylour appeared beforethe court. Both women admitted to having formed contracts of marriage withJohn and to subsequent intercourse. However, the contract with Cecily washeld to be the prior one. On march 18 1348, the court found that John andCecily's marriage remained unsolemnized, and that John was continuing to31pursue his affair with Joan (op. cit., 937, 993). On February 26 1348, JohnLindestede was ordered to solemnize his marriage with Denise Vayre. On April8, he was called to explain why he had not fulfilled the terms of the penanceimposed because of his adultery with Amise Teysey during her husband's life,and to make plain his matrimonial intentions towards Denise, Amise and JoanCroxes. He admitted that he had contracted with Joan prior to the other two (op.cit., 985, 998-9). On December 18 1347, John Boghele and Alice Andrewadmitted a clandestine marriage and were ordered to solemnize. This order wasrepeated on May 21 1348 (op. cit., 973, 1008).Case COne man called super fornicacione et contractu matrimoniali admitted promisingto marry the woman (duceret in uxorem suam), and then to sleeping with her(op. cit., 1026). Another man was said to have made a de facto contract ofmarriage with a woman during her husband's lifetime. He had `pledged himselfto her' (affidando eandem) (op. cit., 999). A couple called super fornicacioneadmitted a contract of marriage. They then exchanged words of presentconsent before the court (op. cit., 1038).Case DOne couple were ordered to solemnize as soon as was possible (op. cit., 969).Three couples sentenced on 10 July 1347 were to solemnize before 14September of that year, another couple sentenced on 29 July 1348 had tosolemnize before 29 September, and a couple who had been sentenced on 2632February 1348 had to solemnize their marriage after 20 April (op. cit., 945-7,985, 1026). This was because the celebration of marriage was prohibited duringLent and Easter. On 30 October 1347, a couple were ordered to solemnizebefore 30 November and on 21 May of the following year, a couple wereordered to solemnize before 24 June (op. cit., 967, 1009). There was noguarantee that the marriage would in fact be solemnized within the stipulatedtime. A second contract was alleged against Sarah Longefrith' within a month ofher being ordered to solemnize marriage with Robert Pertrich. Two othercouples were tardy in complying with the court's wishes, and in one case thenew order was backed with the threat of a 20s. penalty.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Fortress MaidstoneBy Clive Holden1Fortress MaidstonePreface When I took early retirement in 2016, I was looking forward to developingfurther my long-time interest in local military history. I had read about the Historic Defences Committee of the Kent ArchaeologicalSociety and they seemed to be engaged on work that appealed to my interestsso, in early 2017, I contacted its Chairman, Victor Smith, and offered to helpwith their projects. Victor suggested I might like to do some work on theSecond World War Maidstone ‘Nodal Point’. We met up to discuss the projectover a coffee and Victor kindly gave me some very welcome research tips. Most of that research has come from various War Diaries lodged at theNational Archives at Kew. Many hours were spent visiting the Archives, goingthrough the diaries and photographing thousands of pages. Many more hoursthen spent at home poring over the photos, making notes and trying tounderstand all the military abbreviations and the interminable changes incommand structures. Other information was gleaned from the internet as well as several books. In1948, Captain G.C. Wynne of the Historical Section of the Cabinet Office wastasked with producing the official account of the various plans that were drawnup for Home Defence between 1939 and 1945. This account was reproduced inbook form in 2017 by Frontline Books under the title Stopping Hitler and hasbeen a great help with my research. Colin Alexander’s Ironside’s Line is thedefinitive guide to the GHQ Line defences built between 1940 and 1942 andproved to be another valuable source of information on those earlier years ofanti-invasion preparations. After much time considering how to bring all these various strands ofinformation together to form a coherent and, hopefully interesting report, Ichose to produce it in the form of a chronology from the outbreak of the War inSeptember 1939 to December 1943, by which time the threat of a Germaninvasion of the UK had all but vanished. Although the main subject of the report was originally to be the MaidstoneNodal Point, I have expanded it to cover some military activity in the widerMaidstone area which I have taken to include the route of the GHQ Line fromAylesford to Teston and the airfields at West Malling and Detling. Information on military activity within Maidstone itself during the earlieryears of the war I found, to my frustration, to be very limited. Fortunately, therewere War Diaries for the Royal West Kent’s 13th Infantry Training Centre forSeptember to December 1939, which included the first defence plan for thetown, but no such diaries seem to exist for following years. I did contact theRWK museum in Maidstone to ask if they had any records for 13 I.T.C. but2they were unable to help. The War Diaries for Home Counties Area H.Q. 1939-1940 helped to fill in some gaps, but they too proved a frustration as the vitalmonths of April, May and June 1940 are missing (coincidentally the samemonths are missing from the Chatham Area’s War Diaries from the sameperiod). Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. War Diaries provided a more localised source ofinformation on activity from June 1941 onwards and when the town itself wascreated a ‘Fortress’ in 1942 the local garrison began producing its own WarDiaries which detailed much of the work involved in the construction works forthe Fortress and its various defence plans. The upper echelons of the command structure produced their own War Diarieswhich I have also drawn on as they obviously had a great influence on whathappened in Maidstone. These included the diaries of Kent Area, EasternCommand, South-Eastern Command and XII Corps. Trying to make sense of the ever-changing chains of command over the periodwas a difficult task but I hope I have managed to illustrate them correctly in theappendices to the report. I certainly do not claim this report to be a definitive account, but I do hope Ihave managed to bring to attention many previously unknown aspects ofMaidstone’s military history during the Second World War.Clive HoldenEast MallingNovember 2019Acknowledgements I wish to express my thanks to Victor Smith for all his help, advice, andencouragement with this project. Thanks too to Paul Tritton for his help andencouragement. Also, my thanks to Roy Moore, owner of the Kent PhotoArchive website, for his help; to Stuart Carley for allowing me to use imagesfrom the Frederick Carley Collection; and to Rex Cadman and Roger Smoothyfor allowing me to use images from the ‘War & Peace’ Collection.3Introduction When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, it came as nosurprise to most people in this country. Such a conflict had been predicted,feared and expected ever since Hitler came to power in 1933. Following themilitary re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the British Chiefs-of-Staffbegan planning for a war with Germany which they assumed might break-out inthe latter apart of 1939. The risks of a seaborne invasion of Great Britain wereregarded to be negligible but the danger was that the country could be defeatedby air attack alone. When hostilities did eventually break out, the Government still believed thatthe United Kingdom would remain a secure base. However, by October 1939German submarine activity off the North and West coasts resulted in thereduction of Royal Navy forces in the North Sea to provide escorts and tradeprotection in those areas under threat from the U-Boats, thus leaving the EastCoast vulnerable to a surprise large-scale raid. The Chiefs-of Staff were askedto take the necessary steps to prevent such a raid. Plans were drawn up tocounter a strike by up to 15,000 seaborne supported by 10,000 airborne troopson targets in the East of England. Following the German invasion and occupation of France and the LowCountries and the seizure of the Channel ports in the early summer of 1940, aninvasion across the Channel into the southern counties of England became a realpossibility. Due to its proximity to France, Kent was under particular threat.Defence plans were hastily revised to combat any invasion. These plansincluded the construction of the ‘GHQ Line’ a series of defence works to defendLondon and the industrial heartlands of the Midlands. Along these lines manytowns and villages were designated as ‘anti-tank islands’ also known as NodalPoints, heavily defended localities with pillboxes, roadblocks and anti-tankobstacles designed to slow-up a German advance. Because of its importance asa vital communications hub with its road, rail and river links and being thecentre of county administration, Maidstone was designated as a Nodal Point andbecame an integral part of the GHQ Line defences. Further revisions of antiinvasion plans in 1941 and 1942 saw Maidstone upgraded to a ‘Fortress’ withenhanced anti-tank defences and a dedicated garrison. The following report is the culmination of two years research into the militaryhistory of Maidstone in the Second World War and the plans that were put inplace for its defence.4Maps (1)Key:1) Maidstone Barracks2) Invicta Lines3) Detling Airfield4) West Malling Airfield5) Kent Home Guard H.Q. (74 London Rd)6) Aylesford Bridge7) Allington Lock8) Mote Park9) Teston Bridge10) Vinters Park11) Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. (Preston Hall Farm12) Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. (Bower Terrace)5Map (2)Key:A) Union Street Drill HallB) Maidstone BridgeC) County Hall / Sessions HouseD) Archbishop’s PalaceE) Police StationF) Tilling Stevens FactoryG) Fortress Battle H.Q. (Bank Street)H) Fortress Battle H.Q. (Town Hall)I) Maidstone Home Guard H.Q. (Brewer Street)6Prelude Evidence of settlement in Maidstone can be found dating back to prehistorictimes with Maidstone Museum holding many locally found Mesolithic andNeolithic artefacts. The Romans and Normans established settlements here anddeveloped its economy, aided by its position on the River Medway whichallowed for the easy transportation of goods upriver into the heart of the countyand downriver to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. The town has a long military history: the ‘Battle of Maidstone’ in 1648 duringthe Civil War was an important victory for the Parliamentary forces under thecommand of Lord Fairfax, overcoming the town’s Royalist garrison.Battle of Maidstone Memorial in Brenchley Gardens The first of Maidstone’s two army barracks was built in 1797 as the threat ofNapoleon loomed from across the Channel, and King George III visited MotePark to inspect 3,000 of the local militia assembled from across Kent inanticipation of an invasion. The barracks were situated just off, what became,the Sandling Road. They were originally built to serve the West Kent Militiaand then, in the 19th century, they became one of the Army’s major CavalryDepots. In 1835 the barracks were home to the Army Riding School then in1873 they became the depot for the 50th (West Kent) Regiment of Foot and the97th (Earl of Ulster’s) Regiment of Foot. These two regiments amalgamated in1881 to become the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment with MaidstoneBarracks as its Regimental Depot.7The 18th C. former Maidstone Barracks Officers’ Mess in 2016Aerial view of Maidstone Barracks In the First World War Maidstone was the headquarters of the Home CountiesDivision and on August 14th, 1914 the local newspapers reported that therewere 2,000 Territorials in Maidstone waiting to be sent to their war stations.The regimental depot for the West Kent Yeomanry was in Union Street andmen were encouraged to enlist directly there. It would be a common sight to seethe troops marching along the High Street, on their way to the depot. In 1920 the Royal East Kent Yeomanry and West Kent (Queen’s Own)Yeomanry were amalgamated to form the Kent Yeomanry and simultaneouslyre-roled as field artillery to form the 97th (Kent Yeomanry) Brigade, RoyalField Artillery. The new regiment consisted of four artillery batteries one of8which, the 388th, was based at Maidstone. The Regimental H.Q. was alsoestablished in Maidstone at the Drill Hall in Union Street.388 Battery, 97th (Kent Yeomanry) Brigade, R.A. at the Drill Hall, Union Street in 1936 To the north of the town a Royal Naval Air Station was established at Detlingin 1915 which was later taken over by the Royal Flying Corps. However, theairfield was often subjected to low hill fog, so an emergency landing strip wasestablished at Kings Hills, West Malling which could be used whenever weatherconditions rendered Detling unavailable. Following the end of the First World War the airfield at Detling wasabandoned and the emergency landing strip at West Malling was left to becomeovergrown and all but forgotten. However, with the rekindled interest in privateaviation in the late 1920’s the hunt was on for new potential flying sites. In June1930, a private company, Kent Aeronautical Services, completed their purchaseof the former landing strip site at Kings Hill and founded the West Kent AeroClub there. In 1932, the aviation pioneer Sir Alan Cobham brought his NationalAviation Day Display, more commonly known as ‘Cobham’s Flying Circus’, toWest Malling. Within a few years the airfield was sold again and re-namedMaidstone Airport. In 1938 the new owner, Walter Laidlaw, was encouraged bythe Air Ministry to set up a Civil Air Guard Scheme at West Malling. This wasa mainly civilian organisation but was financed by the Air Ministry and run as amilitary organisation to train possible future pilots for the RAF.9Maidstone Airport, West Malling 1938 In the late 1930’s the threat from Nazi Germany saw the expansion of theRoyal Air Force and the need for more airfields. Detling was re-opened as anRAF Station in 1938 and, in early 1939, West Malling was finally requisitionedby the Directorate of Public Works for use by the RAF. Both airfields weredestined to play major roles in the forthcoming conflict. Maidstone’s 18th century wooden army barracks were now falling into disrepair and were fast becoming unsuitable for the demands of a 20th centuryarmy.Royal West Kent Regt. Reunion Parade at Maidstone Barracks 1935 (Carley Collection)10R.W.K.’s on parade at Maidstone Barracks in 1936 (Carley Collection) In 1936 the Government purchased a site from the Lushington family a fewhundred yards to the north of the Sandling Road barracks and proceeded tobuild a new hutted camp on it for the Army. When it was completed it becamethe home of the Infantry Training Centre of the Queen’s Own Royal West KentRegiment (13 I.T.C.) and became known as the ‘Invicta Lines’. The Armyretained the Sandling Road Barracks and they continued in use until theirdemolition in the 1990s.Unarmed combat training at 13 I.T.C. (War & Peace Collection)11September1939- April 1940 – The Phoney War At the time of the outbreak of the Second World War on the 3rd September1939, Maidstone’s Invicta Lines Barracks was home to the Regimental Depotand Headquarters of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment (R.W.K.)and the regiment’s 13 Infantry Training Centre (13 I.T.C.) which provided themain garrison for the town. The total establishment of the Depot and 13 I.T.Cwas 13 Officers and 272 Other Ranks, under the Command of Major E.S. Kerr.Within 24 hours of the declaration of war 600 reservists had reported to theDepot and been clothed and equipped. Hundreds more reservists and recruitscontinued to arrive throughout September, and many were soon on their way tojoin their battalions with the British Expeditionary Force in France.New recruits arrive at Maidstone Barracks. (War & Peace Collection) The 6th Cavalry Training Regiment was also based in the town and followingthe declaration of war it was detailed to provide protection for the Kent CountyPolice H.Q. and barracks on the Sutton Road. The Regiment moved toShorncliffe in November 1939 and 13 I.T.C. took over its protection duties.12Troopers of the 6th Cavalry Training Regiment (War & Peace Collection)Kent Police H.Q. & Barracks, Sutton Road, Maidstone The town and surrounding villages were designated ‘Maidstone Sector’, partof British Army Eastern Command’s Home Counties Area which was acombined command with the 44th (Home Counties) Infantry Division (TA).[See Appendix I] The combined Command was administered with a shared stafffrom a joint H.Q. at Shenden, a large requisitioned house on the Weald Road inSevenoaks. Brigadier A.I. Macdougall D,S.O., M.C. had joined the Staff in July1939 as Area Commander in anticipation of the splitting of the Area andDivisional Commands. However, for the interim period and on instruction fromEastern Command H.Q., he was now acting as Brigadier i/c [in charge]13Administration to the Area and Divisional Commander Major-General E.A.Osbourne C.B., D.S.O. Brig. Macdougall eventually assumed the Command ofHome Counties Area on the 25th October.Brig. A I Macdougall as a Major in 1918 © IWM (HU 117428) Among the forces at Brig. Macdougall’s disposal were troops from theNational Defence Companies. Established in 1936 as part of the TerritorialArmy Reserve, the companies were formed on a county or city basis, each beinglinked to their local Territorial battalion. Enlistment began on 1st September1936 and was open to ‘ex-members of His Majesty's Forces, normally betweenthe ages of 45 and 60 years’. Their role was stated to be ‘to protect importantpoints in Great Britain when war is threatening or has actually broken out, butmembers of the force will not be called up until these conditions arise, nor willthey be called up on account of civil disturbance’. In November 1939 theN.D.C. were formed into Home Defence battalions attached to their localregiments. The 8th (HD) Bn. Royal West Kent Regt. was based at Maidstone.Their duties included the guarding of Vulnerable Points and Prisoner-of-Warcamps. As the result of the increased tensions following the German take-over ofCzechoslovakia in the Spring of 1939, the British Government had ordered thedoubling in size of the Territorial Army. Each T.A. Division was itself doubledin size until it was able to ‘throw-off’ a duplicate Division. In the case of the44th Division its duplicate was to become the 12th Infantry Division. On the 7thOctober the 44th and 12th Divisions became separate formations and theCommand of Home Counties Area was passed to the G.O.C. [General OfficerCommanding] 12th Division. One brigade of the 44th Division was 132 Infantry Brigade part of whichmoved to Linton, near Maidstone at the outbreak of the war where it was then14re-designated as 36th Infantry Brigade and became part of the newly formed12th Infantry Division. The Commander of Maidstone Sector and the R.W.K. Depot in October 1939was, the recently promoted, Lt. Col. E.S. Kerr of the Royal West KentRegiment with his H.Q. on the Invicta Lines.Lt. Col. E.S. Kerr Lt. Col. Kerr was also responsible for 13 I.T.C. and oversaw the rigoroustraining schedules for the recently called-up reservists and new recruits The 9th October saw some important visitors to 13 I.T.C. The first to arrivewas the acting Colonel of the Royal West Kent Regiment, Brigadier N.I. WhittyD.S.O. He was followed shortly after by the G.O.C. Eastern Command, Lt.General Sir Guy Williams K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who was on his first officialvisit to Maidstone. Finally, the Commander Home Counties Area, Brig. A IMacdougall D.S.O., M.C. arrived in the late afternoon to see the troops intraining.Rifle firing drill at 13 I.T.C. (War & Peace Collection)15 On the 27th October 1939, the Commander-in-Chief Home Forces General Sir Walter Kirkeaerodrome or aerodromes on which further troop-carrying aircraft could land.Germany was known to have about 4,000 trained parachutists that could be usedin such an operation and over 1,000 civilian aircraft with the necessary rangeeach capable of carrying at least 15 ‘air landing’ troops that could be used infollow-up on the seized airfields. Immediate action would be taken by thenearest formations to repel the invaders and the General Officers Commandingin-Chief of the Command or Commands involved would be responsible for theconduct of the battle in their area. The code word JULIUS would be employed to signify that there wereindications that an enemy attack was being contemplated and the code wordCAESAR that an invasion was imminent.The 1939 Maidstone Defence Scheme In an order issued by the Commander Home Counties Area, Brigadier A.I.Macdougall, dated 1st November it was directed that, in the event of enemyairborne landings, the responsibility for dealing with such landings would restwith the Territorial Army troops in the area. However, the officers commandingthe I.T.C.s at Maidstone and Canterbury would be responsible for the close andimmediate defence of their respective towns. 13 I.T.C. at Maidstone would bedetailed to provide 300 men formed into two companies for the defence of themajor roads leading into Maidstone: the A20, A229 and the A249. They were tobe issued with all available Bren guns, 1,000 rounds of ammunition per Brengun, 100 rounds per rifle and 12 rounds per revolver. Transport for these troopswas to be provided by the R.A.S.C. Depot at Southill Barracks, Chatham.Maidstone Sector H.Q. was instructed to prepare a detailed defence schemebased around these orders following which all officers and N.C.O.s would carryout a T.E.W.T. [Tactical Exercise Without Troops] to test the scheme In accordance with Brig. Macdougall’s orders, the ‘Maidstone DefenceScheme’ was produced and on the 6th November all officers from 13 I.T.C.took part in the resultant T.E.W.T. after which they were all said to be ‘fullyacquainted with positions for the defence of Maidstone’. While it was considered unlikely that Maidstone itself would be the originalobjective of any raid, it had to be borne in mind that conditions prevailing at thetime may force a change of plan on the enemy. The Maidstone Defence Scheme envisaged an airborne attack by no more thanone hundred ‘first class’ parachute troops armed with rifles and light machineguns. It was expected for the enemy aircraft to approach at night for a dawntroop landing, allowing the landing party a full day for its initial operations.Time being of the essence, it was thought that the landing party would attemptto capture motor vehicles to help speed them on their way to their objective. Itwas therefore considered essential to close all roads leading to the danger area16to civilian traffic. Similar consideration should be given to any railway and rivertraffic. The close defence of Maidstone was to be considered as a series of ‘stops’, theobject being to turn the enemy away from the town, if possible, toward the gunsof the defenders’ mobile reserve. Two companies from 13 I.T.C., each of fourplatoons, were available for the defence of the town. One platoon would beavailable at one hour’s notice and another at two hours’ notice. The other sixplatoons would need six hours’ notice although, in an emergency, this could becut to two hours. These troops, however, would be mainly young and onlypartially trained. With only eleven motor cars immediately available to 13I.T.C. it would be necessary to commandeer civilian vehicles to providesufficient transport for the troops. Ten buses (five for each company), a furthertwelve cars, two motorcycles and two 30 cwt lorries or similar vehicles wouldneed to be ‘Impressed’, by force if necessary. It would be difficult to predict the effects of an enemy airborne landing on thecivilian population. Numerous false reports and rumours of enemy activitycould be expected and so any early accurate information was unlikely to comefrom the civilian authorities. However, receiving such information wasconsidered essential so the defence scheme would need to provide for officers’mobile patrols in cars, the object of which would be to locate and keep in touchwith the enemy. If accurate information regarding the location of the enemy waslacking then it would be desirable to keep as small a force as necessary in fixedpositions and maintain a large, mobile reserve. It was assumed that Maidstone would not be in danger from every direction atonce so if, for example, the enemy raiding party were at the east of the townthen the roads entering the town from the west could be left unguarded. If it wasdeemed necessary to ‘stop’ all roads, then this could only be done by reducingthe strength of their guard posts. The defence scheme went on to detail ‘The immediate and close defence ofMaidstone’ with special reference to the roads Maidstone – Sittingbourne(A249), Maidstone – Charing (A20) and Maidstone – Loose (A229). In all therewere six main roads and two minor roads leading into the town. Of these, twocame from the west (A26 and A20). The River Medway, to the north of thetown, formed a natural obstacle to an enemy raiding party moving east to westand could only be crossed at Allington Lock or Maidstone Bridge.17Maidstone Bridge With ribbon development and housing estates extending the perimeter of thetown to the north and north-east, the temptation would be to move on andconfront the enemy in open country and villages outside the town. However,this was to be resisted as such a course of action could lead to the defendersbecoming isolated and dispersed. Instead troops should be concentrated at ‘stop’positions on roads into the town. The Maidstone – Chatham road (A229)offered a strong platoon position at the Sandling Lane junction. Another ‘stop’ could be established on the Boxley Road in the area of itsjunctions with Grange Lane and Sandy Lane.18 Another good platoon position existed on the Maidstone – Sittingbourne road(A249) at the crossroads near Penenden Heath. From the east the Maidstone - Charing road (A20) offered little in the way ofsuitable ‘stop’ positions due to ribbon development and the large number oftrees along the road. The only reasonable position being astride the road andrailway near Turkey Mill.19 In the south, on the Loose Road (A229), housing extended without a break toLoose. On the Sutton Road (A274), buildings extended a mile beyond itsjunction with Loose Road. These were both main roads so the solution here wasto concentrate a force at the junction of the two roads which would be ready tomove down one road to Loose or the other to the Police Barracks, dependent oninformation received from the mobile patrols.20 The main western approaches to the town were the London Road (A20) andthe Tonbridge Road (A26). Suitable defence positions were identified near therailway bridge over the A20 between Allington and Barming Station and on theA26 at Barming at its junction with Fountain Lane and Farleigh Lane. The initial steps to be taken if a suspected enemy landing was reported were:(a) Request the Chief Constable to close to civilian traffic all roads leadingtowards to the area of the suspected landing.(b)Despatch Officers’ Patrols in cars to that area.(c) To collect or impress immediately vehicles to convey the force available.21(d)To ‘stop’ all roads in the direction of the suspected landing areaimmediately using just one Company for this purpose.(e) Roadblocks to be made by troops on all roads leading into Unit positions. In addition to the above steps, the following authorities were to be informedimmediately by telephone:1) Headquarters Home Counties Area – Sevenoaks2) Headquarters 36th Infantry Brigade – Linton3) Headquarters 143 Field Regiment Royal Artillery4) Kent County Police Headquarters5) Chief Constable – Maidstone6) 6th RAF Observer Corps - Maidstone The force detailed to counter the raid would comprise:Headquarters: 5 Officers; 7 N.C.O.s; 24 Other RanksNo.1 Company: 5 Officers; 150 Other Ranks (inc. N.C.O.s)No.2 Company: 5 Officers; 120 Other Ranks (inc. N.C.O.s) Each Company would comprise a H.Q. (to include a Company SergeantMajor, a Clerk and runners) and four infantry Platoons, plus Drivers, Signallersand Stretcher-Bearers. Each Infantry Section (24 in all) would be issued with a Bren light machinegun. Ammunition at the rate of 100 rounds per rifle, 1,000 rounds per Bren gunand 300 filled Bren gun magazines would be held by the Guard Commanderready for immediate issue. All personnel would be fully armed and equipped, including gas capes andfield dressings, and would draw all their ammunition, Bren guns etc. from theGuard Commander. Each man would be supplied with a knife, fork and mess tin. These itemswere to be packed in a haversack and water bottles filled. A greatcoat and twoblankets for each man would be packed in folded bundles, tied, labelled andthen stacked in the Guard Room ready for despatch. The Messing Officer would supply 300 steel plates and basins. TheQuartermaster and Messing Officer would supply 40 camp kettles and arrangefor a supply of tea, sugar, milk and other non-perishable items to make up a fullday’s ration for each man. All these items were to be made available in theGuard Room together with a quantity of fuel. Water for tea-making would haveto be obtained from local residents. Tools, wiring materials and hurricane lamps would be made available in theGuard Room and yard. The Medical Officer would arrange for an ambulance, R.A.P. [RegimentalAid Post] and first aid box to be ready to move at 30 minutes notice.22 The P.A.D. [Passive Air Defence] Officer would arrange for a supply ofbleach powder and bleach ointment to be made available in the Guard Room. Before moving off, each Platoon Post would detail one man to remain at theGuard Room to take responsibility for his Platoon’s greatcoats, rations, cookingutensils tools etc. When in position the Platoon Post Commander would sendanother man back to the Guard Room to guide the stores to the position. TheQuartermaster would then supervise the loading and despatch of the stores ontothe motor vehicles that had been impressed for that purpose. On the sounding of the alarm the Messing Officer would immediately arrangefor 300 ‘substantial’ haversack rations to be prepared and held ready for issue asrequired. One vehicle would be held in readiness at the disposal of the Quartermasterfor the replenishment of ammunition etc. to any Post and each Post Commanderwould ensure that an ‘intelligent representative’ would be sent back to theGuard Room, when additional supplies were required, to guide the vehicle tothe Post. Pre-empting possible casualties from enemy raids, the following month on the16th December, a military hospital was opened at Sandling Park on the InvictaLines.Sandling Park The anticipated German airborne raids did not materialise, and the WesternFront remained quiet during these first months of the war, continuing so into theearly months of 1940 with the whole period, notwithstanding the many actionsat sea, becoming known as ‘The Phoney War’. The Home Counties Area remained on alert for possible invasion attempts butincreased emphasis was now being put on training. On the 1st February ‘Home23Counties Area Training Instruction No.2’ was issued detailing the objectives oftraining with special regard to physical fitness, weapons training, P.A.D.[Passive Air Defence] practices and security duties. The Instruction wasparticularly relevant to Maidstone as the home of 13 I.T.C.Weapons inspection at Maidstone Barracks in 1940 (War & Peace Collection) On the 5th February 1940, Brigadier Macdougall relinquished command ofHome Counties Area to take up his new appointment as Major-General, GeneralStaff. The command of the Area passed to the G.O.C. 12th Infantry Division,Major-General R.L. Petre until the 5th March when Brigadier J.S. DavenportM.C. of the Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Regiment was appointed as the newArea Commander. In April both 12th and 44th Infantry Divisions moved to France to join theBritish Expeditionary Force leaving the 1st (London) Infantry Division to takeover responsibility for the defence of Kent.24May – December 1940, Britain at Bay The period of the ‘Phoney War’ ended abruptly on the 9th April 1940 whenGerman troops invaded Denmark and Norway. Following a disastrous militaryand naval campaign in Norway, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlainwas forced to resign and was replaced on the 10th May by Winston Churchill.The same day Germany launched its main campaign in the West with invasionsof Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. A few days later German tanks werethrusting into France through the Ardennes and were soon threatening to cut offthe British Expeditionary Force which had moved up into Belgium to counterGerman advances there. The B.E.F. were forced to withdraw to Dunkirk andawait evacuation. In response to the escalation in hostilities, Kent County Council immediatelydecided to establish a County Civil Defence Mobile Reserve ultimately toconsist of three companies, each of two hundred men comprising first aidparties, ambulances and combined rescue and decontamination squads. Onecompany was to be formed at once and established at a convenient point readyto move to reinforce local resources in areas damaged by enemy action. Following the German invasion of France, a part-time military force, theLocal Defence Volunteers (L.D.V.), was formed from men aged between 17and 65 who were exempt from or who had not yet been called up for full timemilitary service. The L.D.V. were organised into to ‘Zones’. The Kent Zoneestablished its H.Q. at the Territorial Army’s Headquarters at 67, College Roadin Maidstone, although they later moved to their own H.Q. building at 74,London Road.67, College Road – T.A. H.Q. & L.D.V. Kent Zone H.Q. in 19402574, London Road – Kent LDV / Home Guard H.Q. 1940-44 After the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and thesubsequent fall of France the country faced the very real danger of an invasionfor which it was ill-prepared. With most of the Army’s heavy equipmentabandoned in France its immediate ability to prevent any major German assaultwas severely curtailed. An additional concern was that the nation’s existingstatic defences were outdated and woefully inadequate to deal with a seaborneinvasion. Although XII Corps had been formed in June under the command ofLt. Gen Andrew Thorne to provide troops for the defence of Kent and Sussex,its main formations comprised of just two infantry divisions and three artilleryregiments. It was obvious that this critical overall situation had now to beaddressed with some urgency. General Sir William Edmund Ironside, Commander-in-Chief, GeneralHeadquarters (GHQ), Home Forces had the un-enviable task of preparingBritain’s anti-invasion defences. To aid his task he was given additional powersand made Chairman of the Home Defence Executive which enabled him tocommunicate directly with Government departments.26General Sir Edmund Ironside Ironside drew up a plan of defence which was submitted to the War Cabineton the 25th June 1940. Amongst the plan’s proposals were for the inland areasto be divided into zones consisting of a series of ‘stop’ lines. Despite their namethe purpose of these lines was to delay rather than stop German forces allowingtime for reinforcements to arrive in sufficient strength to engage the enemy withsome reasonable chance of success. The most important of these zones was tobe the one that encompassed London. The ‘stop’ lines were to be selected by theGeneral HQ Home Forces were designated GHQ Lines or more familiarly as the‘Ironside Line’. The lines consisted of observation posts [O.P.s], anti-tankobstacles, pillboxes, barbed wire entanglements, static anti-tank gunemplacements and, where suitable, mines. It was also deemed necessary that thefullest use be made of natural obstacles such as waterways. Their bridgecrossings were to be heavily defended and prepared with demolition charges toprevent their use by the enemy. The pace of construction of these defence works was impressive. By July1940 Eastern Command were reporting the completion of 463 large shell proofpillboxes, 1,788 small bullet-proof pillboxes, 50 miles of concrete anti-tankobstacles and 43 miles of anti-tank ditches. Another 1,840 pillboxes were stillunder construction with a further 2,000 – 2,200 projected. Part of the Newhaven to Hoo G.H.Q. Line ran through Maidstone Sectorwhich was responsible for manning the 55 O.P.s and 115 pillboxes within itsboundaries. The personnel to man these would be drawn largely from theMaidstone and Malling battalions of the Kent Home Guard. Home CountiesH.Q. suggested the minimum manning requirements to be eight men perObservation Post and five men per pillbox. Anti-tank gun pillboxes weremanned by regular units of the Royal Artillery.27 In addition to the stop-lines many villages and towns were designated asanti-tank ‘islands’ also known as ‘Nodal Points’, designed for all-round defenceto protect key points such as road junctions and centres of communications.They fell into two categories: Category ‘A’ Nodal Points’ which were generallyto be found near the coast and, in the event of invasion, were at risk of beingisolated for up to six days before relief. Category ‘B’ Nodal Points were furtherinland and were unlikely to become isolated for more than three days. NodalPoint defences included a ring of anti-tank obstacles, roadblocks and defendedbuildings. Nodal Points also received an increased scale of Civil DefenceServices. These services covered:(1) The supply of water for drinking and fire-fighting(2) Fire-fighting apparatus and personnel(3) ARP personnel and parties(4) Shelter or trenches for the whole population(5) The supply of petrol for the fire-fighting appliances(6) Food supply. To obtain satisfactory liaison between the Civil and Military authorities in anemergency in these Nodal Points, it was decided that a small body to be called a‘Triumvirate’ should be appointed. Each Triumvirate consisted of a localmilitary commander, a police representative and a civilian representative of theLocal Authority, usually the Mayor or the Chairman of the District Council, orChairman of the Emergency Committee. It was recognised that so long as Civil Defence Committees and EmergencyCommittees could function, they should continue to do so and that theTriumvirates, as such, would have no executive powers. Likewise, LocalAuthorities would continue to function so long as their administration could doso. When an area came under the sole control of a military commander, he was toissue orders on matters affecting the civilian population to the Local Authorityor to its Civil Defence or Emergency Committee. Using the CivilRepresentative of the Triumvirate as his channel of command. The view taken by the military authorities was that there was to be noquestion of the evacuation of the civil population in any event. Pamphlets wereissued to civilians emphasising the necessity to ‘stay put’ should they findthemselves in the middle of a battle and to treat the situation as though it werean air-raid and retire to their shelters or basem*nts.28“Stay Where You Are” pamphlet issued by the Ministry of Information in 1940 In 1940 Maidstone was designated as a Category ‘B’ Nodal Point due to itsstrategic position on the Newhaven to Hoo GHQ Line. The town stood on themainline railway from London to Ashford and the Medway Valley railway linefrom Strood to Paddock Wood. It also had several major trunk roads runningthrough the town centre and was an important crossing point over the RiverMedway. The Medway formed an integral part of the GHQ line. As well as MaidstoneBridge itself there were also important crossings at Teston and Aylesford, eitherside of the town. These were both designated as ‘Defended Localities’. TestonBridge was defended by several pillboxes of various types designed for infantryand anti-tank gun use. If the Germans managed to cross the river here their waywas almost clear to capture the RAF fighter airfield at nearby West Malling.29A shell-proofed machine-gun pillbox overlooking the Medway at Teston Aylesford Bridge was defended by an anti-tank gun pillbox, a small infantrypillbox which also doubled as a light anti-aircraft gun emplacement, and theloop-holed wall of a garden backing onto the river which covered the approachto the bridge. The bridge was also prepared for demolition. On the 26th August1940, at the height of the invasion scare, orders were given that on receipt of thecodeword for the invasion, Cromwell, a demolition party from the School ofMilitary Engineering at Brompton would be dispatched to Aylesford tocomplete the demolition. The demolition party would also be tasked withcratering all the approach roads to the village with explosives.30Aylesford Bridge at low tide Between the bridge and the railway at Aylesford there was bulk petroleumstorage depot. Plans were made, in an emergency, to either contaminate the fuelor destroy the installation completely to prevent the stocks falling into the handsof the enemy.Between Aylesford and Allington the river was lined with more pillboxesalong its left bank. Most of the locks along the non-tidal stretch of the riverwere also well defended with pillboxes. Allington Lock and its sluices wereconsidered to be of particular importance. A Type 28A 6-pounder anti-tank gunpillbox with a side chamber for a light machine-gun defended the lock itself,whilst two Type 24 infantry pillboxes were sited a few hundred yards upstreamin the grounds of Allington Castle and another a short distance downstream nearthe railway line. The lock was also prepared for demolition, a task that would becarried out by the same R.E. party that was charged with the demolition work atAylesford.31Allington Castle (Carley Collection)Type 28A pillbox at Allington Lock On the 22nd July 1940 the L.D.V. was re-named the Home Guard andorganised into battalions. The Kent battalions were numbered consecutivelythroughout the county with the Maidstone battalion being designated 11th(Maidstone) Battalion, Kent Home Guard (11 K.H.G.). The Maidstone BattalionH.Q. was established at Kreemy Hall in Brewer Street. On the 30th July 1940,the Commander, Home Counties Area declared in a letter addressed to all HomeGuard Battalion Commanding Officers in his Area:32 ..that the Home Guard responsibility is, in order of importance:- (a) OBSERVATION (b)GUERILLA TACTICS (c) MANNING ROAD BLOCKS (d) DEFENCE OF CENTRES OFRESISTANCE In July, the ‘Operational Area’ of Home Counties Area was divided into two‘Sub-Areas’: Sevenoaks Sub-Area and Dorking Sub-Area. Maidstone Sectorbecame part of Sevenoaks Sub-Area along with Tonbridge Sector and BigginHill Sector. Colonel R. Papworth was appointed Commander of the DorkingSub-Area while command of the Sevenoaks Sub-Area remained under the directcontrol of the Commander Home Counties Area, Brigadier J.S. Davenport. Lt.Col. Kerr remained as Officer Commanding Troops, Maidstone and MilitaryCommander, Maidstone Sector with responsibility for the ‘Maidstone Centre ofResistance’. On the 21st July 1940, General Ironside was replaced as C-in-C Home Forcesby General Sir Alan Brooke who had his own views on how the ground defenceof the United Kingdom should be conducted. He was completely opposed to theconcept of static stop-lines situated far inland and placed far more importanceon building up strong reserves for mobile operations.General Sir Alan Brooke © IWM (TR 149) These views were reinforced by the fact that the urgency with which many ofthe stop-lines had been constructed and the use of civilian contractors lackingany military experience meant that many of the pillboxes were sited incorrectlyor where they could serve no purpose. Within weeks of his appointment Brookediscarded Ironside’s conventional approach of a linear defence in depth infavour of swift offence with mobile reserves placed well forward near the coast.However, fully implementing these new plans would take considerable time.Not least of the problems facing Brooke was the shortage of high standard33motor transport necessary to carry the ‘mobile’ reserves to where they would beneeded. Therefore, Brooke had to work with what was already in place, at leastin the short-term. Brooke’s problems were exasperated by the extra calls on histroops for many diverse activities which took them away from the effectivetraining they desperately needed. On the 5th September 1940, an order wasissued by Home Counties Area H.Q. to the Maidstone I.T.C. to send outdetachments of troops to assist local farmers with hop-picking. Ironically, justtwo days later the code-word, Cromwell, indicating that an enemy invasion wasimminent was passed on from the same H.Q. bringing Home Defence forces inthe Home Counties Area to the highest state of readiness. Thankfully thisproved to be a false alarm and the troops were soon stood down. All the hectic activity on the ground preparing defences against land attack inthe late summer of 1940 was more than matched in the skies above Maidstonewhere the ‘Battle of Britain’ was raging between the RAF and the GermanLuftwaffe. Brick and concrete surface shelters were built along the High Streetin Maidstone to provide protection for people using the town centre. Most localschools and factories also had at least one shelter, some underground such asthose at the town’s two grammar schools. Maidstone suffered its first daylightbombing raid of the war on the 8th August. The air-raid sirens sounded at 11.40a.m. and those in the factories and schools filed in an orderly manner into theirrespective shelters just as they had practised many times before. August 13th had seen a devasting German attack on the RAF Station atDetling in which sixty-seven RAF and civilian personnel were killed andanother ninety-four injured. As a result of this raid, just four days later, on the17th August, XII Corps HQ ordered four Bofors light anti-aircraft guns andtheir crews from 55 LAA Reg. to move to Detling to strengthen the airfield’sdefences. Then on September 27th Maidstone itself suffered its worst bombingraid of the war with eighteen dead and eighty injured. On the 31st October asingle German bomber appeared over Mill Street. Its bombs killed six people inthe immediate area. During the months of the ‘Battle of Britain’, between Julyand October, a total of 53 people were killed on the ground in air-raids overMaidstone.34Bomb damage in Charlton Street, Maidstone. September 1940Damage inflicted by a delayed-fuse bomb in Knightrider Street on 27th September 1940(War & Peace Collection) Maidstone’s Mote Park had been taken over by the Army early in the war foruse as a training ground and it also became an important staging camp for themovement of XII Corps formations throughout Kent. During September 1940elements of the 1st New Zealand Division were based at the park including its4th Infantry Brigade which was given responsibility for dealing with any enemyairborne landings in the Maidstone – Sittingbourne -Faversham – Charing area.35In November the park was one of two major staging camps (the other being atKnole Park in Sevenoaks) for the 43rd (Wessex) Division on its move into EastKent to relieve 1st (London) Division.Mote Park pre-war (War & Peace Collection)Royal Engineers sketch map of Mote Park denoting the Staging Camp tent sites for units ofthe 43rd Division during their stay on their move to their final East Kent positions inSeptember 1940. (TNA WO 166/3729) In September 1940, the younger soldiers of 8th (HD) Bn. R.W.K. Regt wereformed into their own ‘Young Soldiers Battalion’ designated 70th Royal WestKent (70 R.W.K.). On the 9th October 1940 Home Counties H.Q. instructed the36C.O. of 70 R.W.K. to provide a Company of 180 men for the defence of WestMalling Aerodrome. Prior to deployment to West Malling they would beaccommodated at 13 I.T.C. Maidstone for further training.The Control Tower at RAF West MallingJust two weeks later, Maidstone Sector were instructed to send detachments ofthe 70th R.W.K. Company then in training at 13.I.T.C. to Fort Halstead andDunton Green in the west of the county to relieve detachments of 7th Bn. DorsetRegiment. This extra strain on Maidstone’s garrison prompted a memo to beissued from Home Counties Area HQ to XII Corps HQ in Tunbridge Wellsstating that, due to having to find a large draft of trained personnel for otherduties, from the 9th November it would be impossible for 13 I.T.C. to continueproviding immediate assistance columns for West Malling or DetlingAerodromes. On the 4th October the newly formed 920 Defence Battery R.A. arrived inMaidstone and established its base at the Drill Hall in Union Street. The Batterywas due to take-over the manning of eight anti-tank gun pillboxes on the G.H.Q.Line along the River Medway in the Maidstone area from 5 Medium RegimentRoyal Artillery. The new unit’s strength on the 4th October was three Officers,a Battery Sergeant-Major, three sergeants, two bombardiers and 90 newrecruits, plus 17 ‘Other Ranks’ attached from 5 Medium Regiment R.A. Before 920 Battery could assume its role, it had to be brought up to fullstrength and undertake four weeks of intensive training. Also, extra billetingspace was needed, and this was found in houses in Station Road, Albion Placeand the ‘Rifle Volunteer’ public house.By the 22nd November the Battery was at full strength and divided into twoTroops (‘A’ Troop and ‘B’ Troop). Having completed its initial training, theBattery was ready to take-over the manning of the following A/T Posts:37 No. 9 and 10 MAIDSTONE (‘A’ Troop) No.11 TOVIL (‘A’ Troop) No.12 EAST FARLEIGH (‘A’ Troop) No.13 BARMING BRIDGE (‘A’ Troop) No.14 TESTON (‘B’ Troop) No.15 NETTLESTEAD’ (‘B’ Troop) No.16 YALDING (‘B’ Troop)A-T Post No.10 by the railway line off Lower Fant Road. However, within just one day Posts 14, 15 and 16 had to be abandoned owingto flooding. Their guns were dismantled and brought back into barracks and thedetachments were transferred to man three A/T Posts in Tonbridge. With the onset of winter, the threat of invasion diminished and from the 23rdDecember A/T Gun Posts 9 – 13 were also reduced to being manned on a ‘careand maintenance’ basis. On the 27th November, following earlier discussions with senior staff officersfrom XII Corps, Brig. Davenport issued new instructions regarding NodalPoints:1. Nodal Points in Home Counties Area must be prepared to resist for 48 hours.2. The defences will consist of field works, or windows of houses, to cover the NodalPoint with an all round defence. Special attention being paid to the roads.3. Windows of houses being required for defence will be requisitioned and if necessarythe floors strengthened. Sandbags will be filled and stored on the premises but notplaced in position.4. Complete houses will not be requisitioned. Those that have already been taken over andfortified may be retained, if required.5. All roads entering the Nodal Point will be blocked with “buoy” type blocks.6. Public buildings such as Post Offices – Town Halls – Schools may be earmarked forKeeps. No preliminary work to be done on these.7. A.T. minefields to be sited but not prepared.8. R.E. [Royal Engineers] for these defences will be available at the end of December1940.38 A few days later Brig. Davenport went on to clarify that XII Corps Commandhad decided that Nodal Points in the Home Counties (Operational) Area,including Maidstone, should not come under the heading of those which wererequired to resist for periods of more than 48 hours. In view of this it was notconsidered necessary to take special measures for the safety of the civilianpopulation and the safeguarding of essential services.39 January – December 1941 - Consolidation January 1941 saw a major re-organisation of the Army’s Commands. Thestructure of Aldershot Command was expanded to form South EasternCommand (SECO). As a result, Eastern Command was relieved of Kent, Surreyand Sussex which were transferred to SECO. For administrative purposes,Chatham Area and the Kent parts of Home Counties Area were re-organisedinto Kent Area under the command of Brigadier J.S. Davenport M.C. with itsHeadquarters in Chatham. On the 15th January Maidstone Sub-Area was createdincorporating Sheppey Sector, Chatham Sector, Maidstone Sector andTonbridge Sector. The Maidstone Sub-Area temporarily remained under thedirect command of Kent Area H.Q pending the appointment of its owncommander. Kent Area would also now be responsible for defensive measuresin the rear of XII Corps forward divisions and would have under its commandthree independent infantry battalions in addition to its Home Defence andYoung Soldier battalions. Overall operational and administrative command ofthe Kent Area became the responsibility of XII Corps H.Q. in Tunbridge Wells. In February the Young Soldiers of 70 R.W.K., once again, took over thedefence of West Malling and Detling airfields. ‘A’ Company were deployed toWest Malling with their H.Q. at ‘Barn Jet’ in East Barming, while ‘B’ Companywere deployed to Detling. However by March, in a memo written on behalf ofthe C-in-C South Eastern Command to G.H.Q. Home Forces, the position ofthe seventy men of ‘A’ Company at West Malling was described as‘unsatisfactory’ as they were being employed, for much of the day, on work forthe construction of the airfield’s defences leaving only one hour per day fortraining. A request was made that G.H.Q. Home Forces make representations tothe Air Ministry so that the RAF Works Department provide the labour for thedefence works to allow the Young Soldiers sufficient time for their training. During February and March various units of XII Corps Reserve arrived inMaidstone. 1st Army Tank Brigade H.Q. and Signal Section was established atMote Park and 5th Light Field Ambulance at Vinters. The H.Q. of the 44thInfantry Division moved to Linton, just outside the town, and 133 InfantryBrigade Group were based in hutted camps along the A20 Maidstone – Charingroad. The latter were detailed to deal with any attempted enemy airbornelandings in the area. On the 7th February, the policy on the defence of the crossing point over theMedway at Aylesford was called into question by Brigadier J.S Davenport,Commander Kent Area. He pointed out in a memo to XII Corps H.Q. thatalthough the bridge’s defences were now complete, with pillboxes, roadblocks,defended houses and fieldworks, it was impossible for him to provide the fullyequipped company of troops required to man them.40One of the ‘Defended Buildings’ at Aylesford. The embrasure on the far right was for a 2-pdrA-T gun He added that the Commander of Maidstone Sector would be prepared to sendthree platoons from the Royal West Kent’s Infantry Training Centre (13 I.T.C.)to man the Aylesford defences on the order to ‘Stand To’. However, thesetroops would be neither fully trained nor fully equipped and their deploymentwould leave the defences of Maidstone itself ‘correspondingly weakened’.Meanwhile a pre-fabricated ‘Callender-Hamilton’-type bridge had beeninstalled over the Medway at Aylesford to accommodate military traffic andrelieve pressure on the original narrow medieval bridge. This new bridge wouldalso need to be defended in the event of an enemy attack and with no furtherregular troops available, a platoon of the Malling Home Guard was assigned forthis purpose.The Callender-Hamilton bridge under construction at Aylesford (War & Peace Collection)41 On the 2nd May 1941 it was directed that the 55 Officers and 1,061 OtherRanks of Maidstone I.T.C were assigned to the defence of the Maidstone NodalPoint. less the company allocated to the defence of Aylesford Bridge. It wasalso hoped to form a small force of A.F.V.’s (Armoured Fighting Vehicles)from the I.T.C to act as a mobile reserve for the Maidstone Sub-Area. On the 1st May Kent Area H.Q. came under the direct command of SouthEastern Command. A few days later, on the 5th May, Headquarters MaidstoneSub-Area moved from Chatham to its new home at Preston Hall Farm,Aylesford. Then, on the 13th May, the Kent Area Commander and all staffofficers of Area HQ were present at the Granada cinema in Maidstone for anaddress by XII Corps Commander, Lt-Gen B.L. Montgomery.The Granada cinema, Maidstone In June a proposal was put forward by the Zone Commander, Kent HomeGuard to Kent Area HQ to split the 11th (Maidstone) Bn. into two separatebattalions; Urban and Rural. The reasons given were that with a strength ofalmost 2,400 men the battalion was too large to be dealt with by just one parttime officer; the area from which the men were drawn fell naturally into anurban and a rural district; and as the Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Baker livedin Maidstone and was, in the time available to him, able to supervise thetraining and administration of his men in and around Maidstone, he washowever unable to deal with the rural districts which included the Nodal Pointsof Harrietsham and Headcorn as well as numerous other defended localities the42importance of which required their own high-level of supervision. The proposalwent forward with the full support of the Maidstone Sub-Area Commander. On Friday 13th June Maidstone was honoured with a visit by His Majesty theKing. Having lunched at XII Corps H.Q., in Tunbridge Wells, he arrived midafternoon in Maidstone where he observed 43rd Division’s Royal Engineerstraining in Mote Park. He then travelled on to East Sutton Park where he saw 94Field Regiment Royal Artillery at training and stayed for tea.King George VI with Lt. General Montgomery at XII Corps H.Q. at Broadwater Down inTunbridge Wells (War & Peace Collection) Also, in June South-Eastern Command issued the following information andinstructions regarding co-operation with the Civil Authorities in each NodalPoint in the event of active operations:a) Unified Civil Command. The civil authorities are arranging for a unified civilcommand in each Nodal Point which will come into effect in active operations.b) Chief Civil Officer. A chief civil officer will be appointed for each Nodal Point. InBoroughs this well be the Mayor, in Urban Districts the Chairman of the Council, and inRural Districts a representative appointed by the Council.c) Senior Police Officer. The Senior Police Officer in the Nodal Point will be associatedwith the Chief Civil Officer. When the Nodal Point Commander assumes command, thesenior Police Officer will act as his civil Staff Officer.d) Chain of Civil Command. When the Nodal Point Commander assumes command, hewill issue his orders through the senior Police Officere) Assumption of Command by Nodal Point Commander. The Nodal Point Commanderwill assume command under any of the following circ*mstances: - 1) When the Nodal Point is cut off. 2) When fighting breaks out in the vicinity 3) When he is ordered to do so by a superior military Authority.43 4) When the local authority is ordered by the Regional Commissioner to place itself under his orders.f) Liaison. It is essential that when the Nodal Point Commander assumes command hisattention shall not be diverted from his operational responsibilities. Close contact willtherefore be established now between the Nodal Point Commander, the Chief Civil Officerand the senior Police Officer, so that civil and military defence plans are co-ordinated andsmooth working in an emergency ensues.g) Instructions to Local Authorities. An instruction on the above lines is being issued bythe Regional Commissioner to the local authorities in each Nodal Point, copies of which willbe forwarded later. The Commander of the Maidstone Nodal Point was Major C.E.P. Craven of13 I.T.C., who was also the Commander of Maidstone Sector. The forces at hisdisposal for the defence of the Nodal Point comprised 985 men with just 860rifles, two Bren machine-guns, twenty-four Boys anti-tank rifles and fiveNorthover Projectors (a makeshift anti-tank weapon).Members of the Home Guard using a Northover Projector in 1941 © IWM (H11843) Since the Spring of 1941, the distraction of their operations in the Balkans hadmade the German invasion of the United Kingdom in the near future less likelyand with the start of Operation Barbarossa, the offensive against the SovietUnion, on the 22nd June the likelihood of invasion was reduced even more. TheChiefs-of-Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee (J.I.C.) both agreed thatthe Germans would be unable to break off their offensive until they hadachieved a major objective, either the capitulation of the Soviet forces or thegaining of sufficient territory to preclude a possible successful counter-attack bythe Red Army. It was considered that the Germans would be unable to44disengage the large land and air forces required for the invasion of the U.K.before the 1st September at the earliest. With an estimated 6-8 weeks requiredto transport, re-equip and embark these forces to the West, an invasion couldnot start before the middle or end of October, by which time winter would besetting in and so the probability was that any invasion would be postponed untilthe Spring of 1942. Whatever the change in the general war situation, in Kent anti-invasionpreparations continued regardless throughout July. On the 5th, XII Corps H.Q.issued its Operational Instruction No.28 on the subject of ‘Defence Works’.This document set out the policy for the construction and maintenance ofdefence works in XII Corps Divisional Areas and Kent Area. In addition to fieldworks constructed by Field Army troops, authority was given for two types ofnew works that could be undertaken by local commands in Nodal Points,approved Defended Villages and sites along the line of the River Medway(Maidstone Sub-Area contained all three). These works were: the strengtheningof existing pillboxes and the provision of temporary roadblocks (for which,concrete cylinders would be supplied in bulk by South Eastern Command). Theconstruction of new concrete pillboxes, permanent roadblocks and tank ditchesor similar obstacles in these areas would, in future, only be executed as part of aplan approved by SECO. The on-going maintenance ‘in effective condition’ of all existing tank ditches,natural anti-tank obstacles (riverbanks etc.), pillboxes, roadblocks and fieldworks in Maidstone Sub-Area would be the responsibility of the Commander,Kent Area. Construction of new pillboxes would now be confined to those that wereproof against the German 37mm anti-tank gun; that is with a wall of reinforcedconcrete not less than 3.5 feet in thickness. They should also be sunk into theground to give the lowest possible profile and camouflaged to blend into theirsurroundings. Correctly sited existing pillboxes were to be strengthened byincreasing the thickness of their walls to not less than 3.5 feet in thickness. Ifthey were found to be only vulnerable on one side, then a 3.5 feet wall could bebuilt outside the pillbox on the vulnerable side. In all cases loopholes in excessof two should be blocked-up. New ‘permanent’ roadblocks would consist of removable steel rails set insockets in the road flanked on the verges by fixed concrete blocks. ‘Temporary’roadblocks would consist of movable obstacles such as railway wheels, concretecylinders and concrete buoys. Anti-tank mines could be used in conjunctionwith roadblocks but should not be laid until required after ‘ACTIONSTATIONS’. On the 11th July 1941, Maidstone Sector Operation Order No.1 was issued.Covering 13 I.T.C. R.W.K., 11 (Maidstone) Bn. Home Guard and 24 (Malling)Bn. Home Guard, the intention was expressed that in the event of enemy actionthe Sector was to be defended to the last man and to kill every German who had45succeeded in entering it. That same night 11 (Maidstone) Bn. carried out anexercise to practise members of the Home Guard in their duties as guides to theRegular forces in the Sector.‘H’ Company, 11 (Maidstone) Bn. Kent Home Guard On the 19th July, XII Corps assumed the direct operational command ofMaidstone Sub-Area with Colonel Sir Edward Warner DSO MC as Sub-AreaCommander. Following a conference at Maidstone on the 29th July it wasdecided that operational command of 13 I.T.C and the troops defending DetlingAirfield would also pass to XII Corps.Parade at RAF Detling On the 3rd August Exercise CANNON was held in Maidstone. The object ofwhich was to exercise the Home Guard in co-operation with units of theRegular Army and Civil Defence in the defence of the Nodal Point against lowflying enemy attack and parachute troops. The exercise exposed the weaknesses of the Home Guard in the eyes of theSub-Area Commander, Colonel Warner. In his overview of the exercise hestates: All must agree, that if the Maidstone Nodal Point is to resist successfully an attack byairborne tps, the defences leave much room for improvement. … Despite the demands of46their civil avocations, the Home Guard must be prepared to provide themselves with fightingquarters and protect themselves with fighting obstacles.Colonel Warner was also critical of the speed of the Home Guard’sdeployment:We are still very slow. It took some 2½ hours for the Home Guard to complete their musterfor the defence of Maidstone last Sunday. It took attacking parties 2 hours on the average, tocover two miles. He further questioned the Home Guards’ organisation of their supplies: Are you satisfied that on Sunday 3 Aug.41 your ammunition and your bombs weredistributed so that they could be used against the enemy? Were you certain that your men hadfood and water, if not beer to carry them through, at any rate until darkness permitted you toreplenish in comparative safety? Can you see the battle proceeding according to plan if yourcommunications are cut; your transport bombed and your medical services disorganised? In conclusion Colonel Warner wrote: Our object is to kill every German who may land in Kent. For this purpose we must haveadequate defences, intelligent commanders with reserves under our hands, and individualsoldiers who will use their spades, their weapons and their intelligence to deal with the enemywherever and however he may be met. Possibly as a result of Exercise CANNON, and following a recce by ColonelWarner of Maidstone Nodal Point and its defences, there was yet another reorganisation of the Maidstone Sub-Area Command on the 20th August whenSub-Area Instruction No.6 directed that as from the 24th August, TonbridgeSector, Maidstone Sector and Goudhurst Sub-Sector would be abolished andthat Sub-Area H.Q. would deal with the Nodal Points, Defended Localities andVillages within those Sectors through their respective battalions. Three dayslater, it was confirmed that sanction had been received from South-EasternCommand for the division of 11 (Maidstone) Bn. Home Guard into twobattalions to be known as 11 (Maidstone) Bn. and 29 (Mid-Kent) Bn. 11 Bn.would cover the Borough of Maidstone, the Parish of Loose and the villages ofBoxley and Detling. The battalion would remain under the command of Lt. Col.W.A.N. Baker M.C. Then, on the 30th August, XII Corps H.Q. directed thatClass ‘B’ Nodal Point of Maidstone was to be re-classified as a Class ‘A’ toensure the provision of Civil Defence Services on the maximum scale. A paperissued by the War Office in 1941 seeks to clarify the position regarding Class‘A’ Nodal Points: A considerable amount of time, labour, materials and expense has been spent making themas far as possible ‘anti-tank obstacles’, the object being that they should act as a ‘strongpoint’ or ‘centres of resistance’. … it is hoped that they will be capable of resisting for sevendays. In the event of an attack the closest co-operation with the civil authorities wasdeemed essential. As such, special consideration was to be given to theprovision of food, shelter, water, fire-fighting and medical necessities. An order47issued by G.H.Q. Home Forces on 28th September 1940 recommendedprovision for Category ‘A’ Nodal points for up to ten days of food and water forthe civil population and a higher scale of firefighting and protection than thatprovided for other areas. The garrison of the Maidstone Nodal Point was reported to be comprised of:‘A’ Company 28th (S.R.) Bn. Kent Home Guard [raised from local workersfrom the Southern Railway]; 26th (Kent Bus) Bn. Kent Home Guard [raisedfrom workers from the Maidstone & District and other local bus companies];11th (Maidstone) Bn. Kent Home Guard and the regular troops of 13 I.T.C., allunder the command of the Nodal Point Commander Lt. Col. A.A. Eason of theQueen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment.Men of 28th (S.R.) Home Guard drilling at Maidstone West Station In September, Lt. Col. Eason was succeeded as 13 I.T.C. and MaidstoneNodal Point Commander by Lt. Col. D.C.G. Dickinson of the Queen’s RoyalRegiment. Lt. Col. Dickinson had been the commander of Guildford I.T.C. untilits amalgamation with Maidstone I.T.C. in August. On the 3rd September a meeting arranged by the South-Eastern RegionalCommissioner, Viscount Monsell of Evesham, was held in Maidstone attendedby military and civil representatives to enable Regional Representatives of thevarious Government Ministries and Departments to get in direct touch with theLocal Authority in dealing with the various matters arising from the reclassification of Maidstone as a Class ‘A’ Nodal Point. Two weeks later theDeputy Regional Commissioner, Mr. Arthur Bottomley, paid a visit toMaidstone Sub-Area H.Q. to discuss matters connected with the MaidstoneNodal Point.48Deputy Regional Commissioner Arthur Bottomley It was around this time that XII Corps H.Q. had become sceptical about thewhole concept of Nodal Points and, in a paper issued on the 17th September,had pressed for their abolition in its area which included Maidstone. However,Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. argued strongly for the retention of all its Class ‘A’Nodal Points but agreed to the abolition of all Class ‘B’ with the exception ofTonbridge and Goudhurst recommending both being upgraded to Class ‘A’. On the 13th October, the C-in-C of South-Eastern Command. Lt-Gen BernardPaget issued his ‘Appreciation for the Spring Of 1942’ in which he directed thedevelopment of selected Nodal Points in his Command into ‘fully tank-prooflocalities’. These were to include the Nodal Points of Maidstone and Tonbridge. Just a few days later, on the 17th October, information began to be receivedby M.S.A. H.Q that Maidstone was to be strengthened into a ‘Fortress’ withextra hardened defences and an officially designated Garrison On the 27th October, Lt. Colonel L.D. Bennett of the Gordon Highlanderswas attached to Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. pending his appointment asCommander replacing Col. Warner. He took up his appointment on the 1stNovember and was promoted to full Colonel. Over the following weeks hetoured his command visiting both Home Guard and Regular units, inspectingdefences and witnessing various training exercises.The new Commander of XII Corps, Lt. General James Gammel, visitedMaidstone on the 6th November when he inspected and approved the proposedinner and outer perimeters of the Fortress. This was followed two days later bya visit to Maidstone by the Brigadier General Staff (B.G.S) and Chief Engineer(C.E.) of XII Corps to consider the work involved in converting the MaidstoneNodal Point into a Fortress (Designation F1). They made a tour of the proposeddefences accompanied by Col. Bennett, Commander M.S.A. and Major Fraser,Second-in-Command 13 I.T.C. Following this visit Col. Bennett held meetingswith the Maidstone ‘Triumvirate’ which consisted of representatives of the49army, police and civil authorities who would become responsible for theadministration of the Fortress in the event of an invasion. Further meetings wereheld with the Chief Constable and the Maidstone Borough Surveyor to discussthe civil aspects of the fortress conversion. On the 1st December, Col. Bennett inspected the proposed perimeters of theMaidstone Fortress with the Chief Engineer of XII Corps, Brigadier B.T.Godfrey Faussett OBE, MC, and Major Stewart the Officer Commanding 260Field Company, Royal Engineers, the unit who were to undertake the proposeddefensive works. These proposals were for an ‘Outer Perimeter’ consisting ofthe terraced streets west of Bower Mount road up to Oakwood park, the streetsnorth of Buckland Hill, then following the railway line down to the river. On theeast of the river the perimeter was more northerly, extending east before curvingdown to cross the Sittingbourne and Ashford Roads. To the South the perimeterswung down from the A20 to the river and then down to the streets belowSheal’s Crescent, over Loose road, and then around Hastings road in thedirection of Mote Park before swinging up to the Ashford road. Within thisouter perimeter an inner perimeter or ‘Keep’ was to be established on theeastern side of the Medway, protecting the bridge across the river. This innerperimeter stretched northwards up to the prison; east to Church Street; acrossthe Ashford Road and then south to Mote Road and then along KnightriderStreet back to the river. Strongpoints were to be established in various buildingsincluding the prison, Holy Trinity Church, the former Archbishop’s Palace andthe Rootes car factory. On the 6th December, Commander XII Corps againvisited Maidstone and gave his final approval to the proposed defences.Archbishop’s Palace (War & Peace Collection)50Fortress Maidstone – January 1942 – December 1943 On the 21st January 1942, the War Office Establishment (W.E. V/554/1) wasauthorised for the Maidstone Garrison with Lt. Col. Dickinson as itsCommander and Capt. Gale as Garrison Adjutant, and work on the Fortressdefences commenced. From the 21st January to the 8th February Requisitions were sent out anddetails of the defence works were given to those chiefly concerned. When workbegan constant liaison was maintained with the Borough Surveyor, Mr. Hughes,regarding the ownership of the properties and land involved. The defencesincluded an anti-tank ditch which ran along most of the open ground of theouter perimeter. The ditch was dug by the mechanical excavators of 135Mechanical Equipment Company, Royal Engineers and was augmented by rowsof concrete anti-tank obstacles, and barbed wire. Part of the ditch-line ranaround the boundary of Maidstone Boys Grammar School and its playing fields.One of the classrooms overlooking the ditch was strengthened to provide afiring position.1946 aerial view of the Grammar School with some A-T obstacles visible between the A-Tditch and the school buildingWeapons pits were dug, and pillboxes built to provide other firing positionsalong the defence lines.51Pillbox at the Style & Winch Brewery in St Peter’s Street photographed during its demolitionin 1997 (ADS Defence of Britain Database) Roadblocks were established on the access roads into the Fortress. Some ofthese blocks consisted of metal rails, usually sections of railway track cut tolength, installed into sockets cut into the roadway. The rails could be removedto allow the passage of legitimate traffic. Concrete cylinders were set into theverges flanking the carriageway preventing enemy vehicles by-passing theroadblocks. The roadblocks would be manned by the Home Guard who wouldcheck vehicles in and out of the Fortress. The major roads required moresubstantial roadblocks. These consisted of very large concrete cylinders andcubes with gaps wide enough between them to allow for the passage of cars andtrucks, but which would seriously impede large armoured vehicles such astanks. A number of these large obstacles were installed on Maidstone Bridgewhich carried the main A20 Tonbridge Road over the River Medway into thetown centre.52Roadblock on Maidstone Bridge Another major roadblock was set up on the northern outer perimeter at thejunction of the A229 Chatham Road with Forstal Road. The roadblock wasreinforced with a flame fougasse, a type of improvised explosive devicedesigned to spray burning petrol over approaching enemy vehicles.A229 / Forstal Road junction roadblock During February, contract work on anti-tank obstacles and pillboxes was heldup due to severe frost but the digging of the anti-tank trench, weapons pits andthe erection of wire obstacles proceeded normally. The Requisitioning of land,construction of the defence works and visits to all the sectors of the Fortress bythe Garrison Adjutant continued throughout March. The spoil on the perimeter53of the anti-tank ditches was levelled and work proceeded on road- blocks andbarbed wire obstacles. Interestingly some of this work was now beingundertaken by 70 CW (Chemical Warfare) Company, Royal Engineers. The 5thMarch saw a visit to the Fortress by XII Corps Camouflage Officer, CaptainHarold Good. He made a tour of the Fortress defences imparting his advice onaspects of their concealment.The anti-tank ditch and obstacle line running across Allotment Gardens from the A229Chatham Road On the 26th March 1942 the Commander of XII Corps, Lieutenant-GeneralGammell, issued his ‘Plan to Defeat Invasion’. Acting under South-EasternCommand, XII Corps were responsible for defeating any invasion attempt inKent. A previous plan had been issued in 1941 but that had concentrated ondefeating enemy forces on the invasion beaches or failing that holding them offat the Nodal Points of Dover, Folkestone on the coast and no further inland thanthe Nodal Points at Canterbury and Ashford. The garrisons of these NodalPoints were to hold out until XII Corps reserve division troops could manoeuvreinto position to engage and destroy the enemy forces.54Lt. Gen. James Harcourt Gammell, G.O.C. XII Corps The 1942 Plan upgraded these four strategic Nodal Points to ‘Fortresses’ andadded those at Maidstone and Tonbridge thus envisaging halting the Germanadvance further inland. The main invasion battle would be fought in the coastalbelt by the two forward Divisions of XII Corps with one Independent InfantryBrigade from each holding the Dover and Folkestone fortresses. MaidstoneSub-Area HQ would assume responsibility that part of XII Corps area to therear of the forward divisions. Of the Corps Reserve Division forces: oneInfantry Brigade Group would be located north of Canterbury. The remainder ofthe Division would be concentrated in areas to the west and south ofCanterbury. However, two Reserve Division infantry battalions would be heldback and allocated, one each, to assist in the defence of West Malling andDetling aerodromes. The Home Guard would play a vital part in the plan bydefending its towns and villages, thereby restricting enemy movements;providing observation posts and scouting parties to report on enemy air landingsand troop movements; and by providing the Regular Army with local guidesand information. Pools of guides would be maintained at every village PostOffice. The whole battle would be directed from XII Corps H.Q. at Broadwater Down,near Tunbridge Wells with a mobile Advance H.Q. based at Harrietsham.Gammell ordered all his commanders to prepare their own plans in accordancewith his orders and that these plans were not to be referred to as ‘DefenceSchemes’ so as not to ‘induce a defensive mentality. Instead, he directed, theyshould be called ‘Plans to Defeat Invasion’.55 Just one day later, on the 27th March, XII Corps Chief Engineer, BrigadierBryan Godfrey-Faussett, issued ‘Engineer Operation Instruction No.3’ whichwas to be read in conjunction with Gammell’s plan. The Instruction concernedthe implementation of essential road repairs in the XII Corps area during activeoperations. In it the Chief Engineer stated that the maintenance and repair ofroads and bridges during operations would be the combined responsibility of theCivil and Military authorities. The civil authorities were represented by theCounty Surveyor, Mr. F.W. Greig who was based at County Hall in Maidstone.He would exercise control of repairs through his team of County DivisionalSurveyors with their local civil road gangs. Each road gang would have its owntransport and hand tools and possibly a road roller. Military units would providemost heavy mechanical equipment where required. In theory, the civilauthorities would carry out minor repairs whilst more extensive work wouldrequire the assistance of the military. In practice, close liaison would bemaintained between the County Surveyor and the local R.E. commanders sothat any repairs of essential routes that could not be undertaken quickly by thecivilian workers, could be tackled at once by military units. To assist with more extensive repairs, mechanical angle dozers would besupplied by South-Eastern Command, one of which together with two dumpertrucks was allocated to 263 Field Coy, Royal Engineers, based at Maidstone’sMote Park where there was also a R.E. ‘Dump’ containing tools, road materialsand other stores.Royal Engineers angle dozer at work © IWM (B 6177)56 One Pioneer Corps Salvage Team, comprising one Officer and 41 OtherRanks, was assigned to the Maidstone Fortress to come under command of theGarrison Commander. Their primary task was to keep the routes through thetown clear for traffic. During operations military requirements would havepriority over all others. Paragraph 10 of the Instructions dealt with the repair to services in roadsdamaged by enemy action. Where the rapid repair of roads was deemedessential, and no alternative route was available, no attempt would be made torepair services. However, local R.E. commanders would obtain maps of theservices from the civil authorities together with stop-co*ck keys to turn off gasand water mains where necessary. The maintenance and rapid repair of buriedtelephone cables during operations was deemed ‘of great importance’. Theirrepair would be undertaken by either Post Office engineers or Royal Signalspersonnel only. During any essential road repairs care was to be taken not tobury any broken ends of telephone cables leaving them to be repaired andburied by the Royal Signals or Post Office teams later. Early April saw the removal of the 44th Division from XII Corps so theycould prepare for service overseas. They were replaced by the 53rd (Welsh)Division who moved into Mote Park on the 23rd April. Their R.E. contingentproceeded to undertake the duties of their 44th Division predecessors whichincluded the defence works for the Maidstone Fortress. Meanwhile, thecommand of the Garrison troops was reviewed by XII Corps HQ with thedecision taken that the Commander of 13 I.T.C., Lt. Col. Dickinson would notbe given command of the Garrison until the order to STAND TO had beenissued. Until then command of the Fortress and the preparation of its defenceswould remain with the Commander of Maidstone Sub-Area, Col. Bennett.Following this decision Col. Bennett, held meetings with Borough Councilofficials and the Home Guard to discuss the Fortress defences A new Garrison Adjutant was appointed on the 7th April with 2nd LieutenantD.M. Backhouse replacing Captain Gale. One of his first duties was to meetwith the local authority’s Medical Officer of Health (M.O.H.), Dr. Gaffikim, todiscuss the setting-up of Civil Aid Posts. The M.O.H. was responsible forCasualty Services (CS) which included all the various medical services such asCasualty Receiving Hospitals (for serious injuries), permanent First Aid Posts(FAP - for lightly wounded), First Aid Points (to alleviate pressure onhospitals), Ambulances, Mobile Units (MU - to assist at major incidents), GasCleansing Stations (to deal with injuries from chemical and poison weapons)and Mortuaries (both existing and temporary). The new Garrison Adjutant was a busy man throughout April. On the 11th hemade a survey of all the craft on the River Medway between East Farleigh andAllington Locks; on the 13th he met with the ARP Controller, ColonelCampbell, at County Hall; on the 16th he had a meeting with the Borough57Surveyor to discuss drainage arrangements in the Fortress ‘Keep’ area; on the18th he made a complete tour of the Fortress defences; on the 25th he had ameeting at Maidstone Borough Police Station to discuss a forthcoming policeexercise in the Fortress area; on the 27th he attended a meeting at MaidstoneWaterworks and on the 30th he held a meeting with the Garrison MedicalOfficer, Captain Severn, to discuss medical arrangements within the Fortress. Inaddition to these duties, the Garrison Adjutant also kept in close liaison with theC.O. of 13 I.T.C., providing him with weekly reports to keep him updated onthe progress of the Fortress defence plans.Maidstone Police Special Constables on parade in 1941 (War & Peace Collection) On the 8th April, The South-Eastern Regional Commissioner, ViscountMonsell, issued his ‘Direction No.56’ which, for the first time included theBorough of Maidstone as one of the districts subjected to a ‘Visitor Ban’. Issuedunder Regulation 16a of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939, it directedthat no person who ‘is not normally resident’ in the area shall not enter or,having entered it, remain there. To qualify as a ‘Resident’ a person must havebeen living in the area for at least six months between the 1st January 1939 and14th November 1941. Anyone who had taken up residence after 14th November1941 was not allowed to remain. Exceptions were made for business andemployment purposes, some leasehold tenants, people who had been evacuatedto the area to live with their family or friends who qualified as residents,patients in convalescent homes and TB patients in sanatoriums. Also, on the 8th April, Maidstone Sub-Area HQ moved from Preston HallFarm at Aylesford to its new home at 3/4 Bower Terrace, Maidstone which waswithin the outer perimeter of the Fortress.583/4 Bower Place 2019 (known as Bower Terrace in 1942)From here, on the 13th April, it issued its own ‘Plan to Defeat Invasion’.Spread over seventy-three pages divided into twenty-six sections, this extensivedocument covers subjects such as troop dispositions, aerodrome defence, roadblocks, defence works, demolitions, minefields, communications, co-operationwith the civil authorities and the immobilisation of: railways, factories, fuelstocks, river craft and telephone exchanges. The first section of the plan covered general anti-invasion principlesconcluding with the following points regarding the conduct of any battle: The role of all tps [troops] in M.S.A. [Maidstone Sub-Area] is the offensive defence. All ranks must be imbued with the offensive spirit and training to regard the defence as:-a) A means for inflicting heavy losses upon the enemy in his first rushb) A means of denying to the enemy avenues of approach through which he must NOTpassc) As pivots round which reserves can manoeuvre to exploit enemy failures and temporarydis-organisationThe underlying principle will be that every German who sets foot in M.S.A. will bedestroyed.There will be NO WITHDRAWL AND NO SURRENDER In Section III of the plan, which dealt with ‘Dispositions’, Fortresses aredescribed as: … well held strongholds at important strategic points on which Field Forceunits can pivot. These Fortresses are manned by Regular and H.G. [Home Guard] units.(The strength of the Maidstone Home Guard battalion at this time was reportedas being 2,231 men)59 This section also dealt with the operation of Triumvirates: In all Fortresses and Nodal Points when the threat of invasion approaches the town orvillage, the affairs will be directed by a Triumvirate composed of the Military Comd, theCivil Head and the Police Authority.This Triumvirate has complete authority for commandeering premises or services as thesituation requires. This authority will, if necessary, be enforced by the military power. The military authority in each Fortress or Nodal Point will be the Fortress or Nodal PointComd. The Triumvirate should meet from time to time to ensure that all arrangements arecompleted up to date for the essential services such as feeding, water supply, fuel, light,sanitation and A.R.P. services. Section IV identified a number of ‘Vulnerable Points’ (VP’s) within the town.These were buildings considered to be ‘… essential to the National War Effort’.These included the River Bridge, the Southern Electric Building, theCorporation Electric Works, the Gas Works and the Tilling Stevens engineeringfactories. The buildings were to be protected by the police or Home Guard fromthe threat of sabotage, land or airborne attack.The Tilling Stevens factory (Note the wartime camouflage paintwork) Section VII (Immobilisation of Oil and Petrol) included instructions fordenying the stocks of gas oil at Maidstone Gasworks to the enemy. Stocksstored above ground were to be burned in their tanks whilst those inunderground tanks were to be destroyed with explosives by Royal Engineersfrom the Maidstone Garrison. The Garrison’s engineers were also to be60responsible for destroying fuel stocks of the Kent Rivers Catchment Board atCollege Wharf but only when the officer responsible considered that the plantcould no longer serve the civilian population or when it had ceased to operatedue to damage.The River Medway in flood with Maidstone Gasworks in the background (War & PeaceCollection) Section VIII dealt with the ‘Immobilisation of Factories’. Where there was animminent danger of capture by the enemy, ‘essential’ factories were to beimmobilised by the removal or concealment of vital parts of the machinery. Themain object of this policy was to prevent the destruction of these vital parts bythe enemy so that when the factory was recaptured it could rapidly return tonormal production. Denial of the use of the factory to the enemy was deemedonly a secondary objective. The factories within the Maidstone Fortress areacovered by this section included Springfield Mill, Turkey Mill, RootesEngineering Works and the Tilling Stevens Engineering Works.61Springfield MillRootes Engineering Works Section XI detailed the action to be taken against enemy parachutists andairborne troops. If the enemy were to land in the daytime, then they should belocated and destroyed before they had time to become an organised force. Ifthey landed at night they should be located, contained and then destroyed at firstlight. To assist in locating the enemy Observation Posts (OP’s) would bemanned as soon as ‘ACTION STATIONS’ was signalled. There were severalOP’s sited in the Maidstone area including those at Leeds Castle, Bearsted GolfClub, Linton Hill, Sutton Valence, Chart Sutton and Headcorn. In addition to62these OP’s all Royal Observer Corps (R.O.C.) posts in the area would alsoreport any enemy landings. The primary role of the R.O.C. was the visualdetection, identification, tracking and reporting of enemy aircraft. They hadobservation posts in Lenham, Headcorn and Bearsted. Section XIII concerned roadblocks. These were divided into two ‘Types’:Primary and Secondary. Primary roadblocks consisted of concrete cylinders,rolled steel joists (RSJs) and sockets (into which the RSJs would be inserted)and would be sited as part of the defences of Fortresses, Nodal Points and somedefended localities. Secondary roadblocks consisted of concrete cylinders orbuoys only and would be sited in less important defended localities and as partof village defences. Each roadblock would be manned by not less than oneN.C.O and four men. On the signalling of ‘ACTION STATIONS’ allroadblocks would be permanently manned. Section XIV gave some brief instructions on the maintenance of defenceworks, wire fencing, weapon slits and flame fougasse installations. Of the latter,at least two were installed in the Maidstone Borough area: one at the junction ofForstal Road and the A229 at Sandling and another on the Loose Road. Theseflame ‘traps’ would have consisted of a barrel of fuel attached to an explosivedevice and would have been detonated to destroy approaching enemy vehicles. Section XIX concerned the re-deployment of anti-aircraft guns in the event ofan invasion. This re-deployment was known as the ATTIC Scheme and wouldtake about ten days to complete. The scheme involved the movement of 4 x 3.7-inch mobile AA guns and 4 light anti-aircraft (LAA) guns to Detling Airfieldand 16 x 3.7-inch mobile AA guns distributed to four sites around the outskirtsof Maidstone at Boxley, Shepway, Thurnham and East Barming. Although allthe guns would remain under the Army’s AA Command it was considered thatthey would have a secondary role – that of ground defence, in which the gunscould be used in direct-fire role against targets on the ground such as enemytanks and armoured vehicles. Section XXII set out the forces allocated to each sector in the Maidstone SubArea. Maidstone Fortress itself would be defended by ‘C’ Company of theG.P.O [Post Office] Home Guard Battalion, ‘A’ Company, 29 (1st SouthernRailways) KHG, the 26th (Bus) Battalion, KHG, the 11th (Maidstone)Battalion, KHG and regular troops from 13 I.T.C. The outlying defended villages, defended localities and Nodal Points to thesouth of the town would be defended by the 29th (Mid-Kent) Battalion, KHG Section XXIII of the Plan set out the procedure for the ‘Ringing of ChurchBells’ as a warning in the event of airborne invasion:1. Bells will only be rung in the case of landings by air-borne tps (including parachutists)in the neighbourhood of the Church in which the bells are rung.2. The order to ring Church bells will only be given on receipt of reliable first hand inf ofsuch landings.633. The warning will not be passed on by ringing other Church bells nor are they to be rungmerely because bells in an adjoining parish are heard4. Bells will only be rung on the order of a commissioned Offr of H.M. Forces, includingH.G., or a chief offr of Police. If the H.G. Offr normally giving the order is notavailable, he may direct his senior N.C.O. whose name will be specified in writing.5. Local arrangements will be made to ensure that written instructions are in possession ofthose who ring the bells, so that they may understand at all times from whom they willreceive the order. Section XXV, ‘Co-operation with the Civil Authorities’, emphasised the needto formulate plans with the authorities to ensure that military operations wouldnot be hampered if civil administration were to break down. Once militaryoperations had commenced all control by central Government would becomeimpossible within the ‘battle area’ and so the implementation of the plans wouldbecome a matter for the military and local authorities. It was therefore importantthat the closest liaison be maintained with the local civil authorities. The mainbody responsible for Civil Defence administration in Kent was No.12 SouthEastern Region with its H.Q. at Bredbury House in Tunbridge Wells under thedirection of the Regional Commissioner, Viscount Monsell. The duty of theRegional Commissioner was to act for the Government in the event ofcommunications being cut. The Regional H.Q. contained branches of all themain Government Departments and were responsible for Air Raid Precautions(ARP) within the Region. Below Regional level civil administration was carriedby means of the local authorities.Bredbury House, Tunbridge Wells - No.12 Region H.Q. During active military operations direct liaison would be maintained with thecivil authorities responsible for the area or locality most closely correspondingwith the military unit’s or formation’s operational locality or boundary. Thus,Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. would liaise with South Eastern Regional H.Q .below64county level on ARP Control, the Police, the National Fire Service and theMinistries of Transport and Food whilst Maidstone Fortress Garrison wouldliaise with its local Triumvirate on these matters. The final section of the M.S.A Plan, Section XXVI, dealt with ‘Home GuardDuties’:1. MUSTERINGThe H.G. will only be mustered on orders of the Army Comd.On “STAND TO” such members of the H.G. as is considered necessary will be calledout.On “ACTION STATIONS”, all members of the H.G. will be called out.2. The following will be carried out by the H.G.:-“STAND TO”(a) All telephones are manned day and night.(b) Defences where H.G .have been mustered, 30% by day, 100% by night.(c) Make all final preparations for mustering if not already done, and check up allplans to defeat invasion.“ACTION STATIONS”(a) Defences will be manned day and night.(b) Rd blocks permanently manned.(c) Rail-block manning parties at one hrs notice.(d) Not less than two guides per locality report to Post Offices.(e) One Lieut. liaison per Bn will report to M.S.A. H.Q.(f) O.Ps are manned.(g) V.Ps are manned.(h) All defences not completed are duly camouflaged and wired where possible. Work on the Fortress defences continued throughout May. More ground wasrequisitioned for the siting and construction of concrete anti-tank ‘Cubes’,infantry defence positions, wire obstacles and spigot mortar emplacements. Bythe end of the month XII Corps Chief Engineer, Brigadier Bryan GodfreyFaussett, was able to report work on the defences to be ‘95% complete’. With the Maidstone Fortress defence works almost complete, the month ofJune saw the publication of its draft ‘Garrison Defence Plan No.1’ (so namedcontrary to Lt. Gen Gammel’s instructions!). The plan superseded all previousplans and instructions related to Maidstone Nodal Point. It assumed that anenemy invasion by sea and air was ‘likely’ with its probable objectives being anadvance on London through Maidstone and the seizure of neighbouringaerodromes. The Defence Plan was based on three ‘States of Readiness’ which woulddetermine various actions to be taken:65NORMAL: State of Readiness which exists when invasion is considered unlikely, but raidsare to be expected.‘STAND TO’: Ordered where conditions are particularly favourable for invasion. It is acomplete state of readiness for all Regular troops and such H.G. as the Army Command maydecide.‘ACTION STATIONS’: Ordered when there is an immediate threat of invasion. A completestate of readiness with the Home Guard mustered. All messages ordering or cancelling any of these sates of readiness were to bechecked back before action was taken on any of them. On ‘STAND TO’, all Regular troops would be at thirty minute’s notice and allmembers of the Home Guard that were deemed necessary would be called out.All Headquarters would be manned with a 24-hour watch maintained on alltheir telephones. All road-blocks on the Outer Perimeter would be ‘garrisoned’by parties of, not less than, one N.C.O. and six Other Ranks, and all Cylinders[movable, cylindrical, concrete obstacles] in the Spurs would be placed into inposition. Spigot mortars and their ammunition would be moved into positionwith guards placed on them day and night. Sector Commanders would draw anyextra weapons they required from the Garrison Armoury. They would alsoestablish ammunition dumps and become responsible for the defence of allpreviously identified ‘Vulnerable Points’ (V.P.s) in their respective Sectors. Allsecret documents and letters would be collected by Company Commanders anddelivered to the Orderly Room in the case of 13 I.T.C. or their Battalion H.Q. inthe case of the Home Guard. Additional tasks to be carried out included theclearing of fields of fire, establishing barbed-wire obstacles and camouflagingpositions. Finally, all Sector Commanders and the Commander of the Reservewould review all their arrangements in preparation for ‘ACTION STATIONS’. On ‘ACTION STATIONS’: all defended positions were to be manned dayand night; all members of the Home Guard not already mustered would bemustered; the Invicta Lines and Sandling Road Barracks would be evacuated by13 I.T.C; road-blocks would not to be set in position unless ordered by FortressH.Q.. or in the face of the enemy; military and civilian ‘stragglers’ would becollected at road-blocks and their identity established. They would then bedistributed according to instructions received from the Garrison Commander;rail-block manning parties would be at one-hours’ notice The troops available for the defence of Maidstone Fortress were:No.13 I.T.C. [RWK Infantry Training Centre]11th (Maidstone) Bn K.H.G [Maidstone Home Guard]‘C’ Company 25th (P.O.) Bn K.H.G. [Post Office Home Guard]‘A’ Company 28th (S.R.) Bn K.H.G. [Southern Railway Home Guard]66In addition, the following troops were to come under Garrison command onreceipt of the signal to ‘STAND TO’:Area Salvage Officer and No.4 Salvage Unit, Pioneer CorpsR.E. Demolition Party from C.R.E. [Commander Royal Engineers] XII CorpsTroops who were based in Mote Park‘A’ Company, 224 Field Ambulance R.A.M.C.Two sections No.20 Bomb Disposal Unit R.E. (when not required by theRegional Commissioner)D.C.R.E. [Deputy Commander Royal Engineers] Maidstone and his Staff In support of the above would be the sixteen mobile 3.7-inch heavy antiaircraft guns and their crews as allocated to Maidstone under the ATTICScheme. These guns could also be used in ground defence. The stated intention of the Defence Plan was to hold Maidstone Fortress andAllington Lock ‘to the last man and the last round’. The defence of Maidstone Fortress was organised into six Sectors and a‘Keep’ as follows:No.1 Sector with its right boundary from the Junction of Curzon Road and ParkAvenue; along the east side of Wheeler Street to a point where it meets UnionStreet. Its left boundary ran from a point where the Outer Perimeter meets theRiver Medway at Springfield; along the towpath on the east side of the river to apoint where St Faith’s Street meets the Medway at Riverside Brewery. ThisSector was to be defended by the six platoons of ‘A’ & ‘D’ Coys 11th(Maidstone) Bn K.H.G. The Sector H.Q. would be at Kreemy Hall in BrewerStreet. No.2 Sector had its right boundary where the Outer Perimeter crossed theRiver Len; along the river to the junction of Padsole Lane with Water Lane. Theleft boundary adjoined No.1 Sector’s right boundary. This Sector would bedefended by the seven platoons of ‘C’ Coy 13 I.T.C. The Sector H.Q. would beat Virginia House in Vinters Road. No.3 Sector right boundary ran from where the Outer Perimeter met the LooseRoad; along the east side of Loose Road and Upper Stone Street to the pointwhere Upper Stone Street meets Mote Road at Wrens Cross. The left boundaryadjoined No.2 Sector’s right boundary. This Sector would be defended by thesix platoons of ‘A’ Coy 13 I.T.C. The Sector H.Q. would be at 92, HastingsRoad. No.4 Sector right boundary ran from where the point the Outer Perimeter metthe east side of the River Medway at Tovil; along the river to the oldArchbishop’s Palace. The left boundary adjoined No.3 Sector’s right boundary.This Sector would be defended by the five platoons of ‘C’ & ‘E’ Coys 11th(Maidstone) Bn K.H.G. The Sector H.Q. would be at the rear of 76/78 CollegeRoad.67 No.5 Sector right boundary ran from the point where Scrubbs Lane met theOuter Perimeter at Oakwood Park; along Scrubbs Lane to its junction withLondon Road; along the east side of London Road to Rocky Hill and on to theBroadway; on to the river bridge leading to the High Street. Its left boundaryadjoined No.4 Sector’s right boundary. This Sector was to be defended by thefive platoons of ‘B’ & ‘G’ Coys 11th (Maidstone) Bn K.H.G. The Sector H.Q.would be at Alexandra Hall, Tonbridge Road. No.6 Sector right boundary ran from the point where the Outer Perimeter metthe London to Maidstone Southern Railway line; along the railway embankmentto the point where the high-level railway bridge crosses the River Medway. Itsleft boundary adjoined No.5 Sector’s right boundary. This Sector would bedefended by the five platoons of ‘B’ Coy 13 I.T.C. The Sector H.Q. would be at53, Buckland Road. The ‘Keep’ boundaries ran from the junction of Week Street with UnionStreet; along the south side of Union Street to its junction with Wyatt Street;right, along Wyatt Street to its junction with Marsham Street; right, alongMarsham Street to Church Street; left, along Church Street to King Street; left,along King Street to Padsole Lane; right, along Padsole Lane to Water Lane;left, along Water Lane back onto Padsole Lane; along Padsole Lane to MoteRoad; right, along Mote Road to its junction with Stone Street; over the road toKnightrider Street; along Knightrider Street to College Road then through theRefrectory Gardens to the River Medway; along the east bank of the river to thejunction of Waterside with St Faith’s Street; right, along St Faith’s Street to theMuseum; across the road to the Almshouses then turn left along St Faith’sStreet to its junction with Week Street; right, along Week Street to its junctionwith Union Street. The ‘Keep’ would hold the Fortress Reserve consisting ofthirteen platoons from ‘D’ & ‘E’ Depot and H.Q Coys 13 I.T.C. (less M.T.drivers and personnel required for Signals Operations) The Fortress ReserveH.Q. would be at the old Archbishop’s Palace. The Reserve would primarily beinvolved in the role of counter-attack.68Fortress Sectors & Keep As soon as the Outer Perimeter of the Fortress was closed all movement inand out would come under the control of the military and police. Within theFortress traffic movement between Sector to Sector and from Sector to the‘Keep’ would be via a ‘one-way’ traffic scheme so as to avoid congestion andconfusion.69The Fortress traffic scheme Allington Lock on the River Medway was considered vital to the defence ofthe Fortress. In order that the river continued to provide an effective anti-tankobstacle to those Fortress Sectors through which it ran, it was essential that thesluice gates at the lock were held ‘at all costs’.70The sluice gates at Allington Lock Defence of the lock was to be provided by ‘F’ Coy. 11th (Maidstone) BnK.H.G. An H.Q. would be established at the Lock Keeper’s House andLockwood House. The Garrison was also responsible for providing protection, in the form of oneplatoon from 11th (Maidstone) Bn K.H.G, to the Police H.Q. at Wren’s Cross.Maidstone Police H.Q. at Wren’s Cross Another Garrison commitment detailed in the Plan was to provide a mobilecolumn from the Fortress Reserve for the defence of the three top secret ‘Y’wireless intercept stations at Sutton Valence. The ‘Y’ stations were an importantlink in the chain which led to the Government Code and Cipher School at71Bletchley Park where German military wireless transmissions were de-coded.The ‘Y’ Stations at Sutton Valence were Direction Finding (D/F) Station, taskedwith taking bearings on German wireless transmissions so that the locations ofthe transmitters could be plotted. They were manned by personnel from theArmy, RAF and Royal Marines, each service responsible for its own station.There was also a ‘twin’ Army station at nearby Chart Sutton which would act asa ‘back-up’ or reserve to the Army station at Sutton Valence. They werecryptically referred to in official correspondence as AMES (Air MinistryExperimental Stations). The mobile column, consisting of one Officer and 28 Other Ranks transportedin four 15 cwt trucks, plus two armoured cars with their crews and a motorcycle despatch rider, would be employed on the orders of Maidstone Sub-AreaH.Q. in the event of a threat to the security of the ‘Y’ Stations. The six driversdetailed to the column were ordered to ensure that were familiar with the routeto Sutton Valence and other roads in the area by day and by night. When notrequired in this role, the mobile column would form part of the GarrisonReserve. On receipt of the signal to ‘STAND TO’ command of the Fortress would betransferred from M.S.A. H.Q. to the C.O. of 13 I.T.C. Lt. Col. Dickinson, withhis H.Q. established in the Sandling Road Barracks. On receipt of the signal‘ACTION STATIONS’ Dickinson would move his H.Q. to the basem*nt of theGeneral Accident Assurance Company building in Bank Street, and it would befrom here that he would conduct the battle for Maidstone.The former General Accident Assurance Company building in Bank Street The Garrison Defence Plan set out detailed instructions for procedures to beundertaken following an enemy invasion., particularly as regards thedistribution of ammunition, weapons, rations and stores. The ‘1st Line’ supplyof ammunition would be held with troops in their forward positions while their‘2nd Line’ would be held in their Sector Reserve. A ‘3rd Line’ plus a further72estimated 14-days’ supply was to be held with the Fortress Reserve in the OldPalace Gardens. On ‘STAND TO’ the Quartermaster of 13 I.T.C., in conjunction with theQuartermaster of 11th (Maidstone) Bn K.H.G, would arrange for the transfer ofthe necessary weapons and ammunition passing between the two units.Transport to be handled by 13 I.T.C. 13 I.T.C.’s Sector Commanders and the Commander of the Fortress Reservewould collect from the Invicta Lines sufficient rations to sustain them for 48hours. These rations would be held in reserve in their respective Sector stores.At the same time, they would collect their petrol cookers and cooking utensilsfor use in the field. On ‘ACTION STATIONS’ Messing Officer 13 I.T.C. woulddetail cooks to each I.T.C. Sector H.Q. The Messing Officer would also transferthe remaining five day’s rations reserve from the Invicta Lines to the ‘Keep’. Meanwhile, all Home Guard members on ‘STAND TO’ would continue tofeed themselves at their own homes for as long as their duties permitted. Thosethat could not be fed from home would be fed from Home Guard CateringEstablishments. Home Guard Sector Commanders would collect theiremergency 48-hour reserve ration packs from their Battalion H.Q. and distributethem to their respective Sectors. On ‘ACTION STATIONS’ the Home Guardwould continue to be fed from the Home Guard Catering Establishments. The48-hour ration packs would be distributed on to Company Areas but would notbe consumed until authorised by the Garrison Commander. On ‘ACTION STATIONS’, the Quartermaster 13 I.T.C. would arrange tomove all essential stores from the Invicta Lines to the Sandling Road Barrackssite. The Q.M., in conjunction with the Officer Commanding Reserve wouldthen arrange for a rear-party to remain at the Invicta Lines. The Q.M. wouldalso arrange with P.A.D. Officer [Passive Air Defence Officer] 13 I.T.C. foranti-gas and reserve clothing to be available in store at the Old Palace. Effective communication would be of the utmost importance. 13 I.T.C. wouldestablish signals communications between the Fortress H.Q. and all SectorH.Q.s as well as with the Reserve H.Q., Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. andLockwood House at Allington Lock. Liaison Officers from 13 I.T.C. would bedetailed to Maidstone Sub-Area H.Q. and to the Civil Defence Services H.Q. atPalace Avenue. 11th (Maidstone) Bn K.H.G. would detail Liaison Officers toMaidstone Sub-Area H.Q. and Maidstone Garrison H.Q. The primary means of communications would be by the G.P.O. telephonenetwork. Should this network be disrupted through enemy action then there wasan alternative telephone circuit in place using field cable operating to a 6-lineswitchboard at Garrison H.Q. In addition, a ‘Wireless Net’ had been set-up withits Control Centre at the Fortress Battle H.Q. in Bank Street. This ‘Net’ couldserve all the Sector H.Q.s with the exception of No.4 Sector which would haveto rely on ‘visual telegraph’ communications operating between a station on the73roof of the Sector H.Q. at 76/78 College Road and one on the roof of 71a BankStreet, near the Fortress Battle H.Q. If all the above means of communication were to fail, then ‘Runners’ wouldbe used and a Runners’ Depot set-up in the alleyway between the High Streetand Bank Street.Fortress communications ‘Net’ Other points dealt with under the Garrison Plan included the immobilisationof oil & petrol stocks, the immobilisation of factories and the defence of‘Vulnerable Points’ (V.P.s). These points had already been well covered inMaidstone Sub-Area H.Q.’s ‘Plan to Defeat Invasion’ but were re-affirmed inthe Garrison Defence Plan with some modifications:74a) Immobilisation of oil and petrol: The Commander Maidstone Fortresswas responsible for ordering the denial to the enemy of petrol pumps,road tankers and the gas oil stocks at Maidstone Gasworks. CommanderMaidstone Sub-Area was to retain responsibility for all other diesel andgas oil stocks, white spirit and distillate stocks, benzole stocks and anyfuel stocks at the Kent Rivers Catchment Board.b) Immobilisation of factories: On ‘ACTION STATIONS’ the followingfactories would be notified and then immobilised by the removal orconcealment of vital parts of their machinery: Lower Tovil Mills,Springfield Mills, Medway Mill, Hayle Mill, Turkey Mill, Bridge Mills,Tovil Mills, Rootes Len Engineering Works, Tilling Stevens RomneyWorks and Tilling Stevens Victoria Works.Bridge Mill, Tovilc) Vulnerable Sites: As in the M.S.A. H.Q. Plan, these were defined asbeing:… an establishment, the destruction of which will materially affect the National WarEffort.The V.P.s Maidstone Garrison had responsibility for were : the three‘AMES’ sites at Sutton Valence, Maidstone Post Office, Maidstone RiverBridge, Maidstone Southern Electric Bridge, Maidstone CorporationElectricity Works, Maidstone Gas Works, the Rediffusion wireless relayservices sites at Cobtree Hall and Mill Street, Tilling Stevens Victoria andRomney Works, Maidstone Waterworks and Rootes Engineering Works.75 The Defence Plan considered the immediate reporting of any crashed aircraftto Fortress H.Q. to be of vital importance. The reports were to includeinformation on:a) Whether BRITISH, ALLIED, or ENEMY aircraft.b) TYPE of aircraft.c) LOCATION of aircraft with Map References.d) DATE and TIME of crash.e) LOCATION of crew. It was deemed essential that a guard was mounted on any crashed aircraft assoon as possible. Enemy parachutists and airborne troops were an obvious threat and to be dealtwith in accordance with the instructions in the M.S.A H.Q. ‘Plan to DefeatInvasion’: in the event of enemy daylight landings, they were to be located anddestroyed quickly, before they had time to become an organized force; at nightthey should be located, contained and destroyed at first light. To assist in locating the enemy generally, Observation Posts [O.P.s] in eachFortress Sector were to be manned on ‘ACTION STATIONS’ and if the enemywere spotted then each Sector Commander was to undertake ‘offensive action’even, if need be outside the Fortress Perimeter, by employing such forcesconsidered necessary to deal with the local situation. The final Appendix to the Garrison Defence Plan dealt with ‘MedicalArrangements’. ‘A’ Company, 224 Field Ambulance R.A.M.C, was allocated tothe Fortress and, on ‘ACTION STATIONS’, the Field Ambulance Commanderwould maintain liaison between the Fortress Commander and the Civil MedicalAuthorities. Several First Aid Posts and Company Aid Posts would be set-up and mannedon ‘ACTION STATIONS’. From these Posts battle casualties would beevacuated to the West Kent General Hospital in Marsham Street.West Kent General Hospital76 Once they had received the necessary treatment they would then be evacuatedto the basem*nt of the ‘Marks & Spencer’ store in Week Street. The KentCounty Ophthalmic Hospital in Church Street would act as an overflow hospitalfor the West Kent General and would replace it if the Fortress Perimeter had tobe reduced to exclude it.The ‘Marks & Spencer’ store in Week Street (War & Peace Collection)The former Kent County Ophthalmic Hospital in Church Street The basem*nt of Fremlins Brewery in Earl Street would be used as anoverflow for the basem*nt of ‘Marks & Spencer’.77Fremlins Brewery in Earl Street (Carley Collection) If the bridge over the River Medway at the Broadway was blown then anycasualties west of the river requiring further treatment would be evacuated toFirst Aid Post No.4 at the Grants Distillery in Hart Street for treatment and thenevacuated to the basem*nt of the Style & Winch Brewery in St Peter’s Street.The Style & Winch Brewery in St Peter’s Street78 The effects of active operations on the civilian population were addressed bySouth Eastern Command whose stated policy was that wholesale evacuation ofthe entire civilian population from areas where fighting may take place was‘impractical’. Pre-arranged schemes existed for the compulsory evacuation ofthe civilian population in the event of invasion from towns and villages in the‘Coastal’ area (which ranged inland as far as Ashford and Canterbury), but forthose living in Nodal Points, Fortresses and in the vicinity of airfields furtherinland only partial evacuation schemes were considered practical. In category ‘A’ Nodal Points (and Fortresses) a ‘belt’ 200 to 500 yards deeparound the defended perimeter would be cleared of civilians. The exact areawould be determined by the local military commander and preliminaryarrangements for evacuation would be made by the civil authorities incoordination with the Senior Military Liaison Officer, 12 Region. Theevacuated civilians would be accommodated in other parts of the town.Evacuations would be carried out by the Local Authority on the orders of theSub-Area Commander or, if communications are cut, the Nodal Point (orFortress) Commander at any time after ACTION STATIONS. Civilians that had been rendered homeless by enemy bombing or shellingwere to be guided by the civilian police to the nearest Rest Centre approved bythe military command for such a purpose. Following their reception at the RestCentre, homeless civilians were to be billeted in homes within the town vicinity.The object being to hold homeless civilians on the ground by providing thenecessities of life and prevent them from getting on to the roads and becomingrefugees. Under no circ*mstances were local arrangements to be made for theevacuation of refugees or for the provision of ‘refugee routes’. In the event of an emergency, local military commanders would holdextensive powers over the civilian population under both the Common Law andMilitary Law. The Common Law powers conferred on military commanders or members ofthe armed forces were based on the principle that, in an emergency where thesafety of the state was under threat, the preservation of that safety was thesupreme consideration for all citizens whether they were soldiers or civilians,and any acts properly committed in furtherance of that aim would be consideredjustifiable. No issue of regulations or any proclamation was considerednecessary to bring these powers into force. All would depend entirely on thecirc*mstances at the time, the priority being the success of operations againstthe enemy. Each individual officer and soldier would act on his ownresponsibility, doing whatever was best in his own judgement, having regard tothe existing facts and bearing in mind that no unnecessary loss or hardship tothe civilian population was to be involved. In a declared ‘War Zone’ Military Law would prevail. Under the DefenceRegulations any area could be declared a War Zone by the Minister for Home79Security and within it civilian offenders could be brought before a War ZoneCourt. It was anticipated that, in the event of an invasion, the whole of SouthEastern Command would be declared a War Zone. In order to expedite thehearing of any case against a civilian offender an Officer of Field Ranks orabove would have the right to direct that proceedings against the offender beinitiated in a War Zone Court thus avoiding the necessity of a preliminaryhearing by Justices. Where, due to the military situation, it was not possible to bring an offenderbefore a War Zone Court, Military Commanders would have the power toadminister summary justice on their own responsibility. This would only bedone under extreme circ*mstances, and it would be the Military Commander’spersonal responsibility if he ordered a civilian offender to be held in militarycustody or executed. Where possible, a civilian offender would only be held inmilitary custody until such time that normal communications were restored.However, if this was not possible then the Commander would endeavour toarrange for suitable independent officers to hear the evidence and recommendthe action to be taken under the same procedure as a Field General CourtMartial. Provision was also made for the Regional Commissioner, on the request of theSouth Eastern Army Commander, to impose a curfew on the civilian populationin any part of No.12 Region where it was considered operationally necessary. Under the Defence Regulations, in operational areas and on request ofauthorised Military Commanders, parties of civilians could be mobilised forcompulsory labour duties. The provision of such parties would be theresponsibility of local officials of the Ministry of Labour. In the event of air raids, the civil authorities would be able to call on theassistance of the military. This assistance could take one of three forms:a) Assistance by a specially organised force of engineers, signals, MilitaryPolice and infantry to large towns which were considered liable to suchheavy raids that the Civil ARP services would be inadequate to deal withthe damage.b) Assistance by one company of infantry, or equivalent, to towns where theCivil ARP services were considered adequate to deal with the damage butwhere help may be required with traffic control, prevention of looting orrioting, fire-fighting and rescue work.c) Assistance by local military units to save life and prevent damage toproperty during or immediately after a raid. Maidstone was considered to be one of the towns for which only the secondand third forms of assistance might be required. Such assistance would be by arequest from Headquarters No.12 Region to Headquarters XII Corps. Only inthe event of communications breaking down would requests be made directwith the local Military Commander.80 Maidstone was increasing in importance to the Army as it prepared for itsfuture offensive operations against Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’. Mote Park was nowan important training ground and home to several units from XII Corps.Royal Engineers ferrying a 25-pounder field gun across the lake at Mote Park (War & PeaceCollection) Reflecting this growing importance, the H.Q. of XII Corps Troops, RoyalEngineers moved from Tunbridge Wells to Maidstone in June 1942, occupyingthree properties in the town: ‘Greystones’ and No.1 Nine Elms Estate in LondonRoad and No.29 Buckland Hill. On the 29th June the Chief Engineer sent Billsof Quantities to contractors to tender for the erection of a new hutted camp atVinters Park to accommodate a further 1,000 men. The estimated cost of thenew camp was put at £65,000.The Vinters Park hutted camp post-war when it was used to house ‘bombed-out’ families(War & Peace Collection)81 Preparations for the defence of the Maidstone Fortress continued through June1942. On the 1st, the Maidstone Sub-Area and Garrison Commander, ColonelBennett, attended a meeting with the Chief Constable, Henry Vann, atMaidstone Police Station and the following day held a meeting at BowerTerrace to discuss medical arrangements within the Fortress. On the 17th hereceived a visit from XII Corps Commander, Lt. Gen Gammell. Meanwhile, theGarrison Adjutant Capt. Backhouse conducted an inspection of the OuterPerimeter defences; attended a meeting at Tilling Stevens to discuss defencearrangements; held a meeting with Maidstone’s Town Clerk, Graham Wilson, todiscuss details of the defence of the ‘Keep’; visited the School of MilitaryEngineering at Brompton to arrange for the printing of maps for the GarrisonDefence Plan; met with the National Fire Service Area Fire Officer, GeorgeRobinson, to discuss closer liaison arrangements within the Fortress; andattended a lecture by Brigadier Lewis, the Director of Chemical Warfare, at the‘Ritz’ cinema.The ‘Ritz’ cinema in Pudding Lane As a consequence of Brigadier Lewis’s lecture on Chemical Warfare, M.S.A.H.Q. added a section on the subject to its ‘Plan to Defeat Invasion’. Designated‘Section XXXV’, it detailed the procedures for dealing with the confirmed orsuspected use of poison gas by the enemy. It placed particular emphasis ofprompt, accurate and concise reporting of chemical incidents including the timeand place of the attack, type of weapon used, type of gas, casualty details andmedical reports. Other additions to the M.S.A. Plan included sections on the authority toimmobilise non-essential civilian motor vehicles; the immobilisation of wirelessrelay stations; the destruction of currency held in local banks; and theimmobilisation of B.B.C. wireless stations and G.P.O. telephone exchanges andtelegraph offices.82 Fortress defence preparations continued through July and August. A manningexercise was held for No.2 Sector on the 4th July and this was followed byExercise ‘FERRET’, on the 6th, for all personnel at 13 I.T.C. A ‘paper’exercise, designated ‘BASTILLE’, was also held to test procedures at GarrisonH.Q. Tours of the Fortress were made to recce suitable positions for 3-inchmortars and flame fougasse installations, and to arrange telephone facilities inSector H.Q.s. Senior officers from M.S.A. and Garrison H.Q.s also inspected the defences ofAllington Lock and made a tour of the three A.M.E. Stations at Sutton Valence.Following these visits, exercises were held to test the defences at Allington andthe emergency deployment of a mobile column to Sutton Valence. The work on the Fortress defences was still awaiting completion. On the 10thAugust, the Garrison Adjutant, Captain Backhouse and the officer in commandR.E. Works Maidstone Fortress, Lt. Wright, met with Col. Bennett at M.S.A.H.Q. to discuss the priority of the work still to be finished. Following thismeeting, XII Corps Chief Engineer assigned one Section of 10 Group PioneerCorps to 263 Field Coy. R.E. for a week to assist with the Fortress works andthe construction of the new army camp at Vinters. Further help came in theform of a working party from 13 I.T.C. which assisted with the revetting of theanti-tank ditch that ran around the Outer Perimeter. The conduct of civilian affairs within the Fortress in the event of it becominga ‘battle zone’ was considered of high importance. The Garrison Adjutant, Capt.Backhouse, held a meeting with Maidstone’s Chief Police Inspector to discussthe question of Civil Rest Centres. These would be set up to provide relief tocivilians forced to evacuate their homes during the battle. They would generallybe manned by teams from the Women’s Voluntary Service (W.V.S.), churchworkers, school staff and others normally associated with the premises in whichthe Centres were set up. They would prepare food and ensure there wereadequate washing facilities and provide fresh clothing where necessary. Manyof the teams held weekly training meetings in order to keep the Centres andequipment in readiness for possible use. The distribution of food stores within the Fortress was another concern andled to Captain Backhouse meeting with Maidstone’s Food Controller, Mr,Honey at his office in the Corn Exchange to discuss food distribution problemsin the town. A meeting was also held with the Civil Defence Deputy SubController, Captain Cornish, at the Civil Defence Control H.Q. based in theSessions House [County Hall] to discuss A.R.P matters within the Fortress.83County Hall (War & Peace Collection) The proposed siting of the Fortress Battle H.Q. in the basem*nt of the GeneralAccident office building in Bank Street came under review in July whenGarrison Adjutant, Capt. Backhouse was detailed to look for alternative sites.Following a recce of nearby premises, he suggested Maidstone Town Hall as asuitable alternative. His choice was approved by M.S.A. Commander, Col.Bennett and Garrison Commander Designate Lt. Col. Dickinson. On the 11thAugust, Capt. Backhouse met with Maidstone’s Town Clerk, Graham Wilson,to discuss the establishment of the Battle H.Q. in the Town Hall and, on the28th, he held a meeting with the Borough Surveyor, Mr Hughes, to discuss thelayout plan of the Town Hall and the public air-raid shelter below.The Town Hall In October, one company of the 9th Battalion, Bedfordshire & HertfordshireRegiment was moved from Sheppey Sector to Maidstone to assist with the on-84going Fortress defence works. They were accommodated at the Sandling RoadBarracks and set to work on the anti-tank ditch. They were still there inNovember when Commander M.S.A., Lt. Col. Bennett, made an ‘Admin’inspection of the unit. Following an order from South-Eastern Command H.Q, administration wasnow a ‘hot topic’ in Maidstone Sub-Area. M.S.A. Administration InstructionNo.6 had been issued at the end of October to all units in the Area. Instructionsincluded the necessity to account for and make economies in the use of rations,clothing, stores, fuel and power. Even the use of paint was to be strictlycontrolled. Any buildings that were considered in need of re-painting would besubject to inspection by a representative of the Deputy-Commander, RoyalEngineers. If he approved the work, then he would inform the unitQuartermaster concerned of how much paint was to be used and how it was tobe applied to ensure there was no waste. Every effort was to be made to locate and collect wood to burn for heatingfuel instead of coal during the winter months. Any large amounts of woodconsidered suitable for collection were to be reported to M.S.A. H.Q. so thatarrangements could be made to purchase them from their owners. Another resultof this ‘economy drive’ was the consolidation of some of the various unitheadquarters in Maidstone. By the end of November No.2 Group, Kent HomeGuard H.Q. and Maidstone Garrison H.Q. had both been moved into 3/4, BowerTerrace to share with M.S.A. H.Q. An important visitor arrived in Maidstone on the 20th November when PrimeMinister, Winston Churchill came to Mote Park to see the 53rd (Welsh)Division in training. He watched various exercises and demonstrationsincluding mine-detection and boat assaults and, before he left, he delivered arousing speech to the assembled troops.Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Mote Park on 20th November 1942 (War & PeaceCollection) As the year 1942 entered its final month, Maidstone Garrison suffered agrievous loss when the Commander of 13 I.T.C., Lt. Colonel D.C.G. Dickinson,85died suddenly on the 11th December at Sandling Park Military Hospitalfollowing an operation for acute appendicitis. A highly respected and popularofficer, he was also a very accomplished musician; a brilliant pianist who couldalso play practically any brass or woodwind instrument. He had served inFrance in the Great War and went on to serve in China and Malta. Lt. ColonelDickinson had been in command of 13 I.T.C. since September 1941 and, in theevent of an attack by German forces on Maidstone, he was designated to takecommand of the Fortress defences. He was just 43 years old and left a widowand daughter. The funeral took place, with full military honours, at MaidstoneCemetery on the 15th December. Among the attendees at the funeral were theColonel of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, General Sir CharlesBonham-Carter; Major W.A. Salmon, Brigade-Major Maidstone-Sub Area;Captain D.M. Backhouse, Garrison Adjutant; Deputy Mayor of Maidstone,Coun. C. Gordon Larking; Major R. L. Surtees, Acting Chief Constable, KentCounty Constabulary; and Captain F. Cornish, Chief Controller Civil Defence,Maidstone.Lt. Colonel Dickinson’s grave in Sutton Road Cemetery, Maidstone Lt. Colonel Dickinson’s replacement as Commander of No. 13 I.T.C. was Lt.Colonel C.E.P. Craven of the Q.O.R.W.K. Regt. He assumed his new commandon the 22nd December. The early months of 1943 finally saw the finishing touches being made to thedefences of Maidstone Fortress. In January, a working party from the RoyalSussex Regt. was drafted in to help complete the anti-tank ditch and, on the 26thFebruary, a tour of inspection was made of all the defences by the Commander86of Maidstone-Sub Area, Col. Bennett; the Commanding Officer 11th(Maidstone) Bn. K.H.G., Lt. Col. Baker; and the Garrison Adjutant, Capt.Backhouse. Capt. Backhouse continued to make regular inspections of all theFortress Sectors and their defence works, ensuring they were being kept wellmaintained. He also continued to hold meetings with the civil authorities andattended various roadblock demonstrations throughout the Fortress. Meanwhile, XII Corps H.Q. had updated its ‘Plan to Defeat Invasion’.Although the possibility of a German invasion would always remain, thechances of such an invasion being attempted in 1943 it now considered to be‘remote’. Limited but large-scale raids were considered a more likely danger.The policy for XII Corps would now be to maintain in the highest state ofreadiness such anti-invasion measures as were also required to defeat raids.Other defensive measures and dispositions necessary to defeat an invasionshould be kept ready for deployment at two months’ notice. The XII Corps Plan went on to state that the period from 29th March to the12th April should be devoted to the maintenance and repair of existing defenceworks; the main tasks being to put infantry and artillery positions into ‘goodorder’. In addition, minefields would be reviewed and a note of the number ofmines required to complete them sent to XII Corps H.Q.; demolitionpreparations and the storage of explosives would be reviewed and fougasses andflame traps examined. On the 1st February a conference was held at M.S.A. H.Q. to considerMilitary aid to the Civil Power in the event of heavy air-raids on Maidstone.This aid would include the provision of military support to the police in themaintenance of law, order and public safety. The town had already sufferedconsiderable damage and loss of life from enemy bombing during the Autumnof 1940 and the German bombers had returned to Kent during the ‘BaedekerRaids’ campaign of 1942. As a result of these raids a bombing decoy site hadbeen built in open fields south of the town at Broomfield, to deflect enemybombing from Maidstone. Known as a ‘Starfish’ decoy, it operated by lighting aseries of controlled fires during an air raid to replicate an urban area targeted bybombs. Another Maidstone ‘Starfish’ decoy was built at Lenham where anearlier decoy (QF Type) had been in operation since 1941 deflecting enemybombing from RAF Detling.87One of the two extant buildings from the Lenham ‘Starfish’ decoy site The Spring of 1943 saw some important visitors to Maidstone. On the 21stMarch, the Director-General of the Home Guard, Major-General the ViscountBridgeman D.S.O., M.C. paid a visit to Home Guard battalions in the MaidstoneSub-Area. Then, on the 4th April, it was the turn of the Army’s Inspector ofInfantry, Major-General Dudley Johnson V.C., D.S.O. & Bar, M.C. to visitvarious Home Guard battalions in the area. The following day. Maidstone SubArea H.Q. was honoured by a visit from the Princess Royal in her capacity asColonel-in-Chief of the Royal Signals and the Royal Scots. Also in attendancewere the Commander XII Corps, Lt. Gen. M.G.N. Stopford and the SeniorController of the A.T.S, the Countess of Carlisle.The Princess Royal at Maidstone Barracks (War & Peace Collection)88 The following week another royal visitor came to the town in the person of theduch*ess of Kent whose husband, the Duke of Kent, had been killed in a planecrash the previous August whilst serving with the RAF. The duch*ess visitedCounty Hall and then went onto the Kent County Ophthalmic Hospital inChurch Street where she toured the wards and spoke to patients and staff. At theoutbreak of the war, the duch*ess had trained as a nurse for three months underthe pseudonym ‘Sister Kay,’ rendering service as a civil nurse reserve.The duch*ess of Kent at Kent County Ophthalmic Hospital (Carley Collection) In May there was another re-organisation of Military Commands. Kent Areawas disbanded and replaced by two ‘Districts’: West Kent District and EastKent District. Maidstone Sub-Area was re-designated ‘Maidstone Sub-District’,reporting to the Commander of East Kent District, Major-General William FoxPitt D.S.O., M.V.O., M.C. Maj-Gen Fox-Pitt paid his first visit to M.S.D. H.Q.on the 24th May. On the 4th June H.Q. East Kent District was established atColes Dane House, Harrietsham and three days later it officially took overcommand of the District from XII Corps. Col. Bennett remained asCommander of Maidstone Sub-District and some of his senior officers wereassigned new roles and titles in-line with the current emphasis on more effectiveadministration. Some final amendments to Maidstone Garrison Defence Plan No.1 werepublished in June. Most of the amendments were purely administrative but alsoincluded important additions to 13 I.T.C.’s Mobile Column responsibilities.Two Air Ministry Petrol, Oil & Lubricants (POL) depots near Charing were89now added to the three AME Stations at Sutton Valence to which the MobileColumn would be deployed in the event of a threat to their security. Thestrength of the Mobile Column was also enhanced to reflect its additionalresponsibilities. It would now consist of:(a) PERSONNEL (i) One Carrier Platoon(ii) Two 3” Mortar Detachments(iii) One Infantry Platoon(iv) Six Signallers(v) Two m/c D/Rs [motorcycle Dispatch Riders](vi) Fitters i/c as available(b) TRANSPORT (i) Ten Carriers universal (ii) Two Carriers 3” Mortar (iii) Six Trucks 15 cwt. (iv) Three Trucks 8 cwt or equivalent (v) Five M/Cs Details of the Fortress signals personnel to be employed at peak times duringoperations were also now included in the Garrison Defence Plan: Fortress H.Q. Signal Superintendent (Sergeant) 1. “In” Clerks 1. “Out” and “Through” Clerks 2. D.R. “In” Clerks 1. Telephone Orderlies 2. Internal Orderlies (checks) 2. M/c Orderlies 2. Cycle Orderlies 2. Wireless Orderlies 1. Wireless Operators (No.18 Set) 1. Wireless Operators (No.21 Set) 1. Wireless Operators (No.36 Set) 1. __ 17 __Sectors and Fortress Reserve H.Q.N.C.O. i/c Signals 1.Telephone Orderly 1.Wireless Operator 1.M/c or Cycle Orderly 1.__4__Allington LockN.C.O. i/c Signals 1.Telephone Operator 1.Wireless Operator 1.90M/c or Cycle Orderly 2.__5__ The total number of men required at any one time for Fortress H.Q., - Fortress ReserveH.Q., - 6 Sector H.Q.’s, and Allington Lock H.Q., = 50. On a basis of four hour shifts the total of Signal Personnel required in Maidstone Fortresswill be 100. It seems ironic that, as the preparations for the defence of Maidstone Fortresswere being completed, the threat of a German invasion was perceivedsufficiently diminished to allow for the lifting of the Residence Ban that hadbeen imposed on the town the previous year; this being officially announced bythe Regional Commissioner on the 14th July. However, the restrictions oncasual visitors remained in place. Although the threat of a full-scale invasion had receded, there was still adanger that the enemy could still mount smaller raids, either from the sea or,more likely by airborne commando forces, on certain ‘Vulnerable Points’[V.P.s]. It would seem likely that this was a topic for discussion during the visitof Lt. General John Swayne, G.O.C. South Eastern Command, to Maidstone onthe 9th July. The following day, Maidstone Sub-District H.Q, issued itsOperational Instruction No.15 ‘Defeat of Raids’. The Instruction considered thatthere were no V.P.s in Maidstone Sub-District that would warrant such a raid.However, there were suitable objectives within East Kent District in locationsthat bordered on M.S.D. As any enemy raids on these could have serious effectson M.S.D., preparations were to be made for necessary action against theraiders; the policy being that any enemy landing force was to be attacked, andcompletely destroyed or captured. Instructions were issued to local Civil Defence authorities and the police thatthe presence of any enemy troops should be reported immediately to the nearestRegular Army or Home Guard command. In the event of a raid, or the receipt ofa raid warning, all headquarters and command posts would be manned and aLiaison Officer from 13 I.T.C. would report to M.S.D. H.Q. All availableregular troops under M.S.D.’s operational command would be ordered to‘STAND TO’ and all Home Guard units would report to their respective AlarmPosts. In an airborne raid, the Home Guard would probably be the nearesttroops to the scene of the landing. They were to keep the raiders under constantobservation, harassing them continuously and supply all possible information tothe nearest Regular Army command who would direct reinforcements to thearea. These last points were supplemented in an Operational Instruction issued byEast Kent District H.Q. which noted that the training and equipment of HomeGuard units was not suitable for the support of an attack on the type of highly-91trained enemy troops that were likely to carry out raids in the U.K. As such, inthe event of a raid, Home Guard offensive actions should be confined to attackson parachute troops who have not been able to collect their weapons andorganise themselves, and immediate counter-attacks to restore the situation intheir own local defences. The rest of the Summer was a quiet period for Maidstone Fortress. 13 I.T.Cheld a sports day and a swimming gala; officers from M.S.D. H.Q. attendedvarious training courses and visited Cadet camps. In September M.S.D.Commander, Col. Bennett and Garrison Adjutant, Capt. Backhouse attended aluncheon at 13 I.T.C. in honour of the Colonel of the R.W.K. Regiment,General Sir Charles Bonham-Carter and then, a few days later, both officers metwith the Military Liaison Officer of No,12 Region, Captain Ewart-Biggs.General Sir Charles Bonham-Carter, Colonel of the Queen’s Own Royal West KentRegiment On the 27th September Col. Bennett was posted as Garrison Commander,North Africa. He was replaced as M.S.D. Commander and Maidstone GarrisonCommander by Lt. Col. J.N. Lamont M.C., T.D. who assumed his newcommands on the 10th October. Two days later the new District C.O. presidedover a conference of Home Guard Battalion Commanders at M.S.D. H.Q. In October, M.S.D. H.Q.’s ‘Defeat of Raids’ Operational Instruction wasupdated. The Instruction stated that an invasion was now ‘improbable’ but therisks of raids or sabotage still remained and would increase as soon as landoperations commenced in North-West Europe, with petroleum depots andcentres of communication, such as Maidstone and Tonbridge, being regarded apossible targets. To counter any raid M.S.D. H.Q. would be able to call upon the assistance ofXII Corps Field Force units based in the Sub-District but not normally under itscommand. These would include the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division at MotePark, and No.3 Army Group Royal Artillery [3 AGRA].92Troops of the 53rd (Welsh) Division parading along the Ashford Road, Maidstone in 1943(War & Peace Collection) In the event of a surprise raid, the Field Force would play the major role inattacking and destroying the enemy. If warning of a raid was received, then theField Force would withdraw forward units and use them in a counter-attackrole. The Field Force would supplement those Regular troops and Home Guardunits already under the direct command of M.S.D. H.Q. Within in theMaidstone Fortress area these included 13 I.T.C. and 11th (Maidstone) Bn.K.H.G. All Royal Observer Corps posts within the Sub District were to be put onnotice to look out for airborne raiders. If a post spotted any raiders they wouldfire-off red star warning rockets and report back to the R.O.C. No.1 Group H.Q.in London Road, Maidstone who would then pass all relevant information toM.S.D. H.Q. On the 21st October M.S.D. H.Q. issued Operational Instruction No.18 –‘Denial of Oil and Petrol Resources to the Enemy’. It instructed that all usablestocks of petrol (motor and aviation fuel), benzole and kerosene should beprevented from falling into the enemy’s hands. The methods to be employedincluded the sealing of all petrol and oil pumps; the destruction of storage tanksand the running to waste of road and rail tankers. Benzole stocks were to becontaminated with tar. Producers were deemed responsible for maintainingstocks of tar which had to be connected to the benzole in such a way that itcould be run in by gravity or pumped. Means to mix the tar with the benzolealso had to be provided. It was the duty of the local army commander to makeperiodic checks to ensure that these precautions had been taken by theproducers.93 On the 1st December, Colonel F.L.W. Wright assumed the commands ofMaidstone Sub-District and Maidstone Garrison. Col. Wright spent much ofDecember acquainting himself with his new command, visiting military basesand meeting senior civilian officials. On the 11th December he was inMaidstone visiting Kent County Council Headquarters and meeting with theMayor of Maidstone and the Chief Constable of Kent Joint Police Force. A fewdays later he held a conference of all Home Guard Battalion Commanders atM.S.D. H.Q. He also visited the Regional Commissioner 12 Region atTunbridge Wells and attended a conference of Sub-District Commander at EastKent District H.Q. in Harrietsham. 1943 ended with the tide of war now turned in the Allies favour. Germanforces in Europe were on the retreat on the Eastern Front and in Italy and werenow under threat from an Allied cross-channel invasion in the West. The dangerof a German invasion of the United Kingdom now deemed by the Chiefs-ofStaff as ‘negligible’. The defences of ‘Fortress Maidstone’ which had yet to be tested in action,from now on were never likely to be and nor were they. The ‘what-ifs’ willforever be discussed. If there had been an invasion, could Maidstone have heldout ‘to the last man and last bullet’ under a German onslaught as planned? In1940-41 the answer would probably be ‘not for long’, but as a Fortress, as itexisted in 1942-43, it would have presented a far more formidable obstacle to aGerman advance on London and it would certainly been able to deal effectivelywith the type of smaller-scale enemy raids that were being envisaged by late1943.94Maidstone’s Defences Today Most of the Second World War defence works in and around Maidstone weredemolished soon after the end of the war. There was little interest in preservingany physical memories of, what had been, a difficult and traumatic six years forthe town’s population. Understandably, people just wanted to get back tonormality as soon as possible. However, some traces of those defences doremain. At the School Lane entrance to Mote Park there are two ‘loopholes’ that havebeen cut into the stone wall which would have provided firing positions forrifles or light machine-guns to defend the entrance to the army camp.Loopholed wall at the School Lane entrance to Mote Park On the A229 Loose Road, heading south out of the town between Sheal’sCrescent and Heather Drive, a footbridge crosses the road. By the footbridge onthe right you can see nine huge concrete ‘Cubes’ used as anti-tank obstacles.These are some of the few survivors of the hundreds that supplemented the antitank ditch, excavated in 1942-43, to cover open ground around the perimeter ofthe Fortress. Another group of these can be found by the Millennium Bridgewhich crosses the Medway near Springfield.95Two anti-tank ‘Cubes’ can just be seen under the bridge on the Loose Road (Photo PaulTritton) Several pillboxes, of various ‘Types’ remain in the area, mostly along theroute of the 1940 GHQ Line on the River Medway. At first glance it wouldseem remarkable that so many of these iconic structures have survived foralmost 75 years, given that so many other military structures were removed ordemolished so quickly after the war. The answer is a testament to theirconstruction. Most pillboxes were built on private farmland and after the warthe Government did not want to go to the time and expense of demolishingthem, so they offered the landowners £5 for each pillbox they demolishedthemselves. However, pillboxes could not be demolished easily, after all theywere designed to stand up to bullet and shellfire. Most landowners decided that£5 would not make up for the time, effort and labour it would take to demolishthem. I can remember as recently as the 1990’s, driving along the TonbridgeRoad and seeing a farmer and some of his employees trying to demolish apillbox with sledgehammers and a tractor. A few days later I drove past againand saw a demolition company’s lorry parked up in the field and they wereusing a bulldozer to demolish it. I wondered for a long time how much that hadcost the farmer! If you walk along the banks of the Medway from Aylesford to Teston you willsee several pillboxes. Most of them are infantry pillboxes of an irregularhexagonal design officially designated ‘FW3/24 Type’. Two were recently‘uncovered’ during work on a new footpath along the river near East Farleigh.You may also be fortunate to see some of the far more substantial ‘FW3/28AType’ which housed an anti-tank gun.96Recently exposed Type 24 pillbox by the Medway at East FarleighType 28A pillbox near Teston Bridge97 Fortunately, there is now far more interest in protecting these survivingwartime structures. Most of them have been documented on the Kent CountyCouncil’s Historic Environment Record and some even have ‘Listed’ status so,hopefully, they will continue to stand as reminders to future generations of thedangers that Maidstone, as with other towns and villages around the country,were prepared to face in the darkest days of the Second World War.9898List of Appendices I : Command Structure September – November 1939 II : Command Structure September 1940 III : Command Structure February 1941 IV : Command Structure June 1942 V : Command Structure June 1943 VI : Pillboxes VII: Anti-Tank Obstacles & Roadblocks VIII: Flame Fougasses & Spigot Mortars IX: RAF Detling Defences X: RAF West Malling Defences XI: School Air-Raid SheltersAppendix I – Command Structure September – November 193999GHQ HomeForcesNorthernCommandSouthernCommandWesternCommandEasternCommandHomeCounties AreBrooklandsSectorGuildfordSectorHolmwoodSectorRedhill &Reigate SectorBiggin HillSectorMaidstoneSector6th CavalryTrainingRegimentQORWK RegtDepot13 I.T.C.TonbridgeSectorNationalDefenceBattalions6th (HD) BnThe Buffs8th (HD) Bn.QORWK Regt.8th (HD) BnEast SurreyRegt11th (HD) BnQueen's RoyalRegt8th (HD) BnRoyal SussexRegtChatham Area East AngliaArea44th InfantryDivision (TA)12th InfantryDivision (TA)36th InfantryBrigade35th InfantryBrigade37th InfantryBrigadeAldershotCommandScottishCommandLondonDistrictNorthernIrelandDistrictAppendix II – Command Structure September 1940100GHQ Home ForcrsEastern CommandHome Counties Area6th (Home CountiesArea) Defence Regt.R.A.920 Defence Battery 921 Defence Battery 922 Defence Battery 923 Defence BatteryDorking Sub-Area Sevenoaks Sub-AreaBiggin Hill Sector Maidstone SectorQORWK Depot13 I.T.C.11th (Maidstone) Bn.K.H.G.Tonbridge SectorNational DefenceBattalions8th (HD) Bn QORWK 70th (YS) Bn QORWKXII Corps1st (London) InfantryDivision 45th Infantry Division Royal Artillery60th Army FieldRegiment88th Army FieldRegiment74th MediumRegimentAppendix III – Command Structure February 1941101GHQ HomeForcesSouth EasternCommandIV CorpsSussex AreaXII CorpsKent AreaMaidstoneSub-AreaSheppeySectorChathamSectorMaidstoneSectorQORWK Depot13 ITC11th(Maidstone)Bn KHGTonbridgeSector8th (HD) BnQORWK70th (YS) BnQORWKGravesendSub-AreaHoo Sector CobhamSectorSevenoaksSector6th DefenceRegt. R.A.CanadianCorpsSurrey AreaAppendix IV – Command Structure June 1942102GHQ Home ForcesSouth Eastern CommandXII CorpsMaidsone Sub-AreaMaidstone Garrison13 ITC Maidstone Fortress 11th (Maidstone) Bn KHG 'C' Coy 25th (P.O.) Bn KHG QORWK Regt Depot 'A' Coy 28th (S.R.) Bn KHGKent Area103Appendix V – Command Structure June1943GHQ HomeForcesSouth EasternCommandWest KentDistrictEast KentDistrictAshford SubDistrictMaidstoneSub-DistrictMaidstoneGarrison13 ITC QORWK Reg.DepotMaidstoneFortress11th(Maidstone)Bn KHGCanterburySub-DistrictXII Corps104VI : Pillboxes Pillboxes are concrete dug-in guard posts, normally equipped with loopholesor embrasures through which to fire weapons. The originally jocular name arosefrom their perceived similarity to the cylindrical and hexagonal boxes in whichmedical pills were once sold. They are in effect a trench firing step hardened toprotect against small-arms fire and grenades and raised to improve the field offire. Hardened defensive structures had been built around the world for hundredsof years, but it was during the Boer War in the late 19th / early 20th century thatthe first masonry ‘blockhouses’ began to appear on the battlefield. Mostly builtto a standard pattern designed by the British Army’s Chief Engineer in SouthAfrica, Major-General Elliot Wood, they consisted of a three-storey, mortaredstone tower. The ground and first floors were loopholed to provide firingpositions and the second floor was covered by a corrugated iron pyramid roof.Later examples were built of concrete instead of stone and were of a largehexagonal design which could accommodate up to forty men. The modern style of pillbox first appeared on the Western Front during theearly years of the First World War when defensive ‘stop-lines’ were also beingbuilt around London which would eventually incorporate the first pillboxes tobe seen on British soil. In the Second World War, following the evacuation of the B.E.F. fromDunkirk, a rash of pillbox-building broke out, mostly centred on the south ofEngland along General Ironside’s GHQ Line. In June 1940, Branch FW3 (Fortress Works Department 3) of the WarOffice’s Directorate of Fortifications and Works issued a series of standarddesigns of pillboxes for Home Defence known as ‘Types’. As well as thesestandard Types, many other ‘variants’ were built to house different weapons orto suit local conditions. The most common Type built along the GHQ Line was the FW3/24, aninfantry pillbox of irregular hexagonal design, usually built to just bullet-proofstandards with 12-inch thick concrete walls, usually with brick-shuttering. Theside wall faces varied in length from 6ft to 8ft with a much longer 12ft rear wallwhich also housed the entrance. They were built with embrasures in each faceand an internal anti-ricochet wall. They could house a garrison of eight men.105 Type FW3/24 designA Type FW3/24 hidden amongst the vegetation in Whatman Park, Maidstone106Front view of a Type FW3/24 overlooking the railway line near BarmingThe rear wall of a Type FW3/24 at Teston showing the entrance107Internal view of one of the embrasures of the FW3/24 at Teston. Note the supportsfor a Bren gun bipodThe Type FW3/22 was another infantry pillbox, of a regular hexagonal design,slightly smaller than the Type 24, built to a bullet-proof standard and couldhouse a garrison of six men. The Type FW3/22 was the most common type ofpillbox built in England but very few seem to have been constructed in theMaidstone area. The only local examples I have come across are on the site ofthe former West Malling Airfield at Kings Hill. Type FW3/22 design108Type FW3/22 at the former RAF West MallingThe Type FW3/28A is an anti-tank gun pillbox with an infantry side chamber.Rectangular in design, it is the largest form of pillbox to be found on the GHQLine in the Maidstone area with dimensions of 27ft x 19ft and a wall thicknessof 42 inches. It would house a 2-pounder or 6-pounder anti-tank gun, either on afixed on a holdfast or mobile mounted on wheels and trails. It would contain agarrison of ten men plus another two armed with Bren light machine guns in theside chamber. A fine example can be seen by the A26 Tonbridge Road atTeston.Type FW3/28A design109Type FW3/28A at TestonInternal view of the Type FW3/28A at Teston showing the A/T gun embrasureInfantry side chamber in the FW3/28A at Teston110VII: Anti-Tank Obstacles & Roadblocks A major element in the fixed defences of Maidstone was the roadblock. Theroadblocks of the original 1940 Nodal Point defences became an integral part ofthe 1941-42 Fortress plans. Roadblocks took many forms, but most consisted of concrete anti-tank blocks,both the 5ft by 5ft solid ‘Cubes’ and large ‘Cylinders’ made from in-filledconcrete pipe sections. These were placed permanently to funnel traffic into anarrow carriageway where they could be examined at a manned checkpoint. Insome cases, these checkpoints would be covered either from a hardened,loopholed guardhouse, similar to a small pillbox, or from a nearby ‘defendedbuilding’. Some roads were not suitable for such permanent obstructions, particularly ifthey were going to be used for our own heavy military traffic, in which casessome form of temporary roadblocks were required. If it was a narrow road thenthe roadblock would consist of fixed concrete cubes placed each side of thecarriageway. The cubes would have a stepped slot cut into one face into which ametal RSJ could be dropped to block the road gap when required. Some roadblocks on minor roads would only consist of ‘movable’ concreteobstacles such as 2ft 6in x 1ft 9in cylinders or 2ft 9in high conical ‘Buoys’.Both types of these small obstacles could easily be rolled in and out of position.They also had holes drilled through their length to enable metal poles to beinserted to assist with their movement. The poles could be left inserted toincrease the obstacle’s effectiveness. Obviously when faced with a roadblock the enemy could always attempt to‘outflank’ it if there was suitable space to do so. To prevent this, concrete‘Pimples’ were set into the softer ground either side of the carriageway toobstruct movement. General Brooke took over as C-in-C Home Forces in July 1940. When he waswith the B.E.F.in France during the German invasion, he witnessed Frenchroadblocks causing great hinderance to the movements of his troops. Theseexperiences led him to order the dismantling of many of the large ‘permanent’roadblocks on the Home Front and their replacement with rail socket andmobile cylinder obstacles. The rail socket obstacles consisted of verticalsections of old railway track which were placed into sockets cut into the roadsurface. These would normally be kept removed and the sockets covered withsquare metal plated to allow for the passage of legitimate traffic and only put inplace to deny passage of enemy vehicles. Concrete cylinders would then beplaced in front of the rails to provide extra layers of obstructions. It wasestimated that twelve men could close a 13ft road gap with eleven rails andtwenty-one cylinders in thirty minutes. A later version of the type of roadblock111saw the vertical rails replaced with ‘bent’ rail sections which made them moreeffective against heavier tanks. Although tanks could travel faster on hard, metalled road surfaces they wereprimarily designed to be able to move across open country in any conditions. The Maidstone Fortress defence works included the digging of anti-tankditches around the fortress perimeter. The two most common type of ditch werethe ‘V’-shaped, designed to trap tanks nose down, and the square profile type,designed so a tank would fall in and be trapped. Both types were dug to a depthof about 11ft and were about 18ft wide. The anti-tank ditches around Maidstone were supplemented with rows ofconcrete ‘Cubes’, up to four or five deep in places, and possibly minefields. Measures were also taken to prevent tanks using railway lines circumvent thefieldworks. These were similar to roadblocks with large slotted concrete blockseither side of the railway tracks with steel girders placed into the slots to blockaccess across the tracks. Although deemed vital to Maidstone’s defence in wartime, all these obstacleswould cause obvious problems if they remained in place for long after hostilitiesceased. The anti-tank ditches took up valuable agricultural land and were soonfilled-in and their concrete defences removed. The roadblocks were a majorhinderance to the free movement of traffic, so they too were demolished. Exceptfor a few A/T blocks on the Loose Road and by the Medway at Springfield noother evidence remains of these important Maidstone Fortress defences.112Home Guards erecting a road barrier during an exercise held in the north of Scotland. © IWM(H 7330)Concrete pipe ‘Cylinders’ roadblock on Maidstone BridgeMovable ‘Cylinder’ obstacles at Fort Amherst, Chatham113Concrete ‘Buoy’ type obstacles at Hoo St Werburgh‘Pimple’ type obstacles on display at Fort Amherst, Chatham114Home Guard soldiers in York prepare a vertical roadblock © IWM (H 15191)Plan of a ‘Bent Rail & Pimple’ roadblock (TNA WO 199/54)115Anti-tank ditch running along open ground to the railway line west of Turkey Mill on theAshford Road in MaidstoneEastern Command A-T Ditch (© IWM H 29060)116Anti-tank ‘Cubes’ by the River Medway at SpringfieldAn impressive line of A-T obstacles running along open ground to the banks of the RiverMedway at Tovil117VIII: Flame Fougasses & Spigot Mortars Mention is made in the main text of two important weapons systems that weremade available to the defenders of Maidstone Fortress – the Flame Fougasseand the Spigot Mortar.Flame Fougasse Following the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, Britain faced a critical shortage ofweapons. In particular, there was a severe scarcity of anti-tank weapons, manyof which had to be left behind in France. Nevertheless, one of the few resourcesnot in short supply was petroleum oil since supplies intended for Europe werefilling British storage facilities. Lord Hankey, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and a member of theMinisterial Committee on Civil Defence, promoted the idea of the burning of oilfor defensive purposes, believing that oil should not just be denied to theinvader, but used to impede him. Hankey brought his ideas up in a meeting ofthe Oil Control Board and produced a paper on the subject for the C-in-C HomeForces, General Ironside. Hankey’s ideas soon came to the attention of Prime Minister, WinstonChurchill, who authorised Geoffrey Lloyd, the Secretary for Petroleum to pressahead with experiments, with Hankey taking the matter under his generalsupervision. To this end, the Petroleum Warfare Department (PWD) wascreated and was made responsible for developing weapons and tactics. The PWD carried out tests out in July 1940 which concluded that, in suitableconditions, the use of burning petrol and oil as a weapon against armouredvehicles would prove ‘most effective’. The report on the tests was sent to theArmy Council at the War Office recommending that the weapon would be bestdeployed in defiles on roads, in villages or built-up areas and, for best effect, beused in conjunction with other anti-tank weapons and obstacles. The method of employment for the weapon would be by gravity or trailerpump from a hidden reservoir. The fuel would be fed to the defile through 3-inch pipes and then discharged through jets or sprays and ignited electronically.The recommended composition of the fuel was 25% petrol and 75% gas oil. Anadded advantage of such a mixture was that it could not be used to power motorvehicles and so would be useless to the enemy if stocks were to fall into theirhands. The fuel mixture would be stored in standard 40-gallon oil drums in apre-prepared emplacement or pumped from a mobile tanker. Within a year the weapon was deployed in all Army Commands around thecountry. It was now known as the ‘Flame Fougasse’. The name derived from aweapon used in the late medieval period called a fougasse: ‘a hollow in whichwas placed a barrel of gunpowder covered by rocks, the explosives to bedetonated by a fuse at an opportune moment.’118 The most basic form of the flame fougasse consisted of the 40-gallon barrelsof fuel installed in emplacements excavated on each side of the road or inspecially constructed concrete blocks forming part of a roadblock.Alternatively, they could be placed in the open at the side of the road wherethey could easily be mistaken as barrels of tar for road repair. When fired froman emplacement a 5lb propelling charge of gunpowder was placed at the rear ofthe horizontally placed barrel and the opening and firing charge in the centre ofthe front end of the barrel which would be facing the target. The charges weredetonated by fuses connected to a 100-120 volt wireless battery. On detonationthe opening and firing charge would rupture the end of the barrel and ignite thefuel which would be fired at the target by the propellant charge. All that wasneeded to fire the fougasse was to connect the fuse wires to the batteries. It was recommended that the fougasses should be employed in batteries of notless than ten to achieve maximum effect and to guard against the risk of anyignition failures. Although the fougasses would have to be prepared by Royal Engineers theycould be fired by any troops. The simplicity of its operation made the flamefougasse particularly suitable for Home Guard use. The Chief Engineer HomeForces noted that ‘These flame traps do at least give the Home Guard a sportingchance of frying a few Germans.’ In August 1941, Fred Hilton was serving with 260 Field Company RoyalEngineers based at Mote Park in Maidstone. He later recalled: During this time we went on a lot of exercises, mostly de-fencing, laying make-believeminefields, blowing make-believe craters etc. On one occasion digging in and actuallyblowing a set of Fougasse — these were 50 gallon oil drums filled with petrol and oil, buriedin the side of a defile with a small charge of explosives behind or underneath. The idea wasthat when a column of enemy tanks [approached] the spot the Fourgasse were blown. I don’tknow if they were ever used in action but, at the demonstration we did, the flame covered anarea of about 50 sq yds and nothing could have lived in it. I think this would have stoppedsome of the tanks, of course, this was the whole point of the exercise! Only two flame fougasse are recorded on the Heritage Environment Record(HER) in the Maidstone Borough area: one at the junction of the A229 withForstal Road (as mentioned in the main text) and the other on the Loose Road.There may well have been others but no physical evidence of any remain today.However, on the Lydd Road in Camber, East Sussex there are two extantfougasse structures, which possibly housed pumping equipment for a beachfougasse. I found these last year and took photographs.119Flame Barrage demonstration at Mid Calder, Scotland. November 1940 © IWM (H 5772)Flame Fougasse demonstration somewhere in England c.1941 © IWM (D 24854)120One of the Fougasse structures at Camber (rear view)The other Fougasse structure at CamberSpigot Mortars The Spigot Mortar, or Blacker Bombard to give its correct name, was a lightanti-tank weapon developed by Lt. Col. Stewart Blacker O.B.E. in response tothe British Army’s shortage of anti-tank guns following the B.E.F.’s evacuationfrom Dunkirk. Blacker had served in the Indian Army and then in the RoyalFlying Corps in the First World War when he was shot down and severely121wounded. After the war he decided to concentrate on developing specialweapons at his own expense without help from the services; it was his proudboast to be the country's sole private inventor of armaments. The Second World War found Blacker with the rank of lieutenant-colonel inthe Territorial Army, but obviously unfit for further service overseas. Hetherefore concentrated on his projects for developing weapons. His first interesthad been in trying to devise an anti-tank weapon for use by the infantry. Duringthe early part of the 1930s, Blacker became interested in the concept of thespigot mortar. Unlike conventional mortars the spigot mortar did not possess abarrel, and instead there was a steel rod known as a 'spigot' fixed to a baseplate;the bomb itself had a propellant charge inside its tail. When the mortar was tobe fired, the bomb was pushed down onto the spigot, which exploded thepropellant charge and blew the bomb into the air. Before the war neither the anti-tank Blacker Bombard, as he called it, nor anyof his other weapons had been adopted by the army. However, when the warhad started Blacker approached everybody he knew at the War Office to dosomething about them but without success. In 1939, a new section of military intelligence research (MIRc) had beenformed to develop special weapons for ‘irregular’ warfare. At its head was aRoyal Engineer, Major Millis Jefferis. When Winston Churchill became PrimeMinister, he also took the role of Minister of Defence and took MIRc under hiswing as part of his Ministry and changed its name to MD1 Blacker was eventually referred to Jefferis who took a great interest in his‘Bombard’ weapon and brought it to the attention of Churchill who attended ademonstration of the weapon on 18th August 1940 and was suitably impressed. By October 1940, Blacker and Jefferis considered that they had brought themortar up to a point that a decision was required on its future. ProfessorFrederick Lindemann, Churchill’s Scientific Adviser who worked closely withMD1, wrote to the Prime Minister, recommending it for its simplicity, whichwould enable it to be produced in large numbers; its small size and light weight;and the fact that it could fire various sizes of ammunition and its effectivenessagainst armoured vehicles. Lindemann summarised the claims made for the newweapon which included a rate of fire of 10 rounds per minute and a cost ofproduction (after the first 1,000) of £40 per gun and £3 per bomb. Two types ofbomb had been developed: an anti-tank bomb which weighed 33lbs, with amaximum range of 580 yards, which could penetrate almost 2½ inches ofarmour; and an anti-personnel bomb which weighed 16½ lbs with a maximumrange of 1100 yards. Lindemann told the Prime Minister that Blacker andJefferis now wanted to demonstrate the mortar against a stationary orapproaching tank in order to establish its merits. Churchill passed the letter ontohis military Chief-of Staff, General Ismay, requesting him to arrange ademonstration.122 Trials of the prototype were undertaken by the Ordnance Board atShoeburyness in February and March 1941. The Board’s report described themortar as having an ‘excellent effect’ with a 20½ lb bomb against armour plate.However, the results of the trials showed that it would not be suitable for use asan anti-tank gun in active operations due to its poor chances of hitting a movingtank at more than 100 yards. Its most promising role was considered to be as ashort-range anti-tank weapon to reinforce static and semi-static defences. Itcould be sited and suitably camouflaged in close proximity to roadblocks,defiles and tank traps. Following the trials, 2,000 mortars were ordered for use by the Home Guardtogether with 300,000 rounds of heavy anti-tank ammunition and 600,000rounds of the lighter anti-personnel ammunition. In use, the mortar was to beeither affixed to a large cruciform platform, or an immobile concrete pedestal. The first Bombards appeared in late 1941 and were issued to both regular andHome Guard units. By July 1942, approximately 22,000 of the Bombards hadbeen produced and issued to forces throughout the country. However as early asNovember 1941, concerns were being aired about the suitability of the weaponand it was unpopular with several units; the anti-tank rounds were found topossess several problems. They had insensitive fuses, which meant that theywould often pass through an unarmoured target without detonating, and whenthey did explode fragments were often thrown back at the crew. Some unitsattempted to trade their Bombards for Thompson submachine guns or refused touse them at all. Large numbers of fixed concrete pedestals for Bombards were installed and asignificant number survive in their original positions in many parts of theUnited Kingdom. Unfortunately none seem to have survived within theboundaries of the former Maidstone Fortress but some can still be seen in otherparts of Kent and a very well-restored emplacement can be found at LimpsfieldChart in Surrey.123Cut-away drawing of a Blacker Bombard from a War Office pamphletMen of the Saxmundham Home Guard prepare to fire a Blacker Bombard during trainingwith War Office instructors, 30 July 1941. © IWM (H12299)124Home Guard soldiers training with a Bombard on a fixed concrete mounting © IWM(H30181)A surviving spigot mortar concrete pedestal at the Citadel Battery, Dover125A restored spigot mortar emplacement at Limpsfield Chart, Surrey126IX: RAF Detling DefencesWhen the airfield at Detling closed in 1959 the site reverted to farmland. KentCounty Council purchased some if the land for use as the Kent CountyShowground and a small industrial estate was developed on the old airfieldTechnical Site leaving just a handful of original buildings. However, much ofthe defensive infrastructure remains and can easily be viewed from publicfootpaths.Type FW3/22 Pillboxes (Light Anti-Aircraft Gun Variant) There are more extant pillboxes at Detling airfield than any other singleSecond World War site in Kent. Sixteen have been documented on theExtended Defence of Britain Database of which I have identified twelve so far.They are all the same basic design for use in airfield defence: a much modifiedand enlarged Type FW3/22 variant. As with the standard Type 22 they werebuilt in the form of a regular hexagon but with much longer walls (14ft 6ins) toallow for the inclusion of a central LAA (light anti-aircraft) open gun wellwhich contained a mount for either a Bren or Lewis LMG (light machine-gun).There are four rifle-firing loopholes, much longer but narrower than on astandard Type 22 and a square loophole with a shelf for either a Bren or LewisLMG. They all have a very low entrance, some protected by an equally low ‘blast’wall, which the crew would have needed to crawl through on their hands andknees to gain access. Of the twelve I have been able to find, just three have been strengthened toshellproof standard. The loopholes on the shellproof pillboxes are of a shorterbut broader design.Bullet-proof version. Note the vegetation growing out of the central LAA gun well127Shell-proof version. Note the very low entranceCentral LAA gun well128Internal view of the LAA gun well showing the gun mountingInternal view showing the entrance and LMG loophole129Airfield Battle Headquarters The Battle H.Q. at Detling was built to an Air Ministry design (Drawing No.11008/41) which was the most common pattern found on RAF airfields in theSecond World War. It comprises a 28-foot-long by 9 foot wide undergroundbox divided into two rooms (Messengers & Runners Room and DefenceOfficer’s Room), a short passageway and a WC with an extra room to one side(PBX Room) this room measures 6 foot by 8 foot. The PBX (Public BranchExchange) Room housed the telephone equipment. Four concrete steps led upinto the surface Observation Room. A short metal ladder gave access to theemergency escape hatch, but it has been removed. Access to the Battle H.Q.from the surface was by a concrete stairway which has long been demolished. Due to the demolished entrance and the removal of the escape ladder accessinto the interior of the Battle H.Q. was not possible. However, a B.H.Q. of anidentical design exists on the site of the former RAF Lympne airfield which Iwas able gain access to some years ago.Detling B.H.Q. Observation Room and escape hatch130Detling B.H.Q. view into the escape hatch showing the steps up to the Observation RoomLympne B.H.Q. view from PBX Room131Lympne B.H.Q. Observation Room‘Seagull’ Trench Seagull trenches were a defensive structure unique to airfields. They derivedtheir name from the shape of their roofs which resembled the wings of a seagull.They comprised a brick or concrete lined trench protected by a concrete roof onraised brick supports which provided firing bays. The example at Detling is arare survivor albeit only the roof and supports are visible, the rest of the trenchhaving been infilled some years ago. I was fortunate to find it as it was verywell hidden amongst the vegetation on the sloping side of the earth motte of themedieval Binbury Castle. It is small in size compared to others I have seenelsewhere, but it may have been just one of several on the airfield.132View through the vegetationSide view133The distinctive ‘seagull wing’ shape of the roofFrontal view showing the firing baysPickett-Hamilton Fort In July 1940, proposals were being circulated for the consideration of a‘disappearing pillbox’ for use in airfield defence. The pillbox would normallybe flush with the ground when not in use but had a concrete ‘lifting turret’which could be raised quickly into a firing position. The turret would be raisedby means of a hydraulic pump or, if that failed, by a hand jack. The time134required to raise the turret by hand was three minutes. The cost for each pillboxwas put at £45. Its main advantage was deemed to be that it could be sited in the middle of anaerodrome without causing obstruction during normal operations. The C-in-CHome Forces (General Ironside), attached considerable importance to thisdevice which he considered would result in the economy of troops required onthe static defence of airfields. The proposals were not greeted with universal approval by Army Commands.The C-in-C Eastern Command, Lt. Gen. Williams, was ‘… unable to agree thatthis design comes up to the necessary specification for general army purposes… It is top-heavy, and the slightest blow or rough treatment would throw themachinery out of gear.’ In December 1940 drawings for an improved version of the pillbox werebeing circulated. The internal diameter had been increased to 6ft allowing atwo- or three-man crew ample room to work in. It would be operated manuallyby the crew inside the fort pushing upwards on the roof to raise the turret withthe aid of a counterbalance weight. Tests showed that it could be raised andbrought into action by four men in about four seconds and lowered in twelveseconds. The cost of the improved fort was put at £230 - £250. Officially named the Pickett-Hamilton Counterbalance Fort, it was designedby Francis Pickett, an agricultural engineer, and Donald Hamilton, a Londonarchitect. It consisted of a cylindrical, concrete, loopholed drum which satinside a concentric concrete sleeve that was sunk below ground level. Accessinto the fort was through a hinged hatch in the roof. The manual counterbalancelift was soon replaced with a pneumatic pump and later with more efficienthydraulic machinery. Installation of the forts on airfields around the country commenced in January1941, with three forts per airfield deemed to be the minimum requirement. Themanufacturers specified eight days for the erection and testing of each fort. Present-day aerial views of the airfield site at Detling show two of the fortsextant of which I have visited one. All that is visible is the roof flush with theground surface. I lacked any tools to lift the access hatch so internal viewingwas no possible. A working example of a Pickett-Hamiliton Fort can be seen outside theLashenden Air Warfare Museum at Headcorn Airfield. The fort was oneoriginally installed at Manston in 1941. It was excavated by the RoyalEngineers in 2006 and moved to Headcorn.135A fully retracted Pickett-Hamilton Fort at Detling, The access hatch off-centre to the rightCut-away drawing showing the hydraulic lifting mechanism136The working example at Headcorn137X: RAF West Malling Defences The RAF continued to use West Malling Airfield until 1960 when it washanded over to the US Navy. They left in 1963 and the site was eventually takenover by Kent County Council. Flying continued in various forms until 1992when it was sold for development into housing and commercial offices. The site is now the parish of Kings Hill. Most of the airfield Domestic Sitebuildings remain but almost all the Technical Site infrastructure wasdemolished. Thankfully some important defensive structures survived theredevelopment.The ‘Bofors Tower’ The surviving landmark defensive structure at the site of the former airfield atKings Hill is the pair of light anti-aircraft gun towers colloquially known as ‘theBofors Tower’. Located in a wooded clearing east of the Teston Road junctionwith the A228, the structure consists of two four-legged, three-storey,reinforced concrete frames of similar dimensions each encased in brick. Eachtower is about 35 feet in height and topped with a concrete gun platform. Thetwo platforms are separated by a three-inch ‘expansion gap’. The northernmostplatform would have supported a 40 mm Bofors light anti-aircraft, whilst theother supported a predictor sight for the Bofors and possibly a Lewis gun.Internally the Bofors gun tower has floors at all levels. The other tower is openfull height to the second floor and functions as a stairwell with landings at everyhalf-level and has pairs of high level, two-light windows on the east and westelevations. Internal access from one tower to the other is by way of the floorscantilevering out from their respective towers to almost meet in the middle withjust a two-inch gap. Access to the gun platforms is by an entrance hatch on the 2nd floor of thepredictor tower. The Bofors platform is cantilevered on all four sides with anammunition locker on each corner. Long after the war someone had the rather bizarre idea of affixing plant boxesto the east elevations of both towers. The obvious problem of how the plantswere going to be watered was answered by installing an automatic irrigationsystem. The pipework for the irrigation pump is still in place in a room on theground floor of the predictor tower.138West elevationEast elevation139Landing connecting the two towers. Note the gap between the cantilevered floors.Stairwell in the predictor tower140Bofors gun platform. Note the ammunition lockers. The void in the photo was for an externalladder.Type FW3/24 Pillbox One of the few surviving airfield pillboxes can be found in a small natureconservation area off Bancroft Drive: a Type FW3/24 infantry pillbox. It washeavily modified by the Air Ministry in 1941 following a recommendation bythe G.O.C. South Eastern Command that airfield pillboxes should have theirwalls strengthened to a concrete thickness of 3 ft 6 inches. This it was hopedwould make them proof against a 20cm anti-tank gun that the Germans werebelieved to be developing at the time. To achieve this extra thickness concretepanels were added to the existing walls. It was also recommended that thenumber of loopholes be reduced to two but in this example only the oneforward-facing loophole has been left exposed which would have probablymounted a Bren or Lewis light machine-gun.141The added concrete strengthening panels can clearly be seen hereThe single remaining loophole / embrasureAirfield Battle HeadquartersIn the event of an enemy attack, the defence of the airfield would have been coordinated from the Airfield Battle Headquarters which still stands in Flite142Wood, which is in the middle of Kings Hill golf course. This structure wouldprovide a hardened and secure structure from which the Airfield DefenceOfficer could conduct the battle. It was built to an Air Ministry design (DrawingNumber 11012/41) and consists of a stairway down to four underground rooms(Messengers, PBX, Defence Officer’s and a Storeroom) and a WC, linked by ashort corridor. A metal ladder gives access to a small, square observation roomwith two embrasures in each face and one in each corner which wouldoriginally have provided a good view across the airfield. Another short metalladder gives access to the emergency escape hatch which emerges at the side ofthe observation room.Observation room and emergency escape hatch143Access stairwellView from messengers room through the hatch into the PBX room144Emergency escape hatchObservation roomPickett-Hamilton Fort By 1942 335 Pickett-Hamilton Forts had been installed in airfields across thecountry but they were still far from popular with military commanders. TheCommander of XII Corps, Lt. Gen. Thorne, considered them unsuitable for145airfield defence because of the limited accommodation inside the fort itself, thefour-inch concrete walls offering little protection against enemy fire, inadequatedrainage, and the high cost. The Commander of IV Corps, Lt. Gen, Nosworthy, felt, in addition totechnical and maintenance difficulties, that they would have a ‘pernicious,psychological influence’ on the garrisons of Young Soldier battalions who hadto protect aerodromes, who may be greatly tempted to ‘close down’ instead ofcarrying out their duties in an attack. The Commander of II Corps, Lt. Gen. Anderson, canvassed the opinion ofRAF Station Commanders in his area and reported that ‘… the Fort is in thenature of a white elephant’. The few that had been installed in his area wereeither incomplete or did not work. The C-in-C Southern Command, Lt. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, was morepositive. He thought the forts had value ‘… particularly on dome shapedaerodromes’ where they may provide the only means to bear fire over the wholesurface of the landing ground’. But even he expressed concerns over thetendency of the raising and lowering mechanism to jam when in operation. By March 1942 all the faults with the fort had been noted, one of them beingtheir inability to withstand the weight of a fully loaded four-engined bomberwhen they taxied over them. With Bomber Command now deeming them‘useless’, no more Pickett-Hamilton Forts were built. In common with other airfields where they were installed, there were threeforts at West Malling. Unfortunately, one was lost during the re-development ofthe airfield, but another was recovered and is now on display at the ImperialWar Museum at Duxford. The third fort remained in-situ and has been protectedbehind a ‘Heras’-style fence for the last seven years. It is now due to becomethe centrepiece of the new Kings Hill Park amphitheatre.146The turret of a Pickett-Hamilton Retractable Fort, fully raised and manned by a bren-gunteam of the Coldstream Guards, taken on a fighter airfield in Southern England. © IWM (CH17890)One of the West Malling forts now on display at IWM Duxford147The surviving in-situ fort safe behind a security fence in 2012148XI: School Air-Raid Shelters Despite the conditions of war, children’s education was considered asimportant as ever. Disruption to lessons, although at times inevitable, was to bekept to a minimum. Schoolchildren had to become accustomed to carrying gasmasks at all times and gas mask drills at schools became routine. KentEducation Committee issued a directive that pupils should be trained to workand play in their masks. At the outbreak of the War, cloakrooms were reinforced to provide relativelysafe refuges while more substantial surface or underground shelters were beingconstructed in school grounds. Maidstone’s two Grammar Schools were eventually provided with enoughunderground shelter space to house all their pupils and staff. During air-raidspupils and staff would move into the shelters where school lessons wouldcontinue. After the War, the shelters were either backfilled or used for storage.Fortunately, some of the shelter networks still survive and I have been fortunateto be allowed to visit those at both schools. Maidstone Grammar School During the War Maidstone Grammar School (MGS) in Barton Road providededucation for over 300 boys. The excavation of shelters had begun during theMunich Crisis of 1938 and the work accelerated after the Declaration of War in1939. The shelters extended from the School Court and continued under theplaying fields. Post-war most of the shelter entrances were backfilled and the ground abovebuilt on to accommodate the increasing numbers attending the school. However,one entrance was kept open to allow for some of the tunnels to be used forstorage. Dampness within the tunnels eventually made them unsuitable forstorage and they fell into disuse. The tunnel entrance was fenced off and sooncovered in vegetation.During 1942-43, an anti-tank ditch was excavated, and concrete obstaclesconstructed around the perimeter of the school and some of the playing field asan integral part of the defence works for Maidstone Fortress. It was with a hopeof finding some evidence of these works, that I approached the school in March2018 requesting a visit which was granted. I was made very welcome andduring an initial meeting the Headmaster, School Bursar and School Archivistthe subject of the air-raid shelters came up. Although it was previously thoughtthat the shelters were completely inaccessible, the Bursar, mentioned that shehad been down into them. The Headmaster immediately agreed that we shouldall go and take a look. The caretaker was summoned to unlock the gate to the149shelter entrance. The steps down were completely buried under years ofcomposted dead leaves but we managed to get down them into the tunnels. After a brief look around, I suggested I make an approach to the KentUnderground Research Group (KURG) for them to clear the entrance andsurvey the tunnels. This work was undertaken in October 2018. The steps andoverhanging vegetation were cleared, a survey made of the tunnels and graffitirecorded.The entrance steps to the MGS shelter after clearance in October 2018150Internal view of the MGS shelterWC cubicles in the MGS shelterMaidstone Girls Grammar School At the start of term in September 1939, Maidstone Girls Grammar School(MGGS), in Buckland Road, had over 500 pupils. Its numbers had been swollenby the arrival of 240 evacuee pupils from King’s Warren School in Plumstead.Many of the MGGS pupils had King’s Warren evacuees billeted with them intheir homes. Families had no choice in this, if they had rooms to spare. Three shelters were excavated in the school grounds, each consisting of sixtunnels. Each shelter could accommodate up to 180 pupils and staff. Eachtunnel served as a classroom with the girls sitting on benches with their backs tothe wall. In each shelter there was a small room divided into two curtained151chemical toilet cubicles. Lighting for the shelters was initially provided by oillamps but these were superseded by electrical lighting later in the war. The shelters continued in use until the end of the ‘V’ rocket weaponscampaign in the early Spring of 1945. With the end of the war the shelters wereabandoned and, in 1948, the two in the grounds at the front of the school hadtheir entrances demolished and backfilled. The remaining shelter at the rear ofthe school was used as a storeroom for many years before falling into disuse.One entrance was demolished and the other was locked-up and remained sountil about 2012 when it was re-opened. The shelter was then cleared, and anew secondary entrance built, enabling it to be used for educational purposeswhich included visits from groups from other local schools.The original entrance to the MGGS shelter152Internal view of the MGGS shelterOriginal fire blanket container in the MGGS shelter In 2019 KURG were approached by MGGS with a view to locating and reopening one of the two shelters at the front of the school whose entrances hadbeen demolished, backfilled, capped with concrete and buried in 1948. On one of the hottest days of the year in July, I found myself of the KURGteam digging out the entrance. The approximate position of the shelter itself hadalready been determined by a magnetometer survey the previous day and thepossible locations of the three original entrances identified with the help of anaerial photograph of the site from 1946. Work was begun on one of theentrances which was, thankfully, under the shade of some trees that had notbeen there in 1946. The downside of this was that the tree roots made theexcavations much more difficult. We eventually struck the concrete cap, but thisproved a formidable obstacle which could only be cut through with the aid of a153heavy-duty electric breaker which we had to go out and purchase on the day.Having broken through the cap we then came across several sections ofreinforced concrete fence posts which had been used as a base for the cap.These too had to be broken-up and the reinforcing rods cut through. It was thenthat I noticed a gap appearing and, shining my torch into it, a large voidappeared which proved to be the entrance tunnel. We cleared some of the rubblefrom the stairs and, after testing the air quality made our way into the shelter,the first people to have done so in over seventy years. Having ensured theshelters safety, we invited the school’s headteacher and some members of herstaff in to look around. The shelter was in remarkably good condition but had been left empty with nointeresting artefacts to be found. We did find some wartime graffiti on the wallsbut not as much as was evident in the other shelter. At the end of the afternoon the entrance was secured and the following dayanother KURG team undertook a detailed survey which included recording thegraffiti and constructional details. The entrance was then backfilled but itsunderstood that the school plan to restore this and another of the entrances toallow the shelter to be used for educational purposes.Some of the KURG team digging out the MGGS shelter entrance154The electric breaker gradually exposing the entrance tunnelInside view of the exposed entrance155Internal view of one of the shelter’s ‘classrooms’Pencil drawing of a glamorous looking lady found on one of the walls156SourcesPrimary sourcesThe National Archives – War Office - War Diaries and Military Headquarters PapersWO 166/1214 Home Counties (G), Nov 1939 – Dec 1940WO 166/4637 Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment Infantry Training Centre, Sept – Nov 1939WO 166/521 44th Division, General Staff, Aug – Nov 1939WO 166/3729 R.E. 260 Field Coy Sept 1939 – Dec 1941WO 166/72 Eastern Command HQ (G) 1940WO 166/344 XII Corps, General Staff, Aug 1940 – Dec 1941WO 166/2026 920 Defence Battery, R.A., Sept 1940 – Mar 1941WO 166/4647 70 Bn Royal West Kent Regt. Sept 1940 – Dec 1941WO 166/1216 Kent Area HQ Jan – Nov 1941WO 166/1304 Maidstone Sub-Area HQ June – Dec 1941WO 166/6044 South Eastern Command (G) 1942WO 166/6048 South Eastern Command, Royal Engineers 1942WO 166/6149 XII Corps (G) Jan – Dec 1942WO 166/6153 XII Corps Chief Engineer 1942WO 166/6154 XII Corps HQ Royal Engineers 1942WO 166/6760 Maidstone Sub-Area HQ Jan – Dec 1942WO 166/6870 Maidstone Garrison Apr – Dec 1942WO 166/8168 R.E. 260 Field Coy. Jan – Dec 1942WO 166/10438 XII Corps (G) 1943WO 166/10851 East Kent District (G) May – Dec 1943WO 166/10983 Maidstone Sub-District 1943WO 166/11045 Maidstone Garrison Jan – Dec 1943WO 199/21 GHQ South Eastern Command – Defence of Airfields Mar – May 1941WO 199/36 GHQ Home Forces – Defence Works – Construction of Concrete Pillboxes Aug 1940 – Jul 1944WO 199/44 GHQ Home Forces – Concrete Defences Policy Jul – Sept 1941WO 199/48 GHQ Home Forces – Defence Works Jun 1940 – Apr 1942WO 199/51 GHQ Home Forces – Defence Works – Roadblocks Jun 1940 – Jul 1941WO 199/54 GHQ Home Forces – Defence Works – Scheme of Anti-Tank Obstacles Jun 1940 – Mar 1943WO 199/55 GHQ Home Forces – Defence Works – Construction of GHQ Zones Jun 1940 – Jun 1943WO 199/544 GHQ Home Forces – Keeps and Fortified Villages Sept 1940 – Oct 1942WO 199/1433 HQ Northern Command – Chemical Warfare – Flame Fougasses Jul 1940 – Jun 1942WO 199/1779 HQ Southern Command – Pillboxes – Employment in Defence Jul 1940 – Sept 1941WO 199/2527 HQ Eastern Command – R.E. – Pillboxes October 1941 – October 1944WO 199/2577 HQ South Eastern Command – Defence Areas Mar 1941WO 199/2578 HQ South Eastern Command - Defence Areas Sept 1941 – Nov 1943WO 199/2599 HQ South Eastern Command – Liaison with Civil Authorities Jul – Dec 1941The National Archives – Cabinet Office PapersCAB 120/375 Minister of Defence Secretariat – Weapons and Munitions – Anti-Tank Weapons - “BlackerBombard” Mortar Oct 1940 – Mar 1943Secondary Sources – BibliographyAlexander, Colin – Ironside’s Line (Historic Military Press 1999)Boorman, H.R.P. – Hell’s Corner 1940 (Kent Messenger)Brooks, Robin J. – From Moths to Merlins, The Story of West Malling Airfield (Meresborough Books 1987)Gulvin, K.R. – Kent Home Guard (North Kent Books 1980)Moor, Anthony J. – Detling Airfield (Amberley Publishing 2011)Ruddy, Austin J. – British Anti-Invasion Defences 1940-1945 (Historic Military Press 2003)Wynne, G.C. -- Stopping Hitler (Frontline Books 2017)157Francis, P. – West Malling Bofors Tower Condition Survey (Airfield Research Group – Airfield Review, March2019)Kent County Council – KENT The County Administration in War 1939-1945 (Kent County Council 1946)Internet ResourcesArchaeology Data Services (https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/)British Army Officers 1939-1945 (https://www.unithistories.com/officers/Army_officers_A01.html)Imperial War Museum Collections (https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections)Kent County Council Heritage Maps(https://webapps.kent.gov.uk/KCC.HeritageMaps.Web.Sites.Public/Default.aspx)Kent Photo Archive (http://www.kentphotoarchive.com/kpa/desktopindex.php)Land Forces of Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth(http://web.archive.org/web/20070622075214/http://www.regiments.org/)
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
How can two hamlets, only one mile apart, vary so much? This became an intriguing question to the author who originally was researching just Upton and the family that owned and farmed the land around the hamlet of Upton in the parish of St Peter and between St Peter and Broadstairs in Thanet. Later, a second hamlet was discovered, Hollicondane in the parish of St Lawrence in Ramsgate, and the following is a report on both and their similarities and differences, mainly the latter.
DISCOVERING & RECORDING TWO QUITE DIFFERENT LOSTHAMLETS IN THANET NORTH-EAST KENTIntroductionHow can two hamlets, only one mile apart, vary so much? This became an intriguing questionto the author who originally was researching just Upton and the family that owned and farmedthe land around the hamlet of Upton in the parish of St Peter and between St Peter andBroadstairs in Thanet. Later, a second hamlet was discovered, Hollicondane in the parish of StLawrence in Ramsgate, and the following is a report on both and their similarities anddifferences, mainly the latter.How it came aboutThe Trust for Thanet Archaeology (TTA) excavated the grounds of Upton House in the parishof St Peter the Apostle, Thanet in 2006 where the dozen ‘executive’ houses of Upton Grangeare now. As a member of the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Society (IOTAS) the author offereda few hours of help. Across the road was Little Upton a seventeenth century former farmhousewith a curvilinear gable which formed part of the author’s study of Dutch gabled houses inKent for Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 136 2015.Researching another feature in the area for an article for the IOTAS magazine the author wasediting, a stranger involuntarily kick-started an investigation when permission was asked to gointo her rear garden. This to view a folly (one of three) spotted 30 years before by the authorfrom the squash courts in the grounds of Wellesley House School Broadstairs. The author wasallowed to borrow the deeds to her property which included a plan of Upton Lodge and itsornate grounds and other details of which the author was unaware as the Lodge is nowsurrounded by bungalows. He realised that here was another part of a settlement that hasvirtually disappeared from O.S. maps having been absorbed by the expansion of Broadstairsbut is remembered by Upton Road and School, the latter built on the fields of the former farm.The author was fortunate to know several of the residents of the former Upton and knocked ontheir doors. Research deepened and a letter to a local newspaper led to the former owner of thedemolished Upton House making contact, fortunately another former squash player! Theevidence for the Hamlet of Upton was slowly uncovered piece by piece - both standing andlost buildings.The name of Goodson appeared more and more and was the family that farmed the area overat least four generations. Intrigued, research into the Goodsons revealed that the family waspresent in Thanet for over four hundred years although the name has since disappeared inThanet. The Upton Goodsons provided at least two churchwardens to St Peter’s church, aWilliam Goodson paid £69=15=10 in ‘Poors rates’ (poor relief) in 1729 and Edward S.Goodson paid towards a new bell at the same church in 1892.A William Goodson, farmer, was buried at St Lawrence parish in nearby Ramsgate and aninspection of the gravestone revealed that he died in 1876 and was from ‘Hollicondane’ a nameknown to the author who had noted numerous different spellings over the years, without fullyrealising what the name comprised. Hollicondane was a farm and hamlet apparently so itseemed a good idea to compare the two.UPTONThe Surviving PropertiesUpton Lodge: at the eastern end of the hamlet ‘Listed Grade II probably 18th century refaced mid19th century with later 19th century extension at rear’ - English Heritage; but considerably alteredbefore and after a fire in the 1950’s. The authentic looking garage having new wood andrendered breeze blocks under the period tiles. Ornate grounds of ‘6 acres and 24 poles’1 with thethree follies (see Lost Properties below) were sold off mid twentieth century and are now hometo 33 bungalows. A nineteenth century journal2 states: ‘Robert Pricket Esq., has also made UptonCottage a delightful summer residence’ – research has finally revealed that Upton Cottage was infact the Lodge as the 1849 Isle of Thanet Directory, page 82, lists a Bernard Hebeler there –see below. The present Upton Cottage was two small cottages in the 19th-century (see below).Given the above, and the fact that the Lodge has a tunnel and was probably an agriculturalbuilding originally (see next paragraph) and it is possible that the original building on the siteis at least as old as English Heritage credit if not older. An 1822 map of the hamlet does notshow it however. Past residents include Bernard Hebeler and family of German origin; also,Louisa Noott who had a window installed in St Peter’s church for her son lost in World War I.By 1897 only Mrs Hebeler (nee Pricket) is listed there. The adjacent Weasel Cottage c.1888housed the Lodge’s gardeners; the Weasel name comes from Frank Goodson whose nicknamewas ‘weasel’ (and occupied it when built) according to local Derek Austin. Two spaciousmodern bungalows now separate them.A footpath runs in a straight line between Upton Lodge and a former windmill (removed c.1910) behind the Bradstow Mill (formerly Clarendon Hotel) pub in the High Street Broadstairsand the line is respected by the railway (built 1846, Broadstairs station opened 1863) andVictorian Gladstone Road. There are remains of a kissing gate (to allow people but not animalsto cross the line) which was erected by the railway, now mostly ivy covered and using railwaylines as posts, indicating agricultural use of the land abutting the railway and a possibleagricultural origin of the Lodge.Little Upton: Listed Grade II, circa 16753 built in brick (with flint low down to the south) witha curvilinear gable to the east, much extended to west, north and south, under a tiled roof withboundary walls of flint with a little clunch. A modern conservatory has been built over a well.The rear boundary wall to north has a blocked gateway to the ancient thoroughfare (see below).A photograph circa1900 exists also apainting showingbuildings which havegone. Formerlyknown as PimlicoFarm according to anelderly resident4whose grandfatherworked there, alsonoted in pencil on anold plan.Note the house in thisphoto circa 1900courtesy of DerekAusten.The Cottage: of varied dates and materials; originally a single storey farm building mostlikely; extended and raised to two floors and became 1 and 2 Upton Cottages. Knapped flint,unknapped flint, cream bricks (and tiles in part), orangey red bricks, yellow brick and a smallarea of clunch whilst two boundary walls are unknapped flintwith four small peachy hued bricks (7”x1½”) in part (photoright) plus 9”x2½” red bricks in another area and red roofingtiles low down - comprises a puzzling mix of materials. Similarcolour and size bricks 7”x1½” are in the porch of St Peter’sFarmhouse which is plaque dated 1682; can one deduce that theycame from a demolished seventeenth building nearby? Also, inthe boundary wall is a blocked up Victorian Royal Mail post boxindicating that there was enough business for one in the past.The author helped the owner clear undergrowth to enable ageophysical survey by five IOTAS members in March 2014 ofa small part of the garden which revealed a buried (probablyVictorian) path in concrete with glazed barley twist edging butlittle else.Documents held at Daniel & Edwards (solicitors) and deeds to the building seen show that itwas sold from the Upton Estate in 1932 and sold again to Alan (a motor engineer) Frederickand Marjorie Joyce Pickett who bought the two cottages on 5 September 1955 and convertedthem into one soon after. Thecottage was empty by 2013, boughtin 2014 and is currently beingrestored and modernised (2017).The variety of materials in the walls of TheCottage (originally 1 & 2 Upton Cottages).The Cottage before restoration.Oast house: Listed Grade II, probably eighteenth century, mainly brick but again with flintlower down under a tiled roof, the oast vent roof being slate; converted into Upton farmhousein 1935 (when the roof was raised?) for Frank Goodson upon the sale of Upton House. It isnow living accommodation for staff of Wellesley House School who own it. A two-stallwooden stable survives but a cottage shown on the 1842 tithe map behind the white wall hasgone.To the immediate east is:Minters: circa 1770. Originally two small workman’s cottages (according to documents heldat Daniel & Edwards) mostly in flint with brick on 1st floor in front and dressings under a slateroof and extended at rear. Once known as Hogbins Cottages, the name was changed when theywere converted and modernised for the family of Edward Minter Goodson. Land to the eastonce extended to Weasel Cottage and housed their well but now houses a modern bungalownamed Clynder.Orchard Cottage: circa 1760 and of the same period as Minters next door and has the samewall construction of flint (some knapped some unknapped) with brick window and doorsurrounds under a slate roof (and a modern extension at rear and to side). There are no windowsto the north (the road) and being single storey, the cottage matches two farm buildings at nearbyWestwood. However, the owner believes it to have always been domestic accommodation andthe 1842 tithe mapindicates that it was at thatdate. A garden feature inflint 12.5 x 7.5 metres isbelieved by the owner tobe a former barn but is notrecorded on old maps andcould be a sunken gardenfeature. The 1896 6” to 1-mile Ordnance Surveymap (viewed online)shows it as a pond. Aneighbour can remember a previous female owner housing her mini car in the formerly openwestern end - note the roof.N.B. This was possibly 9, Upton Cottage originally, mentioned in documents for which theauthor cannot find another candidate. No document mentions 7 & 8, Upton Cottages.5 and 6 Upton Cottages: Local List, built circa 18605 are alongside Little Upton and EnglishHeritage say ‘as one with Little Upton’ which is some 190 years earlier! In yellow brick and flintunder a tiled roof extended at the rear. Records show that these along with other Upton Cottages(see under Lost Properties below) were for the persons employed by the Goodsons or membersof the Goodson family.4, Fair Street: age unknown as very much altered but is confirmed as being originally theslaughter house for Upton Farm by a surviving bill to Goodsons Estate Upton (dated March1931) for alterations to Slaughter House and stable. The owner Mr P. Locke remembers furtherdemolished buildings behind his property – see Lost Properties. The boundary wall to number2, Fair Street incorporates possible walls of lost buildings.Other Surviving FeaturesA North – South thoroughfare: an ancient route between the Reading Street area in the northof Thanet to the west of Ramsgate in the south was possibly Iron Age in origin 6 and was shownto have been metalled by the Romans by the author7 in the northern part at least. It passesthrough Upton at the west end and a part of this route is called Upton Road (from the LittleAlbion pub to Upton) but was truncated in the 1930’s by the Broadstairs to Margate Road (StPeter’s bypass) which was built on Goodson’s land. Another footpath went direct from Uptonto St Peters church 900 metres distant to the north west.The route from Louisa Bay, Broadstairs to Upton (used by the Goodsons to cart seaweedaccording to Thomas Pointer), is uphill all the way and shows Upton (high farm or settlement)which is on a plateau, to be an accurate name. There are at least 36 Uptons in England.The Lost Properties:Upton House and associated farm buildings: TR: 38531 67674 substantial, mid nineteenthcentury brick-built house, demolished by October 2006; it almost certainly replaced the originalfarmhouse as there were wooden agricultural buildings included in the grounds of two acres 26perches, and a plan shows thefarmyard and pond in front of thehouse. The Goodsons sold (fromDaniel & Edwards records) UptonHouse on 5 March 1933 toFlorence Dipple for £1,750; whosold around 1952 to Moss-VernonPhillip, who sold to Mr and DrWatson in the late 1950’s. TheWatsons sold to another formersquash player (who wishes toremain anonymous) in November1978 and he remembers theassociated wooden buildings, one on stadle stones (mushrooms); fortunately, he also has apainting from 1988, by the late John Foot, of the house (reproduced with permission of thehouse’s former owner). The house was sold in August 2002 to Bill Wilsmer, builder who soldon to Millwood Homes who built a dozen executive homes on the site.Pig sties: There were a range of pig sties along Vale Road to the immediate east of the farmand between it and part of the way to the Oast House where a row of bungalows now sitaccording to resident Steve Cawood who occupies one of the bungalows. See also below underUpton Farm.Dutch barn, stables and other possible buildings behind 4, Fair Street.Brazier Farm: Demolished 1861, was located somewhere behind 4, Fair Street according totwo sources 8, The author is unable to locate any other details. A 1947 photograph from PeterLocke shows a Dutch barn roof shape dimly in the background which Peter of 4, Fair Streetremembers. A painting 9 shows another building that may have been part of Brazier Farm – allnow lost.3 and 4 Upton Cottages: stood partly on the new green facing Broadstairs and the divertedroad and were built in 1861 10 in brick behind a flint boundary wall on Brazier Farm land anda surviving photograph corroborates the materials. Demolished in the 1960’s when the roadwas diverted to allow access to a new mini estate.Anecdotal accounts from a number of local residentstestify to the disappearance of stables and similarbuildings including a greenhouse in the area of LittleUpton, the latter now a private house. One stablehoused the donkeys that were hired out on Broadstairsbeach.Upton Lodge grounds: A long lean-to greenhouse inthe formal grounds of Upton Lodge has gone but thehigh rear wall remains in the garden of a bungalow inGladstone Road as does the square concrete base of afolly. The one surviving folly (pictured left) is in agarden of Holm Oak Gardens.Upton Farm/Estate: In the Goodson family for atleast four generations; varied considerably in size andacreage over the decades, now built over mostly bybungalows but also houses, Upton School and ‘Our Lady Star of the Sea’ a Catholic Church.Latterly (early twentieth century) the Goodsons appear to have invested in newly built housesin Upton Road (nos. 37,39,41) and four plots in the Round Hill Estate (Pierremont Avenueand/or King Edward Road) all sold from 1921 onwards. The estate (including the replacementUpton Farm) was sold off from 1920 to 1957 in over 30 lots. The final sale by order of theGoodson Trustees by auction conducted by co*ckett, Henderson & Co., of High StreetBroadstairs on 18 October 1960 consisted of Oast cottage, 9, Upton Cottage (not identified –possibly Orchard Cottage or demolished cottage alongside the Oast), farmyard, two barns, pigsties, cart shed and stabling. The solicitors acting were Daniel & Edwards, of Ramsgate, thepresent Mr Daniel kindly making available all the documents where they acted for theGoodsons which list much of the above information and much more. The sale beat the reserveof £6,000 by £1,300.Documentary & Literary sources:R/U774/T655 Kent History & Library Centre, Maidstone. Title Broadstairs: Three parcels ofland (3 acres) at Upton. 1700Lewis 1736 p.168 “Upton or Uptown” [also lists “Dumpton or Downtown”].Indenture 1796: Upton. Land Tax 1798: Upton.Hasted 1800 p.356 “several small hamlets and houses interspersed throughout it [St Peters] …Upton”. Census return 1871: Upton Hamlet. Plus, many more recent entries.HOLLICONDANEBy chance, while investigating the Goodsons at Upton, the author learnt of a William Goodson,farmer, who died in 1876 and was buried at St Lawrence, part of Ramsgate. The author decidedto try and locate his grave in St Lawrence churchyard and remarkably the gravestone was quiteclearly legible and stated:IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM GOODSON LATE OF HOLLICANDANE WHO DEPARTED THISLIFE DECEMBER 16TH 1876 AGED 76 YEARSThe author was aware of Hollicondane in St Lawrence parish from previously studying oldmaps where 22 different spellings have been noted. See article in July 2017 KAS Newsletter(the 22nd spelling noted since that article - see below). The whole site and area is now ownedby St Lawrence College a prestigious private school with all their auxiliary buildings, the JuniorSchool located on the site of the previous farm buildings to the south of College Road, whilethe farmhouse (TR:38079 66055) to the north of the road has gone to be replaced by otherschool buildings including accommodation. Kelly’s Directory - Isle of Thanet 1928 lists aHollicondane Lane as being from 129, Margate Road to Leonards Avenue which is the presentCollege Road while early maps do not name the road whilst naming other roads in the areawhich indicates that it was only a narrow track or lane (and drawn as such) until the majordeveloping of St Lawrence College. At its eastern end, College Road has a junction with HollyRoad which again in 1872 was depicted as narrow and labelled FP.The Surviving Property‘Potato’ Store: The one survivor of thefarm is a small single storey rectangularbuilding 17’x14’ (5.3x4.3 metres) inyellow brick with vents in the gables andnarrow slit vents (now bricked up) in frontand a 43” wide doorway with a well-wornwooden door, all under a corrugated roof.A long-term employee of the collegestated it was the potato store. All of thecollege buildings built until the late 20thcentury are in red brick. This smallbuilding is visible on the O.S. 1872 6” toone-mile map. The ‘Potato’ store right.The Lost PropertiesHollicondane Farm: A brief description of the building is given in literary sources below. “Inearly October 1865, a large fire occurred at Hollicondane Farm”11 fortunately the house wassaved although a barn, a wheat stack and two sheep were lost. The report mentions an adjoiningfarm which is otherwise unknown unless it is Newlands Grange half a mile away. NewlandsSchool, immediately north of Hollicondane Farm and on its land, was originally HollicondaneJunior School when it opened in April 1949. The farm buildings were south across what is nowCollege Road and under the College Junior School.Very little other evidence of a hamlet can be found apart from the farm and a public housecalled Hollicondane Tavern. There was a tavern at least by 1867 when the owner applied for aspirit licence – possibly located in one of the two or four cottages, mentioned below, as wasthe custom in some rural areas; it was replaced by a handsome late nineteenth century building,and displayed an eye-catching sign, but closed late 1990’s and was demolished in 2009. 12 The1872 Ordnance Survey 6” map only shows the farm buildings and notes Hollicondane Tavernalongside – no other buildings depicted. A photograph of the tavern and sign was in theSummer 2017 KAS Newsletter. The catchment area was rural but the nearby RamsgateMunicipal Cemetery, Lime Works and Brickfields are shown on the O. S. map plus the JewishCemetery (founded 1872) in Dumpton Park Road, (nearby and on the line of the ancienttrackway) not shown, would have had labourers that possibly provided the customers. TheThanet Directory and Guide 1883-4 under Villas, Terraces etc., lists 1-4 Hollicondane Cottages(and Hollicondane House presumably the farm) which are not shown on the 1896 O.S. map. Aterrace of ten houses close by to the east were built after the 1896 map (c.1900) as were 13 inan unmade road to this day, known as Leonards Avenue.Literary sources:In addition to those listed in July 2017 KAS Newsletter.Not mentioned in Lewis.1796 Indenture …”place there called Halicandane in the Tenure or occupation of EdwardTroward”. N.B. A William Goodson married Alice Troward in 1717.Hasted 1800 p.378 “… small hamlets or knots of houses…. Hallicandane.”Fragments of History of Ramsgate by C.T. Richardson 1885. “A James Woolcot is in residenceat Hollicondane in 1885 listed under Sir Moses Montefiore Ward”.Cotton’s History of St Lawrence 1895 p. 236 “In 1620 Alexandra Goodson rated for 38 acres”[under Northwood]; p.237 “Hollicondane, called by Philipott in his map of Kent Howling Lanebut more likely it was originally Holticum Dane i.e. Grove of the Danes [on what evidence?]farm house in a hollow is brick with gables and string course and is dated 1678 and there areone or two cottages of about the same date.”13 A footnote states: “In the Church Rate Bookunder 1617 it is spelt Howlettendane”. Archaeologia Cantiana vol. 22 1897 p.3. Mr. W. H.Hills kindly furnishes particulars of the discovery at Hollicondane, midway between thathamlet and Dumpton, south east [sic] from Ramsgate.One might expect these two hamlets to be similar, but there are more differences thansimilarities.SimilaritiesBoth hamlets were farmed by the same family (at least for a while at Hollicondane) but bothlost their Goodson families. There are no Goodsons in Thanet or northeast Kent now, the lastburial was in St Peters in 1971 and Mr M. Daniel of solicitors Daniel & Edwards in Ramsgateremembers an elderly Goodson living at Wingham when Mr Daniel was a young articled clerkso probably in the 1970’s. See footnote below.The ancient north south trackway that passed Upton on its western edge, passed Hollicondaneto the east within 200 metres and members of the Goodson families could walk between thetwo farms in approximately 20 minutes (much less by horse); the route has been slightlydiverted at Dumpton by modern development after the demolition of West Dumpton Farmwhich appears to have been built over the trackway. A practise Ivan Margery, the Roman Roadexpert noticed elsewhere.Despite the encroaching urbanisation, the sites of both former farmhouses are still only half akilometre or less from farmland. Hollicondane less than 300 metres to the south of NewlandGrange’s land, Upton just 500 metres to the south of Bromstone Road which is the north ofNewland’s land.Three Middle Bronze Age barrows were found in the Hollicondane area with burials andsettlement finds nearby; also, Romano-British pottery, coins and skeletons were found underthe College grounds/buildings in 1890 at the western end. 14.Upton was on the probable Iron Age route with third and fourth century Romano-British findsindicating a building nearby. 15. There is then a long gap in historical evidence of settlement atboth Hollicondane and Upton although settlement is likely to have been continuous at bothsites, particularly Upton.Farming has always been an unpredictable means of earning a living as income is dependenton the price of produce which can vary enormously from year to year. Demand can also affectwhat is produced. The rise of Broadstairs and the other coastal towns as resorts meant anincreased demand from hoteliers for fresh produce such as vegetables, bacon and eggs plusmilk although the east of Thanet is generally too dry for dairy but see Quested below.Anyone visiting Thanet today will be unlikely to spot any livestock apart from horses forpleasure riding; whereas as recently as 1891 Quested lists 1,200 cows and calves, 940 workinghorses, 21,000 sheep and 3,000 pigs in Thanet. 16 She also states that from the 1930’s smallfarms were disappearing fast from 193 in 1951 to 96 in 1971. By 1947 the optimum farm sizewas already over 400 acres p. 237. Edward Goodson at Upton in the 1839 tithe, owned 119acres two roods and 39 perches but farmed as a tenant a further 34 acres, one rood and 16perches a total of 154 acres. William Goodson at Hollicondane in the 1840 tithe farmed 107acres two roods and 32 perches so was considerably less; consequently, if farm prices realisedfell short of costs 17 both farmers were heading for trouble.DifferencesUpton was overtaken by urban expansion of Broadstairs – the Upton Estate being sold pieceby piece over forty years from 1920 to 1960 – to supplement falling farm income?Hollicondane was bought up by South Eastern College (now St Lawrence College) over only13 years – 1880 to 1893; an early sale being in 1865 to an individual. 18. See final paragraphbelow.Only two spellings of Upton are recorded - Upton and Uptown whereas at least twenty-twospellings of Hollicondane are recorded over 400 years. Why? Four syllables instead of twopossibly leading to scribal error. Maybe a smaller hamlet had fewer notable features i.e. no orvery few signs to the hamlet of Hollicondane? Possibly originally the farmer/s and or occupantsat Hollicondane had an accent that early cartographers could not easily understand - possiblyoriginally from across the North Sea via Sandwich which had a noted influx; or a combinationof the above.Variable pronunciations could hardly lead to the variable early spellings of Howlettendane,Howling, Hollow then Hollowcombe (both parts can indicate a valley) becomingHollicondane; but this is not so surprising perhaps especially as the farm was in a dip and thefields of the farm occupied the valley ‘in front’ of the farm to the south with the high groundof Newlands Farm and school (originally Hollicondane School) behind. The common placename Holcombe indicates a deep or hollow valley according to The Oxford Names Companion.Howlett Zoo near Littlebourne is another example of the earliest version, the meaningunknown. The frequency of ‘Dane’ in Thanet place names (Dane Court, Dane Park etc.,) needsfurther investigation – a corruption of ‘dene’ or might this be a leftover of the Vikingsoverwintering in Thanet in ad 850?19.Upton is on a high plateau, Hollicondane Farm’s fields roll down into a valley and up the otherside to Boundary Road – Ramsgate’s early boundary. See maps in KAS Newsletter Summer2017 p. 6 to 8.The tiny hamlet of Hollicondane had a pub but the larger hamlet of Upton did not, their nearestbeing the Little Albion (due north on the ancient track) some 450 metres away and built in themid nineteenth century replacing an earlier building. While there are photos and paintings ofsome of Upton’s lost buildings, there is a complete lack of pictorial evidence of Hollicondaneapart from the Victorian era public house.Upton has nine surviving buildings (as presently arranged) that are nineteenth century orearlier; whereas Hollicondane has only one – the ‘potato’ store.An indenture at Kent History and Library Centre Maidstone, U774T85B dated 11 June 1864lists seven Goodsons and one-in-law (Gibbons) on the one part plus William Goodson “andthose listed above” in 3rd part. A possible explanation of this is the lack of credit available inthe first half of the nineteenth century; ‘two or three must join in unless he were known to bea man of substance’.20.In the 1870’s cheap wheat started being imported from the USA cutting the profit of UK wheatfarmers – did William (he died in 1876 aged 76) experience this? Mockett’s Journal mentionsthat smallpox killed several young men in 1876. Hollicondane Farm finally came to an endprobably because of the following noted by Quested. In 1892 to 1895 a combination of fallingcorn prices, drought over three years and two severe winters with a collapse in hop prices ledto a crisis and the sale of nineteen farms in Thanet. 21.Upton survived, the oast house becomingredundant. Further contributing factors possibly were noticeable population changes; thepopulation of Kent rose by over 107% 1891 – 1981 22 and between 1851 and 1900 there was asmall decline in the rural population but a rise in the urban population of circa 20% a decade,partly through people moving to better paying work in towns. 23ConclusionTwo hamlets 1.75 kilometres (a few feet over one mile) apart, would perhaps be expected tobe similar in all main respects, but the above indicates that these two hamlets, both connectedby farming on the same chalk lands, are different. One reason may be that Hollicondane wasbordered by Newlands Grange that received tithes (from both farms) so was presumably alwaysbigger and more important than surrounding farms. Upton, on the other hand was in the middleof numerous small farms (and fields) in the nineteenth century (23 in a 1½ mile or 2⅓ kilometrecircumference around Upton according to the author’s calculations, now five) which may haveenabled an easier accumulation of land. The land holdings at Upton in fact varied considerablyover the years with apparent frequent acquiring and disposing of land (including on themainland) also renting from and to others indicated by documents from Daniel & Edwards,tithe lists and demonstrated by maps of their holdings at Kent History and Library Centre atMaidstone. Unfortunately, this level of detail is not available for Hollicondane.Another item of note from the Upton study is the practice of farmer’s daughters retaining theirparent’s surname as a middle name after marriage: e.g. Kezia Minter Goodson (1816 baptisedIckham) married Edward Goodson farmer of Upton in 1836 and was buried at Preston 1906.The Minters farmed the Ickham area as their numerous graves and vaults at Ickham churchyardindicate. Harriot Mascal Goodson (1869 – 1935) married Kezia and Edward’s son also anEdward farming at Upton. Mascals were local farmers at Dumpton and Northwood.Footnote on the Goodsons. Investigations into the Goodsons continues and will, hopefully, intime, lead to a further report. We know that the Goodsons were in Thanet before 1599 as areport in Archaeologia Cantiana vol.26 p.39, 1904 (Archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘court’) showsthat a John Goodson was in St Nicholas at Wade Thanet in 1598 and records from CanterburyCathedral archives show that Alexander Goodson of St. Peter’s(where he died in 1622) marriedParnell Croft at Woodnesborough in 1617 and that the Goodsons were then in St Peters until1971. Investigations are hampered by there being so many Edwards and Williams farming atSt Peters one after the other.William Goodson of Hollicondane (9 February 1800 to 16 December 1876) known as theYounger was bequeathed c. 45 acres at Hollicondane (plus c.48 acres near Spratling Street, 7acres at Newington and 2½ acres at Liberty Way, Ramsgate) by William the Elder (c.1768 to10 March 1854 who farmed Upton which he bequeathed in his will dated 10 August 1821 toanother son Edward (c.1806 to 11 May 1878); and the 1843 tithe lists William of Hollicondanefarming 107 acres although not all at Hollicondane. In the 1849 Isle of Thanet Directory a JohnGoodson was listed as farmer at Hollycondane [sic] presumably a brother as tenant? As seenabove William’s gravestone states ‘late of Hollicandane’ [sic]. More work is required on theGoodsons!ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe residents, past and present, of Upton particularly Nick who is tackling The Cottage, AndyRolfe, Derek Austin, Peter Saunders and Peter Locke; Mr Daniel of Daniel & Edwards whomade available the numerous documents relating to The Upton Estate and the Goodson familywho ran it, also Hollicondane; Jenny Price of IOTAS for Goodson research (ongoing); Dr RobIrwin for constructive analysis. Andrew Brown of St Lawrence College for details of purchasesby the College, Broadstairs and Margate Libraries, finally the helpful staff of Kent History &Library Centre, Maidstone. Perhaps thanks most of all to Barbara Williamson who entrustedme with her deeds which eventually led to this study.NOTES1 From sale deeds 1 July 1910 Sutton to Noott.2 John Mockett 1775 – 1848 a St Peters farmer whose family ran the Hopeville Farm from 1625, wrote a detailedjournal published in 1836 – on the final page.3 Nick Dermot, former Conservation Officer of Thanet District Council who believes the boundary walls are olderthan the house.4 Mr Derek Austen who provided other anecdotal evidence of the area.5 According to memoirs of Thomas Pointer (1837 – 1912) who worked for the Goodsons at Upton from 1858 to1909, who noted 3 & 4 Upton Cottages were built in 1861 (sold by the Goodsons in the 1930’s, demolished in the1960’s) and a surviving photo of 3 & 4 shows they were of similar construction to 5 & 6.6 Gerald Moody TTA Upton House excavation report.7 ARA News (Association for Roman Archaeology Issue 24 September 2010 – Roman Finds in Thanet GordonTaylor and verified in KAS Newsletter Autumn 2011 Roman Thanet Revealed by Moody TTA.8 Thomas Pointer’s mother ‘and many generations’ were born there. Peter Locke of 4, Fair Street has a 1947photo showing dimly the Dutch barn in the deep snow of that winter.9 Drawn and engraved by Geo Walker, published 1 June 1812 entitled ‘Upton near St Peters’.10 See note 5.11 Thanet’s Victorian Fire Brigades by Robert Varnham (IOTAS) 2010, p. 45.12 Old Ramsgate Pubs by Michael Mirams. Photo by Brian Curtis courtesy of the Inn Sign Society.13 The date and description of the farmhouse indicates that it may have had curvilinear gables, a style nearing theend of its popularity at that period - Archaeologia Cantiana vol. 136 p.271 study by Gordon Taylor.14 Archaeologia Cantiana vol.130 p.307 Dr Dave Perkins; Thanet Sites & Monuments record 91 IOTAUnit.Exact site not noted but the Lidar map indicates barrows on Newland Grange land to the north.15 Gerald Moody TTA Upton House excavation report.16 Rosemary K.I. Quested, The Isle of Thanet Farming Community 1996. A comprehensive historical coverageof the local farming scene; unfortunately for this study’s point of view, her focus tends toward west Thanet andHollicondane is not mentioned and the Goodsons/Upton only twice.17 ibid. p.235.18 Records of purchases by South Eastern College supplied by Andrew Brown of St Lawrence College.19 The Isle of Thanet by Gerald Moody TTA p.172.20 Quested p.106 quoting Cramp 1833.21 ibid. p.162.22 The Isles – A History by Norman Davies 1999/2000 p.807.23 ibid p.648.© D. Gordon Taylor 2018An amusing tale, of some age, having been noted in an 1884 History of Ramsgate by DrRichardson, on the origin of the names Hereson (a nearby hamlet) and Hollicondane can befound by Googling the following: www.thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/hereson-andhollicondane.html.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
Searching for Ebony‘Remember the former things of old’A long-lost village on an inland islandTithe Map of Ebony published in 1843. ®Tenterden and District Museum.Details of the map can be viewed on the interactive digital images display at Tenterdenand District Museum (www.tenterdenmuseum.co.uk). The Ebony Tithe Award Schedulesare on-line at http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Maps/EBO/01.htmPublished by the Kent Archaeological Society 2018Text: Paul Tritton. Research: Pat Tritton. © Kent Archaeological Society unless otherwise attributed.Design: Katie Grocott Murdoch.All images ®Kent Archaeological Society unless otherwise attributed. Cover photo of St Mary’s, Reading Street © Stuart Kirk.Apologies for inadvertent infringements of Reproduction rights to images whose provenance could not be established.Grateful thanks for information and/or images received from Dr Nick Hudd and Dr Jack Gillett (Tenterden and District LocalHistory Society), Tim and Marylyn Bacon, Ivor Body, Miriam Bowley (‘Outlook on Oxney’), Debbie Greaves (Tenterden andDistrict Museum), Dr Adrian Greaves, David Fletcher (Oxney Local History Society), Alan Anstee, Ted Connell, Gerald Cramp,Keith Parfitt, Victor Smith (Kent Archaeological Society), Mark Binns, Christopher Robinson, Emma Sivyer (CanterburyDiocese), Paul Evans (Army Museums’ Ogilby Trust), Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Kasey Ball, James Corrin,Maurice Dalton, Richard Diedo, Donald Duffus, Homewood School, ‘Kent Fallen’ website, Brian Janes (The Colonel StephensRailway Museum), Kent History and Library Centre, Colonel Anthony Kimber, Stuart Kirk, Jo Kirkham (Rye Museum), BarryLane, Andrew Miles, National Army Museum, Derek J. Paine, Chris Pursglove, Emma Richardson, roll-of-honour.com, RoyalSussex Regimental Collection, Clive Sinclair, Lorna Turney, Robert Watsham, David Weller, Jamie Whittle, Gillian Whittle,Primrose Wyborn.Chapel Bank, site of the lost village of EbonyiContentsIntroduction Page iiChapter One: Along Kent’s ancient ‘ghost coast’ Page 3Chapter Two: Ebony’s first parish church Page 5Chapter Three: The end of an estuary Page 8Chapter Four: The church that crossed the water Page 12Chapter Five: In search of Ebony Page 19Chapter Six: St Mary’s today Page 23Chapter Seven: Wartime Ebony Page 26Chapter Eight: Some Ebony families Page 33Chapter Nine: Anniversaries, events and pilgrimages Page 42Chapter Ten: Family histories on Chapel Bank Page 46Appendix 1Baptisms, marriages and burials Page 49Appendix 2 (compiled by Dr Jack Gillett)Clergy of St Mary the Virgin, Ebony, since 1858 Page 52Appendix 3The Medieval Church of St Mary, EbonyFrom Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 100, 1984 Page 53Appendix 4The Excavations on the site of St Mary’s Church, Chapel BankFrom Archaeologia Cantiana Vol.110, 1992 Page 68Index Page 90iiIntroductionNearly 50 years ago we explored Romney Marsh for the first time, looking for its dozen or so ‘lost villages’, sometimes findingonly a group of crumbling ivy-clad flint walls on the sites of their parish churches. The locations of most of these sad and lonelyplaces were well documented but our car trips across the marshes frequently took us within sight of a mysterious ‘hog’s-back’ hill,named ‘Chapel Bank’ in Gothic lettering on our one-inch Ordnance Survey. The typeface indicated that this was a ‘site of antiquity’and one day we followed a muddy footpath to the distant summit.Along the way we found numerous oyster shells, brought to the surface during recent ploughing. Curious to knowhow they had come to light so far from the coast, we sent some of them to Jack Hargreaves, presenter of the popular SouthernTelevision series Out of Town that featured country life in years gone by. Jack suggested the shells were from oyster bedscultivated on the bed of the shallow medieval sea that once ebbed and flowed hereabouts, lapping inshore islands such asChapel Bank and Oxney that later became landlocked when Kent’s ‘Saxon Shore’ receded.At the top of the hill, stunted trees buffeted by south-westerly gales leaned eastwards at 45 degrees. In the brambles,clusters of gravestones, undermined by fox-holes and badger setts, tilted this way and that, and we could just make out a fewepitaphs under a patina of mosses and lichens. Little did we know that we were standing on the site of a medieval parish church,seldom – if at all – mentioned in the chronicles of the lost churches of Romney Marsh.Time moved on, and so did we. In 1984 Sir John Winnifrith of the Kent Archaeological Society published, in ArchaeologiaCantiana, the first definitive history of the church of St Mary the Virgin, Ebony, whose existence in the centre of the graveyardwe had explored 14 years earlier, was gradually being proven by a team of the society’s archaeologists.* * *Winnifrith and his contemporaries were not the first KAS members on the Ebony scene. In the late 1890s and early yearsof the twentieth century, Leland Lewis Duncan had had the foresight to visit scores of Kent’s churchyards and burial grounds,including the one on Chapel Bank, to record hundreds of memorial inscriptions on the headstones contained therein.He deposited his notebooks with the society and his transcriptions were later typed-up by KAS volunteers and posted onwww.kentarchaeology.org.uk for all to read. Most of the inscriptions he noted are now illegible due to erosion, so today hisefforts are of immense value to local and family historians alike. Thanks to Duncan’s work we have managed to trace our ownfamily’s Longley and Southerden ancestors to various parishes in Kent.In a similar immense labour of love, another KAS member, Arthur Hussey, transcribed hundreds of medieval Willsmade by testators in numerous Kent parishes. One of the most prolific amateur historians of his generation, Hussey was a memberof our society for 50 years and a Vice-President from 1927 until he died in 1941. In 1907, in partnership with Leland Duncan, hepublished Testamenta Cantiana, a series of extracts from Tudor and Medieval Wills that provide fascinating insights into life in thecounty’s parishes in that period. Hussey too donated all his notebooks – handwritten in impeccable script – to the KAS and it waswhile typing up abstracts of the Wills that Pat, a volunteer in the KAS Library, discovered that Ebony had much more to reveal thanwe could possibly have imagined.Ebony and Chapel Bank had continued to fascinate us since we first went there in 1970, so starting with information gleanedfrom the memorial inscriptions and Will transcriptions, we decided to learn more. Eighty testators from Ebony remembered StMary’s Church in their Wills. Their testaments revealed an astonishingly large population and range of trades and occupations ...blacksmiths, fishermen, haberdashers and many others. Our research led us on a journey from early medieval times, to disastersthat struck St Mary’s Church ... the Napoleonic Wars ... a deadly plague ... the burial on Chapel Bank of nearly 40 soldiers from anearby barracks ... to tragedies and heroism in two world wars and onwards into the twenty-first century.This year marks the 160th anniversary of an incredible episode (one of many over the centuries) in Ebony’s history – themassive task of dismantling St Mary’s Church stone-by-stone and rebuilding it where it now stands in Reading Street. We hope youwill derive as much enjoyment from reading Searching for Ebony as we had while finding it and researching and writing its history.Paul TrittonPat TrittonMaidstone 20183Chapter One – Along Kent’s ancient ‘ghost coast’Follow the Saxon Shore Way from Seabrook or Rye across the northern perimeter of Romney Marsh and each passing miletakes you further from today’s coastline until, at Appledore, it is up to eleven miles away and what were once busy shippingchannels are now vast pastures, home to countless world-famous ‘Romney’ sheep.A range of low, green hills delineates this ancient ‘ghost coast’. South-west of Appledore two prominences that were onceislands rise above the Rother Valley: the Isle of Oxney, on which the parish churches of Wittersham and Stone-in-Oxney punctuatethe horizon, and Chapel Bank, whose summit is barely one hundred feet above sea level.The ‘chapel’ in question was the parish church of the lost village of Ebony*, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, which survivedvarious vicissitudes until, after members of its congregation had abandoned their homes on Chapel Bank, it was dismantled andrebuilt a mile away at Reading Street on the ‘mainland’ south of Tenterden.* * *The parish’s recorded history begins in 832AD when Aethelwulf, Saxon ‘sub-king’ of Kent and son of King Egbert, gave a manorof about 2,400 acres (3¾ square miles) at what became known as Ebony to Christ Church Priory, Canterbury. Its monks may havebuilt a church there but if so it was probably destroyed by the Danes after they invaded south Kent in 892, when warriors from250 warships captured King Alfred’s fortress at Appledore and occupied the district.Domesday Monachorum and early lists of Kent parish churches confirm that by the 11th century there was a church at Ebony.The earliest archaeological evidence for its existence dates from the 12th century, when stone, timber, ironwork, lead, shingles,mortar and other heavy materials needed for the construction of the church had to be hauled with great difficulty across themarshes and up to the top of the island.The task was much easier for later phases, carried out after the Knelle Dam on Wittersham Levels, near the Sussex border, wasconstructed in 1332. This diverted the Rother to the north of Oxney and Chapel Bank, taking it past Smallhythe and ReadingChapel Bank, Ebony.4Street and then on to Appledore and the sea. Previously, theriver ran southwards into Rye Bay.The dam created a navigable waterway, probably morethan 20 feet deep at high tide. Ferryboats plied betweenSmallhythe and Oxney and between Reading Street andChapel Bank. Barges delivered heavy goods from south coastports and farther afield, and shipped wool, timber, charcoaland other commodities – including barley from Ebony forCanterbury monastery – down the channel.The Rother was now open to the largest ships of the day.Vessels capable of carrying up to one thousand tons were builtat shipyards at Smallhythe and Reading Street over a periodof two hundred years. Reading Street’s main claim to fame innaval history is The Regent, a 600-ton four-master built therein 1486 for Henry VII and inherited by Henry VIII in 1509. Itsmain mast was 114 feet tall and had a circumference of morethan nine feet. In August 1512 The Regent fought with 25ships of Henry’s navy (including The Mary Rose) in the Battle ofSaint-Mathieu; her powder magazine exploded while she wasalongside the French man o’ war Cordelière. More than 1,700French and English sailors perished.The Regent’s replacement, the Great Harry, was built atWoolwich from timber felled in the Weald and shipped downthe Rother to Rye Bay and thence to the Thames.* The origin of the place-name ‘Ebony’ isuncertain. It may have been derived from the OldEnglish personal name ‘Ebba’ and the Old Englishword ‘ēg,’ meaning ‘an island, land inthe midst of marshes’.Reading Street, viewed from the site of the medieval Rother shipping channel.A model of the galleasse Grand Mistress, displayed in St Mildred’sChurch, Tenterden, to commemorate ships built at the Rothershipyards in the 16th century.The courses of the River Rother before and after the Knelle Damwas built.© Laetitia Barnes 2015, first published in From Ships to Sheep, theStory of Smallhythe.Chapter Two – Ebony’s first parish churchFascinating insights into the lives and fortunes of Ebony’s inhabitants in the 16th century can be gleaned from ninety Willsin Probate records kept at Canterbury Cathedral and now accessible on-line on the Kent Archaeological Society’s website,www.kentarchaeology.org.uk. They show that generous grants and legacies from many wealthy landowners kept St Mary’s ingood repair.The parish’s most generous benefactor was John Raynold of Reading Street, who died in 1522, leaving £40 to pay for a chapel,dedicated to St Anne, to be built on the south side of the church. He instructed that he and, when her time came, his wife Joan,should be buried in the churchyard, on the south side of the chancel. John also left funds to pay for the chapel’s furnishings andornaments, including candlesticks and wax tapers for use on feast days, and wax from which to make tapers for regular servicesand the celebration of the Feast of the Purification on 2 February. He left 8d to each of the four men who carried his body from hishouse to his grave; £3.6s.8d. to each of the ten priests who led his cortège; and treated his neighbours to a dinner in his honour,at which every poor person who attended was given 2d. Thanks to another of John’s legacies a causeway, footbridge, paths andstile on the route to the church were repaired. He left £3 to cover all this, plus ‘6s.8d. more’ in case that was not enough.Joan was well provided for, inheriting his house, profits from his land and ‘all my moveable goods and all my householdspoons and other plate’. She died in 1525, instructing that she was to be ‘buried in the new Chapel lately builded by the costs ofmy said husband, next unto the sepulture of my late husband’. Work on the chapel would not have started until after John wasburied, so presumably it was built around his grave.John also paid for a priest ‘to sing for my soul’ at St Mary’s, stipulating that during ‘fowle wether’ this rite could be performedin a chapel at Reading Street which had been built in the early 1400s or maybe before then. Clearly, St Mary’s position on a bleak,rain-swept hilltop was not always conducive to year-round churchgoing!Many others, including Henry Northland and William Moseden (who joined Jack Cade’s Rebellion in 1450 and were fortunateenough to be pardoned) and William Knott left money to pay for votive lights, so St Mary’s was well stocked with candles to burnbefore its images of St Katherine, St Stephen, St Peter and St James, and in its shrines to its patron saint and St Thomas.Thomas Harry’s legacy paid for a new rood loft in ‘the great priory church on the Isle of Ebony,’ shingles for the roof, andprovided an allowance of ten shillings for a priest to sing ‘in the chapel at Reading’ and also paid for the road between ReadingStreet and Tenterden to be repaired. Richard Lawles, a blacksmith, left two tons of timber with which to build new railings for thechurchyard. He also assigned his tools and two tons of iron to his nephew, Peter.Like many others, Lawles’s Will shows how generous and considerate the testators were in various ways to their relations andfriends; some testators helpfully revealed their trades and occupations.Alice Cowper left ‘my greatest brass pot’ to John Weke; a velvet gown to John’s wife Joan; a sheet, plate, pewter dish andsawser [sic] to John and Joan’s two daughters; ‘my best candlestick’ to their son Robert; ‘my old blue gown’ to Richard Birchele –and a heifer and a bullock to Alice Burchele!To his wife, Dionise, William Donny bequeathed his best bed and the ‘best apparatus belonging to the bed, also my best girdleharnessed with silver, which she gave me at marriage, and a gold ring’. William’s father, Henry, received William’s fishing boatand nets.Symond Kent left a ewe and a lamb to the wife of his friend William Foster and ‘a red cow with a wredled face with one hornwith a calf’ to Edmund Lewkener.John Pellonde’s legacies to his wife, Agnes, included a heifer, ‘my dun mare, and a black bay mare with a colt;’ four castratedhogs; huge quantities of wheat, barley, oats, beans, cheese and butter; and two oxen, a yoke and a plough.In 1518 Joane Taylour, a widow, evidently a haberdasher, consigned ‘all the wares and stuff now in my shop and my bestgown and best kirtill’ to her mother, Joan Raynold, and six ells of canvas to Juliane Browne of Newenden. (An ‘ell’ was a unit ofmeasurement, approximately the length of a man’s arm.)Abstracts from these Wills and many others can be read at www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/18/12/06.htm56‘A blaze of lights and colour’In his definitive history of St Mary’s, published in the Kent Archaeological Society’s journal, Archaeologia Cantiana, in 1984 (seeAppendix 3) Sir John Winnifrith wrote: ‘The church would have been a landmark visible from miles away to shipping coming upthe sea creek. Its interior was also impressive. As the parishioners came into the church they saw a blaze of lights and colour. Therewas a shrine to the patron saint, St Mary the Virgin ... other saints had their images and lights burning before them, provided bybequests of the faithful’.Four ‘great bells’ and a sanctus bell rang out across the meadows from the west tower, which was surmounted by a tall spire.When it was at its most awe-inspiring and best state of repair, St Mary’s may nevertheless have been prone to incipientweaknesses imposed on its foundations by subsidence of the unstable Wadhust Clay on which its foundations rested, or by theGreat Kent Earthquake of 21 May 1382, which destroyed Canterbury Cathedral’s bell tower, fractured other buildings all over thecounty, and was felt as far away as London.Inevitably, St Mary’s was plundered following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Henry VIII gave Ebony to Sir WalterHendley of Cranbrook, who was an attorney at the Court of Augmentations and a Commissioner for the suppression of themonasteries. Hendley died in 1550, apparently bequeathing a life interest in the manor to his widow, Margery, who soon marriedThomas Roberts of Ticehurst. Roberts assumed responsibility for St Mary’s but stripped lead from the chancel roof and neglectedto repair the broken north door. The church was left open to the elements – as was the vicar’s house, which became a cattle shed.Sir John wrote: ‘The congregation and priest must have endured considerable discomfort, huddling in what remained of the oldhouse of prayer. Somehow they hung on’.In about 1560 St Mary’s was destroyed by fire, probably caused by a lightning strike – an ever-present danger before lightningconductors became familiar fixtures on church towers. The parishioners raised £200 to build a smaller St Mary’s, more of a chapelthan a church, into which the east window and parts of the walls that survived were incorporated. It was probably at this time thatthe knoll on which the church stood became known as ‘Chapel Bank’.The nave and chancel, dividedonly by a communion rail, were asingle buttressed structure with asmall bell-cote at the west end. Thechurch’s furniture amounted to littlemore than a rudimentary altar, areading desk and a pulpit.No one knows exactly when the‘down-sized’ St Mary’s was built butit seems that the task took manyyears. The roof was not shingleduntil about 1574 and in 1590 thechurch was ‘fentred by extremewinds,’ suggesting serious stormdamage. It was probably completedin the last years of Queen ElizabethI’s reign and today’s historians referto it as ‘the Elizabethan church,’ todistinguish it from its predecessor,whose construction spanned severalcenturies.Ebony Court Lodge Lands, 1710. Reading Street is at bottom right.7In 1710 a map of Ebony Court Lodge Lands, owned by John Blackmore, showed the church in the centre of a complex of fields,many of whose owners are identified. The map is oriented with south at the top; Reading Street, situated north-west of ChapelBank, is shown in the bottom right-corner. From here a path ran through a lych-gate and a wicket-gate and on to the church’snorth porch.An unusual aspect of the site is that the church lies within a symmetrical hexagonal boundary. It may originally have beena ditch or bank and was once defined by railings or a fence, long since lost. Boundaries of this shape are extremely rare aschurchyard features and the origins and significance of the Ebony enclosure remain obscure. It was certainly in existence by thestart of the eighteenth century.Another curiosity is that the hexagon,first marked on the 1710 map and, 113 yearslater, on the Ebony Tithe Map (and delineatedto this day on large-scale Ordnance Surveymaps and clearly visible on Google Earthsatellite images) is about one hundredyards wide and appears to be too large toaccommodate only a church and churchyard,suggesting that other buildings might at onetime have stood within it.Recommended further reading: NormanChurches in the Canterbury Diocese, The HistoryPress, 2009, ISBN: 9780752447766.Chapel Bank from the air in 1979, showing the hexagonal boundary around the siteof St Mary’s Church. Chapel Bank Farm and Reading Street are at top left.8Chapter Three – The end of an estuaryShipbuilding at Smallhythe and Reading Street, which helped Ebony and neighbouring parishes prosper for nearly threehundred years, finally ceased after the Knelle Dam was breached in 1635 to divert the Rother from its eastern estuary and backon to its previous course south of Oxney and thence to Rye. This enabled profitable sheep pastures, cornfields, orchards andhop-gardens – and wide open spaces for country sports – to be created on the reclaimed marshes along the old shipping channel,which became known as the Reading Sewer. Chapel Bank’s families migrated down to Reading Street and other more hospitableplaces previously ‘across the water’.* * *Ebony has always been sparsely populated but in 1801 it had 351 inhabitants, most of whom were soldiers posted to thearea after France declared war on Britain in 1793. They were part of a huge Army raised to defend the Kent and Sussex coastagainst invasion. St Mary’s parish clerk noted that ‘the great increase’ in the number of baptisms and burials in his registers in1805–1812 was ‘due to the presence of a large camp and barracks at Reading Street.’ Notable among the baptisms are twinsSarah and Ann, daughters of Private Joseph Spreadborough and his wife Sarah (see Appendix 1).In Tenterden, the vicar of St Mildred’s parish church officiated at four soldiers’ burials and eight marriages of men from thebarracks, and eighteen baptisms of their children.Among the units based at Reading Street were the 2nd Battalion, 50th Regiment of Foot; the 2nd Battalion, 57th (WestMiddlesex) Regiment of Foot; the 2nd Royal Surrey Regiment; the 2nd West Yorkshire Militia; the 43rd (Monmouthshire)Regiment of Foot; the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot; the 89th Regiment of Foot; the 95th Rifle Regiment; theHertfordshire Regiment; the Nottinghamshire Militia; the Nottinghamshire Regiment, and the West Kent Militia.The barracks were described as ‘extensive’ by James Dugdale in his book The New British Traveller, published in 1819, andit is possible that there was an observation station and an invasion warning beacon nearby. In favourable conditions, from theAbove: After the Rother was diverted back to its original course in 1635, barges plied between Rye and Smallhythe along the valley’s stillnavigable channels until 1924. Pictured here at Smallhythe Dock in 1905 is one of two vessels operated by two sons of William Body of GibbetFarm, Ebony. William Body jnr is standing on the right; one of the other men is possibly his brother, Charles. ®Tenterden and District MuseumAbove right: farmers Cecil Weller (left) and his father Frederick shearing sheep in a meadow behind Brockett Farmhouse, the Weller familyhome. ®David Weller.9farmyard at French Hay (aka Frenchay), three quarters of a mile north of Barrack Farm, the hills beyond Boulogne can be seenthrough field-glasses. With a powerful telescope the view is even clearer.In his book Tenterden, the First Thousand Years, Hugh Roberts described the town’s ‘call to arms’ in 1793 and the enthusiasticresponse it received, commenting: ‘the attraction of the handsome and brightly coloured uniforms may have contributed to thegeneral enthusiasm’. Between 25 June 1798 and 1 November 1802 a new military road was built between Tenterden and Ashfordby a succession of regiments, including the 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment of Foot and the 2nd Battalion of the 52nd (Oxfordshire)Regiment of Foot.‘It is highly likely,’ wrote Roberts, ‘that companies of the above units would have been stationed for some of this period atReading Street’.Thirty-seven soldiers are known to have died while stationed at the barracks, as well as two wives and nine children of Armypersonnel. Most of them were probably victims of the ‘ague’ or marsh fever, later known as malaria, spread by mosquitoes. Thiscaused high mortality across Romney Marsh until the construction of the Royal Military Canal, completed in 1806, enabled landdrainage to be gradually improved, whereupon the mosquito population declined. Nevertheless, even 40 years later, Bagshaw’sGuide called Ebony ‘low and unhealthy. The vapours arising from the marsh subject it to continual fog’. Reading Sewer hadbecome a fetid, stagnant creek, its outfall to the sea having been severed by the Royal Military Canal.The death rate at Reading Street Barracks averaged four a year from 1804 until 1807, peaking at 16 in 1808. Obviously, everydeath was a family tragedy but none more so than those of 19-year-old Dorothy Sweeney, wife of Private John Sweeney, whosefuneral was on 13 May 1806, and their daughter Mary, only two weeks old, who was buried two days later.Four of the soldiers were buried in St Mildred’s Churchyard, Tenterden. They were Major H W Parry of the Montgomery Militia(died 7 February 1798, aged 43); James Hott, a Light Infantryman with Captain Bullock’s Company of the Third Norfolk Regimentof Militia (9 November 1798, 22); Joseph Smith, Derbyshire Militia (10 March 1800, 65), and Quartermaster John Titley, DorsetMilitia (13 March 1800, 55). The headstones, now illegible, on the graves of James Hott and Joseph Smith are still standing, closeRight top: Sheep crossing the bridge over theReading Sewer at Reading Street on their wayto their pastures on Chapel Bank c. 1916.The properties in the background are, fromthe left, Old Barrack Farmhouse, Skeers House,Wellbro and the ‘White Hart and Lamb’.Right bottom: The Linton Beagles, from LordCornwallis’s estate near Maidstone, on the roadfrom Reading Street to Appledore on 28February 1921. ®David Weller.10to the west path to the church porch. The graves of H W Parry (no longer marked) and John Titley (with a barely legible headstone)are between the north-east corner of the tower and the northern boundary of the churchyard.The other 33 soldiers, the wives and the children were laid to rest in unmarked graves in St Mary’s Churchyard on Chapel Bank;not even their approximate location is known.Reading Street Barracks have left no mark on the landscape but two plots of land – ‘Barrack Field’ and ‘Barrack Yard’ – listed inthe Ebony Tithe Award Schedules – may mark the site. Close to these plots, three-quarters of a mile north-west of Reading Streetand just outside Ebony’s parish boundary, lies Barrack Farm; 1871–1890 Ordnance Survey maps (next page, top picture) depict agroup of buildings west of the farmhouse that could once have been Army huts. Nearby there was a firing range and, on RotherLevels to the south, a racecourse where the Tenterden Horse Races were held, patronised by the troops and local people alike.Confusingly, there is an Old Barrack Farm within the nucleus of buildings that comprise Reading Street and only a few minutes’march from the site of a rifle range on the north-west flank of Chapel Bank (next page, bottom picture).Reminiscing in 1868 about her childhood some 60 years earlier, Ann, granddaughter of Thomas Weston, four times Mayor ofTenterden between 1784 and 1814, and Elizabeth (née Lott), recalled garden parties at her grandparents’ home, Oaks House, atwhich officers from Reading Street Barracks ‘mingled with the ladies who walked there and read Shakespeare to them’.The soldiers were also entertained at Tenterden’s New Theatre by the Jonas and Pedley Company and other itinerant groupsthat made their way from town to town in the days when travelling entertainers were generally regarded as little better thanrogues and vagabonds.After the licentious soldiery departed, Ebony’s population declined to just 151 people in 1821 (89 males, 62 females) and forthe rest of the 19th century averaged only 160.Recommended further reading: Tenterden – The First Thousand Years by Hugh Roberts. ISBN10: 0947828346 ‘The Great Threat’Colonel Anthony Kimber, a military historian who has researched the Napoleonic defences of Romney Marsh and the Kent andSussex coast, writes: ‘Reading Street Barracks were established perhaps as early as the post-French revolutionary period in thelate 18th century but certainly during the “Great Threat” from 1803 through to post-Trafalgar, 1805. The defence strategy duringthis period was to secure the Channel with Navy and sea fencibles; build Martello towers; install forts and gun positions on thebeaches; prepare to flood parts of the Marsh, and dig the Royal Military Canal.‘Behind the canal there were mostly regular forces (reinforced by militia), deployed in camps or “barracks,” ready to providedefence in depth. Near Ebony, troops were stationed along the canal, particularly in places such as Iden Lock and at bridgecrossings. On the high ground to north of the marsh there were camps housing one or two battalions in places such as Fairlight,The grave of Joseph Smith The grave of James Hott The grave of John Titley11Winchelsea, Rye Hill and at Shornecliffe Redoubt. Between these there would have been smaller detachments, perhaps ofup to only 100 men. Reading Street would have been one of them. I imagine that there were brick buildings there, similar tothose found today in Barrack Road, Winchelsea, to accommodate a detachment of a few officers, men and horses. Additionalaccommodation might have been tented.‘It would have been a key strategic site, designed to hold troops to block the approaches to Tenterden and beyond on one ofthe potential routes to London. Troops were drawn from all over England to defend the Marsh, which was seen to be the mostlikely landing ground for the Grande Armée stationed at Boulogne.’Recommended further reading: The impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the Romney Marsh http://ryeharbour.net/pdf/1’3.pdf12Chapter Four – The church that crossed the waterBy the early 19th century St Mary’s was in a poor state of repair and in 1858 the vicar (Rev. Walter William Kirby) and hischurchwarden decided that it was too expensive to restore, and too isolated – the nearest house was now three-quarters of a mileaway. Consequently, during the summer, while the roads were at their driest, the church was chiselled, pick-axed and sledgehammered to pieces, and farm labourers carted its stones laboriously down the tracks (up which they had been hauled manycenturies earlier) and across the former course of the Rother to more populous Reading Street. A bell, 22½ inches in diameter,cast by Thomas Mears and Son at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London in 1805, was also removed. In August the parish clerknoted in his register: ‘The chapel which stood in the centre of the churchyard of Ebony on the hill was during this month pulleddown in consequence of its inaccessible position’.St Mary’s, known for a time as a ‘chapel of ease,’ was rebuilt at Reading Street, on a plot of land given to the parish by VirginPomfret, at a cost of £270, raised by public subscriptions and supplemented by a grant of £100 from the Incorporated Societyfor Building and Churches. The celebrated Gothic revivalist architect Samuel Sanders Teulon, whose Buxton Memorial is usuallyvisible in the background when politicians are interviewed in Victoria Tower Gardens, near the Houses of Parliament, supervisedthe project and the contractors were Bourne and Chandler of Woodchurch. The foundation stone was laid on 24 August by thevicar and Mrs Kirby, J Boon (churchwarden) and local landowner Seaman Beale. According to the Kentish Advertiser of 31 Augusta time capsule was buried on the site (probably under the foundation stone, the position of which is not marked). The church wasconsecrated less than three months later, on 18 November, by John Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury.The Kentish Express reported that a ‘continuous and merry peal of bells’ greeted the archbishop when he arrived at Appledorestation and continued all day. He was met by Mr Kirby, vicar of Appledore and Ebony, and clergymen from other local parishes,who all had lunch at Appledore vicarage before travelling on to Ebony for the ceremony, after which they returned to the vicarage‘in a long train of vehicles filled with influential personages’.In the mid-19th century most of Ebony’s workers were farm labourers and servants but there were also several ‘lookers’(shepherds), a grocer (James Beken), a licensed victualler (George Thomas Paine, landlord of the ‘Ewe and Lamb’ (later renamed‘The White Hart and Lamb’). a tailor (William Adams) and a ‘washing woman’ (Anna Ring). In the east of the parish lived JonathanDorman, level crossing gate-keeper on the Ashford – Rye Railway, opened in 1851, whilst at Reading Street, Edwin Smith wastollgate-keeper at the junction of two turnpike roads from Tenterden. Built one hundred years before the railway, one road ranLeft: Ebony and the Isle of Oxney, from the 1813 Ordnance Survey. ©Cassini Publishing Ltd www.cassinimaps.comRight: Plaque erected to mark the conditions of the grant given to St Mary’s Church.13south to Wittersham and from there to Rye, on what is now the B2082; the other (now the B2080) headed eastwards to Appledoreand across Romney Marsh to New Romney.After St Mary’s was moved down the hill its churchyard continued to be used for a number of years. Its older gravestonesgradually eroded and many of their memorial inscriptions (‘MIs’) would by now have been lost for all time, but for the efforts ofLeland L Duncan of the Kent Archaeological Society. In 1919, using his well-thumbed copy of Bradshaw’s railway timetable, hetravelled from his home in Lewisham to Ashford or Tenterden station where the driver of a pony-and-trap, who that morning or theprevious evening had received instructions on a postcard, was waiting to take him Chapel Bank, where he noted word-for-word allthe 45 inscriptions that were still legible.Twenty-six family names were recorded: Balcombe, Butler, Catt, Chacksfield, Cloake, Dixon, Douglas, Fowle, Fry, Hope, Lepper,Luckhurst, Lyle, Mitchell, Murray, Pain, Paine, Poile, Pike, Ramsden, Relf, Stretton, Turk, Virrell, Walker and Weller.The ‘MIs’ span more than two hundred years, from Mary Fowle, who died in February 1699, to Philadelphia Catt, who passedaway in 1913 and was the widow of William Catt, Ebony’s parish clerk for 38 years and sub-postmaster at Reading Street for 27years. Thirty-four of the memorials Duncan examined were erected before 1858, including that of eccentric Isaac Cloake, whodied in 1820 aged 72. His last wish was that at his funeral, 72 old men (one for each year of his life?) wearing white frocks andstockings, each and every one the father of six children, were to follow his coffin to his grave. It is doubtful whether, even with thehelp of all the neighbouring parishes, Ebony met that wish!Duncan also surveyed Tenterden churchyard, noting the four aforementioned Army ‘MIs’. Over a period of 40 years he visitedburial grounds throughout Kent and his thousands of transcriptions can be now be read on the KAS website.* * *Resurfacing the junction of the two former turnpike roads at Reading Street c. 1925. ‘The White Hart and Lamb’ inn is in the background. Turnleft here for Appledore and New Romney; straight ahead for Wittersham and Rye.14Chapel Bank churchyard is still consecrated ground, owned by theincumbent of St Mary’s, Ebony, and occasionally used for burials to this day.Among recent interments there, marked by memorial trees, are the ashesof three members of the Sinden theatrical family: Sir Donald, his wife DianaMahony Sinden (1927–2004) and their son Jeremy (1950–1996).The family, completed when Marc Sinden was born in 1954, lived at RatsCastle, on the road from Ebony to Wittersham, and worshipped at St Mary’s,where Sir Donald often read the lesson, always from the Book of Isaiah,Chapter 9, verses 2-7: ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen agreat light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has lightshone’. While living at Ebony, Sir Donald took time off between his actingengagements to pursue his interest in church architecture, presenting adocumentary, Discovering English Churches, on BBC2 and writing a book,The English Country Church, to accompany the series. He also wrote hismemoirs there, including amusing anecdotes about life at Rats Castle, whichhe bought in 1951 and where he died in 2014 at the age of 90.Towards the end of his life, having lost his wife and eldest son, he drewcomfort from being able to sit in his garden and admire the view of ChapelBank, only a mile away. The ashes of Daniel Mahony, Diana’s father, areinterred at St Mary’s.The area has other cultural connections: Norman Forbes-Robertson(1858-1932), the distinguished Shakespearean actor, owned and restoredStocks Mill, Wittersham; his contemporary, Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928),lived at Smallhythe Place for the last 28 years of her life; Jean StirlingMackinlay (1892-1958), operatic singer and folk singer, lived at ‘Ebony Cottage,’ Reading Street; and David McKean, filmmaker,illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer and musician, lives at Ebony Oast, Stone-Cum-Ebony.* * *Chapel Bank today evokes secrecy and mystery, inaccessible by road and visible as a distant tree-clad knoll requiring adetermined effort to climb to its summit. At most times of the year it is smothered with dense foliage and is best visited in latesummer, soon after volunteers have carried out their annual clearance of invasive undergrowth around the gravestones. Severalpublic footpaths lead to Chapel Bank, the most convenient being one from Chapel Bank Farm that ascends the hill’s north-westflank, or the bridleway on its southern slope – probably once the road along which building materials for St Mary’s were hauled.The paths pass a number of ponds and springs (valuable water sources for the island’s inhabitants), one which may have been theHogwell, or holy-well, known to have been somewhere hereabouts.Above left: one of the paths to Chapel Bank. Above right: looking north-west from the summit towards Reading Street (centre of picture) andSmallhythe (left).Sir Donald Sinden. (®Oxney Local History Society)15* * *It was not until 1977, nearly 120 years after the ‘new’ St Mary’s at Reading Street was consecrated, that the first of a seriesof scientific archaeological excavations to find what remained below the surface at the site of the old church was conductedby the Kent Archaeological Society and the Tenterden and District Museum Association, under the direction of Cecily Lebon andAlec Miles.Back in 1659, Richard Kilburne of Hawkhurst had asserted in his Topographie; or a Survey of Kent, that the remains of amedieval church survived on Chapel Bank, close to the Elizabethan one that replaced it, but apparently no serious attempt to findthem was made by some local historians who investigated the site in the early 1900s .For their first excavation the archaeologists selected an area of the churchyard covered by trees and scrub but with noheadstones, suggesting that this was the site of a large building. A trial trench, cut on a north-south axis, exposed the foundationsof what later proved to be the north wall of a Norman nave, and the remains of its south wall which had been ‘robbed’ ofits stones. Further excavations established that originally St Mary’s was a typical ‘two-celled’ (nave and chancel) Normanchurch, slightly larger than the well-known Norman churches at Dode in north Kent (another ‘lost village’) and St Benedict’s,Paddlesworth.Discoveries made as the project progressed included a partially blocked north door into the chancel; quoins, jambs and otherpieces of masonry shaped from Caen stone, and from ironstone probably dug from quarries on the south and south-east flanksof Chapel Bank; floor tiles, imported from the Low Countries and set in mortar on a bed of rammed chalk; pieces of paintedwindow glass and medieval and Tudor pots; beads (possibly from a rosary), ten English medieval coins dating from the reigns ofEdward I to Henry VI, and a Venetian soldino, minted by Michele Steno, Doge of Venice from 1400 until 1413.Comparing what was found below ground with early descriptions of the church, the archaeologists calculated that the churchhad been high enough to accommodate a substantial arched window and a rood screen, which had supported effigies of theCrucifixion and the Virgin Mary. In medieval times, north and south aisles were added to the Norman nave followed, evidently inthe late 15th century, by a bell tower with a ground plan similar to the one at St Mildred’s, Tenterden.By now, the church was more than one hundred feet long overall, comparable in size to St Peter and St Paul’s Church,Appledore, four miles away.The site of the final phase of construction at St Mary’s, John Raynold’s St Anne’s Chapel, was found to have abutted the southside of the chancel on foundations consisting of stones likely to have been collected from the beach at Pett Level, Fairlight.Scattered around the chapel floor were pieces of Bethersden Marble (perhaps the remains of an altar slab) and burnt fragmentsof plain glass and painted glass, the latter possibly from a large window that was sucked inwards by a fierce draught during the1560 fire.Some of the glass remnants bore esoteric geometric designs, possibly traders’ or merchants’ marks and unlike any foundelsewhere.Surprisingly, the graves of John and Joan Raynold were not found. He had left instructions that they were to be marked with‘two images of Latyn and our names graved in Latyn under the images’ – an impressive monument that would surely have beenfound had it survived the four centuries that passed until the archaeologists embarked on their excavations.The Great Fire of EbonyAsked to examine the results of the ‘dig’ and assess how the fire started and progressed, a senior Kent Fire Service officersurmised that lightning struck the tower, igniting its roof beams and causing an inferno in the bell chamber that destroyed themassive frame from which the bells, weighing several tons, were suspended. They then crashed through the floor of the ringingchamber, whose joists collapsed, prising stonework out of the tower walls. Weakened by the intense heat the tower collapsed,destroying the nave roof and most of the north aisle. What remained of the tower acted like a flue, expelling smoke and debris asa violent vortex of air was sucked into the building, shattering the plain glass and painted windows.It must have been a terrifying and distressing sight, visible for miles across land and sea. All that the parishioners coulddo was watch helplessly and extinguish any sparks that settled on the thatched roofs of nearby buildings. The closest substantialsource of water for fire-fighting was the Reading Sewer but it would have been impossible to carry enough buckets of water upthe hill to quench the flames, and in any case there were not enough people living nearby to form a ‘human chain’ to do this.Most of the building was left beyond repair.16***When they had completed and back-filled their excavations the archaeologists were able to form a mental picture of theNorman and Elizabethan churches they had discovered and, by referring to a watercolour of it, painted 51 years before the latterwas rebuilt at Reading Street, create a composite image of the two buildings. This clearly confirms that the Elizabethan church wasbuilt adjacent to the south aisle.Shortly before the church was relocated, Howard Gaye made two engravings which also guided the archaeologists asthey surveyed the site and published their report of the project. On the north side there was a substantial buttressed porch,strengthened by an iron tie-bar inserted through the masonry and secured with an ‘S’-shaped anchor plate to prevent the outerwall from bowing. Square-headed Perpendicular Gothic trefoil two-light windows were built into the north and south walls;there was an Early English three-light east window, flanked by massive buttresses, and a west window with three lights. Severalgravestones are depicted close to the east and south walls.The archaeologists completed their work on the church site in 1986 and then explored a grass verge adjacent to the northernboundary of the churchyard, close to the area named The Booth Field on the aforementioned 1710 estate map. Over the years thefield had yielded considerable quantities of pottery and coins during ploughing – evidence, it was concluded, that this was thesite of the village of Ebony. It was not possible to excavate the field but an exploratory trench in the verge uncovered stoneworkthat may have been the footings of a medieval timber-framed house.Above left: St Mary’s Church, 1807. From a watercolour by H Petrie FSA. Above right: Archaeologists’ impression of the Norman church and,superimposed, the Elizabethan church that replaced it.Above: The church from the north-east, showing the substantial porch. Above right: The church from the south-east.17However, the most exciting discoveries came three years later when, in 1989 Neil Allen, a member of the Romney MarshlandMetal Detecting Club, recovered more than one hundred English medieval coins, 60 of which were identifiable, on a narrow stripof land adjacent to the churchyard’s northern perimeter. The oldest coins were minted in the 12th century, during the reign ofHenry II; one was Elizabethan, but the majority were of 13th century or early 14th century origin. More coins were found thanwould be expected in such a small area, giving credence to a theory that commercial activities – fairs or markets, maybe – wereconducted there. About 10 years earlier, oyster shells had been brought to the surface on Chapel Bank during ploughing –perhaps originally discarded around seafood stalls set up for the fairgoers, oysters being an affordable ‘poor man’s food’ inthose days.Other metal objects detected by Neil Allen included buckles, thimbles, a 15th century lead token and two more Venetiansoldinos, these last items suggesting that Ebony, like Rye and other English Channel ports, traded with merchants from Venice,notably the Corsini brothers of Florence, whose galleys anchored in Rye Bay. Soldinos, known as ‘galley-halpens,’ were unofficiallyused as halfpennies during a shortage of English coins of this denomination.Examples of artefacts recovered during the excavations at Chapel Bank are kept at Tenterden and District Museum, includingworked stone pieces; fragments of painted window glass; an iron object (possibly a crucifix); floor tiles; and pottery, includingparts of a 13th century cooking vessel, a late 12th or early 13th century cooking pot and a 12th century cooking pot.Ebony’s only other significant archaeological finds, reported in Archaeologia Cantiana in 1882, were a Roman urn and coinsand a quantity of ashes, found by Stephen Judge while draining a field near Reading Hill.See Appendix 4 for a full account by Cecily Lebon and Alec Miles of the excavations, including a site plan.Archaeology in progress on Chapel Bank. Clockwise from top left: (1, 2) the site before the first ‘dig’ in 1977, a natural ‘adventure playground’for small boys!; (3) revealing the church’s medieval foundations; (4) a medieval coin, possibly a Richard II halfpenny, found within the churchwalls; (4) floor tiles from the Low Countries, pictured ‘as found’.18Anti-clockwise from right: (1) a corroded iron artefact, possibly a crucifix from an altar; (2, 3) fragments of painted window glass with geometricdesigns, possibly traders’ or merchants’ marks; (4) Hand-shaped unidentified stonework.19Chapter Five – In search of EbonyEbony is a lost village in more waysthan one. It appears on only a few mapsand signposts and only recently hasa village sign been erected betweenWittersham and Reading Street to informvisitors that they are crossing the parishboundary. The village sign depicts ‘Ollie’Orpin of Hayes Farm, who frequentlyappeared at fêtes and other eventsdressed in his traditional shepherd’ssmock and felt hat. ‘Ebony Cottages’at Stone Corner in the far south of theparish, and ‘Ebony Cottage’ in ReadingStreet, are among the few propertiesthat bear the name ‘Ebony’. (Photos © Oxney Local History Society)Ebony is part of the civil parish of Stone-cum-Ebony, together with Stone-in-Oxney on the Isle of Oxney, and is one of the nineecclesiastical parishes within the Tenterden, Rother and Oxney Benefice.Most of the parish’s residents live in the hamlet of Reading Street, distinguished by a group of Grade II Listed Buildingsconsisting of Ebony Cottage, Wellbro Cottage, Skeers House and Old Barrack Farmhouse. This was formerly the village post officeand shop; one hundred years ago, letters from Tenterden Post Office, the nearest money order and telegraph office, were receivedhere every day (except Sundays) at 7.10am and 7.40pm; outgoing mail was despatched at about 6.15pm.From the archives ...in and around Reading Street in times pastClockwise from top left: (1) ‘Ebony Cottage,’ once the home of singer Jean Stirling Mackinlay; (2) a poultryman on his cart loaded with crates ofchickens (Brockett Farmhouse on the left, Ebony Cottage on the right); (3) a solitary cyclist finds it easier to walk up the hill than ride, passing OldBarrack Farmhouse and heading towards Skeers House, Wellbro, the ‘White Hart and Lamb’ and Brockett Farmhouse; (4) the ‘White Hart andLamb’, Brockett Farmhouse, Ebony Cottage (behind the tree) and Tollgate House; (5) Frederick Weller (1870–1954) and his sheepdog at BrockettFarmhouse; (6) one of the first motor cars to be seen around Ebony; properties shown are, from the right, Brocket Farmhouse ,the ‘White Hartand Lamb,’ Wellbro and Skeers House, with S’-shaped anchor plates to prevent its front wall from bowing. ®David Weller20The local population of about 70 is sometimesoutnumbered by visitors to Tenterden Garden Centre, formerlyTollgate Nurseries. Tollgate House, to the south, evokes thetollgate on the turnpike roads to Rye and New Romney.Adjacent to the garden centre’s car park is the formerEbony School, built in 1882 as a mixed elementary schoolon land sold to the parish by Herbert Paine for £15, andclosed in 1922.Ebony School’s first teacher was Jane Catt, eldest daughterof William Catt, Ebony’s parish clerk and sub-postmaster, andhis wife Philadelphia. The 1881 census, taken while the schoolwas still being built, records that she was living with herparents at Old Barrack Farm and teaching about 30 pupils ina temporary schoolroom in St Mary’s Church. Her career wasterminated by mental illness and by 1891 she was a patientin the East Kent Lunatic Asylum at St Augustine’s Hospital,Chartham.Jane Catt’s successor was Mary Ann Scudamore, aschoolmistress from Islington, London, who in 1891was lodging with John and Naomi Almond at RamsdenFarmhouse, Appledore Road (not to be confused with anotherRamsden Farm, south of Reading Street) and in 1901 withDavid Standen, a road labourer, and his niece Ellen Holdstock,at Lane Cottage, Appledore Road. Ramsden Farmhouse(pictured right) has been improved beyond recognition since1891. Now a Grade II listed property, it was on the market for£1.9million a few years ago.Reading Street Post Office in 1913 .21In 1911, now aged 61, Mary Scudamorewas still living in Reading Street, in anunnamed three-bedroom cottage orhouse. This may have been The SchoolHouse which appears in later recordsas the home of the school’s head (andprobably only) teacher. It was demolishedmany years ago and evidently stood afew yards south of the school, alongsidethe B2080 and opposite what is now thegarden centre’s entrance porch.Average daily attendance at the schoolwhen Mary Scudamore retired was 26.In early 1914 Ivy Rous (née Goodall),whose family home was in Norfolk, wasappointed headmistress. She had onlyrecently married Thomas Rous (whose story will be told in Chapter Seven), also a schoolteacher by profession, who was servingwith the Essex Yeomanry. Their time together was very intermittent, due to Thomas’s overseas postings. He survived most ofthe war, only to be killed in action eight months before the Armistice. While caring for their baby daughter, Ivy remained incharge of the school for another four years, until it closed. By this time, Ebony’s elder children were attending schools inTenterden and Appledore.After the school closed it became a venue for church meetings and social events, was requisitioned by the War Office in 1940,and since 1948 has had various owners, including Colonel J F (‘Charles’) Armstrong who used it as a woodworking shop. It isnow owned by Chris Pursglove. In March 2017 a ‘change of use’ planning application from workshop to retail was submitted toAshford Borough Council.* * *Opposite the site of the tollgate stands The Old Inn, rebuilt in 1900 on the site of previous inns dating back to 1659. Over theyears it underwent confusing changes of name and was called ‘The Ewe and Lamb’ in the 1841 census and later ‘The White Hart’and ‘The White Hart and Lamb’. Its licensees included George Thomas Paine (who was also a shepherd and grazier) from c. 1841,William Farrance from 1881, Charles Catt from 1891, James Bates from 1901, Norman Dean in 1913–1922, Thomas H Boughtonfrom 1930, George N Aitken and finally ex-Regimental Sergeant Major William (‘Bill’) Herridge, late of the 2nd Battalion, RoyalSussex Regiment.An entry from Kelly’s Directory, 1913.Left: Chris Pursglove at Ebony School; Centre: Pupils’ coathangers in the school cloakroom, now Chris Pursglove’s workshop;Right: The schoolroom from the south in 2017.22A large and obviously well patronised establishment in its heyday, it had a bar, bar-parlour, parlour, kitchen, washhouse,scullery, dairy, cellar, two attics, seven bedrooms, a wool room, stables, two cow lodges, a cart lodge, an orchard, paddocks and alarge garden.When Bill Herridge died in 1969 it was closed, renamed, and sold for £5,000, becoming a ‘B&B’ before being put on themarket for £109,000 in 1973. It has now been a private residence for many years.In the words of those who knew him, Bill Herridge was ‘quite a character’. Short, stocky and ramrod-straight, he wouldsometimes don his RSM uniform, complete with drill stick. During his 37-year tenancy ‘The White Hart and Lamb’ acquired areputation for being ‘the pub with no beer’ because from time to time he omitted to replenish his cellar. Cigarettes were scarcetoo; he stocked only a few packets for his best customers.Bill often closed the pub for the day without notice, pinning a notice to the door saying, ‘Gone to the Races. Back at 8.30.’On other days he preferred watching television to serving his customers and left the lights out in the bar to deter anyone fromentering. Those who ventured in were gruffly greeted with, ‘Help yourself and leave the money on the bar’.Refusing to install a telephone, he relied on a GPO kiosk outside the pub for his spasmodic orders to the brewery and his callsto his ‘bookie’ for his daily half-crown ‘flutter’ on the horses. Eventually the GPO decided to remove the kiosk because it cost £300a year to maintain and was used for only £15-worth ofcalls – all, as far as they could tell, made by ‘the Major’.His neighbour, Daisy Townsend, kept an eye on himin his old age, and promised that if his curtains werenot drawn by 9am she would call in. That day came atChristmas 1968 when Daisy and her husband becameconcerned, and found that Bill had collapsed.He died at the age of 85. His ashes were interred atSt Mary’s on 25 January 1969 following a memorialservice conducted by the vicar, Lieutenant-Colonel theRev. Bouverie-Brine, attended by family and friends,including detachments from local ‘Old Comrades’associations and their standard bearers. Bill Herridgejoined the ‘Royal Sussex’ in 1904, when he was 21,and served for 27 years before becoming landlord of‘The White Hart and Lamb’. During the First World Warhe was Mentioned-in-Despatches and awarded theDistinguished Conduct Medal.Old Comrades pay their respects at the interment of RSM W G Herridge’sashes at St Mary’s.Above: The ‘White Hart and Lamb’ in the 1960s; Centre: ‘B&B’ for £7.50 a night in 1980; Right: ‘The Old Inn’ in 2017.23Chapter Six – St Mary’s todaySt Mary’s Church, opposite Tenterden Garden Centre, shows much evidence of its Elizabethan heritage in its ashlar and redblack stonework. Over the years the provenance of its windows has been queried but in a note in his church register the vicarleft no doubt: ‘All the windows except the Vestry and West Window are [from] the old [church]’. In his Notes on old Tenterden,published in 1902, John Ellis Mace wrote: ‘the stones and tracery of the windows [were] replaced as nearly as possible in their oldpositions, three on the south side, two on the north [but] the positions of the south doorway and one window were reversed’.This confirms that the Early English east window, and thePerpendicular windows from the chancel and nave, wereretained. The west window is ‘Victorian Gothic’. The Elizabethanchurch’s north porch was not reinstated but it is likely that itsexternal arch survives as the one that now graces the Victorianbuilding’s main, south-facing, entrance. A fragment of amedieval gargoyle is discernible on the dripstone of one of itscorbels.Whilst it is not possible to date the arch accurately it appearsto be early Gothic and there is every reason to assume thatit survived the 1560 fire more-or-less unscathed, and wasincorporated into the Elizabethan church as depicted in HowardGaye’s drawing on page 16.The most striking difference between the floor plans ofthe Elizabethan and Victorian churches is that the latter has avestry, built on to the north-east corner under a ‘cat-slide’ roof.The church from the south, showing three of the windows salvaged from the Elizabethan St Mary’s. ©Stuart KirkOne of the first photographs taken after the church was consecrated.24Its external door frame is also likely to have come from the Elizabethan church and may be a pre-1560 component, in this casehaving previously spanned the south doorway. There is a barely recognisable medieval ‘mass-clock’ or ‘scratch-dial’ (a form ofsundial) incised into its right-hand jamb, serving no purpose now that it no longer faces the sun.The timber-framed, tile-hung, louvered shingle-capped bell-turret above the west gable resembles its precursor and housesthe 1805 Thomas Mears bell. Among those for whom it has been tolled are Maria Ann Sherwood, orchardist and cultivator of theGranny Smith apple, and Thomas Smith, a farm labourer from Beckley, who were married in August 1819. They lived at Beckley forthe next 19 years, during which time Maria bore eight children, three of whom died in infancy.Most of the church’s furnishings and principal internal fixtures were made for the new church; one artefact from theElizabethan St Mary’s is a frieze, carved with oak leaves and acorns, on the reading desk. The building was listed Grade II in1950 because it preserves much of the original character and masonry of the old church. Historic England’s National HeritageList describes its principal features as follows: ‘The fittings are mainly 19th century or later. At the east end there is a simplereredos with a shelf. The pulpit is a timber drum with plain sides and a carved cornice and base on a stone plinth: Newman [JohnNewman, author of The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald] suggests an 18th century date. The font is very small andhas an octagonal bowl with a bratticed cornice on an octagonal stem on a raised step of encaustic tiles. In the nave the seating ismade up of chairs while the choir stalls have chamfered ends and open-traceried, Perpendicular-style fronts. There is a fragmentof an old oak frieze incorporated into the reading desk and a rustic sanctuary rail with wrought-iron uprights and a woodenLeft: The main doorway and its strap-hinged 19th century plank door. ©Stuart Kirk; Centre: The east window’s pointed arch, hood mouldings andPerpendicular tracery; Right: The bell-turret above the west gable.Left: The two north windows and the doorway to the vestry; Centre: The Victorian west window, with Rev. Judy Darkins, Vicar of Ebony, inthe foreground; Right: The crucifix on the east gable, a copy of an original salvaged from the Elizabethan church, only to be destroyed inan air raid 86 years later.25handrail. The nave floor is of parquetwhile the chancel has red and blacktiles. There is a good-quality paintedRoyal Arms of 1768 which was thework of J Marten of Tenterden’.Marten also painted Royal Armsfor Tenterden Town Hall and Hinxhill,Staplehurst, Upper Hardres andUdimore parish churches.In the churchyard there are aboutone hundred graves, including thoseof members of the Armstrong, Bacon,Bashford, Bates, Beadle, Beeching,Betchley, Body, Broadbank, Brown,Burton, Clayton, Clark, Coley, Croucher,Giles, Gillett, Goldsmith, Herridge,Honeysett, Johnson, Law, Mahony,Millen, Newton, Packham, Pierce,Robins, Shaw, Stevenson, Stewart,Weller and Wheeler families.Left: Victorian floor tiles in the sanctuary with Victorian motifs, possibly made by Minton’sLimited; Right: The ‘timber drum’ pulpit.Left: The chancel, showing the frieze on the reading desk. ©Stuart Kirk; Right: King George III Royal Arms.Left: The nave and west window. ©Stuart Kirk; Right: The nave, chancel, east window and octagonal font. ©Stuart Kirk26Chapter Seven – Wartime EbonyThere were troop movements and military camps in and around the parish in both world wars. From 1914, Ebony men joinedthe all-volunteer ‘Kitchener’s Army,’ enlisting at Tenterden Drill Hall (now St Mildred’s Church Hall), opened in 1911 forG Company, 5th Territorial Force Battalion East Kent Regiment and also used by D Squadron, Royal East Kent Mounted Rifles.All of Ebony’s First World War soldiers (those who died and those who survived) are named on a Roll of Honour in StMary’s Church.In the Second World War, children in the school playground, mothers in their gardens, and men working in the fields, cheeredand waved as they witnessed aerial combats during the Battle of Britain. Tragedy struck at the height of the conflict, on 24 August1940, when Pilot Officer Noel John Victor Benson (aged 21) of 603 Squadron, RAF Hornchurch, was killed when his Spitfirecrashed in flames at Great Hay Farm, Leigh Green, on Ebony’s northern boundary, after being attacked by a Messerschmitt Bf 109.A few years later, retribution was in the air as hundreds of Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force heavy bombers filled theskies over Romney Marsh by night and day, on their way to and from targets in occupied Europe, followed in 1944 by theairborne armadas of Operation Overlord (D-Day) and Operation Market Garden (Arnhem) and, in 1945, Operation Varsity(the Rhine Crossing).On 6 September 1943 three ‘stragglers’ in a formation of USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses approached from the south. One‘pancaked’ on Pett Level marshes, another exploded on Pannel Marshes (between Winchelsea and Pett) and a third crash-landedat the foot of Chapel Bank. The crew escaped. The ‘planesurvived more or less intact and was repaired and fitted withreplacement engines. After a few ditches had been filled in toprovide a level runway across the fields it was flown back tobase. Eye-witness Clifford Bloomfield, a teenager at the time,described the incident in his book Wings Over Rye, publishedin 1994. Many years later Peter Paine, another eye-witness,captured the scene in an evocative watercolour (above) forOxney Local History Society.Nothing so exciting had been seen there since July 1911when pioneer airman Eugène Renaux, flying a Farmanbiplane, flew low over Reading Street before making anemergency landing on Romney Marsh while taking part inA Flying Fortress bomber that crash-landed on Chapel Bank in 1943; St Mary’s Church is in the background. ®Oxney Local History Society27the Circuit of Europe Air Race – an ambitious event, Louis Blériot having pioneered cross-Channel flight as recently as July 1909.Celebrated photographer Alex Ridley of Tenterden, whose portraits of Dame Ellen Terry and friends can be seen at SmallhythePlace, was on Chapel Bank to record Renaux’s flypast.Aviation progressed at such a rate that only a few short years after the Europe air race, primitive German aircraft were crossingthe Channel and North Sea to bomb Kent coast towns and London.In the Second World War, Ebony experienced no civilian fatalities or serious injuries on the ‘home front’. Its first air raidoccurred on 25 October 1940, when 11 high-explosive bombs fell harmlessly into a field near French Hay. Nearly four yearspassed uneventfully until the V1 ‘Doodlebug’ flying bomb onslaught of 1944. On 27 June a V1, shot down by an RAF fighteraircraft over Reading Hill, demolished a bungalow on the Appledore road. The ARP (Air Raid Precautions) report of the incidentnoted that the building was rendered ‘uninhabitable’. On 7 July another V1 crashed at Frenchay Farm, without causing anydamage, followed by another on 19 July which, again the prey of a RAF fighter, caused extensive damage at Chapel Bank Farm,near where the Flying Fortress had crashed in September 1943.Finally, on 26 July, the RAF had one more excuse for a celebratory victory roll over Ebony after claiming a V1 that damagedhouses in Reading Street, slightly injuring one person. This was probably the bomb whose blast shook St Mary’s Church anddestroyed the ancient stone crucifix, salvaged from the rubble of ‘old St Mary’s,’ that had been mounted as a finial on the eastgable 86 years earlier.Ebony’s best-kept wartime secret was an underground bunker that was the hideout of Tenterden’s Auxiliary Unit, part of thenetwork of resistance volunteers trained to conduct sabotage and assassinations against the enemy in the event of a Germaninvasion. Tenterden’s six-man group was led by Louis Pugh, manager of a local chemical factory – just the man to concoctimprovised plastic explosive devices!The group’s first lair was in a hollow oak near Frenchay Farm, where they tested their explosives by supplying some to a farmerwho used them to blow-up some apple trees he wanted to remove. The exercise was too successful. The trees were blown sky-high.A police officer who investigated was told that the blast had been caused by an unexploded bomb. The group then constructed amore ingenious hiding place under a summerhouse at Gibbet Oak House, off Appledore Road. This was 20ft long and 12ft wide,with a headroom of 10ft, and was equipped with bunks, stores and lamps, and enough food and water to last at least 12 weeks.During a later era of military secrecy, the Cold War, the Ministry of Defence operated a Racal Hyperfix navigation system atBarrack Farm; its presence was obvious but its purpose was discreet.Members of the Army Veterinary Corps who visited a Baptist Sunday School run by Dorothy Body at ‘The Gibbet,’ Appledore Road, during theFirst World War. From a picture postcard donated to Tenterden and District Museum in 1983 by Richard Stephen Body of Hope Farm, Snargate.The Sergeant in the centre appears to be wearing three medal ribbons: the 1895 Indian General Service Medal, the 1908 India General ServiceMedal, and a Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. ®Tenterden and District Museum28Roll of HonourEbony’s War Memorial honours eight men who were lost in the First World War, including one who died just a week beforethe Armistice; three brothers from one family and two from two other families; and a patriotic newly-married schoolteacher whoenlisted within days of war being declared, fought through most of it, only to lose his life shortly before it ended.The parish’s only Second World War casualty was Aircraftman 1st Class Harold James Coley, son of Edgar and Alice Coley, whoserved with 2834 Squadron, RAF Regiment and died on 5 August 1943, aged 21. His grave is in St Mary’s Churchyard.* * *Six of the seven sons of William and Sarah (née Judge) Body served in the Army in the First World War. The family lived atGibbet Farm, the heart of a farmstead also known as Gibbet Oak Farm and ‘The Gibbet,’ on Ebony’s northern boundary.* * *Sergeant Arthur Judge Body (William and Sarah’s fourth son) of the Corps of Hussars, 1/1st Royal East Kent Yeomanry (Duke ofConnaught’s Own) Mounted Rifles, died on the night of 30 December 1915, aged 37, during the evacuation of Helles, Gallipoli.He is commemorated on Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery Memorial, Krithia, Turkey.The cemetery was created after the Armistice: 3,360 First World War servicemen are buried or commemorated in the cemetery;2,226 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials commemorate many casualties known or believed to be buried there.Sgt Body was one of only 30 Royal East Kent Yeomanry men to die at Gallipoli.Before the war he served as a private in the 2nd Volunteer Weald of Kent Battalion of The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), probablyin South Africa during the Second Boer War.Major Edward Upton Body, MC (William and Sarah’s fifth son) of the Royal Field Artillery, 130th Battery, 40th Brigade,husband of Hilda May Body of St. Leonards-on-Sea, died at Ruesnes, France, on 4 November 1918, aged 39. He was buried at theCommonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, Ruesnes Communal Cemetery, Nord, France.Before the war Edward joined the Indian Army Volunteer Corps Artillery Companies, serving from 1910 as a lieutenant in theBengal Volunteer Corps and the Calcutta Port Defence Volunteer Corps.During his time on the Western Front, Edward distinguished himself by his gallantry in action on several occasions. His MilitaryCross was presented to him at Aldershot by King George V on 25 June 1918. In his diary, Edward noted: ‘Investiture by King. Avery successful day. Lunch in RA Mess’.* * *Plaques in St Mary’s Church commemorate Sgt Body and Major Body; their sister Margery (William and Sarah’s youngestdaughter), who died of tuberculosis in Switzerland, on 15 October, 1909 aged 21, and Bertha Lansdell Barr (William and Sarah’sfourth daughter), who died at Colborne, Canada, on 28 September 1980, aged 96. The church’s Bible was presented by Williamand Sarah in memory of Margery.Bertha was a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse and workedat the VAD hospital at Clifton House, Ashford Road, Tenterden,which opened in October 1914 and initially treated woundedBelgian soldiers. There she met a Canadian soldier; JamesBarr, who had been injured in France. They were married inTenterden and after the war Bertha joined many other warbrides on a ship that took her to Canada to be reunited withJames. After she inherited some family money they bought afruit and vegetable farm in Southern Ontario.Whereas most of William and Sarah’s sons worked on theland before their military service, their eldest, Thomas, becamea physician and surgeon. At the age of 23, while still a medicalstudent, he interrupted his studies to enlist with the 11thBattalion of the 33rd (Royal East Kent) Company, ImperialBertha Body (back row, third from left) and other nurses atTenterden VAD Hospital. ®Ivor Body29Yeomanry, serving in South Africa in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and subsequently qualifying as a general practitionerwith a practice in Ashford.In 1914 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a temporary lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force,subsequently transferring to V1 Corps, Royal Garrison Artillery, an arm of the Royal Artillery, as Captain Body.Whilst serving on the Western Front, Thomas was allocated his own personal war-horse, an Army charger named ‘Camouflage’.They rode on the Somme, where both of them were injured. Their story is told in Chapter Eight.The other sons of William and Sarah Body who survived their military service were William Stephen, their eldest son; HaroldJames, their third son; and Geoffrey, their youngest son, who served in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force as a corporal fromSeptember 1915 to April 1916, having enlisted in the Royal East Kent Mounted Rifles Territorial Force in January 1911.* * *Private George Charles Paine, youngest child of Herbert Paine, shepherd and farm bailiff, of Reading Street and the lateCaroline Paine (née Smeed), was a shepherd before enlisting as a driver in the Army Service Corps, 664th Company. He died on20 April 1917, aged 28 and is buried at Puchevillers British Cemetery, Amiens.After completing his basic army training, George was posted to France, arriving at Le Havre on 18 March 1917. A few weekslater he died suddenly after being taken ill with measles and bronchitis.* * *Second Lieutenant Thomas Rous, husband of Ivy Rous (née Goodall) of The School House, Reading Street, served with theRoyal Field Artillery, D Battery, 296th Brigade and died on 22 March 1918, aged 31. Until March 1917 he had fought with theEssex Yeomanry. His grave is in Etaples Military Cemetery.Rous, a schoolteacher, was born in Charing. He married Ivy on 24 August 1914 – 20 days after war was declared and probablya few days before he joined the Essex Yeomanry. He fought in the Battle of Loos in September 1915, was invalided home aftercatching enteric fever, returned to France in July 1916 as a Bomber (First Class) and went back to England in March 1917 to joinan officers’ training course. In the following September he was commissioned into the RFA and in December, the month in whichhis and Ivy’s only child, Olive, was born, he was posted to an artillery battery near Etaples. He died the day after being seriouslywounded.His Commanding Officer, Captain Raymond Godwin, wrote to his family, saying: ‘He was such a cheery brother officer, bothon duty and in the mess. His pluck and endurance were wonderful, so much so that I twice submitted his name to the BrigadeCommander for some distinction or award for bravery; the first time for his bravery and devotion to duty, when he crawled up toRight: George Charles Paine and his graveat Puchevillers British Cemetery, Amiens.30and into German barbed-wire entanglements to observe a destructive shot we had to fire on a new trench. Through his gallantaction we were able to destroy the enemy trench. The second time, to the Colonel’s notice, for his coolness and splendid exampleunder the heavy bombardment of 21 March, when he went from gun-pit to gun-pit, helping his men and cheering them on. Itwas thus he received his wounds’.* * *Shortly before the First World War, William Pierce, a farm bailiff,his wife Emily and their two daughters and six sons moved fromFrenchurst Farm, Sandhurst, to Hayes Cottage, High House Farm,Ebony. Four of the sons volunteered or were called-up for militaryservice; tragically, three of them were killed during the last twoyears of the war.Private Percy Thomas Pierce of the Queen’s Own (Royal West KentRegiment), 8th Battalion, D Company, died on 3 February 1918,aged 27, and was buried at Hargicourt British Cemetery.From November 1917 to mid-February 1918 the ‘8th West Kents’were fighting near Corbie and Vadencourt. The official RegimentalHistory describes the probable circ*mstances of Percy’s death:‘On the night of the 3rd February, D Company raided a Germanpost known to the battalion as “Herbert’s Post”. Herbert was thenickname given to a succession of German sentries who had fallen prey to British snipers on sentry duty at this point. The raidwas carried out by two parties, both of which got in close and engaged the enemy, inflicting a good many casualties. Theright party was counter-attacked by the enemy. Second Lieutenant Carville and hismen extracted his party, shooting two enemy himself. Second Lieutenant Crightoncommanding the left party was hit and Sergeant Vanner took over’.Percy appears to have been one of the few casualties of this engagement, havingsurvived injuries in previous battles. He suffered wounds to his right hand and left footin September 1916, was evacuated to England and Tipperary for hospital treatmentand convalescence, and returned to France in July 1917.Private James Percy Pierce, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 1st/5th Battalion,Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, died on 15 February 1917, aged 33 and wasburied at Amara War Cemetery.Private Daniel William Pierce, Wellington Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion,New Zealand Expeditionary Force, died on 7 June 1917, aged 38 and was buried atWulverghem-Lindenhoek Road Military Cemetery, Flanders.Daniel had emigrated to New Zealand before the war and was one of its 100,000men who signed-up to fight for their King and Country; 18,000 of them lost theirlives. At the time of the Armistice, Wulverghem-Linendenhoek Road Military Cemeterycontained 162 graves but subsequently soldiers from nearby battlefieldsand small cemeteries, including Pierce and 11 other New Zealanders who died on 7June 1917, were reburied there, bringing the total number of graves to more thanone thousand.* * *Private Arthur George Eggleden of The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 6th (Service) Battalion, died on 7 October 1916, aged 19.His parents were Arthur and Elizabeth Eggleden of Willow Cottage, Reading Street. Posted to France on 27 April 1915, he wasreported missing in action on 7 October 1916 during the Battle of Le Transloy, the BEF Fourth Army’s last offensive in the Battle ofthe Somme.Private Eggleden worked as a shop-boy and plumber’s mate before the war and enlisted on 2 December 1914. On the day hedied the ‘6th Buffs’ were in action all day and at 13.45hrs came under heavy shell-fire from German long-range guns At 1400hrsHayes Cottage, pictured in 2017. © Robert WatshamPrivate Daniel Pierce’s grave in Flanders.31the battalion went over the top into ‘no man’s land’ and was met with devastating machine-gun fire. The attack was held up whenat least two companies were caught on open ground, and eventually ground to a halt. By the end of the day 347 men lay killed orwounded on the battlefield. Arthur was among the battalion’s 121 ‘other ranks’ who lost their lives. He has no known grave and isremembered on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.His medals were sent to his mother as his father was at that time serving as a sapper in Royal Engineers.* * *Private Frank T Addy of the 1st/5th Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), is also on the Ebony Roll of Honour (but not onthe parish’s war memorial) and on the war memorial in Tenterden High Street. He died on 7 May 1916, aged 22 years, and wasburied in Amara War Cemetery, Iraq. Private Addy was the youngest son of Charles Addy, who died in 1909, and Lousia Addy (néeSinden), who died in 1913, of Frenchay Farm. He worked on the farm before he joined The Buffs.Amara was occupied by the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force on 3 June 1915 and became a hospital centre. The cemeterycontains more than 4,000 graves.* * *Two brothers who were born in Ebony are named on War Memorial in Beckley, East Sussex, where they were living at the timethey enlisted.Private Albert John Bates of the 13th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, was killed in action at Becourt on 3 September 1916,aged 23. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.Private Reginald Ernest Bates, his younger brother, was a private in the 13th Battalion, Essex Regiment, and died on 19 April1917 after being wounded at the Battle of Arras. He was 20. His grave is in Aibigny Communal Cemetery Extension near Arras.The Bates brothers’ grandfather, Nathan, who was married to Frances, farmed 290 acres at High House, on Rye Road, Ebony,from about 1871, probably earlier, and employed eight men and two boys. By 1881 he had extended his farm to cover 868 acres,employing 16 men and six boys.Nathan and Frances’s son, Charles, became a farmer and lived with his wife Mary at Hayes Farm, adjacent to High House Farm,where they raised three children: Albert (born in 1893), Ethel (1895) and Reginald (1897).By 1911 the family had moved to Lime Court, Beckley, where Charles worked as a farmer and grazier. The Lych Gate at Beckleyparish church was erected by Charles and Mary Bates in memory of their sons.* * *Also in St Mary’s Churchyard is the grave ofColonel Jack Francis (‘Charles’) Armstrong MBE ofthe Royal Scots Fusiliers, who served with distinctionin Burma in the Second World War and becamechurchwarden and treasurer at St Mary’s andpatron of the Maidstone branch of the Burma StarAssociation. He died in 1987, aged 87, leaving awidow, Mabel (‘May’) and their children, Robin andGillian. The family lived at Skeers House, ReadingStreet. His headstone, incised with his regiment’sbadge, records that he was a ‘soldier and craftsman’.Mabel died in 2005, aged 102.There is also a memorial to Colonel Armstrong inthe church, close to a window endowed by Mabelin 1984 and inscribed ‘In deep gratitude for myparents, my family – the safe return of my husbandfrom war – and for our children and grandchildren,this window is offered to the praise of God and thisloved place of worship. MGVA ‘Playing the Last Post after the unveiling of Ebony’s War Memorial on 22 July1922. ©Ebony Church Archive32Top left: Ebony’s First World War Memorial; Top right: In 1993 the memorial was restored and on Remembrance Sunday it was rededicated ata service conducted by the Archdeacon of Maidstone, Ven. Patrick Evans (second left) and the vicar of Ebony, Rev. Seymour Harris. Also in thepicture are churchwardens Joyce Bates (left) and Elizabeth Orpin, and British Legion standard bearers Betty Sim and Jim Chesson. ©KM GroupCentre left: The Roll of Honour for 38 men who served in the First World War. ‘+’ denotes those who lost their lives.; Centre middle: AircraftmanHarold James Coley’s headstone in St Mary’s Churchyard; Centre right: the Armstrong memorial window.Bottom left: Colonel Jack Francis (Charles) Armstrong’s memorial; Bottom right: Colonel Armstrong’s headstone.33Chapter Eight – Some Ebony families‘Body’ is a recurring family name in Ebony’s history. The aforementioned William Body, who lost two sons – Edward and Arthur– in the First World War, was one of the parish’s most enterprising and, no doubt, wealthiest entrepreneurs.He became a farmer, grazier, fruit grower and agricultural seed grower at Gibbet Farm (aka Gibbet Oak Farm and ‘The Gibbet’)and was a member of one of three Body families, all descendants of John and Sarah (née Pinyon) Body of Wittersham, that ownedfarms and mills in south-west Kent and East Sussex.The farm is named after the gibbet that was a gruesome local landmark, 200 feet above sea level, overlooking Shirley Moorand visible from several miles away to the south and east. Here, the bodies of thieves and murders hanged at Gallows Green,Tenterden, were left to rot. There were many public hangings in Tenterden but in general Ebony’s parishioners appear to havebeen a law-abiding lot; only two local murders are recorded in Mark Mullins’s book Old Ashford Borough Murders (Plough andCircuit, 1999).At an inquest held at Ebony on the 5 June 1622 on Richard Sharnoll, a local labourer, it was reported that GeorgeGroombridge, a blacksmith from Ebony, struck Sharnoll on the head with a hammer, inflicting fatal injuries. At MaidstoneAssizes, Groombridge was found guilty of ‘felonious killing’ but his sentence is unknown. In October 1627, Nicholas Burrell, ahusbandman from Ebony, was hanged for the murder of John French.* * *Born in 1848, William Body inherited his father Thomas’s farm at TheHall, Wittersham, in 1868 and in 1873 married Sarah Upton Judge ofBenenden. Over a period of 14 years, William and Sarah had a total of 13children (seven sons and six daughters); the eldest, William Stephen, wasborn in 1874, the youngest, Margery, in 1888. In 1884, when their familywas almost complete, they all moved from Wittersham to Dunstall Farm,Shoreham, so that the sons could be educated at the Queen ElizabethGrammar School, five miles away in Sevenoaks, to which they travelleddaily by pony-and-trap.In 1897 the family moved to Ebony, where William prospered, grazinghundreds of acres on and near Romney Marsh and travelling to New York,New Zealand and Switzerland to study agriculture. The family’s first homeafter moving from Shoreham was a large old house at Gibbet Farm thateventually became too expensive to maintain, so in about 1921 Williamand Sarah moved into a flat-roofed bungalow built for them nearby. Thiswas one of a several new buildings at ‘The Gibbet’ that included a largeL-shaped block, built on the site of two oast-houses, that contained fruitand corn stores, bottling rooms and stables at ground level. On the topfloor there was a flat for William and Sarah’s second son Thomas, anda room in which their second daughter Dorothy ran the Sunday Schoolmentioned in Chapter Seven.Unmarried, Dorothy lived with her parents until they died and thenmoved in with her sister Edith and her husband Harry Robins, Town Clerkof Petersfield. When Harry died, Edith bought Petersgate in AppledoreRoad, Tenterden, where she and Dorothy made a home for Thomas, whodied unmarried on 7 December 1961, aged 85. The sisters donated a plotof land at the bottom of the garden at Petersgate to build Shrubcote Hall, acommunity centre.* * *Modest success for William Body at the Rye CattleShow in 1881. ®Primrose WybornDorothy Body (left) and Edith Robins and visitingShrubcote Hall shortly before it opened in 1956.®Tenterden and District History Society34William Body, who earned a place in the annals of agriculturefor pioneering the cultivation of wild white clover, died in 1933.By then he had helped most of his five surviving sons succeed invarious agricultural and related businesses.After being discharged from the Army in April 1916, after fiveyears’ service, his youngest son Geoffrey married Frances EmmaStonham in 1920 and ran Barrack Farm, Reading Street and WeyStreet Farm, Ruckinge.William and Sarah’s third son, Harold, who married OliveMay Hart in 1901, ran several farms on and near Romney Marsh,including Goldenhurst, a 126-acre farm and farmhouse atAldington. Noel Coward rented this property in 1926 and in 1927bought it from Harold for £500, living there until 1956. Despitelosing his left eye in a shooting accident while a schoolboy, Haroldserved in the East Kent Yeomanry.William and Sarah’s two eldest sons, William Stephen (whomarried Maggie Finn in 1902) and Charles (who married MayNoakes in 1915), were partners with their father in a firm thattraded in all manner of materials and commodities from wharfsand railway yards, as a 1904 advertisem*nt (right) shows. At thistime, barges (two of which belonged to the Body family) couldstill navigate along part of the Rother Valley, between Rye andSmallhythe (see Chapter Three). More opportunities for commercewere created when the Rother Valley Light Railway started operatingbetween Tenterden and Robertsbridge in 1900 and, in 1905 (nowrenamed the Kent and East Sussex Railway), opened a line toHeadcorn on the South Eastern Railway, connecting with services tothe Channel ports and London, and the national railway network.William and Sarah Body (fourth and fifth from left,centre row) with all their seven sons, six daughters andsundry spouses and grandchildren at ‘The Gibbet’ on2 March 1907, in the shade of the gibbet oak. Backrow, from the left: Arthur, Charles, Mildred, Edward,Hilda, Thomas, William Stephen and Geoffrey Body.Centre, seated: Edith (‘Queenie’) Body; Harold JamesBody with his wife Olive (née Hart); William and Sarah;and Maggie (aka Margaret, née Finn), wife of WilliamStephen Body. Front: Dorothy Body; Richard (‘Dick’) andJoyce (‘Biddy’), children of Harold and Olive; MargeryBody; Margaret, daughter of William Stephen and‘Maggie,’; and Bertha Body. This was the last reunionof the entire family: Margery died of typhoid in 1909during a visit to Switzerland. ®Primrose Wyborn•Hilda, a keen photographer, died of tuberculosis in 1927. Bertha married a Canadian soldier (see Chapter Seven). Mildred married TrevorPerrott, an oil engineer, with whom she lived in the Russian oilfields until the 1917 Revolution, when she and their baby daughter Vera fledpenniless to England on a coal boat; Trevor was unable to escape until 1922. In the Second World War, Mildred and Trevor, who now also had ason, Peter, were living in the Romanian oilfields at Ploiești during the German invasion of Romania. The family narrowly escaped to Egypt, Peterjoined the Guards, and was killed during the Allied invasion of Italy.Members of the Body family and relations gather round afire, billy-cans at the ready for a ‘brew-up,’ while enjoying apicnic at Dungeness in 1906. From the left: Sarah Body, ? Finn,Maggie Body with baby, Dorothy Jane Body, Bertha LansdellBody and other Finn relatives. ®Edward Carpenter35Captain Body and his faithful war-horse, ‘Camouflage’William Body bought a team of Russian ponies so that his sons could learn to ride; once they were proficient theyenthusiastically ‘followed the hunt’ while living at Shoreham and later at Ebony.Arthur, Charles, Geoffrey and Thomas had their own horses. During the summer Thomas took on ‘locum’ work to be able toafford to hunt with the Mid-Kent Staghounds and the Ashford Valley Hunt in the winter.After serving as an Army doctor throughout the First World War (as related in Chapter Seven) he bought his charger,‘Camouflage,’ for £25; together they went hunting around south Kent and also won 11 local point-to-point races.In June 1934 Thomas took ‘Camouflage,’ who by now had been his faithful steed for nearly 20 years, to the first post-FirstWorld War International Horse Show at London’s Olympia exhibition centre, to take part in a parade of 24 veteran war-horses.Later, at other events, he went on show to support the Royal Veterinary College Hospital’s ‘250 Million Farthings Fund’.Clockwise from top left: (1) Captain Thomas Body riding ‘Camouflage’at Hothfield in 1934. (2) Thomas and ‘Camouflage’ (farthest fromcamera) at a ‘point-to-point’. (3) letter from Thomas to a friend. (4)an appeal for donations to the Royal Veterinary College Hospital.®Primrose Wyborn36The PackhamsGibbet Farm’s longest-serving employee was Edward John Packham, who spent his entire working life as a farm-hand andstockman on William Body’s farms.Edward and his wife Harriet Esther (née Bean) lived at Little Gibbet, a cottage that stood beside the pond where PinecoveNursery is today. Edward previously worked on William’s farms at Wittersham and then, as a young married man, at Shoreham,where the first of his seven children – Elsie, Florence and Alfred – were born.When, after 11 years at Shoreham, William Body moved to Gibbet Farm, Edward, now35, went with him and soon afterwards, on 27 September 1898, Cyril was born. He wasthe first of the ‘Ebony Packhams’ and in the next six years three siblings followed – twinsAlbert and Irene, and Reginald.Alfred, Cyril’s elder brother, served with The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) in India andthe Middle East in the First World War; Cyril followed him into the regiment, enlistingwhen he was under age. Albert joined the regiment after the war ended.Packham family historian Richard Diedo (Cyril’s great-grandson), writes: ‘My photo(above) shows him with one “good conduct” stripe, indicating he had served two yearswith an unblemished record, and a brass “crossed flags” badge on his left forearm,signifying that he was a trained signaller.‘When old enough to serve overseas he was transferred to the newly-formed MachineGun Corps. In my picture of the 57th Battalion and its commanding officer, LieutenantColonel John Frederic Roundel Hope, Cyril is in the middle row, fourth from left. This isthe only known photo of this battalion.‘My mother Christine (Cyril’s grand-daughter) recalls that he always had a cough,caused when he was gassed in the trenches. After the war he married Mary (“Polly”)Beach. They settled in Tenterden where they raised their family – Victor, Dennis, Patrickand Derek.‘Cyril worked on the Kent and East Sussex Railway all his life, latterly as a guard. He died in 1975 and is fondly rememberedon the railway to this day. Photos of him are held in the K&ESR archives and he has been mentioned in several editions of thevolunteers’ magazine.‘He had a lucrative sideline cutting his fellow railway workers’ hair (in company time!) and was renowned for walking along therunning-board outside the carriages to lean in through the windows and collect tickets, rather than wait for the train to stop!‘He was a sergeant in the railway’s Home Guard during the Second World War. Alfred served in India and the Middle East inthe First World War.’Above: Cyril Packham. Centre: 57th Bn, Machine Gun Corps. Right: Albert Packham. ®Richard DiedoAbove: Dennis Packham.®Richard Diedo37‘Dennis, Cyril and Mary’s son, was born in Tenterden and lived there all his life, leaving home only twice: the first time to servein the Royal Navy during the Second World War, and lastly for a family holiday in Cornwall shortly before he died in 1968.‘Dennis served on the C-class destroyer HMS Cavalier’s first commission, in operations off Norway and in the Indian Ocean andMiddle East. He was posthumously awarded the Arctic Star, the campaign medal belatedly bestowed in 2012 on those who servedon ‘convoys north of the Arctic Circle. We are able to visit Cavalier in Chatham Historic Dockyard’.Memories of the Packhams of EbonyClockwise from top left: (1) Cyril Packham (left) and his brother Alfred at Little Gibbet. (2) Cyril Packham at Little Gibbet. (3) The Packham family atLittle Gibbet in the early 1920s; members identified are Harriet (front row, far right), her daughter Florence (back row, third from left) and Mary,Cyril Packham’s wife (back row, far left). (4) Cyril Packham (fourth from left) with Kent and East Sussex Railway colleagues in April 1953; alsoin the group are, from the left, Bert Sharp, Douglas Vidler (guard), Arthur Harris (porter), Nelson Wood (driver), Jack Head (driver), Peter Vidler(fireman), Bob Blair (fireman) and Fred Hazel (driver); ® Colonel Stephens Railway Museum. (5) Florence Packham, Cyril’s sister, at Little Gibbet.(6) Edward John Packham (1862-1950).38Above left: Leigh Green Football Club in the 1920s. Players identified are, from the left, back row: (1) Percy Weller, (2) Percy Holdstock, (3)?Hickmott, (4) Fred Goldsmith, (6) Reginald Packham, (7) Alfred Packham. Front row: (1) C (?) Homewood, (2) Jerry Mannering, (5) Cyril Packham,(6) Eli Homewood, (7) Bill Taylor. Foreground: Sam Brotherwood (team mascot). The team’s ground was opposite Leigh Green Industrial Estate;its changing room was in Bill Pearson’s cottage, seen in the background.Above right: Albert Packham and Ella May Williams on their wedding day.Left: Leigh Green Cricket Club in the 1950s. Back row,left to right: unidentified umpire, ? Gladish, DavidPackham, R Prior, J Jary (scorer), S Seager, E R Page.Front row: A Uden, W Maskell, S G Jary, Reg Packham(David’s father), Dennis Packham, P Hall. The team’shome ground was at Setts Wood Farm, owned by R Prior.Above left: Alfred and Mabel (née Holdstock) Packham on their wedding day. Reginald, Alfred’s youngest brother, on left. Centre: Cyril and Mary(‘Polly’) Packham with their eldest son Victor, at Little Gibbet, c. 1922. Above right: The last resting place, at St Mary’s, Reading Street, of EdwardJohn Packham and Harriet Esther Packham, forebears of the Packhams of Ebony.39The WellersMany generations of the Weller family lived in Ebony, from the mid-18th century until about 1880; indeed, at one time therewere so many Wellers living there that it was jokingly referred to as ‘Wellertown.’ Some of their graves can be found on ChapelBank and at ‘new’ St Mary’s. The Wellers are the only family with graves in both churchyards.In 1861 Stephen Weller (32) and his wife Alice (29) and their sons George (5) and Stephen (3) were living in Reading Street;Stephen was working as a farm labourer. He and Alice had a son, Harry, in 1863, and a daughter, Alice, in 1867; both of thesechildren predeceased their parents.Stephen snr died in 1902, leaving £493 to Alice (about £55,000 in today’s money).By 1901, Stephen Weller jnr had married Susannah Mercer (36) and they were bringing up their two sons and six daughters atBarrack Farm. Their eldest child, Rhoda, was 13; Thomas, their youngest, was a year old. Rhoda was born on 3 October 1887 andwhen she was six weeks old she was one of more than 8,000 children in the Tenterden district who were vaccinated for smallpoxbetween July 1871 and November 1899.In April 1888 Rhoda’s doctor, Jesse H Newington, reported that Rhoda’s vaccination had been ‘successful’.In 1911 Stephen Weller, by now a widower and working as a shepherd, was raising daughters Lily (18), Laura (13) and Ada(9) and sons Harry (16), Tom (11) and Percy (7) at an address in Reading Street. Stephen, St Mary Church’s sexton, died in 1924,leaving effects worth £249 (about £27,000 in today’s money).Ada died, unmarried, in 1975. She was buried in her parents’ grave on Chapel Bank and was the last Weller to be interredthere. The last Weller funeral at St Mary’s was that of Phyllis Irene Weller in 2001.A delightful picture from the 1920s, showing a bride wearing a typical wedding dress of that period, and the wedding party in their ‘Sundaybests’. The occasion was the marriage at Ebony on 16 September 1925 of Bertha Weller, aged 20, daughter of farmer Frederick Weller and AmyWeller (née Goodhew) of Brockett Farm, Reading Street, to George Millen. Frederick and Amy are standing on the left. ®David Weller40The PainesThe Paine family became well-known in Ebony when George Thomas Paineand his wife Ann (née King) took over the ‘Ewe and Lamb’ (later known as the‘White Hart and Lamb’) in about 1841. The pub was the focal point of ReadingStreet’s social life in an age when most of its menfolk laboured all day in fields andfarmyards, working up raging thirsts that could be slaked only by pints of ‘mild,’a mildly-hopped and malt-flavoured ale for which Kent’s breweries were oncefamous.George and Ann (pictured right) were married at ‘old’ St Mary’s (described as ’theChapel of Ebony’ on their marriage certificate) on 20 April 1840. It was one of thelast weddings to be held there.They had six children (Mary, Henry, Ann, Herbert, Emily and George Thomas) anddied in 1877 and 1879 respectively.George and Ann’s first daughter,Mary, married William Hearsfield at StMary’s in 1865. Their marriage was oneof the most remarkable in the historyof Ebony. William was 22 (three yearsyounger than Mary) and had onlyrecently returned to his family’s farm at Fairfield on Romney Marsh, after serving as asoldier of fortune with Abraham Lincoln’s Union Army in the American Civil War.He sailed to America in 1861 on a windjammer, taking with him a chestcontaining all his belongings. He lost all of them when he was shipwrecked on theapproaches to New York Harbour. After surviving the ordeal he was given shelter bya farmer whose sons belonged to ‘The Wide Awakes,’ supporters of the RepublicanParty during the 1860 presidential election.William joined them, transferring to the Illinois Cavalry as a dispatch rider whenthe war began. He narrowly escaped captivity and death on several occasions. Afterthree years he returned to Fairfield to work on the family farm and marry Mary. From1884 until he died 1917 they ran a dairy business in Erith.Several years after the Civil War, William learned that he could claim an AmericanArmy pension. His first payment was a 20 dollar piece, minted in 1860. When hedied in 1917 his pension was transferred to Mary, who died in 1926.Left: George Charles on his pony, Emily, Caroline, and a neighbour at the Paines’s cottage. George Charles was the last member of the Painefamily to be born in Ebony. He died while serving with the Army in the First World War (see Chapter Seven). ®Derek PaineRight: Caroline, daughter of Herbert and Caroline (née Smeed) with her husband, Charles Fryer, a blacksmith. They were married at St Mary’sin 1900. ®Derek PaineAbove: George and Ann’s second son,Herbert, a grazier, shepherd and later afarm bailiff, married Caroline Smeed atSt Mary’s in 1872 and lived in ReadingStreet. They are pictured with three oftheir seven children: Thomas, Emilyand George Charles.41Ann, second daughter of George and Ann, married John Mitchell at St Mary’s in 1871. Tragically, she died five years later at theage of 32, predeceasing her parents. She is pictured above with her baby son, Harry.The children of George and Ann’s sons comprised the last generation of the Paines of Ebony; the family gradually dispersedto other areas of Kent. Pictured below are three of George and Ann’s grandsons – George Thomas Paine, William Paine and ArthurHenry Paine. They were all born in Reading Street to Henry Paine and Jane (née Hart) a few years before the family moved toGreat Mongeham, near Deal.Above left: George Thomas Paine, born in 1871, delivering The People newspaper. Founded in 1881 it was, and is still, ‘feisty, funny and trulyindependent’ and was, along with the News of the World, one of the first Sunday newspapers to achieve mass circulation, from cottages tovicarages – although there were some avid readers who denied being among its followers! ®Derek PaineAbove centre: William Paine, born in 1873. An employee of Martin Mill Waterworks, he died of shock and gunshot wounds in 1942.His assailant was convicted of manslaughter. ®Derek PaineAbove right: Arthur Henry Paine, one of the last Paines to be born in Ebony. His family moved to Great Mongeham in about 1881, when hewas seven. ®Derek PaineLeft: Mary Hearsfield (née Paine); Centre: William Hearsfield; Right: Ann Mitchell with her baby son, Harry. All pictures ® Derek Paine42Chapter Nine – Anniversaries, events and pilgrimagesOn 13 July 1958 the one hundredth anniversary of the rebuilding of St Mary’s in Reading Street was celebrated at the firstconfirmation service in the church’s history, conducted by the Rt Rev. Lewis Evans, Bishop of Dover, and Rev. Bouverie Brine, vicarof Stone and Ebony. On 28 July 1968 the church held its first Gift Day Service, raising £138.On 16 November 2008 the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the church was celebrated at a service led by the vicar, Rev.Stella Halmshaw and the Archdeacon of Maidstone, the Ven. Philip Down. Sir Donald Sinden read one of the lessons.In 1981 Rev. Anthony Towse left Ebony to take up other appointments. He is pictured below left receiving a watercolourpainting of a local landscape, a farewell present from his parishioners. With him are Mabel Armstrong, her daughter Gillian, JohnDoyle (who painted the picture) and Colonel Armstrong (®Ebony Church Archive).In May 2015 Joyce Bates celebrated 40 years as a churchwarden at St Mary’s. She is pictured below receiving a presentationfrom the vicar, Rev. Judy Darkins (®Ebony Church Archive)Above left: Rt Rev. Lewis Evans and Rev. Bouverie Brine with churchwardens Tom Weller and Bob Gillett (far right) and confirmation candidatesViolet Bond, Christopher Brown, Jim Gillett, Ann Whitehead, William Bond, Audrey Curteis, David Horn, Brian Whitehead, Mary Wood, CharlesBridger, Jack Gillett, Alfred Tubb and Elizabeth Whitehead. ®Ebony Church ArchiveAbove right: pictured arriving for the Gift Day Service are Colonel Armstrong (centre) with the Ven. Tom Pritchard, Archdeacon of Maidstone(left) and Rev. John Bouverie-Brine (vicar of Stone and Ebony), accompanied by Tenterden Town Council officers and councillors and the Mayor(Councillor Reuben Collison). ®Ebony Church Archive43Annual pilgrimagesA pilgrimage to the site of old St Mary’s Church on Chapel Bank took place in September 1958, one hundred years after itwas removed to Reading Street. Now an annual event, the pilgrimages have been led by, among others, the Ven. Michael Nott,Archdeacon of Maidstone, in 1964; Rev. Raymond Heath, vicar of Rolvenden (1970); Sir Donald Sinden (1980 and 1996);Archbishop George Carey (1998) and Archbishop Rowan Williams (2008). The pilgrimages are usually held on the first Sunday inSeptember, departing from St Mary’s Church at 3pm.The 1979 pilgrimage attracted an attendance of 170. This was the highest since 1961, probably because of the wide publicinterest that had only recently been created when the first archaeological excavations revealed the foundations of the medievalchurch. Cecily Lebon gave a talk on Ebony’s history.In 1980 Sir Donald read Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard to a congregation of 180; prayers were led by Rev. AnthonyTowse, vicar of Appledore and Ebony.In 1981 Anthony Towse led his thirteenth pilgrimage, shortly before taking over other local parishes and becoming Rural Deanfor the South Lympne Deanery.In 1989 Oxney Brass Band accompanied the hymns during the pilgrims’ service for the first time.In 1996 the pilgrimage was preceded by a service at St Mary’s at which Sir Donald Sinden read the first lesson. Later Rev. DavidBlindon, vicar of Wittersham, led an open-air service on Chapel Bank, with organ music recorded at St Mildred’s, Tenterden.Among the congregation was a Devon family with six generations of Ebony ancestors. After the service the ashes of two localresidents were interred in the churchyard.The Ven. Joanne Kelly-Moore, Archdeacon of Canterbury, led the 2017 pilgrimage.Above left: a windswept Archbishop Carey prepares to conduct the pilgrims’ service in 1998. Above right: report of the 2008 pilgrimage led byArchbishop Williams. ©KM GroupAbove left: Rev. Raymond Heath officiating at the pilgrimage service in 1970.®Ebony Church Archive; Centre: Sir Donald Sinden andRev. Anthony Towse leading pilgrims to Chapel Bank in 1980; Above right: Rev. Anthony Towse conducting the pilgrimage service in1981.®Ebony Church Archive44The 1973 pilgrimage was an even more special occasion thanprevious events. Attracting a then-record attendance of 130, it wasled by Sir John Winnifrith, who planted a tree on the site of the oldchurch and gave the following talk, entitled:‘Remember the former things of old’Isaiah Chapter 46 Verse 6‘This island of Ebony on which we are standing today has nohouse, no home on it, no-one lives here and only this desolatechurchyard marks the site of its ancient church. Yet for over athousand years men and women lived here, brought up their familieshere, and worshipped in their parish church, which we know stoodhere for at least 800 years, before it was removed to Reading Street in1858.‘Our Saxon, more accurately Jutish, forebears settled on this islandsoon after they came to Kent and called it Ebbeny – in their language“Ebbe’s isle”. Some think that Ebbe was Saint Ebbe of Northumbria.This is possible, not proven. What, of course, is a fact, is that this wasthen a real island. If you had looked down from this spot you wouldhave seen how the island was surrounded by a great sea creek. Downit, even at low tide, the Rother filled the channel. At high tide, the seaflooded in from Romney and Rye, and swirled all over the levels. Theisland stood out in the middle of a great inland sea.‘What is also a fact is that in 832 Aethelwulf, King of Kent, gave Ebbeny as an endowment to the monks of CanterburyCathedral. They held it as their manor till Henry VIII broke up the monasteries. For all of this period of 700 years the whole life ofthe people of Ebony was regulated by the manor. They could have served worse masters. The monks would see that they did notstarve, and it was the monks who most certainly built the first church on this spot, on the site of a holy well. This church, we know,was there before the Norman invasion. Life was hard. The perils and dangers of this night could include the arrival of Danish longships rowing up the creek. They did in King Alfred’s reign. The people of Ebony needed, and got, all the comforts of the Christianfaith. What a comfort the sound of the bells must have been, to the fog-bound mariner, or the marshman finding his way homeover the levels.‘The Norman invasion made little difference to life on Ebony. The monks continued to farm the land, and spring-barley offthe hill we have just climbed was finding its way, probably by water, to the monks’ great granary, at Canterbury, in the early 14thcentury. The seaway indeed was part of life here throughout medieval and Tudor times. Ships came up it to Smallhythe andNewenden from the coastal ports and from France and you could watch their passage from this spot.‘In the 15th and 16th centuries one big change came to Ebony. The monks stopped farming the land themselves and let it outto tenants. So you got well-to-do yeomen in the parish as well as the labourers, and we know their names.‘We also know the names of three labourers of Ebony, who in 1450 joined the great rising against government: Northland,William Moseden and William Knott should be remembered today.‘The people of Ebony loved their church on the island. The old Saxon church had been replaced in the middle ages. It was quitea bit bigger than the church which was standing here in 1858 and was so faithfully rebuilt at Reading Street. You must pictureit here with, however, a bell tower big enough to hold its four bells and its Sanctus bell, or tinkler as we call it at Appledore. Thechancel had a lead roof, the rest of the roof was shingled. The Holy Well was still there and there was a noted stone crucifix, part ofwhich survived until quite recently. And the graveyard then, as now, was surrounded by a wooden fence.‘Inside, the church was a blaze of colour. A light burned before the statue of St Mary, the patron saint. There was a shrine of StThomas and statues of St Peter, St Stephen and St Catherine. All had lights burning before them as did the Holy Well. All theseworks were supported by gifts and legacies from parishioners. These people were prosperous at this time. Sea transport up anddown the creek ensured a good market for the wood and coal and handicrafts of Ebony.‘By the 16th century people were living more and more on the mainland, particularly at Reading Street, and a chapel of theHoly Cross was established there at this time. It disappeared, almost certainly during the Reformation.45‘The Reformation struck Ebony in Edward V1’s reign and Cranmer’s agents removed the stone altar, the shrines and the lights,and pillaged the bells and the great store of church ornaments and furniture which showed how well the church was cared for atthis time.‘The elements struck at the same time, lightning and tempest. The chancel was open to the sky, the vicarage used for cattle,the one surviving bell was cracked. But the parishioners still loved their church. They did the essential work of reroofing and gotleave to postpone the expenditure of getting in the new and less lovely paraphernalia of the Reformation, the Homilies, theParaphrases of Erasmus, even the Book of Common Prayer. As late as 1610 they had not yet got the Ten Commandments or, evenmore essential to salvation, the Tables of Affinities, which forbid us to yield to the temptations of marrying our grandparents.‘By this time there was still a sizeable population – 24 houses and 45 communicants in 1569. But decay was setting inamongst the people. Deaths greatly exceeded births and by 1700 there were only 17 householders. But they stuck to theirchurch and the big farmers, now holding their land from the new absentee Lord of the Manor, to whom Henry VIII had sold theCanterbury properties as churchwarden, had the main responsibility. The Ramsdens who arrived in the 1680s, and the Poilesabout a hundred years later, deserve honourable mention.‘But the days of the old church here were now numbered. The Rother had altered its course during the 14th century and nolonger scoured the channel that kept Ebony an island. But the tide still flowed in from Rye up to 1800. Then the threat of Frenchinvasion, when the population of Ebony was temporarily swollen by the troops housed at Barrack Farm, finally cut off the tide andonly the sewer divided the island from Reading Street. The ill-drained land was unhealthy and by 1814 there were only four orfive houses on this island and about ten at Reading Street. By 1858 the decision was taken and the task of removing the remainsof the church from here to Reading Street had been accomplished.‘So much for the former things of old. The one outstanding thought that they impress on me is the continuing love of theparishioners for their church. Admittedly some of them were well-to-do men but most of them had a bare subsistence and in the18th and 19th centuries starvation and poverty were their lot. And always there was disease. But they stuck to their church. Theystuck to it long after the centre of the parish had moved to the mainland.‘The other thought which the records leave with me is the devotion and the dedication of the clergy. For most, especially in the18th century, the vicars of Appledore rarely came to Appledore and still less to Ebony, but the curates who took the services wereconstant in their care for their parishioners - visited them in their sickness and themselves died of their diseases.‘And now to finish with two thoughts for the present clergy and parishioners. To them I think we should all give unstintedpraise. And the highest praise is that they have not failed those who were here before them in the last thousand years. The churchat Reading Street is beautifully cared for, the church dues are all paid, and the services are regularly held. They deserve not onlyour praise but all the help they can get, beyond the bounds of their small parish. And I hope that they and their successors willcontinue in this good work and find it a help to remember the former things of old which can be such an inspiration to them’.• Sir Alfred John Digby Winnifrith CB KCB was born atIghtham and educated at Westminster School and ChristChurch, Oxford. He joined the Board of Trade in 1932, theTreasury in 1934, and was Assistant Secretary to the WarCabinet Office and Civil Service Combined Operations HQduring the Second World War. In 1957 he was appointedPermanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture andFisheries. After retiring in 1967 he lived in Appledore andbecame an active member of the Kent Archaeological Society,for whom he wrote the aforementioned definitive history ofSt Mary’s, Ebony. He was a Trustee of the British Museumfrom 1967 to 1972, Director General of the National Trust(1968–1970), a member of the Royal Commission onEnvironmental Pollution (1970–1973), a member of theCommonwealth War Graves Commission (1970–1973) andof the Hops Marketing Board (1970–1978). Above: Sir John Winnifrith planting an oak tree on Chapel Bank in1973. © Kentish Express46Chapter Ten – Family histories on Chapel BankThe Poile and Ramsden families who deserved ‘honourable mention’ in Sir John Winnifrith’s talk at the 1973 pilgrimage havegraves on Chapel Bank. Some of their memorial inscriptions are now barely legible but thanks to Leland L Duncan’s survey for theKent Archaeological Society in 1919 we know that those for the Ramsdens read as follows:‘Here lieth the Body of Stephen RAMSDEN of Ebony, Yeoman, married Jane daughter of Richard GILES of Pluckly, Clothier, bywhom he had 5 children. He died October the 10th 1712, aged 54 years. Jane his daughter was buried September 12th 1712aged 16 years. Catharine October 12th 1710 aged 12 years. Thos: his son was buried March 29th 1714 aged 2 years. Tho: March1714 aged 4 months. 3 sons survived him viz John Stephen and Giles and one daughter, Elizabeth’and‘John RAMSDEN Gentleman late of this Parish. Died 2 December 1762 aged 67 years and 4 months. He married Elizabethdaughter of William MURRAY of Tenterden by whom he had issue 4 children, John, Stephen, Elizabeth and William. Elizabeth died18 November 1740 aged 6 years and 5 weeks and he is interred in the parish of St Alphage in Canterbury’ [In the 19th century theRamsden family owned a house and 26 plots of land in Ebony.]47Above left: ‘In memory of Jane, wife of Henry Poile of this parish who died 12 May 1789 aged 53 years. Left issue Henry, Jane, James, JohnSeers, Elizabeth, Judith and Charles’ [In the mid-19th century the Poile family owned and occupied High House Farm and 17 plots of farmland,including hop-gardens, in Ebony].Centre: ‘Harry, 3rd son of Stephen and Alice Weller of Tenterden, died 24 June 1887 aged 24 and Alice Weller, died 19 February 1890 aged 23’[Close to this grave is that of Stephen Weller, Harry and Alice’s father, who died on 1 April 1902, aged 73.]Above right: Memorial to Rhoda Selmes (née Weller), daughter of Stephen and Susannah Weller, erected by her children near other Wellerfamily graves.Above left: ‘George Thomas Paine died 28 November 1877 aged 66. Left surviving Ann his wife and 5 children viz: Mary, Henry, Herbert, Emilyand George Thomas. Also Ann his wife died 6 April 1879 aged 65’ ©Emma Richardson [See pages 12 and 21]Centre: The grave of William Catt, Ebony’s parish clerk and sub-postmaster, and his wife Philadelphia Catt. ©Emma Richardson [See pages 13and 20]Above right: Headstone in memory of Robert Walker, who died on 19 June 1842 aged 44, his wife Sarah, who died on 22 March 1881, andtheir son William who died four months later, aged 41. Sarah outlived Robert by nearly 40 years and had to eke out an existence as a laundressto support her children, occasionally receiving help from the church. ©Emma Richardson48Mysteries unsolved, questions unansweredThirty years after the archaeologists backfilled their excavations, Chapel Bank still conceals many mysteries.• Why is the churchyard boundary hexagonal – much more difficult to set-out than a circle, square or rectangle?• Where were the village’s 24 houses, known to have been the homes of 45 of St Mary’s communicants in 1569. Thefootings of one of them may have been found in 1986. Have the foundations of the others been destroyed by centuries ofploughing? Could they be revealed by a geophysical survey?• Where, precisely, were Reading Street Barracks? At Barrack Farm or farther south, at Old Barrack Farm? Field walks, supportedby metal detectorists, would probably result in the discovery of pieces of military hardware – badges, bullets, buttons,horseshoes, nails, utensils – that would establish which of these ‘barrack’ farms was the site.• Where are the Army graves? No plan has survived to show the location of individual graves; only the ones marked by legibleheadstones bear witness today to who lies below. If the soldiers were allocated an exclusive plot in the graveyard their coffinsshould be detectable by depth-gauges or by a resistivity survey.Regardless of this, it would be right and proper to erect a memorial, on Chapel Bank or at St Mary’s, Reading Street, to honourthese forgotten soldiers, wives and children, who succumbed to marsh fever while stationed in this remote corner of Kent when‘Old Boney’ threatened to invade our shores.Somewhere here amidst the marked graves of Ebony’s families are the remains of forgotten soldiers, wives and children of ReadingStreet Barracks.Appendix 1Transcriptions from parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials at St Mary’sChurch, Chapel Bank, Ebony and St Mildred’s Church, Tenterden, of Army personnel basedat Reading Street Barracks.Baptisms at St Mary’s1807April 12. Elizabeth, daughter of John and Ann Doyle, 54th Regiment of Foot. Born March 15 1807.1808February 28. Leonard, son of Edward and Jane Inckley, 2nd Royal Surrey. Born February 8.February 28. John Campin, son of John and Hannah Campin, 2nd Royal Surrey. Born February 8.April 17. William, son of Samuel and Ann Evans, 2nd Royal Surrey. Born April 2.July 31. Frances Harris, daughter of Peter and Sarah Dart, Serjeant of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born July 17.July 31. Margaret, daughter of William and Elizabeth Ward, Corporal of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born July 17.August 21. Charlotte, daughter of George Thomas and Mary Ann Gardiner, Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born July 17.September 4. Harris, daughter of Joseph and Mary Peyton, Serjeant Major of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born August 191809February 12. William, son of William and Susanna Johnson, Serjeant of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born January 22.February 12. Sarah and Ann (twins), daughters of Joseph and Sarah Spreadborough, private of the 2nd Royal Surrey. BornFebruary 5.February 19. Harriet, daughter of Jonathan and Rebecca Holey, Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born January 22.March 19. Mary Ann, daughter of William and Harriet Crips, Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey.April 30. Thomas, son of William and Martha Bustard, Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born April 19April 30. Elizabeth, daughter of William and Martha Bustard, Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey. Born December 15, 1906.August 20. Hugh, son of Lewis and Jane Lewis, Private of the Montgomery Militia. Born August 7.Baptisms at St Mildred’s1797November 17. Ann, daughter of Henry and Mary Humphries, Montgomeryshire Militia.1798November 11. Martha, daughter of John and Mary Shreede, 3rd Norfolk Regiment, 17991799April 14. John, son of William and Martha Briggs, 3rd Norfolk Regiment. Born March 1.April 14. Maria, daughter of Augustine and Elizabeth Beck, 3rd Norfolk Regiment. Born March 16.April 14. Robert, son of Robert and Phillis Thompson, 3rd Norfolk Regiment. Born April 5.1800March 2. Eliza Venn, daughter of James and Leah Bardsley, Derby Regiment.180210 January. Jemima, daughter of William and Elizabeth Thomas, Royal Waggon Corps.495016 April. Mary Ann, daughter of Robert and Mary Backhurst, 9th Regiment.15 May. Elizabeth, daughter of William and Jane Hart, Royal Waggon Corps. Born April 21.22 September. Elizabeth, daughter of James and Elizabeth Palmer, 52nd Regiment.1804March 23. Louisa, daughter of Joseph and Mary Peyton, 2nd Surrey Regiment.August 19. Charlotte, daughter of William and Jane Appleton, 57th Regiment.September 23. Eliza, daughter of Henry and Ann Box, 57th Regiment.1805January 6. George, son of William and Elizabeth Hurstwhite, Notts Regiment.February 17. George, son of John and Ann Wilson, Nottinghamshire Regiment.1806March 9. Margaret, daughter of James and Alice Cosgrove, 27th Regiment.March 23. John, son of James and Ann Down, 27th Regiment.1814November 6. James, son of Edward and Jane Murrell of Tenterden, soldier.Marriage at St Mary’s1815September 1. John Little, Corporal, West Kent Militia, to Esther King, both of Ebony.Marriages at St Mildred’s1800February 23. William Stringer, Herts Regiment, and Sarah Parsons.September 14. George Walter, West Kent Regiment, and Elizabeth Tombs.1801January 1. Edward Meades, West Kent Regiment, and Elizabeth Blunt.1802March 26. Joseph Hill, 9th Regiment of Foot, to Mary Pankhurst.December 3. Thomas GREEN, widower, 52nd Regiment, to Elizabeth Patterson, widow.1804April 29. William Watkins, 2nd Surrey Regiment, to Beck New.April 30. William Blainey, 2nd Surrey Regiment, to Rachel Mitchell.180520 June. Edwin Townsend, 57th Regiment, to Rachel Munro.51Burials at St Mary’s1804September 8. John Duggan, a Serjeant in the 57th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 37 years.November 9. John Povey, a Private in the Notts Militia, 22 years.November 25. John Wright, a Private in the Notts Militia, 22 years.December 31. William Shintell, a Private in the Notts Militia,24 years.1805February 17. Samuel Morley, a Private in the Notts Militia, 35 years.March 20. Benjamin White, a Private in the 53rd Battalion, 19 years.1806May 13. Dorothy, wife of John Sweeney, 19 years.May 15. Mary, daughter of Dorothy and John Sweeney, a Private of the 52nd Battalion of Foot, 14 days.July 27. Catherine, daughter of Miles and Mary Rile, a Private of the 52nd Battalion of Foot, infant.August 7, 1806. Hugh McBanaist (?), 52nd Regiment.October 3. Thomas Culbertson, 2nd Battalion, 52nd Regiment.1807July 10. Thomas McVeay, son of Daniel and Mary McVeay, a Serjeant of the 52nd Regiment of Foot, 2 years.August 10. William Gambal of the 43rd Regiment.September 3. Andrew Daly of the 54th Regiment, 31 years.September 30. Eleanor, daughter of William and Margaret Healey of the 89th Regiment, 3 years.November 17. Sarah, daughter of Peter and Sarah Dart, Serjeant of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 18 months.1808February 24. Elizabeth, daughter of John and Margaret Wightman, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 3 years.March 4. Thomas Wright, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 25 years.March 10. James fa*ggoter, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 27 years.March 14. William Hart, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 24 years.March 21. John Holms, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 23 years.April 11. John Farrow, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 44 years.April 25. James Kelley, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 48 years.April 26. John Collins, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey,35 years.April 26. John, son of Edward and Charlotte Macvitty of the 2nd Royal Surrey 18 months.May 26. Charles Perry, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 16 years.May 30. Edward Browne, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 27 years.June 1. Hugh Owen, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 40 years.June 5. John Pursoneir, A Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 20 years.June 12. Ann, wife of William Roberts, a Serjeant of the 2ndRoyal, Surrey, 24 years.June 16. Walter Andrews, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 32 years.July 19. James Lavender, A Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 25 years.521809February 19. Richard Agent, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 21 years.March 16. Richard Fletcher, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey,27 years.March 25. John White, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 38 years.March 31. Jewel Adams, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 28 years.April 3. Thomas Evans, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 24 years.April 13. Edward Clarke, a Private of the 2nd Royal Surrey, 49 years.May 8. John Brown, a Private of the 95th Rifle Regiment, 26 years.June 16. Philip Hearn, a Private of the 50th Regiment, 2nd Battn, 31 years.July 23. Nathaniel Whitmore, a Private of the 50th Regiment. 2nd Battn, 17 years.October 2. John Greenwood, a Private of the 2nd West York militia, 20 years.Appendix 2 (compiled by Dr Jack Gillett)Clergy of St Mary the Virgin, Ebony, since 18581858 William Walter Kirby1862 Thomas Negus Bourke1868 George Booth Perry1873 William Alfred Hill1874 Mark Dyer French1889 Edward Bacheler Russell1895 Thomas Harrison1900 Clifford Berney Hall1908 Arthur Octavius Scutt1928 Herbert Newman1933 Robert Charles Jessie White1938 Ralph Davis1948 John Cowell1952 Walter Cole1955 John Bouverie-Brine1969 Anthony Norman Beresford Towse1982 Christopher Robin Duncan1986 Seymour David Harris1995 David Bindon2000 Malcolm Williams2001 Stella Halmshaw2012 Judy Darkins53Appendix 3The Medieval Church of St Mary, Ebony, from Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 100, 1984545556575859606162636465666768Appendix 4The Excavations on the site of St Mary’s Church, Chapel Bank, from Archaeologia CantianaVol. 110, 199269707172737475767778798081828384858687888990IndexAllen, Neil 17Appledore 3, 4, 9, 12, 13, 15, 21, 43, 44, 45Armstrong, Colonel J F 21, 31, 32, 42Auxiliary Unit, WW2 27Army Veterinary Corps 27Battle of Britain 26Baptisms, marriages and burials 49Body family 8, 27 et seq., 33 et seq., 46Bourne and Chandler, builders 12‘Camouflage’ war-horse 29, 35Clergy of St Mary the Virgin 53Chapel Bank 3, 4, 6-10, 13-15, 17, 26, 27, 39, 43 et seq.Catt family 13, 20, 21, 47Duncan, Leland L 13, 46Ebony School 20 et seq., 29Forbes-Robertson, Norman 14French Hay and Frenchay 9, 27, 31Gaye, Howard 16, 23Gibbet Farm (aka Gibbet Oak Farm and ‘The Gibbet’) 8, 27,28, 33, 34, 36-38Hayes Farm 19, 31Herridge, William 21 et seq.High House Farm 30, 31, 47Jack Cade Rebellion 5Kent and East Sussex Railway 34, 36, 37Kimber, Colonel Anthony 10Kirby,Rev W W 12 et seq.Knelle Dam 3, 4, 8Lebon, Cecily 15, 17, 43Machine Gun Corps 36Mackinlay, Jean Stirling 14, 19McKean, David 14Memorial Inscriptions 13, 46Miles, Alec 15, 17Murray family 46Oxney, Isle of 3, 4, 8, 12, 19Packham family 36 et seq.Paine family 12, 20, 21, 26, 29, 40 et seq, 47Petrie,H 16Pilgrimages to Chapel Bank 43 et.seq.Poile family 45-47Pursglove, Chris 21Ramsden family 45, 46Raynold, John 5, 15Reading Sewer 8, 9, 15Reading Street 3-16, 19-21, 26-27, 29-31, 34, 39-45, 48Reading Street Barracks 8 et seq, 48, 49Reading Street Chapel 5, 44Rother 3, 4, 8, 10,12, 19, 34, 44, 45Royal Military Canal 9 et seq.Rye 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 17, 20, 26, 33, 34, 44, 45Selmes, Rhoda (née Weller) 47Shipbuilding 4 , 8Smallpox vaccinations 39South Eastern Railway 34St Mary the Virgin church, Reading Street 12 et seq.,23 et seq., 42 et seq.Smallhythe 3, 4, 8, 14, 27, 34Stone-in-Oxney 3, 19St Mary the Virgin church, Chapel Bank 3, 6 et seq., 8,12 et seq., 15 et seq., 69 et seq.Sinden, Sir Donald 14, 4291Tenterden 8-13, 15, 19-21, 25-28, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37,39, 42, 43, 46, 47Tenterden and District Museum 15, 17, 27Terry, Dame Ellen 14, 27Teulon, Samuel Sanders 12, 66Tithe Map of Ebony 7, 10Turnpike roads 12, 13, 20V1 ‘Doodlebug’ flying bomb 27Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital 28Walker family 13, 47War memorials 28 et seqWeller family 8, 13, 19, 25, 38 et seq., 47White Hart and Lamb 9, 12 et seq., 19, 21, 22, 40Wills of Ebony parishioners 5Winnifrith, Sir John 6, 44, 55Wittersham 3, 13, 14, 19, 33, 36, 4392BibliographyBerg, Mary, and Jones, Howard: Norman Churches in the Canterbury Diocese. History Press, 2009.Buttler, Tony; Dalton, Maurice; Mayor, Susannah; Walker, Fred: From Sheep to Ships: The Story of Smallhythe.Smallhythe500, 2015.Carpenter, Edward: Romney Marsh in Old Photographs. Alan Sutton Publishing, 1994.Duncan, Leland L., Hussey, Arthur: Testamenta Cantiana : a series of extracts from fifteenth and sixteenth century wills relating tochurch building and topography, 1906-1907.Eddison, Jill: Attempts to clear the Rother Channel, 1613-1624 (Romney Marsh, the Debatable Ground). Oxford UniversityCommittee for Archaeology Monograph 41, 1995.Greaves, Adrian: Forgotten snippets and gruesome history of Tenterden and District. Debinair Publishing, 2017.Green, Ivan: The Isle of Oxney. Bygone Kent Vol 1, 1979.Jessup, Frank W.: Kent History Illustrated. Kent County Council, 1996.Laurence, Alec: Tenterden – A History and Celebration of the Town. Francis Frith Collection, 2004.Lebon, Cecil, Miles, Alec: The Excavations on the site of St Mary’s Church, Chapel Bank. Archaeologia Cantiana Vol.110, 1992Newman, John: West Kent and the Weald. The Buildings of England. Penguin Books 1969.Roberts, Hugh: Tenterden: The first Thousand Years. Wilton 65, York, 1995.Roper, Anne: Gift of the sea: a Guide to Romney Marsh. Redmans, 1970.Spelling, R S. Tenterden: A Pictorial History of a Market Town. Tenterden and District Local History Society (undated)Syms, James Antony: Storm at Old Romney. Lewes Book Guild, 1996.Winnifrith, Sir John: The Medieval Church of St Mary, Ebony. Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 100, 1984.WebsitesConfederation of Cinque Ports. http://cinqueports.org/Kent Fallen. http://www.kentfallen.com.Romney Marsh: the Fifth Continent. https://theromneymarsh.netThe impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the Romney Marsh by Colonel Anthony Kimber. http://www.wildrye.infoSpringtime at Ebony in the 1960s, with St Mary’s Church and Ebony School in the background. ©Kent LifeAn isolated tree-crowned hill overlooking remote marshland four miles south of Tenterden marks the site of the long-lost village of Ebony, whose parish church was a landmark visible from miles away to ships heading forharbours along what today is known as Kent’s Saxon Shore.This book, the first to be devoted to the history of the village and parish, tells the story of the early inhabitants...the desecration by man and destruction by nature of their first church... the one they built to replace it... andwhy hundreds of years later it had to be moved, stone-by-stone, down the hill to Reading Street.Here too are stories of people from all walks of life who have lived and died in and around Reading Street,including... soldiers who succumbed to marsh fever during the Napoleonic Wars, and were buried in unmarkedgraves... family tragedies and forgotten heroes of WW1... Spitfires attacking and ‘doodlebugs’ exploding inWW2... the eccentric landlord of the ‘pub with no beer’... and the star of stage and screen whose last restingplace is among the trees on the hill where Ebony’s history began.Published byKent Archaeological Society, Maidstone Museum, St Faith’s Street, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LHwww.kentarchaeology.org.ukRegistered charity number 223382Searching for Ebony
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
SNODLAND AND‘CEMENTOPOLIS’1841‐1881ANDREW ASHBEEii© Andrew Ashbee 2017Published 2017 byAndrew Ashbee, 214, Malling Road, Snodland, Kent ME6 5EQiiiCONTENTSIntroduction ivI The Village Grows 1II Agriculture, Cement, Paper 28III Road, Rail, River 68IV Church and School 105V Community 138 Appendices:1 Statistics: Registers: Snodland 155 Registers: Halling 156 Registers: Burham 157 Registers: Wouldham 158 Registers: Cuxton 159 2 Census occupations (introduction) 160 Snodland 161 Halling 165 Burham 167 Wouldham 169 Cuxton 1713 Comparative population growth for Birling, Cuxton, Aylesford and East Malling 172 4 Snodland cement workers 1841‐1881 173 5 Snodland papermakers 1841‐1881 182 Further Reading 195ivvSNODLAND AND ‘CEMENTOPOLIS’1841-1881INTRODUCTION‘Cementopolis’ is a word coined by Victorian newspaper writers to describe the group ofindustrial workings which had grown up on the banks of the Medway, especially in thefour parishes of Burham, Halling, Snodland and Wouldham. Some of the largest limeand cement factories in the country were developed here in what had hitherto been apredominantly rural area and their activities caused some amazement for visitorsexpecting the delights of the ‘Garden of England’.Encouraged and accompanied by travellers as enterprising as myself, I have recentlyemployed a summer holiday in visiting a town known as Cementopolis, of which Ihad for years only heard dim, vague, and doubtful accounts. It is not unpleasantlysituated in an amphitheatre of hills with a river branch for its base, filled with aflotilla of shipping. Its inhabitants are numerous and industrious, though what it isthey are doing it is not easy for a stranger to discover. The courteous Alderman ofthe arrondissment I visited controls the Cementopolis and North Down Railwayand chartered a special train for us, by which we were taken from the dockyards tothe distant hills, passing serried rows of furnaces and mounds of coal; throughrealms of stacked wood and mighty masses of piled bricks, through tunnels, onemore than half a mile long, over viaducts and under bridges, the latter giving apleasant spice of excitement to the expedition, for if the traveller is too curious, ornot careful enough in ducking, he runs some danger of being scalped. These perilssurmounted, you arrive at immense excavations, which recall the quarries of Syene,and there you see scores of men, at various altitudes blasting (with gunpowder),picking, prising, and shovelling lumps of some cretaceous mineral, with which along row of railway trucks is speedily filled. These lumps are carried away by asnorting Shetland-pony-like locomotive to a spot where the first of a series ofgigantic and demoniacal machines takes charge of them and claws and scratches thelumps to pieces. The resulting mass is then mixed and macerated with a darkermineral, dug from a nearer spot, and twirled and drenched until it loses its pristinepurity, the resulting compound being pumped to distant beds, where it rests forsome days to settle. This peaceful period over, the water is poured off the stuff,which is toasted over plutonic fires in enormous kilns, the result being nodules ashard as iron. These again are taken to immense iron jaws and cracked and crunchedand ground, and punched and stamped and triturated until they reach the stage ofalmost impalpable powder. Then it reaches something like rest and is stored into 2cwt barrels.These barrels are also made in Cementopolis and, as Pepys says, “it is mightypretty” to see the strips of timber brought from the spreading stacks outside intothe sawdust-laden atmosphere of the noisy cooperage and turned into barrels in thetwinkling of a bed-post to the tune of six hundred a day. Swishsh ! sweeshsh ! theheated staves are shaped. Rattle ! thud ! thump ! bang ! the staves are forced intoform and held by iron rings. Whirr ! whirr ! the edges are bevelled. Krunch ! prrsh !kerrishe ! prrsh ! the head is rounded. Tap ! tap ! the wooden hoops are on. Tank !tank ! the iron ones follow, and then the final tub is sent rolling down the gangwayto be branded and stored in capacious sheds. I haven’t space to tell you of all theresources of the place, the extent of its productions, or the ingenuity of itsappliances. Suffice it to say that it is well worth a visit and of travelling somedistance to see. If you want to go to this terra incognita you must take steamer to NewHythe or the coach to Burham, and when there seek the friendly aid of Mr. Butler,the energetic manager of the flourishing Burham Cement Company. He hassomething like a thousand men to look after, but, like all busy men, he can oftenvifind half an hour to devote to interested tourists who desire to explore thiswonderful but almost unknown locality.1A former Rector of Snodland suggested that within the Garden of England Snodlandmight be considered as ‘one of the tool-sheds’. The description would not have beenvalid before the mid-nineteenth century when Snodland was small, like its neighbours, (apopulation of 300-400 in 50-60 houses) and dependent on farming for its livelihood. Theyears between about 1840 and 1880 were perhaps the most momentous in Snodland’shistory. The village changed from relying on agriculture as the principal way of life to onein which the paper and cement industries came to dominate employment. It is true thatboth industries had gained a foothold here many years before, but then on a small scaleand farming (as with so many other local communities) continued to provide the food,follow the seasons, and infiltrate the lives of all. Reporting on the opening of the Stroodto Maidstone railway in 1856 The South-Eastern Gazette noted ‘The next conspicuousobject [after Larkfield church] is the extensive lime works at Burham, […] from which alarge proportion of the builders of the metropolis are supplied. This is a flourishing littleindustrial colony, creating and diffusing wealth, both by what they consume and whatthey produce.’ Thomas Cubitt’s brick and lime works at Burham (in which manySnodland men worked) evoked much admiration from the writer of an article in TheIllustrated News of the World (8 October 1859):“… on viewing the whole field, with its various and numerous engines, buildings,tramways, kilns, wharves, &c., one cannot but see that here are what may be justlytermed the model brick-works. Here are concentrated the results of near half acentury’s experience and improvements. Everything is in the right place. Nothingsuperfluous. Every possible attention has been given to economise labour andmaterial, and every advantage taken of the natural position of the estate. When infull work, between 600 and 700 men and boys are employed, and from 25,000,000to 30,000,000 of bricks, besides tiles and pipes, can readily be turned out from theworks; which, however, can be considerably augmented without any great outlay, orincreasing the present steam power.”At Snodland and Halling the lime works of Poynder and Hobson, one of the earliest inthe district, began in 1819 and with a companion works at Northfleet again suppliedmaterials for major building projects in London and elsewhere. This factory expandedafter William Lee bought it in 1844 and he was one of three brothers also involved inmajor national building projects. Poynder and Hobson’s first manager William Peterswent on to create his own works at Wouldham in the 1850s, which was said to havebecome the largest of its kind. Again Snodland men were employed there and by 1880some 600 men were said to cross the Medway to and fro daily in the small ferry boats ofSnodland, Halling and New Hythe. Meanwhile Charles Townsend Hook took over thepaper mill in 1855 and built it into a large and successful enterprise.These were years of social change too as the enterprising Victorians set about exploringand regulating communal life. The area Workhouse had replaced poor relief in individualparishes, schools were inspected, the conditions for children working in factories wereinvestigated, the advent of the railways opened up business and travel for many, aplethora of newspapers spread news of all kinds, whether, local, national, orinternational. Societies were set up to assist parishioners in planning for hard times—theForesters, Shepherds, Odd Fellows—and in seeking greater fulfilment in their lives—Gardeners’ Societies, evenings of lectures, readings and music, sport, and the creation ofthe Working Men’s Club.1 South Eastern Gazette, 10 September 1889, by ‘Verax’.viiThis account is laid out as a series of interlocking essays, each focussing on a particularaspect, exploring Snodland’s development in the years 1841 to 1881, and naturally takingin links with Halling, Burham and Wouldham. Of course local industry continued toexpand at a similar rate between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, but itsroots were founded in the forty years before that date. In particular in Snodland theleadership and philanthropy of Charles Townsend Hook (1832-1877) at the paper milland William Lee (1801-1881) at the cement works gave so much to the local area, notonly in employment, but also in enriching its social life. Both lived in the village andserved as parish officers in several capacities, endeavouring to improve the lot not onlyof their workers and their families, but of the whole community.AbbreviationsKAS Kent Archaeological SocietyKHLC Kent History and Library Centre, MaidstoneMALSC Medway Archives and Local Study CentreODNB Oxford Dictionary of National BiographySHS Snodland Historical SocietySMM Snodland Millennium MuseumTHA Smurfit Kappa Townsend Hook Archive (at SMM)TNA The National Archives, KewAcknowledgements:I thank my friends and colleagues Janet Beyer, Rosalind Boon, Catharina Clement, SimonJoy, Brian Joyce, Tamerlane Large, Mark Peters, Hazel Tachtatzis, and Brian Wolfe fortheir help with various parts of this study.1 I: THE VILLAGE GROWSThe 1840sThe decade of the 1840s was perhaps the last when Snodland matched its neighbouringparishes as a small and predominantly agricultural community. Between 1821 and 1841the censuses show the parish population growing very slowly from 438 to just 500, withthe number of houses increasing from 59 to 102. In size it was then hardly larger thanBurham, Leybourne, or Ryarsh, and was actually smaller than Birling. Farms dominatednot only the landscape, but also the economy, with agricultural labourers far outnumbering the workers in paper and lime.1 The village itself divided into two maincommunities, one in the High Street and the other at Holborough. The 1841 census canbe matched with the 1844 Tithe Apportionment map and schedule and a detailed LandTax return for 1846 to present a remarkably clear picture of the parish and its inhabitantsat that time, although this is also muddied by the constant movement of families at atime when virtually all rented their homes..HolboroughTitheno.Property Inhabitants2138 [Holloway Court] Thomas Poynder (lime works owner) + 2289 Cottage/garden William Luxford (labourer; groom) + 10148 House/mill Edward Martin (miller) + 1277 [Island Cottage] Ann Waghorn (independent) + 2142 House/garden William Peters (lime works manager) + 7144 House/beer shop Richard Gowar (farmer; beer retailer) + 1145a William Hewitt (blacksmith) + 2[146] William Efford (ag. lab.) + 4[147] Mary Efford (widow); Samuel E by 1846150 House/yard/garden John Fielder (carpenter) + 9151-2 House/garden x2 James/Elizabeth Hoppe (grocer)153 Forge Frances Phillips (blacksmith) + 4156 [House] Thomas Hulks Huggins (miller) + 4William Hodge[s] (carrier) + 1;William Capon (ag. lab.)157 James Hewitt (blacksmith) + 2171 Oast and orchard [unoccupied]158+374159House/gardenHouse/yardRichard Peters (grocer) + 10Thomas William Peters374-7 [‘Gilder’s farm’] John Goodhugh (independent)John Wray (ag. lab.)149 Shop Edward Hawks (carpenter) + 6? Thomas Tomson (ag. lab.) + 21 They will be treated separately in the next chapter. 2 Names are from the 1841 census.2Holborough in 1844 showing the tithe apportionment numbers.3Holborough RoadTithe no. Property Inhabitants270-272 George Francis (lime burner)270-272 William Phillips (blacksmith) + 4 d.1854270-272 Frances Southgate (independent) d.1855263-4 [small holding] William Patten Wilson (fruiterer) + 4182-3 [Prospect Cottage] George Gorham (butcher) + 2261 [Covey Hall farm] Thomas Matthews (farmer) + 5242 [owners: Moore family] Thomas Stallwood (lab.) + 3243 [owners: Moore family] John Moore (bricklayer) + 6244 The Bull Stephen Phillips (victualler) + 10Numbers 270-272 on the west side of the road at the Holborough end comprised an oldhouse, later commonly called Nightingale Cottages, in front of which was a timber-cladbuilding, built by John Goodhugh (1745-1835), farmer and carpenter. All were in ‘SawpitField’, so it is likely that the village (or Goodhugh’s) sawpit was here.Virtually the whole road between the Bull Inn and Holborough was open farm land, butnumbers 263-4, house and orchard, was the small-holding of William Patten Wilson,fruiterer, (1798-1884) just to the south of the present clock towerThe shell of Prospect Cottage on the east side of the road is a 15th-16th century building,with brick facing which seems to have been added by Jasper Crothall (d. 1781), managerof the paper mill, who lived here. Associated land on the west side of the road becamethe site of a windmill in subsequent years, although this was removed to Gillingham in1839. Prospect Cottage was occupied by the Brain family from around 1792, who werebutchers and millers, but others later became responsible for the windmill. GeorgeGorham (1794-1861) was here between 1837 and his death and as will be seen he soldmuch of his land for new houses.Covey Hall (perhaps a historic mistake in transcription for Coney Hall) and Home Farmhad been in the hands of Thomas Matthews senior from around 1837. It was an ancientfarm and was owned by the Whittaker family of Trottiscliffe/Barming from the mid-18thcentury. Thomas Whittaker bequeathed it to Edward and Constantine Wood in 1817.Opposite the Bull inn next to the corner shop were two small cottages occupied byThomas Stallwood and John Moore (tithe nos. 242-3). In a court case in 1850 JohnMoore stated that he had built them, one eight years ago and the other about two yearsago, but they were owned by his brother [William].3 The Bull was an ancient inn, rebuiltseveral times, the last in 1878.3 Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 16 April 1850.4High StreetThe main villageTithe no. Property Inhabitants393 Toll gate [keeper] + John Cogger +4397 Rectory Henry Dampier Phelps + 3240 [The Old Bull] William Kilpin (grocer) +4401-2 Snodland Street (S) William Gorham (delivery officer) + 7401-2 Snodland Street (S) Alexander Gorham (tallow chandler) + 4234-7 [Gorham’s Cottages] (N) Thomas Bateman (papermaker) + 1234-7 [Gorham’s Cottages] (N) Frederick Boorman (papermaker) + 5234-7 [Gorham’s Cottages] (N) John Capon (lime lab.) + 4234-7 [Gorham’s Cottages] (N) William Austin (lime lab.) + 2403-12? Snodland Street (?) Joseph Bateman (grocer) + 4403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) William Mecoy (cordwainer) + 4403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) Nicholas Tiesdall (ag. lab.) + 7403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) Solomon Burgess (ag. lab.) + 4403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) George Manley (ag. lab.) + 5403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) Edward Dartnall (cordwainer) + 4403-12 [Hadlow’s Cottages] (S) Armigill Hadlow (ex bargeman;independent) + 2232-3 Snodland Street (N) John How (ag. lab.) + 5232-3 Snodland Street (N) Thomas Goldsmith (ag. lab.) + 9227-9 [Mulberry Cottage] (N) Edward Baker (barge owner) + 2227-9 [Mulberry Cottage] (N) James Weeden (paper maker) + 1227-9 [Mulberry Cottage] (N) Catherine Park (independent) + 15217 Snodland Street (N) Capon218 Snodland Street (N) William Austin (carpenter) + 2219 Snodland Street (N) John Wingate (paper maker) + 5413 Red Lion (S) John Orpin216 Snodland Street (N) Frances Brown (independent)215 Snodland Street (N) Ann Pearson (independent) + 2439 [Acacia Cottage] (S) John Clark (papermaker master) + 9214 Snodland Street (N) Ann Gooding (independent)213 Snodland Street (N) Henry Gurney (paper maker) + 4211 Snodland Street (N) John Baker (lime lab.) + 3210 Snodland Street (N) Jeremiah Healey (papermaker) + 1209 Snodland Street (N) William Kemp (ag. lab.) + 2208 Snodland Street (N) Elizabeth Dartnall (independent) + 3207 Snodland Street (N) George Fissenden (ag. lab.) + 3Much of the main village shown on the tithe map comprised old houses which had seenbetter days and which were in urgent need of replacement. On the north side of the HighStreet just Gorham’s cottages (nos. 234-7) and the mediaeval hall house (nos. 227-9)survived into the twentieth century, but the others were replaced during the 1850s-60s, asnoted later.Painting dated 1864, probably by Agnes Darlington Hook.On the left is tithe no. 401, demolished in 1882 to make way for the New Jerusalem church, and on theright two of the former Gorham’s cottages (tithe nos. 234-7).6Snodland Wharf203 [Court Lodge] John Orpin (ag. lab.) + 3195-201 Snodland Wharf Mary Boorman + 1Thomas Eason (papermaker)Albion Jones (papermaker)195-201 Snodland Wharf [3 unoccupied]195-201 Snodland Wharf John Bateman + 5[two lodgers are papermakers]200 Snodland Wharf Thomas Kidwell (papermaker) + 1444 [Paper mill house?] James Clark (papermaker) + 9195-201 Snodland Wharf John Weedon (paper lab.) + 4The Court Lodge began life as the manor house of Veles. A family of that name isdocumented in Snodland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the manor ofVeles covered most of the parish. By 1841 the estate had diminished to the areabordering the river and in 1818 had been split into two parts, one (as shown on the map)7for the mill and wharf and the other remaining as a 15 acre farm. Six houses in WharfRow are mentioned in a deed of 1795 and no doubt the papermaker owners increasedthe number to nine in ensuing years for housing their workers. (Some of the numbersshown are for the gardens as well as the houses.) That of Thomas Kidwell (tithe no. 200)was licensed as a Non-Conformist Chapel in 1824 and continued to be used as such untila new chapel was built in Holborough Road in 1855.Brook Street438 Brook Lane Henry Hawks (ag. lab.) + 8437 [School house] John Cogger (schoolmaster) [to 1842]Edward Jupp [from 1842]418-19 Brook Lane John Gorham (ag. lab.) + 5418-19 Brook Lane William Mecoy (papermaker) + 5435 Brook Lane Thomas Wray (carrier) + 3417 Brook Lane Charlotte Faulkner (independent) + 1420-1 Brook Lane James Baker (lime lab.) + 3420-1 Brook Lane William Hadlow (ag. lab.) + 5All the houses in Brook Street were old in 1841, although the school building had beenrenovated and modified in the late 1830s.8Farms and related buildings in the rest of the parish247-251 Paddlesworth Lane WilliamWaterman (ag. lab.) + 1William Gowar (farmer)247-251 Paddlesworth Lane Edward Hawks (ag. lab.) + 3William Adams (ag. lab)247-251 Paddlesworth Lane James Crowhurst (ag. lab.) + 4247-251 Paddlesworth Lane James Peters (lime burner) + 5247-251 Paddlesworth Lane William Vallum (ag. lab.) + 2Thomas Fairman (ag. lab.) + 3247-251 Paddlesworth Lane James How (ag. lab.) + 4Originally an L-shaped building called Bennet’s Place (Thomas Bennet d.1461) anddescending through the Hall and Brown families, it was bought by Thomas Stephens,farmer at Paddlesworth, and was converted to five cottages for his labourers c.1821.254 Cox’s Farm James Lock (bailiff) + 4William Walker (ag. lab.) + 1George, Richard, and William Mills (ag.labs)317-319 [Cox’s Farm Cottages] James Capon (ag. lab.) + 7317-319 [Cox’s Farm Cottages] Charles Webster (ag. lab.) + 1310 [Coney Hall cottage] [1 unoccupied]317-319 [Cox’s Farm Cottages] William Hawks (ag. lab.) + 4Cox’s, or Woodlands Farm was called ‘Newhouse’ in the 17th century and documentssurvive showing it was extant by the mid-fifteenth century. In 1841 it was owned byThomas Luck of the Hermitage, West Malling and then descended to his son Edward.The isolated Coney Hall cottage on Whitedyke Road belonged to Covey Hall farm(formerly owned by Thomas Whittaker, but in 1841 by Constantine and Edward Wood).9 [Mark Farm] George Masters (ag. lab.) + 7Mark Farm was of great antiquity, its name signifying its position on the boundarybetween the parishes of Snodland and Paddlesworth. Paddlesworth Thomas Stephens (farmer) + 3George Mungham (ag. lab.)James Wilcox (ag. lab.)James Rosebridge (ag. lab.)William Mulocks (ag. lab.)James King (ag. lab.)In 1841 Paddlesworth was still an independent parish – and remained so until 1888. Thefarm was owned by Thomas Stephens [I] (1770-1835) and then his son Thomas [II](1799-1878).12 Punish Crown Lodge Michael Lane (woodreeve) + 2The house was probably built around 1819 when the Crown bought woods on thedowns and Lane was appointed to look after them. Punish William Loft (ag. Lab.) + 7Joseph Francis (ag. Lab.) + 1 Punish Henry Allwork (ag. lab.) + 9 Punish Farm Richard Postans (farmer) + 4 Punish Farm Thomas Spain (ag. lab.)Another farm of great antiquity, named after the Povenashe family, known to have beenin Snodland in the 11th and 12th centuries. In 1841 it was owned by William Tidd whohad bought it from the Earls of Romney in 1808 and the farmer was Richard Postans. Pomphrey Charles Letchford (ag. lab.) + 7Henry Harris (ag. lab.) Pomphrey John Chapman (ag. lab.) + 4John Bassett Pomphrey Richard Cassum (ag. lab.) + 7Pomphrey/Pomphrey Castle high on the downs above Dode was a group of farmcottages, apparently serving Great Buckland farm (in Luddesdown) rather than Punish.80 Ladd’s farm Solomon Brice (farmer) + 7George Wingate (ag. lab.)William Town (ag. lab.)George Waters (ag. lab.)David Curd (ag. lab.)The Ladd family is known to have been in Snodland in the 11th and 12th centuries. In1841 the farm was owned by Edward and Constantine Wood, who had inherited it fromthe estate of Thomas Whittaker (d.1817).The 1850sAlthough the 99 families listed in 1841 had grown to 129 in 1851 it is not possible towork out where the extra people lived. The closure of the paper mill for some time andconsequent migration of workers mean that few names in the two censuses match up asone would have hoped. Only sixteen new houses were built in the parish in the ten years10to 1851. One of these was Thomas Fletcher Waghorn’s house, known as ‘The Lodge’,which had been completed by February 1842. Another was the ferry house, completedby 1844, which was partly funded by Henry Dampier Phelps, the Rector, as a means ofmonitoring uncouth workers who were inclined to disturb his services in the parishchurch. He wrote:For time immemorial a Foot Path had existed thro’ the Church Yard to the River: &was no nuisance, till the Houses by the Paper Mill were let to a Lime Burner overthe River for his Labourers. Then the number constantly passing, at all hours, &their shouting to call the Ferryman became so very annoying on the Sunday duringDivine Service, that I determined to stop the Path, or turn it farther from theChurch. Stop the Path entirely, I found could not be done. I then tried to changethe direction of the Path to the outside of the North Wall of the Church Yard; butthe Owner of the Land would not consent to it. I then made a similar trial to thePerson who had let the Houses & whose premises ran down to the River on theSouth side, but he also refused. I was then compelled to turn the Path under theSouth fence of the Church Yard, down to a piece of Glebe at the bottom near theRiver & to fence it off. This I did: & assisted Edward Baker to build a House on myGlebe to be near his work, & to keep all things quiet. The Oak fence & myassistance to Baker cost me about £100. The rest of the expense was borne by him:to whom I promised as long a Lease as I could grant, on gaining the Bishop’sconsent: and that he should pay me Five Pounds per an.: as Rent for the Glebe &my share of the building One half of which I intend to give to the support of theSunday School. The Bishop hitherto / 1848 / has not given his sanction.4Elsewhere it seems some housing in Holborough underwent changes and the Moorefamily added to the group they owned on the west side of Holborough Road, but littleelse is recorded.The ferry houseThe planned Strood to Maidstone railway received Parliamentary assent in 1853 and itappears that some Snodland parishioners were aware that this could bring prosperity notonly to the village, but to them personally. Furthermore the lime works had been boughtby William Lee in 1846 and ownership of the paper mill passed to the Hook family in1855, setting both enterprises on a secure footing. Soon after he arrived as victualler atthe Red Lion in 1844, William Kingsnorth purchased a two-acre field (tithe no. 442)4 Notebook ‘A’, Snodland Historical Society collection at Snodland Museum.11from the paper mill owner, Thomas Spong.5 Kingsnorth retired from the Red Lion in theearly 1850s. The field was well-chosen, for in due course the South Eastern Railwayplanned to run through the middle of it, and compensation was then due from them.Kingsnorth built his own house, Green Meadow Villa, on the west side of the field andon the east, fronting Mill Street, sixteen houses for workers, from whom he could collectrents.From 1856 the railway itself provided a station, in which the stationmaster and his familylived, together with a cottage for the crossing-keeper. More enterprise was shown withthe decision to build a good hotel nearby to serve travellers using the railway. ThomasPoynder owned the land and the Queen’s Head was designed by a Mr. Clifton and builtby J. G. Naylar, alderman and sometime mayor of Rochester. A grand opening tookplace on 19 June 1857 with a dinner provided by Thomas Castle and his wife, whomPoynder had persuaded to leave the Five Bells at Halling to become hosts of his newhotel. Poynder noted thatFears had been expressed in some quarters that the establishment might proverather too extensive for the place, but in these days of progress, now that therailway had been brought to their doors, and improvements were being carriedforward all around them, he thought they might reasonably hope that those fearswould not be found to be well grounded.6There is no doubt that this was a superior building to any of the other inns in the parishand it soon became the venue of choice for meetings and societies. On more than oneoccasion in the 1860s Alderman Naylar used it for dinners of The City of RochesterBuilding Society (later The City of Rochester Permanent Benefit Building Land andInvestment Society) of which he was chairman.Stretching to the west of the Queen’s Head was land acquired by John Goodhugh(1735-1834) from Robert, Earl of Romney in 1808. In 1788 the village ‘poor house’ hadbeen built on the site, with the ‘New Poor House’ added later. It is likely that these arethe buildings shown on the tithe map within the numbers 207-212, but in 1838 theestablishment of regional workhouses made their original purpose redundant and theybecame available for normal use. The Queen’s Head was built on the site of the New PoorHouse and the others had gone by the mid-1860s at the latest.Immediately to the west were tithe nos. 212-13, one rented by a sequence ofpapermakers, the other by Ann Gooding (1777-1860), a laundress from Marlborough,Wiltshire, and her lodger Philip Hawks, a gardener.Next were two old houses (tithe nos. 215-16) occupied by two sisters: Ann Pearson(1772-1847), widow of William, a shoemaker, and Frances Brown, who in the 1820s hadmanaged the Bull Hotel. In 1863 the Vestry minute book remarks on the ‘dangerousstate of cottages, late the property of William Pearson’ and they must have beendemolished soon after to make way for Delamere House and its grounds.Tithe nos. 217-224 and the associated orchard (no. 188) were owned by William Austin(1775-1842), a carpenter, and they passed to his wife Mary (1779-1859) at his death. Atthe 1841 census the four houses were occupied by Thomas Bateman, Frederick Boormanand two other papermaker lodgers, John Capon and three papermaker lodgers, andWilliam Austin. By the 1844 tithe the occupants had become ‘Capelin’ [John Capon],William Austin, William Kemp, and Elizabeth Dartnell and her son William. Thesehouses were demolished, probably in the 1860s, and were replaced by a baker’s shop and5 Shown as ‘Land sold to William Kingsnorth’ on an 1847 map of the mill area: SMM: THA. 6 South Eastern Gazette, 23 June 1857.12bakehouse, the Victory public house, and a large grocer’s shop. These new propertieswere certainly present by 1867 and the whole development may have arisen becauseEustace Hook, the youngest son of the paper mill owners, required his own house at hiscoming of age. On 21 November 1865 Eustace bought the orchard and perhaps thewhole property from William and Frances Austin, children of William and Mary, so it isquite likely that the new shops were all part of the re-development. Eustace built DelamereHouse in the former orchard, the alley on the west was extended to create a drive-way toit, and the site of the former poor houses became part of the garden.On the south side of the High street two houses were transferred from Thomas Banfield(recorded in Snodland 1808-1815) to Armigill Hadlow (1772-1842), a bargeman, on 30October 1822.7 (These were replaced by the present nos. 74-78, built for Eliza Thomas,Armigill’s daughter, in 1878.) Hadlow subsequently built four more houses on the land,which were in place by 1829 when he made his will. Two of these remain as Nos. 88 and88a; the other two were behind and were demolished in mid-twentieth century.The two surviving houses built before 1829 for Armigill HadlowOne person it is difficult to place in the 1841 census is the grocer Joseph Bateman.Brother of Thomas, who was living in Gorham’s Cottages, he was only in Snodlandbetween 1837 and 1842, before moving to Aylesford. His shop and home may have beenpart of Hadlow’s group, but this is unclear.Another who began building around 1853 was George Gorham (1794-1861), a butcherliving at Prospect Cottage in Holborough Road, and a member of a prominent localfamily. In 1836 the death of the owner enabled him to acquire a considerable amount ofland attached to the property when it was auctioned—he already occupied it all.8 Lot 1was ‘A Most substantially Brick-built WINDMILL, situated in the parish of Snodland, bythe side of the high road leading from Rochester and Strood to Malling, driving two ofFrench stones, with going gear complete, abundant stowage room, and every requisiteaccommodation for carrying on an extensive trade, ... and surrounded by two acres(more or less) of rich arable land.’. The mill was ‘unoccupied’ in 1837 and was takendown and moved to Gillingham in 1839, leaving the field empty (Tithe 267). In duecourse Gorham engaged a builder, John Roots, of Luton, Chatham, to build houses on7 Banfield is recorded in 1808 to 1815 in the tax assessments by the Churchwardens. 8 South Eastern Gazette, 30 August 1836.13the field. An indenture of 3 May 1853 (mentioned in another of 9 May 18619), shows thatJohn Roots, brickmaker, sold part of Windmill Field to Joseph Bateman of Aylesford,grocer, and in due course this was acquired by Thomas William Peters who built fivehouses on it.10 Those five houses are Jessamine Cottages (with three more behind themadded a little later). Bateman’s family was Non-Conformist, and part of the land was setaside for a chapel to replace the one beside the paper mill, and for a British School whoseethos served those not belonging to the established Church of England.11 The 1861census lists seven houses as ‘Bateman’s Row’, but it is not clear which these are—mostprobably they are part of what is now ‘Providence Place’. ‘Alma Villa’ (now no. 157) isalso listed, together with another nine properties in the same field. The 1867 OrdnanceSurvey map shows the whole field was built upon by then, now including the substantial‘Prospect House’, later known as ‘Bryncree’. One problem is the identification of thirteenhouses named as ‘Prospect Place’ in the 1861 census, where the group on the east ofHolborough Road shown on the 1867 map (which still survives with its stone nameplaque) comprises only ten properties.9 MALSC: 1200/DE 1171.10 Ibid.11 See p. 115.14Windmill Field in 1867(names taken from the 1871 census)George Gorham also owned Lot 2 in the auction: Pond Field (Tithe 368) boundingBirling Road and Constitution Hill, as well as a smaller plot on the North side of15Constitution Hill (Tithe 152-3). George died on 14 November 1861, presumably havingalready sold the land to Roots. In 1853-4 Roots had taken lodgings as tenant to WilliamDay in Thomas Waghorn’s house and was actively building houses on Pond Field.Unfortunately he went bankrupt on January 19 1855 and had to cease operations. Hisassets were sold at various ensuing auctions, the first on 28 February 1855. This offeredAll those ten brick-built COTTAGES, with slated roofs, known by the name of“Constitution Hill” (six of which are in an unfinished state.) Each cottage containstwo sitting-rooms, washhouse, and cellar. Also a small newly- erected Cottage,situate at the bottom of the brickfield there, together with the said Brickfield, which,with the sites of the said cottages, contains about 2A. 3R. 33P. of land, with aninexhaustible supply of brick earth, and now used for the manufacture of bricks. …The finished cottages produce a rental of £37 per annum, and are now occupied.…12A second auction, on 28 March 1855 concerned the brick-making stock:The whole of the STOCK, implements and utensils in trade, by order of theassignees of Mr. John Roots, Brickmaker (a Bankrupt,) on the premises, at theSNODLAND BRICKFIELD, without reserve, Consisting of about 70,000 stock bricks, 200,000 place bricks, 3 pug mills, 9bearing off barrows, 10 crowding ditto, 32 lengths of wrought iron wheeling plates,wood planks, wash mill, iron pump, quantity of slates, reed hurdles, shutes, scrys,brick wagon, moulding tables, brick boards, iron and wood harrows, quantity ofashes, tools and implements in trade and other effects.13Evidently some of this failed to attract buyers and a third attempt was made at the BullInn, Snodland, on 5 September 1855 to auction thirteen lots:Seven valuable and desirable pieces of BUILDING GROUND, six carcases oftenements or dwelling-houses, a tenement or cottage and garden, a very valuablepiece of land, containing about 2 acres, and having a great depth of valuable brickearth, and the materials of a wash mill and a cast iron pump and gear.The property is freehold, with frontage to the high roads leading to Meopham andBirling, within a short distance of an intended station of the Strood and MaidstoneRailway, and to a wharf on the river Medway.14There had been some sympathy for Roots at the bankruptcy hearing on 21 April 1855‘the failure having arisen in some measure from unavoidable loss, a heavy fall havingoccurred in the price of bricks and other building materials just after Roots had laid in aconsiderable stock’.15It would appear that Gorham next turned to John Tomlin, a builder from Wrotham (andlater Maidstone), who in the next few years built some 55 houses on Pond Field. By thetime of the 1861 census a dozen of these houses in ‘Birling Lane’ were occupied,together with about 18 more on the present Constitution Hill, but by 1867 the rest hadbeen built.12 South Eastern Gazette, 6 February 1855. 13 South Eastern Gazette, 20 and 27 March 1855. 14 South Eastern Gazette, 4 September 1855. 15 The Morning Post, 23 April 1855.16The 1860sDrainage problems and solutionsHowever, between 1865 and 1869 Tomlin was repeatedly summoned to attend meetingsof the Highways Board at West Malling in connection with a ‘nuisance’ emanating fromdrains to these houses. Local newspapers first reported it on 18 November 1865:The surveyor reported a very serious nuisance on property belonging to Mr.Tomlin, late of Wrotham and now of Maidstone, where 55 houses and cottages onConstitution-hill, Snodland, had no cesspool, but the drainage ran into the road.The nuisance had existed eight or nine years, and some drain pipes had been laiddown, but were most inefficient, as they only conveyed the water to the corner ofthe road, and the rest ran across to the injury of the road. There was also anothercause of complaint. One of the cottagers had dug a drain with a pick-axe across theroad without any pipes whatever. The drain was only five or six inches deep and thewater ran across the road.Mr. Pierson, waywarden, (Snodland), said he had seen the soap suds running acrossthe road. There was no cesspool at all.Mr. Dickenson (surveyor) said that one of the cottager’s wives told him the waterran into her house, and her husband was obliged to make the drain in order to getrid of it. [Tomlin was called and said he had spoken to the previous waywarden, Mr.17Kingsnorth, ‘who said he had better put in a drain to carry it off into the ditch.’Kingsnorth denied this. The Board gave Tomlin a short time to find a solution.]16In an ill-timed move the Malling Guardians had just voted against improvements todrainage in parishes under their control, but their stance was attacked by the vicar ofBirling, Edward Vesey Bligh, and Rev. Carey, Rector of Snodland:From J. Gaspard le M. Carey, Rector of Snodland:Sir, I should not be doing Justice to myself, or to my people, if I took no notice ofMr. Bligh’s clear and explicit letter on the nuisance question, which appeared inyour impression of November 20th. I am exceedingly obliged to him, and canassure him that if the sanitary condition of Birling be deplorable, that of Snodlandis no better. I could not have supposed, till I saw it with my own eyes, that thelust of gold would have gone so far. Men build houses here without wells, andwithout drains; with open cesspools, and with open drains; with the drains of oneblock of houses running under the open sinks of another block of houses, andsending up their vapours through them; with closets in the closest possibleproximity to the houses, crowded, and not cleaned for eighteen or more monthsat a time. The demand for labour, moreover, is such that the poor labouring manhas no escape. He must take the house which offers itself, or lose his bread.Are these rapacious landlords murderers, or not? When diphtheria andtyphoid fever carry off their victims in these foul places, and now a mothersaturated over her home duties with the poison which her husband at the limeworks or paper-mill escapes, and now her tender babe, drawing at each innocentbreath a deadly draught, are sacrificed and die, will the landlord have nothing toanswer for as he meets them in another world? “But he did not murder themintentionally.” No! but if by wilful and prolonged neglect he compasses theirdeath, is he not responsible?If the case of the landlord, however, be so bad, what shall be said of theBoard of Guardians, who are aiders and abettors in this wholesale waste of life? Itseems a mockery to call them “Guardians” any longer. They are the destroyers ofthe poor people whose misfortune it is to be placed in their hands. I am told thatat the Board-meeting, at which this question was so sadly and painfully settled, theargument on which one speaker rested his opposition was, that if the request ofthe confederate parishes were granted, every parish in the union would demandthe same concession! Surely there must have been some sitting by, who wishedthat speaker’s tongue had never been loosed. Why, sir, this is the whole matter.The cry is universal, because the evil is so great; and no parish that has any regardfor human life would do otherwise than, through its officers, claim the removal ofthese fatal poisons.But the Board of Guardians may rest assured that their triumph in favour ofdisease and death will be shortlived. It will be found, if I mistake not, that we havegained far more than we have lost by the late decision. The attention of theGovernment will now be drawn to the matter; it will be shown how little, even inintelligent Kent, Boards of Guardians have the real interests of the poor at heart,that which is now permissive will be made imperative; and probably in othermatters, over which they have at present a discretionary control, that control will betaken from them. Thus good will come out of evil.1716 Maidstone Telegraph, 18 November 1865. 17 Maidstone and Kentish Journal, 30 November 1865. Carey’s letter retains the idea that illness was caused bybreathing foul air (although John Snow’s seminal work on tackling cholera had appeared ten years earlier).Bligh’s support for proper drainage and his attack on the Board of Guardians is mentioned in EsmeWingfield Stratford, This was a man: the biography of the Honourable Edward Vesey Bligh, Diplomat-Parson-Squire(London, 1949), pp. 191-218The Guardian for Snodland, C. Townsend Hook, felt he could not let this powerfulletter go unchallenged, and pointed out that not all his colleagues were in favour of themotion:Sir, I have read with much satisfaction the letter of the Rev. E. Bligh on the conductof the Malling Board of Guardians on the nuisance question. There are numerouscottages in this village in which all the laws of health, from the necessity orignorance of the inmates, are constantly set at defiance.It is useless for the poor man to seek his remedy against his landlord. Hewould soon have to quit, and shift, if possible, to worse quarters.I am sure that if those members of the Board, who by their votes refused toenforce the law, would have reflected that by so doing they were giving thestrongest argument for the abolition of their remaining powers of self-government,to that influential and increasing class who are disgusted with the apathy, the localprejudices, and the obstinacy, which are too often the most conspicuous elementsin the proceedings of parish vestries and local boards, the result would have beendifferent. They overlook the real capacity for good work these institutions possess,and are thoughtlessly desirous of sweeping away all our self-governing bodies as somuch obstructive rubbish.I must protest against Mr. Bligh or the public entertaining the idea that Mr.Betts’ motion was rejected by any large majority. I am glad to say there were manythere who did not at all like to be known among their neighbours in the words of theofficial Instructions from the Privy Council, as those who “had neglected or refused todo their duty.”18Soon after John Tomlin was convicted under the ‘Nuisances Removal Act’:The defendant was the owner of some fifty or sixty cottages at Snodland, andwithout permission he dug a drain under the road to a ditch on the opposite side,and consequently filthy water, and sometimes, when pigs were killed, blood flowedacross the road.The district surveyorSaid that in the summer time especially a great nuisance was caused by the wasteand refuse water, soap suds, and pigs’ blood running from defendant’s cottagesacross the highway. Many complaints had been made, and he had several timesspoken to defendant’s son on the subject. Defendant had repeatedly promised toremove or abate the nuisance if time was allowed him.Defendant said there was no nuisance. He went on Saturday week to the premisesin company with W. Lee Esq., M.P., Mr. Pierson, and other gentlemen, and they allagreed that there was no nuisance. If there was anything to complain of it was onlya little waste water, and he was quite willing to build a cesspool when the weatherpermitted.He was fined £1 and costs, which he paid.19At the end of 1866 a further problem was brought to Tomlin’s attention and acommittee was formed to consider it:[They] had examined and inspected the road and had taken exact admeasurement,and they were of the opinion that Mr Tomlin had encroached upon the public road.They had been informed by Mr Kingsnorth, who some time since held the office ofSurveyor of the roads, that at the time the cottages were built he told Mr Tomlin, orhis son that he was encroaching upon the public roads, but no notice was taken.There was a great deal of traffic from Addington, Ryarsh, Malling, and other places18 Maidstone and Kentish Journal, 4 December 1865. 19 South Eastern Gazette, 10 February 1866.19to the Snodland railway station, and they were of opinion that Mr Tomlin should berequired to remedy the evil complained of, and that failing to do so, proceedingsshould be taken against him by the Board. 20Nothing more is heard of this and one guesses that Tomlin could not or would notdemolish the offending houses. In April the Board decided to take no further actionagainst Tomlin, presumably for this infringement.21 However the ‘nuisance’ had not goneaway and in 1868 he was summoned to West Malling Petty Sessionsfor neglecting to conform to an order for the removal of a nuisance in some of hiscottages at Snodland.Mr Alfred Hoppe, inspector of nuisances, said that on the 7th of March he found agreat stench arising from a drain running under the washhouses of 21 cottages ofMr. Tomlin. He served Mr. Tomlin with a notice for its removal, but he afterwardsfound that nothing had been done to abate the nuisance. He laid that informationbefore the last board meeting, and he was directed to take the present proceedings.Mr. Tomlin, in reply to the information, said that it was impossible to find cottagesin a better condition than those complained of. He had done all he could to remedythe drainage, but as he was compelled to drain into a ditch he was unable to makematters better. [Tomlin was ordered to pay costs and to attend the next vestrymeeting]22In all the proceedings the Highways Board continued to tell Tomlin to correct theproblem, but never offered support or advice as to how he could achieve this. EventuallyRev. Carey made a formal complaint ‘of the foul state of the drains in Mr. Tomlin’sproperty at Snodland’:Mr Tomlin has laid out a great deal of money in building the cesspools near thecottages at Snodland, but they are still likely to overflow into the road. The premisesare in a worse state than ever, and will be likely to be a nuisance in the summer.Mr Woollett thought the gentleman ought to manage better, seeing he was a builderand an architect.Mr Hoppe—He has done all his skill can devise, and spent a good many pounds.Mr. Dickins—He could divert the overplus water.Mr Carey—The cesspools are like great graves behind the houses, and will verylikely cause serious results in the summer.23The Surveyor said the nuisance was more than ever.A waywarden had not seen much the matter at the place. Mr Tomlin had laid out agreat deal of money, and had tried his best to prevent any nuisance.The Surveyor never saw such a bad place, as the manure flowed on to the road.A waywarden wished to know if the surveyor could not point out a remedy.The Surveyor said it was not his place to find a remedy, and Mr. Carey had madethe complaint.Mr Tomkin though Mr Tomlin ought to have a proper cesspool and thus preventthe nuisance.The Surveyor said the manure ran along the side of the hedge, and passed under anarch, where the poor people were obliged to get their water for drinking purposes.It was a very foul cesspool, and contained manure from about sixty houses.The Clerk stated that the Highway Board had nothing to do with it, unless the roadwas injured, and the surveyor had said the water ran under the road. If it was anuisance to the public the Board could interfere.The Surveyor—It is very offensive to passengers, and looks and smells dreadful.20 Maidstone Telegraph, 26 January 1867. The road narrows can be seen on the map. 21 Maidstone Telegraph, 20 April 1867. 22 Maidstone Telegraph, 4 April 1868. 23 Maidstone Telegraph, 20 January 1869.20A lengthy discussion followed and it was proposed … that the Clerk write to MrTomlin … informing him that unless the nuisance is removed within a fortnight, asummons will be issued against him.24One final meeting covered much the same ground:The Chairman-Does the soil run on to the road?Mr Hoppe—It runs on the side of the road.The Clerk—It belongs to the highway, and is part of the road. It is a piece of wasteland used for stones, and the surveyor should see it kept right. …The Chairman—Have many persons complained?Mr Hoppe—The general public complain of it, and Mr Tomlin has no power tokeep it clean.Mr Carey—The soil runs from 52 cottages.The Chairman—One or two of the waywardens think the complaint a frivolousone, but the inspector is of a different opinion.Mr Carey—It is a great nuisance, and injurious to the children.Mr Hoppe—Mr Tomlin covers it with dirt to hide the nuisance.The Chairman—The question is, should Mr Luck, the owner of the land adjoining,or the Highway Board, remove it.Mr Hoppe—The case has been before the Board ever since I have been in office.A Guardian said proceedings had been taken against Mr Tomlin; the case fellthrough and the Board had to pay £12 costs.The Board requested Mr Hoppe to endeavour in the best way he could, to have thenuisance removed.On 15 January 1870 ‘Mr Hoppe reported that the nuisance at Snodland was abated, asMr Tomlin had done all he possibly could.’25 A report of an accident to the night soil carton 17 January 1874 is a reminder that this service, although rarely mentioned, wasroutine at the time.Wells and pumps were normal features in Snodland, each serving a few houses, and areshown on the first large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1867. In 1877-8 it was decidedthat a drainage scheme should be drawn up for Snodland, noting that ‘the principalowners of property had already put in drains at a considerable expense’. A letter by alocal doctor sets out in some detail what he felt was needed:Now as regards Snodland, which depends for any sanitary or unsanitary appliances whichit possesses upon the arrangements made for each separate or row of houses, we have sofar a more simple question to deal with. We have no imperfect systems to disentanglebefore endeavouring to design the method most proper for our purpose. Snodland is along, straggling village, with but few houses in comparison with the amount of groundoccupied, low lying by the river side, at the foot of a range of hills plentifully supplied withnatural springs, but nevertheless most abominably provided with ure water for drinkingpurposes, the sources being from wells which from the nature of the subsoil are shallow,collecting nought but subsoil water, and that necessarily polluted by all manner ofabominations. The question then, from the nature of the place and its capabilities as regards expense,gradually narrows itself into a choice of necessities to avoid evils of greater or lessermagnitudes. A main sewer to convey away the surface and slop waters would be verycostly, and to remove the excreta also would necessitate water-closets, which whenconstructed at great cost, would be scarcely suitable for a population mostly of the cottageclass, and although the sewage might be conveyed away we must not forget that our watersupply would still be as impure, if not much more impute than ever. For no sewers can beso constructed but that they will allow subsoil water in and sewage water out, and thus24 Maidstone Telegraph, 22 May 1869. 25 Maidstone Telegraph.21while the sewage and surface water would be got rid of, rendering the air in the dwellingsmore pure, the water would be worse and the expense enormous. We should then makethe procuring of a good water supply the first consideration, by forming a reservoir underthe hills; the drainage would then reduce itself down to the object of keeping the sewageair out of the dwellings, and cesspools under these circ*mstances would be robbed of thegreater half of their deadly effects, while the lesser half would be provided against by thesimple method of disconnection. Each house should be provided with a properlyconstructed closet, after the pattern of our health officer’s, Dr. Baylis, while the slopwaters will be conveyed away into cesspools thoroughly ventilated and always cut off fromthe houses, trusting to no form of trap, although taking care to make use of one. Thesurface water would be conducted in surface gutters to the river, a careful collection of therain water from the roofs by tanks rendering the quantity generally but small.SAML. PRALL, M.D., F.R.C.S. West Malling, March 28th 187726In June that year a parish Local Sanitary Committee met to consider a report by thedistrict sanitary inspector on the proposed drainage of Snodland27 and by September theyhad decided to proceed:.Snodland. Local Sanitary Committee The above committee, having for some time past hadthe drainage of the parish before them, have now resolved to thoroughly drain the wholeplace, for which purpose the committee and ratepayers met at the National School-roomon Monday, when Mr. May, the district surveyor, laid before the meeting certain schemesfor drainage purposes, with probably cost. It was decided that the matter be at onceproceeded with. Improvements have already been made along the Holboro’-road, by theconstruction of a footpath, and it is to be hoped that the next step will be “Gas in thestreets”.28With the two leading industrialists in the village always anxious to do what they could forthe welfare of the parishioners, Snodland was much better placed to take such decisionsthan those where there was obstruction caused by intractable management of ancientestates:The tender of Mr. Ames, of Rochester, for the construction of the first section of theSnodland drainage works, at a cost of £690, including £110 for the settling tank, wasaccepted. With regard to the Burham drainage scheme, it was stated that the trustees ofEarl Aylesford’s estate had positively declined to allow the pipes to pass through hislordship’s estates, and the matter was allowed to stand over for the present.29* * * * *In 1851 Thomas William Peters (1817-1905) is first listed in a local directory as a coalmerchant. He was the son of Richard (1791-1881) and he describes himself in anadvertisem*nt in 1849 as ‘late wharfinger at Messrs Poynder & Co.’, so clearly had startedout working on barges there. The ‘new wharf’ he advertised was by the paper mill and hehimself had moved nearby to Mill Street. Around 1860 Richard Peters built Anchor Placeand the eight houses of Hope Terrace next to it. The 1861 census lists him as a‘proprietor of houses’. Anchor Place became the home of Thomas William when it wascompleted late in 1861.With the expansion of the paper mill the number of houses in the parish doubled from87 to 167 in the decade to 1871. Charles Townsend Hook was anxious to provideaccommodation for his growing workforce and seems to have turned to a fellow26 South Eastern Gazette, 2 April 1877. 27 South Eastern Gazette, 11 June 1877. 28 South Eastern Gazette, 24 September 1877. 29 South Eastern Gazette, 8 July 1878.22Swedenborgian, Joseph Privett, who is first recorded in the village in 1857 at themarriage of his daughter Sarah to an East Malling papermaker, Samuel Fryer.30 The 1861census describes Privett as a ‘journeyman carpenter’ and he certainly had travelled muchin the course of his work. Births of his children are noted in Cheltenham (1828), Llowes,Radnorshire (1840), Birmingham (1843) and Hythe, Kent (1853). Although nodocumentary evidence has been found, Privett probably built the fine houses which wereon the west side of Brook Street, handsome buildings set back from the road withextensive gardens front and back. Beside them he built one for himself, which laterbecame the home of the resident Swedenborgian minister and which was used forservices in the early days of the Society in Snodland.31It is likely that these houses were built during the late 1850s—early 1860s and they allappear on the 1867 ordnance survey map. Also there is a ‘Fibre or Tin Foil factory’ withfour adjacent houses. According to Charles Townsend Hook these four houses were alsobuilt by Privett at a cost of £503. 3s. 3d., but the date of their completion is not shown.32The Hook family lived in a house rented from the Rector, Henry Dampier Phelps, whoseems to have bought it around 1839-40.33 After Phelps’s death in 1865 they were able topurchase it from his executors for £409. 12s. 6d., and at the same time spent more onsurrounding land and property, particularly on the north side of the High Street where ahouse was built for Eustace Hook as he reached his maturity. This also provided roomfor a coachman’s house and stables (£570. 2s. 3d.) and gardener’s house (£292. 9s. 8d.).34William Kingsnorth added the five cottages of Railway Place on his field, fronting theHigh Street, but much building in this part of the village arose from the selling of a fieldbelonging to the National School. John May’s original bequest included the field onwhich the schoolmaster could keep livestock, but perhaps the practice had beenabandoned, since it was later leased to The Queen’s Head. In 1866 Mrs Castle, theproprietor, offered it for sale.3530 All Saints, 30 November 1857. At that time there was no Swedenborgian builing licensed for services inSnodland.31 See p. 120.32 THA, Ledger, p.233; Journal on loan to SMM, p. 30. 33 KHLC, Q/RP1/34634 THA, Ledger, p.221; Journal, p. 29. 35 South Eastern Gazette, 21 May 1866.The southern terrace offive cottages in Brook Street23With the growth of the population provision of a larger school was imperative, as therector records in Parochialia36Mr. Walter Rumble resigned the charge of the school at Easter 1866 and Mr. TomHilder of Ightham was appointed to succeed him. The number of the children soonafter this time increasing considerably, it was thought desirable to erect larger andmore commodious school-buildings, as well as to build a new house. The schoolwas founded by John May Esq. In 1801 who endowed it with 24 acres (nominally)of land. The land produced at the time I saw it £33. 10 per annum. Application wasmade to the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales to sell the land for thebenefit of the school, and after much official delay the sale took place onWednesday Feb. 27, 1867.One portion, viz. that in front of the Queen’s Head Hotel, hitherto let for £13. 10per ann, was divided into 25 lots, and sold for £2402. The extent was 2¾ acres(about). The other portion, hitherto let for grazing purposes, situate next the river,and fetching £20 per annum, was sold for £500. Its extent was 16 acres (about).Thus the whole realised £2902.No plan of the 25 lots has been found, but some are easily identified. On the south ofthe High Street the building on the corner of May Street was the Post Office until around1895. Similarities in the pediments and barge-boards of this building with those on theformer houses by Privett in Brook Street, suggest he built this too.Two shops on the east side separate the Post Office from another three-storey building,May Place, beyond them. Evidently the latter was built for Thomas William Peters, whoadvertised no. 2 to let in March 1868.37 However, Charles Townsend Hook notes ‘Cash[paid to] T Peters for lot 2 £150. 0s. 0d.’ on 14 January 1869 and by 13 March it hadbecame the surgery for Snodland’s first resident doctor.38On the east side of May Street plots big enough for two or three houses became 1-3 MayCottages; 1-3 Gladstone Place; 1-3 Portland Place; 1-2 Springvale Place; Mons/MonaCottage; 1-3 Faith Place; 1-3 Western Cottages. The builders and original owners of theseare unknown, but the first occupant of 3 Portland Place was a builder, Edward Rowles,and it seems likely that he built at least his terrace, including a passageway large enoughfor his horse and cart to pass through.More of a mystery is the wonderfully ornate ‘Faith Place’, with its date plaque of 1871.‘Faith Place’ was possibly built by the Moore brothers, who were leading NonConformists and who may have made this a project to advertise their workmanship.36 SHS Pamphlet: Notes from Snodland Rectory 1865-1882 (1992). 37 South Eastern Gazette, 23 March 1868. 38 SMM: THA Journal, p. 29; Kent Messenger, 13 March 1869.24Although the family had been active in Snodland as bricklayers for at least ten years, thismay have been one of their first attempts at a finished building. A few years later theybuilt houses in Malling Road, with the same distinctive front railings as here.It would appear that all the other school plots were bought by Charles Townsend Hookto add to the houses already provided in Brook Street. He also paid for the making of theroads in May Street and East Street, the costs recorded in his Journal. These includedpayments for drains to J. Privett (17 August 1868) and E. Rowles (17 March 1871). Theroads are marked on the 1867 map, but without houses. Other work completed byPrivett and paid for by Hook includes ‘May Villas’ or ‘Millswood House’, a name derivedfrom the family’s former home at Chalford, Gloucestershire, two superior dwellings forthe mill clerk and mill foreman,39 work on altering and ‘rearranging’ five houses, the millmessroom and storekeeper’s house,40 seven houses in East Street,41 and four houses witha workshop on the Brook.42Six more houses were added to the terrace in East Street by the youthful firm of ‘Burgessand Langridge’,43 because Privett had moved on to Chatham. For these they were paid£775. 19s. 6d. on 15 November 1869. Two more houses on the north side of East Streetwere named Vine Cottage, for which they received £280. 4s. 7d. on 19 September 1870and their next recorded work is ‘Long Row’, eighteen houses on the west side of MayStreet.44The houses in East Street, seven built by Joseph Privett and six by Burgess and Langridge,Shown shortly before their demolition in 1980Charles Townsend Hook’s Journal and Ledger record his purchase and expenses of manyproperties, summarized here:Veles [the family home] bought from Mr Phelps £409.12.6. 30 June 1866; alterations till1868: £2750.12.9. [Rev. Phelps had died on 30 July 1865, and his nephews were hisexecutors]School Field: 5 lots £724 ‘added to Veles’ July 1 1867; Lot 10: gift to Mrs Hook £70April 1 1868; Cash T. Peters for lot 2 £150 14 January 1869; land 2 houses £50 March 31186939 £780. 17s. 9d., paid on 30 June 1868;40 £328. 2s. 8d. paid to Privett from £1844. 14s. 4d. spent on purchasing nine cottages and gardens[Snodland Wharf] from Mrs Broad between 24 April 1867 and 26 January 1871: Journal, p. 30, Ledger, pp.385-6.41 £791. 6s. 5d. paid to Privett on 17 October 1868: Journal, p. 30; Ledger, p. 233. 42 £720 paid to Privett on 22 October 1868: Journal, p. 30; Ledger, p. 233. 43 Thomas Burgess (c.1845-1889) and Robert Thomas Langridge (1844-1927). The 1871 census showsBurgess as master of three men and one boy.44 £2069. 13s. 4d. paid on 19 April 1875.25Fibre or Tin Foil factory £5001.15.8 to 30 June 1871 [This was a venture which failed]22 July 1872: Thomas Wooding: mortgage for 4 cottages in Church FieldsBuilt by Burgess and Langridge between 22 July and 18 December 1876 for £550Thomas Wooding lived in one of the five cottages making Medway Place, (1881-1891), soperhaps mortgaged the other four.Coachman’s House and stables £570.2.3; Gardener’s House £292.9.8 [North side ofHigh Street, with Delamere]Kingsnorth wall [Journal, p.407] £13.8.10, 18 Dec.1871 [separates Kingsnorth’s fieldfrom the May Street properties and prevents a back exit from the May Street houses.]Coal wharf let to Thomas William Peters from 25 March 1871 at £30 a year.Charles Gorham’s House [next to Veles] £400; purchased 26 May 1873Church Fields purchased from Poynder £3800, 17 May 1875Beer House £528.2.1 24 June 1868 [The Wheatsheaf in Mill Street]Purchased 6 cottages from Kingsnorth, 2 July 1875, £1350New public houses served the growing number of workers in paper and cement. In 1868Charles Townsend Hook built The Wheatsheaf in Mill Street outside the mill entrance andit was let to the Wateringbury brewers F. Leney & Sons for 21 years. But after Charles’sdeath, and because they were avid supporters of the Temperance movement, his sistersclosed the beerhouse as soon as the lease expired. On Constitution Hill The Monk’s Headwas open by 1867, while the Moore family of bricklayers diversified, with William Mooredescribing himself as ‘bricklayer and beer retailer’ at what became the appropriatelynamed Bricklayers Arms in Holborough Road. The Prince of Wales joined the Rising Sun asan additional hostelry at Holborough.The 1870sIn the mid-1870s a small estate was built between Malling Road (which was still restrictedby the tolls) and Birling Road. This estate comprised the 28 houses in Portland Place, 8more in ‘Bottom Row’, late re-named as Chapel Road with further houses added later,and two in Bull Fields. With the cessation of the tolls in 1878 a further 25 houses werebuilt on the west side of Malling Road as far as the stream, then the parish boundary withBirling. The remainder of the houses in Malling Road, together with those in OxfordStreet and Bramley Road, were gradually added in the years up to 1915, so do notconcern us here. More houses were added in Constitution Hill, including Clara Place in1875 and the Papermakers Arms off-licence next door.Even earlier, at the Holborough end of the village, William Lee and others weresupplying more houses. North of Windmill Field a further 26 houses were built on thewest side of Holborough Road, with twelve more called ‘Lee’s’ or ‘Victoria Cottages’ onthe east side. Richard Peters added eleven houses on the ground associated with hisshop and a terrace of 14 ‘Orchard Cottages’ replaced the buildings of Gilder’s Farm eastof them.It is noticeable that with all this building little provision was made for what would becalled the middle classes and it was not until late in the century that a number of largerproperties were built to satisfy the growing number of professionals, who might perhapsemploy one or two servants. As noted earlier both the principal families in Snodland hadgained their wealth through commercial activity rather than inheritance and it seems thatthose they employed were largely content to occupy the new if relatively small houses26built by their masters. Even the Hook family did not enlarge Veles their home until afterthe death of their landlord, the rector, but they then added Delamere for the youngest son,Eustace, and Carisbrooke House in the grounds of Veles for their governess and her sisters.The new papermill manager Colonel Holland, built Ivymeath in the late 1870s, but soonmoved to Tunbridge Wells At Holborough William Lee was one of a family of builderswhose cement-making activities allowed him to purchase the estate previously acquiredby the lime merchants Poynder and Hobson. His son-in-law William Henry Robertsbrought a touch of aristocracy to the family, but they were minor gentry and it was Lee’swealth which sustained them here for three generations.Elsewhere, within the 1841-1881 time-span we can note Providence House and Alma Villain Windmill Field. Brook House in Malling Road was the home of a doctor, while NephaliteVilla in the High Street, was built by the ferryman Edward Baker. James Brown, a builderfrom Maidstone, built Belle Vue Villa for himself in Holborough Road, on the site ofWilliam Wilson’s market gardener’s house, while Thomas Henry Peters moved intoAnchor Place in the High Street. For a time Waghorn’s house The Lodge was owned byWilliam Day, the Maidstone auctioneer, but then passed through a succession of cementforemen and managers. Eventually some superior houses were built facing the cricketmeadow (glebe) and later still more were added in Birling parish at the south end ofMalling Road.As early as 1867, and because the paper mill had a gas works, Rev. Carey noted that ‘gaswas introduced into several shops in the village’. The idea of providing gas street lampswas discussed at a meeting on 9 October 1871, but nothing was done until February1878 when the three Hook daughters asked for permission ‘to break up the roads … forthe purpose of erecting lamps and supplying them with gas free of charge’. The VestrySanitary Committee noted ‘that the Misses Hook had made a very liberal offer, which, nodoubt, would be highly appreciated by the parishioners’.45 The paper mill supplied gasuntil 1887 when the mill became a limited company and arrangements had to bemodified:Snodland, 25th October 1887Sirs,We wish to recall to your minds the promise we made with pleasure nearly ten yearsago early in 1878, to put up (with the sanction of the Vestry) some gas lamps in thevillage and connect them with our then mains, and we have since that time beenpleased to bear the expense of keeping the lamps lighted in accordance with ourintention then expressed. We have now see fit to transfer our business (includingthe gas works) to a limited company and owing to this circ*mstance the promisehas expired. The 24th of December next appears to us a convenient day for thepresent arrangements to terminate, but we will ourselves continue to take theresponsibility until the time named. In the meantime you can doubtless makearrangements with the directors of the company as to future supply.We would again express our gratification at having been able to be of this service tothe village.Will you kindly take this as formal notice and you will doubtless at once take theopinion of the Vestry as to the future.Yours faithfullyEdith Anna HookMaude Midsummer Hook 45 Ibid., pp. 16 and 39.27Agnes Darlington HookFor some years the mill continued supplying gas at a discounted rate of ‘four shillings perthousand cubic feet’ and they maintained the lamps. Twelve lamps had been given to theparish by the Misses Hook, three by C.T. Hook and Co. Ltd., and six by William Lee, allof which became the property of the parish.46It was not until the 1890s that water was laid on to Snodland, so wells and pumpscontinued to be the source of supply during the whole of the time being surveyed here.Following Mid Kent Water Orders of 1888 and 1890, works were built at Halling andwater was supplied to twelve local parishes, including Snodland, Halling, Burham andWouldham. The Wouldham scheme was the last to be completed in 1897.47 46 MALSC: P342/8/1: Snodland Vestry Book, letters dated 25 October 1887 from the Misses Hook and 1December 1887 from the Assistant Overseer at C.T. Hook and Co. Ltd.47 See Mid Kent Water Company: The First Fifty Years, compiled by H. D. Edwards, Maidstone 1954.28II: Agriculture, Cement, PaperAgricultureIn considering the great changes which industry brought to Snodland, it is important torealize that of necessity the old traditions continued to play an important part in people’slives. Moreover, the owners of the cement companies had vast tracts of land in their careand were themselves as much farmers as industrialists. They often employed others tomanage their estates, while they themselves lived as country squires in the principalhouses of the district.A stark reminder that all needed to find ways of feeding themselves at a time when fewshops or other facilities were available, comes from the auction of the estate ofSnodland’s long-serving rector, Henry Dampier Phelps, on 6 September 1865. At theend of a full description of his library and furniture is the following paragraph:The out-door Effects will include 3 excellent full milch well-bred cows, 2 store pigs,quantity of poultry, stack of capital meadow hay, 4-wheel phaeton, dung cart, quantity ofmanure, dairy and brewing utensils, wheelbarrow, ladder, hand glasses, quantity of gardentools, and other effects.1The Town Malling Agricultural Association, for the encouragement of servants andagricultural labourers’ was one of many such groups established around England. It wasfounded in 1830 and each year in October or November held a ploughing match,followed by a convivial annual dinner with speeches and entertainment for the farmersand landowners. Prizes were awarded. These were given to the farm servants andcovered a variety of tasks: four- and three-horse ploughing competition, the drying ofhops, shepherding skills, evidence of long-service, and the rewarding of servants withlarge families who had managed to raise their children without having to claim parochialhelp. Sums were not large, but welcome enough, and pride in receiving such an awardwas no doubt a considerable compensation. For the owners the occasion also providedthe opportunity to see and test new machinery. Some sample awards :On 4 November 1831:Shepherds: The second prize of £2. 10s. was awarded to — [William] Vallum,Shepherd to Mr. Stephens [of Paddlesworth], for the care and management of 186wethers without loss.In 1832 the president of the Association was ‘Thomas Poynder, Jun. Esq.’ and theCommittee of Management included ‘Mr. Thomas Knight of Snodland’.On 22 October 1834:To William Vallance [Vallum], servant to Mr. Stephens of Paddlesworth, havinglost only one sheep out of a flock of 262 - £2.On 31 October 1838:Shepherds: The first prize of £3 to Thomas How, shepherd to Mr. ThomasMatthew[s] of Snodland, for having had the care of 102 sheep for the year endingat Michaelmas, without losing one.1 Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 15th, 22nd and 29th August 1865.29All the parishes had resident shepherds and sheep were a familiar sight until at leastthe 1930s.Sheep at Paddlesworth in the 1920sLabourers with large families: The first prize of £3 to Solomon Burgess, servant toT. Poynder, Esq., of Snodland, for bringing up nine children without parochialrelief.On 3 November 1841:The best ploughman [of 30 entrants] Raydon Wingate, servant to Mr. Poynder ofSnodland, £3. The driver John Cogger 10s.On 10 November 1846:Bringing up families without parochial relief:: £2. 10s. to Richard Martin, servant toMessrs. Poynder and Medlicot, of Snodland, nine children, youngest 11 yearsOn 1 November 1848:Among a great many claimants for these prizes, Charles Gurr, servant to Messrs.Simmonds & Co., of Maidstone, and William Vallum, servant to Mr. ThomasStephens, of Paddlesworth, had each served their masters and predecessors in theirbusiness the long term of 40 years, and the committee divided the two prizes of £3and £2. 10s. between them.On 26 October 1854:Four-horse ploughs: To Simon Giles £1. 10s., the third prize; and John Knott thedriver, 5s.; in the employ of Mr. W. H. Poynder of HallingMore people in the district meant more food was needed, but those men now working inthe paper and cement industries were no longer directly involved in farming and foodproduction. However most wives and children were not part of the new manufacturingprocesses and continued to follow the seasonal work in the fields in the time-honouredway. The National School log-books clearly show that many were involved in this andholidays were set accordingly:301864. 8 August. Several gone gleaning1865: 11 August: Closed the school for the Hopping holidays – 6 weeks.25 September: 1st day of school … Hopping not over – therefore scarcelyany children at school Morning 28. Afternoon 27.26 September. Hopping over. More children at school today – Morning 50and afternoon 50.1866: 20 August. Many children away, assisting their parent in the harvest fields orgleaning.24 August. Broke up today for the harvest and hop-picking holidays.8 October, Opened school after the Hopping holidays – 116 childrenpresent1867: 23 July. Harry Capon, Edward Rosebridge, Mary Ann Hook, James Majorcame back to school after being absent a long time fruit picking.1868: 23 July. Many children gone gleaning.1869: 23 August. No present this morning only 51 & this afternoon only 46. Agreat many children are gone gleaning.4 October. Commenced school after Hopping Holidays.1872: 16 August [Infants]. The numbers during the week continue very low.Numbers still continue too ill to come – many others that are well aregleaning.30 September. … Allan Shayes has asked for today to finish hop-picking.1873: 28 July. Harvest began today – school will begin to go down in numbers.One interesting later comment came from a mother, giving evidence in a case where oneof her daughters had been savagely attacked by a dog.As my little girls have told you, we were out hop-picking on the day of this unfortunateoccurrence. We did not go exactly for the money, because I and my husband are always inregular work, but we went—as a great many do in the village—more for the outing andthe fresh air than anything else. My husband works at the Snodland Paper Mills.2The incident was at Ryarsh and about three miles from their home in Snodland. Thetithe apportionment of 1844 shows about 60 acres in Snodland still devoted to hops,although the main area of cultivation was by then in parishes further to the south.The farms in Snodland, as throughout the country, ranged from ancient and quite largeenterprises to small concerns of just a few acres. Some had no involvement with industryat all, but those detailed below gradually shifted their allegiance from tilling the land toexcavating it for its mineral wealth.At the beginning of the period under discussion most of the Snodland farms had residentfarmers, although the owners often lived elsewhere. In 1841 there were bailiffs at‘Cox’s/Woodlands’ Farm, owned by Thomas, then Edward Luck of the Hermitage, WestMalling, and Mark Farm, which was grouped with Groves Farm on the Birling-Snodlandboundary. But gradually other farmers were replaced by bailiffs, agricultural labourers, oreven in one case a lime burner. As noted below, Ladds Farm passed from Thomas2 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 18 October 1891. The case was reported nationally and the Home Secretary wasforced to write to the magistrates, who were accused of giving too lenient a sentence.31Matthews to Solomon Brice [I] in the 1820s and at Brice’s death in 1843 there was noreplacement farmer. Richard Postans had Punish Farm to 1845, and it was then takenover by James Pye, a member of the farming family from Cuxton, until 1864, and then abailiff was put in. When Thomas Matthews quit Covey Hall Farm in 1854, William Peters[II] took over until 1869, when he died. Bailiffs then ran it until Joseph Championcombined farming at both Woodlands and Covey Hall. Thomas Stephens [I] (1770-1835)and [II] (1799-1878) were farmers at Paddlesworth, succeeded by William English in thelatter year.Painting of Covey Hall farm (tithe no. 261), probably by Agnes Darlington Hook.The oast houses remind that there were 23 acres of hops on the farm in 1844.The Ladd family is recorded in Snodland between 1242 and 1443, so Ladd’s farm is ofgreat antiquity; in the early 1820s it came into the hands of a Solomon Brice.Generations of Solomon Brices were born at or near Otterden, near Faversham.Solomon Brice [I]3 (1764-1843)4 and his son, also Solomon [II] (1806-1866), arrived tooccupy Ladd’s Farm by 1824. Solomon II was not yet old enough to have his own farm,but around 1827-8 he is recorded as succeeding Thomas Matthews as the occupier ofLadd’s, while his father took on the rather larger neighbouring farm, variously called‘Clements’ Farm’, ‘Dupper’s’, or ‘Middle Farm’. The elusive William Dupper5 had takenover this farm following the death of Susannah Clements in 1803 and his name appearsas the occupier until 1812. On becoming rector of Snodland in 1804 the Rev. HenryDampier Phelps was careful to draw up a list of all tithes due to him and this invaluabledocument gives information on the usage as well as the owners and occupiers of land in3 The [I}, [II], [III] identifications concern only the Solomons of Snodland and Wouldham. 4 [I] baptised 9 Sep 1764, Stalisfield; buried at Halling ‘from St Margaret’s, Rochester’, 18 May 1843, aged79; [II] baptised at Otterden 8 June 1806; died 29 Dec 1866, estate ‘under £300’; [III] baptised at Halling28 Oct 1832; died 25 Oct 1904, estate £9418. 18s. 7d.5 He did not live in the parish, but a man of this name was married at St Mary’s Chatham, on 6 Nov 1812.A Susannah Dupper was buried at Halling on 30 Aug 1804, aged 52 and two females (daughters?) calledDupper were buried there in 1788 and 1792.32Snodland then, amplifying what can be gleaned from contemporary churchwardens’ andoverseers’ accounts and the Land Tax returns. The owner of the farm at that time wasThomas Beech. Phelps listsLowers Shelters 11¼ acres WheatMiddle Shelters 9¾ acres FallowUpper Shelters 10½ acres CloverHigh Lands (lay) 24 ac. pasture, 6 ac. Oats, 4 ac.TurnipsWalnut Tree Field 5¼ acres CloverUnderback Field 9 acres Wheat14 acres (lay) 14½ acres PastureBrown’s Lands 7½ acres OatsWhite Piece 7 acres CloverGardener’s Marsh 2¾ acres PeasApple orchard 3 acres GardenLand in CommonField19½ acres FallowTotal: 134 acres, assessed at £27. 0. 0.When the farm was sold by Lord Romney in 1808 it comprised 224 acres in Snodlandand Halling. However, although ‘farmer’ was the recorded occupation of bothSolomons, newspaper reports indicate that they were also involved with lime-making. InHalling the farm included a small chalk pit (tithe no. 128), where a theft occurred in1839:William Reeve was charged with stealing various articles of wearing apparel,belonging to his fellow workmen, in the employ of Mr. Solomon Brice, at his Chalkworks in Halling, near Rochester, on Sunday last. The workmen were lodged in alarge building on the premises, and the prisoner was seen to come from there.6Four years later a sturgeon was caught in the Medway and a Solomon Brice (which mustbe II, because his father was buried the previous week) was again involved. The sturgeonwas seen in the Medway by workers at Whorne’s place lime works, was caught and takento Rochesterand was conveyed away , about twelve o’clock at night, by Stanbury’s van, to theoffice of Messrs. Davis and Sanders, lime merchants, East-side, Grosvenor-basin,Pimlico, and St. Bride’s, London—Solomon Brice, foreman of the works at Hornsplace, paying 5s. for the carriage.7Following the death of Solomon I his son’s name also disappears from the Snodlandrecords. There is no doubt that he moved across the river, but both Burham andWouldham are given as his residence. It seems likely that since he was foreman for‘Messrs. Davis and Sanders’, he was asked (or decided) to move to the Wouldham Halllime works, where ‘Edward Davies and Another’ were the managers. Their pit was sitedin Wouldham and the works in Burham. Brice seems to have moved first to Burham,where twins were born to him in 1843, and one guesses that he became foreman of theworks there. By 1848 he had become the farmer at Wouldham Hall, replacing GeorgePierson who had moved to Holborough. This farm was recorded as 400 acres in the6 West Kent Guardian, 11 May 1839. 7 The Morning Post, 26 May 1843. Using an earlier precedent the Mayor and Corporation of Rochesterclaimed the sturgeon as their right and the town clerk was instructed to order Davis and Sanders to returnthe fish to them.331851 census, with ‘outdoor labourers’ supplying the workforce. Brice’s householdincludes several agricultural labourers lodging with him, so he was continuing his doublelife in agriculture and lime. In spite of his move, all the baptisms of Solomon II’schildren took place at Halling.8 But it is curious that regardless of all the evidenceshowing his activities in lime-working, the censuses, directories and tithe schedules listhim as a farmer only. Once William Peters had bought the lime works in Wouldhamaround 18539 it is likely that he and Brice co-operated in developing the industry. Twotokens10, unfortunately undated, show that Brice was sufficiently involved in theoperating of the works to be named on them:Tokens, probably for exchange by workers for beer or foodAs foreman perhaps he was required to pay his men. By the time of the 1861 censusBrice had become a ‘mud dealer’ instead of a farmer and was living at Rainham. Hismen, known as ‘muddies’, dug the mud from the Medway which was used in lime andcement production. Clearly the business was in its infancy at this time and Solomon’sestate was only valued at ‘under £300’ following his death in 1866. However Solomon[III] was to transform the firm with a large fleet of barges, built between 1861 and 1905,and his estate when he died in 1904 was thirty times larger. Two other tokens forWouldham Hall are known, but no person is shown on them: .At the time of the 1841 census George Pierson (1813-1872) was living at WouldhamHall with his mother and sister. As a ‘farmer’ aged 28 he presumably was fairly new tothe job. It appears that by 1848 he had been replaced there by Solomon Brice II and hadmoved to Holborough where he became the farmer of Halling Court Farm and othersmallholdings. This farm was spread between Halling (437 acres) and Snodland (82acres) and was leased from the Dalison family, acting for the Bishop of Rochester, theLord of the Manor. Between about 1824 and 1849 it was occupied by William Holding[I] and [II], but in 1850 it passed briefly to ‘William Peters’. This appears to have beenone of the farms which the Peters family decided to quit, advertised in The Times of 148 The twins Grace and George, bap. 14 Aug 1842; bur. John Andrew ‘of Burham’ 28 Feb 1845; bap. Alfred‘of Wouldham’ 13 Feb 1848; bur. William ‘of Burham’ 13 Oct 1848. 9 See p.43.10 National Mining Memorabilia Association; see www.mining-memorabilia.co.uk34September 1850.11 Pierson seems also to have worked the 22 acres of ‘Gilder’s Farm’,bequeathed to James Goodhugh by his father John. The coming of the railway seems tohave been the catalyst for a new farm—‘Pierson’s New Farm’— which was built to thewest of Holloway/Holborough Court. Pierson remained there until 1867, when heretired to Rhode/Road House, Mereworth. On 7 December that year, at St George’sHanover Square, he married Katherine, the widow of James Goodhugh, formerly farmerof Rookery farm, Birling, and of ‘Gilder’s’ at Holborough, who had died in September1864.12 George himself died on 15 May 1872, leaving an estate valued at ‘under £14,000.’Rev. James Formby, vicar of Frindsbury from 1826 to his death in 1881, had acquiredmuch land in Kent, including 356 acres in Halling, detailed in the 1843 titheapportionment. This document shows he also farmed a further 41 acres in the parish,owned by Poynder and Medlicott. Notice of the auction of land in various parts of Kentfor which Rev. James Formby was the tenant appeared in 185713 and included plotscalled ‘Gilder’s’, ‘Reeds’ and ‘Mill Stream Mead’ which sound like part of Gilder’s Farmat Holborough. In the 1851 census James’s son Charles (1828-1880) already describedhimself as a lime merchant and he began a chalk pit on Formby’s land on the west sideof the Pilgrim’s Road. Together with his brother James (1836-1898) he created theirprincipal works at Whitewall Creek, Frindsbury. This ran into difficulties because the siteonly allowed access by barge, and in later years the firm was forced to transport rawmaterial by barge from Halling to Frindsbury. James lived in Halling in the 1890s, nodoubt so as to supervise this traffic.14It is not easy to establish the agricultural activities of the Peters family, who divided theirenergies between lime work and farming. The 1851 Halling census shows WilliamPeters junior (1824-1869) as a farmer of 20 acres, living with his father William and nextdoor to his uncle Thomas, whose sons John and Thomas were agricultural labourers.These two may have been among the four men whom William employed. William seniormust still have had his eye on other employment because he acquired three barges in1845-6, built by his father-in-law Joseph Lilley; presumably these were used to carryeither agricultural produce or lime/cement. An advertisem*nt of 14 September 1850already states that farming stock from Halling Court and at Snodland Farm of ‘Messrs.Peters, who are quitting the farm[s],’ is to be put up for auction. Land tax records showthat Halling Court farm had been in the hands of William Holding father and sonbetween 1824 and 1849, but for one year transferred to William Peters before Holdingresumed in 1851-2.15 George Pierson then took over. It appears that William Peters I andat least some family members moved to Wouldham in the early 1850s in order to set uptheir cement works. However, the baptism of four children to William Peters andCaroline recorded in the Burham church register between 1854 and 1860 can only referto the son of Richard and Rebecca, since the son of William I was still unmarried. In1861 William [II] appears to be the William Peters at Burham, aged 37, unmarried,limeburner, at the Beer House and Office among Lime Work cottages. Also in thebuilding was James Hewitt, one of the Holborough family who were living next door toRichard/Rebecca.11 See below, p. 34.12 South Eastern Gazette. When Katherine Hodshon married James in 1849 she was 45 years his junior; theage difference with George was only eight years.13 Maidstone Journal and Kent Advertiser, 1 December 1857. 14 He died on 16 October 1898 at Marsh Lodge, Halling; estate valued at £1401 16s. 2d. 15 ‘William Peters lime-burner, Holborough Farm’ is listed in the Directory of Maidstone and its Environs,Maidstone, 1850.35Around 1848 a William Peters had added the 22 acres of Snodland Court Lodge to hisholdings, and when Thomas Matthews decided to quit Covey Hall farm in 185416 Peterswas successful at the auction. This gave him the principal farm in Snodland, togetherwith a 4-5 acre plot at Holborough, although these were still owned by theWhittaker/Wood family.17 The latter included the large thatched house on the site, whichbecame the home of Harriett Peters and her husband the bargeman John Gooding. Herparents, Thomas and Harriett, are recorded here too in 1861. A big question remains asto what extent William Peters I was involved in these farming ventures and whether heprovided money and support for them. William II’s presence at Burham in 1861 notedabove hardly suggests farming was central to his work then, although he is recorded as‘farmer’ in the probate assessment of 1869.18When he arrived in Snodland around 1823 Richard Peters rented a house atHolborough (tithe no. 158). But by the beginning of 1837 he was able to buy it and theadjoining property where, in due course, his son Thomas William Peters lived for a time.Richard is named as a ‘grocer’ in the 1851 census, but ‘lime labourer’ ten years later.However he is also recorded as a dairyman and around 1845 he rented pasture on the‘marshes’, presumably for his cows, but apparently he hoped also to get rents from thegrazing of horses there as well as money from the sale of reeds.19 Some of this land wastransferred to George Pierson in 1851.Thomas Weekes the younger (1835-1893) had returned to North Halling by the time ofhis father’s death in 1873 and became manager of the works there. The 1881 census listshim as ‘Lime & Cement Manufacturer, Barge Owner & Farmer (of 140 acres) employing150 men and 7 boys’. No doubt the bulk of these workers were employed in the pit andfactory; Weekes is not recorded as an owner of land in 1873, so presumably leased it.20FARMS from CENSUSESThe following tables are compiled from the limited information given in the censusesand the tithe apportionment returns – including some approximate acreages. Nameswithin brackets ( ) are bailiffs or labourers, so no acreages appear in their returns.SNODLANDDate Farm Farmer Acreage Men Women Boys1841 William Gowar1841 Paddlesworth Thomas Stephens1841 Punish Farm Richard Postans1841 Clements Farm Solomon Brice1841 Richard Gowar1841 Covey Hall Farm Thomas Matthews1841 Cox’s Farm (James Lock)1841 [Mark Farm] (George Masters)1844 [tithe Paddlesworth] Thomas Stephens 88+1844 [tithe Punish] Richard Postans 1441844 [tithe Clements] Solomon Brice 741844 [tithe Covey Hall] Thomas Matthews 1901844 [tithe Halling Court] William Holding 781844 [tithe Cox’s] Edward Luck 1781844 [tithe Gilders] James Goodhugh 1916 Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 29 September 1854. 17 Thomas Whittaker had acquired the farm in 1740 and it passed to various descendants. 18 The couple had married in Gillingham in 1863. His estate was valued at ‘under £450’. 19 Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 11 May 1847 and 9 May 1848. 20 Return of Owners of Land 1873: Kent.361844 [tithe Holborough] Poynder & Medlicott 2571844 [tithe various] John/Ann Orpin 491844 [tithe Grove/Mark] John Knell 681851 John Orpin 151851 [Covey Hall Farm] Thomas Matthews 140 61851 Holborough George Pierson 220 10 31851 Paddlesworth Thomas Stephens 512 251851 Mark Farm (George Masters)1851 [Cox’s Farm] (James Lock)1861 Holborough George Pierson 350 9 41861 Paddlesworth Thomas Stephens 513 24 31861 [Cox’s Farm] (Charles Webster)1861 Mark Farm (George Masters)1861 Pierson’s New Farm (Henry Cheeseman)1861 Ladd’s Farm (James Hart)1861 Punish (Joseph Dyke)1871 [Covey Hall] Joseph Champion 400 12 41871 Cox’s Farm (Charles Webster)1871 Mark Farm (George Masters)1871 Punish Farm (Joseph Dyke)1871 Ladd’s Farm (R. Hayman/F. Mitchell)1871 Lee’s Farm (Stephen Hodges)1871 Paddlesworth Thomas Stephens 500 7 51881 Thomas Hollands 120 7 5 11881 Woodlands Joseph Champion 160 8 41881 Paddlesworth William English 266 8 4 21881 [Covey Hall] (John Hucks)1881 Mark Farm (Harriet Masters)1881 Ladd’s Farm (J. Mew/A. Kennett)HALLINGDate Farm Farmer Acreage Men Boys1841 (Richard Martin)1841 Solomon Brice1841 William Holding [tithe] William Holding 437+152 [tithe] Solomon Brice 20 [tithe] William Pye 86 [tithe] James Formby 356+41 [tithe] Poynder & Medlicott 1131851 Thomas Castle 100 41851 William Peters 20 41851 [Plough Inn] Edward Norman 100 21861 Edward Norman1861 Charlotte Hart 250 11 21871 Plough Inn Edward Norman 400 10 71871 Black Boy Charles Vane 20 31871 Upper Halling Thomas Bates 340 121871 Clements Farm (Joseph Francis)1871 Formby Farm (Thomas Payne)371881 Whornes Place Thomas Weeks 1401881 Black Boy Geroge Jessup 161881 Hayward’s Farm (Walter Brooker)1881 Formby’s Terrace (Thomas Langham)The farms at Burham and WouldhamAs with Snodland and Halling, there was some overlap between the farms of Burhamand Wouldham. In the 1841 census John Friday is listed as a ‘retired farmer’, but he isstill noted as occupying the 380 acre farm owned by the Earl of Aylesford in the titheapportionment of 1842. A second farmer for the Earl was R. Warde, with 423 acres.BURHAMDate Farm Farmer Acreage Men Boys1841 John Friday1841 Elizabeth Brisley1841 John Perrin1841 Henry Wraight1841 Burham Hill John Hawks1841 William Swan1842 [Tithe] John Friday 3801842 [Tithe] R. Warde 423+1441842 [Tithe] G. Pierson 142+511842 [Tithe] John Selby 2101851 Swan’s Farm Abraham Swan 851851 Sarah Brooker 401851 Burham Court (William Kemsley)1851 James Tomlin 401851 Petts Farm (William Bishop)1851 Sarah Brooker 401851 James Tomlin 401851 Culand Farm (Jesse Kemsley)1851 Culand Farm (William Hawks)1851 Burham Hill John Hawks 181861 Hill Farm Stephen Simmons 125 61861 Burham Hill Farm John Hawks 10 21861 Henry Wraight 1 11861 Bridge Road House William Miller1861 Fo[r]stal House Thomas Salby [Selby]1861 Great Culand Farm (Jesse Kamsley)1861 Little Culand Farm Charles Brown 33 1 11861 Brooker Farm Sarah Brooker 40 2 11861 Burham Court Farm Thomas Abbott 572 24 31861 Scarboro Farm Susan Swan 20 51861 Hill Farm (Charles Weller)1871 High St. Farm (William Packham)1871 Burham Court George Blackett 460 13 41871 Upper Teddington Farm (James Cook)1881 Burham Court George & John Blackett 560 26 21881 Petts Farm George Kinner 37 11881 Brooks Farm Charles Brown 50 2 11881 Burham Farm Franck Grensted 650 27 6381881 Hill Farm Bluebell Hill (Jas. Lane; Wm. Fudge)1881 Brooker’s Farm Bluebell Hill (Matthew Wraight)1881 Wood Farm (George Mabb)WOULDHAMDate Farm Farmer Acreage Men Women Boys1841 Manor House Edward Day1841 Sta[r]cke[y] Castle John Pearce1841 Wouldham Hall George Pierson1841 William Hedgitt1842 [tithe] John Pearce 2681842 [tithe] William Pye 4781842 [tithe] George Pierson 142+511842 [tithe] John Selby 2101842 [tithe] William Mannering 251851 William Pye 470 231851 Solomon Brice 400 141851 Robert Walls 204 61851 (Richard Baker)1851 John Pearce 350 201851 William Mannering 201861 School Farm John Yates 200 9 31861 Stark[ey] Castle John Pearce 300 12 111861 Manor House John Scott 477 201871 Manor House John Scott 570 22 12 51871 Starkey Castle Mary Ann Pearce c.300 14 31871 Free School Farm Edward Keeler 200 18 31881 Manor House John Scott 600 20 101881 Starkey Castle Alfred Pearce 267 10 41881 Free School Farm Edward Keeler 200 13 4 539CEMENTBetween the Medway Towns and Aylesford, the river Medway cuts through the chalk ofthe North Downs. The proximity of the chalk hills proved ideal for lime and cemententrepreneurs and during the nineteenth century many factories were built to supplydemand. Initially chalk was moved from the pits to the works by horse and wagon(s), buteventually small railways replaced them. Barges could move the finished product to allparts of the kingdom, but especially London. The earliest of these works was establishedat Whorne’s Place, North Halling in 1799.The Holborough estate of John May (d.1805) was bequeathed to Edward Wickham, whoin September 1819 sold it to Thomas Poynder and William Hobson.21 This firm had beenactive for many years. Poynder, son of Thomas of Wootton, Hampshire, deceased, wasapprenticed to Edward Wix of the Tylers and Bricklayers Company on 21 January 1765and married Wix’s daughter Mary at St Peter’s, Cornhill on 7 November 1775. Theytraded as Wix and Poynder until the former’s death in 1787. Poynder and Hobson, coaland lime-merchants, had premises in Scotland Yard, where a serious fire occurred in1816. By 1823 Poynder, with his son Thomas, and Hobson were trading as limemerchants and co-partners from buildings in Earl Street, Blackfriars, when a muchreported court case was brought against the elder Poynder for refusing to take the officeof overseer of the poor for St Ann’s, Blackfriars, on the grounds that he was not ahouseholder living at the buildings.22 Part of the evidence was that ‘one Medlicott’[presumably Edward] managed the business for them and resided in the house. As will beseen Medlicott eventually replaced Hobson as a partner. For some years the youngerThomas lived at Holloway Court, Holborough, to oversee the workings. A map of 1823shows ‘Mr Poynder’s House’ as well as the growing chalk pit and waste.23 His daughterFrances was baptised at All Saints in 1829 and later all four daughters donated a windowto the church.24 Thomas Poynder senior died in 1837, by which time he was extremelywealthy and living at Clapham Common. He remembered his friends William Hobsonand Edward Medlicott with gifts of £10 each for memorial rings.25 A contemporaryaccount of Halling says that ‘Chalk abounds, and the works for burning it into limeprovide the chief occupation of the inhabitants; the lime used in building Waterloo andLondon bridges was brought from Halling’.26Hobson was born in Southwark on 9 November 1752, married Ann Rickman in 1779and they had 16 children. Hobson built the family home called Markfield at Tottenham,where, on a visit in 1806, the artist John Constable made sketches of the daughters. In1805 Hobson became the main contractor for building the Martello Towers on the SouthCoast and he also helped build Newgate Prison and Thames Docks. He made his fortune21 KLHC: CCRb/M4, 27 October 1819.22 E.V.Barnewell and Sir Creswell Creswell, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of King’s Bench,(London, 1823), vol. I, pp. 178-9.23 KLHC: Q/RH2/181.24 Unfortunately destroyed by a land mine in 1942 and no description survives. Phelps, the Rector, said itwas the work of [Joseph Hale] Miller.25 TNA, PROB 11/1829/27. He bequeathed £36,350 in his will. The Snodland rector, Henry DampierPhelps, was also bequeathed a £10 memorial ring.26 Samuel Lewis (ed.), A Topograhical Dictionary of England, 7th edn., 1848, ‘Halling’. Both bridges weredesigned by John Rennie, but Waterloo was opened as a toll bridge on 18 June 1817 – too early for theHalling works to have been involved. The replacement London Bridge was opened on 1 August 1831—butsee below, p.42.40through involvement in brick-making, lime-making and brewing enterprises.27 He died,aged 87, on 23 May 1840 and is buried at All Hallows, Tottenham. His will mentions hispart in ‘all the Chalk Pits, Buildings, Erections, Lands and Ground situate at Northfleet,Snodland and Hawling in Kent.’ The Northfleet works were put up for sale on 7 May1847These extensive and valuable Premises occupy an area of upwards of Thirty Acres.On the north they are bounded by the River Thames, where there is a Wharf withsufficient depth of water for vessels of heavy tonnage; and on the south by the roadleading from London to Gravesend and Dover. They were formerly known as theLime Works of Poynder and Hobson, and are now principally used by MessrsPoynder and Medlicott for the carrying on a large trade in chalk, gravel and sand.Many portions of the land, which have been excavated, are adapted for buildingpurposes; or the premises generally might be converted for any business requiringconsiderable space, or for wharfs, with valuable river frontage.The Buildings now on the Property consist of a comfortable detached CottageResidence, with stabling, coachhouse, and garden, fronting the Dover Road, twolimekilns, 19 cottages, barn or storehouse, the Ship public house, stabling for —horses, blacksmith’s shop, large yard, cow houses, and a Cottage Residence withgarden on the hill. Also a newly erected factory with forge and foundry, let on leaseto Messrs. A. Horlock and Co. for a term of 60 years, at a ground rent.The Leasehold is held for a term, at a rental of £150 per annum; but the rentalsreceived are more than sufficient to pay all outgoings, leaving the purchaser inpossession of an excellent trade, the quantity of chalk, gravel, etc, sold last yearbeing nearly 20,000 loads.28Northfleet from the river in 1829Pigot’s Directory for 1840 lists Thomas Poynder as then residing in Northfleet, so he hadprobably moved on from Snodland, where his place was taken by his son William Henry.But later we find Edward Medlicott at 2 Stanby Place, Northfleet, where he died in27 Information from
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEANDEER PARKS IN KENTBy SUSAN PITTMANCanterbury Christ Church UniversityThesis submitted to theUniversity of Kent at Canterburyfor the Degree of Doctor ofPhilosophyJanuary 2011VOLUME ONEAbstractElizabethan and Jacobean Deer Parks in KentAlthough many researchers have contributed to the knowledge andunderstanding of the number, characteristics, landscape, management and ethos ofmedieval deer parks, there has been little coverage of deer parks in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, interest re-emerging with the upsurge of eighteenth centurylandscaped parks. This thesis aims to somewhat redress the imbalance byconcentrating on the deer parks in one county, Kent, during the reigns of Elizabeth Iand James I.The trigger for the choice of period was the earliest printed list of parks, whichappeared in Lambarde's 'A Perambulation of Kent' published in 1576, with a secondedition in 1596. After a discussion about the accuracy of the lists, topics such as thenumber, distribution, location, shape, size and longevity of Kentish deer parks arecovered in Part I. How deer parks were managed forms two chapters in Part II, withthe process of and reasons for disparkment and the management of disparked parksoccupying another chapter. The ownership of parks in Part III addresses issues suchas who held parks in 1558, how ownership was acquired, the reasons behind thesuccessful retention of parks, which parks changed hands or were created and whethernew owners there were differences between them and established owners. Lastly, onechapter in Part IV investigates the role Kentish parks played in enhancing the lifestyleof their owners, while another chapter concentrates on the negative perception of deerparks among those excluded from them and how this was expressed in a complexityof park violations.Lambarde left readers with the impression that deer parks in Kent were indecline, but this research shows that they retained their potent symbolism and indeedwere generally flourishing throughout the period under review.ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEANDEER PARKS IN KENTBy SUSAN PITTMANCanterbury Christ Church UniversityThesis submitted to theUniversity of Kent at Canterburyfor the Degree of Doctor of PhilosophyJanuary 2011iContentsVOLUME ONEContentsList of Figures, Maps and Platesi – viiv - viAcknowledgements vii – viiiAbbreviations ixIntroduction 1 - 6Part I – Kent Background 7 - 55Chapter One –William Lambarde, early cartographers and the evidencefor the number of parks in Elizabethan and Jacobean Kent 8 - 28Introduction 8 - 11(i) Loss of parks before Elizabeth I's accession 11 - 15(ii) William Lambarde, the historian and topographer 15 - 19(iii) William Lambarde's list of parks 19 - 23(iv) William Lambarde and the cartographers 23 - 26Conclusion 27 - 28Chapter Two –Characteristics of Kentish Deer Parks 29 - 55Introduction 29 - 30(i) Distribution and location 30 - 42(ii) Park density 42 - 46(iii) Park shape and size 46 - 50(iv) Longevity of parks 50 - 53Conclusion 53 - 55Part II - Park Management 56 - 168Chapter Three –The Management of Parks owned by the Gentry 57 - 118Introduction 57 - 59(i) The upkeep of boundaries 59 - 71(ii) Deer keeping and deer keepers 71 - 90(iii) Other enterprises in parks 90 - 116(a) Cony warrens 90 - 97(b) Animals at pasture 97 - 102(c) Water management, fish, waterfowl and herons 102 - 109(d) Timber and wood resources 109 - 116(iv) The viability of parks 116 - 118Chapter Four –The management of Royal Parks in Kent 119 - 137Introduction 119(i) The keepers of royal parks in Kent 119 - 132ii(ii) Aspects of management of royal parks of Greenwich and Eltham 132 - 137Chapter Five –Disparkment and the Management of Disparked Parks 138 - 166Introduction 138(i) The definition of disparkment 138 - 140(ii) The pattern and process of disparkment in Kent, 1558-1625 140 - 148(iii) The management of disparked parks 150 - 162(a) Crown parks leased out 150 - 153(b) Parkland into farmland 153 - 159(c) The exploitation of woodland 159 - 162(iv) The longevity of disparked parks as distinct units in thecountryside162 - 166Conclusion 166Part III – Park Owners and Park Holders 167 - 182Chapter Six –Park Owners and Park Holders 167 - 182Introduction 167(i) The owners of active parks in 1558 167 - 171(ii) New owners of established parks from the crown, by privatetransfer and the owners of new parks 171 - 179(iii) Factors influencing retention and loss of parks 179 - 182Conclusion 182Part IV – The Social Context of Deer Parks 183 - 301Chapter Seven –The Perception of Crown, Nobles and Gentry towardsparks184 - 235Introduction 184(i) Attitudes to hunting in parks 184 - 193(a) Hunting in royal parks in Kent 186 - 189(b) Gentry hunting in Kentish parks 189 - 194(ii) Venison on the menu and venison as gifts 194 - 200(iii) The use of parks for recreation and hospitable entertainment,apart from hunting 200 - 221(a) The royal park at Greenwich 200 - 203(b) Royal visits to parks in Kent 203 - 209(c) How nobility and gentry appreciated their parks 209 - 221(iv) Canterbury and Otford Great Parks – transition from keepershipto ownership221 - 235Conclusion 235 - 236VOLUME TWOChapter Eight –Unlawful Activity associated with Parks 237 - 301(i) Introduction 238 - 240(ii) The extent of disorder associated with parks in Kent 240 - 244iii(iii) The legal context of unlawful activity in parks 244 - 250(iv) The nature of park violations 250 - 299(a) Low-key poaching 252 - 253A: Case study – Sissinghurst park in the mid 1590s 253 - 259(b) Covert hunting for sport, usually gentlemen-led 260 - 267B: Case study – Sir Alexander Culpepper (1581-1629) 267 - 274C: Case study – Penshurst Park in the early 1570s 274 - 280(c) High profile, brazen parks violations 280 - 285D: Case study – Penhurst Park, May 1600 285 - 290(d) Poaching with a commercial or criminal element 290 - 291E: Case study –Humfrey Latter, mid 1590s/early 1600s 291 - 298Conclusion 298 - 301Conclusion 302 - 304Appendices 305 - 330Appendix 1 Figure 1.2 Lambarde's list and 5 early maps compared 306 - 307Appendix 2 Figure 1.3 Active parks in Kent, 1558-1625 308 - 309Appendix 3 Figure 1.4 All known parks in Kent 310 - 315Appendix 4 Map 1.1 Map of Kent showing all known parks 316Appendix 5 Figure 5.1 Disparkment 317 - 318Appendix 6 Figure 6.3 New owners of established and new parks 319 - 320Appendix 7 Figure 6.4 Crown parks in Kent 321 - 323Appendix 8 Figure 7.2 Rowland Whyte's schedule of letters 324 - 327Appendix 9 Figure 8.1 Deer park Violations, 1558-1625 328 - 330Bibliography 331 - 350Park profiles 351 - 460Contents by initial letter of park ABCDEFGHIKLMOPRS 351 - 355 355 - 370370 - 380380 - 381381 - 389389 - 392392 - 396397 - 403403404 - 409409 - 416416 - 419419 - 426426 - 436436437 - 447TW447 - 455455 - 460Number of words - 99908ivList of FiguresVOLUME ONEPart I – Kent BackgroundChapter OneWilliam Lambarde, early cartographers and the evidencefor the number of parks in Elizabethan and Jacobean KentFigure 1.1 Comparison between Lambarde's lists of parks, 1576 &15969Figure 1.2 Lambarde's list and 5 early maps compared (Appendix I) 306 - 307Figure 1.3 Active Parks in Kent, 1558-1625 (Appendix 2) 308 - 309Figure 1.4 All known parks in Kent (Appendix 3) 310 - 315Map 1.1 Map of Kent showing all known parks (Appendix 4) 316Chapter TwoCharacteristics of Kentish Deer ParksFigure 2.1 Density of parks in S.E. England, Saxton and Speed'smaps43Figure 2.2 Park size arranged in order of first known date 47Figure 2.3 Number of parks of similar size 49Figure 2.4 Longevity of active Kentish parks, 1558-1625 51Figure 2.5 Longevity of active parks in Kent and Suffolk, 1558-1625 52Figure 2.6 Numbers of medieval parks compared for 17 counties 54Map 2.1 Parkland areas of west Kent (1) 45Plate 2.1 Parks sited near castles 35(a) Leeds castle (b) Cooling castlePlate 2.2 Varied location of parks 37(a) Halden (b) Brasted parkPlate 2.3 Varied location of parks 38(a) Lullingstone park (b) Lympne parkPlate 2.4 Parish boundaries in relation to parks 40(a) Lullingstone park (b) Birling park (c) Brasted parkPlate 2.5 Early alteration of Surrey/Kent boundary 41(a) Sketch map (b) West Wickham parkPart II - Park ManagementChapter ThreeThe Management of Parks owned by the GentryPlate 3.1 The park pale – Canterbury park mid.C16th map 60Plate 3.2 Park boundary earthworks 64(a) Leeds park (b) Broxham parkPlate 3.3 Park boundary earthworks 66(a) Henden park (b) Ightham parkPlate 3.4 Access into parks 68v(a) Lullingstone park (b) Deer leapPlate 3.5 Access to park boundaries and around parks 70(a,b) Glassenbury parkPlate 3.6 Access to park boundaries and around parks 72(a) Lynsted park (b) West Wickham parkPlate 3.7 The deer keeper(a,b) Scot's Hall park 75Plate 3.8 (a,b) Park lodges at Shurland park 80Plate 3.9 Deer in parks 85(a) Knole park (b) Boughton Monchelsea parkPlate 3.10 Cony warrens – Chevening map 96Plate 3.11 Pasture in parks 99(a) Scotney park (b) Otford Little parkPlate 3.12 Water features in parks 104(a) Hemsted park (b,c) Birling parkPlate 3.13 Water features in parks 106(a) Birling park (b) Halden parkPlate 3.14 Water features in parks 108(a) Canterbury park (b) Conduit house, CanterburyPlate 3.15 Timber and wood resources in parks 111(a) Broxham park (b) West Wickham parkPlate 3.16 Timber and wood resources in parks 113(a) Cobham park (b) Knole parkPlate 3.17 Timber and wood resources in parks 115(a) Lullingstone park (b) Penshurst parkChapter FourThe management of Royal Parks in KentFigure 4.1 Keepers of the royal park at Greenwich 122Figure 4.2 Keepers of Eltham parks 124Plate 4.1 Greenwich park and James I 136(a) Park wall (b) Queen's House and park, 1637Chapter FiveDisparkment and the Management of Disparked ParksFigure 5.1 Disparkment (Appendix 5) 317 - 318Plate 5.1 After disparkment 149(a) Glassenbury park (b) Panthurst parkPlate 5.2 The longevity of disparked parks 165(a,b,c) Ightham parkPart III - Park Owners and Park HoldersChapter SixPark Owners and Park HoldersFigure 6.1 Park ownership in 1558 170Figure 6.2 Social status and park ownership 172Figure 6.3 New owners (a) of established and (b) new parks 319 - 320vi(Appendix 6)Figure 6.4 Crown parks in Kent (Appendix 7) 321 - 323Plate 6.1 Jacobean mansion of Somerhill 176(a,b) SomerhillPart IV - The Social Context of Deer ParksChapter SevenThe Perception of Crown, Nobles and Gentry towards parksFigure 7.1 Upgrades to houses and gardens 217Figure 7.2 Schedule of letters from Rowland Whyte (Appendix 8) 324 -327Plate 7.1 Standings 191(a) Southfrith park/forest (b) Knole parkPlate 7.2 Greenwich park and Elizabeth I 202(a) Henry VIII's panorama (b) Queen's oakPlate 7.3 Panorama painting of Greenwich park c.1620 204Plate 7.4 The mansion in parkland setting – Penshurst Place 212Plate 7.5 Viewing park from garden 214(a) Penshurst (b) KnolePlate 7.6 Viewing park from house 215(a,b) SissinghurstPlate 7.7 Garden terraces overlooking parks 218(a,b) ChilhamPlate 7.8 Harris's engraving of Knole, 1719 220VOLUME TWOPart IV - The Social Context of Deer Parks - continuedChapter EightUnlawful Activity associated with ParksFigure 8.1 Deer Park Violations, 1558-1625 (Appendix 9) 328 - 330Figure 8.2 Illegal Activities in Penshurst Park, 1572-1573 276Map 8.1 Locations featured in the Penshurst park violations, 1600 289viiAcknowledgementsThere are so many people, friends and erstwhile strangers, named below andunnamed, yet also deserving, to whom I wish to express my gratitude and admiration.They have been unsparingly generous in their encouragement through permissionsgranted, in the sharing of their expertise and their company in the field. I have namedas many as possible below and the Park profiles show their more specific areas of help.Dr. Stephen Hipkin has given vital guidance, instruction and encouragement inthe development and execution of this thesis. The path has not always been easy, butinsight, patience, humour and mutual exchange of ideas helped to find the best route.The friendly casual encounters with others in the Department of History and AmericanStudies, and with its secretary, Nicky Marshall, have been most welcome. I have alsobenefited greatly from the award of a Research Studentship from Canterbury ChristChurch University.I feel privileged to have been offered advice and support particularly fromlandscape historian, Dr Nicola Bannister, and also from Dr Michael Brennan, Dr C.W.Chalklin, Dr Heather Falvey, Dr Rosemary Hoppitt, Professor Noel Kinnamon, DrRobert Liddiard and Professor Germaine Warkentin. Christopher Whittick and DrDavid Wright have assisted me in transcribing and translating from Latin certain keydocuments. The genealogical expertise of Matthew Copus helped to track downpossible wills of deer keepers.My valued network of local historians has been greatly extended as news of myresearch spread or as I sought contacts for information about individual parks. In thisregard I would like to thank Denis Anstey, Dr Nicola Bannister, Anne Clinch, LionelCole, Geoffrey Copus, Dr Gerald Cramp, David Cufley, Jane Davidson, James MGibson, Debbie Goacher, Harold Gough, Sylvia Hammond, Duncan Harrington,John Hatherly, Margot Hendrick, Ramon Higgs, Joyce Hoad, Geoffrey Kitchener,Patricia Knowlden, Margaret Lawrence, Terry and Mary Lawson, Samantha Lee-Brina,Peter Mayer, Kim McIntosh, John Owen, Chris Owlett, Ernie Pollard, Dr MauriceRaraty, Geoffrey Roberts, Colin Robbins, Ian Scott, Jayne Semple, Sally Simmons,Dr Jean Stirk, Kristina Taylor, Caroline Vulliamy, Cliff Ward, Andrew Wells, RobWilliams and Pat Winzar. Voluntary Organisations who have provided information areCobham Ashenbank Management Scheme, Cranbrook Museum, Kent ArchaeologicalSociety Library and Otford Heritage Centre. Members of staff at the archive repositoriescited in the Bibliography have generally been very eager to respond to requests, forwhich I am most grateful.My fieldwork trips have been aided by many companions, especially the lateChristopher Waterman who understood how important the project was to me. Othercompanions have been Matthew Balfour, Dr Nicola Bannister, Edward Barham,Geoffrey Copus, Dr Paul Cornelius, Peter Dear, Jonathan Fryer, David Fuller, Dr PaulLee, Martin Lovegrove, Adam Nicolson, Michael Peters, Ernie Pollard, GeoffreyRoberts, Jeremy Secker, Pat and Peter Stroud, Jan and John Talbot, Pat Waterman andthe Canterbury Woodland Research Group.Access for visits has been granted by David and Guy Nevill for Birling park,Michael Cottrell for Bore Place park, Marice and Dominic Kendrick for BoughtonviiiMonchelsea park, Col. R.P.D. Brook for Chevening House, David Edgar of Park Farmfor Brasted park, Malcolm and Sue Wells of Canterbury Camping and CaravanningClub for Old Park, Canterbury, Tessa and Stuart Wheeler for Chilham park, MarcusSutcliffe for Glassenbury park, Edward Barham and Michael Ditton for Halden park,Martin Lovegrove and his farm manager, Bob Felton, for Henden park, David Fuller forIghtham park, Graham Bolden for Mersham Hatch park, Viscount De L'Isle forPenshurst and Ashour parks, John and Jan Talbot of Lodge House for Scot's Hall park,Robert Lewis for Sissinghurst park, The National Trust for Scotney and Sissinghurstparks, The Schools at Somerhill for Somerhill park, Alastair Malcolm for Throwleypark, Alice Porritt, Maysel Dawson and the manager of Nepicar Rare Breeds Farm forWrotham park,.In the final presentation of this thesis I have been very glad of the meticulousproof reading of Jennifer Ward and Daphne Ridler-Rowe. The computer skills indrawing up graphs and maps of John Hills, Geography Technician in the Department ofGeographical & Life Sciences at Canterbury Christ Church University, have beengreatly appreciated as have those of Keith Milne, who has rescued me from disaster onnumerous occasions. Both have given me unstinting time, patience and expertise.ixAbbreviationsArch.Cant. = Archaeologia CantianaBL = British LibraryBLS = Bromley Local Studies LibraryCCA = Canterbury Cathedral ArchivesCKS = Centre for Kentish StudiesCMS = Centre for Medway StudiesCPR = Calendar of Patent RollsEKAC = East Kent Archive CentreESRO = East Sussex Record OfficeLPL = Lambeth Palace LibraryStaffsRO = Staffordshire Record OfficeSuffRO = Suffolk Record OfficeTNA = The National Archives1INTRODUCTIONELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DEER PARKS IN KENT, 1558 to 1625This study has had a long gestation and represents a fusion of several interests –the ecology of the countryside, landscape studies, the history of Kent and genealogyamong them. The personal focus on deer parks arose in the 1980s when assisting in themapping and measurement of over one hundred ancient pollards in Lullingstone(55)park in Kent.1 Curiosity about the origin of these trees led to research into the park,which resulted in a slim publication on the subject.2 Years later a similar researchproject into a Duchy of Cornwall deer park, Kerrybullock, near a holiday haunt in theTamar valley, widened the interest.3It has long been an ambition to undertake detailed investigation into the deerparks of Kent, which this research has fulfilled, albeit for practical reasonsconcentrating on the relatively limited period spanning the reigns of Elizabeth I andJames I from 1558 to 1625. The starting point of the research was inspired by the list ofKentish deer parks produced by the Elizabethan historian, William Lambarde, in thefirst edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent' published in 1576 – the earliest printed list ofparks for any county.4 Originally it was intended to extend the research into the reign ofCharles I in order to assess the effect of the Civil War on deer parks, but time and spaceconstraints made this impractical. There is, however, a certain logic in concentrating onthe reigns of Elizabeth I and James I because both enjoyed hunting, the latter almostobsessively, and the monarchs' enthusiasm in this regard affected noble and gentryattitudes towards deer parks, which, during years of relative stability, could be studiedto evaluate how they fitted into everyday culture without the distortions of the turmoilof internal warfare.1 Numbers in brackets by park names are used throughout the thesis to identify individual parks inalphabetical order, so that they can be found on Map 1.1 p.316 and in the Park profiles from p.351;Rackham(1976:200) pollard = tree which is cut 8 – 12 feet above ground level and allowed to grow againfrom the bolling (trunk) to produce successive crops of wood.2Pittman(1983).3Pittman(1991).4A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the description, Historie, and Customes of that Shyre. Collectedand written (for the most part) in the yeare 1570 by William Lambarde of Lincolnes Inne gent. and noweincreased by the addition of some things which the Autheur him selfe hath observed since that time,(printed in London 1576).2As the first substantive research related to deer parks for any county for the latesixteenth into the seventeenth century, this study is wide ranging. Almost every aspectadds to the corpus of knowledge about the subject, and the whole might be seen toestablish a base from which further research might emanate, rather than adding nuances,reinforcing or challenging conclusions of previous research. A major aim at the outsetwas to determine at a county level the overall state of parks, whether, as WilliamLambarde intimated, they were in decline, or whether they were stagnating orflourishing. Where opportunities have arisen on a subsidiary level, the findings of otherhistorians have been tested against the Kent model, forming minor themes interwoventhrough the text.In the absence of any research into Kentish deer parks, basic questions such asidentifying the number of parks in existence, their distribution, characteristics,management and ownership had to be tackled in order to establish the groundwork.Following this process, the dynamic forces behind parks were investigated; the factorscontributing to the successful functioning or creation of parks; the degree, pace andprocess of disparkment; how parks were appreciated and valued by their owners; andthe extent to which threats to parks from those denied regular access to them might haveundermined their viability.The choice of parks to study was fairly arbitrary in that any park referred to incontemporary documents, i.e. from 1558 to 1625, was included, giving an eventual totalof exactly one hundred. The reason for this decision was that if the creators ofdocuments were still referring to an area of land as a park, it should be included whetheror not it was still operating as a viable deer park. In any case, in the early stages ofresearch the status of each park had not always been confirmed, and even at the end, forsome, it remained unknown. The definition of 'park' within the context of this study istherefore necessarily broad and incorporates any area specifically called a park, whichhad once been enclosed for deer or continued to contain deer. Thus parks with deer,parks without deer, and completely disparked parks have come under scrutiny. Where aspecific selection of parks has been made for deeper consideration, for example, parksstill with deer when reviewing management, or defunct parks in the discussion aboutdisparkment, this has been made clear in the text.3In order to make any progress towards arriving at an overview, profiles for onehundred individual parks were compiled, despite the extraordinary difficulties in sodoing.5 Evidence about deer parks was widely scattered both in state papers and familyestate records, but even after scouring a wide variety of documents sometimes littlemore than a snippet of relevant information was unearthed. The diversity of thesesources becomes apparent in the number of footnote references, which have beennecessary. There were disappointingly few documents solely related to deer parks evenamong the most extensive family papers such as those of Lord De L'Isle and Dudley,but where such documents survived they provided significant insights into aspects ofpark management, use and ownership.6 Despite considerable endeavour some parkprofiles barely contain more than one or two references, while other park profiles arefuller, but contain references widely spaced in time and variable in usefulness.Nevertheless, the park profiles provide as comprehensive a list as possible of bothdocumentary and secondary evidence extant for every park known in Kent from 1558 to1625.Although medieval deer parks have long captured the imagination and interest ofhistorians at parish, county and national levels, the same does not apply to the Tudorand Stuart period, which tends to be tacked on as a postscript to studies of medievaldeer parks or as a prologue to studies of eighteenth century parks.7 This hiatus in thehistory of parks means that there is little direct comparative secondary material at hand,although where possible parallels have been found from the medieval period. For thisreason no detailed review of published sources appears in this introduction, but rathersuch publications as have a bearing on particular topics are reviewed in each chapter,because each has required different historiographical literature.The thesis is structured in four parts. In Part I the general background toKentish parks is discussed. Chapter One concentrates on an analysis of andcommentary on William Lambarde's park lists of 1576 and 1596, which were found tobe reasonably accurate.8 When the lists were compared with five contemporary maps,5See Park profiles p.351 onwards.6 Held at CKS and accessed by special permission of Lord De L'Isle.7 Mileson(2009) reassesses previous research into medieval parks, and so his book provides an overallhistoriographical review.8Lambarde(1576); Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent (London, 1596, 2nd edition).4the number of parks containing deer appeared to remain relatively stable throughout theperiod, with the number of parks going out of use being roughly balanced by newlycreated parks. However, as the park profiles reveal, there are yawning gaps in thehistory of individual parks, so only tentative conclusions could be drawn. Chapter Twodiscusses the main characteristics of parks and, with many originating before 1485,comparison with medieval parks in other counties was possible. Although Kent's variedgeology strongly influenced the distribution of parks, particularly along the Greensandridge belt, more complex factors such as archiepiscopal land holding, the proximity ofLondon and the partial clearance of the Wealden woodland were also significant. Theimpression that Kent was less imparked than other counties has been queried, with thediscovery of many more parks than originally thought, but as the same may be true ofother counties, no firm conclusion can be drawn.Part II covers the management of parks in three chapters. Chapter Threediscusses the management parks owned by gentlemen and noblemen and Chapter Fourthe management of crown parks. As there appears to have been no previous detailedstudy of the management of Elizabethan and Jacobean parks for any county, this studyfor Kent forms a template against which any future county studies can be set. Althoughbooks by Gascoigne and Markham gave detailed advice on estate management, howElizabethan and Jacobean owners actually managed their parks is not well documented.9Evidence has to be pieced together from a few illustrative examples, which were foundscattered in estate papers, but they form an impressionistic picture revealing these parks,like their medieval counterparts, to have incorporated a mixture of diverse usescompatible with the retention of deer.The roles of the deer keeper in gentry parks and, in Chapter Four, the parkkeeper in royal parks have been outlined in as much detail as the evidence allows,because it was felt that very little systematic examination of these roles had previouslybeen carried out. Roger Manning in his pioneering book on hunters and poachers from1485 to 1640 tackled the subject, but did not always distinguish between the deer keeper9 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575, London); Markham, Maison Rustique, or Thecountrey farme (London, 1616).5and the park keeper.10 His comments about the prevalence of poaching backgroundsamong deer keepers were thought worthy of testing for the county of Kent, with thediscovery that many deer keepers came from respectable yeoman families andperformed their duties diligently, although examples of rogue deer keepers were nothard to find.11Chapter Five examines the process of disparkment and the management ofdisparked parks, as they were converted to other uses. It ends with a discussion of theresiduary survival of disparked parks long after their original function had ended.William Lambarde was found to be less reliable over the pace and timing ofdisparkment, which he implied was continuing to accelerate in Elizabeth I's reign. Suchpatchy evidence as survives indicates that the rate of disparkment slowed down in Kentbetween 1558 and 1625, and that, for Kent at least, the decline of the park wasexaggerated.Even an apparently straightforward exercise to establish lines of park ownershiphas proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Chapter Six in Part Three covers this topic.There was overall stability in the ownership of parks, with many families holding parksfor several generations before 1558, and continuing to do so until 1625 and after. Thosewho newly acquired parks during this period tended to be members of the Kentishgentry, not unlike the established owners, but some had newly acquired wealth. Wherethere was a disruption in park ownership loss or disparkment tended to coincide withparticular family circ*mstances, rather than apparently being spurred on by the generaleconomic climate of the time. There appears to have been a reluctance to give up parks,necessity rather than enthusiasm being the motivation to gain added income fromdisparkment.Lastly, Part IV reveals opposing perceptions of parks, Chapter Seven from theowners' viewpoint, and Chapter Eight from the viewpoint of those excluded from parks.The owners and their milieu placed great value on their parks in terms of prestige,status, largesse, and the enjoyment that they derived from them, both as venues ofrecreation and aesthetically, as settings for their mansions. The strength of this10 Manning(1993:28-33,189-195).11 Ibid.6attachment partly explains why owners were so keen to retain their parks. However,Chapter Eight assesses the counter force of those, including gentlemen and men fromlower strata of society, who were denied access to the private hunting preserves of theelite. Depositions, mainly from the Kent Quarter Sessions and from the court of StarChamber, but also from the Sutherland and De L'Isle and Dudley family papers,provided a depth of information about park breaks, and enabled a vivid reconstructionof their nature and complexity.12 An attempt has been made to estimate the threat parkviolations posed to the viability of parks, but it proved impossible to quantify this,neither is there comparative material from other counties to establish whether Kentishparks were more or less vulnerable to incursion.The drive to undertake this thesis has been strong enough to overcome thedistinct disadvantage of the fragmentary, scattered, often sparse yet varied, nature of thedocumentation. Yet, in following up every lead, reading widely, and undertaking visitsto numerous park sites, it has been possible to convey an evocative impression of thedynamics behind deer parks throughout the period 1558 to 1625. Because there is nowider framework within which to place an interpretation of Kent parks, it has been hardto judge how typical they were, but whatever was happening elsewhere the impressionis that deer parks in Kent were both relatively stable in numbers and that indeed mostwere flourishing.12 The Sutherland papers are held at Staffordshire Record Office.7PART I – KENT BACKGROUNDLittle is known about deer parks in Kent for any period, but even less is knownabout them in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods. It is therefore essential toestablish which parks were operating as deer parks and which disparked parks survivedin the landscape as separate entities. Lambarde's lists of parks, with and without deer,dating from 1576 and 1596, and five contemporary maps are useful primary sources toaid the identification of parks and will act as a starting point in establishing the numberof parks in Chapter One. The distribution, location, density, shape, size and longevityof the parks will be discussed in Chapter Two.8PART I - CHAPTER ONEWILLIAM LAMBARDE, EARLY CARTOGRAPHERS AND THE EVIDENCEFOR THE NUMBER OF PARKS IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN KENTThe aim of this chapter is to review contemporary printed sources covering thewhole county of Kent to estimate the number of parks containing herds of deer inElizabeth I's and James I's reigns and to see whether these sources enable a preliminaryassessment to be made about whether the number of active parks was stable, fluctuating,decreasing or increasing. Throughout this thesis a distinction between 'active' and'disparked' parks is being made. The term 'active' refers to parks known to have helddeer for at least some time in the period from 1558 to 1625, together with those parksthat were shown on contemporary maps. The term 'disparkment' will be discussed fullyin Chapter Five, but for the time being non-active parks were those either without deer,or those for which the existence of deer remains unproven. For nearly all parks there isinsufficient evidence to prove whether there were deer in parks and, if not, to pinpointexactly when they were removed.Attention will initially be focused on the only contemporary textual source tocontain information about parks in Kent, namely William Lambarde's 'A Perambulationof Kent' first published in 1576 and revised in 1596, both editions of which included alist of deer parks in the county. In the first edition the list comprised 52 parks of which34 contained deer and 18 did not, and in the second edition 54 of which 31 containeddeer and 23 did not.1 The list of 1576 is the earliest printed list for any county, althougha written list of 22 Suffolk parks and their owners survives from c.1560.2 Lists of parksfrom another six counties appear in state papers in the early 1580s, following enquiriesinto the number of parks with breeding mares.3A comparison of Lambarde's two lists indicates both particular and long-termchanges. In the former case, five parks were added to the number of disparked parks,which rose from 18 in 1576 to 23 in 1596. Secondly, by specifying disparked parks1Lambarde(1576:48-49) The Particular of Kent; Lambarde(1596:60-61) The Particular of Kent; seeFigure 1.1, p.9 for comparison between Lambarde's lists of deer parks.2Suffolk Record Office B449/5/31/36 Hengrave manorial record, cited by Hoppitt(1992:1).3TNA SP12/162/38 Cornwall, SP12/163/20 Dorsetshire, SP12/163/14 Hertfordshire, SP12/148/63Norfolk, SP12/162/44 Somerset, SP12/162/34 Wiltshire. See also Chapter Three pp.100-102.9Figure 1.1 – Comparison between Lambarde's Lists of Parks, 1576 and 15961st Edition, 1576 2nd Edition, 1596(Disparked parks italicised, seven changes in 1596 list in bold)Aldington disparked (omitted in 1576)Allington disparked Allington disparkedAshour AshourAt Ashford (?Scot's Hall) At Ashford (?Scot's Hall)Bedgebury BedgeburyBirling BirlingBrasted disparked Brasted disparkedBroxham disparked Broxham disparkedCalehill CalehillCage disparked Cage disparkedCobham CobhamCooling CoolingEltham ElthamEltham ElthamEltham ElthamFolkestone disparked Folkestone disparkedGlassenbury GlassenburyGreenwich GreenwichGroombridge GroombridgeHalden Halden disparkedHamswell HamswellHenden disparked Henden disparkedHever disparked Hever disparkedHungershall HungershallIghtham disparked Ightham disparkedKnole KnoleLangley disparked Langley disparkedLeigh disparked Leigh disparkedLeeds LeedsLullingstone LullingstoneMerewood disparked (misspelt) Mereworth disparkedNorthfrith NorthfrithNorthfrith NorthfrithNorthfrith NorthfrithOtford OtfordOtford Otford disparkedOxenhoath disparked Oxenhoath disparkedOxenhoath disparked Oxenhoath disparkedPanthurst disparked Panthurst disparkedPenshurst PenshurstPostern disparked Postern disparkedPostling PostlingSt. Augustines St. AugustinesSaltwood Saltwood disparkedShurland Shurland disparkedSissinghurst SissinghurstSouthfrith, forest Southfrith, forestSouthpark SouthparkStonehurst disparked Stonehurst disparkedStowting StowtingSutton disparked Sutton disparkedWestenhanger WestenhangerWestenhanger (2nd park added)Wrotham disparked Wrotham disparked10Lambarde was distinguishing between active and defunct parks, in itself recognition oflong-term change, which he stressed in the section entitled 'The Estate of Kent':-Parkes of fallow Deere, and games of grey Conyes, it maynteyneth many,the one for pleasure, and the other for profit, as it may wel appeare by this,that within memorie almost one half of the first sorte be disparked, and thenumber of warrens continueth, if it do not increase dayly.4Here parks are equated with the enjoyment derived from their function ofsupporting herds of deer, compared with the emphasis on the profit emanating frombreeding conies. By implication Lambarde attributes the loss of nearly half the deerparks to the expense of maintaining them for pleasure alone, although he did notelaborate on what he meant by disparkment. As will be discussed in Chapter Five,disparkment was a complex process, encompassing various stages, but for the purposesof this chapter Lambarde's simple definition of disparkment, namely that the parks nolonger sustained deer, will suffice.5Lambarde's estimation that nearly half of the county's many parks had beendisparked within living memory, at the time of the first edition, was a drastic andnoticeable change. This contention, along with Lambarde's identification of specificdisparked parks, will be explored in the opening section (i) of the chapter to give asummary of sixteenth century developments prior to the reign of Elizabeth I. In thesecond section (ii) Lambarde's experience as a disciplined historian and his personalknowledge of the county of Kent will be examined to assess the reliability of hisresearch, which will be shown to be of a generally high standard. In section (iii)Lambarde's invaluable lists with their overview of existing parks in 1576 and 1596 willcome under scrutiny, with discussion about their inconsistencies and ambiguities.Although Lambarde made a few alterations to his previous list of parks in the secondedition of 'A Perambulation of Kent' of 1596, he did not revise the main text, so hisstatement about the rate of disparkment remained. This study will argue that the rate ofdisparkment slowed down from the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign until the end of thereign of James I, a trend that can be discerned by studying the five contemporary countymaps to which attention will be turned in section (iv). These maps will be comparedwith each other and with Lambarde's lists. Finally, parks which were missed by all4 Cony = an adult rabbit (http://dictionary.oed.com); Lambarde(1576:9) this paragraph was unaltered inLambarde(1596:11).5See also Chapter Five pp.138-148.11these sources or which were set up later will be mentioned, to reach a conclusion insection (v) about the number of parks which had deer in them for at least part ofElizabeth I's and James I's reigns.(i) Loss of parks before Elizabeth I's accessionLambarde's key phrase 'within memorie' (used in the first edition of 'APerambulation of Kent' to which it must be assumed that it primarily applies) wouldtake older inhabitants back to earlier turbulent times in the sixteenth century whenthere was disruption in the ownership of many parks.6 Lack of continuity ofmanagement seems to have led to the loss of deer herds in some parks andconsolidated the disparked status of others, but evidence of the individual histories ofeach park is at best patchy, so in most cases circ*mstantial evidence is all that isavailable. However, it will be shown that the loss of nearly half the active parks inKent occurred from the later years of Henry VIII's reign to the end of Mary I's reign.7The church, owning two-fifths of the county from 1422 to 1535, was thelargest landowner in Kent.8 This figure was well above the national average, andwas largely attributable to the extensive land holdings of the archbishop ofCanterbury.9 Ecclesiastical bodies held about 30 parks in Kent before the EnglishReformation, with the archbishop of Canterbury alone owning at least 19 parks,many not on Lambarde's lists. The land exchanges and confiscations engineered byHenry VIII from 1537 to 1540 therefore had a great impact on Kent landownership.10As a result of the transfers the archbishop lost a dramatic number of parks atAldington(1), Bexley(5), Fryarne(36), Ightham(48), Knole(50), Langham(early park16), Lyminge(56), Lympne(57), Maidstone(59), three at Otford(62-64),Panthurst(67), Saltwood(75) and Wrotham(100).11 Other ecclesiastical institutionswith parks seized by the crown were Boxley Abbey (Boxley,14a), St. Augustine'sAbbey (Canterbury Old park,19), the Priory of Christ Church (Canterbury Trenley6Lambarde(1576:9) The Estate of Kent. As a lawyer, Lambarde was probably thinking in terms of thephrase 'within living memory', which was normally taken to be a period of between 30 to 60 years.7In this section all ecclesiastical parks are included whether or not they appeared in Lambarde's lists.8 Clark(1977:6) citing Du Boulay(1966:244-245).9 Clark(1977:6) this estimate is derived from comparative data on monastic holdings in other parts of thecountry in P. Hughes, The Reformation in England I(New York, 1950-1954:375).10 Du Boulay(1952:19-36).11 Morice(1859:234-272); Du Boulay(1966:317-329). The 'earlier park' number is a park which does notappear in post 1558 documents, but which has been included on Map 1.1 'Map of Kent showing allknown parks' (Appendix 4 p.316) and Figure 1.4 (Appendix 3 pp.310-315) as a bracketed number.12park(20) and Westwell,98), the Abbey of St. Mary Graces by the Tower of London(Elham, 30), and Folkestone Priory (Folkestone, 34).12 In addition, the bishopric ofRochester surrendered to the crown part of its land enclosed within Cooling(24)park.13 Effectively, the only parks, whether active or disparked, retained by thechurch were the archbishop of Canterbury's parks at Chislet(22), Curlswood(26),Ford(35) and Lympne(57) and the bishop of Rochester's park at Bromley(16).14How many of the parks were maintained with deer under the ownership of thecrown remains unclear, because little is known of their status prior to seizure, but hadthey been disparked for any length of time Lambarde's 'within memorie' would havebeen somewhat overstretched.15 However, it is clear that lack of continuity inmanagement and the desire of the crown and its lessees to maximise profits had ledmany to cease as deer parks by the reign of Elizabeth I, as Lambarde's first listtestifies.16 The exceptional parks still holding deer were Cooling(24), owned by theBrooke family of Cobham, and, under keepership or crown lessees, Knole(50),Otford Great park(62), and, perhaps, Otford Little park(63) and Saltwood(75).17Political turmoil also affected private parks, several of which were transferredto the crown after attainders served on traitors. Some of these parks had alreadybeen disparked, but new owners disparked others. Sir Henry Sidney, for example,with the grant of Penshurst in 1552 obtained Ashour(69) park, Northlands orPenshurst(71) park (then including Leigh park,70) and Southpark(72), after they hadlain in royal hands since the attainder imposed on Edward Stafford, duke ofBuckingham, executed by Henry VIII in 1521.18 Penshurst(71) park, adjacent to12 Boxley(14a), CPR c.66/1010 no.1047, p.213, 23/2/1563; Canterbury Old(19) Park, Morice (CamdenSociety IX, 1859); Canterbury Trenley(20), Hasted 9(1797:158); Westwell(98), Hasted 7 (1797:416);Elham(30), Hasted 8 (1797:99); Folkestone(32), TNA SC 6/HenVIII/1727 7 1758.13 CMS DRc/T166A, 1533/4.14 Chislet(22) park, LPL TA39/1, no deer since 1541; Curlswood(26) park, LPL TA633/1, 1586 'onceused as a park for deer'; Ford(35) park, map fragment, 1624, shows deer (Arch.Cant. XLV (1933:168); noevidence for status of Lympne(57) park; Bromley(16) park divided into fields by 1646 (BLS 43/7a,b) butneither its dates of creation nor of disparkment are known.15 Way(1997:17-18) discussion on effects of disparkment abandoned because 'so few disparkments ordiminutions in areas imparked could be dated, and because those few that could were subject to a highdegree of insecurity.'16 See Figure 5.1 'Disparkment' (Appendix 5 pp.317-318).17 See Park profiles p.351 onwards.18 CKS U1475/M59; Kingsford & Shaw 1 (1925:xxiii-xxiv).13Penshurst Place was kept, but the others were eventually leased out and given over toagriculture or woodland.19The disgrace of the Boleyn family following Anne Boleyn's execution in1536 eventually lost surviving members their seat and park(46) at Hever Castle, andparks at Henden(45) and Kemsing(49).20 Henden(45), from at least 1540, andKemsing(49), perhaps long before, had ceased to be deer parks, while Hever(46)retained its pale, but lost its deer, principally becoming a cony warren by 1560.21In Edward VI's reign, extensive land acquisitions around Tonbridge by JohnDudley, duke of Northumberland, including three parks in Northfrith(89-91),Southfrith park(93) or forest, Cage(88) and Postern(92) parks, proved to be shortlived following his disgrace and death in 1553. Cage(88) and Postern(92) parks hadbeen disparked by the time Lambarde compiled his first list, but Northfrith(89-91)and Southfrith(93) survived longer into Elizabeth I's reign.22Lastly, in Mary I's reign, after the major failed rising of 1554 in Kent led by SirThomas Wyatt, the crown gained other attainted land. Allington((2) and Boxley(14a)parks were seized from Sir Thomas Wyatt himself. Allington was on Lambarde's list ofdisparkments, but Boxley(14a) was omitted, having been disparked by the abbot at anunknown date.23 The status of Sir Thomas Wyatt's new Lea park(14b) at Boxley, whichhe attempted to create in 1549, is unknown, but it seems to have been short-livedjudging by disputes over the identities of the two parks at Boxley later in Elizabeth I'sreign.24 A defunct park at Broxham(17) was seized from William Cromer.25 Lastly, SirHenry Isley's involvement and subsequent beheading lost the family Brasted(15) andSundridge(83) parks, both of which had been divided into fields by 1553, a park at19 The exact sequence of events unknown, see Park profiles p.351.20 Astor(1979:10) 1538, Henry took over Hever(46) as widower succeeding to his wife's estate, butcompensated Anne Boleyn's siblings; CKS U1450/T5/62, 1541, Henry VIII acquired Henden(45) after anenforced exchange of land between himself and William Stafford, husband of Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister;CKS U1450/T6/10, 1560 lease of park for cony warren, deer house to be kept in good repair, but nomention of actual deer.21 Surrey Record Office (Hoskins papers) leases from 1540 contain no evidence that deer were in the park(excerpts from Lionel Cole); BL Harl.Cart. 86.G.54,H.16,H.53, grants of park land make no mention ofpales or internal character of the park.22 Thirsk in Zell(2000:87-88); Chalklin(2004:95-104).23 CCA DCB-J/X.10.17.24 Zell(2000:32) 1549, hedges of Wyatt's new park at Boxley(14b) were torn down.25 Lambarde(1576:6-7).14Langley(52) near Maidstone, which was disparked by 1576, and Sutton Valence(86)park, which was disparked when John Leland passed by in Henry VIII's reign.26Although in 1555 the four parks were restored to Sir Henry Isley's son on payment of afine of £1000, he fell into arrears and all his lands were returned to the crown in 1575.27By implication, Lambarde attributed the loss of active deer parks to economicpressure, and some parks might well have lost their deer and undergone further stepstowards total disparkment prior to seizure by the crown, perhaps due to financialpressure, family decline, or the different priorities of their owners. However, in thecase of disparkment 'within memorie', it can hardly be coincidence that thesuccessful deer parks in Lambarde's lists had not been directly affected by politicalinstability, while 15 of the 18 disparked parks on the 1576 list were those that hadundergone enforced disruption of ownership during the religious and political crisesof the period.28 Change of ownership would not automatically lead to disparkment,but abrupt interruption in park ownership and management accelerated conversion ofparkland to farmland or woodland. Turbulent upheavals made park restoration moredifficult and previous disparkment more entrenched, and for crown-leased parks theincentive to reintroduce deer was further diminished or restricted by existingsubleases.29 Disparkment in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I will be covered more fullyin Chapter Five, but in the meantime Lambarde accurately identified an acceleratingrate of disparkment prior to the first edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent', but did notnote a deceleration in the early years of Elizabeth I's reign.30 To compound this lack ofrefinement of period, by not revising his text in the second edition of 1596, he has leftthe reader with the impression that the rate of loss continued throughout Elizabeth I'sreign. This was not the case, because when comparing his lists with the parks depicted26 CKS U1450/E19, 1553, Brasted(15) and Sundridge(83) parks divided into fields; Chandler VIII(1993:88) prior to 1546, 'This elder Clifford hath yet a maner by Boxle caullid Sutton Valaunce wherewas a park.'27 Steinman Steinman(1851:40) 8 March 1 & 2 Philip and Mary deed of restoration; CKS U1590/T14/17,1575, his debts were about £10000 in several bonds, so his property was seized for a fair distribution ofthe proceeds.28 The three exceptions are Mereworth(60) (misspelt at Merewood in 1576) and two parks atOxenhoath(65,66) about which information is lacking.29 See Chapter Five, pp.150-153, Chapter Six pp.173-174.30 See Chapter Five (ii) p.140 onwards, and Figure 5.1 (Appendix 5 pp.317-318).15on contemporary maps, it will be seen that the rate of disparkment continued to slowdown in the 20 years that followed the first edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent.'. Thedeer parks that remained at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign were for the most partretained for several more decades, with a handful of new parks being created to balancethe number that were lost.(ii) William Lambarde, the historian and topographer'A Perambulation of Kent' was recognised as the pioneering county history evenin its own time. In the opening pages Lambarde outlined the greater part of his interestin the section entitled 'The description and hystorie of the shyre of Kent.' Most of itscontents lie outside the bounds of this study; but among 'such other things incident tothe whole' Lambarde stated that he finally wanted to cover the hills and dales, parks andforests.31 In doing so he has provided the historian with the earliest printed list of parks,both extant and extinct, within any county.Before examining this and the later list of 1596 in detail it is necessary toestablish their credibility, by judging the soundness of Lambarde's method and thedegree of accuracy in his research. His contemporary William Camden, author of'Britain' considered him 'a man right well endowed with excellent learning.' 32 Whenwriting his history of Kent, Camden thought Lambarde 'has withal been so happy in hissearches; that he has left very little for those that come after him.' 33 Lambarde's trainingas a lawyer gave him a disciplined approach to study, and indicative of his enquiringmind and scholarship was his mastery of Anglo-Saxon language and law displayed in'Archaionomia' published in 1568. By that time he had also been working on themanuscript of the 'Alphabetical Description of the Chief Places of England and Wales',the bulk of which he and many of his friends had drawn from old chronicles and ancienthistories.34 Lambarde's academic and scholarly approach has been consideredmeticulous for its time.35 According to Mendyk, 'He selected evidence intelligently31 Lambarde(1576:6-7).32 Camden(1610); Read(1962:7) citing Camden's dedicatory letter in the first edition of 'Eirenarcha'.33 Mendyk(1986:476).34 Lambarde(1596,foreword).35 Read(1962:6); Warnicke(1973:2-27).16from the raw substance of his sources, and evaluated it in accordance with soundprinciples. Objective truth, not legend, was his goal.'36Concerning methodology, Lambarde himself stated that to compile 'APerambulation of Kent' he had studied credible records, and then added informationpartly from his own knowledge, and partly from that gleaned from other men. 37However, details are hard to come by. He drew on his 'Alphabetical Description of theChief Places of England and Wales' for what he referred to as his 'TopographicallDictionarie' (later to become 'A Perambulation of Kent'), and for which he enlarged thehistory and topography of that county.38 His written sources have been analysed, but itis doubtful whether substantive documentary evidence on parks was available to himand, in any case, it would have been of limited use since it would scarcely have touchedthe contemporary position.39When approaching the compilation of the section 'The Particular of Kent', inwhich the list of parks appeared, Lambarde would have had to rely largely, if notentirely, on his own and others’ knowledge of the Kentish countryside. Indeed, headmitted as much when he wrote an apology concerning information he or others hadgathered:-If either by want of memorie I have not taken all, or by too much credulitiehave mistaken any: I have pardon for it, and desire the Reader, either tocorrect or supplie it, by his own discretion and judgement.40He might have written systematically to landowners about their parks, but survivingcorrespondence is scattered. Some letters written to Archbishop Matthew Parkerrelating to 'A Perambulation of Kent' showed that he was prepared to alter and amendin deference to those with specialist knowledge as part of his meticulous attention todetail. 41 That he kept notes, as he did for 'Ephemeris' related to his work as Justice36 Mendyk(1986:471).37 Lambarde(1576:59).38 Warnicke(1973:26-27).39 Flower(1935:47-48); Warnicke(1973:27-30) documents relating to ecclesiastical land might havebeen seen through the patronage of Dr. Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury.40 Lambarde(1576:9) reference to his methodology and the apology were added before the finalpublication and do not appear in the manuscript copy of 1570 which he had prepared for circulationbeforehand (BL Add.Mss.20033).41 Bruce & Perowne(1853:424-426) cited with references to other letters in Alsop, 'Lambarde,William 1536-1601 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15921); StaffsRO D593/S/4/14/16-18,letters between Sir John Leveson and Lambarde; Dunkel(1965:46-48).17of the Peace, is shown by one surviving manuscript.42 Entitled 'Note of the names ofthe gentry in Kent, 1574', this was a working list which could be amended until themanuscript was despatched to the printers.43 It is apparent that the list of parks wascompiled in a similar way. It was laid out in two columns in neither alphabetical,ownership nor locational order, rather the names were written at random as theybecame known to him, despite Lambarde’s emphasis on an ordered approach in therest of the book.44In these circ*mstances the degree of accuracy needs to be assessed.Warnicke considered that Lambarde often travelled throughout Kent and knew itwell, because 'A Perambulation of Kent' contained many of his personalobservations.45 But although he was soon to become embedded in the county, hehardly had time before the late 1560s to know it as intimately as many of the wellestablished Kentish gentry who would be his readers.His father, John Lambarde, a very successful London draper who had risen to besheriff of London, purchased several properties, the last being that of the Kentish manorof Westcombe in Greenwich in 1553, shortly before his death the following year.William Lambarde was only eighteen at the time, but eventually inherited Westcombe,along with other properties in Herefordshire, Wiltshire and London, when he came ofa*ge in 1557. While John Lambarde had acquired properties haphazardly, his sonconcentrated his estate in London and Kent, adding to the Kent holding, but selling offthe holdings in other counties. However, he remained resident at Lincoln's Inn untilcalled to the Bar in 1567, and leased out Westcombe.46 The rest of his lifedemonstrated how fond he was of Kent, and Adrian believes that he was partlymotivated to write 'A Perambulation of Kent' as a means to win acceptance into society42 Read(1962:15-52).43 Folger MS. X d.260, Folger Shakespeare Library. I am grateful to Georgianna Ziegler of the FolgerInstitute for this reference. This list differed slightly from that which was later published.44 Adrian(2006:306-334) this article deals with the high degree of order in 'A Perambulation of Kent'and the importance it placed on political order and stability. However, "Here creating order is notabout reducing everything to 'universal unanimities' or sameness. Instead Lambarde allows fordifferentiation and distinctiveness (even disagreement) so long as they do not erupt into any kind ofdisorderly threat," p.330.45 Warnicke(1973:30) also for other biographical details.46 Ibid. p.10.18there, 'by demonstrating his intimate knowledge of and mastery over the topography andhistory of the county.'47If this was his intention, he was eminently successful because in hiscommendation of the book Thomas Wotton of Boughton Malherbe could not haveendorsed William Lambarde more strongly:-We should unto the author William Lambard, yeeld our very harty andperpetuall thanks: as our Country man in our wordes and deedes lovinglyuse him: as a man learned, duly esteeme him .... which for my part, I thinkemeete to do, and meane to do: and for your parts, I desire hartily you shoulddo, and I hope assuredly you will do.48Lambarde stated on the title page that 'A Perambulation of Kent' had beencollected and written (for the most part) in 1570.49 From 1568 he had been given wideropportunity to gather material while undertaking his new duties as a Commissioner ofSewers from Lombarde's Wall to Gravesend Bridge.50 This exacting job, givingcontrol over important waterways, would have involved travelling around thecountryside with fellow commissioners such as William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, andWilliam Brooke, lord Cobham. Moving about the county in such company enabled himnot only to make his own observations about Kent, but also to meet influential menfrom whom he could extract and exchange information.In 1570, at the age of 34, he married Jane Multon, whose father, GeorgeMulton, owned the St. Clere estate in Kemsing, northeast of Sevenoaks, and his socialnetwork among the Kentish gentry grew even wider. He was reticent in widelypublicising the manuscript until it had been thoroughly scrutinised and it was from St.Clere that he wrote his letter to Thomas Wotton, on the last day of January 1570,requesting him to read the draft of his book. He chose Thomas Wotton because of the'good understanding and interest' he had in the county, and hoped that he 'for good willindifferently would, weigh and peruse it.'51 His reticence was further reflected inArchbishop Matthew Parker's letter of May 1573, which was sent with a copy of themanuscript to William Cecil, lord Burghley, prior to Elizabeth I's progress round Kent,47 Adrian (2006:311).48 Lambarde(1576:7-8) Wotton's foreward.49 Ibid. title page.50 Warnicke(1973:36).51 Lambarde(1596:foreword).19'who would be inquisitive concerning the places where she journeyed.' 52 In it thearchbishop requested Lord Burghley not to discuss the manuscript in public so that theauthor's friends might have time 'to peruse, to correct, and amend.'53By the 1580s Lambarde had become well integrated into the county. He hadbecome a Justice of the Peace in 1580. He lived in St. Clere until 1583, before movingto Halling for his second marriage, where he lived as close neighbour to Sir JohnLeveson and Lord Cobham until his third marriage in 1592. Finally, he ended his daysin 1601, resident at Westcombe.54 Thus, when he came to prepare the second edition of'A Perambulation of Kent' for publication in 1596, he should have been in an even betterposition to make any necessary alterations to the park list.Detailed examination of the lists indicates that Lambarde's 1576 park list isfairly accurate, especially when the difficulties of communication and travel during thelate Tudor period are taken into consideration. The second edition of 'A Perambulationof Kent' in 1596 was largely a re-print, and that might go some way to explain thelimited number of changes made in the 1596 list. However, Lambarde must have madesome checks, although not as thorough as they might have been. He failed to add parkomissions or to clarify ambiguities in the first list, or to take note of new park creationsin the intervening 20 years, so to that extent the 1596 list is less reliable than itspredecessor.(iii) William Lambarde's list of parksThe park lists were given quite a high priority in the order of 'A Perambulationof Kent.' In the section of the book headed 'The Particular of Kent' the lists of parksappeared preceding lists of hills, rivers, bridges, cities, markets and fairs, castles,honourable houses, almshouses, former religious houses and schools. The significanceof this position might have been because the subject was close to the interests of hisreaders, 'his Countriemen, the Gentlemen of the Countie of Kent', as Thomas Wotton52 Nichols(reprint of 1823 edition:341).53 Dunkel(1965:46-47).54 Alsop, Lambarde, William 1536-1601 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15921).20addressed them in his foreword, or perhaps because parks merited priority as awidespread and dominant feature in the rural landscape.'55In the first edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent' the list comprised 52 parks with54 in the second edition of 1596. Tracing the parks on the modern Ordnance Surveymaps proved to be relatively straightforward. Some parks, such as Cobham(23),Greenwich(39), Groombridge(40), Knole(50), Leeds(54), Lullingstone(55) andPenshurst(71) are still in evidence today. Others were easily located on a variety ofmaps and in documentary records, but two proved very elusive and some raisedambiguities.56 Stonehurst(81) was just over the border into Surrey, in the southeastangle between the Sussex and Kent boundaries with that county, but its inclusion wasprobably because of its ownership by the Brooke family of Starborough Castle (abranch of the Brooke family of Cobham).57 Hamswell has not been tracked down.There was a ‘Hamwell’ in Kent, about one mile east of Eastry (now the hamlet ofHammill), but there is nothing to indicate there was ever a park there. It is possible thatLambarde meant Hamsell park(43), in Rotherfield, Sussex. This was owned by theWaller family of Groombridge, who also owned Groombridge park(40), straddling theboundary between Kent and Sussex. Rotherfield is hardly county border country, but itis possible that confusion arose once again because Hamsell(43) park was owned by aKent based family.There is ambiguity over Langley and Southpark because two parks of each namehave been found. Both Langley parks are poorly documented, but Langley(52) parknear Maidstone, held from the crown, was more likely to have been disparked by thisperiod, which is as Lambarde recorded, while Langley park(51) in Beckenham wasprobably established in late Elizabethan times and continued into the seventeenthcentury.58 Southpark followed Ashour park(69) at Penshurst in the list, both owned bythe Sidney family. However, evidence points to this Southpark(72) being disparked by1570, and the listed Southpark was not so denoted.59 It is certain, therefore, that South55 Lambarde(1576) first page of Wotton's foreward.56 See Park profiles p.351 onwards; tithe maps, c.1870 OS 6" mile series, were invaluable.57 OS TQ425412.58 Documentary evidence on both is sparse. See Hasted 5 (1797:346-349) for Langley, near Maidstone;Tookey(1975:9) land purchased in Hayes and West Wickham in 1571 became part of the later LangleyPark; Arch.Cant. III (1860:191-193) 16/2/1633, letter mentioned the park.59 CKS U1475/E55/1, 1559.21park(12) near Boughton Malherbe, which was repaled and restocked by Thomas Wottonin 1567, was meant.60 A mistake over this park would seem to have been highlyunlikely given that Thomas Wotton had been sent Lambarde's manuscript to check.However, there is a discrepancy over Thomas Wotton's parks because he had threeparks at Boughton Malherbe, South park(12), New or Lenham park(11), and Bocton orOld park(10), the last two being absent from Lambardes's lists.61 New or Lenhampark(11) was impaled by Sir Edward Wotton (1489-1551), but was under arablecultivation by 1567. Many deer, but perhaps not the whole herd, were rounded up fromthe Old park(10) and removed to South park(12) in December 1567. The omission oftwo such recently functioning parks is inexplicable, unless for some reason it was withthe acquiescence of Thomas Wotton himself.Lambarde made unusual selections in two names, St. Augustine's(18) andCalehill(98). Evidence points to St. Augustine's(18) being the park in Canterbury,usually called Canterbury, New or King's park(18), created by Henry VIII in the 1540son former monastic land belonging to St. Augustine's monastery, Canterbury. Mary Igranted the park 'commonly called Canterbury park' among other properties, to CardinalPole in 1556, and it would seem that it was only called St.Augustine's park for the shortperiod of his ownership until his death in 1558, when his executors called it ‘St.Augustine's.'62 Thereafter, it is referred to under its other names, so why Lambardepicked out the monastic name is unclear. Apart from Lambarde's lists there are no otherreferences to Calehill park(98) in the parish of Little Chart until 'The Olde Parke' and'Parke woode' are shown on an estate map of the Darell family in 1639.63 It is possiblethat Lambarde was referring to this park, but if so he omitted the well documentedmedieval park of Westwell(98), three miles to the east of Calehill, which continued withdeer in it under crown lessees at least into Elizabeth I's reign.64The park 'at Ashford' is enigmatic. Edward Hasted linked the reference 'atAshford' to Ripton(later park 104) park, but the earliest date for the park so far concerns60 BL Add.Mss.42715.61 Ibid.62 CKS U1450/T6/28, copy of CPR 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, 13/3/1556; Dasent I (1893) Acts of PrivyCouncil no.25, 9/12/1558.63 CKS U386/P1.64 Brigstocke Sheppard(1889:384) 1292 earliest date for Westwell(98); BL Add.Mss.42715, 1561, deerfrom Westwell mentioned.22its imparkment in about 1640.65 It is more likely that Lambarde was referring to thepark at Scot's Hall(77), near Smeeth, to the east of Ashford, owned by Sir ThomasScott, high sheriff of Kent, who had the wealth and status to sustain a park and lived ingrand style, entertaining Elizabeth I at his home in 1573.66A second park at Westenhanger(96,97) was the only active park added byLambarde in 1596, otherwise he made a note of five additional disparkments, andcorrected a misspelling.67 In the first edition there were 18 disparked parks, and in thesecond edition of 1596 there were 23. The additional five were the disparked Aldingtonpark(1), omitted from the 1576 list, and four new disparkments, namely at Halden(41),one Otford park(?63), Saltwood(75) and Shurland(78). The total number ofdisparkments represented about one-third of William Lambarde's 1576 list, and a littleover one-third of the later list, but his choice of parks to include in this category was notconsistent. In the first edition some Elizabethan disparkments were not recorded by him,for example, one or two of Edward Wotton's parks at Boughton Malberbe(10,11).68Other disparkments 'within memorie' William Lambarde might have listed were SirThomas Wyatt's parks at Maidstone(59) in which deer were last mentioned in 1556 andBoxley(14a) disparked by 1554.69 The archbishop of Canterbury's parks at Chislet(22)had not held deer since 1541 and Curlswood(26) had also been disparked.70Brasted(15) and Sundridge(83) parks had both had been disparked by Mary I's reign,which Lambarde recorded in the case of Brasted(15), but not in the case ofSundridge(83).71 As most disparkments occurred before Elizabeth I came to the throne,the omissions are not critical in determining the number of deer parks which continuedto function in her reign.The question next to be addressed is how complete a list of active parks didLambarde compile and to do this the five contemporary maps will be discussed,65 Hasted 7 (1797:534) 'There was formerly a park here, which was in being when Lambarde wrote hisPerambulation, in 1570. The lands of it are still called the Old Park'; CKS U1095/P3, 24/12/1640, 'Aplott of Ripton Parke... as it lay in severall closes before it was Imparked.'66 Scott(1876:196,203-204); Cole(1999,186); co*ckburn(1995) AC/35/40/3/2545,1597.67 Lambarde made seven adjustments to the 1576 list in 1596, see Figure 1.1 p.9.68 Boughton Malherbe(10,11) see p.24 following.69 Boxley(14a) see p.13 above; CKS U1450 T6/28, 1556, Maidstone(59) park; TNA E134/31Elizabeth/Hilary16, 1588, disparkment occurred by 1554.70 Chislet(22) park, LPL TA39/1, 1587, no deer since 1541; Curlswood(26) park, LPL TA633/1, 1586'once used as a park for deer'.71 CKS U1450/E19, 1553, Sir Henry Isley's parks then divided into fields.23although only the first three were produced during the period spanning the first andsecond editions of 'A Perambulation of Kent.'(iv) William Lambarde and the cartographersThe five county maps depicting parks are conveniently spaced to cover most ofthe period under review.72 Contemporary with the first edition of 'A Perambulation ofKent', with its list of 34 active and 18 disparked parks, were the maps of Saxton c.1575and of an unknown cartographer c.1576. Saxton showed 27 parks, three more than theanonymous map, which depicted 24.73 Lambarde's second edition of 'A Perambulationof Kent', with its list of 31 active parks and 23 disparked parks, was contemporaneouswith Symonson's 1596 map, with 31 parks. In James I's reign came Norden's map of1605 with 27 parks and Speed's of 1611 with 29.74 One notable feature of the mapswas that none of Lambarde's disparked parks in the first edition of 'A Perambulation ofKent' appeared on the maps, the inference being that the cartographers were attemptingto record only existing deer parks. Corroborating evidence shows that to this extent themaps are accurate, with the exception of a park at Sarre, included by Norden, where nopark has so far been detected, although it is possible that a short-lived park was set upthere in the early seventeenth century.In the maps the park symbols are larger than would be the case in true scale, sothe exact location of parks can be distorted. Some parks were clearly labelled, andothers were easy to interpret because only one park was associated with the area, forexample, Cooling(24) on the Hoo peninsula or Shurland(78) on the Isle of Sheppey.Others presented greater difficulty because they were not labelled, and the situation wasespecially confused to the south and east of Leeds castle around Boughton Malherbe,and in the Lyminge/Stowting area.72 See Figure 1.2 (Appendix 1, pp.306-307) for Lambarde's lists of 1576 and 1596, alongside the 5 earlycounty maps. A copy of the map of the unknown cartographer had been inserted at an unknown date intoa copy of 'A Perambulation of Kent' of 1576, signed and dated by Peter Manwood of St. Stephen's,Canterbury, in January 1590. Although controversy has raged about whether this was the intended 'Cardeof this Shyre'referred to by Lambarde, the watermark on the paper was found to be of the same period asthat of the book and the map bore the arms of Elizabeth I, so barring forgery it has been included in thisexamination of parks. This book is at CKS with notes on the back page by G. P. Amos Pembroke on theauthenticity of the watermark. Pembroke bought this copy in 1885 from the sale of the library of the Earlof Jersey at Osterley park. See Box(1926:89-95) and Livett(1937:247-277).73 The additional three parks are Halden(21), Scot's Hall(7), Westenhanger(96).74 Speed's additional parks are Glassenbury(37), Halden(41), Throwley(87), Well Hall, Eltham(95).24The two county maps from the 1570s showed two parks in the vicinity ofBoughton Malherbe.75 A park near Ulcombe might have represented South park(12),while another at Boughton Malherbe was probably Bocton Old park(10). On the threelater maps only one park was shown, which was more likely to have been Lambarde'sSouth park(12).76 Compared with Lambarde, who listed Postling park(73) but notLyminge(56), all the maps showed an unlabelled park at nearby Lyminge(56) ratherthan at Postling(73). This leaves a quandary, because there was or had been a park bothat Postling(73) and at Lyminge(56). It is possible that Lambarde confused Postling(73)for neighbouring Lyminge(56). Henry VIII appointed deer keepers at Lyminge(56) inthe 1540s and there was a case of unlawful hunting and stealing deer in Lyminge(56)park in 1606.77 According to Lambarde, Postling(73) was still an active park, althougha tithe dispute in 1576 indicates that the park had been disparked.78 Given the positiveevidence of deer in Lyminge(56) park, it is most likely that the maps representedLyminge(56), so it appears that Lambarde should have included Lyminge(56), althoughhe was correct about the presence of a park, albeit disparked, at Postling(73).The maps located six parks that were absent from Lambarde's lists. Four parks(at Bromley(16), Eastwell(28), Lynsted(58) and Throwley,87) were late creations, threeof uncertain date, which appeared on the three later maps.79 A licence to impark 1000acres at Eastwell had been given in 1589, so the park was overlooked by Lambarde, butevidence on the other three is less clear-cut.80 Two other inexplicable omissions fromhis list were parks at Ford(35) and Hemsted(44). All five maps depicted the archbishopof Canterbury's park at Ford(35).81 Although Lambarde might have been less familiarwith east Kent, it is unclear why he was not told about it by Archbishop MatthewParker, especially as Ford Palace with its park(35) was one of the few estates retainedafter the forced land exchanges of Henry VIII's reign.8275 Saxton 1575, anonymous map c.1576.76 Symonson 1596, Norden 1605, Speed 1611; BL Add.Mss.42715, for Boughton Malherbe.77 Zell(2000:60) citing Letter Patent XVI, 1500, p.714; CKS QM/SB 710, 2/10/1606.78 CCA DCB-J/X.10.16 f.209-210, 1576.79 Firm evidence is lacking, but implication of late creation is in TNA SP12/136/33 for Bromley(16);Vallance(1932:147) Lynsted(58); apart from the early Kent county maps there is no clear evidence for thedate of Throwley(87) park.80 Physick(1973:128) licence to enclose 1000 acres of parkland granted in June 1589.81 Arch.Cant. XLV (1933:168) c.1624, map of Ford park with deer.82 Du Boulay(1952:19-36); Morice(1859:267); Du Boulay(1966:317-329).25Another omission by Lambarde was of Hemsted(44) park, which was shown onSaxton's and Norden's maps, at both ends of the time scale. The park was functioningwhen Sir John Guldeford wrote his will in 1560; Elizabeth I stayed at Hemsted duringher progress in 1573, and a map of 1599 shows a park of 113 acres.83 It is unclear whyLambarde left this park out, except to add weight to the possibility that his contactswere not as extensive towards the south and east of the county.Lambarde and the cartographers faced the difficulty of ascertaining exactlywhich parks were functioning as deer parks at any given time because of the possibilityof total or partial disparkment, re-imparkment and new imparkment. The fluctuatingfortunes of Halden(41) and Shurland(78) parks bear this out. While Lambarde addedHalden(41) to disparkments in the second edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent', the parkappeared on Symonson's and Speed's maps, yet this might not be inconsistent with theevidence. Halden(41) was seized by the crown from John Dudley, duke ofNorthumberland, in 1553 and put into the hands of Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, whenno deer were in it, because in 1571, after Elizabeth I had recognised the Sidney claim tothe Dudley estates, Halden(41) park was completely repaled.84 When deer werereintroduced is unknown, but a survey of 16 August 1609 confirmed that deer were inthe park, although in the following year the deer had gone.85.A similar difficulty with achieving complete accuracy is illustrated by the park atShurland(78). Lambarde added Shurland(78) to disparkments in the second edition of'A Perambulation of Kent', and the maps of 1596, 1605 and 1611 also disregardedShurland(78), which might be seen as confirmation of the situation, but other evidencesuggests that the status of Shurland(78) was not quite so clear cut. There were about220 deer in a park in 1572, yet by October 1574, only 40 deer remained, and it wouldappear that the park was not restocked.86 Lack of deer would justify Lambarde'sdisparkment and the park's omission from the later maps, and no deer were mentionedin a survey of mid-January 1605. However, within a year Philip Herbert, earl ofMontgomery, instigated a suit of deer stealing, claiming that the ancient park had83 ESRO DAP Box 32, will of 4/5/1560; Cole(1999:179-201) Appendix 2; SuffRO HA43/T501/242.84 Bowen(1939:23); Sir Henry Sidney married Mary Dudley, daughter of John Dudley, duke ofNorthumberland, and Jane Guldeford, whose family held Halden; CKS U1475 E23/2.85 CKS U1475/M73; CKS U1475/T92.86 TNA SP12/87/1-3, 15/5/1572; TNA SP12/908/29, 7/10/1574.26always held deer.87 While he might have exaggerated the continuity and extent of deerkeeping, the defendants did not dispute his statement that deer had been there 'whereofmemory of man is not to be contrary', even though it would have been in their interest todo so.The only active parks in Lambarde's list not appearing on the maps wereHamswell(43) and Stonehurst(81), which is not surprising if they lay outside thecounty.88 Ashour park(69) was not on the maps, neither was it added to Lambarde'sdisparkments, but it was being leased out by the Sidney family from the 1550s andgradually lost its status as a park, so Lambarde's inclusion of Ashour(69) might wellhave represented its last days as a park, and its omission from the maps the recognitionthat its original function had been lost.89There was a significant degree of correlation between Lambarde and the earlymapmakers, with 12 parks being in all sources and a further six being in five out of thesix. However, none of the compilations was identical.90 Some discrepancies might beattributed to the four decades separating the earliest map from the latest – eachillustrating changes over time, but when matched with the documentary evidence it isalso clear that none was comprehensive. The most prominent parks in which deer werepresent some time between 1558 and 1611, but which do not appear in 'APerambulation of Kent' or the five county maps, were Bore Place(9), Lee(53), TylerHill(94) in Canterbury and West Wickham(99).91 Boughton Monchelsea(13),Roydon(74), Scotney(76) and Well Hall(95) in Eltham were established as parks, butthe presence of deer remains unproven.92 Licence to impark 500 acres at EastWickham(29) and Bexley was granted to Sir Oyliffe Leigh in 1610, but evidence ofpark creation is lacking for Chilham(21a), Mersham Hatch(61), and Surrenden(84)which were probably formed later in James I's reign.9387 TNA E178/3925; TNA STAC8/183/34.88 See p.20 above.89 CKS U1475/T33, leases of 1553,1572,1574; Straker(1931:219).90 See Figure 1.2 'Lambarde's list and 5 early maps compared' (Appendix 1 pp.306-307).91 CKS QM/SB/122, 1596, Bore Place(9); Drake(1886:192-193) Lee(53) park; CKS U591 C261/5,1599/1600, Tyler Hill(94); BL Add Mss.33899, 1558,1564, West Wickham(99).92 CKS U807/M1, 1556, Boughton Monchelsea(13); CKS U48/P1, 1590, Roydon(74); ESRO DykeHamilton 606, 1579, CKS U1776/P1, 1619, Scotney(76); TNA E164/44, 1605, Well Hall(95).93 TNA SP14/58/19, East Wickham(29); Heron(1791:68-69) 1623, Chilham(21a); CKS U274/E5, 1618,Mersham Hatch(61); CKS U350/E4, 1625, Surrenden(84).27ConclusionLambarde's first list of 52 parks contained two parks wrongly located withinKent, three ambiguities over parks at Langley(51, 52), Southpark(12, 72) and atAshford(77), and two enigmatic names: St. Augustine's(18) and Calehill(98). The other45 entries have been found to be accurate, so that overall the list has a high degree ofreliability. It is, however, not comprehensive with at least three omissions of activeparks at Ford(35), Hemsted(44) and Lyminge(56). A number of disparkments mighthave been included for consistency, although dates of disparkment in some cases areunknown. Except for the addition of a second park at Westenhanger(96,97) and adisparked park at Aldington(1) in 1596, and altering 'Merewood' for 'Mereworth'(60)errors of commission or omission remained uncorrected in the second edition of 'APerambulation of Kent', so the degree of overall error in the later list is greater.However, Lambarde's lists remain an invaluable resource to historians, enabling themnot only to identify Elizabethan parks, but also to differentiate the parks containing deerfrom those that did not. The range from 24 parks shown on the anonymous map to 34(excluding disparkments) listed in the first edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent' isprobably not too far out at any given time.The aggregate number of active deer parks over the period 1576 to 1611 fromLambarde's first list and from the five cartographers is 46, including 'at Ashford'(77),Hamsell(43) (?Sussex), Stonehurst(81) (Surrey) and Starborough(80) (on theKent/Surrey border). This total of active parks rises to 53 with the addition of deerparks mentioned in other sources. Deer are mentioned in documentary evidence for 33parks.94 Whether the other 20 parks actually contained deer is debatable, because theycould have functioned as open parkland, perhaps with stock grazing or rabbit warrens.However, nine parks named by Lambarde, but for which no supportive documentaryevidence has been found, have been included because Lambarde distinguished activeparks from the disparked by defining the former as those containing deer.95Additionally, a further eight of the 38 parks shown on the five contemporary county94 See Figure 1.3 (Appendix 2 pp.308-309) 'Active Elizabethan and Jacobean Deer Parks', and Parkprofiles p.351 onwards for the sources of evidence for individual parks.95 Lambarde(1576:9); see Figure 1.3(Appendix 2 pp.308-308) - there is documentary evidence for deer inall but six of Lambarde's list – hence the addition of those six as active parks.28maps have been added on the basis that, because the maps omitted all the disparkmentsnoted by Lambarde and by other sources, a very strong assumption can be made thatthey depicted active parks, especially as the maps were produced to attract influential,powerful purchasers – the owners of such parks.96 A further three new parks,Chilham(21a), Mersham Hatch(61) and Somerhill(93b) complete the total of 53.97Additionally, there is a strong likelihood, but no substantive verification, that BoughtonMonchelsea(13), Great Chart(38), Halstead(42), Roydon(74) and Scotney(76) wereactive parks in this period.98The number of parks was never stable because some parks did not have deer inthem for the whole period; some were disparked in the course of the period; whileothers were new creations.99With evidence of the existence of 100 extant and extinct parks in documentsfrom 1558 to 1625, including 53 known active parks, Lambarde's estimation that halfthe deer parks had been disparked was on target. However, in not fully updating his listor amending his text, the second edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent' failed to reflectthe deceleration of disparkment in the later decades of the sixteenth century, althoughhis lists and the five maps confirm this trend.96 See Prince(2008:9-11) for a fuller argument about the nature of the parks that would be depicted onmaps.97 CKS U38/T1 part 2, 1622, manor house of Somerhill(93b) with park.98 CKS U807/M1, 1556, Boughton Monchelsea(13); CKS QM/SR1/m.6d, 1605, Great Chart(38); TNAE178/6020, 1621, Halstead(42); CKS U48/P1, 1590, Roydon(74); ESRO Dyke-Hamilton 606, 1579, CKSU1776/P1, 1619, Scotney(76); TNA E164/44, 1605, Well Hall(95).99 See Figure 1.4 'All known parks in Kent' (Appendix 3 pp.310-315), and Map 1.1 (Appendix 4 p.316)for the names and locations of these 100 parks. On the map the 100 parks of 1558 to 1625 are in red andnumbered without brackets. Earlier parks, documented before 1558, are green and bracketed (1) to (48)and later ones documented from 1625-1660 are blue and bracketed (101) to (106).29PART I - CHAPTER TWOCHARACTERISTICS OF KENTISH DEER PARKSHaving established which parks existed in Elizabethan and Jacobean Kent,attention will now turn to their distribution (i), density (ii), shape and size (iii), andlongevity as active parks (iv). Gathering even basic information for these aspects hasbeen not been easy because there is no corpus of park-related material. Evidence hasemerged haphazardly from a wide range of sources and tends to be fragmentary innature, but despite these inadequacies, the characteristics of Kentish parks can beportrayed, if somewhat sketchily at times. Another obstacle has been the lack ofcountywide research into the Kentish parks before the Elizabethan period, which wouldhave given a useful basis of comparison. Conversely, although research from othercounties, such as Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire withHuntingdonshire, and Suffolk has been done, it offers little comparative material for theperiod from 1558 to 1625.1Lambarde's lists have provided a starting point for the names of parks, and thefive contemporary maps give a vivid visual representation of their distribution asperceived by Elizabethan and early Jacobean cartographers. However, the survey hereundertaken includes all Kentish parks, whether or not disparked, for which referenceshave been found from the eleventh century to 1660. Research, both general and countybased, into medieval parks beyond Kent, has proved invaluable in providingcomparative material for factors influencing distribution, density and longevity. It hasalso suggested guidelines to follow. Documentary evidence has provided data about thesize of over 60 Kentish parks. In addition, about 20 pre-1660 estate maps, of variableusefulness, show park boundaries and occasionally depict internal structure. The sitesof over 40 parks have been visited in an attempt to ascertain the route and survival ofboundary earthworks and other features, and local historians have provided field-work1 County studies of medieval parks include – Liddiard(2007), Rowe(2009), Hertfordshire; Wiltshire &Woore(2009), Derbyshire; Dye(unpublished 1986), Norfolk; Way(1997), Cambridgeshire &Huntingdonshire. Prince(2008) covers Hertfordshire parks since 1500, although only the first 26 pagescover the period 1500-1660; elsewhere the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been included at theend of more detailed medieval park studies e.g. Way(1997) and Hoppitt(1992).30details of a further 11 parks.2Field visits have covered the geological zones of Kent,and give a spread from its westernmost park, West Wickham(99), to one of the mosteasterly, that of Canterbury park(18); from Cooling(24) on the fringes of the northcoastal marshes to Lympne(57) overlooking Romney marsh, Kent's southernmostpromontory. The choice of locations was arbitrary in that several were on private land,which was visited by the kind invitation of the owners; others were selected becausethey were readily accessible from public footpaths; and yet others because map-workgave a fairly accurate guide to where boundaries might lie within the landscape.3(i) Distribution and locationElizabethan parks in Kent were largely the legacy of previous generations. Withonly a handful of parks being set up after 1558, the choice of park location had beenestablished decades or even several centuries earlier, so a detailed analysis of the factorsdetermining the original distribution of parks lies beyond the scope of this study.However, some general comments can be made to indicate factors that might haveinfluenced the earlier park-making process.Map 1.1 showing the distribution of parks in Kent, identifies parks referred to inElizabethan and Jacobean documents; parks for which no post-1558 references havebeen found; and parks for which references have been found in Charles I's reign, and forwhich an earlier existence is suspected, but remains unproven.4 Map 1.1 is ascomprehensive as possible, bearing in mind that not all the parks have been located, notall were active at the same time and their longevity varied, some earlier parks mightpossibly occupy the same location as later ones under a different name, and some parkswith the same name occasionally moved sites.Research into the distribution of medieval parks in other counties has shown thatseveral factors, including geology and soil structure, the location of woodland,settlement patterns and strategic sites, were universally applicable. Also to be taken2I am grateful to Chris Owlett for Northfrith(89-91) and Cage(88) parks, pers. comm.; Sally Simmons forEltham Great(31), Middle(32), Horn(33) and Well Hall(95) parks, pers.comm.; Harold Gough forFord(35), pers.comm.; Tatton Brown(1983:115-119) delineated Canterbury New(18), Old(19) andTrenley(20) parks; Bowden(1996:329-332) Kemsing(49) park; Taylor(2003:155) Knole(50) park.3I am grateful to many individuals who allowed me to explore their grounds and who accompanied me.4See Map 1.1 'Map of Kent showing all known parks' (Appendix 4 p.316).31into account for influencing choices would be the constraints placed on the ambition ofindividual landowners by the extent, nature and location of their land holdings.Broadly speaking Kent can be divided into six geological zones - the Thamesestuary and north coastal region, the North Downs, the Greensand Ridge with the valeof Holmesdale, the Low Weald, the High Weald, and Romney marsh. These have beensuccinctly and graphically outlined by Everitt:-There were, and still are, six Kents, covering a million acres andstretching 70 miles east and west, and of each area this theme (i.e. antiquity)was broadly true; of the Marshland from the Thames past the Swale toThanet Minster; of the Downland with its southern scarp and windingnorthwards valleys; of the wooded ragstone hills and Holmesdale; of theLow Weald with its many 'dens'; of the high Weald with its ridge of 'hurst'villages; or again of the Marsh from Stone to New Romney.5Two of these zones, the Thames estuary with its coastal hinterland and Romneymarsh, were virtually devoid of parks. The rich grasslands for sheep grazing onRomney marsh and the north Kent coastal marshland, and the fertility of the loamy soilof the north coast hinterland for agricultural production at very early dates, probablymeant that the opportunity for park creation was limited; enclosing land for parksresulting in unacceptable losses both in production and in rental income.6 Theexception was the cluster of mainly royal parks to the west of the Darent valley, towardsLondon, where the parks adjacent to the palaces of Greenwich and Eltham weresituated.7 Here, having suitable hunting grounds close to the capital would have been ofparamount importance to the monarchs and their court, but otherwise there were fewparks because the area was well settled and the fertile soil so close to London could becultivated to supply the capital's food markets.The North Downs also had few parks, even towards London, but more werelocated towards the eastern end in the upper reaches of the Little Stour valley. Thevariable nature of the chalk substrate might account for this pattern. To the west thechalk plateau is overlaid with sand and clay drift well suited to various types ofa*griculture, except where the Downs are capped with clay-with-flints, where woodland5Everitt(1966:20).6Thirsk in Lawson & Killingray(2004:72-73).7See Map 2.1 'Parkland areas of west Kent', p.45 – park areas have been deduced from personal field andmap work, and from information kindly supplied by others (see fn. 2 of this chapter). See Park profiles(from p.351) for individual parks.32persisted and parks could be sited.8 More potent than geological factors, the distributionof parks in east Kent reflected the former ownership of land by the archbishop ofCanterbury where, unlike to the west of the county, several parks were sited on chalkdown land despite its suitability for agricultural use. Although the archbishopric ownedvast woodlands in the Weald, which might be thought to be more suitable for parks,deer being woodland animals, priority there was given to timber extraction, as will bediscussed shortly.The unproductive, shallow soiled, steeply sloping Greensand ridge with its'chart' names supported a band of parks along its entire length.9 The greater density ofparks in the west of the county might reflect the influence of London, but the string ofparks continued to run southeast towards Folkestone, with further clusters of parksaround Maidstone and southeast of Ashford. It is probable that here lay unexploited orunder-exploited land where parks could more easily be carved out of woodland, whichin any case was being cleared faster than that of the Weald, especially in the west of thecounty, because it lay nearer to settlements and to the London market.10In the Low Weald, parks were more closely grouped to the west of the Medway,with markedly fewer to the east. Pioneering work by Cantor and Hatherly established aclose correlation between woodland and parks. 'More significantly, a high woodlandcover in the Domesday Book of 1086 was almost always the scene of much subsequentimparkment.'11 Rackham concurred with this observation in general, although hepointed to several anomalies including that of the Weald – the most extensive woodlandarea of all – which contained only a little above average number of parks and he posedthe question 'Did it lack gentry to establish them?'12The contrasting medieval development of the west and east Weald, as argued byWitney, offers an explanation for the higher number of parks in the west than in theeast.13 The Wealden forest had been divided into a complicated system of dens, which8Tuson(2007:22).9 Chart from the Anglo-Saxon 'ceart' meaning a rough common overrun with gorse, broom, bracken(http://dictionary.oed.com).10 Witney(1976:154-186).11 Cantor & Hatherly(1979:74-75).12 Rackham(1986:123).13 Witney(1976:154-186).33became detached parts of the surrounding parishes exploiting woodland resources oftimber and autumn pannage for pigs.14 By the mid-thirteenth century the den systemwas petering out in the western Weald. Lack of water transport routes, coupled with theabundance of woodland on the Greensand hills to the north, made timber extractionfrom the western Weald unprofitable, so there was little resistance to woodlandclearance for settlement. Dens were transformed into subordinate farm-based manorsand it became possible for the gentry to take over smaller holdings in order to amasslarge estates on which to site parks. At the same time the crown established the Claredynasty at Tonbridge, where the family built Tonbridge castle and extended its territory,the Lowy of Tonbridge, ever more widely to the west. The establishment of the Claresat Tonbridge was further strengthened by the effective withdrawal of the interests of thearchbishop of Canterbury. Around Tonbridge, the Clares formed an immense chase byfencing off numerous dens. This chase of 40 square miles comprised two woodlandareas separated by the Medway, namely Northfrith(89-91), served with deer fromCage(88) park, and Southfrith(93), supplied with deer from Postern(92) park. Gentrylike the Pencestres of Penshurst followed suit with parks of their own.Meanwhile, in the eastern Weald the traditional den system remained robustunder the dominating power of ecclesiastical and royal landowners, and park creationwas inhibited. In the southeast Weald in particular, woodland lay close to the riverRother and timber could be easily shipped out to the continent. Prices, pushed higherby demand, led landowners like the archbishop of Canterbury to protect their Wealdenwoodland until a much later date, when it was more difficult for secular gentry toaccumulate holdings and therefore to acquire sufficient land for a park.15Across the High Weald parks were also more widely spread. Although much ofthe land remained woodland, and the heavy clay and Hastings beds only supportedmarginal farming dependent on grazing, park creation was limited and came late. Forcenturies settlement was scattered and isolated by waterlogged roads for several monthsof the year. It was not an area that attracted magnates, and wealth eluded it until the14 Pannage = right or privilege to pasture pigs (or other animals) in a forest (http://dictionary.oed.com).15 Clark(1977:7).34advent of cloth making which became well established by the mid-fifteenth century andexpanded in the sixteenth century, peaking in about 1560.16In response to Rackham's query, most parishes in the whole area of the Wealdhad resident members of the gentry, including newcomers rising from the ranks ofsuccessful yeomen, clothiers and merchants.17 The subsidy rolls of the 1520s showedthat some clothiers were wealthier than the local landowning gentry, and many acquired'nouveau' gentlemen status.18 They invested in their industry and in land, but mosteither did not aspire to parks or had scattered landholdings, which they preferred tolease out.19Although the geology and soil structure of the six 'Kents' underlay thedistribution of parks, it has been indicated that other more complex factors also playedtheir part. This has been found to appertain to other counties as well, with variationsreflecting the type of land available, whether woodland, common, waste or cultivated,and settlement and lordship patterns. Early parks in Oxfordshire were carved out ofwoodland and waste.20 In Derbyshire while early parks were associated with woodpasture, later parks were located on the margins of parishes, often with boundariescoterminous with that of the parish.21 In Northamptonshire parks were sited away fromsettlement on the edge of cultivated land, but in the north of the county were enclosedout of forest.22 In Berkshire parks were formed from the commons of the Kennet valleyin the south, and from the woodland of Windsor forest in the east, both areas with theleast productive sandy soils.23 In Suffolk the location of 63% of parks was biasedtowards the heavy clays of the wooded central area.24 However, the early clearance ofwoodland in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire meant that 25% of parks were sitedon cultivated land, with no emphasis of park creation on lower grade soil.25 InHertfordshire neither the heavily wooded Chilterns nor the depleted woodland area in16 Brandon(2003:148,177-181); Zell(1994:12,153).17 Ibid. p.31.18 Brandon(2003:151).19 Zell(1994:32-37).20 Woodward(1982:4).21 Wiltshire & Woore(2009:9-12).22 Steane(1975:212,216-219).23 Hatherly & Cantor(1979:67).24 Hoppitt(1992:34-35).25 Way(1997:29-37).35Plate 2.1Parks sited near Castlesa) Leeds Castle encircled by water, and surrounded by parkland insecluded bowl of land in the valley of the Len on the Greensand belt.By kind permission of Leeds Castle Foundation – Guide Book, 1980,photo by Ronald Sloman.b) South side of Cooling Castle gatehouse. The castle itself overlooksthe north Kent marshes. The flat farmland was once part of the park,the west boundary being the bank with fence on the left. 7 March 200736the north were favoured for parks; instead more parks were to be found in the wellpopulated east and centre of the county where knightly families created parks to securethe dwindling manorial woodland resources for themselves.26 In Sussex, parks weremore likely to replace manorial waste containing patches of wildwood.27 In Cornwallparks were not normally placed on less valuable rough ground on the edges of estates asmight be expected, but in the agricultural heartland surrounding or adjacent to the houseor castle to which they belonged. The wooded east of the county held more parks, butthey were also often established on previously cultivated land, although the overallpattern was concentrated on the sites of medieval castles.28The juxtaposition of castles and parks noted in Cornwall is present to a lesserdegree in Kent. The friths and parks created around Tonbridge castle were a spectacularexample, and, of the major castles, Saltwood(75), Leeds(54) and Cooling(24) also hadparks, although there are no signs that Dover or Rochester ever had such an amenity.New thinking about castles downplays their defensive role and emphasises theimportance of their symbolic, ceremonial and status images.29 The need for animposing residence sometimes meant that the castle was designed as much for visualeffect as for militaristic function, and attention was also given to its landscape setting,with parks being one aspect of the display of wealth and power, as well as being'landscapes of production and pleasure.'30 Rochester and Dover occupied key strategicpositions and perhaps their defensive function took priority, but Leeds castle,surrounded by water, and lying in a sheltered valley overlooked by high ground, wasnot in the best defensive position. The landscaped park(54) and water features at Leedscastle seem to fit in better with the new thinking that aesthetic considerations mighthave been rated more highly.31 Cooling castle, on the edge of the plateau above themarshes overlooking the Thames to the north, has a bleak aspect that was probablyenlivened and enhanced by the park(24) to its south.3226 Liddiard(2007:142-143).27 Harding & Rose(1986:11) citing P.F. Brandon, 'The Commons and Wastes of Sussex' (PhD thesis,University of London, 1963).28 Herring(2003:36-37); Rotherham(2007:60).29 Liddiard(2005:1-11).30 Ibid. pp.97-121.31 Ibid. pp.97-98.32 See Plate 2.1 p.35 for photographs of Leeds and Cooling.37Plate 2.2Varied location of parks(a) The undulating terrain of Halden Park on the High Weald. Thisarea was once the interior of the park. 8 March 2010(b) The gentle undulations of former Brasted park, on theGreensand belt, looking northeast from the southwest corner of thepark. 9 December 200638Plate 2.3Varied location of parks(a) View from higher chalk Downland, once within Lullingstonepark, looking east towards Lullingstone castle, near St. Botolph'sChurch, which is just visible against the backdrop of trees. Thepark was spread across the Darent valley side above Lullingstonemansion on the valley floor. 3 June 1999(b) Lympne park spread out on the south slope of the Greensandridge below Lympne castle, overlooking Romney marsh.19 November 200539Much more detailed research into the origins of medieval Kentish deer parkswould be required before a distinct picture of their distribution emerges, but the lordshipof Canterbury over the eastern Weald and the east of the county, was one importantelement that would seem to set Kent apart. In addition, underlying all land ownershipwas the custom of gavelkind, which made it difficult to accumulate large landholdings,and which may well have inhibited early imparkment.33Apart from the overall distribution of parks in Kent, an owner had to make achoice of the exact park site within each locality. Again, because most park sites hadalready been established by the Elizabethan times, a detailed study has not beenpossible at this stage, but parks in Kent are to be found in a wide variety of landscapesettings, unlike in Suffolk or Derbyshire where they tended to occupy higher ground onthe periphery of settlements.34 Cooling(24) and Westenhanger(96) parks are unusuallyflat; other parks, like Penshurst(71), Brasted(15), Sissinghurst(79) and Halden(41), lieon gently undulating land; Leeds(54), Scotney(76) and Stowting(82) parks are within anamphitheatre of hills, secluded from public gaze; Greenwich(39) and Lullingstone(55)parks are spread across valley hillsides offering a panoramic view from the mansionsbelow, while at Boughton Monchelsea(13) and Lympne(57) the mansions overlook theirparks on the steep Greensand scarp below. Five of the six geological zones of Kent arerepresented by these examples, underlying the amazing variety of locations available topark creators.35The close association between park and parish boundaries, as observed byseveral landscape historians, would merit closer scrutiny in Kent, and might wellindicate a much earlier imparkment than documentary evidence reveals.36 At least 18parks shared part of their boundaries with parish boundaries, while Lullingstone(55)park, covering about 600 acres of a 1000 acre parish, is neatly aligned between theparish boundary of Lullingstane in the north and of Shoreham in the south, the southernboundary also being the boundary of the hundred of Axstane with the hundred of33 Zell(1994:14-19); Clark(1977:7).34 Hoppitt(1992:114); Wiltshire & Woore(2009:9-12).35 There were no parks on the flat and treeless Romney marsh. See Plates 2.2 p.37, 2.3 p.38 and 3.9 p.85.36 Rackham(1976:143); Cantor & Hatherly(1979:72); Hoppitt(1992:279).40Plate 2.4Parish boundaries in relation to parks(a) Map showing the close relationship between the parishboundaries of Lullingstaine to the north and Shoreham to the southof Lullingstone Park. The Shoreham parish boundary also marksthe Hundred boundary between Axstane (N) and Codsheath (S).(b) Ryarsh/Meophamparish boundary bankwith hornbeam coppiceand stubs, formerly parkof the north boundary ofBirling Park.4 February 2005(c) Ditch and bank ofshared Brasted/Westerham parishboundary which alsoserved as westboundary of formerBrasted Park.9 December 200641Plate 2.5The early alteration of the Surrey/Kent boundary(a) Sketch map by B.F. Davis inArchaeologia Cantiana XLVI(1934) p.153, illustrating the 1176alteration of the Kent/Surreyboundary at West Wickham. Thisbecame the west boundary of WestWickham park, serving the mansionof Wickham Court.(b) Surrey/Kent boundary stone, bank and faint ditch,once west boundary of West Wickham Park at SpringPark. 16 October 200542Codsheath.37 Whether or not a park predated the parish boundary is open to debate, buta substantial pre-existing bank would have been a convenient route for whichever wasthe later boundary. Experts date the fixing of parish boundaries to the late twelfth orpossibly early thirteenth centuries.38 Usually the sequence of events is undocumented,but there is strong evidence that the Kent/Surrey county boundary was later used as apark boundary at West Wickham(99). There, the line of the county boundarydemarcated the lathe of Wallington to the west from Sutton-at-Hone to the east in Jutishtimes. The boundary is still marked by a substantial banked ditch. However, before1176 the county/lathe boundary northwest of Wickham Court deviated from thenorth/south direction to put a block of land to its east into Surrey. This anomaly wasended in 1176 when the block of land was transferred to Kent, leaving the new countyboundary running continuously on a north/south alignment.39 Along this new boundaryat New or Spring park another banked ditch was made to link with the older one. It wasthis county boundary that became the west boundary of West Wickham(99) park forwhich Sir Walter de Huntingfield, c.1313-1399, was given licence to impark.40The subtle interaction of ambition, finance, landholding, lordship, ruraleconomy, geology, topography and aesthetics to varying degrees lay behind individualpark locations, but in the last resort whether or not certain places had parks ultimatelydepended on the choice of individual landholders.(ii) Park densityThe publication of Saxton's and Speed's county maps in atlas form enables acrude estimate to be made of the degree to which Kent was imparked in the latesixteenth century compared with 16 other counties in the south eastern sector ofEngland, stretching from Norfolk through Oxfordshire to Hampshire.41 In Figure 2.1,the counties have been set out in descending order of area calculated in square miles,37 See Plate 2.4 p.40; the 18 are Birling(6), Brasted(15), Broxham(17), Cooling(24), Glassenbury(37),Halden(41), Ightham(48), Knole(50), Leeds(54), Lullingstone(55), Lympne(57), Panthurst(67),Starborough(80), Sundridge(83), Throwley(87), Westenhanger(96), West Wickham(99), Wrotham(100).38 Rackham(1986:19); Squires(2004:108) citing A. Jones, A Thousand Years of the English Parish(London, 2000:49) and A. Winchester, Discovering Parish Boundaries (Princes Risborough, 2000:31-37).39 Davis(1934:152-155); see Plate 2.5 p.41.40 Lennard(1880:256).41 Ravenhill(1992); Arlott(1953).43Figure 2.1 - Chart showing the number of parks per county and their density insoutheast England from Christopher Saxton's maps of 1576 and John Speed'smaps of 1611 (set out in descending order of county area)County sq. miles Saxton : 1 pk to sq.mls Speed : 1 pk to sq.mlsNorfolk 2092 - - - -Hampshire 1682 23 (- I of W) 73 32 (+ I of W) 52Kent 1537 27 57 29 53Essex 1532 44 35 48 32Suffolk 1512 25 60 27 56Sussex 1463 32 46 58 25Northamptonshire 1017 23 44 24 42Cambridgeshire 858 5 172 5 172Surrey 758 16 47 35 22Oxfordshire 752 8 94 12 63Buckinghamshire 740 11 67 11 67Berkshire 726 11 66 11 66Hertfordshire 528 26 20 24 22Bedfordshire 463 12 39 12 39Huntingdonshire 370 6 62 5 74Middlesex 282 3 94 10 28Rutland 142 4 36 6 24I of W = Isle of Wightfollowed by the number of parks shown by Saxton and by Speed, with a crude estimateof one park to number of square miles alongside each.42 A margin of error must be readinto the total numbers for each county because although parks are shown as fencedrounded enclosures, there are certain ambiguities, especially as not all the parks arenamed. In Kent all enclosures on Speed's map can be linked to parks, but in Rutlandsome enclosures are named as woods, leaving doubt as to whether this county wasexceptional in this approach, or whether some unlabelled enclosures in other countiesmight have been woods rather than parks. In Hampshire, Speed leaves nearly half theparks uncoloured without indicating what distinguished them from the colouredenclosures. In forest areas, such as in Sussex, some park-like enclosures might havebeen subdivisions of the forests into walks rather than deer parks in their own right.Lastly, the lack of parks in Norfolk is an anomaly that cannot be explained since adocument of 1581 lists 18 parks, of which one, Handworth park, had no deer.43 Overall,42 County areas are from Smith & Gardner, Genealogical Research in England and Wales (Salt LakeCity, USA, 1959).43 Hindry Mason (1884:77) 'Parishes and Townships,' contains a transcription of SP12/148/63, listing thenumber of breeding mares in Norfolk parks.44if Kent is typical, the number of active parks shown both by Saxton and Speed is likelyto be an underestimate, but these county maps are the only direct comparison availableto the historian.44Kent was the third largest county, after Norfolk and Hampshire, and hadroughly one park to every 57 square miles according to Saxton's map and 53 accordingto Speed's. These figures put Kent midway in density of parks. The most imparkedcounties, by this rough estimate, were Surrey, half of Kent's size, and Hertfordshire,less than a quarter of Kent's size. Both these counties offered easy access from theovercrowded city of London to fine mansions set in parkland estates. 45 Even thoughKent also bordered London, its lower density of parks might be explained by the earliersettlement and higher agricultural fertility of northwest Kent, which restricted theavailability of land nearer to the capital. As has been noted, park sites tended toleapfrog over the Thames side and North Downs geological zones in west Kent toconcentrate on the Greensand ridge and the western Low Weald, the latter in particularbeing more than a day's ride away from London. 46 Sir Robert Sidney of Penshurst wasaffected by the bad roads of the Low Weald, which presented obstacles to seeing hisfamily when he was serving at court. To avoid 'a wearisome journey' he either rented atown house for his family, or, as in 1594, persuaded his wife to spend winter at Otford,where she would be within 16 miles of London and 'no foul way to speak of.' 47Despite the poor roads in southwest Kent, the overall density of parks washigher here than elsewhere and the impact such enclosures had on the countrysidewould have been considerable. Map 2.1 of west Kent, from the Thames in the north toTonbridge in the south, and from the Surrey border in the west to Wrotham in the east,44 Prince(2001:9), Rowe(2009:71) confirm that contemporary maps underestimate the number of parks;Prince(1967:2) Christopher Saxton's map records 817 parks in England and Wales, but no parks areshown for Norfolk and parts of Wales.45 Lasdun(1992:42).46 See Map 1.1 'Map of Kent showing all known parks' (Appendix 4 p.316).47 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:56,61); Clarke & Stoyel(1975:133) citing CKS U1475/C81/48,letter of 20/9/1594.45Park areas have been deduced from documentary evidence, personal field and map work, and frominformation kindly supplied by others (see fn. 2 of this chapter). See Park profiles (from p.351) forindividual parks.46shows the distribution of parks with the areas they covered.48 Twenty active and 17disparked parks have been included, with boundaries of a further eight parks unverified.Not all the parks were active at the same time, but there is evidence to suggest that, evenafter disparkment, park pales or boundaries were maintained – and some can still betraced on the ground.49(iii) Park shape and sizeThe characteristic park shape was broadly rounded, without kinks, to keep theoutline as compact as possible. This shape enclosed the maximum amount of landwhile requiring the minimum length of fencing.50 Kent deer parks while reflecting thegeneral ideal, took on a variety of shapes, as can be seen in Map 2.1 of the parks in westKent.51 Broxham(17), Henden(45) Langley(51) and Panthurst(67) parks most closelyconformed to the rounded shape, while others such as Eltham Great(31) park,Knole(50), Penshurst(71) and West Wickham(99) parks were more elongated.Greenwich(39) park was (and still is) rectangular.Park sizes were rarely mentioned in documents except in surveys, but areas havebeen found for 38 of the 53 active parks and 27 defunct parks in Elizabethan andJacobean Kent, giving a total of 65 parks or two-thirds of the 100 known parks.52Figure 2.2 plots these parks, from the earliest to the latest in date.53 Park areas rangefrom 25 acres to 1600 acres at each extreme (omitting the most exceptionalSouthfrith(93) and Northfrith(89-91) estimated at 5000 acres and 2000 acresrespectively, but divided into several enclosures).54 Because the dates when the areaswere recorded span more than two centuries, for example, from 1432 for Greenwich(39)to 1657 for Sissinghurst(79) park, a park may well have covered varying areas during its48 See Map 2.1 'Parkland areas of west Kent', p.45.49 Examples of parks on Map 2.1 p.45 include the east boundary of Broxham(17) park, north and southboundaries of Ightham(48) park, north boundary of Lullingstone(55), north boundary of New(64) park,Otford, and west boundary of West Wickham(9).50 Rackham(1976:144-145).51 See Map 2.1 'Parkland areas of west Kent', p.45.52 See Figure 1.4 'All known parks in Kent' (Appendix 3 pp.310-315) for park sizes at given dates. 31park sizes came from surveys, 24 from rentals, leases, grants and sales of land, charters, patents andlicences to impark, six from maps and fieldwork, eight from court cases, and two from Inquisitions PostMortem. See Park profiles p.350 onwards for source of size for individual parks.53 See Figure 2.2 'Park size arranged in order of date', p.47.54 Kingsford & Shaw I (1925:237) 1541; TNA SP16/522/133, 1625.470800600400200140012001000 20 (1071)14934626330962556985448 100 (1283) 100 (1620) 7112175297231159970727889266783104432596435693933 50 (1544) 50 (1610) 41 (1487) 41 (1504) 37 (1488) 37 (1628)91178261845455 14b132379407628539529 21b42 AcresPark NumberFigure 2.2 - Park Size Arranged in Order of First Known Date of Park 1625 - Parks 16001599 - Parks 1500 1499 - Parks 1400 1399 - Parks 1300 1299 - Parks 1200to 1200 Parks up48history.55 Some parks were extended, while others were reduced especially prior todisparkment, according to the whims or fortunes of their owners. Parks like Knole(50),and the later parks at Chilham(21a) and Mersham Hatch(61), began very modestly. InKnole's case 74 acres had been enclosed by 1544, but by 1610 the park had beenenlarged to cover 550 acres.56 Chilham's ancient park(21a), a mile or so distant fromthe castle, was superseded in 1616 by a modest 25 acre park(21b), subsequentlyenlarged, adjacent to the castle.57 Over decades during the reigns of Elizabeth I andJames I, the Knatchbulls with the agreement of the archiepiscopate and the manorialcourt acquired pieces of Mersham Hatch common to enclose into their park(61).58Glassenbury(37) was among the parks that contracted. Walter Roberts was givenlicence to impark 1,600 acres in 1488.59 If enclosed as licensed Glassenbury(37) parkwould have been the largest in Kent, with a deep ditch with bank to the north of OldPark wood seeming to indicate its northern boundary.60 However, by 1628 the area ofthe former parkland north of the Goudhurst road had reverted to woodland, and the parkaround Glassenbury house, to the south of the road, covered just 113 acres.61 Someparks contained compartments from which deer were permanently excluded, but which,nevertheless, lay within the park pale. One such example is that of Birling(6) park,which in a survey of 1521 covered 969 acres, over half of which was farmland. A herdof 300 deer was supported by 388 acres of pasture and woodland, and 74 acres ofdownland, but the remaining 507 acres comprised 430 acres of arable land and 77 acresfarmed by three tenant farmers.62Given the disparity of dates at which park areas were recorded, only tentativecomments can be made about the sizes of late Tudor/early Stuart parks, but the widerange from 25 acres to 1000 acres is shown on Figure 2.3.63 The majority size is not as55 Webster(1902:3) citing Petitions in Parliament 15 Henry VI; CKS U24 T207.56 Phillips II (1930:395) Appendix II; CKS U269/E66/1& 2.57 Heron(1791:69).58 CCA/DCc/ChAnt/M/30, 1564; CCA/DCc/ChAnt/M/31, 1589; CCA/DCc/ChAnt/M/33, 1608;summarised CCA/DCc/ChAnt/M/32 c.1685-1696.59 TNA Charter rolls 16 m13 (8).60 A footpath runs east/west roughly along the probable north boundary of the large Glassenbury Park -TQ757386 near Colliers Green to TQ742397 near Combourne Farm.61 Wyndham(1952); original maps owned by Marcus Sutcliffe.62 TNA SC129/4.63 See Figure 2.3 'Number of parks of similar size', p.49 - see fn.52 for sources of information.4950clear-cut as Suffolk's 200 to 300 acres.64 In Kent 24 parks were that size but the greaternumber of 37 were between 100 and 300 acres, eight were below 100 acres,and 18 above 400 acres.65 Of the active parks, the two smallest covering less than 100acres were Chilham(21b) and South Park(12), and the four largest parks, Eltham Greatpark(31), Sissinghurst(79), Birling(6) and Eastwell(28) each covered between 600 and1000 acres. Excluding Southfrith(93) (often referred to as a forest) and Northfrith((89-91), Kentish parks, with an average area of about 293 acres, but across a wide timespan, were larger than Hertfordshire's parks, which averaged 275 acres.66(iv) Longevity of parksThe longevity chart (Figure 2.4) of the 53 active parks in Elizabethan andJacobean Kent shows that 15 have documentation going back to before 1300, and afurther nine to before 1400.67 Of the other 30, eight have earliest records dating tobetween 1400 and 1499, 15 between 1500 and1599, while six were new parks createdafter 1600.68 These groups have also been plotted alongside the figures for Suffolk(Figure 2.5) which, of 130 parks dating from the eleventh century onwards, had 63surviving until at least 1600, with 18 dating back to before 1300.69 In both Kent andSuffolk, therefore, a substantial group of the earliest parks had been in existence forover 250 years. As only nine earliest records in Kent were licences to create parks,many parks were probably well established before their first chance mention.70 Kentishparks such as Bedgebury(4), Cobham(23), Groombridge(40), Hever(46),Lullingtone(55), Scot's Hall(77) and Sissinghurst(79) appear surprisingly late indocuments after 1540, but are all likely to be much older given the prestige and wealthof the various estate owners, the Guldefords, the Brookes, the Wallers, the Boleyns, theHarts, the Scotts and the Bakers respectively.64 Hoppitt(1992:278).65 See Figure 2.3 'Number of parks of similar size', p.49 - for sources of information see fn.52.66 Rowe(2009:27).67 See Figure 2.4 'Longevity of Kentish active parks, 1558-1625' p.51 - see Park profiles from p.351 forsources of information for each park.68 See Figure 1.4 (Appendix 3 p.310-315) for the earliest dates found for each park.69 See Figure 2.5 'Longevity of active parks in Kent and Suffolk, 1558-1625', p.52; Hoppitt(1992:74).70 CPR 10/5/1341, Birling(6) (or Comford, 7); Sparks(1980:57) 1538, Canterbury (18) park; Hasted I(1797:269) 1583, Eastwell(28); Tester(1991:38) 1610, East Wickham(29); Charter rolls 16, m13 (8),1488, Glassenbury(37); CPR 28/1/1348, Panthurst(67) (or Sevenoaks); Page I (1908:473) 1262,Westenhanger(96) if Hanger site; Lennard(1880:256) 1313-1399, West Wickham(99).5152Economic cycles and political instability affected the overall success of parks,but evidently, despite the peaks and troughs, some parks that survived into the latesixteenth century were more successful and long-lived than others. It has beensuggested that the longest continuing parks tended to be the largest, although whetherthis was because they might have been more economically viable (their size allowingmore flexibility in managing diversification), or whether the owners of smaller parkswere less likely to have the income to support them, is a matter of speculation.71Looking at Kent (Figure 2.4 p.51), the various park sizes, shown in sequence of theearliest documentary evidence, reveal some larger parks to be shorter lived than somesmaller ones, but no strong pattern emerges. There is no obvious link between park sizeand the longevity of the park, at least as far as those parks that survived to 1625 wereconcerned. However, incomplete data makes it unwise to be categorical.71 Rowe(2009:26-27).53Another explanation given for longevity is the link between a principal residenceand its park, with parks lacking a residence falling into disfavour.72 This might wellhave caused some disparkment in Kent before the sixteenth century, but by Tudor timesmost owners had only one park, which in the majority of cases had a mansion within it.Apart from the archbishop and the crown, the few owners who retained more than onepark in the county did eventually concentrate resources on the park linked to theirresidence. The Sidneys at Penshurst disparked their nearby parks at Southpark(72),Leigh(70) and Ashour(69) in favour of Northlands or Penhurst(71) park adjacent toPenshurst Place; while in Sevenoaks, the former archbishop's park of Panthurst(67),with no residence, was disparked after being taken over by the crown, while nearbyKnole(50) park, surrounding the new residence, was extended.73 Evidence at Birling iscirc*mstantial, but it appears that the park at the older residence of Comford(7) wasallowed to lapse in favour of Birling(6) park near the Nevill's new mansion, a couple ofmiles away.74 A park which succumbed towards the end of James I's reign wasHungershall(47) at Tunbridge Wells, retained until then by another branch of the Nevillfamily along with their ancient seat and park in nearby Eridge, in Sussex.75Discussion about longevity hinges on general factors such as political andeconomic stability, as well as continuity of dynasty. However, as will be seen as thisstudy progresses the quirks of family fortune were also influential in ensuring thesurvival of an individual park.76ConclusionParks in Kent display many characteristics that would be familiar to medievalhistorians, which is to be expected with 59 of the 100 parks documented in the period1558 to 1625 originating before 1485. Although there were common factors acrosscounties that influenced the distribution of parks, Kent was not alone in having its ownvariations, which have challenged generalisations. The county's distinct geologicalzones, its proximity to London, its ancient settlement patterns and the large holdings of72 Williamson(2000:19-21); Hoppitt(1992:280-281).73 CKS U1475/E55/1, 1559, Southpark; CKS U1475/T33, leases of 1553, 1572, 1574, Ashour; CKSU1475 T61/2, 1553, Leigh; CKS U1450/T5/40, 1567, Panthurst(67) park then rented out in plots.Lambarde omits Panthurst(67) park; See p.48 for the expansion of Knole(50).74 Lambarde omits Comford(7), but its name appears in accounts (1586-1592 CKS U787/E9), withoutmentioning deer.75 ESRO ABE/52.1, 1633, leases back to 1618 show new tenancies in the former park.76 Hoppitt(1992:280-281) for Suffolk, and further explored for Kent in Chapters 5 p.138 and 6 p.167.5455the archbishop of Canterbury all contributed to a distinctness in the distribution of itsparks.The invaluable research undertaken by Cantor and Hatherly in compiling countylists of medieval parks might lead to the conclusion that Kent, the third largest countywith 54 parks, had fewer parks for its size than other counties.77 As can be seen inFigure 2.6, compared with the figures for the 17 counties covering the southeast sectorof England, this figure is the fifth highest, but well below Sussex with 114, Essex with104, Hampshire with 66, Suffolk with 65, and Buckinghamshire equalling Kent's figureof 54.78 However, although no systematic search was undertaken, references to 103medieval parks in Kent have been found, almost doubling the previous total, therebyincreasing the overall density of its parks.79 This higher number of parks puts Kentmore on a par with Sussex and Essex, but until figures for those and other counties areupdated no realistic comparisons can be made, because all Cantor and Hatherly's parklists are likely to be underestimates, as Rowe, for example, has confirmed forHertfordshire finding nearly 70 medieval parks compared with 46 listed by Cantor andHatherly.80Despite the scarcity of information a picture is emerging about some ofcharacteristics of Kent 's parks, but without other county studies, it is impossible tojudge whether or not Kent's parks were typical.77 Cantor & Hatherly(1983:42-43 & Addendum).78 See Figure 2.6 'Number of medieval parks compared with the number of parks on Speed's map of 1611for 17 counties' p.54. The counties all lie in the S.E sector of England as selected for Figure 2.1 p.43.79 See Figure 1.4 (Appendix 3 pp.310-315) and Park profiles (from p.351) for earliest references to eachpark.80 Rowe(2009:4-5)56PART II – PARK MANAGEMENTReconstructing park management has been a challenge because referencesrelevant to Kent lie scattered among the accounts, correspondence, legal papers orproperty deeds of family estate papers and state documents. However, since this is thefirst detailed county study of park management in the late sixteenth/early seventeenthcenturies, it is considered worthwhile to put such information as there is on record forfuture historians to build on, and to enable comparisons to be made with medievalpractices.The three chapters comprising Part II consider the management of active parkscontaining deer, both under gentry and noble and under royal ownership, and the fate ofdisparked parks in the years after the removal of deer. Chapter Three concentrates onactive parks owned by the gentry and noblemen. Aspects to be covered include thetreatment and cost of upkeep of park boundaries; the complex role of the deer keeper andthe care of the deer; other productive activities that could be accommodated within parks;together with the cost of the upkeep of deer parks. Chapter Four focuses on aspects of themanagement of active parks retained by the crown, including the role of the keeper of thepark and the maintenance of the royal parks at Greenwich(39) and at Eltham(31-33).Lastly, Chapter Five explores the definition and process of disparkment, the managementof disparked parks, and the longevity of disparked parks as distinct units in thecountryside.57PART II - CHAPTER THREETHE MANAGEMENT OF PARKS OWNED BY THE GENTRYDespite the documentary limitation, it has been possible to build up an overallpicture of this specialised aspect of Elizabethan and Jacobean estate management, whichhas hitherto received little attention. Even where there are substantial collections offamily documents, such as for the Sidneys of Penshurst, the Brookes of Cobham, theNevills of Birling and Hungershall or the Sackvilles of Knole, only random documentsrefer directly to the day-to-day management of their parks.Before the Elizabethan period, owners and their servants relied on centuries ofpractical experience in running deer parks. Birrell has found evidence in 'The TutburyCowcher' of 1415 and in various medieval sources about management techniques overfawning, rutting and feed, and the permitting of customary acts in parks or stock grazingwhich did not disturb the deer.1 She has argued that a body of practice and managementdeveloped as the Middle Ages advanced. There were, however, no printed manualswholly devoted to the subject.Hunting skills were fully covered in books such as Gervase Gascoigne's 'TheNoble Arte of Venerie or Hunting,' which appeared in 1575, but the author scarcelymentioned parks except by reference to the various habitats preferred by deer in generaland during particular seasons.2 William Harrison included a section on parks inHolinshed's 'Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland' which, although digressive,covered important topics such as the history of parks (albeit unreliable), their greatnumber and size, the park pales, and the depopulating effect of their enclosure.3However, there was little on park management. Much the same can be said of GervaseMarkham's 'Maison Rustique, or The countrey farme' printed in 1616 as a translationfrom French of Charles Estienne's book of the same name, although Markham addedother works so that the husbandry of France, Italy and Spain were 'reconciled and made1 Birrell(1992:112-118).2 Gascoigne(1575); Shirley(1867:8,15) points out that this was based on earlier works - William Twici,huntsman to Edward II, Treatise on the arte of Hunting (Daventry, reprint, 1843), Dame Juliana Berners,The Book of St. Albans (St. Albans, 1496), G. Tillander (editor) Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royneRacio (Paris, 1932).3 Holinshed(1587:204-208).58to agree with ours here in England.'4 'Maison Rustique, or The countrey farme' coveredmore practicalities than Harrison's work, but with the thrills of the hunt taking updisproportionate space. Both Harrison and Markham emphasised the need to enclose theparks securely with oak paling or walls of brick, stone or slate. In describing the interiorof the park Markham considered the requirements of the deer for adequate shelter, foodand water as well as extolling its varied landscape of hills, plains and valleys coveredwith woodland, timber trees and coppice, grassy launds and thickets.5 The role of thedeer keeper in protecting the deer from poachers and the form of his lodge and associatedoutbuildings were also touched on.6The management of parks thus far outlined centred on providing an environmentconducive to a healthy herd of deer as well as maintaining a congenial landscape inwhich to hunt. But Elizabethan and Jacobean parks, like their medieval counterparts,could be multi-functional, encompassing within them other livestock enterprisesdescribed by Williamson as 'intermediate forms of exploitation' that were neither thehunting of wild species nor the husbandry of domestic breeds, but something inbetween.7 Evidence for the continuation of these activities into later Tudor times can befound in Kent, as elsewhere no doubt, with rabbit warrens, ponds for fish and wild fowl,and heronries; dovecotes were likely to be present although no documentation has beenfound for Kent. Timber and wood resources were also valued. Parks might be used forshared grazing alongside deer, or be divided into enclosed compartments that could beused for arable and fodder crops as well as for pasture or timber production. However,exactly what mixture of activities occurred in individual parks cannot be assessed fromthe information available.By managing elements compatible with the nurturing of deer, the park becameless of a financial drain and provided fresh food for the larder, which was especiallyuseful when catering for the large households concomitant with the status of parkowning families. Sir Richard Sackville's household of 1613 to1624 at Knole was4 Markham(1616), citing frontispiece. 'Parks, warrens and hunting' are covered in The Seventh Bookpp.644-713.5 Laund = an open space among woods (http://dictionary.oed.com.)6The role of the deer keeper in combating poachers will be examined in Chapter Eight.7 Harvey(2002:48) citing T. Williamson, 'Fish, fur and feather: Man and Nature in the post-medievallandscape' in K. Barker & T. Darvill (eds.) Making English Landscape, Bournemouth UniversityOccasional Paper 3 (1997:92-117); Rowe(2009:23-24,30-33) elements of the medieval park covered forHertfordshire include rabbit warrens, fishponds, dovecotes, agistment, pannage, fa*ggots, bark, charcoal.59probably larger than most. At meal times food had to be supplied for the lord's table, theparlour table, the clerks' table in the hall, the nursery, the long table in the hall, thelaundry maids' table and for the kitchen and scullery staff – in all about 120 diners.8Twenty-one items of food provided 'of our own' were listed at Penshurst in 1624. Fivewere cereals and vegetables, two dairy products and 14 were meat, fish or game, ofwhich rabbit, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, wild duckling, carp, pike and chub might wellhave been bred or found in the park.9In Chapter Three the main role of the park for deer will first be considered,starting with the type of park paling used in Kent and the cost of erection (i). The role ofthe deer keeper (ii) will follow, including how he saw to the needs of the deer, officiatedover the disposal of deer and venison, oversaw the hunting arrangements, but hisimportant function in guarding the deer within the park will be covered more fully in PartIV Chapter Eight.10 The diverse uses of the park (iii) apart from deer keeping next will beoutlined, concluding with a discussion about the costs of maintaining a deer park (iv).(i) The upkeep of park boundariesA basic requirement of any park was to have impenetrable barrier to enclose thedeer and to keep intruders out. Harrison noted that parks were 'generallie inclosed withstrong pale made of oke, of which kind of wood there is great store cherished in thewoodland countries.'11 Overwhelming evidence for Kent is that parks were fenced, withoccasional stretches of hedging. The only known brick walled park was that of royalGreenwich(39), built between 1619 and 1623.12 In 1610, Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle,contemplated having a stone wall round Penshurst(71) park, as a status symbol, but thelocal stone proved to be both unsuitable and expensive.13 Elizabethan maps, such as ofCanterbury(18) park and Hemsted(44), depict substantial fences with upright, touchingwooden pales.14 These fences were set over six feet to be higher than a deer's leap. Suchenclosures crossing miles of countryside were visually formidable, especially in areas,such as around Eltham (32-34, 53, 95) and Otford where parks(49, 62-64) lay in close8Phillips I (1930:273-276).9 CKS U1475/A27/7.10 See Chapter Eight p.237 onwards.11 Holinshed(1587:204).12 Webster(1902:3-4).13 Shaw(1942:240) 14/10/1610; ibid. p.266, 6/5/1611.14 See Plate 3.1 p.60, CCA M29 midC16th; SuffRO HA43/T501/242, 1599.60Plate 3.1The park pale(a) Map of Canterbury(18) park mid. C16th (CCA M29) showing both sides ofthe park pale erected in about 1538. St Martin's Church is lower right and apublic footpath around the church outside the line of the pale remains.By kind permission of Canterbury Cathedral Archives61proximity.15 The fence was a practical necessity, but must also have reinforcedsymbolically the power, wealth and exclusivity of the park owners.16Fences comprised pales, rails, posts and shores, all of which had to be hewn andshaped by hand, transported to site and then erected.17 According to Thomas Golding,the steward at Penshurst, the fence required good foundations and should stand six toseven feet 'high, strong and thick.'18 When calculating the cost of a fence in 1610 hefound that a ton of timber, at 11 shillings a ton, would make about 200 pales or beenough to set three or 3¼ rods of fencing at the most.19 Once constructed, the paleneeded constant upkeep, although it has been said that a well-constructed oak pale wouldlast 100 years.20Accounts for new fencing around Boughton Malherbe's South(12) park in 1567and Halden(41) park in 1571 give more details about the work and the cost involved.21At South(12) park five professional palers, not only made the pales, posts, rails andshores, but also constructed the fence from March to November 1567. Not knowing thewidth of each pale the circuit of the park cannot be exactly calculated, but a conservativefigure would be over 5000 pales to make just under three miles of fencing round thepark. Oak timber was felled in local woods and worked by the palers, before the readymade components were carted by the carter and his team, who were paid three shillings aday.A parliamentary statute of 1563 had set down various standard wages, whichwere proclaimed at Maidstone market on 23 September the same year.22 These ratesincluded the piece rate payment for setting a fence with one rail and levelled top at fivepence a rod, and four pence if the top was not trimmed or shaped.23 Park fences weremore complicated than field fences because the extra height required more rails, posts15 See Map 2.1 'Density of parks in west Kent', p.45.16 See Part IV, Chapters Seven and Eight, pp.183-301, for positive and negative perceptions of parks.17 Shore = a prop or strut (http://dictionary.oed.com).18 Shaw (1942:266) 6/5/1611.19 The width of the pales cannot be calculated from this because the ton of timber for one rod of fencingwould include that used for the rails, posts and shores as well as for the pales.20 Shirley(1867:238).21 BL Add.Mss.42715; CKS U1475/E23/2.22 Eveleigh Woodruff(1897:316-317).23 Rod = 5½ yards.62and shores for support. Nevertheless, the palers' rates of pay at Boughton Malherbeappear to have been generous, perhaps because Thomas Wotton required speed, asshown by the number of men involved and the preparation of all the components beforeerection. On 9 August 1567 the paler, George Hudson, was paid four shillings for every100 pales, although Robert Rennet, also a paler, received only one shilling (with nospecific provision mentioned for food or drink). After that Robert Rennet continued tobe employed at piece rates with a wider remit until the end of November. He madeposts, pales and rails and set them up with shoring at ten pence a rod for 300 rods on 30November 1567, but another payment on the same date, and thereafter, was reckoned atseven pence a rod, always providing his own refreshment. The Boughton Malherbeaccount presents ambiguities, which open up a number of interpretations. The taskdescription for providing the parts for the paling and setting it up did not vary, but therates of pay did. Perhaps apparently similar jobs posed more problems because ofdifficult terrain or weather conditions. The lower payments might have reflected thelower rates of pay in the winter months, or that food and drink were provided as part ofthe remuneration.24 The Boughton Malherbe document does not indicate whetherGeorge Hudson and Robert Rennet worked alone, but they might have been selfemployed, master craftsmen, who shared their earnings with their employees.25 If thiswas the case, George Hudson's team might have been larger than Robert Rennet's, hencethe differing rates of pay.26Some workmen were better at bargaining their rates of pay, as is illustrated atHalden(41) park. There 'The Booke of Paling the Parke with the repairing of the Pondesand Standyings' named four palers who, from May to August 1571, were each paid oneshilling a day for making and setting the pale.27 During this period, the wage bill for 98man-days totalled £10 18s 0d. However, the accountant then made a note that, on 20October 1571, a bargain had been struck with two palers, Webb and Hawes, who were tobe paid by output or piece rate rather than by the day, and they were engaged to completethe entire circuit of the park with a seven-foot high fence. Webb and Hawes agreed to a24 Woodruff(1897:316-317) a labourer's daily rate of pay was set at four pence, with meat and drinkprovided, or nine pence, without meat and drink, from Easter to Michaelmas, and three pence and sixpence, respectively, from Michaelmas to Easter.25 Tawney & Power I (1924:334).26 Woodward(1981:28-46).27 CKS U1475/E23/2; Tawney & Power I (1924:334) which gives the rates for a carpenter inBuckinghamshire in 1561 as 9d a day or 6d, with meat and drink, for the period Easter to Michaelmas and7d and 4d, with meat and drink, from Michaelmas to Easter.63rate of ten pence for every 100 pales made (a lower rate than any of the palers atBoughton Malherbe,12). Within that calculation, it was agreed that five-foot lengths ofrail were to equate to the cost of three pales, and each post and shore to two pales. Inaddition, the palers were to be paid four pence for every rod of fence erected. Webb andHawes then worked for the next 20 months, until late summer 1573, using the equivalentof 27,922 pales, a proportion of these being the agreed equivalent calculation of rails,posts and shores. The total amount paid to the two men for this contract was just under£43, but it is impossible to calculate from the account what it would have cost by thedaily rate of pay adopted at the beginning of the enterprise. The timber for the fencecame from 70 trees felled from within the grounds of Halden(41) park, thus reducing thecost of raw materials. How the pales were attached to the rails is not mentioned foreither South(12) park or Halden(41) so perhaps they were pegged or mortised becausethe accounts did not itemise nails.28In the Knole(50) accounts for 1629, the paler received 1s 2d for making 100 palesand the pale setter 2s 10d per rod for repairing the park fence, better remuneration thatfor the Elizabethan palers.29 If this was typical, rates of pay had risen since the 1570s,but this might not have kept pace with the rate of inflation.30 Palliser stresses thedifficulty in assessing the standard of living because detailed studies suggest 'no simplepattern of gain and loss in terms either of status groups or of economic groups.' Heconcluded that standards of living enjoyed by the individual craftsmen might have variedaccording to the degree of their commercial success or their ability to supplement theirincome in other spheres of economic activity.31Medieval park boundaries were delineated by a bank on which the fence waserected. The bank was often associated with a ditch running alongside, the ditch beingcreated when earth was thrown up to form the bank.32 Accounts amounting to £7 9s10½d for this type of earthwork exist for the first enclosure of Leeds(54) castle park in28 CKS U269/A41, 1629, 300 nails cost 18d and thousands were used to repair Knole park paling.29 Ibid.30 Woodward(1981:29) citing Phelps, Brown and Hopkins who estimated that from a base of 100 in thethird quarter of the fifteenth century real wages fell to an average of 44 during the 1590s, with a low pointof 29 in 1597, and that real wages did not substantially improve until the second half of the seventeenthcentury.31 Palliser(1992:176) gives broad reviews of the various interpretations of historians, Rogers, Marx,Tawney, Stone; Woodward(1981:39-42).32 Rackham(1976:115-116); see Plate 3.2 p.64 and Plate 3.3 p.66.64Plate 3.2Park boundary earthworks(a) Part of the original south boundary of Leeds(54) park constructed in1364 -Patricia Stroud. 8 January 2005(b) South boundary bank at Broxham(17) park, looking west to eart. Theinterior of the park would have been to the left. Earliest reference to parkis 1294. 12 March 2005651364.33 If left undisturbed, as is the original southern boundary at Leeds, these banks andditches endure in the landscape and traces of them can be used to determine the area andboundaries of ancient parks.34 However, it would appear from fieldwork anddocumentary evidence that parks from the early Tudor period were enclosed without theextra labour of throwing up a bank.35 The only documentary evidence for creating anew ditch was at South(12) park, Boughton Malherbe, where, for reasons unexplained,32 rods of ditch, set with hawthorn hedge, were dug to form part of the park boundary,instead of the oak fence which enclosed the rest.36 According to the 1563 statute a ditchfour feet wide at the top, two feet wide at the base and four feet deep would have cost12d a rod.37 As the Boughton Malherbe ditch of 32 rods cost £1 16s 8d or just under 14da rod, it was probably close to these dimensions.Both at South(12) park, Boughton Malherbe, and at Halden(41) the entireperimeters of the parks were re-fenced. The old pale round Penshurst(71) park, in 'verygreat decaye' by 1610, was also completely repaled over a period of two years.38 Moreusually, fences were regularly checked and certain sections repaired as was necessary.Robert Nynne, bailiff at Birling(6), accounted for 202 rods of fence mended in 1586 atthe cost of £5 10s 0d.39 Canterbury(18) park, newly paled in 1547, seems to have lastedover half a century until the need for substantial repairs in 1605, when nearly £8 wasspent on it.40As the pale was a major potential expense, the tenant might be givenresponsibility for its upkeep when park leases were drawn up. On 27 November 1607,the lease for Bedgebury(4) park, with an annual rent of £30, stipulated that the owners,the Culpeppers, would ensure the pale was in good order prior to the commencement of33 Cleggett(1992:50) Chapter II Appendix I, has transcripts of the receipts and payments for the manor ofLeeds, 1364.34 Good examples remain along the north boundary of Birling(6), south boundary of Broxham(17) park,south boundary of Old(19) park, Canterbury, north boundary of the former greater Glassenbury(37) park,north and south boundaries of Ightham(48) park, south boundary of Leeds(54) park, beyond its presentboundary.35 None was found, after one visit, at Canterbury(18), Cobham(23), Knole(50), Penshurst(69) or Scot'sHall(77) parks.36 BL Add.Mss.42715.37 Eveleigh Woodruff(1897:317).38 Shaw(1942:302,308) 13/11/1611, 21/11/1611; Shaw & Owen(1962:25) 2/3/1612.39 ESRO ABE/18/R/1.40 Salisbury papers, Accounts 6/35.66Plate 3.3Park boundary earthworks(a) West/east profile across remains of park bank with external ditch ofthe east boundary of Henden(45) park, looking south/north. To the leftPatricia Waterman stands inside the park and Susan Pittman (right)stands on the outside face of the park bank. 16 October 2005(b) Looking west/east along the south boundary external ditch ofIghtham park. The park interior would have been to the left.14 August 200567the lease, but thereafter the lessee would be required to keep up running repairs.41However, the landlords would cooperate with the lessee over unforeseen damage to thefence, such as if 'some great part thereof be blown down by some extraordinary greatwind or tempest.'42Apart from being brought down during storms, park palings were vulnerable todeliberate damage by intruders. Several court of Star Chamber cases mentioned fencesbeing pulled down to gain illegal entrance into parks.43 One such colourful episodeoccurred in Canterbury on 22 May 1609 when a large crowd pulled down 300 to 400pales in ten to 12 places around Canterbury(18) park, and once inside rampaged aboutdisturbing the deer before leaving.44Entrances into parks were kept to the minimum for security purposes so greatattention was paid to the gates. These were made of wood, but had strong iron fittings.At Halden the palers made an unspecified number of gates for five shillings, while theiron fittings for the three gates for South(12) park, Boughton Malherbe, were made byThomas Porter who was paid 15 shillings for making hooks, thimbles, hasps and staplesand 1s 8d more for 'three large fair padlocks for the same gates.'45 At Hever(46) in 1560there were two padlocked 'great gates' into the park with duplicate keys, enabling JohnLennard, the lessee, and his park sub-tenant independent access.46 At Knole(50) thesteward reported that the town gate and all the other gates round the park were lockednight and day.47 Despite all best efforts gates were still broken down by determinedunlawful hunters, such as on the night of 18 May 1600 when Cullens gate atPenshurst(71) park was pulled or lifted off its hooks and the padlock broken to enableculprits abducting the deer keeper to escape on horseback.4841 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44.42 Ibid.43 TNA STAC5/S2/20, STAC5/S21/31, STAC5/S68/33, STAC5/S74/15, STAC5/S41/5. see also ChapterEight, pp.236-330.44 TNA STAC8/16/2; see also Chapter Eight p.281-282.45 BL Add.Mss.42715; thimble = the ring or socket in the heel of a gate which turns on the hook or pin inthe gate-post (http://dictionary.oed.com): see Plate 3.4 p.67.46 CKS U1450/T6/10.47 Barrett-Lennard(1908:141).48 TNA STAC5/S68/33.68Plate 3.4Access into parks(a) A substantial Victorian wooden park gate, which might have beenbased on earlier gates at the Park Gate entrance to Lullingstone(55) park.Mildred Reeves c.1930 was the daughter of the then deer keeper. Themild steel park pale dates to the 1890s as does the ladder stile givingpublic access along a feeder track to the Pilgrim's Way along the southfoothills of the North Downs.(b) Deer leap, looking from outside into a park. Illustration from E. P.Shirley English Deer Parks (1867).69In some parks, especially near forests or chases where their installation required acrown licence, deer-leaps were installed along the boundaries to allow escaped or wilddeer into the park. 49 At the point of the deer-leap the fence was lower on the non-parkside, but steeply sloped down on the park side so that deer inside were unable to jumpout, but those outside could jump in. No doubt there were such features in Kentish parks,but the only evidence so far come to light is for Halstead(42) park, created in the 1620s,with place-names Great and Little Dearleap first mentioned in 1792, where no other deerpark had been in the vicinity.50The occasional stile rendered the park more vulnerable to trespass, but mighthave existed to honour ancient rights of way even older than the park. One Victorianladder stile still in situ at Lullingstone(55) park allowed walkers across the park along afeeder path to the Pilgrims' Way at Otford.51 It was unlikely that this route, which musthave pre-dated the park, could have been eradicated or easily diverted. Elsewhere stilesmight have allowed estate workers easier access when going about their daily activities,but also aided the movements of poachers. At Cobham(23) Humfrey Latter, a notoriouspoacher, when chased by deer keepers jumped over a stile to escape from the park.52Conspirators wishing to enter Penshurst(71) park chose to meet corrupt under keepers atTerry's stile.53 Examples like this explain why park owners were often anxious toextinguish footpaths across parkland, but the extinction of user rights was likely to becontested and cause local resentment.Thomas Wotton seems to have made a deliberate decision to leave a footpath onits old line, but outside the new South(12) park, perhaps to minimise inconvenience tothe users. He spent 4s 2d for five days labour repairing this footpath, 'which way aforelay or went through the west side ... ... of the lands lying within the said park.' 54 Wherediversions impinged on established rights or involved other landowners more formalagreements had to be drawn up. In 1606 at Mersham Hatch(61), where the Knatchbullfamily gradually acquired land for a park, the dean and chapter of Canterbury and thenthe manorial court baron allowed Sir Norton Knatchbull to enclose a small area of49 Higham(2003:59-65); see Plate 3.4 p.68.50 Kitchener(2000:146).51 Pittman(1983:72-73).52 CKS QM/SB252, 1598.53 CKS U1475/L17.54 BL Add.Mss.42715.70Plate 3.5Access to park boundaries and around parks(a) Freeboard strip outside north boundary of the earlier largerGlassenbury(37) park c.1488, looking east/west. The freeboard drops intoa ditch on the park side, to the left. 23 May 2005(b) The other side (or park sided) of the hedge on the left above. The trackis a public footpath and runs alongside the north park boundary for most ofits length. The hedgerow shrub featured nearest to the camera is the rare'Wild Service Tree' (sorbus torminalis), an indicator species of ancientwoodland. 23 May 200571common and to divert the highway by the gate of his house, as long as he gave upanother piece of land to become common land.55 A major highway diversion requiredthe permission of the crown under an enquiry of Ad Quod Damnum, which took intoaccount the interests of the crown and other road users. Just such a grant was given in1639 to Sir John Finch, who enlarged Canterbury(18) park by taking in land crossed bypublic roads, providing other ways of the same width and length as alternative routes.56The constant necessity to check and repair the park paling meant that it had to beeasily accessible either from within or outside the park. The external strip wassometimes called the freeboard and tended to be one perch wide.57 Thus former parkboundaries are sometimes still evident in the landscape, being defined by footpaths orroads, at least in part.58 However, it would need intensive fieldwork for each park todiscover, if it were possible, whether the footpath and road network pre-dated anddetermined the park boundaries, or was altered to accommodate a park, or whether itevolved from people having to skirt round parks in order to carry out their routinebusiness. In Kent there are numerous examples of park boundaries running alongsideroads, tracks and footpaths, including Cobham(23), Henden(45), Hungershall(47),Kemsing(49), Lullingstone(55), Lympne(57), Lynsted(58), Otford Great(62) andLittle(63) parks, Panthurst(67), Penshurst Northlands(71) and Southpark(72),Shurland(78), Sissinghurst(79), Stowting(82), Throwley(87), Westenhanger(98) andWest Wickham(99).(ii) Deer keeping and deer keepersIt might be expected that deer keeping would be well documented because of thehigh status of parks, centred on their role in producing deer either for sport or forvenison. However, documentation is disappointingly sparse. The later period is notexceptional in this dearth, as Birrell found in her research into medieval deer farming. 59She attributed poor and uneven documentation partly to the peculiar position of deerfarming, which was taken seriously without being commercialised, and thought it easy tosee why research into the subject had been neglected. Nevertheless, she persevered in55 CCA-DCc-ChAnt/M/33.56 TNA C202/21/1.57 Rackham(2003:193); perch = 5½ yards; see Plate 3.5 p.70.58 Hoskins(1977:94,237); Beresford(1957:19); see Plate 3.6 p.72, and Chapter Two, pp.39-42.59 Birrell(1992:115).72Plate 3.6Access to park boundaries and around parks(a) The road running round outside the southwest corner of Lynsted(58)park. 16 May 2005(b) Footpath running outside part of the east boundary of WestWickham(99) park. 14 January 200573her endeavour to shed some light onto deer farming by looking at a wide range ofsources, while also recognising that the material was difficult to treat quantitatively. Herexample is followed here, and because so little research has been done into the role of thedeer keepers and deer keeping in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods this focus onKent will help to fill a gap.60The role of the deer keeper was complex, and was likely to vary according to thesize of the park and the status of the owner.61 Deer keepers were given wideresponsibilities and had discretion over the management of the deer. They held aposition of trust, yet their diligence in looking after the deer was monitored throughperiodic checks of herd numbers and make-up. They cared for the day-to-day physicalneeds of the deer and maintained the general health of the herd. In addition theyorganised gifts of venison and arranged hunting for the owner, which required skills suchas stalking and tracking in the field and the ability to communicate and deal with men ofall ranks.62 Deer keepers would also need to guard the deer against illegal hunting, forwhich it was essential to have physical and moral toughness in face of the bribes, threatsand force exerted by determined intruders. Deer keeping was, therefore, a multi-facetedjob, involving a great deal of variety. Yet deer keepers held an unenviable position insociety being subservient to park owners and their stewards and bailiffs on the one hand,but on the other, being treated warily by any in the local community suspicious ofauthority. The sense of deer keepers' apartness would have been reinforced by theisolation of living in a lodge in the park, cut off from wider society.63The value of the full remuneration of deer keepers remains elusive, and wouldhave varied from park to park, so it is difficult to assess whether it was sufficient toencourage loyalty to the park owner, or if its insufficiency would reinforce a temptationto collude with poachers. Manning considered many deer keepers to be ex-poachersdrawn in the main from the artisan class, but limited information about the backgrounds60 Manning(1993:28-33,189-195) contains sections on keepers and is an exception.61 Deer keepers rather than park keepers are being discussed in this Section. Park keepers were nobles orgentlemen appointed by the crown or, more rarely, by magnates with several parks, who fulfilled asupervisory and more honorary function, see Chapter Four pp.119-132.62 For gifts of venison see Chapter Seven pp.193-200.63 See Plate 3.7 p.75 and Plate 3.8 p.80.74of deer keepers in Kent does not endorse this view.64 While some deer keepers wereundoubtedly tempted to aid poachers, others remained loyal and fulfilled their dutiesconscientiously, although where the balance of extremes lies remains a matter ofspeculation. It is to issues of the background of deer keepers and their income to whichattention will first turn. This will be followed by the part the deer keeper played incarrying out the wishes of park owners concerning venison gifts and hunting, beforedealing with practical aspects of deer management. The deer keeper's role in defendingthe deer will be fully covered in Chapter Eight.65The names of about 37 Kentish deer keepers and lesser park workers crop up invarious documents, most, it must be said, related to court cases.66 Ten parks arerepresented, with nine names from Penshurst(71) park, seven from Sissinghurst(79)park, five from Knole(50) park, three from Birling(6), Cobham(23), Lyminge(56) andScot's Hall(77) parks, two from Canterbury(18) park and one each from Lullingstone(55)and Otford Great(62) parks.67 Evidence indicates that deer keeping skills passed downfamily generations, with the Jeggers and Wickes, fathers and sons, serving the Brookesin their parks at Cobham(23) and Canterbury(18) and the Terry family at Penshurst(71).68The Smith brothers, John and Henry, worked at Penshurst(71) and three Smiths ofunknown kinship served at Knole(50).69 Philip and Edward Eastland worked together atLyminge(56) as did Christopher and John Crippes at Penshurst(71).70In order to uncover the backgrounds of these deer keepers, possible wills weretracked down, although the only positively matching will was of Robert Terry, longserving deer keeper at Penshurst(71), whose death in 1621 elicited genuine sorrow fromhis employer, Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester.71 The will of Thomas Smalman was the64 Manning(1993:190-191).65 See Chapter Eight p.237 onwards.66 For names appearing more than once, reference might be to the same person, or a similarly namedperson.67 The job description given is as it appears in the documents.68 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1; CKS U1475/L17, U1475/E47, Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:232-233).69 CKS U1475/L17; co*ckburn(1995:299) AC35/32/4/1806, 13/8/1589.70 CKS QM/SB/710; CKS U1475/L17.71 I am very grateful for the genealogical assistance of Matthew Copus; Hanney, Kinnamon &Brennan(2005:232-233) letters 313, 314 of 9 & 12/5/1621, Viscount Lisle to wife.75Plate 3.7The deer keeper(a) Detail from the map of Scot's Hall(77) park, c.1656 (CKS U274 P1)showing a deer keeper with stave, a dog running in front of him and deer andrabbit bounding in the park. The widely spaced pollard trees are typical of thewood pasture habitat of parkland. Although beyond the period of this studythis is the earliest depiction of a Kent deer keeper found to date.By kind permission of the Centre for Kentish Studies, Kent Archives andLocal Studies Service, Kent County Council(b) Lodge House, theoldest part of the housewas formerly the lodge ofthe deer keeper of Scot'sHall(77) park. The lodgedominates a hilloverlooking the park.9 February 200576only will found of a stated deer keeper.72 He was deer keeper at Otford Great(62) park,and his will of 25 June 1583 showed that he held several leases for property and land,including the lease of the mill at Otford. On this basis he can be classed above anartisan, and more likely to have been of yeoman stock. Certainly, his daughter wasmarried into the solid yeoman family of Petley.73 A probate account and nine wills, butno inventories, were found of men with similar names as known deer keepers, in parisheslocal to the parks in which they served, but without their occupation as deer keeper beingspecifically stated.74 These wills probably belong to the deer keepers, because thesurnames, except for Edward Smith, are generally uncommon and no other families withthose surnames have been found in the various localities near to their employment. Evenif the will does not match the actual man, there is a possibility that he held some degreeof kinship with the will-maker and so might have shared a similar background.However, interpretation of this limited range of wills is cautious because the job status ofthe individual at death is unknown, and the full value of possessions at death cannot beascertained without surviving inventories. All that given, some tentative observationscan be made.Most deer keepers are not known by name, nor have all the wills survived; otherdeer keepers dying intestate perhaps came from humbler origins or had little to will, sothis sample of testate deer keepers, if the correct wills have been identified, might beatypical. These will-making deer keepers preferred the appellation of 'yeoman', in somecases perhaps aspiration rather than reality. The definition of yeomen has been shown tobe very fluid, with not all yeomen being either respected freeholders or involved inagriculture.75 However, Lambarde wrote of the happy state of Kentish yeomen whomight be as wealthy as the gentry, yet not so entitled, and Harrison considered yeomen topossess 'a certain pre-eminence and more estimation' among the common people.7672 PCCprob/11/65, 1583, Thomas Smalman.73 PCCprob/11/127, 1611, Edward Petley.74 PRC/16/218, 1638, Henry Cliffe; PCC prob/11/180, 1614, John Crippes; DRb/Pwr22/273 & DRa/PW1,1638, Walter Double; PRC/17/53/227 & PRC/16/125/L1, 1604, Edward Leedes; PCC prob/11/133 & 134,1618, Richard Polhill; PRC/12/13/f126 & PRC/0/3/f59, Robert Reames admon. and probate account;PRC/17/67/106, 1627, Philip Round(Rowne); PRS/W/14/209, 1616, Edward Smith; DRb/Pw25, 1622,Robert Terry.75 Bowers(1994:150).76 Ibid. p.153; ibid. p.149.77Among the group of ten will-makers five were described as 'yeoman', one as'labourer', two as 'gentlemen' and two provided no status. 'Labourer' Henry Cliffe fromTenterden, perhaps under keeper at Sissinghurst(79), achieved a degree of financialsecurity in his lifetime and for his family after his death, leaving a total of £7 6s 0d tofour children, part of which was towards securing an apprenticeship. The 'yeomen'covered a range of wealth. Yeoman Robert Terry's will was of the simplest kind, leavingall his goods and chattels to his wife, so his wealth cannot be surmised, but the Terryfamily were longstanding tenants of the Sidney family, occupying Ensfield farm adjacentto Penshurst(71) park.77 The other yeomen were Walter Double of Speldhurst(Penshurst,71), Philip Eastland of Lyminge (Lyminge, 56), Edward Leedes of Benenden(Sissinghurst,79) and Edward Smith of Chevening (Knole, 50). Of the five, PhilipEastland appeared not to own property, but left all the household effects to his wife,made bequests of fifteen ewe sheep to the younger members of his family and monetarybequests of £27; Edward Leedes and Edward Smith owned their own houses andadjacent land and left monetary bequests to the value of £40 to £50; while WalterDouble's three sons each inherited lands and tenements in Leigh, Tonbridge andSouthborough in Kent and Framfield in Sussex, out of which they were to contribute £8 ayear to support their mother. John Crippes might have come from yeoman stock if hewas related to John Crippes, the elder, of Edenbridge (Penshurst, 71) who left just under£80 in monetary bequests and enough land in Edenbridge in Kent and Crowborough andRotherfield in Sussex, to distribute between his three sons, one of whom was called John.The other deer keeper without attributed status was Philp Rowne (Round) of Cranbrook,whose will equates to that of 'labourer' Henry Cliffe or 'yeoman' Philip Eastland in thathe left just under £30 in monetary bequests, and does not seem to have owned land at hisdeath.Richard Polhill, described as 'gentleman' in his will of 1618, worked atPenshurst(71), and Robert Reames was deer keeper at Scot's Hall(77); both seem to havemore modest means at their deaths than yeomen like Edward Leedes or Edward Smith.The Polhills were a prolific family in west Kent with several branches owning extensiveland holdings.78 Richard Polhill is difficult to fit into this dynasty, but he marriedSindonie, heiress of Philpotts, and after 1594 they lived in the lodge in Leigh(70) park,77 Zell(1994:43).78 Bennett(1958:19).78which he rented along with 500 acres of former parkland from the Sidney family.79 Hebequeathed his son all his agricultural tackle, including carts and ploughs.80 Hisdaughters were to divide the household goods between them after the death of theirmother, who received the undefined residue of the estate, saving a £5 bequest to theirgranddaughter.Robert Reames, was in all probability a gentleman by birth, if he was thegrandson of Johanne Reames, sister of Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, but apparently leftlittle after his death.81 Johanne Reames' son, Stephen Reames, was cousin to ElizabethBaker, later wife of Sir Thomas Scott of Scot's Hall, and this distant family connectionmight explain Robert Reames' appointment as deer keeper at Scot's Hall. An indicationthat Robert Reames might have been Stephen Reames' son is he had a brother calledStephen, who administered his estate and returned a probate account after his death in1613.82 Robert Reames possessed moveable goods valued at 34 shillings, while his debtsamounted to nearly £40, including part payment of £20 to Sir John Scott for rent andother duties.From the tantalisingly limited evidence available, deer keepers could come fromsolid families within the local community, rather than from the artisan origins attributedto them by Manning.83 It would not be surprising to find, as with all walks of life, honestand dishonest deer keepers, but there is no firm evidence that they belonged to thepoaching fraternity before appointment, an issue to be explored in Chapter Eight.84The remuneration enjoyed by deer keepers included elements such as theprovision of accommodation, wages and perquisites in kind and in fees. The total valueof this mixed package cannot be calculated, and in any case would vary according topark size, herd size and the extent of the opportunities for earning extra fees.Deer keepers were provided with lodges inside the park so they lived in closeproximity to the deer. Markham described the ideal location for a lodge as being in a79 CKS U1475/61/4, 1594, & CKS U1475/T61/6, 1615.80 PCC prob/11/133 & 134, 1618, Richard Polhill.81 PCCprob/11/42, Sir John Baker; PCC prob/11/44, Johanne Reames.82 Nicolson(1964:13); PRC/12/13/f126 & PRC/20/3/f59 admon. & probate account, Robert Reames.83 Manning(1993:190-191).84 See Chapter Eight pp.237-301.79prominent position 'where the deere take greatest delight to feed.'85 He anticipated thatthe lodge might become the target of unscrupulous 'stealers or other malitious persons' soit was to be built like a fort and to stand on open ground so no secret approach to it couldbe made. The necessity to go to such lengths underlines the danger of the deer keeper'sjob. Because the deer required 24 hours' surveillance, deer keepers managed a team ofunder keepers to cover absences and to summon in an emergency, and theiraccommodation was also conveniently located in or near the park. Both Penshurst(71)and Leigh(70) parks at Penshurst had great and little lodges, the former in decay but stilloccupied in 1601.86 The lodge at Shurland(78) was a timber construction with a tiledroof situated on top of a hill in the middle of the park, while the under keeper lodged in 'apretty chamber' adjoining the mansion house with independent access to the park (seePlate 3.8).87 Other parks known to have lodges were Bedgebury(4), Birling(6),Canterbury(18), Chislet(22), Cobham(23), Halden(41), Henden(45), Hever(46),Hungershall(47), Knole(50), Lynsted(58), Panthurst(67), Ashour(69) at Penshurst, Scot'sHall(77), Southfrith(93) near Tonbridge and Surrenden(84).88 In some cases, the lodgesremained long after disparkment and were leased out, occasionally as rewards to loyalservants, as were Ashour(69) and Leigh(70) lodges on the Sidney estate at Penshurst.89Many original lodges with their outbuildings were readily adapted into farmsteads andbear the name Park Farm to this day, such as at Birling(6), Brasted(15), Canterbury(18),Penshurst(71), Leigh(70), Southpark(72) near Penshurst, and at Throwley(87).Occasionally, the lodge was rebuilt or aggrandised to become the owner's residence, forexample 'The Lodge', the Roper family mansion at Lynsted(58).90Other perquisites, which reduced a deer keeper's overheads, might include woodfor fuel gathered from the park, or liveried uniform.91 Thomas Smalman wore a doubletand hose provided by 'my lord', probably Sir Henry Sidney, the park keeper of Otford85 Markham(1616:669-670).86 CKS U1500/E1.87 See Plate 3.8 p.79, TNA SP12/87, 1572.88 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44; TNA SC12/9/4; StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1; LPL TA39/1; CKS U1475/M73;Surrey Record Office K87/17/30; CKS U1450/T6/10; ESRO ABE/52.1; CKS U269/A41/1/1;co*ckburn(1994:169) AC35/21/8; CKS U269/T1/A:8:4:4; CKS U214/E19/23; CKS U1475/T33; CKSU350/E4, Yeandle, p.302, www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk; sse Plate 3.7 p.74.89 LPL TA39/1, the lodge at Chislet(22) park was rented out for 80 years from 1539 at an annual rent of£10; CKS U1475/T33, U1475/T61/6.90 Vallance(1932:147-148).91 TNA E178/1163, 1597-1598, at Otford Great(62) park the annual fuel allowance was valued at tenshillings, to be taken from pollarded oak and ash trees in the park.80Plate 3.8Park Lodges at Shurland(a) Just visible to the centre of the skyline is the lodge of Shurland(78)park. It was sited towards the centre of the park with good views of thesurrounding parkland. Shurland House itself was under extensiverenovation and is completely encased with weatherproof sheeting to theright of the skyline. 30 September 2006(b) Shurland House and its outer courtyards from a survey of 1572 (TNASP12/87/1-3). The under keeper's 'pretty chamber' was in this complexwith direct access to the park.By kind permission of The National Archives.81Great(62) park.92 Essential equipment might also have been provided, but was alsobought to become proud possessions. Thomas Smalman's will describes two crossbows,one for everyday use with a steel gaffle, or lever for bending the bow, and another with acarved wooden tiller, or beam drilled for the bolt. 93 He also had one everyday and onegilt wood-knife, which were short swords carried by huntsmen for cutting up game,although they also served as weapons.94 Lastly, he rode a four-year old black geldingand had a hunting horn 'garnished with silver', an essential tool for communication overlong distances.Wages formed the fixed monetary element of remuneration, but because they arerarely mentioned, a few examples can only be indicative. For the year 1587/8 the twodeer keepers at Birling(6) were each paid £4. At Canterbury(18) park in 1605 the deerkeeper and his man were paid £7 10s for the year, while in 1611, Robert Terry's wages asdeer keeper at Penshurst(71) were £5.95 If the Canterbury deer keeper received a similaramount from the £7 10s, his under keeper 's wages would have been £2 10s a year. Kentwas an affluent county where wages tended to be higher than elsewhere in the country,but at Canterbury(18) an under keeper's pay was more than an agricultural labourer'smaximum annual pay of 26s 8d in Buckinghamshire in 1561, and at £2 10s a year wouldhave been the same as an agricultural bailiff in Kent in 1563.96 By these comparisons,the deer keeper's pay was at least adequate, even before taking his other sources ofincome into account.Wages were supplemented by value in kind, in that the deer keeper was allocatedparts of the deer slain during hunting. Traditionally these were the skin, head, umbles,chine and shoulders, which Harrison regarded as unfair because those with a warrant totake a whole buck 'hath in the end little more than halfe, which in my judgement isscarselie equal dealing.'97 When Humfrey Barrett leased Bedgebury(4) park in 1607, he92 Clarke & Stoyel(1975:122-123) citing Acts of the Privy Council 1552-1554, no.967.93 PCCprob/11/65, 1583, Thomas Smalman; gaffle, tiller (http://dictionary.oed.com)..94 Wood-knife (http://dictionary.oed.com).95 Salisbury papers, Accounts 6/35, 29/9/1605; Shaw(1942:311) 25/3/1611.96 Palliser(1992:117) points out that the bailiff's wage in Kent was 67% higher than the 30 shillingsallowed in the Yorkshire area.97 Holinshed(1587:204); Sykes(2003:171) late medieval deer bone assemblage at Donnington Parksupports this statement; umbles = the edible inward parts of an animal, usually of a deer, chine = spine orbackbone (http://dictionary.oed.com).82was given responsibility for the deer and 'for his labour and pains' was allowed to keepone shoulder, the skin and chine of every deer killed.98An extra monetary benefit of variable amount would be the fees received when anowner issued warrants for his friends to hunt or for gifts of venison. The practice ofpaying fees to other park owners' deer keepers dated back to medieval times, asillustrated in the 'Howard Household Books'.99 The Elizabethan, Harrison, confirmed thecontinuation of the custom whereby park owners gave away venison and 'never takingpenny for the same, except the ordinary fee ... given to the keeper by a custom,' theamount being 3s 4d or five shillings in money.100 A few examples confirm thecontinuation of the practice in Kent, with similar fees being paid by recipients of a deerkeeper's services.101 At the Admiral's court held at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey inJune 1580, the mayor of Rochester's expenses included 3s 4d 'payed to my LordeCobham his keeper when he broughte us halfe a bucke.'102 Towards the end of the reignof James I and into Charles I's reign Edward Dering of Surrenden's 'Booke of Expences'showed that on 12 September 1626 he gave Lady Maidstone's deer keeper at Eastwell tenshillings for bringing him venison.103 He was also allowed to hunt in parks atEastwell(28) and Boughton Malherbe(10 or 12) and would give a fee of five or sixshillings to the keeper when his dogs killed deer in those parks:-10 September 1625 – given att Eastwell to ye keeper when I tooke say andmy doggs killed a brace of buckes – 5s. 104Lastly, the deer keeper might earn extra money from his discretion to allocatevenison himself and to give licence to hunt in the park. This was also a continuation ofmedieval practice when local deer keepers and huntsmen were often allowed to decidethe number of deer which could reasonably be hunted, although on other occasions theowner would specify in advance what deer were to be taken and how they were to bedisposed of.105 An owner familiar with his herd or distrustful of his deer keepers mightbe less inclined to give discretion to his employees, but others might be more relaxed98 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44;99 Crawford I (1992:221,225,227,278); Crawford II (1992:108,147,148 337).100 Edelen (1994:255).101 Holinshed(1587:204); for the significance of gifts of venison see Chapter Seven (ii) pp.193-200.102 Blencoe(1859:84).103 CKS U350/E4, Yeandle, p.357, www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk.104 Ibid. p.296, www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk. 'Say' in this context is obscure, but could mean the 'breakingup of a deer' (http://dictionary.oed.com).105 Birrell(1992:123).83about doing so. In either case, a regular stock taking of the herd would reveal anyglaring malpractice by the deer keepers.Examples of the use of deer keeper's discretion over gifts of venison and givinglicence to hunt occur in Kent. The deer keeper of Birling(6) successfully begged a tegfrom Edmund Wickes, keeper of Cobham(23), deer to celebrate his marriage at the turnof the seventeenth century.106 In the early 1600s, Thomas Petley of Halstead paid thedeer keeper of Hamswell(43) park and his boy five or ten shillings for delivering venisonto his door as a favour. 107 John Threale of London in 1601 claimed to have hunted inPenshurst(71) park 'in lawful manner by the licence of the then keeper of that park' and'with his privilies', but was nevertheless accused of unlawful hunting on otheroccasions.108The combination of a dwelling free of encumbrances, a regular annual incometopped up with the value of deer parts and the receipt of fees meant that deer keeperscould well have been amply rewarded for their labour. They held a position of trust,which was easily abused, so it would hardly have been in the owners' interest to underpay them. Owners were anxious to preserve deer for their own requirements, and to addto their esteem among their neighbours and peers by having a well-run park with athriving herd of deer. On the one hand, job satisfaction is indicated by the passing downof deer keeping skills through family generations, on the other hand, dissatisfaction overremuneration might be a possible explanation for some deer keepers, especially underkeepers, becoming disloyal to their masters and turning to corrupt practices. Closerelationships between park owners and park keepers were possible, as illustrated in theconcern shown on several occasions by Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester, for his deerkeeper, Robert Terry.109 The earl also took great care over Robert Terry's replacement,trying to decide between his brother, John Terry, towards whom he was favourablyinclined, and the acting keeper whom he thought equally deserving.110106 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1.107 TNA STAC8/290/17.108 TNA STAC5/S68/33.109 See p.89.110 Hanney, Kinnamon &. Brennan(2005:232-233) letters 313, 314 of 9 & 12/5/1621, Viscount Lisle towife. Davey(1996:140-141) will of Wiston Browne of Rookwood Hall, Essex, c.1580, indicates a highlyprized deer keeper, Edward Humberstone. He was to retain his job for life, with fees and perquisites. Hecould keep two cows and two horses in the park, and was to be provided with six loads of hay to be stored84Pivotal to the deer keeper's role was the management of the deer, which requiredconsiderable understanding of the animals' habits and needs. Owners might expect thedeer keeper to look after the deer 'diligently and carefully,' and the well being of theanimals would take up a great deal of his attention.111 As far as is known, Kentish parksstocked fallow rather than red deer, so comments will be directed to this species.112 TheSidneys toyed with the idea of acquiring red deer at Penshurst(71), but a tame red deerbecame the target of illegal hunters in 1573, and Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle's laterattempt in 1607 to secure red deer calves ended in failure with the death, within twodays, of the only one captured after a four-day stalk in a nearby forest.113Food, water and shelter were largely provided for the deer by having a range ofhabitats within the park, but the deer keeper would need to supplement any deficiency bycutting browse and spreading hay. Within most parks were launds of open grassland, ,some of which were periodically enclosed and others permanently enclosed to excludethe deer so that hay could be grown to supplement food in winter.114 Parklands withlower grade land often produced the best herb-rich meadows, the quality of whichimproved the taste of the venison.115 Other areas were fenced off for fodder crops likeoats, such as that in which the tame red deer was kept at Penshurst(71) park.116With a stocking ratio of three adult deer to one acre, theoretically most parkswould have provided sufficient fodder for the herd. 117 However, with overstocking, orwith variable quality and quantity of grassland, or with overgrazing due toaccommodating other animals within the park, problems over food could arise in summerdrought or winter cold. When Cooling(24) park was broken into in February 1620 withthick snow on the ground, 'very unseasonable for the killing of any deer,' many deer inthe debilitated herd died.118 However well prepared the deer keeper was to supplementin the hay-house for winter fodder for the deer, and was allowed to cut branches for the deer to browse on.He could continue to live in the room he occupied until the new lodge had been built for him in the park.111 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44, Sir Anthony Culpepper's stipulation in lease of Bedgebury(4) park in 1607.112 Chalklin(2004:98-99) in 1521 Northfrith was stocked with red and fallow deer.113 CKS U1475/L17; Shaw (1936:386-387).114 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1; references to launds in Kent include: BL Cart. Harl.85.H13, Bedgebury(4)park, CKS U1475/E47, Penshurst park(71), Barker(1993:20-21) Greeenwich(39) park.115 See Plate 3.9 p.85; Whitaker(1892:11).116 CKS U1475/L17.117 Rotherham (2007:31).118 TNA STAC8/23/11.85Plate 3.9Deer in parks(a) Part of the deer herd in Knole(50) park feeding on a laund area, duringrutting. 15 October 2006(b) Typical parkland with deer at Boughton Monchelsea, with isolatedpollards amid rough pasture, woodland areas lie on the lower slopes. FromGreensand ridge looking south over the Weald.Photograph by Mike Buttonshaw86fodder during inclement weather, winter cold and disease took its toll of the herd, so thatthe survivors required even more careful nurture to build up their strength during thesummer months. Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, in mid-June 1615, requested his wife toserve venison when he came home, 'but withall I must entreat you to be sparing of mydeer this somer ... in respect of my greate loss the last winter.' 119The provision of buildings such as barns, hay houses or deer houses within parksis indicative of the need to store food.120 A timber-framed barn with tiled roof is shownon the mid-sixteenth century map of Canterbury(18) park, while the barn at Leigh(70)park was underpinned with stone, timber boarded with a shingle roof.121 At Shurland(78)the under keeper's timber-built residence with tiled roof had become the hay house for'the bestowing of hay' to the herd of 500 deer in the winter. Leigh(70) park's hay housewas timber-boarded with reed-thatched roof.122Herd balance, with a range of ages and an appropriate ratio between bucks anddoes, was important both for the welfare of deer and for the needs of the hunter, and tomaintain this balance the deer keeper needed to know the ages of individual animals andthe make-up of the herd.123 If there was imbalance the herd would need to be selectivelyculled and this would give the deer keeper the opportunity to use his discretion to issuelicences to hunt deer designated for the cull or to dispose of the venison afterwards.Stocktaking or 'view of the deer' gave deer keepers precise details of the herd, butwere primarily undertaken at the behest of the owner as an invaluable check on the deerkeepers' activities, and perhaps that is why the one extant 'view of the deer' in Kent wassigned or marked by 16 men independent of the deer keeper, whose name did not appearamong the signatories.124 The only allusions to stock taking in Kent concernedPenshurst(71) park where there was no set time in the year for the count.125 InSeptember in the early1570s unlawful hunting was suspended until after the view, which119 Shaw & Owen (1962:298-299) letter of 15/6/1615.120 CKS U1450/T6/10, 1560, a deer house is mentioned in a lease for Hever park.121 CCA map 49; CKS U1500/E1.122 TNA SP12/87, 1572; CKS U1500/E1.123 Whitehead(1950:40-44).124 CKS U1475/E47.125 This accords with Fletcher in Rotherham(2007:32) that views were taken at different times of thehunting season, after or before, and may or may not include fawns.87suggests that it was about to take place in the autumn, after the new fawns had beenweaned, but before the hardship of winter. However, it could also take place in thespring, perhaps to assess the survival rate after winter, because in 1605 the view in April,found that Penshurst(71) park contained 299 deer of which 65 were fully antlered. 126At the same time as the inspection, the deer keeper would account for any deertaken under warrant for household consumption, for gifts or for recreation and add a noteabout natural deaths. This check underlined the accountability of the deer keeper forherd numbers and would make him wary of using his powers of discretion over huntingand gifts of venison too wantonly. Unique in its survival for Kent was the list of deertaken by Robert Terry for Penshurst(71), perhaps for the 'view of the deer' in April1605.127 In the year beginning 18 November 1603 he listed 29 deer (but gave the total as28) and added a footnote about another eight, four does and four fawns, which had diedin the summer of 1604. Only two deer of the 29 deer had died during the winter months,one had been savaged by Robert Terry's own shag dog, eight had been killed for thehouse, seven had been distributed as gifts and 11 taken in hunting.128 In the followingyear 28 deer were taken, and a footnote added a further 11 that had died, and one thatillegal hunters had killed on Easter day.129 Of the 28 deer slain under Robert Terry'ssupervision 8½ had been consumed by the household, 13½ had been gifts, four had beenhunted and two 'taken upp by my Ladye', which might have been by hunting, but themeaning is unclear. Over the two-year period just under a quarter of the deer had beenslain for domestic use, just under a quarter killed by hunting, just over a quarter had diedof natural causes, and just over a quarter had been gifted.There were situations, such as during the view, when the deer keeper would berequired to round up and move deer within the park or to new destinations beyond thepark during restocking, imparking or disparking. When Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury,replaced his disgraced brother-in-law, Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, as tenant ofCanterbury(18) park in 1603 he was not impressed either by 'my poor lodge' or by theherd of deer, and wrote to Sir John Roper requesting him to send some deer, presumably126 Shaw(1936:54-155) from Lord Lisle to Golding; Gascoigne(1575:52-53); fully antlered = mature bucksthat had reached their seventh or above year.127 CKS U1475/E47.128 Shag dog = a mongrel, long-haired greyhound renowned for its ferocity, Markham(1616:674).129 CKS Q/SR4/15 follows up this reference to illegal hunting.88from Sir John Roper's park at Lynsted(58), to boost the numbers, which Sir John Roperagreed 'cheerfully' to send.130 Sir Anthony Culpepper in downsizing his herd prior toleasing out Bedgebury(4) park in the early 1600s, sent some deer to Sir Thomas Waller'sHamswell(43) park in Rotherfield, Sussex.131 In 1561 John Tufton gave 30 deer fromWestwell(98) to Thomas Wotton for Bocton Old(10) park at Boughton Malherbe. Thesewere transferred to South(12) park six years later and the complexity of the capture andremoval of the herd from one park to the other is apparent from Thomas Wotton'saccounts. A large net or deer stall 24 fathoms (144 feet) long in which to trap the deercost £1. He borrowed harnesses to control the deer from Edward Aucher, of Lyminge(56)park. These harnesses were sent from London at the cost of two shillings and repairedwith cord costing 3s 7d. It took 19 men seven working days, ending on 12 December1567, to round up the deer. The wage bill amounted to £1 8s 8d, at sixpence or fourpence a day per man with food and drink. At the end of the round-up 120 deer of mixedages, including ten originally from Westwell(98) park had been captured.132Venison gift-giving and hunting has been touched on in the context of pay andthey formed an important part of the deer keepers' duties. Among the deer keepers'responsibilities, in consultation with the owner, would be the selection of deer to targetfor hunting and for the owner to offer as gifts of venison or to commemorate specialoccasions.133Bucks were the preferred sport in summer when they were 'in grease', carryingmost meat before the rut, and does in the winter months after their fawns had beenweaned and before the next fawning season. In the 'Charta de Foresta' the buck huntingseason was set from the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (24 June) to Holyrood day (14September), and the doe hunting season was from Holyrood day to Candlemas (2February), after the does had dropped their fawns during the 'fence' month a fortnighteither side of Midsummer's day (24 June).134 Although by Elizabethan times theseseasons might have been less strictly adhered to, for the well being of the herd there were130 Sparks(1980:59); TNA SP14/15/34.131 TNA STAC8/294/6.132 BL Add.Mss.42715.133 CKS U1475/E47, see Chapter Seven (ii) pp.194-200.134 The Charta de Foresta extended and codified from previous laws was devised by cnu*t in the earlyC11th. It was subsequently revised and reissued by kings William I and John; Whitehead(1950:24, 44);Poole(1955:32).89certain closed periods. If illegal hunting occurred during these times, such as in May1599 at Penshurst, when two young does with fawns 'in their bellies' were killed, it wasregarded as all the more reprehensible.135The exchange of gifts of venison was common and here the deer keepers' dutiesextended beyond the kill and involved the delivery of the venison, sometimes over fairlylong distances. On two occasions when venison was sent from Penshurst to the absentRobert Sidney, viscount Lisle, at Shurland and at the royal court at Oaklands the deerkeeper, Robert Terry, was put in charge of delivery, and there is no reason to think thatthis did not happen more often. 136For his work the deer keeper would require several types of dog, for 'perfectsmelling', for 'quick espying', for 'swiftness and quickness', 'in smelling and nimbleness',and 'in subtlety and deceitfulness.'137 Lyme hounds were used to pick up the scent ofindividual deer, swift greyhounds pursued deer for short distances and running dogs,similar to foxhounds, with more stamina took over the chase for longer distances.138Kennels, either purpose-built or in outhouses, were provided for the deer keepers' dogsand for those of his master, family and guests, and would be located near the lodge, awayfrom the mansion for fear of disturbing the residents.139 In Kent no reference to kennelshas been found, but two court of Star Chamber cases of 1605 featured scent hounds.140 Inone incident the skills of the lyme hound were put to the test following the theft of over100 black conies from a warren near Penshurst on Christmas day in 1604. During theraid the warrener was beaten and his thumbs tied together with strips taken off one of theattacker's leather breeches. Early next morning Sir Robert Sidney's deer keeper broughtalong his bloodhound, which followed the trail to Francis Coulman's house where thebreeches, with strips missing, were discovered and the culprits apprehended.141Deer keepers were under tremendous pressure from those wishing to undertakeillegal activities within parks. Sometimes they and their deputies were outnumbered and135 CKS U1475/L18.136 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:157) letter 201, 25/9/1610; ibid. p.199, letter 266, 21/9/1616.137 Edelen(1994:340-341).138 Lyme dog = bloodhound (http://dictionary.oed.com).139 Markham(1616:670).140 TNA STAC8/290/17; see Chapter Eight pp.261-262 for the other example.141 TNA STAC8/295/10.90powerless to enforce order, but on other occasions fierce confrontations took place. Theimpression is that those deer keepers who had the backing of their masters were morelikely to stand up to intruders and to protect the deer. On one occasion when RobertTerry and his brother were hurt in defending his game, Sir Robert Sidney wrote to hissteward urging him to take action on his behalf, 'what law will allow mee to doe I assureyou shall be dun to the full.' He asked his steward to thank the brothers and to 'tell thembee assured that I will not see so good affections unrewarded,' intending to give them thepoachers' nets or their value and a share of any fines imposed by the court.142 Thisbacking was more likely to evoke loyalty from deer keepers than indifference or a weakresponse.The undertaking of the various facets of the deer keeper's work, requireddedicated men with a wide range of professional skills, and their ability to deal withanimals and people can easily be overlooked when emphasis is placed on crime withinparks. The range of activities centred on deer within parks required organisationalexpertise, and all the more so when other enterprises, to which attention will now beturned, were carried out alongside deer keeping.(iii) Other enterprises in parksThe multi-functional role of parks in the wider economy of the medieval estate ormanor has been widely recognised, but there appears to have been no substantiveresearch into this aspect of parks in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.However, it is hoped that from the following pages there is enough evidence to indicatethat these early modern parks in Kent were capable of accommodating a wide range ofancillary activities, which not only contributed to the household economy and to theestate as a whole, but also demonstrates the versatility and potential viability of theparks.143(a) Cony warrensLambarde noted the flourishing demand for profitable Kentish conies, and foundwarrens to be 'almost innumerable, and dailie like to increase.' Kent was not unusual in142 CKS U1475/C36/3, 17/08/1601143 Beresford(1957:211); Cantor & Hatherly(1979:71); Rackham(1976:145); Rotherham, inLiddiard(2007:84).91this respect; Harrison, who admitted difficulty in calculating the number of parks inEngland, did not even attempt to estimate the number of warrens in the country.144In previous centuries warrens had been set up in or apart from parks to providerabbit meat as a delicacy for the lord's table. Williamson has pointed out that warrenswere a valued element in elite landscapes, important symbols of status to be proudlydisplayed on approaches to mansions or on skylines where they could be viewed withpleasure from the mansion windows.145 This might well have been true in the setting upof early warrens in Kent, but confirmation awaits detailed fieldwork to establish theexact sites of warrens and their relationship to any principal residence. At Cobham(23)the warren was on a high plateau out of sight of Cobham Hall, whereas atLullingstone(55), if the Victorian warren occupied the same site as the Jacobean one, itwas set on the rising ground in full view of Lullingstone castle.146 Wherever they weresited, by Elizabethan times the great number of warrens had probably robbed them oftheir exclusivity.The production of rabbit meat was fuelled by the growing demand from themiddle classes 'pretentiously eating rabbit to ape the upper classes,' or merely being ableto afford a better standard of living.147 However, it remained an expensive item forlabourers paid on a daily rate of sixpence to nine pence, when a rabbit cost from three tosixpence.148 Kent's proximity to London enabled it to supply fresh young rabbits for thecity's markets and many in Kent were eager to take commercial advantage of this.Markham devoted four chapters of 'Maison Rustique, or The countrey farme' tothe setting up and running of a cony warren which he considered to be a profitablesideline, and not too burdensome a task because conies virtually looked afterthemselves.149 Records for one or two parks in Kent give an insight into how warrenscould be profitably managed. Accounts for Birling(6), from 1586 to 1599, show that thewarrens run by Edward Clark, the master of game, made an annual average profit of £30144 Holinshed(1587:204); Lambarde(1576:5, 1826 reprint).145 Williamson(2006:8).146 Arch.Can. XI (1877:lxxxiv) 1612 Survey of Cobham; CKS QM/SI/1606/13/20, Pittman(1983:64-65).147 Eveleigh Woodruff(1895:316).148 Dr Mark Bailey's lecture 'Rabbiting and warrens', Madingley Hall, Cambridge, August 1996.149 Markham(1616:644-648).92to £40, ranging from £20 in 1586/87 to £50 in 1598/99.150 At Knole(50) in 1629 conieseaten by the household were valued at £19, and those sold outside at £12. On a valuationof sixpence a cony, 1240 conies would have been produced, with 760 being consumed bythe household and 480 being sent to market.151 The two warreners at Birling(7) werepaid £4 a year, £2 less than the deer keepers, but they might also have received boardwages for their victuals, as did the warreners on the Sackville estates.152 No other detailsof expenditure at Birling were given, neither were the number of conies sold or at whatprice, but in contrast to deer keeping, breeding conies within parks had commercialpotential, and accrued profits that could be used to offset the outlay of the park. At Birling(6) and Knole(50), estate employees continued to care for the warrens,but the growing trend was for warrens to be leased out to professional warreners.153 Twoleases for Kent, with terms, which may or may not be typical, are all that remain to givean impressionistic idea of how such warrens were run by warreners of yeomen stock. 154The warren in Hever(46) park was rented out in 1560 by John Lennard, the parklessee, to yeoman Reynald Woodgate at £6 13s 4d per annum for 12 years.155 It wasunusual in stocking black conies, which Lambarde stated were not 'nourished' in Kent;the preference being for fast reared young grey rabbits for London's meat markets in thesummer, rather than black conies bred for their fur and killed at maturity in winter.156 AtHever(46), Reynald Woodgate had to deliver to John Lennard as many conies as couldbe spared each week without depleting the overall numbers.The warren in Bedgebury(4) park was leased to yeoman Humfrey Barrett for £30per annum for 11 years, from 1607, by Sir Anthony and Sir Alexander Culpepper. Thislease was more complex than that for the Hever(46) warren, and is illustrative of the150 ESRO ABE/18/R/1, ESRO ABE/18/R/2.151 CKS U269/A41/1/11; CKS U1475/A27/7, in 1624 a cony at Penshurst was worth sixpence.152 CKS U269/A2/2, in 1612 the warrener at Bulbrooke, Sussex, received £6 for 20 weeks board wages.Board wages = wages allowed to servants to keep themselves in victuals (http://dictionary.oed.com).153 Williamson(2006:9-10).154 Manning(1993:131) cites the example of Peter Woodgate, gentleman of Hawkhurst, (perhaps of thesame family as Reynald Woodgate sub-lessee of Hever park) who leased a very large warren in Brighton,Sussex, in 1622 at an annual rent of £146.155 CKS U1450/T6/10.156 Lambarde(1576:5); CKS QM/SB1598/252, refers to black conies which were ear-marked foridentification in Birling park; TNA STAC8/295/10, warren of black conies at Penshurst;Edelen(1994:254).93mutual obligations of tenant and landlord.157 Humfrey Barrett was allowed to take asmany conies as he liked by netting, ferreting or other means except by gun.158 Duringthe summer months, from 1 May to 1 August, he was to deliver to the Culpeppers eachweek whatever number they required of the 'best fattest sweet and good rabbits to be welland clean killed,' and from 1 August to 1 February the 'best and fattest' – the meat notbeing so tender when the animals were older. For these rabbits the Culpeppers wouldpay sixpence a couple from 1 May to 1 August, ten pence from 1 August to 1 October,and 12 pence from 1 October to 1 February, or would deduct the equivalent from therent. No rabbits were killed from February to May to allow for breeding.159 The pricegradations might well have been linked to the breeding pattern, with cheaper prices in thesummer following the breeding season, and with rising prices during the autumn andwinter seasons to match increasingly dwindling stocks and the cost of extra fodder.Humfrey Barrett was to continue the Culpeppers' custom of giving one or two conies toadjoining farmers at Christmas, perhaps as compensation should any conies have escapedto do damage to their crops. Terms were included to ensure the viability of the warrentowards the end of the lease, when the tenant might have been tempted to squeeze out thegreatest profit by selling as many conies as possible and by neglecting repairs. As wellas continuing to maintain the warren to a high standard, Humfrey Barret was not to killmore than 646 conies, or such number that would exceed the sale figure of £13 17s 5d,which Sir Anthony Culpepper had made from the conies the summer prior to the lease.160If the sale of 646 conies equates to the total sale figure, the conies would have fetched anaverage price of about five pence each. Bedgebury(4) warren must have been anextensive one in order to produce the turnover required to make it profitable, after theoutgoings of maintenance and rent had been covered. Just to find the rent of £30 eachyear, the warrener needed to sell 1440 conies at five pence each, although the cost ofthose reserved for the Culpeppers could be deducted from the rent. Yet presumably,unless the lease was thought to have been of mutual benefit, it would not have beenagreed.157 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44.158 A ferret house was mentioned in the lease; Williamson(2006:36-37,53) sending ferrets into conyburrows to flush them out into awaiting nets produced a 'clean kill,' with no damage to carcasses.159 Manning(1993:129).160 Williamson(2006:9) cites a lease for Nacton warren in Suffolk, which stipulated the number andcondition of conies that were to remain at the expiry of the lease in 1646.94Although Lambarde thought the increased number of warrens was at the expenseof parks, this was not necessarily the case.161 There was room for considerable variation,and the presence of warrens was perfectly compatible with the functioning of deer parks.If the park was large enough and the deer herd adequately catered for, conies could alsobe accommodated. Placing cony burrows or warrens within parks was advantageous inthat cony theft was made more difficult, the warren being doubly protected by its ownenclosure and by that of the park. Moreover parks would have a larger team of patrollingkeepers drawn from deer keepers, warreners and estate workers than a solitary warren.The double enclosure would also reduce the risk of conies escaping to damage adjacentagricultural land and crops.Halden(41) and Knole(50) parks both had conies and deer without the conyburrows seeming to occupy separate enclosures, but such an arrangement would havecompromised hunting on horseback because the burrows could cause horses to lose theirfooting.162 In some cases, as at Bedgebury(4), Hever(46) and Knole(50), there wereperiods when the parks were retained without deer, but with flourishing warrens.163 Anewer park, like Mersham Hatch(61), was initially set up with a warren and subsequentlydeer were added, while at Tyler Hill(94), Canterbury, Sir Peter Manwood was preparedto alter the interior of his deer park to make room for a warren.164Most warrens were enclosed to prevent the conies from escaping and as a barrierto vermin and thieves.165 The leases for Hever(46) and for Bedgebury(4) warrens stressedthe need to keep hedging stock-proof 'with plashers,' which were hedges laid to create animpenetrable barrier round the enclosure.166 Banks were not mentioned in the leases, buta common method of boundary treatment was to form banks of one metre to one and ahalf metres high, which would be vertical on the inside to deter escape and sloping on the161 Lambarde(1576:5).162 CKS U1475/M73; CKS T1450/T6/30, 1566 and CKS U269/T1/A:8:4:4, 1614; Manning(1993:129)citing J. Sheail, Rabbits and their History (Newton Abbot, 1971) p.94. TNA SP14/180/4, c.1624, conies inroyal parks and forests were to be destroyed because 'by making the ground hollow, have endangered theKing in his progress, and much injured the deer.'163 BL Cart.Harl.79.F.5, 1618; CKS U1450/T6/10, 1560; CKS U269/T1/A:8:4:4, 1614.164 CKS U274/E5; CKS U591/C261/5, 1599/1600.165 The Sites and Monuments Register for Kent has seven records of surviving remains of warrens orpillow mounds, only one of which, The Mount at Bore Place, is located in a known parkland area, OSTQ507493.166 U1450/T6/10; BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44. Plasher = a bough or sapling with which a hedge is plashed orintertwined. The whole forms either a quick or dead laid hedge as an impenetrable obstacle to livestock(http://dictionary.oed.com).95outer face.167 The banks would be topped with gorse or blackthorn overhanging thevertical face to prevent the conies jumping over – the 'plashers' of the leases.Enclosures made management easier, not only in reducing loss by escape,predation or theft, but also for animal welfare and commercial reasons. DespiteMarkham's assurance that conies could look after themselves, he detailed many featuresof warren management, which were reflected in the leases for Hever and Bedgeburywarrens.168 A map of Chevening(early6) warren in 1679, though outside the period, isperhaps the earliest depiction of a warren in Kent (see Plate 3.10).169 It shows anenclosure of about two hundred acres with a warrener's house, fields, crofts and woods.Conies are drawn in two areas, in one of which men with dogs are trying to lure theminto a small fenced open-ended enclosure, or perhaps it is a net.170 A large warren, suchas this, was subdivided to give areas for growing fodder crops and to manage rotationalgrazing for the conies throughout the year.171 All warreners needed to sustain the coniesover the winter months. The burrows required constant attention repairing roof collapseand erosion, and laying down blackthorn and whitethorn over them to give the coniescover 'at seasonable times of the year.'172 In ideal conditions warrens would be sited onwell-drained land, but at Bedgebury(4) on the Wealden clay band, ditches, which hadbeen dug to draw water away from the burrows, were to be regularly scoured.173 Lastly,constant vigilance was needed to keep predators, such as stoats, weasels and rats, at bay,and the enclosure would be regularly inspected for breaches, and traps set to capturevermin prior to extermination.174Apart from the benefits of enclosed warrens to animal welfare, conies would beeasier to capture within a confined space. As indicated earlier, methods such as ferreting,netting or a combination of both, which resulted in the least damage to the meat or pelt,167 Williamson(2006:45).168 Markham(1616:644-648).169 Photographed by kind permission of the Chevening estate from the original framed map displayed on acorridor wall in Chevening House, see Plate 3.10 p.96.170 There is no evidence that Chevening was a park between 1558-1625, but there had been an earlier parkin the fourteenth century (Way, 1997:174) CPR, 18/11/1359, grant of buck from Chevening park.171 Williamson(2006:11).172 Ibid. p.37; BL Cart. Harl.77.C.44.173 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44.174 The Hever and Bedgebury leases required the extermination of vermin; Williamson(2006:57-59).96Plate 3.10Cony warrens(a) Detail of the warreners with the rabbits in Chevening warren from the map of1679 in Chevening House.By kind permission of the Chevening Estate.(b) The whole of Chevening warren with several enclosureswithin the 200 acres.97were the preferred options. Williamson outlines the exact procedures in his monograph,but no details have been found for Kent.175 Generally, conies might be chased with dogsinto awaiting nets, as shown on the Chevening(early6) map, or ferrets sent down moundburrows to flush out conies into purse nets placed across exit holes.With welfare and commercial considerations to be borne in mind, setting up awarren required some thought as Sir Peter Manwood of Tyler Hill(94), Canterbury,realised when he wrote to Norton Knatchbull of Mersham Hatch asking him to send overhis keeper, Wagg, to give him advice on the subject.176 Sir Peter Manwood expected toprofit from his investment by minimising expenditure in order to maximise gain. Ratherthan waste money on an unsatisfactory site, he wanted Wagg to help him find the bestlocation on dry ground for the warren, even if it meant rearranging the park by movingthe deer away from the house. He wrote, 'and that I bestowe not my cost in vaine for Iam willing to do it and to remove my deer farder from my howse.' He envisaged anenclosed warren of 12 to 20 acres, because he wanted to prevent conies escaping or 'ellsthey will spoil all my medowes and best groundes ... and so I shal receive more hurtethan profitt.' Stocking was the last stage of setting up a warren and Sir Edward Dering's'Book of Expenses' itemised the cost of his restocking programme in 1625, when hebought 78 live conies from Sir Thomas Culpepper's warrener, paying eight pence eachfor 24 conies and a further ten pence each for 54.177 The greater cost of live conies thanof dead conies would reflect the selection of prime specimens for breeding and thepotential for higher profits to be made from live animals.There is scope for further research into warrens in Kent, both within and outsideparks, but Lambarde's observations about their increasing number and profitability inElizabeth I's reign is likely to be correct; what is more uncertain is the extent to whichdeer were replaced by conies within Kentish parks.(b) Animals at pastureTraditionally, grazing in parks might be open to other animals, although deer tookpriority, and such diversification had to be compatible with deer keeping. Sharing175 Williamson(2006:36-37).176 CKS U591/C261/5, 18/2/1600.177 CKS U350/E4, Yeandle, pp.270-271,282, www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk.98grazing, however, had its limitations. Cattle could be kept alongside deer, althoughremoved during fawning and if there was insufficient grass for the deer; horses' hoovesdamaged the pasture by poaching the ground; sheep helped to keep the pasture in goodcondition, but their scent spoilt deer stalking; goats tainted the pasture, damaging shrubs,which otherwise provided winter browse for the deer.178 Nevertheless, with propermanagement, other animals could successfully share parks with deer at least for certainperiods of the year.179Evidence about shared grazing in Kent is vague. Only a few fleeting referencesgive an idea of pastoral activities in parks and even then it is not clear whether the deerremained or, if they did, how large the herd was. Cattle, horses and other animals couldgraze alongside the deer, but there also might be separate enclosures for such creatures,for example, the sheep close within Cobham(23) park.180 There is one reference to pigsfeeding in parks, when in 1562 £6 8s 4d was earned by allowing swine to feed off mastin Penshurst(71) park.Examples of park owners' or tenants' livestock grazing in parks appear in leases.During the winter of 1612, local farmer, Thomas Holmden, was probably leasingKnole(50) park because he was paid six months' rent of 50 shillings to keep cattlebelonging to Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset, in part of Hook wood in Knole(50) park,and he was also paid 26s 8d for pasturing four of the earl's cattle in the park itself.181These entries in the steward's account imply that the park had been rented out and itmight well be that the deer had been removed, because during Lady Anne Sackville'sresidence at Knole in 1617 her diary is devoid of entries about her husband hunting deerin Knole(50) park, although he did hunt elsewhere.182178 Owen(1977:585).179 Steane(1975:227) King's Cliffe park, Northanptonshire, in 1595, had deer sharing the 1,600-acre park(of which one-third was woodland) with 359 head of cattle and 101 horses, BL Add.Mss.34214;Peterken(1981:14); see Plate 3.11 p.99 for present grazing on former parkland.180 StaffRO D593 S/4/56/1, 1602.181 CKS U269/A2/2.182 Sackville-West(1923:66,74,75); Phillips I (1930:268-270) lands valued at £80,615 sold by Sir RichardSackville from 1614-1623 to meet his debts; Sackville-West(1949:72) cites Chamberlain to Sir DudleyCarleton, 'His debts are £60,000, so that he does not leave much.'99Plate 3.11Pasture in parks(a) An old pollard oak with sheep grazing in the background in formerparkland at Scotney Castle(76). 17 June 2007(b) Solitary pollard in rough pasture with distant cows on former parkland ofOtford Little(63) park. 8 May 2007100When John Lennard, lessee of Hever(46) park, sublet part of the park in 1560 heexpected the sub-tenant to look after any cattle he sent to feed in the 'residue' of the park,i.e. outside the cony warren.183 As the tenant was also required to keep the deer houseand lodge in good repair deer might still have been in the park, but they are notspecifically referred to.184 Sir Robert Sidney used Otford(62) park in 1594 for grazinghis wife's grey gelding, and at Bedgebury(4) the tenant was allowed to pasture one cowand one horse or mare near the lodge. 185Some parks were available for agistment if the herbage was surplus to therequirements of the deer.186 Agistment might be offered on a regular basis if the deernumbers were low, or intermittently when grass was abundant. At Birling(6) in 1596 thebailiff raised 5s on the pasturage of one colt and 6s 3d on three cows in the park.187 Twoaccounts for Knole(50), although just beyond the period of study, are useful indicators ofthe sums of money agistment could raise, but as mentioned above, whether there weredeer in the park at this time is unproven. In the 1629 annual account 16 men paidagistment for over 50 cattle, and two men for an unspecified number.188 The agistmentpaid by each man varied, even if they pastured like animals, for example, Thomas Smalepaid 13s 4d for two yearling-cattle, while John Stuberfield paid 11 shillings for his twoyearling-cattle, and Nicholas Nease paid 8s 6d for one two-yearling and RichardGoodhew only 2s 6d for his, but the length of time animals spent in Knole(50) parkmight have varied. The total raised by agistment for 1629 was £20 7s 8d, but in theprevious year it had been higher at £38 4s 3d, in addition to which 11 loads of hay weresold for 26s 8d a load, bringing in £14 13s 4d - such sums would have gone some way tooffset the cost of the upkeep of the park.189Royal policy since the 1530s had required parks to be used for the breeding ofhigh quality horses for service in war. Landowners were urged to keep breeding mares of13 hands high and stallions of 14 hands high to produce 'good and swift and strong183 CKS U1450/T6/10, Sir Edward Waldegrave owned Hever.184 Ibid. lease of 10/10/1560.185 BL Cart. Harl.77.C.44, 27/11/1607; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:45-46) letter before11/4/1594.186 Agistment = taking in livestock to feed at rates of so much a head, or the rate levied or profit made uponsuch pasturing (http://dictionary.oed.com).187 ESRO ABE/18R/1.188 CKS U269/A41/1/2.189 CKS U269/A41/1/11.101horses.'190 The policy continued into Edward VI's reign and was enforced by Elizabeth Iwho required those who owned a park, or who held one under lease or for life-term, tokeep two mares in a park of one mile perimeter, three in parks of between two and fourmiles perimeter and four in the largest parks.191 In 1565 the queen also stated herintention to hold a six-monthly muster of horses for service 'until the realm bereplenished with horses.'192 Although this frequency did not materialise several musterswere held into the 1580s, as evidenced by a few county returns, but unfortunately not forKent, where the only surviving detail is that in 1583 the sub-commissioners for the Latheof St. Augustine requested more time to certify what horses and mares were being bredin the parks there.193Thirsk considered it no coincidence that gentlemen pensioners, who hadresponsibility for the provision of horses for ceremonial and military occasions, werefavoured with leases of royal parks in Henry VIII's reign. These leases 'were not randomand capricious grants to court favourites, as at first sight appear, but purposeful measuresto improve the number and quality of English horses for service.' Three families, theFanes at Hadlow, the Astleys at Maidstone and the Sidneys at Penshurst, dedicated muchenergy to breeding horses in their Kentish parks.194 Sir Thomas Cheney had a stud inCanterbury(18) park when he was warden of the Cinque ports and McKeen has arguedthat when William Brooke, lord Cobham, succeeded him to the post in 1558 he boughtthe stud or a substantial part of it from his predecessor. Lord Cobham was keenlyinterested in his horses and was kept informed of their whereabouts between his parks atCobham(23), Cooling(24) and Canterbury(18), where 82 acres named 'the mares pasture'remained in 1604.195In the last decades of the sixteenth century breeding horses for war led to a focusof attention on horse breeding in general, and from this the sport of horse racingdeveloped.196 William Brooke, lord Cobham, imported mares from the Netherlands and190 Thirsk(1977:15); ibid. p.12, citing Statutes of the Realm II, 27 Henry VIII c.6 & 33 Henry VIII c.5.191 TNA SP12/136/42; Harvey(2002:149).192 Thirsk(1977:15) citing Statutes of the Realm II nos.494 pp.194534.193 SP12/162/38 Cornwall; SP12/163/20 Dorsetshire; SP12/163/14, Hertfordshire; SP12/147/63, Norfolk .TNA SP12/142/19, Oxfordshire; SP12/162/40, Somerset; SP12/162/34, Wiltshire.194 Thirsk(1977:15).195 McKeen(1986:99-100) cites lists of horses and gelding, 1593-1596, Salisbury papers 145/184,206-07,209-13; Salisbury Accounts 6/35, 29/9/1604.196 Thirsk(1977:22); Lasdun(1992:36).102employed a gentleman of the horse, George Smith, to keep studbooks to track the successof their foals. By the mid 1580s and until his death in 1592, Lord Cobham was in theforefront of horse racing for which he had his colts trained, while George Smith, also askilled jockey, often organised horse racing in Canterbury(18) park.197 Lord Cobham'sson, Henry Brooke, did not follow his father's passion, but his attainder in 1603, GeorgeSmith again oversaw the breeding of colts and in 1605 selected mares for Lord Salisburyto enter into a mares' race in Canterbury(18) park.198 Apart from the spectacle of horseracing itself, the sport appealed to the strong betting urges of the period, and horse racingbecame firmly established when James I became a passionate follower.199Within the limitations of the evidence it is clear that, whether open or enclosed,parkland pasture was utilised in several ways that contributed either indirectly or directlyto the estate's economy. However, it is impossible to assess the number of parks engagedin pastoral activities or what areas were set aside within them. In any case because offluctuations in the quality and quantity of herbage, the likelihood is that the enterprisesvaried from year to year within any one park, and from park to park, and that there wasno norm.(c) Water management, fish, waterfowl and heronsIn the Middle Ages freshwater fish, like venison and rabbit, was a high statusfood, enjoyed by the elite who established their own fishponds, but for others it was anexpensive luxury dish.200 By the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign most parks had wellestablished natural, semi-natural or man-made water features, which required constantmaintenance. Many parks, like that at Leeds(54) castle, had managed water frommedieval times as part of designed landscapes, but all were capable of furtherenhancement.201 Often streams were damned to form a series of ponds through whichfresh water would flow, such as at Leeds(54); a 1599 map of Hemsted(44) park showsinterlinking ponds with dams in the park, and fine remains of other fishponds can be197 McKeen(1986:99-100) the prizes included the golden bell 'valued at £50 and better' and golden snaffleawarded to winners during horse racing at Salisbury in 1585; Thirsk(1977:32).198 McKeen(1986:99-100; Owen 17 (1883:226 no.473) The Salisbury papers may well hold more detailsabout horse racing at Canterbury).199 Vale(1977:20) citing Gervase Markham, Cavelrice, Or The English Horseman, (1607) III, p.56;Thirsk(1977:22).200 Liddiard(2005:107).201 Taylor(1996).103found in Birling(6) and Halden(41) parks (see Plates 3.12 and 3.13).202 LeonardMascall, the Elizabethan improving landowner, whose book on fishing, 'A booke offishing with hooke and line,' was published in 1590, recommended a minimum of fourponds; one for spawning carp, a second for spawning other species, a nursery pond forfeeding fish up to maturity, and a final pond for mature fish ready for the table.203Several ponds also enabled species of fish to be separated from each other, for examplethe carnivorous pike could be bred apart from other fish.204 Mascall reckoned thatfishponds could make a profit which was 'much superior to parks, bowling greens andbilliard tables,' but no records for Kent show this commercial aspect of fishponds inparks, although evidence of the cost of upkeep does survive. 205Considerable expenditure occurred at Halden(41) park in 1571 on 'making newe'what were later regarded as being 'dyvers fayre fyshe pondes.'206 There were five ofthese with 'dyvers other pett stewes and pooles for the preservation of fyshe' in a surveyof 1609. The main five ponds created by damming the stream above a watermill hadbeen given names; my Lady's pond of three acres, my Lord's of four acres, Mr Phillip'sof one acre, Mr Robert's and Mr Thomas's ponds both of half an acre.207 Naming pondsin this way carried 'connotations of lordship' directly linking them with the lord and hisfamily, a practice dating back to the medieval period.208Before repairs were undertaken at Halden(41) the carpenters made grates orsluice gates, guts or channels to take runs of water, and flights or steps to take water todifferent levels. All these components controlled the water flowing from pond to pond.The use of carpenters in this instance implies that these components were wooden, butthe grates could be made of iron or brass, pierced with holes to allow fresh water totrickle through, but small enough to inhibit the movement of fish from pond to pond.209202 SuffRO HA43/T501/242; Birling fish ponds OS TQ764614, Halden OS TQ857341; see Plate 3.12p.104 amd Plate 3.13 p.106.203 Markham(1616:505-506); Brandon(2003:113,120).204 CKS U1475/A27/7, pike was served at Penshurst.205 Brandon(2003:120) quoting from Leonard Mascall, A Booke of fishing with hooke and line.206 CKS U1475/E23/2; CKS U1475/M73.207 CKS U1475/M73, CKS U1475/E23/1, 1544 ponds named, but then 'My lady's pond' was 'MistressMary's.208 Liddiard(2005:107).209 Markham(1616:505).104Plate 3.12Water features in parks(a) The mansion in Hemsted park (now Benenden School), with it series of fiveponds fed by a stream to the right of the house.Detail from a map of 1599 (HA43/T501/242) by kind permission of SuffolkRecord Office from the Earl of Cranbrook Family Archives.(b) Looking across one ofthe fishponds at Birling(6)park to the walled enclosureof the house in Birling park,newly built in 1520-1521.(c) Same pond which runsnorth/south in a narrowvalley called The Cam.12 June 2010105It might be that the carpenters at Halden made frames to hold metal grates. Channelswith sluice gates were required above the dam at the head of the stream, to allow excesswater to bypass the ponds, rather than break over the dam.210 Work on the ponds atHalden took 63 days and involved repairing some breaches in the sides, relining theponds with clay and raising the heads of two ponds by two feet. Some tasks, like diggingthe channel to the floodgates, were paid by day-rate of ten pence, while teams were paid2s 6d for carting clay to the site. In all the work cost £25 9s 2d, which included £2 spentdamning up a breach through which water had burst, sweeping over six workmen andflooding the watermill.211Even when parks were leased out, as at Hever(46) and Bedgebury(4), the lesseeswere expected to maintain the ponds with the fish. At Hever(46) the subtenant, ReynaldWoodgate, his wife and son had to prevent damage to the banks 'from the rage of thewater' by opening the sluices when necessary, and at Bedgebury(4) the lessee, ThomasTharpe, was to confront anyone found fishing or shooting waterfowl in the ponds andprovide the names of the culprits to the park owner, Sir Alexander Culpepper, within tendays.212Occasionally new ponds were added to increase the capacity of the fish stock.The outlay for this was estimated by John Norden in 'The Surveyor's Dialogue' of 1607,to be £1 for every 30¼ square yards of surface.213 In 1567 a new great pond atPenshurst(71) cost £23, a considerable sum, when 12 arras hangings for the house cost£80 0s 10d.214 Using Norden's estimate this pond would have been over half an acre inextent in his time, but if costs had been lower four decades earlier it would have beenlarger. New ponds in Canterbury(18) park dug out for Sir Edward Wotton, lord Morley,caused controversy because a conduit, predating the park, which carried water to theprecincts of Canterbury cathedral, was threatened by the new fishponds constructedabove part of the watercourse.215 In the end an amicable agreement was drawn up in210 Markham(1616:505).211 CKS U1475/E23/1 & U1475/M73.212 CKS U1450/T6/10, 1560; BL Cart.Harl.79.F.5, 1618.213 Manning(1993:132) citing John Norden.214 Kingsford & Shaw (1925:242-243).215 Tatton Brown(1983:45-52).106Plate 3.13Water features in parks(a) Party on Landscape Archaeology Day climbing down from top of maindam below the fishponds at Birling(6) park. 12 June 2010(b) The front of the dam which once held back water for a series of fiveinterlinking fishponds at Halden(41) park. This dam and the whole systemwere extensively repaired in 1571. 8 March 20101071616 whereby the dean and chapter were allowed to install water pipes under the pondand to drain the pond to carry out necessary repairs, as long as they gave notice of thework and let the water run overnight to refill the ponds when the repairs had beencompleted.216 It was not unusual to drain ponds because regular maintenance involvedre-lining them with clay every four or so years. At the same time the decayed matter andmud at the bottom of the pond was removed and spread on the fields as rich manure.217Before drainage, fish were removed with a sizeable drag net such as one costing 14shillings used at Knole(50) in 1622, where there were four stew ponds holding carp.218These ponds were partly restocked with 29 extra fish from Hever the following year, thefourth stew pond receiving the 'great' carps.219The sport of angling was in its infancy, but was gradually being taken up by theKentish gentry such as Sir Henry Sidney, who might have wanted his new pond forangling because he enjoyed the sport, as evidenced when he caught 100 good bream atKillingworth castle in Shropshire in 1568.220 Markham was one of the advocates ofangling, arguing that it promoted civility, patience and temperance, and thought it a goodactivity for servants during their holidays, but their equipment would have been morebasic than that purchased by Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden, who, in 1623, paid 12s10d for an angle and four fishing rods and lines.As well as providing habitats for fish, water features attracted waterfowl and in afew parks heronries were encouraged. The heronry in Chilham(21a) park reputed to bethe oldest and largest heronry dated back to at least 1290, and other heronries were inCobham(23), Halden(41) and Penshurst(71) parks.221 'The sweet morsels' of heron fleshwere considered a delicacy, 'a princely dish and meat for a king', although thisdescription applied mainly to the stomach and breast meat, other parts being'excrementuous' and hard to digest.222 As with venison, gifts of heron meat were216 See Plate 3.14 p.108; CCA-DCc-ChAnt/W/230.217 Brandon(2003:120).218 CKS U269/A3; CKS U269/E23, 1623.219 CKS U269/E23/1.220 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:8) 8/8/1568; CKS U350/E4, Yeandle, p.155, www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk.221 Oswald(c.1972:7), citing IPM Kirby 1280; Bowdler(2002) citing 'The Heronry' on 1864 OS map;Halden, CKS U1475/M73, 1609, there is a yearly breed of herons in Homegrove wood; Kingsford &Shaw(1925:236) bailiff's accounts 1469-1471.222 Markham(1616:671-672).108Plate 3.14Water features in parks(a) The great pond in Canterbury(18) park, perhaps one of the new pondsdug out in the early 1610s, which interfered with the water flow to theprecincts of Canterbury cathedral. 18 September 2009(b) The remains of the conduit house, this structure dating from theseventeenth century, but perhaps on the site of a medieval conduit house.18 September 2009109welcome additions to the gentleman's table.223 The heron also provided good sport inhawking, where 'pleasure and delight' was taken 'in the flight of the hauke for to take theherne.'224The heronry at Penshurst(71) park must have failed at some stage because in1605 Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, attempted to reintroduce the birds. His motivationseems to have been to make an aesthetic and perhaps ostentatious display, 'for I wouldfaine have some herns about my hous.'225 His detailed instructions indicate that he or hisadvisor had read Markham. Young herons in the nest were to be sent to Penshurst to befed near Loampit Grove where the heronry was to be established, and ideal conditionswere to be provided to encourage them to set up permanent residence. To discourage theyoung herons from flying away to find food, trenches were to be dug and filled with eelsand fish fry so that 'at the first the herons may have theyr meate easily.' The venturemight not have succeeded because no herons are mentioned as coming from the estate inthe steward's accounts of the mid 1620s.226(d) Timber and wood resourcesParks had traditionally been a source of timber and wood, although carefulmanagement techniques were required to prevent deer damaging developing trees andstifling regeneration by eating young shoots and saplings. Deer were particularlyattracted to coppice woodland because of the succulent, fast new growth at feeding level,so coppice woodland was confined within ditched, banked and even hedged or fencedcompartments inside which marauding deer were not tolerated. Woodland for tall timbertrees, or newly planted copses would also have been compartmented (see Plate 3.15). 227A technique to retain individual timber trees within open areas of the park, but beyondthe reach of deer, was to pollard them by cutting off all branches above eight to 12 feet,so that new branches and fresh growth developed above the browsing zone.228 This form223 CKS U1475/A27/7, Household Expenses at Penshurst, 15/5/1624, record a gift of four herons and threefrom Mr Dickson a week later; Plumb(1977:83) in 1569 when Sir William Petre entertained Elizabeth I atIngatestone Hall, Essex, the menu included herons from Kent.224 Markham(1616:671-672).225 Shaw(1936:155).226 CKS U1475/A27/7.227 Rackham(1976:195) coppice = underwood trees which are cut to near ground level every few years andwhich grow again from the stool (base); see Plate 3.15 p.111.228 Rackham(1976:200) pollard = tree which is cut 8 – 12 feet above ground level and allowed to growagain from the bolling (trunk) to produce successive crops of wood; see Plate 3.16 p.113 and Plate 3.17p.115 .110of management particularly to oak, ash, hornbeam or beech formed the characteristicwood-pasture parkland scene of isolated trees or groups of trees standing in the opengrassland (see Plates 3.16 and 3.17).229 Pollarding prolonged a tree's life and somepollards, now termed veteran trees, dating back to the sixteenth century or even earlierare still to be found in the parks of Lullingstone(55), Cobham(23), Knole(50) andPenshurst(71).230Areas of woodland varied from park to park. Some parks like Thomas Wotton'snew South(12) park, which had enclosed former farmland, were less well endowed thanothers, and a rare record from this park shows that some parkland trees came fromplanned planting, rather than by random growth. On Tuesday 17 February 1567 ThomasWotton paid sixpence for one day's work in digging up young beeches in Long Beechwood to be set in South(12) park.231 Fenced guards around these trees would have keptthe deer at bay. A survey of Shurland(78) on windswept Sheppey in 1572 failed tomention trees in the park, while in the well wooded Weald in the early seventeenthcentury Halden(41) park had 'dyvers great woods well set with tymber', and Scotney(76)park was shown covered with trees on map of 1619.232 Knole(50) park, on theGreensand ridge, was 'well furnished with fair timber trees.' Much would depend on thenatural vegetation and management of the park.Medieval parks were exploited for timber and wood and these products continuedto be useful resources in the period under review, although specific evidence for Kent isdifficult to find.233 Both coppicing and pollarding were sustainable forms ofmanagement as long as the interval between cuts was sufficient and grazing animals werekept away from the new growth. 234 That is probably why deer keeper, Robert Terry,specifically noted that two deer had been killed in Beechen wood and 'the coppice',between 1603 and 1605, without mentioning the site of other kills. 235 The deer in thosewoodlands may well have been targeted because their presence was detrimental to thegrowth of the trees.229 Rackham(2003:195); Rackham(1986:123-126); Rackham(1976:147-148).230 Observed on fieldwork visits; see Plate 3.16 p.113 and Plate 3.17 p.115.231 BL Add.Mss.42715.232 TNA SP12/87/1-3 pp.7-8; CKS U269/T1/A;8:4:4, 1614; CKS U1475/M73, 1609; CKS U1776/P1,1619.233 Rowe(2009:24-26).234 Rackham(1976:72-73); Rackham(2003:187).235 CKS U1475/E47.111Plate 3.15Timber and wood resources in parks(a) Centuries old ash coppice stool with wood bank boundary on theright, once inside Broxham(17) park Christopher Waterman.16 October 2004(b) Ash coppice on south park boundary bank of West Wickham(99)park, Christopher Waterman on ditch side now a public footpath.Ash and oak were often grown along park boundaries to providewood for fencing. 14 January 2005112Wood and timber from parks were valuable resources for use within the estateand owners were usually anxious to conserve them. When charging his executors to find40 tons of timber from his lands in Kent to complete the construction of CobhamCollege, William Brooke, lord Cobham, expressly excluded his parks at Cobham(23) andCooling(24).236 One reason Sir Robert Sidney gave for his wife to over-winter atOtford(62) in 1594 was to spare the woods round Penshurst - the demand to provideenough fuel for large households to keep warm and for baking, brewing and cookingbeing enormous.237 Small loppings and toppings were used as fuel for the main house orwere converted into charcoal.238 In 1612 Richard Smale was paid 14 pence for each of54 cords of pollard wood he had cut in Knole(50) park, which were then carted to Knolehouse as logs for fuel at the cost of 12 pence a cord.239 Larger branches and trunksprovided timber for construction work such as for the paling at Halden(41) park.240Timber was used in building works inside Penshurst Place, where the steward, RobertKerwin, overseeing trees and woodland in Penshurst(71) park and the disparkedSouthpark(72) promised Sir Robert Sidney to 'looke carefullie to them according to thetrust yow repose in me.'241 In January 1600 he reported that 'the tymber that is anie thingsmall, and the bords and plankes' had been brought from Penhurst(71) park to the house,where a floor was being laid in a small room at the chapel end of the house and apartition erected near the larder.242Apart from consumption within the estate, wood and timber from parks, as fromother woodland, had commercial value and might be profitably sold. In 1623 wood wassold from Penshurst(71) park to defray the estate costs of wood cutting and hedging.243The Darrell family of Scotney leased 100 acres of woodland in Scotney(76) park, withanother 360 acres of woodland, to ironmaster, Thomas Dyke, in 1597 as part of the leaseof Chingley furnace.244 The juxtaposition of these two elements of the lease suggeststhat the woodland was to provide fuel for the furnace, and from the tree-covered map of236 Scott Robertson(1877:214) 24/2/1596, William Brooke's will.237 Hanney, Kinnamon. & Brennan(2005:56,61).238 CKS U1475/E55/4, 1623.239 CKS U269/A2/2; cord = measure of cut wood especially to use as fuel – a pile of cord wood measuredabout 8 feet across 4 feet deep and 4 feet high, but variable across the country (http://dictionary.oed.com).240 See pp.61-62 for the paling of Halden(41) park.241 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:437-438) 13/2/1600.242 Ibid. pp.426-427, 5/1//1600.243 CKS U1475/E55/4.244 ESRO DYK/606 & DYK/607.113Plate 3.16Timber and wood resources in parks(a) Hornbeam pollard in Cobham(23) park, now in woodland setting, butthe outstretched branches indicate that it once stood in the open.Hornbeam was unpalatable to deer, so they tended not to browse it, but itwas useful for fire fuel. 1 June 2004(b) Fine oak in Knole(50)park, east of the walledgarden. 2 October 2010114Scotney(76) park in 1619 it might be inferred that this was supplied by pollarding treesrather than by chopping them down.245 As sporting rights were reserved to the Darrells,woodcutting might well have taken place in the presence of deer.Not everyone was conservation minded. There could be tension betweenimmediate profit and long-term sustainability, as occurred in the Tonbridge area wherethe Wealden iron industry rapidly expanded in the second half of the sixteenth century.Two furnaces and a forge were set up in or adjacent to Southfrith(93) and Postern(92)parks, and in the 1550s the lessees were granted a licence for an annual rent of £500 ayear to cut wood for charcoal in the woodlands of Southfrith(93), and Postern(92) andCage(88) parks which lay close at hand. By 1571 the timber of Southfrith(93) waslargely exhausted and the leaseholder gave up the lease because the return from the saleof wood was too low to meet the high rent. The once richly wooded area by that stagemainly comprised 810 acres of 'rough ground covered with birch and thorn, and the restheath and barren lands.'246Other instances of poor management were on a smaller scale. At Knole(50),wood for the furnace to produce glass for the windows of the house came from the park,but with the glassmakers working flat-out in November 1587, the supply of wood inHook wood was soon exhausted and other woodland was identified for felling.247 Cattlewere put into Hook Wood in the early seventeenth century so perhaps it never recovered.248 With straitened financial circ*mstances there was a tendency to try to gain a quickprofit by selling wood and timber as Sir Henry Brooke was prepared to do in 1600. Hisagent tacitly admitted that the estate had been poorly controlled when he suggested thatSir Henry Brooke should make whatever money he could from the wood, which wasbeing 'embezzled and wasted' by his tenants with the connivance of the bailiffs.249245 Bannister(2001:section 3.6.1).246 Chalklin(2004:98-99).247 Phillips II (1930:333-334) thought the glass works were in Knole(50) park, but Ward(1931:17-19) citesdocumentary evidence from nearby Panthurst(67) park referring to the glass house in that vicinity, and thisis confirmed in CKS U442/P102, 1630, where field no.10 is called 'Glasshouse feild'. The wood for thefurnace came from Knole park; Barrett-Lennard(1908:140-141).248 Barrett-Lennard(1908:99-100).249 TNA SP12/276/43, ?1600.115Plate 3.17Timber and wood resources in parks(a) 500 year-old oak pollard in Lullingstone(55) park with group onVeteran Tree course run by BTCV (British Trust for ConservationVolunteers). 12 March 2006(b) Bear's oak, Penshurst(71) park, dates back to Tudor times.22 January 2005116These few examples for Kent at least show the usefulness of trees as a parklandresource, but little can be gleaned about the extent to which timber and wood wereexploited on a regular basis across a wider range of parks.(iv) The viability of parksAlthough there is insufficient evidence on which to build quantitative conclusionsabout the management of Elizabethan and Jacobean parks in Kent, there is sufficientillustrative material to show that they could be as versatile as medieval parks inexploiting resources within their bounds. The balance of conflicting interests over timewithin the park and between parks created dynamic elements within the landscape withpark interiors as varied, complex and productive as the owners wished to make them. Incontributing to the self-sufficient estate these parks followed the tradition of medievalparks, but, as Liddiard stresses, the landscape of production should neither detract fromtheir role as symbols of power and prestige, nor from their role as landscapes ofrecreation.250 For 40 years after 1590 landed incomes rose faster than inflation so withcontrolled expenditure parks may not necessarily have been such a drain on income ashas been thought, and this even helps to explain the longevity of many parks.251Frustratingly, as others have found, estimating the viability of parks has not beenpossible.252 Estate officials were slow to adopt double-entry book keeping, so accountsdo not show a true balance of income over expenditure.253 In Kent, expenditure on andincome from parks were neither recorded selectively, nor dealt with separately, and tocompound the problems book keeping methods varied from one estate to another. Thereare no balance sheets extant specifically for Elizabethan and Jacobean parks in thecounty. Occasional items of expenditure or income generated by parks have beenhighlighted in this chapter, but disappointingly none of these relate to the cost of keepinga herd of deer. Birling has the longest run of accounts, for the years 1586 to 1599, yetthe park was omitted from these because it was 'in the hands of the Lord for the entireperiod.'254250 Liddiard(2005:100,104); Birrell(1992:122).251 Harvey(2002:59); Brandon(2003:111); Lasdun(1992:32); Stone(1965:188-189).252 Prince(2008:15-16); Birrell(1992:115); Rowe(2005:26).253 Palliser(1992:114); Birrell(1992:115) the same problem applies to the medieval period during whichmanorial accounts purport to record expenditure on and income from parks, but in practice rarely do so.254 ESRO ABE/18R/1 & 2.117If deer keepers kept notes of their expenditure, they do not appear in anysurviving bailiffs' or stewards' accounts. At Knole(50) in 1604, the steward accountedfor repairs to the park paling and listed the cutting of brushwood for the conies under'Extraordinary expenses.'255 At Penshurst(71) both the bailiff and the steward mergedincome over the whole estate, with costs appearing under separate headings. Forexample in the bailiff's accounts for Penshurst, from 1571 to 1572, repairs to the parkpaling were listed under 'Charges of house and household,' and the riding charges of theaccountant who came to observe the stock taking of the deer under 'Foreign paymentsmade.'256The only comment about the cost of the upkeep of a park occurs in a letter of1611 to Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, when his steward was trying to dissuade him fromenlarging Penhurst(71) park. In the letter the steward pointed out that the annual cost ofupkeep of the park with 400 deer was £100:-You have already a very fair and sportelyke a park as any is in this parte ofEngland; the making of yt soe hath abated £100 a yere of your livingealreddy, yt is lardge enough to mayntaine 400 deere, which will affordhunting sufficient for your honorable friends: two years forbearaunce willfull stock yt.257The annual maintenance cost of the park represented a quarter of Robert Sidney'syearly income of £400 from the Penshurst estate, at a time when the overall incomefrom his lands was £3390.258 The park was a luxury he could afford had hisexpenditure matched his income, but after paying household bills he was left with£500, and soon fell into debt with annual building costs and luxury items forPenshurst Place coming to nearly £3000, and his outfits for special occasions to thesame amount.259 The cost of the park's annual upkeep pales into insignificanceagainst these figures, and as his steward hints, it was worth bearing for the kudos itbrought him among his neighbours and friends, but extending it would bring notangible benefits. Over the years, Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, was only able tokeep apace with his debts by borrowing, selling land and endeavouring to advanceat court.255 CKS U269/A2/1.256 CKS U1475/A6/6.257 Shaw(1942:265-266) letter of 9/5/1611, Golding to Viscount Lisle.258 Palliser(1992:112) citing Thomas Wilson, 'State of England Anno Dom.1600' , which assigned to peersan average yearly income of £3600.259 BL Add.Mss.12066.118There were still deer in Canterbury(18) park in the early seventeenth century, butthe pasture and herbage brought an income to the trustee, Robert Cecil, viscountCranbourne, as Sir John Leveson's accounts of 1604 show.260 Of its 350 acres, 82 wereused to pasture mares, raising a rent of £30 7s 6d. Elsewhere in the park the sale ofherbage raised £90 5s 5d, with another £6 16s 9d sold, but not accounted for, theprevious year. From the total of £127 9s 8d, deductions were made for the payment of£20 rent due to the Countess of Kildare, formerly wife of Henry Brooke, lord Cobham,the previous park keeper, half a year's rent of £35 7s 0d to James I, a year's wages of £710s 0d for the keeper and under-keeper, and payments of £17 13s 2d for repairs about thepark – totalling £80 11 2d. Setting income against expenditure, the park made a profit of£46 18s 6d, but this is not the full picture because it does not include the upkeep of thedeer, and to date no deer keeper's accounts for anywhere in Kent have come to light.From the accounting system of the day, it is hard to see whether Elizabethan andJacobean owners would have been able to calculate the financial viability of their parks,but perhaps they did not require separate figures. The park might have been seen as afinancial investment, which would carry with it the expectation of advancement throughthe enhanced social and cultural cache associated with its ownership. On the other hand,as will be seen in Chapter Seven, monetary value need not have been uppermost inowners' minds when it came to an asset like a park, which would have been equallyappreciated for the enjoyment and pleasure that could be derived from it.261260 Salisbury Accounts 6/35, 29/9/1604.261 Chapter Seven p.183, 'The perception of crown, nobles and gentry towards parks.'119PART II – CHAPTER FOURTHE MANAGEMENT OF ROYAL PARKS IN KENTThere were six parks under direct royal control at the beginning of Elizabeth I'sreign: the park(39) next to Greenwich palace, three parks, Great(31), Middle or Little(32)and Horn(33) surrounding Eltham palace, Canterbury(18) park, and Otford Great(62)park adjacent to Otford palace. By the beginning of James I's reign Greenwich(39) parkand the three Eltham(31-33) parks remained. The use the two monarchs made of theirparks will be dealt with in Chapter Seven, here the focus is centred on the upkeep of thesix active royal parks.1The administrative structure of royal parks differed from all but the mostillustrious parks of the nobility by being headed by the keeper of the park, instead of abailiff or steward. 2 Manning, in 1993, commented on the lack of systematic study of thispost for the early modern period, and this remains the case, so, as with the role of thedeer keeper, it has been thought opportune to examine the role of the park keeper atGreenwich and Eltham in as much detail as the evidence allows.3In section (i) the duties of the keeper will be outlined, with their patents,remuneration and perquisites of office (i). In section (ii) how the royal parks fared underElizabeth I and James I will be considered, with the former carrying out belated upkeep,and the latter more willing to make improvements.(i) The keepers of royal parks in KentAt the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign, keepers were appointed for the royal parkof Greenwich(39), the three royal parks at Eltham(31-33), Canterbury(18) park andOtford Great(62) park. These positions were held by highly ranked courtiers or, latterlyat Eltham in James I's reign, by officers of the royal household, and were regarded ashonours granted to the favoured.4 The selection of park keepers of very high socialstanding reflected the importance of the parks at Eltham(31-33) and Greenwich(39) as1See (i)(a) pp.186-189 and (iii)(a) pp.200-203.2TNA prob/11/112/114, 10/11/1608, Richard Dirkin, the park keeper of Bletchingley park, Surrey, ownedby the Howard of Effingham family, left the patent of his keepership to his youngest daughter.3 Manning(1993:28).4See Figure 4.1 p.122 for keepers at Greenwich and Figure 4.2 p.124 for keepers at Eltham which includethe sources of information.120adjuncts to royal palaces within easy travel from London, because the keepers ofremoter, less frequented parks were more likely to be local lords or gentry.5Although the conference of the post of park keeper was considered an honour, itwas not a sinecure as various instructions issued by the crown show. The positioncarried certain responsibilities with it, although for the royal parks in Kent there is verylimited evidence about what the specific duties were. The general obligation placed onthe holder of the patent, which included Greenwich(39) park, was that he was to performthe requisite duties himself or to arrange for a competent 'sufficient' deputy to carry themout for him.6 Given the other responsibilities of state most keepers of Greewich((39) andEltham(31-33) parks shouldered, they required deputies to carry out closer supervision ofthe parks, and the appointment of deputies and other staff enabled the keeper himself tobestow minor patronage, either gratis as a reward for loyalty or in return for a fee.7 In1613, Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, summarised this open-ended brief as seeingto the management of the park environment, the welfare of the deer, and the properoversight of the park's timber.8 Some patentees adopted a hands-on approach, as did he,but others took on a supervisory role, relying on deputies, but still ultimately being heldresponsible for the park.Specific duties occasionally crop up in state domestic papers and include theissuing of warrants for deer, giving permission to cut browse wood for winter fodder,arranging for park maintenance and claiming payment from the crown later. Theimplementation of royal commands, such as to limit the number of deer killed, to permitcertain named people to hunt, or to preserve wood and timber, would also be required.9The extent to which such instructions were carried out is uncertain, although in extreme5 Milesom(2009:147); Manning(1993:28).6 Drake(1886:279).7 Manning(1993:28); Drake(1886:279) no date given, 'Abstract of the provisions of the grant under thestanding form of the letters patent for appointing the stewards, keepers and others.'8 Barker(1993:22).9TNA SP12/171/66, 1584, TNA SP12/180/54, 1585, TNA SP12/181/24, 1583, TNA SP12/149/52, 1587 ,TNA SP14/152/75, 1620, TNA SP14/185/19, 1625, royal warrant to provide hay for deer in Middle(32)park, Eltham; TNA SP14/35/49, 1608, privy seal request to pay keeper, Sir Olyffe Leigh, balance of hisaccount for repairs at Eltham(31) park, TNA SP14/53/110, 1610, warrant to pay keeper, Sir Roger Aston,his account for constructing four bridges and repairing pale and lodge at Eltham Middle(32) park, TNASP14/120/52, 1621, warrant to pay keeper, Patrick Maule for repairs at Eltham Great(31) park; TNASP12/270/25, 1599, TNA SP14/164/71, 1624, TNA SP14/148/104, 1623, orders to permit Spanishambassadors to hunt with keepers in attendance who may dispose of all that is killed, TNA SP14/36/42,1604, TNA SP14/153/74 & 97, 1605, articles to be observed by the park keepers and others forpreservation of the timber in the king's woods and forests.121cases of non-compliance the crown did take action, as when the earl of Pembroke had hispatent of Hungerford park, Berkshire, withdrawn in 1577 because of the 'waste and spoilupon the vert and venison' there. 10 There is evidence of neglect at Eltham in the 1570sand of illegal felling in the 1590s, but the extent to which the park keeper wasresponsible is unknown.11 It would be thought that gross mismanagement was unlikelygiven the high profile of the parks, their park keepers and the visits, albeit sporadic, thatthey received from the monarchs. However, in 1608 James I rebuked Lord Stanhope for'allowing spoil of game' near Eltham palace, requiring him to be more vigilant and to seethe full force of the law was brought to bear on the offenders.12A very important duty was to ensure that there was good hunting whenever themonarch required. Illustrative of how the keeper would be held answerable to the crownfor any shortcomings in this responsibility is a letter sent by James I prior to a visit toGreenwich in 1605. In it he charged three key officers, Robert Cecil, lord Salisbury, toprepare his lodging, Thomas Howard, the earl of Suffolk, his lord chamberlain, 'to havethe house made sweet and to build a co*ck-pit', and Henry Howard, earl of Northampton,as keeper of the park 'to have the park in good order and the does all with fawn.' 13 Inthese instructions the earl of Northampton is referred to as 'the fast-walking keeper of thepark' and the 'tall black and cat-faced keeper' and is playfully, but not without underlyingthreat, warned that 'if I have not good fortune at the beginning of my hunting then thekeeper shall have the shame and never be thought a good huntsman after.'14Of the six parks under keepership at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reignCanterbury palace and park(18) were soon leased out to its keeper, Henry Brooke, lordCobham, and by the end of the reign sold to his son.15 Sir Henry Sidney was keeper ofOtford Great(62) park with a yearly fee of £6 3s 4d, with herbage and pannage; as keeperof the mansion house of Otford he received two pence daily and of the gardens fourpence daily.16 His son was eventually purchased the property from the queen in 1600.1710 Manning(1993:32).11 TNA SC12/27/7; TNA E178/1163, more details on p.133.12 TNA SP14/35/75, August 1608.13 Platts(1973:157).14 Willson(1956:187).15 See Chapter Seven pp.221.235.16 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:411-412) 10/11/1599; TNA SP12/281/57, 16/8/1601; herbage = the naturalherbage or pasture of any land as a species of property distinct from the land itself; pannage = the right or122Figure 4.1 - Keepers of the royal park at Greenwich1553 Sir Henry Jerningham d.1571Mary I's Captain of the Guard and Vice Chamberlain (CPR 13 Nov.1553, pp.404-406)1572 Sir George Howard d.1580Master of Ordnance (CPR V, C66/1089 no.2943, 28 October 1572)1580 Sir Christopher HattonLord Chancellor (CPR VIII, C66/1186 no.1332, 9 June 1580)1594 Thomas Sackville, earl of DorsetPrivy Councillor, K.G. (Cecil Mss. 321 deed 41/24)1605 Robert Cecil, viscount CranbourneLord High Treasurer on surrender of Sackville + Greenwich Castle(TNA SP14/14/1, 2 May 1605, TNA E214/703 4 June 1611 surrendered)1605 Henry Howard, earl of Northampton d.1614Privy Councillor, K.G.,Warden of Cinque Ports on surrender of Cranbourne + Greenwich Castle(Cecil Mss. 15 deed 42/1, 1605, SP14/12/88, 11 October 1611)1611 Thomas Howard, earl of SuffolkLord Chamberlain (Drake (ed.) Hundred of Blackheath, p.280, Patent 9 James I p.24)Theophilus Howard, baron of WaldenCaptain of Gentlemen Pensioners(Drake (ed.) Hundred of Blackheath, p.280, Douquet 2 July 1611, for Greenwich castleonly)1614 Edward Somerset ,earl of WorcesterPrivy Councillor, Earl Marshal, Master of Horse(Drake (ed.) Hundred of Blackheath, p.280, 11 James I, p.31)privilege to pasture pigs (or other animals); payment made to the owner of a tract of woodland for this rightor privilege; the right to collect such payment; the income accruing from this (http://dictionary.oed.com).17 See Chapter Seven(iv) pp.221-235.123The most important park keepers in Kent, appointed throughout the period, werethose connected with the royal palaces of Greenwich and Eltham.18 Although the patentswere granted for life, several were in reversion and only became operable on the death orresignation of the incumbent. Both Elizabeth I and James I chose prominent courtiers askeepers of Greenwich(39) park.19 As with deer keepers, park keepers' full remunerationconsisted of a fixed rate of pay, the receipt of fees and various perquisites. Just howmuch all these elements totalled for the Greenwich(39) and Eltham(31-33) parks isunknown, and in any case was likely to vary from year to year. Although the rate of paywas not itself attractive, the total package was more generous because the patents did notcentre on the parks, but contained wider responsibilities in which the parks wereincluded. For Greenwich this can be seen in the patent of 1572 granted to Sir GeorgeHoward. 20 He was to be paid four pence a day for the keepership of the manor ofPleasance in which Greenwich palace was situated, three pence a day as keeper of theorchard with the small garden and pond there, £4 a year for keeping the turkey co*cks andgame co*cks and their young, and three pence a day as keeper of Greenwich(39) park. Allthese fees, amounting to about £19 a year, were to be paid out of the customs revenue ofthe port of London. In the 1590s (and probably as late as 1600 because Otford Great(62)park was not included) all the offices and perquisites of state were listed, with the feesfor the keeper of Greenwich(39) park and the manor of Pleasaunce being £19 4s 0d ayear, which would approximate to the more detailed package given above.21 Otherannual wages mentioned in the patent to Sir George Howard came from the stewardshipsof several local manors amounting to £10 13 4d, and of Deptford town and Strondamounting to 50 shillings, and the patentee was to receive 60s 8d as bailiff of SayesCourt, Deptford, making a total of £16 4s 0d. The patent also contained a long list ofgrants of specific leases of tenements, plots of land situated in Greenwich, Beckenham,Eltham, Chislehurst and elsewhere, woodland, a dovecote, 80 acres of marshland to beenjoyed without rent, and the lordship of Old Court, which was otherwise known asDuke Humphrey's tower or Greenwich castle, within the park, now the site of the RoyalObservatory.2218 See Figure 4.1 'Keepers of Greenwich park' p.122 and Figure 4.2 'Keepers of the Eltham parks', p.124.19 TNA SP14/14/1, 2/5/1605, TNA E214/703, 4/6/1611, surrendered; Salisbury papers 42/1, patent ofkeepership to Henry, earl of Northampton, with succession to Robert Cecil, viscount Cranbourne;Drake(1886:280) patent 11 James I.20 CPR V, C66/1089 no.2943, 28/10/1572.21 TNA SP12/235/9.22 Drake(1886:279); see Plate 4.1 p.136, which shows Duke Humphrey's tower..124125The position with the Eltham parks(31-33) was even more complicated becausetowards the end of Elizabeth I's reign, and under James I, the keepership of the threeparks might be held separately. Sir Christopher Hatton was alone in holding thekeepership of the three parks at Eltham(31-33) and Greenwich(39) park until his death in1591. He was granted keepership of the Eltham parks(31-33) in 1568, which took effecton the death Henry Jerningham in 1571, and became keeper of Greenwich(39) park insuccession to Sir George Howard, who died in 1580.23As with the keepership of Greenwich(39) park, the keeperships of the Elthamparks(31-33) were included within an extensive patent.24 At the turn of the seventeenthcentury the keeper of Eltham palace and 'the park there' earned the fee of £13 13s 4d.25It is unclear whether this fee covered all the parks, although only the singular noun isused. The earlier patent of 1568 for Sir Christopher Hatton gave daily fees for each ofthe three parks. As keeper of the Great(31) and Middle or Little (32) parks at Eltham hereceived three pence a day for each, and as keeper of certain houses (meaning the Elthampalace complex) in the manor of Eltham sixpence a day and ten marks a year.26 Thesalary for these posts was to come from the revenue of the manor of Eltham. As keeperof Horn(33) park he was paid four pence a day from the customs revenue of the port ofLondon. In addition he was given use of the keeper's lodge, adjoining the palace ofEltham. The patent went on to grant the former chantry and priest's house at Eltham,lease for life of the manor house of Eltham in reversion, several tenements and lands,grant for life in reversion of the garden at Eltham palace, grant of the office of purveyorof the manor of Eltham, of keeper of the woods with the buildings in the store yard, andof the office of steward of the courts of the manor of Eltham. This latter part of thepackage gave the patentee a yearly income of £62 16s 8d and a yearly wage of £2.Lord North's patent of 1597 was similar to that of Sir Christopher Hatton exceptthat the daily fee for Horn(33) park had risen to 16d a day and ten marks a year, perhapsbecause he had to wait until the death or surrender of Hugh Miller before he could23 CPR IV no.1377, 27/7/1568; CPR VIII, C66/1186/1332, 9/6/1580.24 Calendars of Patent rolls do not extend beyond 1592/4, so details of later Patents are less accessible.25 TNA SP12/235/9, c.1600.26 CPR IV no.1377, 27/7/1568; mark = in England was a monetary unit equivalent in value to two-thirds ofa troy pound of pure silver or two-thirds of a pound sterling (http://dictionary.oed.com).126become keeper of Middle(32) park.27 The fee for the Great(31) park was three pence aday (rising to four pence by 1600), and as keeper of the manor house sixpence a day.The successors of Roger North, lord North, after 1600 lacked the stature of previouskeepers, which could indicate a devaluation of the post coinciding with the decline in theuse of Eltham palace and its parks, a supposition further strengthened by theappointment of even less well-known figures during James I's reign.28Because the patents encompassing the parks at Eltham(31-33) andGreenwich(39) were broad, and because other parks might also have been held underwide patents, it is not easy to make direct comparisons, but in the last decade ofElizabeth I's reign the yearly fees of the keepers of the royal London parks were £9 2s 6dfor Marylebone park and £6 1s 8d for Hyde park, while the keeper of the park atHampton Court was paid 4d a day, which was the same as the daily fee for Horn(33)park in Eltham, but one penny more than the other Eltham parks(31-32) andGreenwich(39) park.29 Such differences might well reflect, among other factors, the sizeof the park, the extent of its use, the degree of responsibility that went with thekeepership, and the generosity of a wider package of grants within the patent.Little appears in the patents detailing the perquisites that went with thekeeperships. Sir George Howard's patent for Greenwich(39) park of 1572 gave theassurance that the grant was to be 'enjoyed with all privileges of office in as ample amanner as any previous grantee', but these privileges were not specified. Commonperquisites, as noted for Canterbury(18) and Otford Great(62) parks, were herbage,pannage and the wood of the park.30 The herbage and pannage of the park were includedin the patent for the keepership of Greenwich(39) in 1613.31 When the keepership ofHorn(33) park was given to John Leigh in 1600 a unique note was added about theperquisites, namely that 'the fees be these, the scarthe, 16d, the leffes, 4s, the hande, 2s;summa totalis 7s 4d.'32 Exactly what these obscure words mean is not fully covered inthe Oxford English Dictionary; 'scarthe' is said to be a fragment, 'leffes' can meanpermissions, which might be fees raised from giving permission to hunt or for grants of27 TNA SP/12/264/7, 4/7/1597.28 Brook(1960:44-45); Gregory(1909:186-187); figure 4.2 p.124.29 TNA SP12/235/9.30 Ibid; Salisbury papers 6/35, 29/9/1604.31 TNA SP14/75/4932 TNA SP12/34/25, 4/2/1600.127venison or some other favour, 'hande', among many definitions, can mean 'having a sharein' or 'profit', which might come from the right to take pannage, herbage or fallen woodfrom the park.33 Like the deer keeper in gentry-owned parks, the park keeper wasallowed a quota of deer to distribute among family or friends, or for a fee.34At Greenwich and Eltham a major perquisite was the residence that went with thekeepership, which might have been enjoyed free with food and board. 35 The lodgeswould have been convenient when the court was in residence nearby or in London, or,for keepers not wishing to take up residence, there would have been the rental income.At least two of the keepers made full use of the lodges, namely Sir Christopher Hattonand Henry Howard, earl of Northampton. The keeper's house at Eltham was enjoyed bySir Christopher Hatton, keeper from 1571 to 1591, 'for his own occupation withoutmolestation of any officers of the Queen, because the house was thus first used for thekeeper of the said capital house.'36 He made the lodge his permanent home for severalyears, during which time Monsieur de Champenaye, ambassador from the LowCountries, was handsomely entertained with a concert of 'excellent and sweet music',coursing a buck 'with the best and most beautiful greyhounds that ever I did behold', anda display of equestrian prowess.37 Henry Howard, the earl of Northampton, aggrandisedthe lodge within Greenwich(39) park, and spent £2000 renovating Greenwich castle,which 'he much enlarged and beautified' and made his home.38The keeper's daily pay for just one of the parks might be regarded as inadequate,but the various perquisites added extra income to the office, as well as providing theopportunity for the keeper himself to dispense patronage through minor parkappointments and through special favours. No information has been found about thevalue of perquisites for the parks at Greenwich(39) and Eltham(31-33), but those for thekeepership of the forest and park of Clarendon, for example, were valued at £812 per33 Scarth(e), leffe (leave), hand(e) (http://dictionary.oed.com).34 Adams(1995:177) Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, commanded his servants to give to the keeper ofEltham park 10 shillings on 16 June and 6s 8d on 3 July, 1585, for unspecified favours; TNA SP12/171/66,1584, SP12/180/54, 1585, examples of deer from Odiham and Mortlake parks being granted by thekeepers.35 Manning(1993:29).36 CPR IV no.1377, p.228, 27/7/1568.37 Brook(1960:44) quoted without source.38 Drake(1886:61) citing Camden(1610); see Plate 7.3 p.204, one of the buildings in the park to the rightmight have been the lodge. Greenwich castle is on the highest ground to the left.128annum in 1606.39 Against the background of the total income of some of these magnatesthis was a substantial amount; for example, Sir Robert Sidney, keeper of OtfordGreat(62) park, in 1586 had an annual income of £1200 from estate rents as well as hiscaptain's salary.40 Against higher incomes the value would be useful, but not critical.Robert Cecil, viscount Cranbourne, appointed keeper of Greenwich(39) park in 1604,had a net rental income in 1609 of about £5100, but his profits from political office farexceeded that sum; Theophilus Howard, keeper of Greenwich(39) park from 1611, hadan annual gross landed income of about £11000 with £2000 from offices andperquisites.41 Such incomes, however, did not make these men, or their contemporaries,immune to the value of a keepership, not only to add to their prestige, but also becauseall spent so lavishly that they fell into deep debt, so, even for them, the office of parkkeeper, with its undoubted potential to add to their purse, was welcome. 42Sometimes too lavish a lifestyle or too much influence exercised by a keepercould arouse the suspicion of a monarch, and this occurred with Henry Howard, earl ofNorthampton, who, by residing in Greenwich castle, was able to exert his influencethroughout the palace. He unwittingly jeopardised the keepership by arousing QueenAnne's hostility with a very ill judged comment that she 'was only the best subject, yet noless a subject than I.'43The exact sequence of events is obscure, but seems to focus around the earl ofNorthampton's entitlement to the keepership and other offices in Greenwich, which hepurchased from Robert Cecil, then viscount Cranbourne, in 1605, paying compensationof £200 to the deputy keeper.44 At the same time he bought for £1500, the manor of OldCourt, which included Greenwich castle and its grounds inside the park, although Platts,without citation, considered the transaction to have been a 66-year lease.45 Apart fromdesiring the status value of being keeper of Greenwich(39) park, the earl of Northamptonhad close ties with Greenwich, holding the Howard estate there and having spent his39 Manning(1993:30) citing J. C. Cox, The Royal Forests of England, pp.321-322.40 Hay(1945:55).41 Stone(1973:20,287).42 Stone(1973:xviii); Hay(1945:55).43 Meikle & Payne, Anne of Denmark] (1574-1619)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/ 559) citing Somerset121).44 Salisbury papers 42/1, c.1605; Drake(1886:61) citing BL Cott.Titus, C.IV.45 Platts(1973:156).129formative years in the lodge in Greenwich(39) park as ward of his aunt, Mary Fitzroy,duch*ess of Richmond, regarding it as 'his original home.'46Henry Howard, the earl of Northampton, did not regard the posts at Greenwich ashonorary, but took a close interest in the palace, its grounds and the park. According toboth Platts and Barker, James I was so displeased with the apparent loss of royal controlthat he planned to reduce Henry Howard's power, forcing the earl to relinquishGreenwich(39) park in 1613. However, evidence does not bear this out. The realdifficulty over power at Greenwich came from the relationship between the earl ofNorthampton and Queen Anne.Domestic state papers show that as early as 1611 Henry Howard, the earl ofNorthampton, arranged for the reversions of the keepership of the park to his nephew,Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, and of the manor of Old Court to Thomas Howard'sson, Theophilus Howard, baron of Walden, captain of the gentlemen pensioners.47 Themotive for this arrangement might have been to secure succession for his family, since hehimself was unmarried. Another more practical reason for the change might have beenbecause he was spending more time furthering himself at court, this being the year inwhich Robert Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, secretary of state and lord high treasurer, waslosing his grip through illness, and Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, was in politicalintrigue with the new royal favourite, Robert Carr.48 After the death of the earl ofSalisbury, in 1612, the earl of Northampton took over the day-to-day control ofgovernment business.49 His promotion would have been unlikely had James I thoughthis power base at Greenwich was too threatening to the crown, neither would thereversions of the patents for the keepership of the park and of the manor of Old Court tothe earl's relatives have received royal approval.The exact arrangement by which Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, hadbecome keeper of Greenwich(39) park and had ensconced himself in Greenwich castlebecame crucial a few months after the death of Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, when all46 Croft, Henry Howard (1540-1814) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/13/13906).47 Platts(1973:156); Barker(1993:22); Drake(1886:280) citing patent roll 9 James I, p.24; TNA SP14/65/5,2/7/1611.48 Croft, Henry Howard (1540-1614) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/13/13906).49 Ibid.130was thrown into confusion following James I's decision to transfer Greenwich(39) parkto his wife, Queen Anne, as part of her jointure.50 This was no great wrench for himbecause he frequented Greenwich less in order to spend more time in the privacy of hismore secluded country palaces, and although the royal couple remained on amicableterms, they were virtually living apart from each other – Queen Anne deciding to take upresidence in Greenwich.51Queen Anne was already prejudiced against Henry Howard, earl of Northampton,but according to Drake the conflict between them might well have deepened as a result ofthe earl of Northampton's attempts, in the exercise of his office as lord privy seal and lordhigh treasurer, to rein in the queen's extravagance in order to cut the cost of the royalhousehold.52 Queen Anne, it seems, was not prepared to tolerate his close proximity inGreenwich and was determined to undermine his power base. The earl wrote in distressto a friend:-The Queen says she will have the park in despight of me, although I bought itwith my own money and have the same right as any other subject in thekingdom to his freehold.53To forestall the queen, on 9 December 1613, he wrote to under secretary, SirThomas Lake, requesting that provision be made for his remaining in the park when thedocument transferring it to Queen Anne was drawn up, 'otherwise he will be at the mercyof a wrathful mistress, and his expulsion will be inevitable,' the queen would 'thrust himout of Greenwich Park.'54 Shortly afterwards his keepership was confirmed.55 Twomonths later, on 19 February 1614, James I, 'in consideration of our conjugal love,'granted Queen Anne Greenwich Palace, with its grounds and Greenwich(39) park andthe houses and lodges within the park 'to have and to hold for a 100 years should she liveso long.'56 Despite feeling that no-one would 'keep with so much tenderness ... theground and the deer and the little wood that is left there,' Henry Howard, earl ofNorthampton, considered it expedient to withdraw, so he appointed a bailiff to carry out50 Nichols II (reprint of 1828:671); ibid. p.671, citing Birch's Mss.4173, p.704.51 Willson(1956:184).52 Drake(1886:61); Croft, Henry Howard (1540-1814) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/13/13906).53 Platts(1973:157). He is probably referring here to the manor of Old Court 'purchased' from Robert Cecil,earl of Salisbury, see p.128.54 TNA SP14/75/40; TNA SP14/76/45.55 TNA SP14/75/49.56 Platts(1973:157-158) citing TNA SP14/76/29.131his duties and left Greenwich a broken man, dying at his London house four monthslater. 57The benefits of the office of park keeper, and the mark of a monarch's favour thatit bestowed, were highly prized, so there was fierce competition when a keepershipbecame vacant. One such occasion was noted by Sir Robert Sidney's agent, RowlandWhyte, when the keepership of the Eltham parks(31-33) was thrown open by the deathof William Brooke, lord Cobham, at midnight on 6 March 1597. Later that day RowlandWhyte wrote:-The Court is full of who shall have this and that office; most say Mr. HarryBrooke shall have Eltam and the Cinque Ports, by reason of the favour theQueen bears him. Lord Hunsdon is named for Lord Chamberlain and LordLieutenant of Kent.58On 27 April the keeperships of Eltham parks were still undecided and he wrote thatLady Leighton hoped to be granted keepership and had threatened to leave theCourt if she was not appointed.59 In the event, Henry Brooke, now lord Cobham,and Lady Leighton were both disappointed in the keepership, which Elizabeth Iconferred on Roger North, lord North, treasurer of the queen's household, althoughthe other more powerful posts were awarded as predicted.The grant of park keeperships was a small part of wider royal patronage coveringforests, parks and hunting, but came towards the top of that particular hierarchy, which iswhy the posts were avidly sought after. When Sir Olyffe Leigh, perhaps at the behest ofJames I, surrendered his office as keeper of Eltham Great(31) park in 1609, he wasgranted £1200 as compensation, an indication of the value placed on the office.60 InEdward VI's reign the fees paid to keepers and officers of royal houses, castles, parks andforests amounted to a yearly total of £5268 1s 3½d, and those of officers and ministers ofhunting to £603 14s 2½d. These figures of c.1556 are, however, modest, forming onlyseven per cent of the expenditure of approximately £73982 of the departments of public57 Platts(1973:157).58 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:245-246).59 Ibid. p.27; Ogier, Sir Thomas Leighton (c.1530-1610)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/68/68015) LadyLeighton was a gentlewoman of the privy chamber and Elizabeth I's first cousin once removed.60 Drake(1886:181) footnote 1, reference Issue of the Exchequer, Devon, 92.132service, other than the officers of the court of revenue and the officers and ministers ofjustice.61(ii) Aspects of the management of the royal parks of Greenwich(39) andEltham(31-33)Few documents reveal the routine running of the royal parks at Greenwich(39)and Eltham(31-33), and more detailed research is required into their management, but thescattered references in the domestic state papers, and, more rarely, a survey orcommission of enquiry, give an occasional glimpse into the condition of the parks.Elizabeth I merely saw that essential and often overdue repairs were carried out in theroyal parks, in contrast to James I who took a greater personal interest to enlarge andenhance the parks both at Greenwich(39) and at Eltham(31-33).There is no information about the upkeep of Greenwich(39) park in Elizabeth I'sreign, which might well imply that it was being well run, because it is in contrast toevidence for the parks at Eltham(31-33) which indicates periods of neglect both inmaintenance and in the supervision of timber felling. Disrepair seems to have beencaused by periodic under investment followed by a spate of repairs in the 1570s and inthe 1590s. Perhaps this situation reflected Elizabeth I's preference for Greenwich palacerather than Eltham palace, and although she occasionally visited Eltham throughout herreign, little is known about her use of the parks there. 62 Poor maintenance might reflectthe queen's reluctance to spend money on these parks, but lax supervision by the parkkeepers cannot be ruled out.Evidence of long-term neglect came to light in 1572 in a survey of the Great(31)park at Eltham carried out by John Fludd, the royal surveyor, soon after Sir ChristopherHatton became keeper, but untaken at the 'earnest request' of one of the deer keepers,John Cox.63 Extensive repairs, estimated at £89 17s 4d, were required because the twolodges had become dilapidated, the park paling had deteriorated, and the great pond nolonger retained water. The floors of the upper lodge were 'loose, shaking and ready tofall', the walls, tiles and chimneys were 'decayed,' and the old lodge was 'so ruinously61 TNA SP10/4/27, c.1552.62 Cole(1999:57,179- 202) Appendix 2: 1, Elizabeth I visited in 1559, 1576,1581x2, 1597, 1598, 1601,1602; Emery(1960:102); Brook(1960:45) she visited in 1568x2, 1569.63 TNA SC12/27/7.133decayed ... that there doth nor can any keeper lie therein', even though it was 'a verynecessary place' for a keeper to inhabit 'for the preservation of game.' John Cox was aconscientious deer keeper because, at his own expense, he had already patched up thepale in various places, and carried out repairs to the lodges.The park timber in the Eltham(31-33) parks, being close to the royal shipyard atDeptford, was regarded as a national resource, especially in the critical years leading upto the Spanish Armada of 1588, when Peter Pett, the royal shipwright, was given awarrant to fell trees for ship-building.64 Timber was also used for repairs to the parkfabric, as in 1594 and 1595 when 17 oak and elm trees in Eltham Great(31) park wereused for further repair to the lodges; 60 timber trees were felled in Horn(33) park to palethe perimeter; and the boughs of 87 timber trees from the three parks and three localwoodlands were used to pale the Great(31) park. 65Warrants were issued to control woodcutting and tree felling, but there waspotential for the illegal removal of timber and wood under guise of an official warrant. Acommission highlighted the felling of crown timber by Francis Flower, one of theofficials in charge of the Great(31) park, who, between 1592 and 1595, had arranged forthe trees to be felled to repair the lodges and the pale in the Great(31) park, underwarrant, but without authorisation, had also grubbed up 26 oak trees valued at £10 andtaken away several loads of wood valued at £10, all of which he had sold for profit, andanother two oaks valued at 20 shillings which he had used himself.66 These activitiesoccurred under the keeperships of Lord North and Lord Brooke, from 1592 to 1600,although there is nothing to show the extent of the park keepers' culpability. Bothauthorised and unauthorised felling largely denuded the Great(31) park of substantialtimber trees.67The repairs undertaken at the end of Elizabeth I's reign held good and when asurvey of the manor of Eltham was carried out in 1605, only 50 rods of paling on thesouth side of Horn(33) park were in ruinous condition.68 The same survey conjures up64 TNA SP12/186/46, 1586.65 TNA E178/1163.66 Ibid.67 TNA E164/44/3-58.68 Ibid.134images of the three Eltham(31-33) parks. The Great(31) park of 612 acres was just overfour and a quarter miles round and held 510 deer, 150 of which were antlered.Middle(32) park of 308 acres was enclosed by just under three miles of fencing, and had240 deer, of which 47 were antlered. Horn(33) park of 345 acres was just over threemiles in perimeter, containing 240 deer, 40 of which were antlered. The most openlandscape was to be found in the Great(31) park with only 50 oak timber trees;Middle(32) park, about half the size, had 250 oak trees; while Horn(33) park was muchmore wooded with 2740 oak trees.As the parks were contiguous, separated only by roads, the whole parkland areaof 1265 acres with 990 deer afforded excellent hunting, and although James I was onlyknown to have stayed once overnight, he did use the parks while staying at Greenwich.69His entertainment of the king of Denmark in 1606 was one instance, and he returned forlonger periods to hunt in 1612 and, finally, in 1619.70Before James I's preference for the royal residences west of Kent was establishedhe took steps to extend the royal parks at Eltham by taking 28 acres into Middle(32) parkand he instigated the creation of Lee(53) park adjacent to Horn(33) park.71 On 22October 1604 he instructed John Stanhope, baron Stanhope, to compound withneighbouring landowners to enlarge Middle(32) park, at the large capital expenditure of£2280.72 Further costs of £204 1s 4d were incurred for fencing materials in 1608,another £128 for paling the park and repairing the lodges in 1610, and a further £20 wenttowards building four bridges on James I's orders so that he could more easily movearound the park.73At the same time as ordering the extension of Middle(32) park, James I had plansfor further expansion involving imparking land in Lee, to make a new park adjacent toMiddle(32) and Horn(33) parks.74 For this venture he persuaded Sir Nicholas Stoddard,a landowner in nearby Mottingham, to act as his proxy, and the extent to which69 Nichols II (reprint of 1828:445) only one record in 1612 has been found of James I staying at Eltham;TNA SP14/69/71, 17/6/1612.70 Nichols I (reprint of 1828:445-446); TNA SP14/109/41, 22/5/1619; TNA SP14/109/92, June 1619.71 TNA E317/8.72 TNA SP14/31/24; TNA SP14/9/83; TNA SP14/53/110; TNA SP14/14/11; TNA SP14/32/10; TNASP14/47/5.73 TNA SP14/31/24.74 TNA E317/8.135individuals were prepared to take financial risks in order to please the king is aptlyillustrated as events unfolded.75 According to Sir Nicholas Stoddard the king asked himto displace sub-tenants on 60 acres of land he rented from the crown at Lee so it could beconverted into parkland. In addition he purchased, for £303 13s 4d, the remainder of alease, due to expire in 1622, of a further 42 acres of crown land. Encouraged by theking, who conferred a knighthood on him in 1603, and in the hope of furtheradvancement, he imparked the 102 acres, calling it Lee(53) park.76 He laid out ridingsand launds as James I directed, at the cost of £1500, which he raised by selling other landworth £37 a year. The king apparently approved of the new park, hunting there andkilling at least 80 deer. All boded well for Sir Nicholas Stoddard when James I promisedhim the fee-farm of the park, making him the virtual owner, but the lord treasurerblocked the proposal and the delay meant that Sir Nicholas Stoddard found himself ingrave financial straits.77 Unadvisedly, in anticipation of a successful outcome, he felledtimber on the land, for which he was restrained on 22 January 1622, eventually beingexpelled from the land in Charles I's reign.78James I's enhancement at Greenwich came after he had handed palace, groundand park over to his wife, when, in 1614, he proceeded to spend considerable sums ofmoney on a new residence for his wife, and to extend and wall the park. It was QueenAnne who desired a more intimate house and the result was the 'House of Delight', nowcalled 'The Queen's House', designed in Palladian style by Inigo Jones, surveyor-generalto James I.79 It was an innovative building being the first domestic example in Englandof the revival of interest in classical architecture. The old gatehouse into the park,previously used as a viewing point, was demolished to make way for the new house,which had a loggia on the first floor giving panoramic views across the lower parkland to75 CPR VIII, no.1468, 11/6/1580; Gregory(1909:281-283); Drake(1886:192-193,233).76 Nichols I (reprint of 1828:220).77 Gregory(1909:281-283) citing Exchequer bill 7 Charles I Trinity 94; TNA SP14/130/83, 15/5/1622, SirNicholas Stoddard was 'so opposed by debt as hardly to be able to maintain the family' when ordered todonate a free gift to the Palatinate.78 Gregory(1909:282);TNA SP14/128/112, March 1622; Drake(1886:193) citing Exchequer Bills, 7Charles I, Trinity, 94, and 8 Charles I, Hilary, 136.79 Fletcher(1996:1023).136Plate 4.1Greenwich park and James I(a) Greenwich(39) park wall. towards the south east corner, this stretchfaces east overlooking Blackheath. It is unclear how much of the wallis original because of repairs and repointing since it was built c.161423 February 2009(b) Looking from the hill slope overlooking Greenwich palace, with the Queen'sHouse and its loggia with views over the park. Greenwich castle or Duke Humphrey'stower is on the highest ground.From an engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1637.137the rising hills beyond.80 Work began in 1617 at an estimated cost of £4000, but James Ilost interest in it after Queen Anne's death on 2 March 1619.81James I did, however, proceed to extend the park over Blackheath common to thesouth, together with ten acres of land of Westcombe manor.82 The landowner, MultonLambarde, remained uncompensated, but the vicar of Greenwich received 20 shillings ayear for loss of tithe revenue over this land.83 A 12-foot high wall was then built aroundtwo miles of the park, taking until the end of reign to complete (see Plate 4.1).84 SirThomas Watson oversaw the construction and financed it personally, because at his deathin 1622, Lady Watson successfully petitioned the crown for repayment of £2001 15s11½d.85The routine management of the royal parks at Greenwich(39) and Eltham(31-33),as in gentry-owned parks, would have revolved round the needs of the deer. Parkkeepers would or should have provided overall supervision, and deer keepers would haveseen to the daily welfare, diet, habitat and security of the herd, although little of this hasbeen recoverable. It might well be that more information about the running costs of theroyal parks in Kent are scattered among state papers, such as accounts, but to seek thisout would be time consuming and not necessarily productive, because, as with gentryowned parks, separate accounts might not have been kept or have survived.Chapters Three and Four have rehearsed the vital roles in the smooth and efficientrunning of the parks of the deer keeper in gentry-owned parks and of the park keeper inroyal parks, and they have teased out disparate details about park maintenance anddiversity to build up a picture of how Elizabethan and Jacobean parks operated in Kent.In Chapter Five attention will turn to the fate of failed parks in the county.80 See Plates 4.1 p.136 for the Queen's House under construction and 7.2 p.202 for the earlier gatehouse insitu.81 Barker(1993:25-26) in 1621 James I handed Greenwich over to his son, Prince Charles, who, after hisaccession in 1625 gave the unfinished house to his wife, Henrietta Maria, who completed the building in1635.82 TNA SP14/110/54; TNA SP14/115/68.83 Warnicke(1973:11); TNA SP14/122/31, 30/9/1622.84 See Plate 4.1 p.136; Webster(1902:3-4).85 TNA SP14/117/62; TNA SP14/132/97.138PART II – CHAPTER FIVEDISPARKMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF DISPARKED PARKSDisparkment is a subject that has not attracted a great deal of detailed attention,apart from Robert Liddiard's ground breaking paper delivered in September 2007 at theSheffield Conference on 'The History, Ecology and Archaeology of Medieval Parks andParklands.'1 Without citing particular sources he points to the 'elastic' chronology ofdisparkment, 'with some commentators seeing decline setting in from 1500, othersaround 1600, but most observers pointing to the century between 1550-1660 as a keyperiod in which disparkment took place.'2This chapter aims partially to redress this lack of detailed knowledge by outliningthe pattern and process of disparkment for the county of Kent, which can then be setagainst and compared with those observed elsewhere. In particular it will seek todiscover whether there was any period of widespread disparkment from 1558 to 1625,and, if so, whether it confirms Liddiard's view of an 'elastic' chronology. The firstsection (i) will discuss the definition of disparkment. Section (ii) identifies which parkswere disparked in Kent between 1558 and 1625, tentatively suggesting reasons behindthe low incidence, and the factors leading to particular disparkments. There follows anexamination of aspects of the management of disparked parks, including crown leases ofdisparked parks, in section (iii). Lastly, in section (iv) the survival of vestiges of formerparks, centuries after the original function as deer parks had been abandoned, testifies tothe residual significance of parks in the landscape.(i) The definition of disparkmentThe question posed by Liddiard, 'By what criteria can we judge when a park isdisparked?' needs addressing, and he thinks the answer to be neither straightforward noreasy. The distinction Lambarde made between parks with deer and parks lacking deer issimplistic, and not universally endorsed even by some of his contemporaries.3 As hasbeen seen, a series of statutes required park owners to hold breeding mares and stallions1Liddiard in Rotherham (2007:82).2Liddiard(unpublished, 2007) full text by courtesy of Dr Robert Liddiard.3Lambarde(1576:9) fully quoted on p.10.139within their parks.4 This requirement raised the issue of what counted as a park, and ininterpreting the statute there were variations from county to county. The deputycommissioners in their returns for Dorsetshire and Somersetshire were more thoroughthan those for other counties and gave three categories of park - those with deer, thosewithout deer, and those that had been disparked or, in the case of Somersetshire, were'decayed'.5 A certain ambiguity arises at this point because as most owners holding parkswithout deer no longer bred horses, and yet were not considered to have broken thestatute, they might be deemed to have been disparked according to Lambarde's definitionand to the deputy commissioners' interpretation of the statute. However, the Dorsetshiredeputy commissioners only actually recorded a park to be disparked when it had beenconverted to pasture and tillage, or had been divided into 'divers tenements.' Here, thedegree of disparkment or its irreversibility was at issue. It would seem that theDorsetshire deputy commissioners thought that if a park remained substantially openparkland, there would be few obstacles to the reintroduction of deer, in which case thestatute would again apply. If, on the other hand, the park had been converted intofarmland, subdivided into fields and leased out, then its reinstatement as a deer parkwould be impractical, complicated and costly.The degrees of disparkment adopted by Lambarde on the one hand and by thedeputy commissioners on the other highlight the problems of any simple definition,which would still not cover either the varying stages or pace at which parks might bedriven or might slide into disparkment. Liddiard differentiates between a clear-cut,rapidly enforced decision to dispark, which he terms 'event' and the more commondisparkment, which followed a lengthier and disjointed course or 'process'.6If there are examples in Kent of 'event' disparkment following a decisiondeliberately, systematically and immediately to dismantle a park, there is no survivingdocumentation for Elizabeth I's or James I's reigns. The sole example, from the earlysixteenth century, reflecting a definite intention to dispark shows that, even then, theactual process took several years to complete. The 1587 lease for Chislet(22) parkrehearsed an earlier lease of 1533 granted by the archbishop of Canterbury in which the4See Chapter Three pp.100-101.5TNA SP12/163/20ii; TNA SP12/162/44ii.6Liddiard(unpublished paper, 2007).140lessee had been given licence to kill all the deer and 'to stub and dig up by the roots asmuch wood underwoods and trees as they would be at cost to do it.'7 The lease of 1587recalled that the park had been 'disparked above 46 years.' Within eight years of the1533 lease, in the early 1540s, all the deer had been killed, most of the trees removed andthe pale had been allowed to fall into disrepair, 'so neither deer pale nor sufficient covertmeet for deer hath been remaining within the space of 36 years last past or thereabouts.' 8Contemporary definitions of disparkment therefore varied between Lambarde'sremoval of deer, Chislet's emphasis point where the habitat was unsuitable to sustaindeer, and the Dorsetshire deputy commissioners' interpretation of the land's conversioninto agriculture. Important to disparkment was the alteration of the function and interiorconfiguration of the park, which all these definitions encompass.(ii) The pattern and process of disparkment in Kent, 1558 - 1625The contemporary evidence for the pattern of disparkment comes from a numberof sources. Firstly, maps, leases and other documents which announce or imply the landto have been disparked, and secondly, negative evidence, such as the non-appearance ofparks on maps or in documents, for example, the return of horses being bred in parks.Kent is unusual in also having the evidence of Lambarde's listing of parksdisparked 'within memorie', as discussed in Chapter One (i).9 However, a major problemis that the evidence rarely indicates when disparkment actually occurred. Of 18disparkments identified by Lambarde in 1570, the date by which he had compiled the listfor the first edition of 'A Perambulation of Kent', there is corroborating evidence that 9had been disparked by 1558, and the other nine are likely to have been, although thepossibility remains that, for some, disparkment might have occurred early in Elizabeth I'sreign (see Figure 5.1).10 The assumption that most, if not all, of the other nine parks weredisparked by 1558 is admittedly based on flimsy evidence. The disparkment ofPanthurst(67) park had occurred by the 1560s, when agricultural activity was alreadywell established, which would push back the date of disparkment by several years.7LPL TA/39/1, lease of 20 /6/1587.8Ibid.9See pp.11-15 and Figure 1.1 'Comparison between Lambarde's lists of parks', p.9.10 See Figure 5.1 'Disparkment in Kent' (Appendix 5 pp.317-318) which includes sources and possibledates of disparkment.141Henden(45) park was also in all probability disparked after 1541, following the landexchange forced by Henry VIII upon Ann Boleyn's sister, Mary, and her husbandWilliam Stafford.11 Apart from Lambarde's listing of two disparked parks atOxenhoath(65, 66), nothing else has been found about them, which leads to the tentativeconclusion that their disparkment had occurred long before 1558. Of the remaining fivedisparked parks, there is uncertainty about Langley(52) or Mereworth(60), whileSutton(85) park had been given over the farming by the 1570s, and Cage(88) andPostern(92) parks in Tonbridge, were so heavily exploited to supply in the localironworks that deer were unlikely to have thrived in them after the first decade ofElizabeth I's reign, but earlier dates of disparkment are also possible.12Another 18 parks have been identified from documentary sources, none of whichappear on Lambarde's list or on the three Tudor maps of Kent. There is evidence thatnine of these parks had been disparked by 1558, but very little or nothing is known aboutthe remaining 9.13 The strong presumption is therefore these parks had been disparkedbefore 1558. Four parks, Bockingfold(8), Boxley(14), Fryarne(36) and Lympne(57)suffered disrupted ownership from church to crown during the Reformation.Bockingfold(8), in particular, had three changes of ownership between 1554 and 1559, sohad probably been disparked by then.14 A tithe dispute concerning Boxley(14) park in1574 revealed an established farming regime, and by 1588 there was confusion as towhere the park boundary lay, so disparkment must have occurred much earlier, perhapsshortly after Sir Thomas Wyatt's attainder in the 1550s.15 Nothing is known aboutFryarne(36) and Lympne(57) parks, and the histories of Cudham(25) park andPembury(68) are also obscure. Kemsing(49) park, under the ownership of WilliamBoleyn in Henry VIII's reign, was being parcelled out, implying disparkment, althoughits status is not mentioned in the documents.16 Southpark(72) near Penshurst had beendisparked by 1559 when an indenture for the extraction of wood, within the parkland, butnot the woods, made no mention of the presence of deer.17 Lastly, Comford(7) park atBirling contained deer in 1521, but no document mentions it as an active Elizabethan11 CKS U1450 T5/6212 See discussion under Chapter Three (iii) p.114.13 See Chapter One (i) pp.11-15.14 Hasted 5 (1797:166-167).15 CCA-DCB-J/X.10.17, 1574; TNA E134/30&31,1588, E134/31 Eliz/Hil16, Hil27.16 BL Cart.Harl.86.G.54, 86.H.16, 1525-1526.17 CKS U1475/E1.142park, although the adjacent Birling(6) park in the same Nevill estate was prone to deerand cony theft, and its deer keepers' wages appear in accounts of 1586 to 1594.18With the caveat that dates of disparkment are impossible to pinpoint, that there isno continuity of evidence, and in some cases very flimsy negative evidence, the tentativetotal number of disparkments from 1558 to 1602 is seven or eight. The five failed parksin Elizabeth I's reign were Aldington(1), Bore Place(9), Postling(73) and Stowting(82),with contradictory evidence about the dates of the disparkment of Saltwood(75) andAshour(69) at Penshurst, which might have occurred before 1558, and the possibleinclusion of Sutton(85), Cage(88) and Postern(92) parks.19 In or by Jacobean times afurther five parks were disparked, at Bedgebury(4), Glassenbury(37), Halden(41),Hungershall(47) and Otford Great(62) park.20 This makes a maximum loss rate of lessthan 25 per cent of the total of 53 active parks known to have existed for all or part of theperiod from 1558 to 1625, or 29 per cent if new parks are discounted. Not only is thisrate of disparkment lower than the 50 per cent rate of loss estimated by Lambarde in 'APerambulation of Kent' in 1576, but it also occurred over 67 years. Astute as Lambardewas, his observation about disparkment, therefore, should not be used as evidence for thedecline of the Kentish parks in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, but rather as areflection of the situation from 1509 to 1558. In fact, as far as the evidence allows,between 1558 and 1625, the overall number of parks in Kent appears to have beenrelatively stable, which accords with the evidence of Lambarde's lists of active parks andthe five contemporary maps, which ranged from 24 to 34 parks at any given time.18 ESRO ABE/18R/1; see Figure 8.1 'Deer park violations' (Appendix 9 p.328-330).19 Aldington(1), Lambarde, between 1576 and 1596; Bore Place(9), CKS U1000/3 E5, 1597 Inquisitionpark not mentioned; Postling(73) CCA-DCB-J/X.16, on Lambarde's lists of active parks in 1576 and 1596,but 1576 tithe dispute mentions sheep keeping in park; Saltwood(75), Lambarde, between 1576 and 1596,but Hasted 8 (1797:223) writes that Thomas Broadnax of Hythe disparked Saltwood park in the reign ofMary I; Stowting(82) CCA-DCB-J/X.10.20, on Lambarde's lists of 1576 and 1596, but 1582 tithe disputementions various agricultural products from the late 1570s: Ashour park was leased out in 1552, but firmevidence of it as farmland came in 1572, CKS U1475/T33.20 Bedgebury(4) BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44, 1607, lease mentions deer, but leases after 1612 do not, BLCart.Harl.79.F.3; Glassenbury(37), 1628, map of 'Old Park' with fields; Halden(41), CKS U1475 M73,1609 survey mentions deer, but indenture of 1610, CKS U1475 T92, park 'now disparked';Hungershall(47), ESRO ABE/52.1, 1633, lease recites 8 leases back to 1618; Otford Great(62), Phillips I(1930:216) 1607, 'lately disparked'. The whole of Southfrith(94) was disparked by 1610, but a new,smaller park at Somerhill(94a) was created so Southfrith has been omitted from this debate (see ChapterSix pp.175-177).143The period during which disparkment took place in Kent can be compared withSussex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Hertfordshire, all with different patterns, althoughHertfordshire more closely reflects the pattern of Kentish disparkment.In Hertfordshire, Prince contends that the demand for food by the risingpopulation of Elizabethan London led to 'an unrecorded number of parks' going over toagriculture, especially in southern Hertfordshire, and names five medieval parks missingfrom Saxton's and Norden's maps.21 However, when cross-checking the named parkswith Rowe's research, three of the parks had ceased to function before 1500, the park atLittle Berkhemsted survived until 1614 and Periers park at Cheshunt was incorporatedinto Cheshunt park by James I in 1607, being reimparked rather than disparked.22 FromRowe's gazetteer of medieval parks, there is evidence of the disparking of perhaps sixmedieval parks after 1558 - three were shown on Saxton's map of 1577, but not onNorden's of 1598, another two had been disparked at undetermined dates by 1600, andHatfield Great park was disparked in 1611.23 Rather than confirming widespreaddisparkment in Hertfordshire in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, a study of thegazetteer shows, as in Kent, that more disparkment had occurred earlier in the sixteenthcentury. Doubt must therefore be cast on Prince's general assertion about the loss ofHertfordshire's parks in Elizabeth I's reign because once matched against the history ofindividual parks it does not stand up to scrutiny.In Norfolk, the loss of parks before Elizabeth I's reign has not been established,but during Elizabeth I's reign parks enjoyed 'exuberant popularity.'24 There wereindications of coming decline, such as family indebtedness or specific family problemsas has been found in Kent, but they did not reach a critical level necessitatingdisparkment until after James I's reign. Neither was there widespread disparkment inSussex, where Manning estimated that only six of 121 Tudor parks were disparked insixteenth century.25 He believed numbers of parks peaked at the beginning of thesixteenth century and that a pronounced decline followed in the seventeenth century.21 Prince(2008:12-14); See Chapter 1 (iv) pp.23-26 for examples of possible unreliability in Kent.22 Rowe(2009) pp.78-82, Periers in Cheshunt, pp.88-89, Boreham Wood, pp.90-93,160-161, LittleBerkhamsted, pp.130-131, Hoddesdon, pp.172-174, two parks at Little Munden.23 Rowe(2009) p.96, Furneaux Pelham Old and/or New park, p. 113, Hatfield Great park, p.118 Woodhallpark, p.156 Knebworth Great park, p.194 Pisho park.24 Dye(1986:11,20-32).25 Manning(1993:125-127).144The estimate of only six parks lost during the whole of the sixteenth century is in starkcontrast to the loss of parks in Kent and Suffolk before 1558.In Suffolk, Hoppitt's meticulous research has shown that of 32 parks in existencein 1500 only 19 or 41 per cent remained at the end of the century, but this is discountingthe number of new park creations.26 The overall rate of loss of 59 per cent of Suffolk'spark in the sixteenth century is not out of accord with Lambarde's figures for Kent, butloss was unevenly spread across the time period, and, unlike Kent, the greater loss wasbetween 1550 and 1600 at 31 per cent, while the period from 1500 to 1550 only had a 12per cent loss.This varied pattern of disparkment has not taken into account the new parks thatwere being created. With few comparative county studies it is difficult to judge whetherKent's parks were particularly resilient, but overall, when new parks are added, the actualnumber of parks in Kent remained stable, while in Suffolk the late sixteenth century wasa dynamic period for parks, during which the creation of new parks more than balancedout the loss of ancient parks.27 There are no figures for new parks available for Sussex,Norfolk and Hertfordshire.It is clear that more comparative and detailed studies are required to revealwhether general statements by historians such as Lasdun, Liddiard and Palliser, about arenewed spate of disparking from the second half of the sixteenth century, are borne outfor most of the country, and should not new parks be added to the equation? If Kent,Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex and indeed even Hertfordshire, were experiencing a relativelyslower overall rate of disparkment later in the sixteenth century, are these to beconsidered as the norm, or are they exceptions to the spate of disparking assumed to haveoccurred elsewhere and perhaps more distant from London?2826 Hoppitt(1992:71,83,92,97).27 Ibid.28 Palliser(1992:225) 'In more densely settled areas extra land might be found by disparking. Lambarde(1576) of 53 parks in Kent 23 disparked within living memory.'; Lasdun, (1992:32) 'But despite a spate ofpark making in the first half of the sixteenth century, disparking began to offset new emparking in thesecond half.'; Liddiard in Rotherham (2007:82) 'Iincidents of disparkment can be found throughout theMiddle Ages, but levels of disparkment rose in the late sixteenth century and during the Interregnum.'145Historians above recognise the difficulty in obtaining detailed evidence, andinstead rely on anecdotal or contemporary observations, the former not quantitative andthe latter impressionistic and sometimes contradictory. As has been demonstrated,evidence supports the view that the period of disparkment in Kent to which Lambardereferred occurred mainly before 1558. Other writers, such as Gascoigne and Markham,expound the benefits of parks and their roles within the landed estate, making no mentionof any trend towards disparkment, but rather implying that parks were an importantattribute of a landed estate.29 Harrison spoke of the 'great plentie of parkes' and noted theexpansion of parks with some owners 'still desirous to inlarge those grounds.' 30 However,when discussing the development of farming he contradicts this by stating that ownershad begun 'to smell out' parcels of land which could be made more profitable and'therefore some of them do grow to be disparked.'31 Of course, both trends could beoccurring at the same time involving different owners and different places, but thecrucial judgement to make is whether one trend was more dominant than another, andonly detailed area studies would unravel this. As Liddiard has commented there is nonational picture, 'the jury is very much out' on the issue, so Kent might or might not berepresentative.32Turning to the process of disparkment, it is possible to identify factors that appearto have encouraged the process of disparkment, and others that encouraged the retentionof a park, as indeed Harrison's comments reflect.Although Lambarde did not offer a direct explanation for the loss of half ofKent's parks, his observation that parks were for pleasure and were in decline comparedwith the increasing number of lucrative cony warrens, implies that he thought thateconomic factors lay behind the loss of parks. The impression he gives his readers is thatdeer parks were being dismantled at an ever-quickening rate as a result of a commercialdecision to make way for more profitable agricultural enterprises. However, when theadmittedly sparse evidence for Kentish parks in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I isclosely examined, a different picture emerges, with the slower rate of disparkment after1558 being triggered as much by family circ*mstances leading to financial29 Gascoigne(1575); Markham(1616).30 Holinshed(1587:204-205).31 Edelen (1994:259).32pers.comm e-mail 5/8/2009.146embarrassment, as by hard-headed decisions to capitalise on otherwise under-productiveland purely to make profit. In other words, owners who embarked on disparkment didnot forego the benefits of their parks willingly, but were more likely to have haddisparkment forced upon them.In Elizabethan Hertfordshire's parks, the 'powerful influence' of the Londonmarket, as described by Thirsk, led to an expansion of arable land at the expense ofwoodland, heath and pasture.33 However, the evidence indicates that neitherHertfordshire's parks, nor Kent's, both in a similar strategic position as regards London,succumbed to commercial pressure as readily as has been assumed. Indeed the proximityto London might have had a positive effect on park retention by encouraging the upkeepof parks within easy reach of the court and the city, between them the centre of powerand wealth, especially when both Elizabeth I and James I increasingly confined theirvisits to the home counties.Thus, as far as Kent is concerned, although economic factors cannot bediscounted, especially when long-term trends are borne in mind, the question is why sofew park owners resisted the temptation to take advantage of rising prices and buoyantrents to convert parkland into productive agricultural land.34 As discussed earlier, mostKentish parks were probably affordable, within the overall scheme of owners' budgetsand in one of the most prosperous counties outside London.35 Perhaps, as will beexplored in Chapter Seven, owners valued parks more for other reasons, such as for thecultural capital they afforded.36 Owners of parks could gain favour at court by emulatingthe monarchic passion for hospitality and hunting; maintain their status in theircommunities and with their peers; and enhance the aesthetic setting and surrounding oftheir mansion by preserving one remaining park. It might be that because the Londonmarkets secured both high prices and steady demand, good profits could be made onother parts of estates, without the owners sacrificing their parks. The general prosperityof the Kentish gentry 'with revenues greater than anywhere else' was noted by Lambarde,who considered it due to Kent's location by 'the sea, the river, a populous citie, and a welltraded highway, by the commodities whereof, the superfluous fruites of the grounde be33 Prince(2008:13) citing Thirsk IV (1967:49-52).34 Liddiard(unpublished paper, 2007).35 See Chapter Three (iv) pp.116-118; Palliser(1992:116); Lambarde(1576:7).36 See Chapter Seven p.184 onwards.147dearly sold, and consequently the land may yeeld a greater rent.'37 Kent was in theforefront of agricultural improvements, with innovations occurring in every geologicalregion, so perhaps the ability to raise income from rents on other parts of the landedestate relieved the pressure from park owners to give up the pleasure of the park.38In Kent those parks identified by Lambarde as having been disparked weremainly those where ownership had been transferred from church to crown during theReformation of Henry VIII's reign, or from private ownership to crown as a result ofvarious political crises faced by Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I.39 Factors behinddisparkment and behind changes in ownership are similar, but in both cases, althoughevidence is circ*mstantial rather than direct, the loss of a park often appears to be linkedwith a particular set of circ*mstances, such as indebtedness through overspending,broken succession, the drain of fines for recusancy or the need to raise money formarriage portions. This observation is not peculiar to Kent, but has parallels in Suffolkwhere Hoppitt found that a fall of fortune of whatever sort 'could sound the death knellfor a park,' and in Norfolk, too, the failure to maintain a park was frequently a precursorof a family's impending collapse, often due to financial mismanagement.40An examination of disparked Kent parks provides a good deal of supportingevidence for disparkment linked to a decline in family fortunes. In the case ofAldington(1), Hungershall(47), Saltwood(75) or Stowting(82), little is known about thereasons for their disparkment, but there seems to be more than a coincidental connectionbetween family crisis and disparkment in the cases of Bedgebury(4), Bore Place(9),Glassenbury(37), Postling(73), Halden(41) and Otford Great(62) parks.At Bedgebury(4) financial difficulties arose from the recusancy of Sir AlexanderCulpepper, whose Catholicism forced him to flee home for long periods, to enter bondsfor good behaviour, of £1000 in 1581 and of £2000 in 1587, and to pay fines for nonattendance at church.41 He was even imprisoned for his beliefs. After his death in 1600,it seems likely that 'the troubles' of Sir Alexander Culpepper had a cumulative effect on37 Lambarde(1576:6).38 Thirsk in Zell(2000:102-103).39 Lambarde(1576); Chapter One (i) pp.11-15.40 Hoppitt(1992:280-28); Dye(1986:4).41 Buckingham(1979:20-24).148the financial resources of the family, and in James I's reign the park was leased to tenantsand given over to a cony warren. 42Unfortunately for Sir Perceval Willoughby of Bore Place(7), disparkment wasprobably a consequence of the profligate expenditure of his kinsman father-in-law, SirFrancis Willoughby, who built a grandiose home at Wollaton in Nottinghamshire,entertaining lavishly there, and accruing debts of £21000. In underwriting his father-inlaw's debts, Sir Perceval Willoughby sold his land in Kent, Bore Place(7) probably beingdisparked by 1597, and in 1605, after the death of Sir Francis Willoughby, Sir PercevalWilloughby moved to the prestigious new house at Wollaton, inherited by his wife,Bridget, Sir Francis Willoughby's daughter. 43At Glassenbury(37) the need to maximise income because of debt and familydispute probably caused eventual disparkment. Thomas Roberts, aged 18 when hisfather died in 1580, clashed with his mother over his father's will and the repayment ofdebts, which led to a suit in the court of Chancery.44 Although when he took over theestate he showed himself to be 'a prudent and judicious Gentleman,' efforts to achieveeffective retrenchment seem to have failed, and by 1628 the park had been divided intofields (see Plate 5.1).45In the case of Postling(73) a combination of overspending and lack of a male heirwere linked to the park's disparkment. Problems arose under the ownership of SirAnthony Aucher, who was forced to sell land to repay money he had embezzled through'his ruthless exploitation of crown offices for personal aggrandizement.' 46 Postling(73)park might have been disparked by his death in 1558, but was definitely by 1576 whensold by adventurer, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, husband of Anthony Aucher's granddaughter,who was in need of money to support various maritime projects. 4742 Buckingham(1983/1984:187).43 CKS U1000/3/E28, 1580-1589, a note of 440 acres of land sold for a total of £2568; CKS U1000/3/E6,1595, debts totalled about £4710; newspaper article, Phillips, c.1909.44 Wyndham(1952:126) Chancery Proceeding C2 Elizabeth I B25/62, 1639 Chancery R43/62 & R20/42..45 Anon.(c.1714:22-23); TNA STAC8/53/5, 1604; map owned by Marcus Sutcliffe, see Plate 5.1 p.151.46 Alsop, Sir Anthony Aucher (d.1558) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/68012).47 CCA-DCB-J/X.16, 1576 tithe dispute; Rapple, Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1537-1583)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/10690); Hasted 8 (1797:214).149Plate 5.1After disparkment(a) Glassenbury(37) park shortly after disparkment with fields interspersedwith blocks of woodland. By kind permission of Marcus Sutcliffe(b) Detail of Panthurst(67) park map of 1630 (CKS U442 P102) withhedgerow trees, but only strips of woodland. Animals can be seen in thefields. Field 27 called 'Coneyberrye Meade' was the former cony warren.By kind permission of the Centre for Kentish Studies, Kent Archives andLocal Studies Service, Kent County Council150Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, was in the unusual position compared with mostKentish park owners in having more than one park. He bought Otford Great(62) parkfrom the crown in 1600 and acquired Halden(41), by inheritance, in James I's reign.Both became vulnerable to disparkment when the viscount required ready money to payfor his lavish lifestyle at court and to raise money for his daughters' dowries.48 Bothparks were disparked prior to being sold to Sir Thomas Smythe in 1617 for £9000.49These examples show that in the case of at least six of the ten Kent parksdisparked in the period from 1558 to 1625, changes in ownership, changes in familyfortune, and, in particular, financial crises played major roles prior to eventualdisparkment. The overwhelming factors then appear to have been economic – but not, asThirsk and Prince suggested, in order to take advantage of the London markets tomaximise profits, and thereby income, by converting parkland into farmland, but ratherto deal with the problem of offsetting and repaying family debts.(iii) The management of disparked parksAlthough disparked parks did not carry the status of active parks, they remainedvaluable assets, which could be exploited by their owners by renting out or managing theland productively themselves. In (a) the leasing policy of the crown's disparked parkswill come under scrutiny, and will be shown to have been generous to the tenant,sometimes deliberately as a form of patronage, but also by inertia through habituallyrenewing leases on the same terms even over decades. Next the agricultural use made ofdisparked parks (b) will be sketched out from the patchy evidence to hand, with anattempt to indicate the benefits accruing to the landowners, tenants or sub-tenants.Lastly, the exploitation of the woodland areas of former parks will be covered in (c).(a) Crown parks leased outOf the ten crown parks leased out after 1558, six had been disparked beforeElizabeth I ascended the throne and a further two were disparked during her reign.5048 For the acquisition of Halden(41) park see Chapter Six p.171, 173, and Otford Great(62) parks, seeChapter Seven (v) p.221 onwards; BL Add.Mss.12066; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (2005:173) letter227, 13/8/1612.49 CKS U1475/T92.50 See Figure 6.4 'Crown parks in Kent' (Appendix 7 pp.321-323). The other two parks, Elham(30) andWestwell(99) continued as active parks. Aldington(1) and Southfrith(94) were disparked during ElizabethI's reign, see Chapter Six pp.175-177..151Five parks, Aldington(1), Bexley(5), Boxley(14), Maidstone(59) and Otford New(64)parks had leases of 21 years duration, while Allington(2) and Otford Little(83) parkswere held under 30-year terms granted by Mary I.51 The 21-year lease gave the ownermore flexibility while still offering continuity to the tenant, and in Kent was the preferredlength of term for disparked parks.Some leases were made in reversion for a term of years, such as the grants forAllington(2), Boxley(14) and Maidstone(59). A reversionary lease was granted withouta fine, often to court officials who had no connection with the land they had beengranted. Reversionary leases were part of a wider policy whereby 'faced with a continualshortage of money, the crown attempted to satisfy the demands of its officials for higherincomes by granting to them a share in its own revenue.'52 The reversionary lease gavefuture interest in the land, but as Thomas's research showed from the little evidenceavailable, the actual profits made by the grantees from the leases varied widely becausedeals had to be made with sitting tenants, who were not necessarily cooperative.53Unlike other grants of land which went through formal procedures, reversionary grantsrequired the monarch's personal warrant so that the normal method of using thecommissioners appointed for leasing crown lands was bypassed. In general the resultwas that reversionary leases 'were generous to the grantee, but expensive for the Crown,'because the crown had not increased rents, making the rentable value of the land higherthan rents paid by sitting tenants, and the new owner could levy a fine on the tenantswhich reflected this.54The device of reversionary leases enabled the crown to resist increasing salariesat the expense of efficient management of crown land and was used in Kent in just theway Thomas indicated to reward Mary Finch and John Astley. In 1569 John Astley,master of the Jewels and distantly related to the Boleyns, was given a 30-year lease at arent of £50 a year that included Allington(2), Boxley(14) and Maidstone(59) parks.5551 CPR l, October 1554 m.33; CKS U1450/T6/28, 1553.52 Thomas(1977:71).53 Baker(2002:274).54 For Otford Great(62) see Chapter Seven (iv) p.221 onwards; Thomas(1977:71).55 John Astley's maternal aunt, Elizabeth, had married Sir James Boleyn and so was Elizabeth I's great aunt(http://www.oxforddnb.com/article/818).152The lease was in reversion to that of Mary Finch, who like John Astley had surrenderedher crown annuity in exchange for the lease of 1553, which was due to expire in 1584. 56Other parks were leased singly to members of the Kentish gentry who alreadylived near or who had interests in the location. The evidence of exactly who held eachpark over the whole period and under what terms is patchy, and the prevalence ofsubletting also confuses the picture. Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst had leased OtfordLittle(63) park for 21 years with an annual rent of £20 and fine of £13 6s 8d from 1553,and the lease under the same terms was renewed at least three times until 1601.57 In1568 Otford New(64) park was leased to George Multon of St. Clere, Ightham,Lambarde's father-in-law.58 It is likely that Bexley(5) park was included in Bexleydemesne land leased to Justinian Champneis of Hall Place, Bexley.59Despite the apparent care taken over drawing up leases, confusion couldarise from those issued by the crown as well as from subsequent subleases. Withgrants from crown to main tenant, who sublet to others, who sublet yet again, it isno wonder that over the years exact legal titles became blurred and confused. Onestriking example was that of Mary Finch's letters patent granted in Mary I's reign.Unsure of the extent of the manor of Newnham Court in Boxley, Mary Finch had aschedule of land drawn up, which particularly named Boxley park(14).60 HoweverSir John Baker, who, as both chancellor of the exchequer (1540–58) and undertreasurer of England (1543–58), was responsible for drawing up the final lease,thought 'it would carry too great a show to be named by the name of a park', soincluded the park under the heading of 'general woodlands' reassuring Mrs Finchthat 'you shall be sure to hold and enjoy all these lands as well as if they wereparticularly named.6156 CPR, part XV, pp.319-320, 25/5/1555.57 CPR 2 & 3 Philip and Mary I, 3 pp.69-72, 13/3/1556; BL Add.Mss.36804, 3/3/1567; CPR Part VIno.1408, p.235, 26/3/1568; Arch.Cant. V (1862-3:328) transcription of BL Cart.Lans.82.55; CPR no.1535,p.192, 23/1/1580; Phillips I (1930:232) 11/8/1607.58 CKS U2007/T155, 16 /4/1568, 30/7/1577 & 10/7/1588.59 Arch.Cant. V (1862-3:328) transcription of BL Cart.Lans.82.55. 1573, mentioned his lease of the Bexleydemesne lands, and TNA E178/1163, 1597/98, reported his felling of Crown trees in Bexley(5) park 'byvirtue of a lease as it is said.'60 TNA E134/31Elizabeth/Hilary 27.61 Ibid. deposition of William Goodall of Boxley, yeoman, aged 67.153His advice proved to be unsound, as Mary Finch's successor, John Astley, foundto his cost. His lease of 1569 had included the lands of Newnham manor, whichincluded Boxley(14) park, but in 1581 Elizabeth I granted a lease for three lives toWilliam Baynham for lands in Worcestershire and in Kent including Park wood(14b),Boxley.62 Imprecision in the original lease meant that the ownership of Park woodbecame the subject of a legal battle in the court of the Exchequer.63 Depositions andhearings continued for several years, until 6 July 1590 John Astley wrote to one of thejudges that Park wood, parcel of the manor of Boxley, was held by William Baynham,but that he held Newnhamwood or Park wood, parcel of Newnham Court. In other wordsthere were two Park woods in Boxley, one centred on the old Boxley(14a) park predating1536, and the other on Sir Thomas Wyatt's new park, known as Lea park(14b) atBoxley.64 This explanation was accepted because in a later letter patent of 1596 bothparks were specifically named.65Over the period the crown's hold over its parks under lease undoubtedlyweakened, and although only Allington(2) park passed completely out of its hands, ineffect, with most leases being automatically renewed, the crown was left with onlyresidual control.66(b) Parkland into farmlandAfter disparkment the landowner had several options - to keep the park within hishands and manage it himself, to lease part or all of it out, or to sell. In Kent the favouredstrategies were for the gentile owner to keep the former parkland under his control byfarming it directly or by granting tenancies over all or part of the area, while reservingcertain rights for himself. Either way, on the whole, the park owners retained ultimatecontrol of their former parks.It should be remembered that the process of disparkment in general took placeover a number of years during which time some deer and their habitat may have been62 CPR, Part VII, no.355, p.61, 2/8/1581.63 TNA E134/30 & 31Eliz/Mich.19 (1587-88); TNA E134/31Eliz/Hil.16 (1588); TNA E134/31Eliz/Hil. 27(1588); TNA E133/6/815; TNA E133/6/863.64 The old park is referred to in CCA-DCB-J/X.10.17, 1574; Sir Thomas Wyatt's new park in 1549 cited inZell (2000:32).65 CMS U480/T1/1, 24 February 38 Elizabeth, letter patent.66 CKS U1515/T1, 1584; Worcester(2007:19).154retained. This is illustrated by the leases for Hever(46) and Bedgebury(4) parks, whichwere ambiguous about the continued presence of deer, and might reflect an early phaseof disparkment.67 Even with deer remaining, perhaps prior to disparkment, the herdcould be reduced in number and/or restricted in area, to allow other activities to takeprecedence. Eventually, deer having been removed, more deliberate steps might be takento prepare the land for agricultural or other uses, such as cony warrens or woodland.Chislet(22) park might not be untypical in that to prepare it for agricultural production itwas continually treated with manure after the removal of the deer so that it could then be'occupied as a farm enclosed with ditch and hedges in the most part.'68 However, fewrecords of such a transition survive.At Bedgebury(4) park the Culpeppers, and at Ashour(69) and Leigh(70) parks,Sir Henry and Sir Robert Sidney, in turn, granted one lease for each park, but reserved,among other rights, all rights over wood and timber trees, freedom of access, and theright to hawk, hunt, fish and fowl over the land.69 When the archbishop of Canterburyleased out Chislet(22) and Curlswood(26) parks, he reserved the wood and timber, and,in the latter park, forbade subletting or sale of the term of lease without his permission.70Within Brasted(15), Lenham(11) and Glassenbury(37) parks, large areas were retainedby the owners, with the residue leased out to smaller tenant farmers.71 Maps ofBrasted(15) in 1613, of Ightham(48) and Wrotham(100) in 1620, of Panthurst(67) in1630, and of West Wickham(99) parks in 1632 depict the boundaries of former parkswith remnant woodland within, but otherwise divided into fields for tenant farmers (seePlates 5.1 and 5.2).72 When Hungershall(47) park was disparked in 1618, it was dividedinto seven holdings, which were each leased out for 21 years to local yeomen andhusbandmen, for a total annual rent of £40 10s 0d and 22 firkins of an unspecifiedcommodity.73 Within 15 years, perhaps to pay off debts, Henry Nevill, lordAbergavenny, granted a lease for the whole park to John Kempsall, merchant taylor of67 CKS U1450/T6/10; BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44, for Hever see Chapter Three p.85 and for Bedgebury p.93.68 LPL TA/39/1.69 BL Cart.Harl.79.F.5, 1618; CKS U1475/T55/22A, 1612; CKS U1475/T61/4 & 6, 1594 & 1615.70 LPL TA/39/1; LPL TA/633/2, 10/11/1595.71 CKS U908/L1/1, c.1570; BL Add.Mss.42715, 1559; Wyndham(1952:207).72 CKS TR1534/1; CKS U681/P31, see Plate 5.2 p.165; CKS U442/P102, see Plate 5.1 p.149; CKSU908/P78.73 ESRO ABE/52.1, 1533; firkin = small cask for liquid, butter, fish (http://dictionary.oed.com).155London, for £100 per annum, with John Kempsall keeping the rents from the sevenholdings for the remainder of the existing leases.74Once given over to agriculture, farming practices most suited to the soil, gradientand climate in their locality were adopted, as illustrated by 13 disparked parks aboutwhich something of the internal structure is known.75Animal rearing predominated in eight of the disparked parks scattered in theWeald, on the Greensand or the eastern chalk downs, although all parks had some arableland. In Sutton(85) park in 1575 and Hungershall(47) park in 1618 there were less than30 acres of arable land compared with over 100 acres of pasture.76 Stonehurst(81) hadcattle and corn, and Panthurst(67) park, with 56 parcels of land, included 117 acres ofmeadow and 205 acres of pasture, as against 67 acres of arable, and was shown withcattle and other livestock scattered across its fields on a map of 1630.77 Like other areasin the western Weald, Panthurst(67) park was ideally suited for cattle rearing. Hay fromits meadows and fodder crops from the arable land were used to feed cattle during theautumn and into the winter months, to produce beasts to sell in the London market whenprices were at a premium.78 Cardinal Pole himself kept 60 to 80 oxen in the park, someof which were driven to the London market to be sold after his death.79 The disparkedparks on the North Downs at Postling(73) and Stowting(82) specialised in grazingbreeding ewes, but Stowting(82) was more diversified, with cattle and pigs, a hemp fieldand an apple orchard within its bounds.80On more fertile valley sites, mixed farming was adopted. Allington(2) park, onthe banks of the Medway, contained 90 acres of arable land producing barley, oats,wheat, peas and beans, and 38 acres of pasture with grazing cattle, oxen, sheep andhorses.81 Another riverside park was Little(63) park in Otford, on the flood plain of the74 Stone(1965:779) in 1629 Lord Abergavenny had debts of over £15000.75 CKS U1475/T55/22, 1612, Allington(2); Ashhour(69); CKS U908/L1/1, c.1570, Boxley(14);Brasted(15); Curlswood(26), Glassenbury(37), Hungershall(47), Otford Little(63), Panthurst(67),Postling(73), Stonehurst(81), Stowting(82), Sutton(83). References given for parks that do notsubsequently appear in the text.76 CKS U590/T14/14 Survey, 1575; ESRO ABE/52.1, 1633, citing 1618.77 CKS U1450/T6/44, 1566; CKS U1450/T5/40, 1567; CKS U442 P102, see Plate 5.1 p.151.78 Fox, Williams & Mountfield(2007:36-37) citing Zell(1994:101-102).79 CKS U1450/E20/21.80 CCA DCB-J/X/10.16 f.209-210, 1576; CCA DCB-J/X.10.20 f.8, 1582.81 CCA DCB-J/X.10.16 f.172, 180, 190, 1575 & 1576 and DCB-J/X.10.17, f.33-35, 65-68, 1573.156river Darent. A survey of 1553, commissioned by Sir Henry Sidney soon after he tookover the park, then in its early stage of disparkment, showed that it had 173 acres ofmeadow, valued at five shillings an acre, 84 acres of hay meadow, valued at threeshillings an acre, 95 acres of pasture valued at 2s 8d an acre, and 108 acres of rough and'broomy' ground, valued at 1s 4d an acre, and not then fully converted into fertileagricultural land.82 The value of the park as a whole was estimated at £40 a year. It didnot take long to convert the rough land into cultivatable soil because within ten years thepark was valued at £58 a year.83 Accordingly, leases of 1560 and 1565 expected thetenant of Little(63) park, Otford, to produce crops abundant enough to send to Sir HenrySidney, in lieu of rent each year, 20 quarters of 'good, sweet and merchantable wheat', 20quarters of 'good sweet merchantable malt' and 60 quarters of oats, as well as 20cartloads of 'good sweet merchantable hay'.84It has proved impossible to ascertain the profitability of former parklandcompared with surrounding farmland. The profit raised from disparked parks was boundto vary according to the fertility of the soil or the success in improving its quality, andthe mixture of uses to which the land was put. No accounts survive for disparked parks,and all there is to go on is a scattering of values of crops and livestock given in tithedisputes and a few records of rents in leases. Neither source can satisfactorily throwlight on yield values or rents for parks as against other farmland, partly because of thefragmentary evidence, and partly because information about yields and rents on adjacentland would be required. The value of certain agricultural produce, although given forAllington(2), Postling(73), Stowting(82) and Sutton(85) parks, is often vague as to thequantity and quality valued, and offers little in the way of comparative material.85 AtAllington(2) park in 1575/6 a cop of barley was valued at ten pence, a cop of peas at tenpence, a shock of beans at two shillings, a bushel of beans at 2s 7d, a shock of oats at 1s2d, and a shock of wheat at 3s 4d.86 The value of a lamb varied from 1s 8d per lamb for82 CKS U1475/E21/1 & 2, 1553.83 CKS U1475/E21/1; Kingsford & Shaw(1925:300).84 CKS U1475/T87, 1560 and 1565; quarter = 8 bushels of dry measure (Wightman's Arithmetical Tables).85 CCA DCB-J/X.10.17 ff.33-35, 65-68, 70-72 & DCB-J/X.10.16 ff.172, 180, 190; CCA DCB-J/X.10.16ff.209-210; CCA DCB-J/X.10.20 f.18; CCA DCB-J/X.10.18 ff.174-175, catalogued as Sutton Valence, butinternal evidence points to this being Chart Sutton.86 Cop = conical heap of unbound barley, oats or pease, or of straw or hay, used chiefly in Kent; shock = agroup of unspecified number of sheaves of grain placed upright and supporting each other in order topermit the drying and ripening (http://dictionary.oed.com). A standard bushel measures 19½ inches acrossand is 8¼ inches deep (Wightman's Arithmetical Tables).157Postling(73) park in 1576, eight pence for Sutton(85) park in 1579, 2s 8d forStowting(82) park in 1582, and six shillings for Panthurst(67) park in 1604.87 Otherlivestock in Stowting(82) park included calves worth 6s 8d each and pigs worth eightpence each, but the value of calves and pigs in Sutton(85) park was given as a total for anunspecified number of animals. Both Stowting(82) and Sutton(85) parks producedapples and hemp. The six to seven bushels of apples were worth sixpence a bushel and400 sheaths of hemp were worth a farthing a sheath in Stowting(82) park, while inSutton(85) park apples were valued at eight pence a bushel and hemp sheaths at 3s 4d,which would equate to 160 sheaths at the valuation of Stowting's(82) hemp sheath. Asprices fluctuated regionally, seasonally and annually such values as exist cannot be putinto any meaningful context, but these parks, at least, seem to have been productiveenough for local clergymen to make an effort to claim tithes from land not previouslysubject to such payments.88Revenue from disparked parks would accrue to landowners from tenants' rents,from woodland and other resources kept within the control of the owner, and savingswould come from no longer having to maintain a deer park. However, offsettingpotential profits would be the loss of benefits to the household from the variety offoodstuffs produced by a park. With no costs to defray on the disparked Hungershall(47)park, Henry Nevill, lord Abergavenny, gained not only the rent of £100, but also thesavings of upkeep.89Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, greatly benefited from Elizabeth I's grant to himin 1561 of Panthurst(67) park, the manor of Knole, and the mansion and park(50) ofKnole, with other lands at a very low annual rent of £40 13s 7d.90 By 1566, he hadassigned a 99-year sub-lease over the whole to Thomas Rolfe for an annual rent of £200,which shows just how generous Elizabeth I had been to her favourite courtier. 91 In thefollowing year Panthurst(67) park of 389 acres raised £127 2s 10d rent, which went along way to meet the rent of £200 for the whole original grant of land, showing thatdespite the disparity between the rent paid to the crown and the rent paid to the earl,87 CKS U269/A2/1.88 Bowden in Thirsk IV (1967:593-633).89 ESRO ABE/52.1.90 CKS U1450/T5/68; Panthurst(67) is listed as disparked by Lambarde(1576); Adams, Robert Dudley,earl of Leicester, 1532/3-1588 (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/8160).91 CKS U269/T1/A:8:15.158Thomas Rolfe seems to have struck a good bargain, and the earl still made a sizeableprofit.92 Another park owner anxious to profit from a park, which he had recentlydisparked and which was not near his seat was Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle, who beingshort of ready money to provide dowries for his daughters, was anxious to leaseHalden(41) park to the tenant who would offer to pay the highest rent in 1612.93Profit was not necessarily the only motive behind the granting of tenancies toformer parks. They might also be used as a form of patronage, by granting leases orsubleases to servants on favourable terms. The archbishop of Canterbury seems to haveused Curlswood(26) park in this way, but without knowing what, if any, fines wereimposed one cannot be sure, because, as Chalkin has pointed out for the seventeenthcentury, on the ecclesiastical estates of Kent the annual rent was small and normallyfixed, while the fine was the chief payment and subject to alteration.94 Nevertheless,assuming large entry fees, in granting three leases for Curlswood park, comprising 180acres of woodland and 60 acres of arable land, at a nominal rent of 20 shillings a year for21 years to Miles Sandes in 1586, to Richard Massinger in 1595 and to Sir Robert Hattonin 1617, the archbishop was seeming to offer a favourable deal. The first lessee was aMaster of Arts and fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, and the third was a resident ofLambeth, so both might have been in the archbishop's service, but Richard Massinger, asa servant of the archbishop's household, definitely was.95Sir Henry Sidney, who was paying rent of £20 a year to Elizabeth I for OtfordLittle(63) park, sublet the 453 acres to John Walker, described as his 'servant', not formonetary rent, but for designated amounts of wheat, malt, oats and hay in 1560.96 Healso leased out the lodge and 470 acres land in Leigh(70) park in 1553 to John Harrison,'for true and faithful service', to hold for 20 years at a rent of £13 6s 8d a year.97 SirRobert Sidney, followed the trend, but as Zell points out patronage had its limits in the92 CKS U1450/T5/40; CKS U269/T1/A:8:15.93 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (2005:176) letter 230, 16 /8/1612; CKS U1475/T92, 1610, date ofHalden's disparkment. See Chapter Seven pp.233-234 for profits made after the disparkment of Otford(62)Great park.94 Chalklin(1965:61-62).95 LPL TA/633/1-4.96 Kingsford & Shaw I (1925:248); CKS U1475/T87, 1560 & 1565, for details look back to p.158;Stone(1965:301) sometimes the provision of foodstuff instead of rent was a device adopted by landownersto be supplied with food while offering some protection against inflation.97 CKS U1475/M59, 1552/3; CKS U1475/T61/2.159late sixteenth century when prices and land values rose rapidly.98 In 1594 Sir RobertSidney leased Leigh(70) park of 470 acres with two lodges, to his servant, RichardPolhill.99 The lease ran for 21 years, at one penny for the first 18 months, and £33 16s 8dand two capons each year for the remaining years. However, when the lease wasrenewed in 1615, Richard Polhill agreed to a more commercial rent of £100 a year, inaddition to rent in kind of ten quarters of oats, or nine shillings pro rata if insufficientoats were available, and the delivery at Christmas of a well-fed boar with good brawn, or30 shillings as Viscount Lisle chose, one large, good, fat calf, or 20 shillings as ViscountLisle chose, as well as two capons as in the previous lease.100 One indication thatRichard Polhill was probably well able to afford the rise in rent is that in the first lease of1594 he was termed as yeoman, but subsequently in the lease of 1615 and at his death, hewas regarded as a gentleman.101 Even though Richard Polhill received less patronagethan before, Viscount Lisle continued to reward deserving servants. He gave a 21-yearlease, at 55 shillings a year, of a house and land in Southpark(72) to Thomas Lewes andhis wife, Joane, 'For the favour of baking and brewing in the past and in future andbecause his wife Joane has nursed Miss Veer Sydney youngest daughter of Robert andBarbara his wife.'102Thus evidence from these parks demonstrates clearly that agricultural landbrought into production in disparked park was of benefit to landowners through rents andentry fines, and to both landowners and tenants through direct exploitation of resources.However, the lack of detailed accounts in particular makes it impossible to quantify thisbenefit, or to judge the extent of its contribution to estate management.(c) The exploitation of woodlandThe element of woodland within former parks is not always revealed indocuments, but evidence from surveys, leases and maps points to the retention ofwoodland areas in most disparked parks, and in some cases there were extensivewoodlands, as in Curlswood(26) park in 1587 and Glassenbury(37) park in 1632, with98 Zell(1994:43).99 CKS U1475/T61/4.100 CKS U1475/T61/6.101 CKS U1475/T61/4, 1594; CKS U1475/T61/6, 1615; Richard Polhill TNA PCC prob/11/133 & 134,1618..102 CKS U1475/T27, 1605; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:251) Vere Sidney lived from 1602-1606.160180 and 250 acres of woodland respectively.103 Trenley(20) park, disparked since HenryVI's reign, was still producing regular crops of wood into the 1580s.104 In otherinstances, woodlands were used for animal grazing, with consequent damage to the trees.Park wood in Boxley(14a) park was one example where there was widespread grazing byhorses, colts, cattle, calves and hogs, which would have degraded the trees there.105In other parks woodlands were grubbed up, as has been noted at Chislet(22) andPanthurst(67).106 At Stonehurst(81) permission was given in 1555 for the felling andremoval of all timber trees, woods and underwoods in the park, and on and in the banksand ditches encompassing the park.107The reservation placed on wood and timber for the benefit of landowners insome leases indicates their potential value. For example, woodland and wayside timberin Panthurst(67) park was to be felled and taken away under a ten-year lease with a highrent of £45 16s 8d, double that of renting 106 acres of pasture and meadowland there.108Wood and timber prices increased almost three times in the sixteenth century, though itwas not until the early seventeenth century that, for the first time, with demandoutstripping supply, they rose more rapidly than agricultural prices.109Disparked Kentish parks also provide evidence of the intensive commercial useof coppice woodland. The complexity of the iron industry around Tonbridge has beenresearched by Chalklin, and he details several forges and furnaces, including Posternforge, built by David Willard inside Postern(92) park itself in 1552, that drew wood fromdisparked Postern(92) and Cage(88) parks, as well as from Northfrith(89-91) andSouthfrith(93) parks, 'to burn the same into cole or otherwise at their pleasure to be usedfor the maytenance of their iron workes.'110 As under-tenant at Tonbridge, paying £500rent per annum, he denuded the woodlands to the extent that by 1570/1571 'the woods of103 LPL TA/39/1, lease of 20/6/1587; Wyndham(1952:207) 1632 map.104 Hasted 9 (1797:158); CCA DCB-J/X.11.1 ff.21-22.105 TNA E134/31Eliz./Hil.16, 1588.106 LPL TA/39/1; CKS U1450/T5/40.107 CKS U1450/T6/90.108 CKS U1450/T5/40, 26/10/1567.109 Bowden in Thirsk IV (1967:607).110 Chalklin(2004:98-104); TNA E178/1093, 1570/1571; BL Cart.Harl.85.H6, 1561; Kingsford &Shaw(1925:300) in 1575 the Sidney income from Southfrith forest was £100 and cordwood there wasvalued at £16 5s 5d.161all the said premises were well nigh spent' and the value of the area at the surrender ofthe lease was an estimated at £33 16s 8½d per annum.111Not surprisingly, David Willard had started to look for woodlands beyondTonbridge in order to keep the iron works in fuel and exploited the coppice woodlands inLeigh(70) and Ashour(69) parks on the Penshurst estate. In 1578 at Leigh(70) park,wholesale felling worth £1000 comprising 17150 cords or loads of wood, to the value of14 pence a cord, was carried out.112 This wood was processed on site with permissiongiven to dig pits, perhaps sawpits or charcoal pits, and to build cabins for the colliers, orcharcoal burners, making the charcoal. David Willard also coppiced the whole ofSidney's Spring at Ashour(69) in the same year.113 Coppice re-grows after cutting to givea continuous supply of wood, and coppiced wood from Ashour(69), Southpark(72) andLeigh(70) parks continued to produce crops into the seventeenth century when a cord ofwood fetched £4 8s 3d in 1623. 114 However, occasionally, dealings in former parklandwood did not always go smoothly on the Penshurst estate. In the early 1570s John Riversof Chafford, grocer and alderman of the city of London, was taken to court by Sir Henryover the non-payment of a lease for the extraction of wood from Southpark(72), and inthe early seventeenth century, the re-growth of coppiced woodland was so poor that thewood was unsaleable, even the ironmasters refusing to buy it because of 'the smalenes ofthe wood, the farr fetching of yt, and the fawle in the price of iron.'115Coppice woodland in Bedgebury(4) park was also exploited to provide wood tobe converted into charcoal for the iron industry there. In 1618, Sir Alexander Culpeppersold coppice woods 'sometimes parcel of Bedgebury park' with other woods lying nearBedgebury furnace to ironmaster, John Porter.116 As at Leigh(70) park the wood wasprocessed into charcoal on site. John Porter agreed to pay £53 12s 0d to Sir AlexanderCulpepper in November 1618, and in June, 1619, and 4s 6d for every cord he had cutbeyond 238 cords, every cord of wood to be eight feet long and four feet high.111 TNA E178/1093, 1570/1571.112 CKS U1475/T61/3; Cleere & Crossley(1995:151-152); Chalklin(2004:108-109).113 CKS U1475/T33, 6/6/1579; CKS U1475/E1.114 Shaw(1942:32-33) letter 1/7/1605; Kingsford & Shaw(1934:482) letter 7/9/1600; CKS U1475 E55/4;cord = 120 cubic feet.115 CKS U1475/E1, 1559/1560; CKS U1475/E55/1, 1570; CKS U1475/C50/15, letter of 14/11/1611.116 BL Cart.Harl.77.D.10.162While wood and timber prices remained buoyant into the seventeenth century, theexploitation of woodland resources produced either a one-off sum, after wide scalefelling and grubbing up to convert the land into farmland, or a continuing source ofincome, if trees were harvested in a sustainable manner by coppicing or pollarding.117Although active parks were able to produce wood and timber, even on a commercialscale, disparked parks suffered none of the constraints regarding the needs of the deerand so their wood and timber resources could be exploited more systematically andintensively.(iv) The longevity of disparked parks as distinct units in the countrysideOnce a park had been converted to farmland, woodland or other uses, it waseffectively disparked, but there were several factors, which led to the continuation of theland as a distinct unit. First, and most complex, was the tithable or tithe-free status ofparkland, which meant that former parkland was treated differently from land lyingoutside the park. Second, in the early stages, if the pale was retained either by itssturdiness or by terms of lease, the park's physical distinctiveness in the countrysideremained. Lastly, even when former park pales were removed, the park tended to keepits entity, both in area and in name, in leases and other legal documents, especially, in adensely settled country like Kent, because existing tenancies or landholdings beyond thepark remained intact, with the former parkland surrounded by established holdings intowhich it had to fit.In Kent the normal tithe rules did not apply to deer parks because deer were oftenregarded as wild animals rather than farmed beasts, although there are instances inSuffolk, where once deer were enclosed in parks they become tithable.118 The legalposition is complicated, but the exemption of some parks from the payment of tithes hasbeen noted for counties such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Berkshire.119 Indeed, James Grigor,from one example in Norfolk, asserted that the 'real definition of a park' was that it wastithe-free, which Hoppitt has refuted by analysing the tithe status of early parks in 30Suffolk parishes, where she found that parks 'per se' were not exempt. However, Hoppitt117 Bowden in Thirsk IV (1967:607).118 Brown (ed.) Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters, Part I (Woodbridge, 1992) pers. comm. Hoppitt.119 Hoppitt(1992:80-97) Appendix IV, summarises the development of the legal and customary frameworksurrounding the payment of great and small tithes; ibid. p.80, citing James Grigor, 'The Eastern Arboretum,Or, Register of Remarkable Trees, Seats, Gardens etc. in the County of Norfolk' (London, 1841) for Meltonpark, and Shirley(1867) for Sunninghill park; ibid. p.84, Redgrave park, Suffolk, was tithe-free.163conceded that there were tithe exemptions for parks arising, not necessarily from theirpark status, but from several other factors, including agreements to pay modusdecamandi, or a fixed payment in lieu of tithes.120 After disparkment parks continued tobe tithe-free or covered by an annual compounded payment, thereby perpetuating theiranomalous tithable status outside the main tithe system of the parish. 121 Further researchwould be needed to ascertain, if it were possible, the extent to which disparked parkswere wholly or partly tithe-free or covered by the modus payment. Although the positionwas complicated and varied widely from park to park, the disputes and voluntaryagreements illustrate the continued distinctiveness of parks long after disparkment.There are 11 disparked or new parks in Kent in which the tithable status waschallenged by the clergy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, withcontroversy and confusion over tithes sometimes dogging those concerned centurieslater.122 Tithe disputes demonstrate that the concept of the park was not nostalgic, butarose from practical financial concerns of the tithe payers, who used custom to theiradvantage by paying lower contributions to the church, and of the clergy, who attemptedto gain as much income as possible. The arrangements regarding tithes showed thatformer parkland continued to be regarded as distinct from adjacent land until theabolition of tithes in the Tithe Act of 1936.123More tangible remnants of former parks, visually striking and still traceable aresubstantial boundary banks and ditches, which survive as enduring features in thelandscape.124 The physical removal of these redundant earthworks and the disposal ofthe spoil would probably have been an expensive and challenging task, and not worth theeffort. However, in many cases the banks still provided foundations for park pales,which often continued to be retained and repaired. The importance of the maintenance ofthe pale to the owner of an erstwhile park, perhaps in the hope that the deer park mightone day be restored, is demonstrated by several leases, which insisted on keeping the120 Hoppitt(1992:97).121 Simpson(1997:60-62).122 CCA-DCB-J/X.10.16, 1576, Allington(2); CCA-DCB-J/X.10.17, 1574, Boxley(14); CCA- CcChAnt/C/965, 1547, Canterbury(18); CCA-DCc-ChAnt/C/965, 1547, Trenley(20); Ward(1931) pp.214-215, Phillips (1930) II, p395, Knole(50) & Panthurst(67); CCA-DCB-J/X.16, 1576, Postling(73); CCADCB-J/X.10.20, 1582, Stowting(82); CCA-DCB-J/X.10.18, 1585, Chart Sutton(85); Phillips II (1930:395)1544, Otford Great(62) & New(64); Knatchbull-Hugessen(1960:21-23), Mersham Hatch(61).123 Richardson(1986:52-53).124 See Chapter Two pp.39-42 and Chapter Three (i) p.63-65.164pale long after the park had apparently been disparked. Several decades after the firstlease of Bedgebury(4) in 1604 a lease of 1646 insisted on the pale's maintenance.125Leases of 1595 and 1611 for Curlswood(26) and Henden(45) parks continued to refer tothe 'land and pasture enclosed within the pale', and to the park 'now divided inclosed andcompassed with pales and hedges' even though they had been disparked by 1576.126Even when the 'decayed and ruinous' pale was removed, as at Chislet(22) and Leigh(70)parks, the boundary was still demarcated by a hedge.127 The massive wooden palingmight gradually become inappropriate and an unnecessary expense to maintain, butfarmland and woodland still required enclosures; so it is 'ghost' park outlines withcontinuous, curved hedgerows or field boundaries, with or without a bank, can guide thelandscape historian to former park boundaries, with the later field system containedwithin them.128The persistence of park names in all the documents mentioned in this chapter ismarked. The parks of Cudham(25), probably disparked by the sixteenth century, andBexley(5) park, thought to have been disparked by 1469, were still being called parks inElizabeth I's reign.129 Brasted(15), Ightham(48) and Wrotham(100) parks, disparked inHenry VIII's reign, retained their park identity in documents into the seventeenth century,the last two with their boundaries delineated on a map of 1620, some of which can befollowed on the ground today (see Plate 5.2).130 Similarly, Otford Little(63) park andPanthurst(67) park, disparked by the time of the first edition of Lambarde's 'APerambulation of Kent', continued to be known as parks in Charles I's reign.131 Eventoday, 'Park' farm and 'Park' wood names are commonly found on Ordnance SurveyExplorer maps, along with specific names of long disparked parks such as Fryarne(36)Park, Glassenbury(37) Park, Hungershall(47) Park, Langley(51) Park in Beckenham,Leigh(70) Park, Lympne(57) Park, Postern(92) Park, Southpark(72) at Penshurst,South(12) Park at Boughton Malherbe and Trenley(20) Park, Canterbury.132125 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44; BL Cart.Harl.85.H.13; see Chapter Three pp.65,67.126 LPL TA633/2; Surrey History Centre K87/17/30.127 LPL TA39/1; CKS U1475/T61/4.128 Crawford(1953:189-196), Taylor(1974:25-26) and Hoskins(1977:94).129 CKS U1450/T6/23, 1600; CKS U1590/T25/3, 1699; Du Boulay(1993:32-33).130 TNA IPM C142/468/85, 1630; CKS U681/P31, see Plate 5.2 p.165.131 CKS U1000/1/T1, 1645; CKS U1000/2/T1, 1654.132 OS Explorer maps, TR165469; TQ747365; TQ572386; TQ384670; TQ535476; TR123345; TQ615463;TQ520426; TQ869467; TR195593.165Plate 5.2The longevity of disparked parks(a) Above – Ightham(48) (left)and Wrotham(100) parks dividedon 1620 map (CKS U681 P31)By kind permission of the Centrefor Kentish Studies, KentArchives and Local StudiesService, Kent County Council(b) Boundary of park withinternal division of fields largelyretained as shown on OS Explorer147 map, 1997.(c) Ightham park, view from westside of east boundary of park, andshowing 2 parallel fieldboundaries on 1620 map beyond.The rest of east boundary runswestward on field side ofwoodland area on the left, withditch and shared parish/parkboundary166The longevity of parks in legal documents, boundaries and names has beendemonstrated for Kent, as it could also be for other counties. That park 'entity' couldcontinue in the ways discussed is testimony to the part it had played in shaping thecountryside over previous centuries. In this sense disparkment, final as it may appear,can be seen from another perspective to mark a further phase in a park's history.133ConclusionIn drawing attention to disparkment in Kent, Lambarde recognised an importantdevelopment in park history and the study of the subject has thrown up many problems –the definition of disparkment, the pattern and process by which it was carried out, themanagement of former parkland, and explanations for the continued residual existence ofa failed park. The challenge has been to convert disparate evidence into as coherent anaccount of disparkment as possible. Disparkment in Kent was more widespread before1558, but the Elizabethan period brought relative stability, with the number ofdisparkments being balanced by the number of new park creations. This balance wasmaintained, but with mounting difficulty during the reign of James I. Several familiesoverstretched themselves financially during both reigns, and it became increasinglydifficult for them to meet their debts. Disparkment was postponed for a generation ortwo, but in the tense period before the Civil War in Charles I's reign and withsequestration during the war, the rate of disparkment increased, with few parks survivingunscathed into the eighteenth century.133 Liddiard(unpublished paper, 2007).167PART III - CHAPTER SIXPARK OWNERS AND PARK HOLDERSWhile William Lambarde named the parks of Kent, he did not identify theirowners, an omission that Part III seeks to rectify, especially concentrating on activerather than disparked parks, although there is uncertainty about the period in which eachpark contained deer.Attention will first be paid to the royal, ecclesiastical, noble, titled and gentileowners of active deer parks at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign (i). Next identifyingthe acquirers of established parks from the crown, from private transfers and the ownersof new parks (ii) will show whether there was a change in the profile of park ownershipfrom 1558 to 1625. Factors behind the successful retention of parks by some parkowning families, and the failure of others to keep their parks (iii) will finally beexamined to enable conclusions to be about the extent of continuity of park ownership.The survival of family papers in various archives helps to establish ownership ofsome parks, but for others finding owners has proved to be elusive and inconclusive.Moreover, even where families are known, detailed background information on whichto base an analysis has been much more difficult to uncover.1(i) Owners of active parks in 15582In the Middle Ages park ownership in England was restricted to the highestlevels of the social scale, with no one below the rank of manorial lord owning a park,but with the crown, church and greater earldoms each holding many parks. The 200 ormore members of the greater baronage are presumed to have owned at least one parkeach in the thirteenth century, while by the fifteenth century most of the 100 or soparliamentary peers each had one park.3 Some historians have hypothesised that parkownership extended to lower landowning levels in the later Middle Ages, but others,including Mileson, have challenged this view, arguing that if, between 1350 and 1500,1The following sources have been used to build up profiles – Lambarde(1576:54-58) Visitation of 1574;Lambarde(1596:31-35,586-588) J.Ps., list of disgavelment; Hasted I (1797:197-206, 223-225.232)sheriffs, baronets, lord lieutenants; Harris(1719:434-435, 440-441, 444-457) sheriffs, baronets, M.Ps.;Zell(1999:31-38) J.Ps.; http://oxforddnb.com. was used for individuals.2See Figure 6.1 'Gentry and noble park ownership in 1558', p.170.3 Mileson(2009:108-109).168the number of parks in England dropped by 20 to 30 per cent, then there would havebeen a concomitant reduction in the circle of park owners, thereby maintaining theexclusivity of park ownership.4Without detailed research for Kent one can only speculate about park ownershipprior to the Tudor period, but the backgrounds of Elizabethan park owners indicate thatthe more prominent gentry families had owned parks (or the land on which parks werecreated, but for which no date is known) back into the fifteenth century or before.When park ownership had filtered down to this level of society, or why, is beyond thescope of this study.Incomplete and fragmentary evidence makes it impossible to be exact about thenumber of active parks or their owners at Elizabeth I's accession, or at other given timeduring her reign and her successor's for that matter. In any case, the situation was neverstatic. Of 46 known active parks in 1558, the church had perhaps three active parks,the archbishop of Canterbury's Ford(35) and Westwell(99) parks, and the bishop ofRochester's park by his palace at Bromley(16).5 The crown had varying degrees ofinterest in about 16 parks.6 In 1558 noblemen, Lords Abergavenny, Burgh andCobham, owned only five active parks, Birling(7) and Hungershall(47), Cobham(23)and Cooling(24), and Starborough(80), which partly lay in Kent. Members of thegentry, for the most part from long-established Kentish families, owned 22 parks, manyof which had been in the same family for several generations.7 This group formed asmall wealthy elite, often combining landholding with office in the royal court or in thelegal profession. In this respect the evidence about park owners corresponds with Zell'sresearch into landholding and the land market in early modern Kent, namely that therewas no clear distinction between land owning local gentry and office holders becausethe two categories more often than not overlapped.84 Mileson(2009:110) citing C. Dyer, 'The West Midlands' in E. Miller (ed.) The Agrarian History ofEngland and Wales (Cambridge, 1991) and G.L. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1561(Oxford, 2005) countered by Armitage-Smith (ed.), John of Gaunt's Register (London, 1911) and J.Birrell, 'The Forest and the Chase in Medieval Staffordshire' in Staffordshire Studies 3 (1990-1991).5Little is about the parks at Ford(35) and Bromley(16). See Figure 6.2 for Social Status and ParkOwnership p.172.6See Figure 6.1 'Gentry and noble park ownership in 1558', p.170.7See Figure 6.2 'Social status and park ownership', p.172.8Zell(2000:60).169Under the heading of 'The Nobilitie and Gentrie' Lambarde named 225 membersof these groups, many 'held together by blood as well as by class' through intermarriage. 9As Laslett emphasised, 'The genealogical interrelationships between the members wereextensive, complicated and meticulously observed by all of them: it is astonishing howdistant a connexion qualified for the title 'cozen'.' On Lambarde's list, twelve of the 21 titled gentlemen and Lady Golding ofRoydon, the widow of a knight, held parks.10 However, the figure might be highershould more evidence about dates of other parks and their owners come to light, forexample, Chafford(later park,102) held by the Rivers, Fairlawne(later park,103) by theFanes and Scadbury(later park,105) park held by the Walsinghams.11 Eight othermembers of the gentry on Lambarde's list owned parks so when sons and other familymembers are included, 45 or 20 per cent of the 225 noblemen, knights and gentry werefrom park owning families.12 As in earlier times, park owners invariably belonged tothe upper group of magnate gentlemen.13 None of the 'middling' or lesser gentry ownedparks, although occasionally members of the former group might sublease parks, as didthe Hamon family, sub-lessees of the crown park of Elham(30), who were notableenough to be included in the herald's visitation of 1574.14Parks might be acquired by new creation, inheritance, marriage, purchase, grantof gift, or exchange. Prior to Elizabeth I's accession, four acquisitions occurred byinheritance from blood relatives, 12 by marriage, six by royal grant of gift or freeholdlease, and six by purchase (see Figure 6.2).15 The circ*mstances of the acquisition ofHungershall(47) park by the Nevill family is unknown. As family histories werestudied, it became clear that those who owned parks in Elizabeth I's reign were often the9Lambarde(1576:54-58); Laslett(1948:150).10 Sir Richard Baker of Sissinghurst(79), William Brooke, lord Cobham, of Cobham(23) and Cooling(24)and Sir Henry Brooke as his heir, Sir Alexander Culpepper of Bedgebury(4), Sir Percival Hart ofLullingstone(55), Sir Thomas Kempe of Stowting(82), Sir Philip Sidney of Penshurst(69,71), Sir WarhamSentleger of Leeds(54), Sir Thomas Scott of Scot's Hall(77), Sir Walter Waller of Groombridge(40), SirThomas Guldeford of Hemsted(44), Lady Elizabeth Golding (nee Roydon) of Roydon(74), Sir HumphreyGilbert briefly held Postling(73) park.11 co*ckburn(1995:331) AC35/80/11/1580, 1638, Chafford park; co*ckburn(1995:363) AC35/81/6/1722,1638, Fairlawne park; BromleyLS 336/3a; c.1660+, Scadbury park.12 Gentlemen - Roger Manwood, Walter Roberts, William Roper, Robert Rudston, Anthony Sondes,Thomas Willoughby, Thomas Wotton.13 Clark(1997:125-126).14 Hasted 8 (1797:98).15 Figure 6.2 'Social status and park ownership', p.172.170Figure 6.1 – Gentry and Noble Park Ownership in 1558No.Park NameOwner in 1558 Date land/parkacquiredBy inheritance (total 2)55 Lullingstone Sir Percival Hart 1360 (via Peche)79 Sissinghurst Sir Richard Baker c.1490By marriage (total 14)77 Scot's Hall Sir Thomas Scott 1292s6 Birling Henry Nevill, lord Abergavenny 1430s7 Birling, Comford Henry Nevill, lord Abergavenny 1430s9 Bore Place Sir Thomas Willoughby 1518 c/h10 Boughton Malherbe Thomas Wotton 1413-142211 Boughton Malherbe, Lenham Thomas Wotton 1413-142223 Cobham William Brooke, lord Cobham c. 1400 c/h24 Cooling William Brooke, lord Cobham c. 140037 Glassenbury Walter Roberts 1488 (new park)58 Lynsted John Roper ?1430s-60s78 Shurland Sir Thomas Cheyne c.1300 c/h80 Starborough William Borough, lord Burgh 1471 c/h87 Throwley ?Sir Thomas Sondes 152095 Well Hall William Roper 1488By purchase (total 6)4 Bedgebury Sir Alexander Culpepper 154413 Boughton Monchelsea Robert Rudston 155140 Groombridge Walter Waller 1413-1422 c/h73 Postling John Aucher 1546 c/h82 Stowting Sir Thomas Kempe 1434 c/h99 West Wickham Sir Christopher Heydon 1469 c/hBy grant (total 6)21a Chilham Sir Thomas Cheyne 1509-1549 c/h44 Hemsted Sir John Guldeford 138854 Leeds Sir Anthony Sentleger 1548-1553 c/h56 Lyminge Edward Aucher 154669 Penshurst, Ashour Sir William Sidney 155271 Penshurst, Northlands Sir William Sidney 1552Unknown (total 1)47 Hungershall Henry Nevill, lord Abergavennyc/h = changed hands some time after 1558 and before 1625See Park profiles p. 351 for source of information for each park171beneficiaries of their enterprising or acquisitive forebears, and that park ownershipreflected not only the current, but also the past status of the family.By whatever means and however far back a park was acquired, owners wereoverwhelmingly from Kentish gentry ancestry and newcomers from previous centurieshad become totally absorbed into Kentish society. The Tudor owners, like theirmedieval predecessors, having acquired a park, considered it a matter of family honourto retain it.16 The majority of owners did so, with 19 parks continuing in the ownershipof the same family throughout the reigns of Elizabeth I and of James I (see Figure6.1).17(ii) New owners of established parks from the crown, by private transfer andthe owners of new parks18Changes in park ownership would not necessarily be reflected in the number ofactive parks, which did not vary greatly in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. However,relative political stability brought long-term security in landownership, which gavefamilies a better chance of retaining their parks. Overall, there were more changes ofownership of crown parks than of private parks, so that at the end of Elizabeth I's reign,of a possible 50 active parks, tentative assessments are that the crown owned 11 parks(reduced from 16), the church had two active parks (a loss of one), while noblemen withnine parks and knights and gentlemen with 28 parks had increased the number of activeparks they owned. The position in 1625 was that of 43 active parks, crown ownershiphad dropped to nine, the church still had two, noblemen had nine parks, while thenumber of parks held by knights and gentlemen had slipped to 23, although for eachgroup the exact number of parks remaining active is uncertain.19Although Elizabeth I acquired two Kentish parks, namely Westwell(99) in 1560,and Shurland(79) in 1564, she relinquished interest in several other parks (see Figure6.4).20 She granted away five active parks at the beginning of her reign, re-granted16 Mileson(2009:115).17 See Figure 6.1 'Gentry and noble park ownership in 1558' p.170.18 See Figure 6.3 (a) new owners of established parks, p.319, (b) owners of new parks, p.320 (Appendix6).19 See Figure 6.2 'Social status and park ownership', p.172 compiled from each park profile, see p.351on.20 See Figure 6.4 'Crown parks in Kent' (Appendix 7 pp.321-323); CPR part XIII, 13/12/1559, pp. 440-442; TNA SP12/98/29.172173two of these and restored Halden(41) to the Sidneys in the 1560s. She granted away afurther two parks in the 1580s, and reluctantly, towards the end of her reign, she soldCanterbury(18) and Otford Great(62) parks.21 Thus the crown lost ten active parks,leased out Elham(30), Shurland(78), Northfrith(89-91) and Westwell(98), and kept onlythe parks at Eltham(31-33,53) and Greenwich(39) under direct control. Further lossesoccurred in James I's reign when Shurland(78) park was granted away, and Cobham(23)and Cooling(24) parks, seized in 1603, soon passed from the crown by grant.22 Of thefew royal parks left, Elham(30) alone was sold, despite James I's instructions of 1604forbidding the sale of any forest, chase or park, whether an entity in its own right or partof a manor.23Elizabeth I and James I granted parks mainly to kinsmen and favourites underfavourable tenures, making virtual freeholds, either under fee tail to male heirs or, undera fee simple, socage or knight's service, to male or female heirs, only returning to thecrown if the line of descent failed.24 The grant might involve a small fee or a reservedfee when the park was sold on, or alienated, at a later date.Only four months after coming to the throne Elizabeth I granted lands, includingten parks in Kent, the most valuable group of which were Cage(89), Postern(93) andNorthfrith(90-92), in tail male to Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon, her cousin, to enable himto maintain the lifestyle of his new peerage.25 The queen made another very extensivegrant in fee simple to her favourite courtier, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, in 1561,which included Knole(50) and Panthurst(67) parks.26 However, he later surrenderedthem to the crown in a land exchange, and in 1566 Elizabeth I, subject to existing subleases, granted them to her cousin, Thomas Sackville, lord Buckhurst.2721 See Chapter Seven (iv) p.221 onwards22 3 James I Act of Parliament.23 Hasted 8 (1797:98); TNA SP14/36/13.24 Baker(2002:273-274).25 MacCaffrey, Henry Carey (1526-1596)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/4/4649). Henry Carey, son ofThomas Boleyn, the brother of Elizabeth I's mother, Anne, was created Baron Hunsdon on 13 January1559 within 2 months of Elizabeth's accession; CPR, Part IX, 20/3/1559, pp.115-118; these parks wereAldington(1), Knole((50), Maidstone(59), Otford Little(63) park, Panthurst(67), also Cage(88),Postern(92) and 3 in Northfrith(89-91) around Tonbridge.26 CPR, Part XII no.974, 1/3/1561 pp.189-191; Haynes(2004:243).27 CPR Part VII, no.2367, 29/6/1566, pp.457-462; Jack, Sir Richard Sackville (d.1566) (http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25908). Sir Richard Sackville, the father of Sir Thomas Sackville, was a first cousin ofAnne Boleyn.174These grandee noblemen were absentee landlords, although Lord Buckhurstwould have liked to have resided at Knole, which Elizabeth I is thought to have grantedto him to spare him the journey over the atrocious roads of the Weald because it wasnearer to court than his seat at Buckhurst in Sussex.28 However, a royal grant, thoughwell intentioned as a gesture of favour, was not necessarily of immediate benefit to therecipient and could result in detrimental legal disputes and costs, in this case becausethere was an existing 99-year lease, dating from 1565, for Knole and its park(50). Ittook an 18-year struggle for Lord Buckhurst to acquire the lease because of thecomplicated layers of interest that had accumulated on it, and it was not until 1603 thatLord Buckhurst purchased the remainder of the lease for £4000. 29The last grant of parks Elizabeth I made was unusual in that the grantee wasneither relative nor favourite, but the financier 'customer' Thomas Smythe, collector ofthe subsidy of imports at the port of London since 1558, an office which had netted hima profit of £50000 over 18 years.30 It might have been his underwriting of the cost ofopposing the Spanish Armada that led to the royal grant of land, includingWestenhanger(97) and Ostenhanger(98) parks, in 1585, by military service and anannual fine of £13 8s 6½d.31By James I's reign there were not many active parks at the king's disposal inKent, so to grant any away was a sign of special favour, and, like Elizabeth I, James Iadvanced a favourite and a relative. In 1605 the Shurland estate of 2245 acres with its300-acre park went to Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, who 'by the comeliness ofhis person, his skill, and indefatigable industry in hunting' was 'the first who drew theKing's eyes towards him with affection.'32 After the vacation of Cobham by thedowager duch*ess of Kildare in 1612, the valuable Cobham estate with mansion andpark(23) was granted by James I to his cousin, Ludovick Stuart, duke of Lennox, by28 Sackville-West(1949:39); Phillips II (1930:398).29 CKS U1450/T6/30, 1 February 8 Elizabeth I; TNA E122/130/12-13; TNA E351/764; TNA E351/3541;Ward(1931:24) TNA PCCprob/11/63/15, 25/3/1578; Adams(1995:468); Barrett-Lennard(1908:119);CKS U269/T1/A:8:2, 18 July 12 Elizabeth I; Barrett-Lennard(1908:120-123) letter of 21/10/1566, notesof John Lennard; CKS U269/T1/A:8:14, 23/1/1603.30 Dietz, Thomas Smythe (Smith) (1522-1591) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/37/37985).31 Wadmore(1887:199) citing 26/5/1585 Originalia 27 Elizabeth I, 12/5/1564, p.4, m.44-46; ibid. pp.195-197.32 Cave-Browne(1898:92-93); Smith, Philip Herbert (1584-1650)(http://oxforddnb.com/ articles/13/13042) citing E. Hyde, The history of the rebellion and civil wars in England, I p.74 (1888).175fealty only in free and common socage of the manor of East Greenwich 'and not inchief, nor by knight's service', signifying special favour, because it carried the leastobligations (most notably avoiding wardship).33The crown owned all the active parks in Kent held under lease in the period1558 to 1625, and although some were leased to eminent national figures, most wereleased to members of the upper echelon of the Kentish gentry. The leases for whichsome details are known were markedly different. Annual rents cannot be comparedbecause in most cases the park was only a small element of a more extensive lease, andthe fines were not always included in the calendars. Of the active parks available for releasing during Elizabeth I's reign, she granted one 50-year lease, one at an annual fine of£136, and two 21-year leases.Aldington(1), active for part of the time, was held by the Sentleger family before1591 and afterwards by the Scott family of Scot's Hall on 21-year leases – a termcommonly adopted for disparked parks so perhaps it had been by this time.34 The leaseof Shurland(79) park in the 1580s was also for 21 years, during which the tenants had toprovide lodgings for ten men with weapons to defend the island.'35Southfrith(94), Elham(30), and Westwell(99) parks were active throughout theperiod. The most prestigious lease was for Southfrith(94) near Tonbridge assigned in1571 to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, for a 50-year term in reversion of an existingsublease, which was surrendered in 1573.36 Sir Henry Sidney inherited the lease in1588, and transferred it to Lady Frances Sidney, as part of her widowhood settlementfollowing the death of his son and her husband, Sir Philip Sidney.37 From 1609 to 1611,Richard Burke, earl of Clanricarde, third husband of Lady Frances, built a new mansion33 TNA SP14/131/53; TNA SP14/70/48; Arch.Cant. XI (1887:lxxxiv-lxxxvi); Hurstfield, 'The Greenwichtenures of the reign of Edward VI' in Transactions of the Greenwich & Lewisham Antiquarian Society IVno.4 (1948-49:192-193).34 Lambarde(1596); see Chapter Five pp.150-151 and Chapter Six Figure 6.4 'Crown parks in Kent'(Appendix 7 pp.321-323) ; SP12/240/103, 22/12/1591; TNA SP12/265/20, 25/11/1597; SP14/28/58,26/9/1607, for Addington read Aldington; TNA SC12/20/22, 1624-1625; TNA LR2/196, 1649-1650;TNA SP12/98/29, 7 /10/1574. See Chapter Five (iii) (a) pp.150-153.35 Cave-Browne(1898:92); CPR no.1457, 1/7/1580, p.180.36 CPR no.2647, 28/11/1571; BL Cart.Harl. 77.A35, 75.E.31, 75.H.23; TNA E178/1093.37 Harris(1719:322).176Plate 6.1The Jacobean mansion of Somerhill near Tonbridge(a) Front elevation of the Jacobean Somerhill mansion, built for the Earlof Clanricarde. 9 September 2006(b) Continuation of Somerhill to the left of (a) showing Victorianadditions, but also an ancient oak pollard, which is likely to have beenthere from Southfrith forest when the house was built.9 September 2006177called 'Somerhill' within the newly disparked Southfrith(94), and by 1622 had encloseda park(94b) around it, the only new park in Kent created by an aristocrat (see Plate 6.1).38 In 1623 the earl and countess of Clanricarde were given a 21-year lease or lease ofthree lives of Southfrith(94).39Elham(30) and Westwell(99) had been leased to magnate Kentish gentlemenprior to Elizabeth I's accession, the former in 1551 for 80 years to Sir Edward Wotton ofBoughton Malherbe and the latter, before the queen acquired the park, to John Tufton ofHothfield for 50 years from 1559, which was renewed in 1597 for a further 31 years at arent of only £10 per annum.40 John Tufton did not own a park, but Westwell(99) parkwas conveniently near his mansion of Hothfield Place, where Elizabeth I stayed on herprogress in 1573.41 Lastly, in 1593 Elizabeth reverted to the traditional custom ofassigning parks to men of high status I by granting Shurland(79), at an annual fine of£136, to Sir Edward Hoby, a distant relative by marriage and constable ofQueenborough castle on the island.42Only ten private parks changed hands, although it is not always possible tounravel the precise sequence of events. Of these only four, Knole(50), Leeds(54), WestWickham(99) and perhaps Chilham(21a), contained deer or were in a position to berestocked with deer. An exceptional arrangement was made for Knole in 1625 toextricate Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset, from debt, whereby the manors of Knole andPanthurst in Sevenoaks, except for the use of Knole house and park(50) which were toremain under lease to the earl, were sold, but immediately put into trusteeship forcharitable uses.43 It was left to a later generation to buy back Knole and its park(50),where the family still reside.44 John Lennard, protonotary of the court of common pleas,purchased West Wickham(99) for £2700 in 1580, Sir Richard Smythe, 'customer'Thomas Smythe's son gained Leeds(54) park in 1618 from his brother-in-law, Sir38 See Plate 6.1 p.176, Somerhill; Shaw (1942:276); Phillips I (1930:182); Lennon, Richard Burke, 4thearl of Clanricarde and 1st earl of St. Albans (1572-1635)(http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/67/67043).39 CKS U38/T1(part 2); Lennon, Richard Burke, 4th earl of Clanricarde and 1st earl of St. Albans (1572-1635)(http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/67/67043).40 TNA LR2/196; Hasted 8 (1797:98) at some time after the death of the sub-lessee in 1613, but beforethe lease expired in 1621, the reversion of fee was purchased and the park left crown ownership.41 Chalklin(1965:51); Hasted 7 (1797:518); Cole(1999:186) 19-21 August, 1573; Hasted 7 (1797:518) .42 Daly(1904:170).43 CKS U269/T1; Phillips I (1930:274) Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset, is said to have died owing£60,000; Hasted(1797:71-73).44 Phillips I (1930:268-270).178Warham Sentleger, to save him from his creditors, and Dudley Digges, a diplomat andpolitician, making his fortune from investment in overseas trading ventures, purchasedChilman(21a). These three had made fortunes in their own right and had dynasticambitions that were partly fulfilled by the purchase of these parks.The creators of new parks had similar ambitions as those who purchased parks(see Figure 6.3).45 They were prepared to make an expensive investment in a park as anoutward show of wealth and at the same time to mark out a superior position in societyfor themselves and their families. It is unclear from extant evidence exactly how manynew parks were created between 1558 and 1625, because the actual date of imparkment isnot always known, but there might have been about 12, including Somerhill(93b).46 TwoElizabethan owners of new parks were Sir Moyle Finch, who created Eastwell(28) in1589, and Sir Roger Manwood, who had enclosed Tyler Hill(94) park by the 1590s. Bothwere lawyers and members of Parliament, descended from long established Kentishgentry families.47 New Jacobean parks can also be attributed to those with strong roots inKent, eager to match their accrued wealth with an enhanced social standing within thecounty. The Knatchbull, Dering, Digges and Style families created Mersham Hatch(61),Surrenden(84), Chilham(21b) and Langley(51) in Beckenham, respectively.48 Innorthwest Kent new parks, such as East Wickham(29) enclosed by Sir Olyffe Leigh in1610, Lee(53) by Sir Nicholas Stoddard in the 1600s, and Halstead(42) in about 1620 bySir Thomas Watson, a newcomer to Kent, were created as speculative ventures to attractroyal attention and were relatively short-lived because of the financial strain theyimposed.4945 See Figure 6.3 (b) (Appendix 6 p.320).46 Chilham(21b), Eastwell(28), East Wickham(29), Great Chart(37), Halstead(42), Langley,Beckenham(51), Lee(53), Mersham Hatch(61), Roydon(74), Scotney(76), Surrenden(84), Somerhill(93b),Tyler Hill(94); see Figure 6.3 (Appendix 6) p.319; for new park at Southfrith see pp.178-180; CKSU48/P1, 1590, the earliest reference to Roydon park; ESRO DYK/607, 1597 is the earliest referenceScotney park47 Dormer(1999:7-48); Physick(1973:128); Jack, Roger Manwood(1524/5-1592)ttp.//oxforddnb.com/articles/18/18014.48 Jones(1933:201); CKS U591/C261/5; Knatchbull-Hugessen(1960:20-23); CCA-DCc-ChAnt/M38;Yeandle(2005:323-325).TNA SP14/58/19; TNA STAC8/198/8; TNA E178/6020, 1621;Horsburgh(1929:235-236).49 See Chapter Eight p.282; see Chapter Three pp.134-135; see Chapter Four p.137.179With the exception of those prestigious outsiders who received royal grants ofpark, the owners of newly acquired parks, by purchase or creation, in Elizabeth I's andJames I's reign continued to be drawn mainly from the aristocracy and from wellestablished Kentish gentry families, who used their parks to enhance their life-style andwith aspirations aimed as much at county level as to wider horizons. When Lambardewrote of those who were 'continually translated, and do become new plants,' and that'gentlemen be not heere of so auncient stocke as elsewhere especially in the partesneerer to London', he did not have parks in mind, but men like John Lennard, SirThomas Watson and Thomas Smythe among new park owners could fit this description.Such men had the means to buy up or create parks, but they were the minority amongthe new park owners. 50(iii) Factors influencing retention and loss of parksFamilies who retained their parks were either lucky, or careful, or were able toovercome unfavourable factors, while those that lost their parks were overwhelmed by aproblem, such as financial strain or minority or broken succession, or a combination ofdisadvantageous circ*mstances, which were not easily combated.Most owners benefited from the success of their predecessors, but continuitydepended on each inheritor making a conscious decision to maintain the deer park,influenced perhaps by the enjoyment of the park with all its facets, or from a desire tomaintain or enhance family status, or a combination of both. Along with the will toretain a park there had to be the income to support the ongoing costs. Various meanswere employed to this end, among the options being the pursuit of a career at court, inthe legal profession, living off landed income, investing in business ventures oracquiring more land through marriage, grant or purchase. Only a handful of owners,who inherited parks later in Elizabeth I's reign and into the seventeenth century partedwith their parks shortly after taking them over, and usually they had no option but tosell.51In the absence of detailed financial assessments, only educated guesses can be50 Lambarde(1576:10).51 For example see Postling(73) Chapter Five p.148.180made about the amount and source of a family's income. The Wotton, Roberts, Scott,Guldeford and Culpepper families were among those who seem mainly to havedepended on the income from landed estates. Other families such as the Bakers, Nevillsand Sidneys had supplementary income from assets in the iron industry. Additionally,the Auchers, Brookes, Harts and Sidneys served at court, and the Ropers gained wealththrough their legal careers.While not unaffected by external economic forces, a crucial factor in thesurvival of a park was the continued investment in its management. This did notnecessarily depend on the overall income of the owner, but on his ability to manage hisfinances. The landowner who took an interest in his estates and expected accountabilityfrom his servants was more likely to be able to plan his finances and manage hisresources effectively, an important factor in keeping an estate, and its park, intact. Thebailiff's accounts for Birling manor covering 13 years from 1586 to 1599 point tocareful administration and management of the Nevill estate there.52 Thomas Wottonlived within his means and the book of 571 pages he compiled in 1567 of his estate ofover 80 Kentish manors, including his three parks at Boughton Malherbe(10-12), istestament to his close supervision and interest.53 Sir Robert Sidney of Penshurst wasoften absent overseas and at court, but was well served by his advisors.54 His bailiffsand stewards submitted regular accounts and the rapport between them was such thatthey gave advice or voiced their opinion on their own initiative, as illustrated by hissteward's successful opposition to the extension of Penshurst(71) park.55 However, hisaccountant remonstrated in vain over his extravagance, linked to his high-risk strategyof pursuing personal advancement at court.56 'I must confess,' wrote Thomas Knevett,'that much of your charges in apparel for yourself and children might have binne savedas I have many tymes made bold to informe your honour.'57 Sir Robert Sidney ran intodebt, but managed to avoid disaster by judicial sales of land, through the backing of avery competent wife, through the credit of family and friends, and with the closeoversight and loyal service of his staff. 5852 ESRO ABE 18/R1 & 2.53 Eland(1960:xix-xxi); BL Add.Mss.42715.54 BL Add.Mss.12066; Hay(1984) p.191.55 Shaw(1942:265-266) 9/5/1611 Golding to Viscount Lisle.56 Shaw (1942:265-267).57 BL Add.Mss.12066.58 Ibid; Hesketh(1915:12-13).181Other families, such as the Roberts of Glassenbury(37) and the Scott family ofScot's Hall(77) also ran into financial difficulties, but managed to retain their parks, atleast until the end of James I's reign.59 However six of the ten parks that changed handsbetween 1558 and 1625 fell victim to the indebtedness of their owners. Other ownerssuch as Sir Percival Willoughby of Bore Place(9), Sir Henry Cheyne of Shurland(78),Sir Warham Sentleger of Leeds(54), and Sir Christopher Heydon of WestWickham(99) parks disposed of their land in Kent in order to consolidate their positionsin other counties.60A strong line of primogeniture inheritance was advantageous in retaining parks,while a weak minority or joint-female succession, although not insurmountable made apark more vulnerable to a change in ownership. The ownership of Hungershall(47)park by the Nevills, Sissinghurst(79) park by the Bakers and Hemsted(44) park by theGuldefords was weakened by minority successions, although the last two parkscontinued to function into Charles I's reign.61 Chilham(21a) survived joint inheritanceby daughters, because one husband was rich enough to buy out other shareholders,however, the parks on the Starborough(80) and Stowting(82) estates succumbed tochange of ownership because no such accommodation could be made.62Lastly, families who managed to weather the religious and political storms of theperiod were in a much better position to maintain an active park. Recusants like theRopers of Lynsted(58) and Well Hall(95), were cushioned against recusancy fines andpenalties by the profits of office, but the Culpeppers of Bedgebury struggled to keeptheir estate, and perhaps their park, intact.63 The Brooke family was ruined by politicalintrigue and its fate demonstrates how quickly family fortunes could change.Cobham(23) and Cooling(24) parks were safe in the hands of William Brooke, lordCobham, lord chamberlain of England, with an annual income of over £5000, until1597, but were lost under his son and heir, Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, who not only59 Documentation for these families is sparse.60 Phillips, c.1909, newspaper article; Reed(1992:13); Rutton(1900:122-125); Geofrrey-Lloyd &Wilson(1980:232); Gregory(1963:18-20).61 Burke I (1879:19-20); ESRO ABE/52.1; Zell(1994:36) in the early C17th the Baker estate was thegreatest in the Weald, although land was being sold off after 1596; SuffRO HA43/T501/242.62 Hasted 3 (1797:215); Hitchin-Kemp I (c.1902:39); BL Add.Ch.41796, 10 February 6 James I.63 Trevor-Roper, William Roper (1495x8-1578)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/24/24074); BLCart.Harl.77 C44, 77.D10, 79.F3, 79F5; BL Add.Ch.41796, 10 February 6 James I; BLCart.Harl.77.C.44, 77.D.10, 79. F.3, 79.F.5.182ran into debt of £10,000, but lost all his land through attainder in 1604 after beingimplicated in the Bye plot. 64As has been demonstrated the continued possession of an active park partlydepended upon the will, ability, good judgement, financial control and managerialcompetence of the park owner, but even a model owner might be faced withunpredictable circ*mstances, which could sway the balance and lead to the loss of apark. Although 19 parks saw no change of ownership, several faced uncertain futuresafter 1625.ConclusionVery few parks, and even fewer active parks, came onto the open market, whichunderlines the relative stability of park ownership and the reluctance to part with a parkuntil it became unavoidable. Often the line between retention and loss was very fine.The majority of longstanding active parks were retained or acquired by wealthier gentryor titled Kentish families, who kept a tighter control on their budgets, and by those witha strong line of male succession. Conversely, the loss of a park can be seen to havefollowed a decline in fortune largely brought about by the drain on finances caused byoverspending or by a decline in wealth, or by weakness in the family succession. Fewnew park owners, whether park creators or park purchasers, came from outside thecounty and still fewer of them were the nouveau riche.The difficulty encountered in isolating factors that distinguished park owningfrom non-park owning gentlemen of equal financial and social standing was found to bea daunting task requiring extensive genealogical research and presupposing a wealth ofdata about the financial standing of individual members of the gentry with which tomake a comparison. However, those gentlemen with the necessary resources desirousof a park had the option either to create their own or to acquire one that came onto themarket, so it is unlikely that there were many whose ambition to own a park wasthwarted.64 Lock, William Brooke (1527-1597) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/61/61735); Nichols(1979), p.17;Hasted 7 (1797:416); Nichols(1979:17).183PART IVTHE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF DEER PARKSThere were positive and negative attitudes towards deer parks evoked partly byfeelings of inclusion or exclusion, which crossed social barriers. Chapter Sevenconcentrates on how monarchs, noblemen and gentlemen perceived their parks, the useof the park in sporting and recreational activities, in the advance of patronage throughhospitality and gifts of venison, and how it was valued aesthetically in the landscape.Chapter Eight deals with the negative attitudes towards deer parks, specificallyfocusing on park breaks, illegal hunting and other activities, which challenged thenotion that the park was only there for the privileged few.184PART IV - CHAPTER SEVENTHE PERCEPTION OF CROWN, NOBLES AND GENTRY TOWARDS PARKSWhatever its size, topography and management, the presence of deer remainedthe raison d'être of Elizabethan and Jacobean parks. The enjoyment of hunting bymonarchs, nobility and gentry alike ensured the continuance of parks and led to strongurges to display and defend one's own park, and to emulate and envy the parks ofothers. Surviving documents seldom make direct reference to appreciative responsestowards parks, but can be used with a degree of empathy to illustrate the emotionalcapital expended upon them. Such reconstruction is in itself a challenge, but evengreater is to find examples from Kent. This chapter will open with the eminence of theculture surrounding royal and elite hunting (i) and the use of the park for the productionof venison for the household and for gifts (ii). The park was an adjunct to hospitableentertainment, apart from hunting, and (iii) will show how parks were inextricablylinked to the life-style and mentality of Tudor and early Stuart genteel society, includingin (iv) the aesthetic appreciation of the park in the landscape. Lastly, the case study (v),centred on Sir Robert Sidney's attempts to gain Otford Great(62) park from the crown,illustrates the significance put on park ownership at the highest state level and theimportance to individuals of the concept of the park vis á vis their own social standing.(i) Attitudes to hunting in parksEvidence of hunting in Kentish parks is rare, as it is for the medieval period,which has provoked a great deal of debate about the role of parks in hunting. Historianssuch as Rackham and Birrell have underplayed the role of hunting by park owners, thelatter arguing that areas of parkland were more suited to breeding than hunting deer, andthat while servants hunted regularly, the owner and his guests enjoyed sporadic andoccasional hunts.1 Mileson has recently strongly refuted these premises by placing thepopularity of hunting at the pivotal core of the park's function.2 He contends thathunting was under-recorded, yet indirect evidence for it can be found in a wide range of1 Rackham(1986:133); Birrell(1992:122); Mileson(2009:5-16); Birrell(2006:178); Liddiard(2007:4);Plusowski in Liddiard(2007:77).2 Mileson(2009:180-181).185sources, and that there was a growing need for parks to provide deer for sport asnumbers of deer in the wild diminished.3The pervasiveness of the hunting culture in the sixteenth and early seventeenthcenturies is better documented. Henry VIII's love of hunting has been researched byWilliams; Manning's wider ranging research, covering 1485 to 1640, revealed huntingto be a 'consuming activity' which had a profound effect on popular culture; morerecently, Beaver has also testified to the popularity of hunting, but in particular hasdrawn attention to the ritualised killing at the end of the hunt, symbolically conveyinggentility and honour to differentiate the governing elite from the rest of society.4 Deercounts for two years, 1603 to1605, at Penshurst(71) showed that a quarter of the deertaken were hunted by the Sidney family, guests and friends, which, if replicated in otherKentish parks, implies that hunting occurred more frequently than records reveal.5The publication of contemporary hunting manuals reflected continuing interestin the sport. Gascoigne in 'The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting,' of 1575, wrote ofhunting as a sport 'for gentle blood, ordained first for men of noble kind.'6 Markham inthe seventh book of 'Maison Rustique , or The country farme' also covered the subjectof hunting, leaning heavily on Gascoigne's text.7 Literary references associated theculture of hunting with gentlemanly status, typical adages being similar to that of JamesCleland in 1607 'he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not hawking and hunting' or, asput by 'A Jewell for Gentrie' of 1614, hunting, hawking, fowling and fishing were 'theabsolute parts of Musicke which make the perfect harmony of a true Gentlemen.'8Markham considered hunting to be beneficial 'for the better obtaining of a greaterreadinesse, nimblenesse, cheerfulnesse, and strength of bodie.' 9 Hunting skills werealso associated with character formation during the transition from youth to manhoodand were thought to help build a code of conduct worthy of a gentleman – courage,3 Mileson(2009:15-16,27-29).4 Williams(1998); Manning(1993:17,33); Beaver(2008:16-19).5 CKS U1475/E47.6 Gascoigne(1575:A41).7 Markham(1616:66-69).8 Vale(1983:145) citing J. Cleland, The Institution of Young Noble Man' (Oxford, 1607) p.134.9 Markham(1616:673).186honour, loyalty – qualities useful in other spheres of life, such as being a magistrate orleadership on the battlefield.10Whether or not enforced, restrictive laws were a reminder of the elitism of thehunt because only the affluent would qualify to hunt, own hounds or possesscrossbows.11 Added to which, the expense of the upkeep of horses, dogs and huntingparaphernalia and, for even fewer, parks in which to indulge the sport, would have beenprohibitive to most of the population.12Kentish aristocrats and gentlemen lived in the midst of this culture, as testifiedby their parks and by the hunting enjoyed both by park owners and by illegal intruders,some of whom were members of the gentry. Deer parks were inevitably linked withhunting pursuits, especially as Kent contained no royal forests as alternative huntinggrounds, but although illegal hunting activities can be elicited from court depositions,anecdotal rather than substantive evidence has to be used to give an insight into thehunting enjoyed by Kentish park owners, their families and friends. Before turning tothis, the role Elizabeth I and James I played in promoting and influencing the huntingculture in Kent will be examined.(a) Hunting in royal parks in KentHunting had been one of many skills acquired in childhood by Elizabeth I andher enjoyment of it never deserted her. In 1560 William Cecil, lord Burghey, confidedto de Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that the queen was abandoning government forRobert Dudley, earl of Leicester, with whom she spent days hunting, at the risk of herhealth and life.13 Towards the end of her reign, in August 1602, his son, Sir RobertCecil, reported that the queen, now aged 68, rode ten miles a day and also hunted,'whether she was weary or not, I leave to your censure.'14 Deer parks provided her withvenues in which to indulge in hunting at leisure, and in the chase and kill she couldparticipate as an equal in a man's world. The urge to hunt felt by her successor James I,10 Beaver(2008:19); Beaver(1999:191-192); Manning(1993:5).11 Munsche(1981:169-186); see Chapter Eight (iii) p.243-249.12 Munsche(1981:32).13 Neale(1952:84-85).14 Ibid. p.393.187bordered on obsession.15 In July 1604 after the king's cursory inspection of the fleet atRochester, the Count de Beaumont, wrote:-He took so little notice of it that not only the seamen, but likewise personsof all ranks were much offended, and said that he loved stags more thanships, and the sound of hunting-horns more than that of cannon.16Both Elizabeth I's and James I's enjoyment of hunting was in contrast to theirpredecessors, Edward VI and Mary I, whose preoccupations in their short reigns layelsewhere and whose poor health limited their ability to indulge in vigorous physicalactivity. The long reigns of Elizabeth I and James I enabled their influence in manyspheres to become more deep-rooted, including the impact on their court of theirpassion for hunting. The monarchs' love of hunting led to a more positive attitudetowards parks in which the recreation could be enjoyed. Many courtiers felt encouragedto maintain and enhance not only their residences, but also their parks, in an attempt tovie for royal favour and to entice the monarch to visit them while on progress. Thecrown's preference for certain palaces was partly influenced by the proximity of goodhunting grounds or parks.17 Grants and leases of crown parks, keeperships and relatedpark offices could also be used to confer royal favour as well as being a means ofraising revenue.18The county of Kent was inexorably drawn into this theatre of court emulation,flattery and competition. Greenwich palace, Elizabeth I's birthplace and James I's earlydelight, and Eltham palace, surrounded by three parks, were located in northwest Kentclose to London. The former was retained by both monarchs, although after 1607 lessfrequented by James I.19 Eltham palace became somewhat neglected, but the parklandsof over 1000 acres continued to appeal because they were only about four miles fromGreenwich palace.20That no records have so far come to light about Elizabeth I hunting inGreenwich(39) park might be attributable to the time of year she was accustomed to15 Starkey(2000:27); Nichols II (1823:49); Neale(1952:393); Willson(1956:179-180).16 Rye(1864-5:55) 18/7/1604, cited from Dépêches, Royal Mss.126, fo.421.17 Dunlop I (1962:31-32).18 See Chapter Four (i) p.119 onwards.19 Willson(1956:403).20 Cole(1999:57) citing F.C. Dietz, English Public Finance, 1558-1641, p.104; Nichols II (1828:445) in1612 James I stayed at Eltham.188take up residence in Greenwich palace - her stay usually coinciding with the closeseason, from February until late June.21 Although she occasionally visited Elthampalace throughout her reign, little is known about her use of the parks(31-33) there.22James I, however, did hunt in Greenwich(39) park and in the parks atEltham(31-33), where, as previously mentioned, he encouraged the creation of Lee(53)park as an adjunct to the existing hunting grounds.23 He was in his late thirties at hisaccession, and on his arrival in London he inspected his inheritance with delight andenthusiasm. He spent the summer and autumn travelling from one royal house toanother, all within easy reach of the capital, 'and therein took high delight, especially tosee such store of deer and game in his parks for hunting, which is the sport he preferrethabove all worldly delight and pastime.'24James I took foreign dignitaries out hunting with him when a suitable occasionarose, such as the visit of his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, to Greenwich inJuly 1606 – a visit recorded by Henry Roberts.25 Christian IV spent five days inGreenwich, during which the two kings spent one day hunting along with Prince Henryand 'many honorable persons moste richly mounted on steeds of great prise, andfurniture fayre.' In the morning two bucks were taken in Greenwich(39) park, and inthe afternoon the party rode to Eltham and on horseback killed a further three buckswith crowds following as best they could on foot, as they had whenever Elizabeth Iwent hunting, and 'never wearied in view of so Royall Company, thinking themselvesmost happy (of many other) to behold so rare and excellent sight, two Kings and aPrince.' At this stage James I was willing to put himself on public display, but he soontired of being on show, avoiding crowds and becoming less accessible to the generalpublic, although he did sound out local gentlemen's views during his huntingprogresses.2621 See Chapter Three p.88 for hunting seasons.22 Brook(1960:45) 1568 x2, 1569; Cole(1999:179- 202) Appendix 2: 1559, 1576, 1581 x2, 1597, 1598,1601, 1602.23 See Chapter Four pp.134-135.24 Willson(1956:164,185) source not given, but Thomas Wilson (Pollard, Sir Thomas Wilson (d.1629)(http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/29690) is next quoted.25 Nichols II (1828:54-63); Moore, Henry Roberts[Robarts](1585-1617) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/23/23753), Henry Roberts 'England's Farewell to Christian the Fourth.'26 Willson(1956:184-185); Pollard, Sir Thomas Wilson (d.1629) (http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/29690);Williams(1998:16) citing W. Quintrell, 'The royal hunt and the Puritans' in Journal of EcclesiasticalHistory 31 (1981:41-56).189James I paid two more visits to Greenwich, when he returned for longer periodsto hunt in 1612 and 1619.27 On the final visit in May and June 1619, he was justbeginning to recover from the ill health and depression that had overwhelmed him at thedeath of Queen Anne. However, he resumed hunting after mourning, even thoughracked with gout, and killed a buck. After it had been slit open, he immediately 'stoodin the belly of it and bathed his bare feet and legs with the warm blood', after which heclaimed that the gout had been cured because he had been 'so nimble' since.28It was commonly believed that various parts of the deer had healingqualities so James I's behaviour was not as bizarre as it would appear to modernobservers.29 The blood of the deer also held symbolic qualities, which the kingexploited to display his social superiority. He personally cut the deer's throat, ason this occasion, and would daub blood onto the faces of the attending entourage,who were not permitted to wash it off.30 The power of the blood taken after theritual killing of the deer has been likened to the ritual of sacrifice, with religiousconnotations. 'The circulation of blood ... reveals a purifying and transformativepower, even a sacred quality, that cannot be explained in terms of nobleentertainment'; not only did it mark out favoured courtiers and convey gentility,ritualised killing also had political implications in reinforcing the unique status ofthe monarch 'in a culture that represented social order as part of the naturalorder.'31(b) Gentry hunting in Kentish parksAlthough Markham confined his discussion of parks to the last section of'Maison Rustique', he acknowledged the need for a gentleman to enjoy the recreation ofhunting within his park after more important affairs had been dealt with.32 There wereseveral methods of hunting available to Elizabethan and Jacobean huntsmen, and27 Nichols II (1828:445-446); TNA SP14/108/41, 22/5/1619; TNA SP14/209/92, 12/6/1619.28 TNA SP14/209/92, 12/6/1619. Brook(1960:45-46) a ballad of the time based on this event ends:-But be it this, or be it that, or Eltham's healthy clime,Without a doubt the bout of gout did quit him for a time.So let us all sing, 'Long live the King!' right merrie may he be.When next, in luck, he kills a buck, may I be there to see.29 Gascoigne(1575:39-40).30 Thomas(1983:29).31 Beaver(2008:16).32 Markham(1616:672).190records, though few in number for Kent, give glimpses into hunting practices in thecounty, its variety and social function.Hunters could follow deer on foot, on horseback or take aim from a stationaryposition, perhaps from a standing or platform using various weapons, most notably thecrossbow and the longbow – a weapon that was increasingly going out of fashion.33The possession and occasional use of guns were mentioned in court cases, but it wouldseem that guns were not generally used to hunt deer as a sport.34 Occasionally huntingin the open countryside was an option, as occurred in July 1617 when a deer wasreleased from Lullingstone(55) park for Lord and Lady Wotton to chase towards Otford,on their way to Knole(50).35Coursing was very popular. This was either done by flushing out a deer andallowing the dogs free pursuit after it, or was more organised over a set course withinthe park where a deer was released over a base line with dogs being unleashed later togive chase. The latter coursing was viewed as a spectator sport with bets being placedon which dog would bring down the deer first.36 The popularity of coursing, with orwithout permission, is conveyed in the few records for hunting extant for Kent.37 Theformal method of watching the sport often required standings or raised platforms usedas vantage points from which deer could be watched being brought down, although theymight also be used as stations from which to shoot passing deer. Standings are likely tohave existed in most parks, but only five records exist for Kent - at Bedgebury(4),Halden(41), Hemsted(44), Knole(50), and Somerhill(93b) (see Plate 7.1).38 Anillustration on a 1599 map of Hemsted(44) shows the standing as a scaffold-typestructure round a tree.39 The standing at Knole(50) was more substantial because in the1580s John Lennard spent £400 in repair works, including the standing 'with thecovenante', which might have been located near a possible deer course along a dry33 Gascoigne(1575) covers the methods in great detail, see also Markham(1616:673-682).34 TNA STAC8/290/17.35 Sackville-West(1923:74).36 Dimbleby, How We Built Britain (BBC2 TV, July 2007) in James I reign an ornate stand was built inLodge Park, Gloucestershire, from which heavily betted coursing could be viewed.37 For examples of illegal coursing see Chapter Eight (iv) (b) Case Study C p.276 (d) Case Study D p.292.38 See Plate 7.1 p.191; CKS U1475/E23/2, 1571 Halden.39 SuffRO HA43/T501/242.191Plate 7.1Standings(a) The property called King's Standing at Somerhill, once part ofSouthfrith park or forest. 9 September 2006(b) The dry valley at Knole along which it is thought coursingoccurred. A possible site for the standing has been identified as beingon the left on a platform where the present tree line ends.2 October 2010192valley.40 The Queen's standing in Bedgebury(55) park mentioned in 1607, perhapsrefers to Elizabeth I's visit during her progress of 1573, while 'King's Standing' atSomerhill(93b), with a commanding view over the park, might well have been the siteof a standing dating back to at least Henry VIII's reign, since Edward VI and James I arenot known to have hunted in Southfrith(93a), which was disparked in 161041The frequency with which hunting occurred is open to speculation. In the 'Noteof deere taken' for Penshurst(71) park hunting accounted for 15 deer (or 17, if two'taken upp by my ladye' were hunted) out of 57 deer killed over a two-year period from18 November 1603.42 There is no way of judging whether these years were typical forPenshurst, let alone other parks in Kent, because this 'Note of deere taken' is the onlyone of its type yet found in the county. However, this period did coincide with the earlyyears of James I's reign when Sir Robert Sidney was very much preoccupied at courtmaking the most of his improved position under the new monarch, so was absent fromPenshurst for long periods.43With only 11 days of hunting in two years, seven for1603/4 and four for the following year, the park seems to have been under exploited forrecreational hunting, but there might have been unsuccessful outings that would nothave appeared in the figures. Five hunts were led by family members, including LadyBarbara Sidney and her daughter, Mary, who had her own dogs, which her mother alsoused, showing the active participation of women in the sport, not unlikely in view of theexample set by Elizabeth I's life-long interest in hunting. The other six hunts werearranged for friends ranging from the teenaged Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, to 'oneof the prince's wine seller with his dogg.'44 Generally at Penshurst the use of dogspredominated, five deer being brought down by dogs at the end of a hunt and seven as aresult of coursing, one was shot by crossbow, and two killed without the method ofhunting being noted.Owners of parks delighted to invite their friends to join them hunting or to allowguests to hunt in their absence, as a mark of gentlemanly hospitality. Special invitationsmight be sent on an ad hoc basis, or warrants issued to family and friends allowing them40 Phillips II (1920:400-401); Taylor(2003:167-169); 'covenante' in this context might mean that it wasroofed or covered.41 BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44; OS TQ604447; Chalklin(2004:100-103).42 CKS U1475/E47.43 MacCaffrey, Henry Sidney (1529-1586)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520); see p.208 following..44 Morill, Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex (1591-1646) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/7566).193to hunt at their own convenience. Being given a warrant to take deer from otherpeople's parks was a way in which the park owner would convey favour or show regardto the recipient. A warrant given to those without parks allowed them to enjoy the sportand to acquire extra venison for the household or to pass on as gifts. Warrants issued topark owners provided them with a change of hunting venue or one to use when theywere distant from their own park. Edward Dering of Surrenden had warrants to hunt inEastwell(28) and Boughton Malherbe(10,12) parks, as his park(84) at Surrenden did notseem to contain deer.45 Some warrants of long-standing were difficult to fulfil if stockswere low. Lady Wroth, Sir Robert and Lady Barbara Sidney's daughter, was asked byher parents to be 'sparing' of the deer in 1617 because the herd had been depleted in thewinter.46Less open-ended invitations to hunt also occurred, and friends passing by wereallowed to hunt. In 1561 Dean Wotton was 'greatly entertained' at Westenhanger(96) byLady Winifred Sackville, in her husband's absence, with hawking in the afternoon and 'afair course at a buck' the next morning.47 Sometimes formal parties were difficult to fitinto busy schedules, and weeks went by before the house party at Penshurst that RobertSidney, earl of Leicester, was planning for his courtier friends finally took place on 4August 1617.48 Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset, an avid hunter, travelled from Knolefor this whole day's hunting, but following a disagreement with his wife over finances,refused to allow her to leave Knole.49 The hunting party had given accompanyingwives the chance to meet together on an informal basis, and Lady Anne Sackville feltvery aggrieved at her enforced exclusion, but managed to visit Penshurst a few dayslater during her husband's absence in Lewes and 'had much talk' with her hostess andher female guests.50An invitation to a hunt might be used to further business negotiations or delicatefamily agreements. John Lennard invited Sir Thomas Walsingham of Scadbury to huntwith him at Knole(50) park in August 1579 at a critical point in the marriagenegotiations between their children. Whether part of the tactics or unavoidably true Sir45 Yeandle , Sir Edward Dering's 'Booke of Expences' (www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk) p.296.46 Shaw & Owen(1962:298-299) 15/6/1615.47 Phillips I (1930:135).48 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:204-209) letters 272-280.49 Sackville-West(1923:75).50 Ibid. p.75; Hay(1984:188).194Thomas Walsingham could not 'accordinge to my good will, and your desire' accept theinvitation because he was delayed at court, but he agreed to go hunting as soon as hehad more leisure.51 The marriage went ahead in December 1579, so perhaps the huntplayed a part in the successful outcome.Whatever the method of hunting, dogs invariably played their part in tracking,chasing and retrieving, and were seen as an important component of the hunting culture.Markham devoted most of Chapter XXII ''Of hunting or chasing of the Stag,' todescriptions of breeds of dog and their care.52 Hounds were perceived to be noble,sagacious, generous, intelligent, faithful and obedient, compared with other breeds, andtheir owners often regarded them with special affection, caring for them better than fortheir servants.53 The ownership of lyme hounds, deployed to pick up scent, andgreyhounds, used in pursuit, must have been common among huntsmen, but evidence isscarce. Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden possessed a mastiff, usually regarded as aguard dog, and greyhounds, for which on three occasions he bought collars, slip or line.His greyhounds pursued and brought down deer in Eastwell(28) and BoughtonMalherbe(10,12) parks.54 Gentlemen undertaking illicit excursions into parksfrequently took their own dogs.55Although random records for legal hunting in about a dozen parks have beenfound, evidence for illegal hunting exists for several more, making it likely that allparks with deer were venues for hunting. The royal taste for hunting struck a cord withKentish park owners, their families and friends, and this was intensified by royal visitsto the county.(ii) Venison on the menu and venison as giftsThere are more references to gifts of venison than to hunting in Kent, but thetwo were not mutually exclusive. Deer killed in hunting might be gifted afterwards,other hunted deer would be consumed by the household, and yet other deer, destined51 Barrett-Lennard(1908:106-107).52 Markham(1616:273-682).53 Thomas(1983:106) citing W. & F Baillie-Grohman (eds.), The Master of Game (1904), which wasEdward, 2nd Duke of York's fourteenth century translation, with additional chapters of his own of 'LeLivre du Chasse' by Gaston Phébus; ibid. p.103, citing A. Willer, Hexapla in Leviticum (1631).54 Yeandle, Sir Edward Dering's 'Booke of Expences' (www.kentarchaeology.ac.uk) pp.24,27,210,309.55 See Chapter Eight (iv)(b) p.260 onwards with Case Studies B and C.195either for the household or to be gifted, were killed by deer keepers on the order of thepark owners. Over the two-year period, 1603 to 1605, at Penshurst(71) park, just overa quarter of the deer killed were gifted.56William Harrison, chaplain to Lord Cobham, noted that venison was not sold onthe open market, but was consumed by the household or given and received as gifts,sometimes in return for or in expectation of favours, or to further business.57 There wasa black market in venison, which persisted despite sporadic efforts by the authorities tostamp it out, but this did not detract from the special status of the meat as a gift 'notmuch contaminated by contact with commerce.'58The significance of the context, language, and strategies surrounding gifting inconveying messages of social and political obligation has been the focus of muchresearch in recent years.59 The 'gift register' can be cast widely but this discussion willconcentrate on gifts of venison, which expressed a number of ideas between donor andrecipient, and which was perceived in the culture of 1558 to 1625 as being the mostprestigious item of consumption. There is no shortage of examples in Kent to illustratethe various facets of the giving of venison, but first will come the household use ofvenison, of which only one illustrative detailed example survives.A finely bound volume of Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester's household expensesfor the period 7 April 1624 to 21 March 1625 details the amount and cost of provisionsincluding food during his stay at Penhurst from 15 May 1624 until 5 February 1625.60Other pages listed the dishes served at the high table, the low table, the children's tableand tables in the hall. Venison was included infrequently among the many meat, fowland fish dishes and was listed under the heading 'Provisions of your Lordship's owne'with a notional value by the side. On 26 June 1624, prior to a busy time at Penshurstwhen the book recorded visits by Sir John North, Lieutenant Percy and his men, LordWallingford, Sir Anthony Forrest and Mr Arundell, a fat buck worth £1 10s wasdelivered to the kitchen and various venison dishes appeared on the menu over the next56 CKS U1475/E47.57 Holinshed(1587:204).58 See p.245 for Statutes 4 p.1055, 1 James I c.27; TNA SP12/179/12, 11/6/1585, Lord mayor of London'scrackdown on cooks; Heal(2008:58).59 Heal(2008:42-43) summary citation of research in this field.60 CKS U1475/A27/7.196month.61 On Thursday 1 July two haunches were prepared for the high table with twopecks of flour, 19 eggs, six pounds of butter and half a pound of pepper.62 On Friday 2July deer's foot featured among the supper dishes, and on Sunday 4 July venison pastywas made. In the following week venison stew was enjoyed for supper at the high tableand afterwards formed part of the menu for the low table. At the end of July anotherbuck worth £2 came from the park and in August half a buck valued at £1. Thesevenison dishes were made from fresh meat, but it is likely that venison over and beyondwhat was immediately required was salted, as in medieval times, although no specificevidence for this practice has been found for Elizabethan and Jacobean Kent.63Venison was also served to mark special occasions. At Penshurst a doe wasfreshly killed for Lady Mary Sidney's birthday on 18 October 1603, for Sir WalterMerry's funeral, and for Christmas in the same year. On 28 September 1605 venisonfrom the park was enjoyed at the wedding feast of Lady Mary Sidney to Sir RobertWroth, one of James I's hunting companions.64 Francis Leigh of East Wickham, killed adoe in his park to celebrate his wife's churching in January 1615, but found the deer tooemaciated 'by reason of age and want of teeth' to be edible, so he had to beg a piece ofvenison from Nicholas Carew instead. 65Not surprisingly, recipients of gifts of venison were often family members,including distant kin. Such gifts expressed and strengthened family and wider kinshipties. From 1603 to 1605 at Penshurst(71) of the 17½ deer used to provide gifts ofvenison eight went to family members, including Sir Robert Sidney's aunt, born LadyKatherine Dudley, countess of Huntingdon, and to the countess of Pembroke, widow ofhis nephew, Sir William Herbert, both being among his most influential supporters atcourt.66 The exchange of venison was also an affectionate way of keeping in touch withdistant spouses. When Sir Robert Sidney was away from home, even when serving asgovernor of Flushing, his wife sent him venison and he reciprocated with special treats61 CKS U1475/A27/7.62 Peck = a measure of capacity for dry goods, equal to 2 gallons or 8 quarts.63 Birrell(2006:180-182).64 CKS U1475/E47.65 Joyce Hoad, pers.comm. by e-mail 8/5/2005, no reference given; churching = first occasion whenchurch attendance was resumed by the mother after childbirth.66 CKS U1475/E47; see (iv) p.229 following.197for the larder when he could.67 In September 1610 he was sent a doe during his stay atShurland, and in 1616 a doe and eight partridges were delivered to him at the royalcourt of Oatlands, Surrey.68 Gifts of venison from husband to wife occasionally actedas a peace offering.69 The three red deer pies Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester, sent tohis wife from Nonsuch in 1617 came with an apologetic note about his continuedabsence, 'but yet I cannot say when the company will come to Penshurst.' 70 RichardSackville, earl of Dorset, did not win favour from his wife after 'a great falling out''with an indifferent kind letter' accompanying half a buck sent on 20 April 161771As part of local social networking and to cement relationships betweenacquaintances, neighbouring families would exchange venison, for example, theSidneys sent a buck or a doe to the Willoughbys of Bore Place, the Lennards of Knoleand the Bosvilles of Sevenoaks between 1603 and 1605.72 These gifts might have beenreciprocated in kind, but even if the recipients did not immediately respond to the gift,each one invariably carried an obligation of some kind when called upon by the donor.73Thomas Wotton sent venison to 'his verye assured frende Mr Best' in May 1580, both byway of gratitude for a favour received and to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of MrBest's daughter. Thomas Wotton's covering letter was deliberately disparaging aboutthe quality of the buck to underline 'the great disparity between the value of the gift andwhat it signified,' offering Mr Best the best deer in his park whenever and wherever hechose to receive it, 'for suche hathe your curtesye ben towarde mee, as at my handes ytdeservethe greater matter than Buckes.'74Gifts of venison could be sent as a mark of patronage in gratitude for favours orservices rendered to the donor, such as the buck killed at Penhurst(71) in 1603 for threekey figures serving under Sir Robert Sidney as governor of Flushing.75 To encourage afavourable outcome to business, gifts of venison might be sent to social inferiors toenhance image and to make business more palatable. In an effort to encourage William67 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:176) letter 231.68 Ibid. p.157, letter 201, p.199, letter 266.69 Ibid. p.193 letter 258.70 Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:202) letter 270.71 Sackville-West(1949:70-71).72 CKS U1475/E27.73 Heal(2008:62).74 Eland(1960:39) letter XXXI.75 CKS U1475/E27.198Cowdrey to pay rent due on land in Sundridge, John Lennard of Knole sent him somevenison. The elderly William Cowdrey was pleased with the gift, 'Seldome cometh anyvenysone in these megre old daies; Wherefore I gyve unto your Worshipp the hartierthanks for your Venysone.' However, he still had excuses over his non-payment ofrent!76There was special public significance when venison was sent for communityconsumption. Such a gift underlined a sense of social hierarchy and was a chance forthe donor to display conspicuous giving.77 At the Admiral's court held at Sheerness onthe Isle of Sheppey in June 1580, the mayor of Rochester's hospitality feast included abuck from William Brooke, lord Cobham 'to be merie with.'78 The value of a yearlybuck given by Sir Robert Sidney to the tenants of Otford as being 'to my great credit'was recognised in 1600 by his solicitor, Francis Woodward, when he held the manorialcourt on behalf of Sir Robert Sidney.'79 Lastly, venison might be sent to createfavourable negotiating conditions. In a letter of 16 September 1601 his solicitor stressedhow Sir Robert Sidney's gift of a buck to the townspeople of Wiche in Warwickshire fora communal feast had so increased his 'fame and honnour' that the whole town 'wold beat your commandment yf you should have any occasion to use them.'80The distribution of some venison seems to have been arranged as a regularallocation under the system of warrants, and did not necessarily represent spontaneousgiving. When John Lennard took over the lease of Knole(50) in 1570 he was expectedto honour warrants for deer issued by his predecessors as a form of patronage, forexample, Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst, was permitted to take 15 deer from Knole(50)and Northfrith(89-91). Others who held warrants for deer at Knole(50) were RichardSackville, lord Buckhurst, Richard Lewknor of Northfirth and William Lovelace. JohnLennard even importuned Richard Lewknor 'when he dyd lye sick yn his deathe bedd'so urgently did he desire to discover the extent of his obligations. The implications ofmaking a mistake over the venison seem to have been so dire that others by the bedside76 Barrett-Lennard(1908:132-134).77 Heal(2008:64,67).78 Blencowe(1859:84).79 CKS U1475/C75/4 4/8/1600.80 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:534-535).199did not criticise John Lennard's insensitivity.81 As a result of the consultation JohnLennard honoured Sir Henry Sidney's warrant for 15 deer, six of which came fromNorthfrith(89-91). In 1576 William Lovelace allocated one of his bucks fromKnole(50) to a Mr Sellinger, another example of the filtering down of patronage.However, in this instance the recipient was so ungracious that John Lennard felt him tobe 'evyll worthy to good venyson,' and was likely 'to spede worse another tyme' – a hintthat an inferior beast would be selected if the request was repeated.' 82It must have been galling to John Lennard, after the trouble the warrants hadcaused him, to find that, even as sitting tenant at Knole with responsibility for the park,he did not have complete freedom to take deer from there himself. His good friend, SirWilliam Cordell, master of the rolls, who was either allocated royal deer through hisoffice or was in a better position to acquire warrants, in 1580 sent him a New Year'spresent of a warrant for two does from Knole(50) park 'nye unto yow' and some verygood claret to accompany them 'bycause you shall not surfitt of the flesshe.'Sir William Cordell's gift of venison was in response to John Lennard's NewYear gift in 1580 of two silver pots, which had put Sir William Cordell in an awkwardposition. It was difficult for him to reciprocate in like measure, yet a lesser gift mightimply under valuation of the friendship. He rebuked John Lennard for sending such avaluable present, when 'thyngs of smaller valew myght serve to recognyse that love andfrendshyppe that one of us bereth to another.' However, he hoped his gift of venisonand claret would match John Lennard's generosity, although no price could be put onthe 'mutual amyte' they shared.83 The whole incident underlines the delicate balancegoverning the donation and receipt of gifts.As has been shown gifts of venison were highly esteemed, but they involveddonors and recipients in obligation and expectation. The motivation behind the giftmight stem from genuine familial affection and friendship, from expectations ofadvancement or favour, from gratitude for favours received or from the need to developand reinforce patronage networks. In all cases, like other food gifts, but with the added81 Barrett-Lennard(1908:123-125).82 Ibid.83 Ibid. pp.42-44.200significance venison embodied, gifts of venison were an important currency in thecultural ethos of the period.(iii) The use of parks for recreation and hospitable entertainment, apart fromhuntingParks were multi-functional in terms of land use and productivity, and they wereequally versatile in the way they were used for enjoyment. Monarchs and theirprivileged subjects not only hunted in their parks, but also used them for ceremonialoccasions, informal entertainment, riding, walking and contemplating. Lord North'ssentiments, expressed in Charles II's reign, that the pleasure of a deer park was not justhaving deer around, 'but in having so much pasture ground at hand lying open forriding, walking and any other pastime,' would have been shared by earlier generations. 84Both Elizabeth I and James I enjoyed their royal parks and appreciated the parksof their hosts on progresses and for short visits. This section highlights Elizabeth I'saffection for Greenwich(39) park (a), royal visits to parks in Kent (b), and how thenoblemen and gentry of Kent appreciated their parks (c). Evidence for all these aspectsis patchy, so well documented events are covered in more detail to evoke contemporaryreactions and attitudes to Kentish parks.(a) The royal park at GreenwichElizabeth I visited Greenwich for the first time as queen a year after heraccession. The palace with the backdrop of the park(39) had been upgraded into aprincipal residence for Henry VIII, and it became Elizabeth I's favourite early summerresidence, prior to her progresses, which usually occupied the high summer from July toSeptember.85 The park(39) was used as an adjunct to the palace both for formal,ceremonial occasions, for entertaining notable guests and for informal, recreationalpursuits.A detailed description of set pieces held in Greenwich(39) park during ElizabethI's first regnal visit conveys the flavour of state occasions, which lent colour and84 Thomas(1983:201-202) c.1669.85 Kirby(1954-56:22-50); Dunlop(1962:26) description of John Barclay in Icon Animorum, published1614; Nichols I (1823:69).201pageantry to reinforce the power and prestige of the crown. On 2 July 1559 the city ofLondon organised an elaborate military entertainment on the lawn of the park, withElizabeth I, ambassadors and nobility observing the manoeuvres from a viewpoint in thegatehouse overlooking the park (see Plate 7.2).86 Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester,inspected a muster of 1400 men-at arms, with trumpets blowing, drums beating andflutes playing. Divided into two groups, the soldiers then skirmished before the queen,'guns were discharged on one another, the morris pike encountered together with greatalarm; each ran in their weapons again, and then they fell together as fast as they couldin imitation of close fight.'87 This impressive military pageant was followed by ademonstration of public loyalty, when, after the queen had thanked the participants,'immediately was given the greatest shout as ever was heard, with hurling up of caps.' 88A few days later, from the same vantage point Elizabeth I, ambassadors anddistinguished guests, watched another martial display of three challengers against'defendants of equal valour with launces and swords.' Afterwards the queen rode intothe park with her entourage for a masque followed by a banquet in a 'goodly banquetinghouse' made from fir poles, intertwined with birch branches and covered with flowers.Separate tents were provided for the kitchen and for provisions for the combatants. Toend the day there were deafening volleys of gunfire until midnight.89Regular events, such as the traditional May Day celebrations, also took place inGreenwich(39) park. In Henry VIII's reign, with great fanfare, a procession of hundredsclimbed to Duke Humphrey's tower on May Day.90 Though with less panoply,Elizabeth I, and her court, marked the day by climbing the same hill 'into sweetmeadows and great woods to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweetflowers and with the harmony of birds, praising God after their kind.'91 This aestheticappreciation of parkland surroundings is seldom mentioned, but nevertheless played avital part in the informal use of any park.86 Nichols I (1823:69-72); Barker(1993:20-21); see Plate 7.2 p.202 showing palace, gatehouse and park.87 Dunlop(1962:50); morris-pike = a type of pike supposed to be of Moorish origin (http://dictionary.oed.com).88 Nichols(1823:72).89 Nichols(1823:73).90 Dunlop(1962:49-50) eyewitness account in 1515 by Niccolo Sagadino, Venetian Secretary, 'Bringinghome the May'.91 Dunlop(1962:51) quoted without reference.202Plate 7.2Greenwich park and Elizabeth I(b) Remaining hulk of Queen Elizabeth I's oak at Greenwich Park23 February 2008(a) Wyngaerde's panorama of Greenwich and the palace complex in Henry VIII'sreign, looking south > north. The gatehouse entrance from which Elizabeth I andher guests viewed staged events in the park can been seen to the centre of the outerwall.203The queen was an enthusiastic walker, striding so fast through the bracken atGreenwich(39) and elsewhere that she tired her courtiers.92 Towards the end of herreign Rowland Whyte remarked that while at Greenwich the queen 'uses to walke muchin the Parke and great walkes out of the Parke and about the Parke.' 93 One old oak tree,now dead and fallen, popularly known as the Queen Elizabeth oak, is said to be whereshe stopped for a refreshing drink, sitting within its hollow trunk (see Plate 7.2).94 Sheherself was 'sure the house, garden and walks may compare with the most delicat inItaly.'95 Even when relaxing in the palace garden the queen would gaze out onto thepark through a window she had inserted into the garden wall in 1588.96In 1598 the German traveller, Paul Henztner, who marvelled at the number ofparks in England, noted the various 'wild animals' in Greenwich(39) park and the plain,'where knights and other gentlemen use to meet at set times and holidays to exercise onhorseback.'97 A painting of the park in about 1620 by an unknown artist graphicallydepicts the ways in which various people responded to the pleasing parkland landscape.'A view of Greenwich palace from One Tree Hill' shows sheep grazing on the hill in theforeground, where one couple is strolling and another couple is seated admiring theview over the park to the palace and beyond, up the winding river, to London set againstthe skyline. Deer graze by Duke Humphrey's tower and among the scattered trees,while a lone horseman rides towards the palace, and, nearby, a man on foot with a dogputs a deer to flight (see Plate 7.3).98(b) Royal visits to parks in KentBoth Elizabeth I and James I travelled extensively in their reigns, but whileElizabeth I preferred to visit local residences within a limited radius of London on a fullprogress, James I's interests centred on appropriate hunting venues where convenientroyal residences or hunting lodges were located.99 However, despite the presence of92 Plumb(1977:76).93 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:468) 11/6/1600; see Plate 7.2 p.202.94 Webster(1902:7); see Plate 7.2 p.202.95 Barker(1993:19) no source given.96 Drake(1886:61fn.6).97 Naunton(1889:51-52).98 See Plate 7.3 p.204 for the painting, NMM BHC1820.99 Palliser(1992:12); Willson(1956:184).204Plate 7.3Panoramic painting of Greenwich c.1620NMMBHC1820,'View ofGreenwichPalace from OneTree Hill,'c.1620, by anunknown artist.By kindpermission of© NationalMaritimeMuseum,Greenwich,London205Greenwich and Eltham palaces with their parks, neither monarch ventured regularlyfurther into Kent.An analysis of 23 Elizabethan progresses found that Surrey figured in 13,Hertfordshire in 12, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire in nine, Essex and Berkshire ineight, Hampshire in seven, but Kent only in three.100 Elizabeth I made a two-monthextended progress through Kent and into Sussex in 1573, and she undertook two shorterjourneys in 1559 and in 1582. However with palaces at Greenwich and Eltham, thecounty was easily accessible and a number of shorter trips were made into it, such as avisit to William Isley at Sundridge near Sevenoaks in 1581 and to Thomas Walsingham,whom she knighted at his home, Scadbury, near Chislehurst, in 1597. Both had parks,but Sundridge(83) had been disparked, and there is only seventeenth century evidencefor Scadbury(later park, 105) park, although there is a strong possibility that it existedearlier.101These 58 shorter visits were the second highest for any county.102It is impossible to quantify the impact of the crown on the mindset of theKentish owners of deer parks, but with the likelihood of even irregular visits therewould be an incentive to maintain parks in the hope of encouraging royal favourthrough a visit.103 Additionally, if the monarch's status might be partly judged on theownership of deer parks, so would be that of his or her subjects.Several reasons for Elizabeth I's institution of progresses have been put forward.Among these were her love of travel through England, her wish to display her personand court to a wide range of her subjects in order to promote her image and popularity,and her inclination to combine politics and governance through personal contact andstrengthened social ties with the aristocracy and gentry.104 On a more practical level,she wished to avoid disease prevalent in the summer heat of London.105 Although hertravels put her hosts to great expense, they did not reduce the royal household costs as100 Cole(1999:24-25).101 CKS U1590/T14/14; Archer(1985:4,7).102 Cole(1999:180-202) Table 1: Chronology of Royal Visits and Progresses.103 Nichols II (1823:49) Edmund Bohun wrote that during Elizabeth I's progresses 'she would amuseherself with considering and commending the pleasantness and goodness of her country' and 'admire thegoodness of God, in diversifying the face of the earth, by the mixture of fields, meadows, pastures andwoods, and, she would, as occasion offered, hunt too.'104 Cole(1999:26,34); Wilson(1980:38-39).105 Dunlop(1962:115-118).206Lord Burghley illustrated in his analysis of the itemised expenses of the progress of1573 into Kent and Surrey, which showed additional costs of over £1000, including£229 to feed the 140 horses in the queen's train.106Very full accounts were written of the entertainment the queen received fromhosts such as Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth in 1575 or AnthonyBrowne, viscount Montagu, at Cowdray in 1591, but unfortunately no such detailsurvives for her visits to Kent.107 However, it is likely that her hosts there made surethat an asset like a park was maximised for a variety of amusem*nts includingpageantry, plays, music, banquets and hunting.The fullest extant description is of her stay from 18 July to 21 July 1559 atCobham Hall, the residence of William Brooke, lord Cobham, lord warden of theCinque ports, lord lieutenant of Kent, and one of the few members of the aristocracyliving in Kent.108 The manor house at Cobham had not yet been improved andextended, so the park(23) was exploited to the utmost in entertaining the queen with'sumptuous fare and many delights of rare invention', as Francis Thynne enthused yearslater.109 Other dignitaries present would be duly impressed and the standing of LordCobham further enhanced in his neighbourhood, county and further a-field.Particularly noteworthy were two temporary buildings constructed around trees,which aroused great admiration and wonder. One building was a banqueting house'with a goodlie gallerie thereunto', erected between rows of hawthorn trees and'composed all of greene, with severall devises of knotted flowers.' 110 To provide evenmore space a lime tree was trained into a pavilion, 'the goodliest spectacle mine eyesever beheld for one tree to carry.'111 The bark was stripped off for about nine feet andthe branches bent over and spread round to reach the ground to form one arbour, thenanother two arbours one above the other were formed in the same way, with a stairway106 Cole(1999:58-59); Chambers I (1923:117) it cost Lord Burghley between £2000-£3000 for each oftwelve royal visits to Theobalds.107 Chambers I (1923:122-124); Wilson(1980:86-95).108 Lock, William Brooke (1527-1597) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/61/61735).109 McKeen I (1986:133-134) Francis Thynne added this description to Holinshed's Chronicle of 1587 iii,p.1510; Knafla, Francis Thynne (c.1545-1608) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/27420).109 McKeen I (1986:134) citing John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole paradisus Terrestris, 1629.110 Ibid. pp.133-134, Francis Thynne.111 McKeen I (1986:134) p.134, John Parkinson.207linking one floor to another, and the boughs supporting floor boards. So huge was thetree that within each gallery 'might be placed halfe an hundred men at the least.'Crowds from miles around gathered and as Elizabeth I approached this green shelterspecially commissioned verses of welcome were read out.Elizabeth I next journeyed to Otford where she stayed in her own mansion fromJuly 23 to 28 July 1559.112 Supplementary space also had to be found here, and RobertDudley, earl of Leicester, acting as host, had his tents sent from London at the cost of77s 8d. In one of the tents he entertained the queen to a banquet costing £6 14 0d.113 Itis likely that she went hunting while in Kent because the earl of Derby wrote to RobertDudley on 15 July 1559 that he had been looking out for a lyme dog and suitablegreyhounds which he would send 'when the Quenes highnes shalbe in progesse.' 114 AlsoRobert Dudley's account book shows that he sent two bucks from Otford to MrChelsham and Mr Gresham, the carriage cost of which was 6s 8d.The only description of Elizabeth I's long progress through Kent and Sussexfrom late July to late September 1573 comes from Gilbert Talbot, who concentrated onhow she was received by the towns of Sandwich and Canterbury, rather than by thehosts of country houses.115 Elizabeth I stopped at 27 locations in Kent in 1573, ofwhich 12 are known to have had parks, and three others had parks near their mansions;Sir Percival Hart at Orpington owned Lullingstone(55) park, Sir Thomas Kempe ofOlantigh owned Stowting park(82), while Thomas Tufton of Hothfield leasedWestwell(98) park.116 Although the majority of Elizabeth I's hosts had parks in whichto extend their hospitality, others who did not were still honoured by the queen, so parkownership, though advantageous, was not necessarily decisive in determining where theroyal progress went.Further opportunities to display parks and to gain admiration and respect wereprovided as a result of Kent's unique position as the nearest gateway to the continent.112 MacCaffrey, Sir Henry Sidney (1529-1586) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520).113 Adams(1995:76-77) accounts 20/12/1558 to 20/12/1559.114 Owen V (1980:142).115 Nichols I (1823:331-354); Hicks, Gilbert Talbot(1552-1616)(http.//oxforddnb.com /articles/26930).116 Otford(62), Knole(50), Comford at Birling(7), Oxenhoath(65,66), Bedgebury(4), Hemsted(44),Sissinghurst(79), Boughton Malherbe(10,12), Brabourne (Scot's Hall,77), Westenhanger(96),Canterbury(18) and Cobham(23).208Many travellers passed through the county to and from London and a park owner mighttherefore be called upon to entertain a passing visitor. In February 1582 Elizabeth I andthe Duke of Alençon, en route for France, stayed with Sir Roger Manwood, the lordchief baron, in his newly remodelled house at Tyler Hill, Canterbury, and might havetaken the opportunity to hunt in the surrounding park(94). Occasionally, the lordlieutenant would meet distinguished guests on behalf of the monarch, and arrangediversions for hawking and hunting at suitable parks on the way to London.117In James I's reign, 'the solemn slow progresses' of Elizabeth I were replaced bythe hurriedly arranged hunting parties of which James was inordinately fond, but which,'no longer provided the measured opportunity to spread the influence of the Court intothe wider gentile community.'118 However, in Kent there is more direct evidence in theearly years of his reign for the enhancement of parks or creation of parks, such asLee(53) and East Wickham(29) parks near Eltham in order to entice a royal visit.119Robert Sidney was particularly susceptible to one-upmanship and was preparedto commit himself to expense he could ill afford in order to have the king visitPenshurst.120 He had first hunted with James I (then James VI) in Scotland during theArmada crisis of 1588 and had the stay been longer the king would have 'killed all hisbuckes in Fauckland' hunting with him.121 James I thought him 'so rare a gentleman' thathe created him Viscount Lisle in 1605 and appointed him lord chamberlain of QueenAnne's household.122 However, Viscount Lisle to win even more favour proposedenlarging Penshurst(71) park to lure a visit from James I.123 In a letter of 6 May 1611his steward, Thomas Golding, expressed dismay at the cost when his master was alreadyburdened with 'consuming debts.' He alluded to the underlying motive for the scheme,namely a royal visit, 'Your Lordship knows well that this parte of the countrey is notpleasant nor sportely, and therefore not lykely to have it visited by suche for whose sake117 Rye(1865:182) e.g. the duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1613.118 Davies(1959:263).119 See Chapter Four pp.134-135 for Lee, and see Chapter Eight p.282 for East Wickham.120 Robert Sidney's title underwent various changes – he was knighted in 1588, in 1603 he became LordSidney, in 1605 Viscount Lisle and in 1618 Earl of Leicester.121 Hay(1984:68-69) citing Asheby to Walsingham, 12/9/1588, Cal.Scot.Papers 9:614.122 Ibid. pp.68-69, citing James VI to Elizabeth I, September 1588, Bruce, Letters of Elizabeth and JamesVI, pp.54-55.123 Hanney, Kinnamon. & Brennan(2005:160).209you would inlardge yt.'124 He hinted that the craze for hunting might pass, writing thatif 'the humor of hunting should last in another age, yett yt is not lykely to continewe forever.' He did concede that an enlarged park would add status to the family, but that itsreputation was high enough because 'You have alreadye a very fair and sportlyke a parkas any is in this parte of England.' His advice was sound and Penshurst park was notextended.125However, Thomas Golding was proved wrong about the unlikelihood of James Ivisiting Penshurst. Perhaps shortly after his letter, the king and Prince Henry, out latehunting, arrived unannounced finding the ideal household establishment because it wasalways ready to entertain, even in the absence of the host. The visit was celebrated in BenJonson's poem 'To Penshurst,' in which he devoted several lines to the park,encapsulating the essence of parkland, which helps to explain why so many of the greaterlandowners continued to enjoy parks on their estates. 126 The park allowed Robert Sidneyto 'feast and exercise' his friends; it abounded with deer, conies and pheasants; it providedgrassland for cattle and sheep; it held his stud; and its woodlands were productive. It wasironic that the royal visit that Viscount Lisle had longed for, and which Elizabeth I haddenied him, was fulfilled under James I, but in his absence!While monarchs continued to be lured by the delights of the hunt, men likeRobert Sidney, viscount Lisle, were prepared to maintain the honour of theirhouse by keeping their parks, despite loss of annual rental income and the expenseof park maintenance. Elizabeth I's and James I's predilection was partlyresponsible for the continuance of deer parks, but it was also in tune with theimage of a gentleman's standing as displayed by his coat of arms, pedigree,clothing, mansion, garden and parkland.127(c) How nobility and gentry appreciated their parksIn an age of conspicuous consumption parks were perceived by many as anessential adjunct to a gentleman's estate, especially if that gentleman desired outward124 Shaw(1942:265-267) 6/5/1611.125 Ibid. p.302, 13/11/1611, pp.307-308, 21/11/1611.126 Hanney, Kinnamon. & Brennan(2005:255-257) full text of the poem; ibid. p.165, 25/7/1611 letter andfootnote 313; Donaldson, Benjamin Jonson [Ben] (1572-1637)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/15116) it isthought that Ben Jonson had tutored William Sidney. Prince Henry died in 6 November 1612.127 Beresford(1957:211); Palliser(1992:82-83); Thompson(1991:45-46).210display of his status or had aspirations for advance in his county community, or evennationally at court, in the law or to attract state progresses.128 Though Harrisonacknowledged that parks gave pleasure to the owner and his friends, he thought thatparks wasted valuable land and fulfilled no useful purpose except to produce deer - 'thatvain commody, which bringeth no manner of gain or profit to the owner.'129 Harrison'semphasis on lost profit missed the point. This study has already demonstrated thatparks were of value to their owners in other ways than the monetary sense. Deer asprey for hunters and in the form of gifts of venison were valuable currency in thepursuit of social recognition, obligation and expectation, but parks offered otheradvantages and pleasures to the owners. Norden pointed out that as well as yielding'relief to the Table', parks also provided 'often recreation to the Mynde' and 'exercise tothe Bodie.'130 As has been shown, hunting and other recreational activities were not justa means of exercise, but carried with them social, political, cultural and, in thesacrificial element of the kill, even religious connotations. More than that, Norden gavepriority to the restorative effects of parks when he touched on their deeper emotional,aesthetic significance with his reference to them yielding 'recreation to the Mynde' -here using a now obscure meaning of 'recreation' as giving mental or spiritual comfortor consolation through the arousal of the senses.131A distinction used to be made between the medieval 'practical' park and the'aesthetic' post-medieval park, but reassessment in the last 20 years has led to therecognition that medieval parks had 'an ornamental function as well as a practical andprestige value.'132 Pluskowski has examined the relationship between the physical andconceptual reality of medieval parks, asking whether it was possible that parks wereperceived as idyllic hunting grounds – an aristocratic paradise on earth.133 His answerwas that although by the fifteenth century parks had become multi-functional economic,social and aesthetic enterprises, they remained overwhelmingly geared to themanagement of deer.134 However, that did not preclude the incorporation of conceptual128 Clay I (1984:122-123,147).129 Edelen(1994:255).130 John Norden, Speculum Britanniae Pars Altera or a Delineation of Northamptonshire (London, 1728)p.31.131 http://dictionary.oed.com.132 Mileson(2009:82-83) citing C.J. Bond, 'Forests, Chases, Warrens and Parks in Medieval Wessex' inAston and Lewis (eds) The Medieval Landscape of Wessex (Oxford, 1994:144).133 Pluskowski in Liddiard(2007:64,68).134 Pluskowski in Liddiard(2007:71).211aspects, so that landscape and the ecological environment could be manipulated to suitthe owners' tastes and imagination. He concluded that 'the park was as much theproduct of the seigneurial imagination as it was of economic practicality, but it was nota fantasy world divorced of any sort of reality – it was a social structure fully integratedinto the seigneurial landscape.'135What constituted the basic elements within a park has been fully explored inresearch of medieval parks, in Rackham's pioneering works on the history of woodlandand of the countryside, and evidence from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras indicatesa close similarity.136 The most detailed description of the attributes of an idealElizabethan or Jacobean deer park appeared in Markham's wide-ranging book, 'MaisonRustique'.137 Markham's choice of words clearly showed that elements within parkscombined the practicalities of deer keeping with aesthetic qualities that wereappreciated by the users and viewers of the park. He noted that the hills were called'the viewes or discoveries' in parks, the terms giving a sense of the unexpected surprisewhen the scenery opened out on reaching higher ground. 'The beautie andgracefulnesse' of the park was enhanced by 'all goodly high woods of tall timber' and allcame to life when the hills and woods rebounded with the echoes of the dogs, horns andhuntsmen during a hunt, with 'the cries of the hounds, the winding of hornes, or thegibbeting of the huntsmen ... doubling the musick, and making it tenne times moredelightfull.' The launds or grassy plains where deer fed were 'very champion andfruitfull' and suitable for the pleasure of coursing greyhounds who racing 'in the view ofthe beholders ... beget a delight past equall.' He summarised the scenic aspects of parksas consisting of 'view, laund, and covert, and hill, valley and plain.' All parks requiredwater features, either natural streams, ditches, or ponds where the deer could refreshthemselves and drink, and these too, reflecting light and giving movement by flow or inthe wind, added another dimension to the scene.135 Pluskowski in Liddiard(2007:77).136 Beresford(1957:187-236); Cantor &. Hatherly(1979:71-85); Pluskowski in Liddiard(2007:63-78);Mileson(2009:45-81); Rackham(1976:141- 151); Rackham(1986:121-129); Rackham(2003:108-202);Edelen(1994:204).137 Markham(1616:668-671).212Plate 7.4The mansion in parkland setting(a) Penshurst Place from the park.Photographed by Newbery Smith Associates, 1989.By kind permission of Lord De L'Isle.213There is no reason to suppose that Elizabethan and Jacobean park owners wereless responsive to the landscape than their predecessors or less keen to add features ormake adaptations to suit their tastes. With wide variations of sites within Kent theidealised park was not always achievable, but park owners could make the most ofadvantageous characteristics, enhancing the park by adding new features or expendingtheir energies at least in conserving their assets.138Direct evidence of the attitudes of the gentry and noblemen towards parks inKent is lacking, and it is rare to gain an insight into a woman's attitude to parks, butextensive parks provided them with a secure environment in which to walk and takeleisure, which must have made their home life seem less claustrophobic. RowlandWhyte wrote that after Lady Barbara Sidney's return to Penshurst after illness, she 'takesgreat pleasure in this place, and surely I never saw sweeter ... All things finelyprospering about yt,' (see plate 7.4)139 Lady Anne Sackville, locked into an unhappymarriage, gained solace by walking in Knole(50) park:-16 March 1617Spent day walking in the park with Judith carrying my Bible with me,thinking on my present fortunes and what troubles I have passed through.140A few days later she, joined by her husband, walked in the park and the garden togethertalking business. When he returned to London, she spent the day walking and sitting inthe park, having more peace of mind as a result of his visit.141 Both Lady Barbara andLady Anne were probably not untypical in spending more time at home than theirhusbands, and without their parks to give them freedom to roam they would have feltmore confined.The sensitivity of Kentish park owners to their surroundings is not so much to befound in documents, but in the legacy they have left in the landscape. By Elizabethantimes parks had reached a maturity, which could be appreciated on many levels, butoffered limited scope for creativity. Additions such as Sir Peter Manwood's new conywarren or Sir Robert Sidney's proposed heronry could not fundamentally reshape thepark, so attention was turned onto the house and its immediate environs,138 See Chapter Two p.39.139 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:466-467) 6/6/1600 letter; see Plate 7.4 p.212, for Penhurst Place with park..140 Sackville-West(1923:58-59).141 Ibid. pp.61-62.214Plate 7.5Viewing park from garden(a) Penshurst walled garden with garden tower. Penhurst Place itself inthe background with the brick staircase tower.Photographed by Newbery Smith Associates, 1989.By kind permission of Lord De L'Isle.(b) The northeast corner of the walled garden at Knole, looking fromthe park side to where the wall has been lowered. The ground in thegarden behind he wall has been raised and railings installed so thatthose within the garden could look out over the park. See also Plate 7.8p.220. 2 October 2010215Plate 7.6Viewing park from house(a) The tower at Sissinghurst with viewing access to the roof from whichthe park, garden and countryside can be seen in every direction.(b) Below, the present garden, on the Tudor garden site, and formerparkland looking northeast from the roof of the tower.14 December 2005216within the wider setting of the park.142 Apart from a few prestigious families withsubstantial landholdings beyond Kent, most individuals owned one park in or near theirmain seat, at a time when it had become accepted that a park 'replete with deer andconies' was 'a necessary and pleasant thing to be annexed to a mansion'.143 It was ontheir mansion and the area immediately around it that Elizabethan and Jacobean parkowners in Kent lavished attention during the decades of internal peace.144 Only afraction of the improvements to house and garden have survived further change ordestruction over the intervening centuries, but what remains today gives an idea of itsscale and nature. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when manyhouses were enlarged, modernised or remodelled, gardens were created to become moreaccentuated, intermediate, private spaces between dwelling and park (see Figure 7.1). 145The unity of the landscape was paramount with the garden being a buffer between thehouse and the wilder, yet controlled and private, landscape of the park.146 FynesMoryson, as a visitor from Scotland in 1617, was much struck by this combination,'there is no Countrie wherein the Gentlemen and Lords have so many and large Parksonely reserved for the pleasure of hunting, or where all sorts of men alot so muchground about their houses for pleasure of Gardens and Orchards.'147In the late Tudor and early Stuart period Italian renaissance elements wereintroduced into the garden, and nowhere else in England can the transition better befollowed than in Kent, which has an unusual number of relatively unaltered gardensdating from that period.148 As in other spheres of life, the urge to display led tocompetition between garden creators led by the Brookes at Cobham, the Sackvilles atKnole and the Sidneys at Penshurst, who undertook gardening schemes on a grandscale.149 Typical features would be walled gardens, as at Penshurst(71), with delicatepeaches, apricots, cherries and plums cordoned or espaliered along the walls, andorchards or knot gardens within.150 However, these enclosed gardens contained various142 See Chapter Three p.97, 109.143 The Nevills and Sackvilles had parks in Sussex; Lasdun(1992:32) citing A. Boorde, Advice onBuilding a House (London, 1547), pp.232-242; active parks without mansions included Canterbury(18),Elham(30), Hungershall(47), Lee(53), Stowting(82) and Westwell(98).144 See Figure 7.1 'Upgrades to houses and gardens' p.217. No comprehensive study has been undertaken.145 Jennings(2005:25); see Figure 7.1 'Upgrades to houses and gardens' p.217.146 Henderson(2005:19,73).147 Henderson(2005:137) citing F. Morrison, Itinerary IV p.95 (reprint Glasgow 1907).148 Hall(1995:15).149 McKeen(1986:445-457); Taylor(2003:153-184); Hall(1995:18-21); De L'Isle(1987:17).150 Hay(1984:188); Jennings(2005:36-37).217Figure 7.1 - Upgrades to houses and gardensNo. Name House Garden10 Boughton Malherbe enlarged13 Boughton Monchelsea rebuilt, extended walled garden21b Chilham new, c.1616 terrace, park,1620s Tradescant23 Cobham new, c.1584-1602 wall garden, terrace28 Eastwell extended mount40 Groombridge mount walk, moat41 Halden extended moat44 Hemsted moat50 Knole extended, 1604-08 walled garden, wilderness,mount54 Leeds extended medieval ponds, dam,terrace55 Lullingstone interior c.1600 walled garden, moat58 Lynsted new 1599 walled garden71 Penshurst, Northlands extended c1600 walled garden, gatehouse,terrace, pond,wilderness74 Roydon mount walk, gazebos,terrace76 Scotney rebuilt c.158077 Scot's Hall rebuilt c.158078 Shurland79 Sissinghurst extended, tower c.1560/70 moat, walled garden84 Surrenden sumac bought 162093b Somerhill new, c.161094 Tyler Hill enlarged95 Well Hall enlarged c1568 walled garden99 West Wickham remodelled c.1600This has been compiled from secondary sources in Park profiles p.250 onwards218Plate 7.7Garden terraces overlooking parks(a) The top terraces at Chilham castle looking eastwards.(b) Below, looking south and east. Digby Digges new park of 25acres was probably to the right beyond the terrace.13 January 2006219forms of elevation to give views of the park beyond. A garden gatehouse wasconstructed at Penshurst in 1585 to overlook the park (see Plate 7.5).151 The mansion atSissinghurst was dominated by an Elizabethan three-storey tower, which gavepanoramic views over the park from the roof (see Plate 7.6).152 In other mansionsstaterooms were sited on the first floor, as at Lullingstone or Knole.153 Gazebos, suchas at Roydon(74), gave views over garden and park, while terraced walks, like those atCobham(23) and Chilham(21b), also gave elevated views, and mounts, as at Knole(50)or Groombridge(40), provided viewpoints from which to survey the park (see Plate7.8).154 Former moats, like the one at Sissinghurst(79), were transformed into waterfeatures, and ponds, canals and fountains were added to gardens.155 Wilderness areas,of which Knole(50) had one of the earliest, brought a touch of mystery to contrast withthe formality of the rest of the garden.156 Kentish landowners were among the first tocultivate new, exotic species, which pioneering plant hunters introduced intoEngland.157 Of the garden at Cobham Hall Francis Thynne wrote:-... the rare garden there, in which no varietie of strange flowers and treesdoo want, which praise or price maie obteine from the furthest part ofEurope, or from strange countries, wherby it is not inferior to the garden ofSemiramis.158John Tradescant senior, with strong Kent connections, travelled to Russia with SirDudley Digges, bringing back new plants and later helping him to shape the terracedgarden and park at his new house at Chilham(21b) (see Plate 7.7).159At Knole the integration of all the elements of a stately home were expressed ina 'Particular' of 1614 which referred to the 're-edified' mansion together with itsoutbuildings, walled gardens, orchards and wilderness 'beautified with ponds and manyother seasonable delights and devices' situated within the park which was 'well151 See Plate 7.5 p.214; De L'Isle(1987:15).152 Nicolson(2008:188-191); see Plate 7.6 p.215, for Sissinghurst.153 Cooper(2006:36).154 Hall(1995:16-17,20); see Plate 7.8 p.220, for Knole.155 Jennings(2005:51-53).156 Taylor(2003:173).157 Yeandle, Sir Edward Dering's 'Booke of Expences' p.55, 7/3/1620, Sir Edward Dering paid oneshilling for a sumac tree from Virginia; Jennings(2005:34).158 McKeen(1986:456-457) citing William Harrison, Historicall Description (1587 edition) p.210; thegarden of Semiramis = the hanging gardens of Babylon.159 See Plate 7.7 p.218, for Chilham; Hall(1995:10,17).220Plate 7.8John Harris's engraving of Knole House, garden and park in his 'AHistory of Kent', 1719Knole House, lower left, is set in a large ornate walled garden. It is likely that someElizabethan and Jacobean elements of this continued into the eighteenth century.The south (front) elevation of the house stands directly onto the park. This viewdepicts the garden to the rear of the house. There is a gate into the park in the backwall of the garden, and in the upper right corner can be seen the railings inset toallow those in the garden to look out into the park (see Plate 7.7 p.216 forphotograph of this from the park side). Beyond the upper left corner of the walledgarden can be seen a mount (labelled D) in the park itself.221furnished with fair timber trees,' (see Plate 7.8)160 The writer of the 'Particular' wasconveying an aesthetic response which was likely to be shared by those in Kent whoenjoyed their impressive mansions, flourishing gardens and delightful parks.(iv) Canterbury(18) and Otford Great(62) parks – transition from keepership toownershipDuring the early years of Elizabeth I's reign, Canterbury(18) and OtfordGreat(62) parks were administered under keepership in the expectation that the monarchwould regularly use them, but as Elizabeth I's inclinations gravitated away from Kent,her grip was relaxed, with Canterbury(18) park eventually being leased out to theBrooke family, while Otford Great(62) remained for several decades under keepershipof the Brooke family. The struggle to persuade Elizabeth I to transfer ownership ofthese two parks exemplifies the great attachment the crown had for its parks – it being anational emergency, towards the end of her reign that led Elizabeth I reluctantly to sellboth parks.161 In the case of Canterbury(18) park the transition of ownership to theBrooke family was relatively smooth, but the transference of Otford Great(62) park toSir Robert Sidney was far more fraught and protracted, because his attempts to acquirethe park were blocked by the queen, influenced by her own inclinations and by themachinations of Sir Robert Sidney's rival courtiers.While William Brooke, lord Cobham, was unable to put any plans he might havehad for Canterbury(19) park into motion because he was given ownership in reversionto his father's trustees and, in any case, was attainted three years after the grant of thepark, Sir Henry's and Sir Robert Sidney's plans for Otford Great(62) park were moreapparent, but shifted in emphasis to reflect changes in negotiating stances over time.Both he and his father initially offered to maintain Otford Great(62) park as a deer park,but it gradually emerged that Sir Robert Sidney would prefer to keep a reduced herd ofdeer in a smaller park in order to raise income from the other land. Finally, the prestigeof owning a former royal deer park gave way to the need to acquire Otford Great(62)park in order to gain land by disparkment thereby gaining the full financial benefits thatwould accrue from more productive land. Otford Great(62) park as a deer park wasimportant but became less of a priority, because Sir Robert Sidney already owned160 CKS U269/T1/A:8:4:4; see Plate 7.8 p.220, for Knole.161 CKS U1475/T86.222Penshurst(71) park to symbolise his wealth and status. He could dispense with OtfordGreat(39) park, while still adding to his prestige by adding profitable land to his estate,which would more than compensate for the loss of a luxury item such as a deer park.In 1558 Sir Thomas Finch had been put in charge as steward of the manor andkeeper of Canterbury park(18), but after his death in 1563 Elizabeth I divested herself ofdirect control of Canterbury(18) park by granting William Brooke, lord Cobham, a 30-year lease in 1564.162 The lease included other lands in Canterbury and, for the whole,he was to pay a fine of £400 and rent of £20 a year. A condition of the lease was themaintenance of a herd of 200 deer, but Lord Cobham could have the herbage, pannageand the wood of the park, and he was given permission to remove building materialsfrom the ruinous St. Augustine's abbey. This lease was extended for a further 21 yearsin 1593, and after the death of William Brooke, lord Cobham, in 1597, this lease withothers were put into a trust, because he doubted that his eldest son and heir, HenryBrooke, would satisfactorily carry out his wishes if he were made executor.163Resentful of the trust, Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, sought to strengthen his position bypurchasing the reversion of the park for himself and his heirs directly from the queen.He might also have been motivated by the knowledge that Sir Robert Sidney hadalready submitted a suit to purchase Otford Great(62) park, and he would not havewanted the Sidney family to extend its influence in Kent without an addition to his ownestate.Elizabeth I was fond of Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, there being 'none ofher subjects whom she more delighted to honour,' but this alone would not haveswayed her to sell the park, which she finally did when the government urgentlyneeded money to meet the dual threat of Spanish aggression and Irishinsurgency.164 Lord Cobham probably submitted his suit in 1599, and he wasfortunate to have it promoted by leading men in the queen's government, namelythe secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil, his brother-in-law, and Thomas Sackville,progress and Thomas Sackville, lord Buckhurst, informed Lord Cobham that the162 Acts of the Privy Council, New Series VII, 1558-1570, p.7, 26/11/1558, p.17, 9/12/1558; Croly, SirThomas Finch (http:// oxforddnb.com/articles/9/9443); CPR III no.784, 7/7/1564.163 Salisbury papers 242/21, 9/11/1605; Scott Robertson(1877:209-216).164 Wingfield-Stratford(1959:76-77); Black(1959:488-490).223queen had agreed to accept his bill for Canterbury(18) park.165 However, inAugust 1601, when Lord Cobham had failed to pay the deposit, Lord Buckhursturged him to pay it immediately, 'Pray send it up with all speed, that we maypresently receive it, for we have great cause to use it; do not fail, or I fear whatmay follow.'166 In the absence of payment, Elizabeth I had at first 'utterly rejected'the bill, but she was eventually persuaded to sign it. As Lord Buckhurst reported'by my earnest dealing with Her Majesty, declaring how profitable a bargain itwas for her, and with the help of Mr. Secretary, who in this point stood favourablyfor you', she had 'with much ado' granted the park in reversion to Henry Brooke,lord Cobham, although at the same time she had 'utterly refused' to grant OtfordGreat(62) park to Sir Robert Sidney.167 This was a moment of triumph for HenryBrooke, lord Cobham, but it was short lived, because following his attainder in1604, Canterbury(18) park devolved to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, viscountCranbourne, in 1605.168The steward and keeper of the house or palace of Otford, and keeper of its 430-acre Great(62) park, since 1552 was Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst Place, positionsgranted to his son, Robert Sidney, after his father's death in 1586. 169 The bid for OtfordGreat(62) park by the Sidney family was initiated by Sir Henry Sidney in 1573, but wastaken up in earnest by his son, Sir Robert Sidney, in the 1590s.Sir Henry Sidney was the first of his family to reside in Kent, but both he andhis son were keen to challenge the Brooke family, one of the leading county familiessince the twelfth century. The rivalry had its roots in the ambition of the Sidneys to risefurther up the social scale, perhaps springing from Sir Henry Sidney's marriage in 1551to Mary Dudley, sister of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester.170 This marriage was tohave a continuing impact on the family fortunes in the decades that followed becauseMary's brother, Robert Dudley, created earl of Leicester, became highly favoured byElizabeth I, as did his step-son, Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, and both were prepared165 TNA SP12/274/30, January 1600.166 TNA SP12/281/57, 16/8/1601.167 TNA SP12/281/57, 16/8/1601.168 Salisbury papers 115/17 & 1593-1605 Box S/9.169 Clarke & Stoyel(1975:122-123) citing Acts of the Privy Council 1552-1554, 967; Hay(1945:57) citingKingsford & Shaw(1934:107); BL Cart.Lans.82.55, duplicate of illegible TNA E178/1165 .170 MacCaffrey, Henry Sidney (1529-1586)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520).224to promote the wider family cause. The Brooke family had greater wealth, moreinfluence in the county and better connections in the inner circle of the royal court, butneither Sir Henry nor Sir Robert Sidney were deterred because they felt justified inseeking recognition for their service to the queen, wanted to gain a greater share in thefinancial benefits of her patronage and were eager to receive tangible marks of herfavour. Such reward as Elizabeth I might bestow was inextricably linked with familyhonour and status, and in this instance one of the prizes was the ownership of OtfordGreat(62) park.Although Elizabeth I had intended to use Otford mansion regularly, she is onlyrecorded as having visited Otford in July of 1559 and of 1573.171 In 1561 through theinfluence of his brother-in-law Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, Sir Henry Sidney wasappointed president of the council in the marches of Wales, a position he held until hisdeath in 1586. In 1564 he was made knight of the Garter, and twice was sent to Irelandas deputy from 1566 to 1571 and from 1575 to 1578. All these posts took him awayfrom the court and from Kent, so his ability to keep a close watch on Otford waslimited. However, between his terms of office in Ireland, in April 1573 he urged thecrown to make a structural survey of Otford mansion and its outbuildings, perhapstriggered by plans for the royal progress through Kent that summer.172 It was clear thatthe mansion had deteriorated since Elizabeth I's previous five-day visit in 1559, becausein July 1573 she spent only one day at Otford, before staying five days at Knole, acouple of miles south at Sevenoaks.173 With the cost of Otford mansion's restorationestimated to be £1629 9s 10d, Sir Henry Sidney offered to repair the mansion at his ownexpense, and 'the same by him so repayred to mayntaine for ever at his owne charges forhir Majesties access.'174 He would also provide the same number of bucks and does forthe royal larder as had been done for the previous ten years, and keep the herd of deer'for hir majesties disporte and pleasure at such tyme as she shall come thither.' 175 Inreturn he desired to have the palace, park and manor of Otford 'at hir Majesties hands infee-farme for ever,' at a yearly rent (not revealed) paid to the crown, plus he would pay£39 11s 8d annually to the crown, which was the equivalent to the yearly keepership171 Cole(1999:180-202).172 Hesketh(1915:9).173 Cole(1999: 180-202).174 Ellis in Arch.Cant. V (1862-63:328-330); Clarke & Stoyel(1975:132).175 Ibid. for both.225fees he was currently receiving.176 In other words, he was offering to buy Otford and tomake the palace and park available to Elizabeth I whenever she chose.Sir Henry Sidney might have hoped to win royal favour by offering to upgradeand maintain both Otford mansion and park(62), perhaps calculating that he wouldrecoup the investment later by judiciously leasing out the lodges, woodland, pasture, orby other income generating activities. In any case, the outlay would be worthwhile ifthe purchase gave him a prestigious addition to his landed estate, which wouldconsolidate his family holdings in Kent. He also needed more land to achieve thenecessary income to support a peerage, which he coveted.177 In the event, Elizabeth Irejected the Otford proposal, so no major repairs were undertaken, and the mansioncontinued to deteriorate.178 Sir Henry Sidney's duties took him away from Kent foranother term in Ireland, thereafter returning to Ludlow castle to fulfil his duties aspresident of council in the marches of Wales, and he took no further steps to acquireOtford. It was only in 1582 when approached to serve yet again in Ireland, that heunsuccessfully renewed his quest to gain recognition from the crown by requesting apeerage with lands to support the honour, as well as the title of lord lieutenant ofIreland. He was bitterly disappointed by the refusal - a disappointment which his son,Sir Robert Sidney, sought hard to rectify in the 1590s. 179After his father's death in 1586, Robert Sidney, still in his twenties, succeededhim as keeper of the mansion house of Otford, its gardens and the Great(62) park.180 Asa younger son this was a promising start for an aspiring courtier. Within two years, in1588, at the battle of Zutphen his older brother, Sir Philip Sidney, was killed, leavingRobert Sidney, who was knighted on the battlefield, heir of the Sidney estates.181 Hispatron, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, secured him the post of governor of Flushingin 1589, but thereafter his career stalled, despite serving Elizabeth I conscientiouslyuntil the end of her reign.182 He became increasingly frustrated at being away from hisfamily, from the centre of power at court and at the perceived lack of recognition for his176 Ellis(1862-63:329).177 MacCaffrey, Henry Sidney (1529-1586)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520).178 Hesketh(1915:9).179 MacCaffrey, Henry Sidney (1529-1586)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520).180 Hay(1984:57) citing Kingsford & Shaw(1934:107).181 Robert Sidney's title underwent various changes in James I's reign – in 1603 he became Lord Sidney,in 1605 Viscount Lisle and in 1618 Earl of Leicester.182 Shephard, Robert Sidney, 1st earl of Leicester (1563-1626)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25524).226military and diplomatic endeavours in the Low Countries. It is against this backgroundthat in the 1590s he decided to embark on an offer to lease or purchase Otford mansionand park(62).Initially, he seems to have been driven by practical considerations. His lengthytours of duty in the Low Countries inevitably strained a happy marriage, especiallycomplicated by the difficulties of travel. When in England his freedom to visitPenshurst was constrained by business at court, and his wife's ability to travel to himwas hampered by eleven pregnancies and a growing family of young children.183Otford was conveniently situated en route between Penshurst and London, and in 1594Sir Robert Sidney, on leave in England, but unable to leave the court then at Barn Elms,suggested that Barbara might like to spend winter at Otford because it was nearer toLondon, and she liked it so much that he decided to apply to buy Otford palace, littleknowing how complicated and frustrating the process was to become.184After commissioning a survey, he wrote to Lord Burghley on 21 June 1596,stressing the ruinous condition of the mansion and pointing out that patching it upwould be wasteful because even if Elizabeth I spent £1000 on it 'it would be moneylost; that sum would not make it fit for her to live in, and two or three years hence itwould require mendinge again.'185 He recommended that as the queen no longerrequired the building it could be sold for its materials, in which case he and his friendswould like to buy it, and the park, and he would build a new residence there should thequeen wish to visit, 'I will build a pretty house at my own charge and keep it in repair sothat she may dine there as she passes by.'186 This offer was not unlike his father's twodecades before, except no mention was made of maintaining deer in the park, althoughhe proposed to repair the pale at the cost of £200, set aside £100 on maintenance, andpay the crown the full value of any timber extracted from the park.Apart from having a halfway house between Penshurst and London, SirRobert Sidney's application to purchase Otford also stemmed from his own183 Brennan & Kinnamon(2003) for Sidney chronology; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (2005:p.91) 28/9/1590, letter 15 (C81/14).184 Clarke & Stoyel(1975:133) citing CKS U1475/C81/48, 20/9/1594.185 Hesketh(1915:10-11) citing TNA SP12/259/54.186 Ibid.227financial straits, caused by underwriting the costs of diplomatic missionsundertaken for the crown and by supporting a living standard in keeping with hisperceived status.187 His accountant later calculated that, at the beginning of JamesI's reign, Otford manor with extensive sub-manors, palace and park generated agross income of £400 a year (a considerable portion of the total gross income of£1790 from Sir Robert Sidney's landed estates).188 Sir Robert Sidney admitted tobeing in debt and, rather than sell land to satisfy creditors, hoped to acquire morefrom which to generate income. He felt the acquisition of Otford would be afitting reward for the queen to offer him, and a reasonable request that heexpected to be favourably received:-I am in debt and must sell land if Her Majestie does not relieve me, althoughmy greatest debts are merely growing from her service; yet I will not moveanything unfit for her to give, for one to ask, or for your lordship tofavour.189His expectations for a speedy conclusion proved unrealistic. It was to take five fruitlessyears before his request was met, and then not through any recognition of his service,but because of the financial needs of the crown.Events, as they unfolded, are revealed in the letters of Rowland Whyte, a friendof Sir Robert Sidney since their student days at Oxford University, and his agent at theroyal court.190 In prolific correspondence to Sir Robert Sidney, 67 of Rowland Whyte'sletters, from 22 September 1596 to 26 September 1600, referred to his attempts toprogress his master's suit for Otford mansion and park(62) (see Figure 7.2). 191 In theseletters Rowland Whyte explained why various setbacks occurred as told to him byinfluential people at the royal court.Rowland Whyte's initial mild optimism was tinged with prescience after aninterview with Sir John Fortescue, under treasurer and chancellor of the exchequer on 2187 BL Add.Mss.12066, a retrospective overview of Sidney's finances compiled in Charles I's reign,lists as 'being very chargeable unto you' a mission to Scotland in 1588 and two to France.188 Hay(1984:189); BL Add.Mss.12066.189 Hesketh(1915:10-11) citing TNA SP12/259/54.190 Hanney, Kinnamon & M. Brennan(2005:253).191 See Figure 7.2 (Appendix 8 pp.324-327) for the schedule of letters.228October 1596. 'Sir John Fortescue puts me in great hope, but God knows what issue ytwill take, for all things are subject here to crosses.'192 There was expectation thatElizabeth I might agree to the sale because she was opposed to spending money onrepairing Otford mansion and maintaining the park, saying that she would rather 'thehouse fall and the deer perish than so much money be disbursed.'Rowland Whyte's comment that unexpected obstacles might well lie aheadproved correct. A crown survey of Otford palace and park(62), on 13 December 1596,estimated the cost of repairing the palace at over £2400, double that of Sir RobertSidney's survey, but dismantlement might raise just over £1197 from sale of materials.193 Although most of the park paling could be patched up, 780 perches required totalreplacement.194 Of the 430 acres of parkland, 60 acres were woodland, 80 acres chalkdownland, 40 acres marshy or 'moorish ground', five acres meadowland with 60 acres ofgrounds around the house and lodge. The park contained 456 deer including 70 does,but extra enclosures were needed to keep a supply of fresh pasture. Although the youngoaks might provide timber for fencing posts and rails, it was recommended that thetimber be left to grow larger to provide fuel for the mansion and lodge, and browsingfor the deer. It was reckoned that if the park(62) was leased out with the deer, andreparations laid on the lessee, the value would be £5 a year, but without the deer andwith the upkeep of the pale and lodge becoming the responsibility of the lessee, then therentable income would be £300 a year. These contrasting valuation highlight thedifference between the cost of maintaining a deer park compared with the positivefinancial rewards to be obtained after disparkment.The noteworthy disparity between the rentable value of Otford Great(62) park asa functioning deer park compared with its rent if disparked was a great disincentive tothe crown, and to Sir Robert Sidney, to continue to upkeep the deer park, especiallywhen it was seldom used by the monarch. Indeed indications are that Sir Robert Sidneyintended to dispark the park, because, through his intermediary, Rowland Whyte, hemade clear that he did not wish to retain 100 deer, as assumed by Sir John Fortescue,the chancellor of the exchequer, and pay the high rent (unspecified in the text) that had192 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:225) 2/10/1596.193 BL Cart.Lans.82/55.194 Perch/rod = 5½ yards.229been proposed.195 The exact terms of this deal are not laid out in the correspondence,but Rowland Whyte considered them to be 'very profitable to the Queen and no greatbenefit' to Sir Robert Sidney. With lower rent Sir Robert Sidney might agree to keep areduced deer herd, but otherwise he would see quicker and higher returns on hisinvestment without that obligation. Otford Great(62) park was a potent symbol ofpower and status as a deer park, but its retention as such was not unconditional. Instraitened circ*mstances a deer park was dispensable when compared with theacquisition of land.It was no fault of Rowland Whyte that so little progress was made in the yearsthat followed. He was hampered by the prolonged absences of his master abroad whichcaused not only delays in communication, but also meant that Sir Robert Sidney was notpersonally there to intervene at critical times when the influences at court ranged againsthim had grown stronger. William Cecil, lord Burghley, the lord treasurer, and his son,Sir Robert Cecil, now secretary of state, with their kinsman by marriage, Henry Brooke,lord Cobham, formed the core of a powerful central faction.196 On the other hand SirRobert Sidney's position had been weakened by the deaths of his uncle, Robert Dudley,the earl of Leicester, in 1588, and of his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham, thequeen's principal secretary, in 1590.197 In the late 1590s, the well meant involvement ofRobert Devereux, the earl of Essex, who had married Frances Sidney, Sir PhilipSidney's widow, proved to be counter productive.198 However, Sir Robert Sidney didretain the backing of two redoubtable widows - Anne Dudley, countess of Warwick,sister-in-law of Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, who was 'more beloved and ingreater favour with the queen than any other woman in the kingdom,' and KatherineHastings, countess of Huntingdon, Sir Robert Sidney's aunt, who was eager to promotehis career.199 Despite these friends, Sir Robert Sidney had one crippling disadvantagein that both Elizabeth I and William Cecil, lord Burghley, distrusted him and thisblighted his whole career in her reign.200 Whereas William Brooke had the queen's195 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:217-218) 22/9/1596.196 Hay(1984:152-153).197 Shephard, Robert Sidney, 1st earl of Leicester (1563-1626)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25524).198 Neale(1952:348).199 Adams, Anne Dudley (nee Russell) countess of Warwick (1548/9-1604)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/69744) quotation attributed to Lady Anne Clifford; C. Cross, Katherine Hastings (nee Dudley)countess of Huntingdon (c.1598-1620)(http.//oxforddnb.com/ articles/69739)..200 Hay(1984:38-39) citing J. M. Osborn, Young Philip Sidney, (New Haven, 1972:496)that distruststemmed from 1579 when abroad accompanying his brother, Sir Philip Sidney, and uncle, Robert Dudley,230complete confidence and his son, Henry, her affection, Sir Robert Sidney won neither.Elizabeth I's prejudice fuelled by mischance and factional elements, thwarted any of SirRobert Sidney's hope of advancement, including obtaining Otford Great(62) park.The machinations faced by Sir Robert Sidney in his pursuit for a greaterpersonal stake in just one park in Kent are illustrative of many others taking placearound Elizabeth I.201 The Sidneys' struggle to acquire Otford confirms Neale'sobservation that quarrels between families within the same county were often reflectedin court, while at the same time 'the Court created its own rivalries in the struggle forroyal favour, office, place, and patronage.'202 As Elizabeth I aged, it becameincreasingly difficult for her to maintain control because within this 'perpetual clash ofinterests and ambitions' to satisfy one, several others might take offence. The lateryears of her reign have been called the 'bottleneck years' by Esher, when forpsychological reasons, the ageing queen refused to advance men like Sir RobertSidney.203 The perspicacious Rowland Whyte recognised this and in 1600 warned hismaster of the queen's reluctance to grant any favour unless forced by necessity to do so:-I doe observe the fashions of the Court and ... find the way to prefermentvery difficult; I mean for men of your sort. Besides there is in her Majestyno great inclination to bestow any place that falles, unles meere necessityoccasion it for the good of her service.204Even if Sir Robert Sidney had initially partly wanted to secure Otford forpractical or financial considerations, over the years, when international, national,factional and county politics intervened to block or procrastinate a successfuloutcome, acquiring the park became a question of honour.205 In another letter,Rowland Whyte perceived, like his master, that it was not the intrinsic value ofOtford that mattered any more, but that its acquisition symbolised the crown'srecognition of Sir Robert Sidney's service to the nation as an able and loyaladministrator, and locally, in Kent, would enhance his standing. Failure to gainearl of Leicester, Elizabeth I suspected the older men of meddling in foreign affairs and, by association,her suspicion was extended to Robert Sidney as well.201 TNA SP12/259/82, July 1596; Manning(1993:136-142) a 192 year long law suit (the longest in legalhistory) between the Berkeley and Dudley families over land in Gloucestershire, caused a feud involvingconstant invasion and illegal hunting in the others' parks.202 Neale(1952:70-71).203 Hay(1984:160-161) citing Esher, The Aspiring Mind of the Elizabethan Younger Generation (DurhamN.C., 1966).204 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:455) 19/4/1600.205 See Figure 7.2 'Schedule of letters containing references to Otford from Rowland Whyte to Sir RobertSidney, 1596-1601' (Appendix 8 pp.324-327).231Otford would bring humiliation at both levels. Rowland Whyte reported his replywhen asked why his master wanted Otford:-My answer was you esteemed Otford, not for the profit, but because it washer Majesty's gift, and of the reputation in your own country, which youwould never sell.206The reference to 'your own country' in this context means the county of Kent, where SirRobert Sidney was trying, like his father before him, to take his family further up thesocial hierarchy, and the acquisition of Otford might make a difference to this. Beaverhas observed a similar stance over potential parkland at Stowe, where possessionbecame more potent than the material income of the land, because monetary valuemeant less than 'gradations of gentility and honour relative to other families ofcomparable status.'207In 1597 international politics gave the Cecil faction the opportunity to block SirRobert Sidney's personal attendance at court, while it remained free to pursue itsdomestic agenda. Sir Robert Sidney, whose role as governor of Flushing was exactingand unenviable, longed for leave, which through the influence of the Cecils was deniedhim.208 Tension increased when Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex, unsuccessfullychampioned Sir Robert Sidney against Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, for the wardenshipof the Cinque ports, and thereafter the Cecils' attitude hardened further.209 Neither thegrant of leave nor the Otford suit was likely to succeed in these circ*mstances, whichwere to become even more unfavourable as the year advanced. The impression of thecourt being a 'feverish community' was reflected in Rowland Whyte's letters, whichinformed Sir Robert Sidney of other contenders for Otford.210Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, actively sought Otford for himself after thehumiliating defeat of his younger brother behind Sir Robert Sidney in the 1597 electionsto the House of Commons, because he was as eager as his rival to gain and retain asmuch property as possible.211 Ownership of land gave influence over freeholders as Sir206 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:451) 22/3/1600.207 Beaver in Braddick & Walter(2001:153).208 Hay(1984:72-96,111-143).209 Nicholls, Henry Brooke, eleventh Baron Cobham (156401619)(http://oxforddnb.com/articles/3/3543); Hay(1984:157) citing Stone(1965:621) the warden of the Cinque Ports had influence over 5seats in the House of Commons so the office-holder gained political ascendancy in Kent.210 Neale(1952:71).211 Hay(1984:157).232Robert Sidney's accountant observed 'for by it you shalbe ever able to have manyfreeholders at your command, which in a mans own cowntrey is specially to beregarded.'212 Thomas Sackville, lord Buckhurst, frustrated over his inability to occupyKnole, turned his attention to Otford as an alternative residence.213 He thereforedecided to support Sir Robert Sidney only if he could be granted reversion of Otfordafter Robert Sidney's death; that failing he offered £1000 for Sir Robert Sidney's interestin Otford. Lastly, an unexpected threat emerged from John Whitgift, the archbishop ofCanterbury, who wanted the keepership of Otford to be attached to the See despite thedilapidated state of Otford palace, because according to Thomas Sackville, lordBuckhurst, the lord treasurer, he had complained that 'he has never a house in Kent fitfor him.'214With rival bids on offer, Rowland Whyte frantically urged Lady Barbara Sidneyto leave 'sweet Penshurst' to come to court in November 1599 or the park would be lost'if she wold not take the paines in your Lordships absence to come.'215 As an extraincentive he intimated that her presence might persuade the queen to allow Sir RobertSidney to come home on leave.At this stage Sir Robert Sidney seems to have dropped proposals to purchaseOtford in favour of a lease, which led Rowland Whyte to study previous crown parkleases to see what terms might be available.216 The resulting offer was that the Sidneyshold the park for three lives, with the herbage and pannage, at an unspecified annualrent, and in return Sir Robert Sidney would waive his keeper's fee, maintain a herd ofdeer, while also keeping the lodge and pale in good repair.217 Anne, countess ofWarwick, in February 1600 presented the draft lease privately to Elizabeth I, and wasreassured that Sir Robert Sidney was both respected and the preferred candidate forOtford.218 His loyal agent, Rowland Whyte, thought that this had quashed Lord212 Ibid. p.189, BL Add.Mss.12066.213 See Chapter Six pp.173-175.214 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:447) 11/3/1600.215 See Figure 7.2 'Schedule of letters containing references to Otford from Rowland Whyte to Sir RobertSidney, 1596-1601' (Appendix 8 pp.324-327); Kingsford & Shaw(1934:409) 3/11/1599.216 TNA SP12/166, A Book of Leases of 1583, granted by Queen Elizabeth, from the 1st to the 26th yearof her reign, is probably the document to which Whyte refers.217 Whyte's letters (see Figure 7.2 in Appendix 8 pp.324-327) show that different proposals were pursued,but rejected, with letters of 8/1/98 and 10/11/1599 giving more details of proposals.218 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:440) 21/2/1600.233Cobham's manoeuvres, but Lord Cobham continued to undermine Sir Robert Sidney'sposition by circulating rumours that Sidney had sold his interest in the park to hisdeputy, Edward Jones. 219The sign of hope was soon dashed by the rebellion of Robert Devereux, the earlof Essex, after which the Cecil faction triumphed. However, Sir Robert Sidney hadmanaged to distance himself from his erstwhile patron, and had discreetly approachedSir Robert Cecil for support.220 In August 1601 Lord Burghley raised the matter ofOtford with Elizabeth I, who 'utterly refused and denied to graunte him Otford,'although she had agreed to Lord Cobham's purchase of Canterbury park. 221 Sir RobertSidney had lost out yet again, and must have felt as bitterly disappointed as his father,especially when contrasted to the favour shown to his rival. However, he was permittedto return home so Rowland Whyte's informative letters stop at this point. LordBurghley had also promised to renew Sir Robert Sidney's offer for Otford withexpectation of success 'your suite being so reasonable and for her benefitt and easingeof a great charge.'222In 1600 Rowland Whyte had observed that Elizabeth I was disinclined togrant any favours unless forced by necessity.223 That 'meere necessity' arose onlya few months after Elizabeth I's 'utter refusal' when funds were required for amilitary expedition to quell rebellion in Ireland. The royal mansions in Otfordand Dartford were put up for sale and Sir Robert Sidney quickly bought theformer for £2000.224 By patent of 5 November 1601 he gained possession of themansion house and all the buildings and grounds around it; the Great(62) parkwith herbage, pannage, the deer and the three lodges in the park. The whole wasto be held as tenant-in-chief of the crown for the fortieth part of a knight's fee anda yearly rent of £30.225219 CKS U1475/T86, 30/7/1599.220 Brennan & Kinnamon(2003:166-171).221 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:531) 7/8/1601, Francis Woodward to Sir Robert Sidney; Hesketh(1915:11).222 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:531) 7/8/1601, Woodward to Sir Robert Sidney.223 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:455) 19/4/1600, Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney.224 Phillips I (1930:210); Hesketh(1915:11-12).225 Ibid. pp.11-12.234In many ways it was a hollow victory, because Sir Robert Sidney still had notreceived the recognition from the crown that he felt due to him. He had, however,upheld the honour of his family in the county, rather than face the humiliation of losingOtford palace and park(62) to another, especially, as noted by Rowland Whyte duringthe struggle to obtain Otford, the manor of Penshurst was subservient of the manor ofOtford, making the honour of retaining Otford 'of more valew then any money; seeingyour house of Penshurst holds of it.'226Sir Robert Sidney had borrowed £1500 from the earl of Pembroke and threeother family members, who were subsequently given use of the park, and another loanof £1000 to cover the cost of the purchase of Otford - £500 going as a bribe to 'a partie Iwill forbeare to nominate,' notes Thomas Knevett in his accounts.227 To repay andservice the loans, Sir Robert Sidney had to raise money from his newly acquired assets,a task made easier without deer in the park. Otford Great(62) park was soon disparkedand leased off in plots, as noted in John Manningham's diary of February 1602.228 Thepotential revenue generated is indicated by the annual rent of £80 18s 0d paid byThomas Sackville, earl of Dorset, in 1607 for the Great Lodge and 138 acres in theGreat Park(62).229Sir Robert Sidney also used park assets to secure dowries or settlements for hisfour daughters, fast approaching marriageable ages, and needing suitable partners when'economic matters had a considerable bearing on the winning of general consent andgoodwill' towards a match.230 Under the loan agreement, £3500 was to be levied fromthe rents and incomes of the park 'for the advancement and betterment in marriage' ofhis daughters and 'for affection and fatherly love.'231 Mary Sidney was to receive £2000and Katherine £1500 on marriage or at the age of 18, whichever came first, and in 1605226 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:440) 21/2/1600; BL Lansdowne 82/55, Survey of Otford, 1596.227 CKS U1475/T86, 22/11/1601 draft document, 20/12/1601 formal document signed; BLAdd.Mss.12066; Kingsford & Shaw(1934:534) 16/9/1601, Francis Woodward, Sir Robert Sidney'ssolicitor, had suggested bribing 'Mr Attorney'.228 Bruce (ed.)(Camden Society,1868:20).229 Phillips I (1930:232).230 Wrightson(2002:60); BL Add.Mss.12066; Wrightson(2002:61).231 CKS U1475/T86; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:235-254) nephew, William Herbert, 3rd earl ofPembroke, cousin, John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton, cousins-once-removed, EdwardMontagu and Henry Montagu. Mary married Sir Robert Wroth in 1604, Katherine married Sir LewisMaunsell.235Otford Great(62) park was again used as security to raise £4000 for Phillipp(sic) andBarbara Sidney on the same terms.232Despite raising money by effectively mortgaging the park, Robert Sidney,now viscount Lisle, continued to have financial problems, so in October 1607 hedecided to 'bestir myself to recover again my broken fortune' by asking RobertCecil, lord Salisbury, to buy the park, though nothing came of it. 233 In 1622 hedid eventually sell Halden(41) park and 1100 acres at Otford, including the 430-acre Otford Great(62) park, to the wealthy Sir Thomas Smythe of Sutton-at-Hone,who bequeathed it equally to his four nephews after his death on 4 September1625.234Rowland Whyte's letters give a unique Kentish example of the negotiationsleading up to the sale of a particularly high-profile park. Even though only from oneperspective, this glimpse shows the parlous state of royal finances, with the pressure ofexternal events weakening the queen's position and leading to Sir Robert Sidney'ssuccess. The tenacity with which Sir Robert Sidney pursued his quest for Otfordmansion and Great(62) park was symptomatic of his ambition to enhance the status ofhis family in Kent and in the wider realms of the royal court. His efforts went largelyunrewarded in Elizabeth I's reign, but his desire for higher office and for a peerage werefulfilled under her successor.ConclusionThe perception of individual park owners would have varied in nature anddegree in ways that now elude the historian, but there is sufficient evidence to show thesignificant part parks played generally in the lives of Kentish park owners, their familiesand friends. Parks provided a venue for personal and shared enjoyment in hunting andother recreational activities. They could be very productive, not least in providingvenison for the table and for gifts. They symbolised a prestigious social status fromwhich sprung the basis of prodigious hospitality, including that extended to royalty.With house and garden at the core, parks embodied the ideal aesthetic experience, a232 I Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:235-254) Phillipp Sidney married Sir John Hobart, BarbaraSidney married Sir Thomas Smythe, viscount Strangford in 1619.233 Shaw(1936:431) 10/11/1607; Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan(2005:131).234 Hay(1984:224,226-227); Wadmore(1887:101).236retreat from the world outside. With adequate financial wherewithal deer parks were avalued luxury. However, as in the case of Otford Great(62) park, priorities could alter,and land use as a deer park become less valued for its prestige and status than theprospect of better financial returns from converting the land to other uses.Thompson drew attention to the eighteenth century paradox of the high profileof the gentry in carrying out their functions, for example as magistrates, and their lowvisibility when they physically withdrew behind the pales of their parks to avoid face toface relations with the ordinary people beyond. The pale and gate accentuated theirseclusion, while on public occasions their visibility in distinctive clothing, demeanourand expression was designed to exhibit authority and exact deference.235 This view ofthe gentry might well be applied to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Itmight be rather harsh, in that it is understandable that those in stressful public life wouldfeel the need to withdraw to recuperate their energy. However, those who wereexcluded from the parks were likely to perceive them differently, and it is to theirattitudes that the next chapter will turn.235 Thompson(1991:45-46).ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEANDEER PARKS IN KENTBy SUSAN PITTMANCanterbury Christ Church UniversityThesis submitted to theUniversity of Kent at Canterburyfor the Degree of Doctor ofPhilosophyJanuary 2011VOLUME TWO237PART IV – CHAPTER EIGHTUNLAWFUL ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH PARKSThe enclosure of huge tracts of land, demarcated by high, substantial fences,often stretching for miles across the countryside, was bound to have a largely negativeimpact on local people. Such parks dominated the landscape, had to be skirted roundand avoided, and restricted the development of neighbouring communities.1 Harrisoncomplained of commons being encroached upon by parks and wrote of the 'curse of theLord' to have the country converted into parks, which took land from mankind in orderto make 'walks and shrouds of wild beasts.'2 In this period there is no overt evidence ofprotest against new imparkment in Kent, but whether new or long established, parksprovided constant visual symbols of power, privilege and exclusivity. Resentmentagainst parks was likely to have been further enflamed by the body of discriminatorylaw designed to limit the hunting and taking of game to the upper strata of society.3Elizabeth I's proclamation that game 'belongeth to the men of the best sort andcondition' not only reflected the royal and aristocratic attitude, it also added a newconcept by implying that deer and other game, rather than being regarded as wild (as inthe past) could come under the ownership of the few.4 James I's perception of unlawfulhunting and deer stealing as an affront to royal power and aristocratic privilege led tothe tightening of the game laws to enhance royal prerogative and to buttress aristocraticprestige.5 This elitist attitude and the restriction of hunting rights provoked underlyingtension and defiance, which created social conflict, sometimes erupting into violence.Because the game laws were blatantly class based and arbitrary, they did not commanduniversal acceptance, and where the ordinary man continued to exercise his ancientright to take game unimpeded, parks provided an arena in which the clash of ideologieswas played out.6The extent and nature of unlawful activity associated with parks in Kent will beexamined in this chapter. After a general introduction to the subject (i), an attempt will1 Way(1997).2Edelen(1994:256); shrouds = shelters in this context.3 Walter(1985:110-112) Sir William Spencer's new park at Yarnton was targeted in the Oxfordshire risingagainst enclosures in 1596.4 Hughes & Larkin(1969:319).5 Manning(1993:77,81).6 Manning(1993:62); Hay(1975, reprint 1998:52); Langbein(1983:108.238be made to indicate the extent of disorder associated with parks in Kent (ii). The legalcontext of unlawful activity in parks (iii) will precede an analysis of the nature of parkviolations (iv), interspersed with case studies centred on Penshurst(71) park, onSissinghurst(79) park and the activities of Sir Alexander Culpepper, and onCobham(23) park and the activities of Humfrey Latter.(i) IntroductionAs far as is known this is the first county-based study of park crimeconcentrating solely on parks in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, although Fletchertackled similar issues for the reigns of James I and Charles I in a wider study of thecounty community of Sussex.7 Among other studies, which help to put Kentishactivities into a wider context, are those into hunting and poaching from 1485 to 1640by Manning, and research by Thompson, Munsche, Hay and Beaver, albeitpredominantly investigating the conflicts in royal forests and chases and for laterperiods.8 Insights into the politics of popular disorder and crime by Wood, Manning,Sharpe, Clark, Hay, Langbein and co*ckburn et alia also have a bearing on the subject.9With no royal chases in Kent, and the crown largely abandoning the remnantforests of Northfrith(89-91) and Southfrith(93), near Tonbridge, the county did notexperience the user right disorders so vividly portrayed by Manning and Beaver. Thesewere concentrated on forests and chases in other parts of England, which covered widerareas and where bounds were more open, and where human settlement and custom hadintermixed for centuries. To Manning disorders represented proto-war behaviour intimes of peace, and to Beaver the symbolism of the hunt as the depiction of honour andpower politics.10 Elizabeth I's and James I's concentration of visits to the west of thecapital drew attention away from Kent, the centre of Henrician hunting, and so it wasnot exposed to the tensions created by royal interest in areas such as the forests ofWindsor and Waltham.11 In the Midlands and the north of England parks became thefocus of disorder led by 'restless gentry and yeomen trained and experienced in the use7Fletcher(1975).8Thompson(1975); Hay(1975, reprint 1988) pp.189-253; Munsche(1981); Manning(1993);Beaver(2008).9 Wood(2002); Manning(1988); Sharpe(1984); Clark(1976:365-382); Hay(reprint 1998:17-63);Langbein(1983:96-120); co*ckburn(1977).10 Manning(1993:35-56); Beaver(2001:149-187).11 Beaver(2008:53-88,89-124).239of arms who found fewer opportunities for employment in military enterprises oraristocratic retinues', and after an escalation of attacks on deer parks in Derbyshire, SirFrancis Bacon commented on the 'copy cat' element in other counties 'where the basersort of people ... will not stick to presume to do the like.'12 In Sussex, but mostly inCharles I's reign, Fletcher considered deer stealing to be endemic, not least among thelesser gentry who thought hunting in their neighbour's parks 'the best sport an idlecountry life could offer, and who were bold and difficult to catch.'13The very presence of parks might well have evoked underlying hostility in Kent,but when it surfaced evidence indicates that it was not sustained, but sporadic andconcentrated on different parks at different times, with motivation as varied as theparticipants. The degree to which unlawful activity in Kent was endemic will bediscussed in section (ii), but from the known incidents the level of violence wasgenerally low. Even during the economic crises of the 1590s when parks were morelikely to suffer incursions to vent grievances or to gain sustenance, incidents weremostly small-scale involving a limited number of participants and targeting individualparks, when other factors, to be outlined in due course, made them particularlyvulnerable.Tentative suggestions to explain this pattern would include the social mix of thecounty, with early enclosure, moderate estates, no dominant landowner, and minimalmultiple park ownership.14 There was also a relatively low level of gentry absenteeismin the county, whose resident owners acted more sensitively towards their localcommunities following earlier experiences of the Kentish rising in 1549 and Wyatt'srebellion in 1554.15 The gentry also had a tighter control over governance.16 WilliamLambarde in his 19 speeches to the grand juries of the Quarter Sessions in the period1582 to 1601, did not highlight unlawful activity centred on parks as a problem, and hisreferences in 1582 to 'untimely walking in the night,' and in 1593 to 'night walkers and12 Manning(1993:210-211).13 Fletcher(1975:28-29).14 Clark(1997:7,120).15 Ibid. p.119, p.248, in 1577 Sir Walter Waller of Groombridge was censured for being overbearing topoor men; Palliser(1992:362-363).16 Ibid. pp.125,131,142,146.240night hunters' are open to interpretation, and might well apply to other activities apartfrom illegal hunting.17As will be shown, some unlawful activity involving parks in Kent might havebeen a symptom of protest against parks per se, but other factors such as poverty, greed,envy, bravado or criminality are equally apparent. Historians, such as Sharpe andManning, have pointed to the complexity of offences against and in deer parks, whichranged from the poor driven to take conies for the pot; through more organisedintrusions by loose groups for gain; through to the gentry-led incursions for sport, orfrom envy, and including the more symbolic incidents to air grievances to whichBeaver, in particular, has drawn attention.18 Where there is sufficient documentation,this complexity is confirmed for Kent, with episodes, which initially appear to besimple, revealed to involve a diversity of participants, motives, and actions, and whichhave been highlighted in case studies.(ii) The extent of disorder associated with parks in KentTaking all the documentary evidence assembled so far, it is possible to indicatethe extent of known illegal and suspicious activity against parks and how many parkswere affected, but impossible to judge how complete a record this reveals. Figure 8.1shows the known park violations in Elizabethan and Jacobean times.19 Minormisdemeanours, such as fishing in the river Darent in Otford Little(63) park, to major,multiple incursions with violence such as occurred at Penshurst(71) in 1600, are eachtreated as one incident in this.20 The table has been compiled mainly from QuarterSession and Assize Session calendars, from cases coming before the court of StarChamber and from family papers including the De L'Isle and Dudley, Lambarde,Lennard, Stanhope and Sutherland collections.21A total of 30 of the 53 active deer parks in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periodswere affected by a degree of incursion. The 68 records, some more detailed than others,were unevenly spread through the period, being more numerous from the mid 1590s up17 Read(1962:70,115).18 Sharpe(1984:128-131); Manning(1998:316); Beaver(2008:ix).19 See Figure 8.1 'Deer park violations, 1558-1625' (Appendix 9 p.328-330).20 CKS QM/SRc/1612/59 & 110; TNA STAC5/S2/20.21 CKS U1475, U1500; CKS U1450, U1590; StaffsRO D593; Barrett-Lennard(1908); Read(1962:15-54).241to 1610.22 However, this result is skewed by the chance survival of records, especiallythose of the Quarter Sessions, which effectively only cover the period from the 1590s to1618, with no records before 1580 and very sparse coverage of the 1580s and of thelater years of James I's reign.23 Moreover, suits in the court of Star Chamber arenumerically biased for James I's reign because, unlike the catalogue for Elizabethansuits, the catalogue for James I's reign compiled by Barnes specifies the nature of thecomplaint, making it easier to search for relevant suits. Manorial courts are invaluablein revealing attitudes to poaching from a poor man's viewpoint, but because of thelabour involved in going through the records for a whole county, innumerable minorpark infringements, similar to those found for West Wickham in Kent, lieundiscovered.24Apart from the quirks of archival survival and retrieval, documentation of thelegal system at every level can also obscure the extent of park crime. Lambarde'srandom notes in 'Ephemeris' is a reminder that magistrates alone or in pairs outside thecourt, could deal with petty offenders, with their decisions endorsed by the next QuarterSessions under offenders' names rather than under the type of offence.25 On the whole,official documents of the Kent Quarter Sessions and Assizes record the barest details ofthe culprits' names and nature of the offence, although some of the 1000 QuarterSession depositions for Kent, covering the years 1595 to 1609, relate to parks and givefuller backgrounds to the crime.26 In this context, they are enlightening because theyopen up a range of previously unsuspected park violations, both against the park namedin the indictment, and against other parks; for example, offenders at Sissinghurst(79)22 See Figure 1.3 'Active parks in Kent, 1558-1625' (Appendix 2 pp.308-309); 1559-1569 = 4, 1570-1579= 7, 1580-1589 = 8, 1590-1599 = 11, 1600-1609 = 32, 1610-1619 = 6.23 Extant Quarter Session documents relevant to this study include QM/SR1, engrossed Session rolls,1600-1605; QM/SB, Session papers, 8 entries pre-1592, 1593-1618, and 5 to 1628; QM/SI, indictments, 2pre-1592, 1593-1617; QM/SIq, inquisitions, 1593-1616; QM/SRc, recognizances, 3 pre-1592, 1592-1618;QM/SM, draft minutes, 1593-1617; Melling(1960:1-3).24 BL Add.Mss.33899, West Wickham Court Leet 1 Elizabeth I, George Stephen broke into the Lord'spark and took away deer: 7 Elizabeth I, John Johnson broke into the Lord's park; Wiltshire &Woore(2009:24) includes medieval examples; Sharpe(1984:26); Manning(1993:72), Palliser(1992:357-358) discuss scope of manorial courts.25 Read(1962:15-52); Gleeson(1969:103); Hay(reprint 1998:192).26 Melling(1969:31-32); other depositions can be found in estate papers such as the De L'Isle and Dudleycollection at CKS and the Sutherland collection at Staffordshire Record Office; co*ckburn(1977:55) givesan indicative, but not direct comparison, of the number of persons indicted for poaching, 1559-1603, as21 in Essex, 8 in Hertfordshire and 66 in Sussex.242had also hunted in Eridge park, a park in Rotherfield (probably Hamsell park, 43) and inthe Ashdown Forest, all three venues being in Sussex.27Another way in which the 'shadowy outlines' of indictments under record parkcrime is that they do not always indicate a park offence.28 Hindle points out thatindictments were 'a product of several variables' and could be regarded 'as an index ofjudicial control rather than as plausible evidence of the scale of criminality.''29 Theywere a tool to aid law enforcement, but did not necessarily reflect the true nature orextent of crimes committed. This limitation is only apparent in cases where otherevidence, such as the depositions, survives, and there are examples in Kent, which serveto illustrate that indictments alone are inadequate indicators of park violations.30 Onoccasions where there was insufficient evidence for the indictment of a more seriousoffence, an indictment for a lesser misdemeanour was substituted in order to secure aconviction; as when John Fosten was indicted for firing a gun because there was nocorroborative evidence for the deer theft he admitted.31 On other occasions, a minoroffence might be superseded by a more serious offence, as when felony took priorityover park offences in the case of Humfrey Latter, apprehended during an illegal huntingspree, but eventually indicted for burglary.32Manning noted the increased interest in park crime taken by higher courts, suchas the court of Star Chamber, but was unable to determine whether this reflected anactual rise in such crime or better detection and reporting.33 Thirteen court of StarChamber cases have been traced for Kent, and another four out-of-county suits wereexamined because men from Kent were involved.34 Suits varied in their complexity andin the completeness of their documentation, depending upon what stage they reached orwhether the suit had been withdrawn at some stage because of its inadequacies orfollowing an out-of-court settlement. However, the potential for underestimating the27 CKS QM/SB/168, 21/3/1597.28 Herrup(1984:811).29 Hindle(2000:117-118).30 See Case Study A p.252-258.31 CKS QM/SI/1597/12; Langbein(1983:104-105) draws attention to the practice of down charging.32 See Case Study E p.291-298.33 Manning(1993:169).34 On closer examination TNA STAC5/S2/20, STAC5/S21/31, STAC/S41/5, STAC5/S68/33,STAC5/S74/15 concern the same suit in Penshurst Park in 1599/1600. See Figure 8.1 in Appendix 9p.328-330.243full extent of park violations became clear from the multiplicity of related offences bothin the same park and in more than one park revealed in the plaintiff's bill of complaintor once suspects were subpoenaed and questioned.35There were, of course, innumerable park infringements that were neitherdiscovered, reported, prosecuted nor documented, and they form part of the 'dark figure'of general crime.36 The unknown dimension of this figure probably fluctuated, butEdward Hext, well acquainted with the legal system as a Somerset magistrate and asclerk to the court of Star Chamber, estimated in 1596 that 'the fyveth person thatcommytteth a felonye' evaded trial. This 20 per cent might be indicative of the 'darkfigure', but its accuracy cannot be tested.37Although the realistic figures of park infringements can never be known, itmight well be that, nevertheless, park crime did increase in the 1590s and 1600s, inaccordance with the trend of crime in general, about which there has been vigorousdiscussion among historians, notably by co*ckburn as regards property crime.38 Hindlein sumamrising co*ckburn's research concluded that 'the overwhelming balance ofprobability is that waves of increased prosecution did reflect peaks of theft, which werethemselves affected by economic conditions.39 The social crises from1590 to 1610exacerbated by bad harvests from 1594 to 1597, put society under acute pressure,driving the hungry poor to commit more theft, and fear of disorder, together withdistress over loss of goods during times of hardship, might have contributed to morevigilant enforcement, which drove up prosecutions.40The cumulative effect of incomplete records, the logistical difficulty ofaccessing all relevant documents, the under recording of park violations, together withan incalculable number of undiscovered and unreported offences, make it impossible toestimate the overall threat to parks in Kent from 1558 to 1625. Parks offered a35 TNA STAC8/5/13, 1604, covers many park breaks at Sissinghurst; TNA STAC8/294/6, 1606, mentionspark breaks at Hamsell and Groombridge.36 Sharpe(1984:42).37 Palliser(1992:365) points to co*ckburn(1977:50-51) who inaccurately interpreted this ratio as 80 percent rather than 20 per cent.38 co*ckburn(1977).39 Hindle(2000:13,125-127).40 Sharpe(1984:183); co*ckburn(1977:67-68); Clark(1976:367); Hindle(2000:127) citing E.W. Ives,'English Law and English Society' in History 66 (1981) p.52.244continuing temptation, and magnates and their servants had to exercise constantvigilance to protect deer and other game. However, it would seem that serious parkinfringements were not of worrying or epidemic proportions. Lambarde's speeches andthe thorough search of county legal records, though thin before the 1590s, reveal fewsustained assaults on parks of the severity that would have been deemed to be a threat towider public order. Park owners, such as the Sidneys of Penshurst, the Bakers ofSissinghurst and the Brookes of Cobham, whose parks suffered peaks of illegal activity,took firm action to apprehend the culprits and to regain control over their parks.However, it is likely that low-key, minor infringements were widespread, and, althoughnot officially tolerated, perceived to be an inevitable aspect of park ownership.(iii) The legal context of unlawful activity in parksWrightson's observation that legislation in general emerged in a halting manner,yet reflected a common cast of mind and a certain consistency of purpose, holds true forlegislation covering game in parks, which, by reserving certain rights to the privilegedaimed to be and was discriminatory, and therefore was bound to be socially divisive.41The legal position as regards incursions into parks and damage to the gamewithin them had developed in a piecemeal fashion since the statutes of Westminster of1275. Because game animals and birds were considered to be wild and therefore noone's property, values were not attached to them and so, under law, their taking was notconsidered to be theft. Instead various other laws were devised to restrict hunting inparks, including trespass and all unlicensed forms of hunting, wounding or killing deerby weapons, dogs or equipment, such as nets. Deliberate damage to palings, fences orany fixtures or buildings around and in parks were also offences under the law. Whenfurther deterrents were deemed necessary general laws such as those against riot, routand unlawful assembly were used, especially where several trespassers were involved.4241 Wrightson(2002:157).42 Munsche(1981:169-186) guide to the game laws between 1661-1831, p.170, summary of pre-1660position; Statutes of the realm(1810-1828) Acts specifically referring to parks – Vol. I:- p.26, 1275, 3Edward I c.20: p.iii, 1293, 21 Edward I statute 2: Vol. II:- p.505, 1485, 1 Henry VII c.7 c.8: Vol. III:-p.655, 1503, 19 Henry VII c.11: p.457, 1533, 25 Henry VIII c.17: p.753, 1540, 32 Henry VIII c.8 c.11:p.830, 1541, 33 Henry VIII c.6: Vol. IV, part I:- p.211, 1553, 1 Mary I c.12. Acts regulating possession ofweapons, and general protection of game - Vol. II:- p.581, 1495, 11 Henry VII c.7 c.17: Vol. III:- p.457,1533, 25 Henry VIII c.17: p.718, 1539, 31 Henry VIII c.12: Vol. IV, part I:- p.58, 1548, 2 & 3 Edward VIc.14.245By the act of 33 Henry VIII, 1541, updated periodically thereafter, thepossession of crossbows and handguns was restricted to those with incomes above £100a year, with a penalty of £10 for those contravening the law. Part of the preamble to theact recited the 'great peril and continual fear and danger of the King's loving subjects'and to 'divers keepers of forests, chases and parks' posed by the use of such weapons.Under this law it also became an offence for those legally holding crossbows and gunsto order their servants or any other persons to shoot at 'any deer, fowl or other thingexcept it be only at a butt or bank of earth or at time of war.'43The Elizabethan parliament strengthened the law governing deer parks further toprotect the interests of those who 'as of late and now do at great cost and charges makefish ponds with ... divers good fish for the provision of their household and emparkedland for breeding and cherishing and increase of red and fallow deer for the samereason, and have bred in woods and grounds eyries of hawks ... to their great pleasureand commodity.'44 By the act of 5 Elizabeth I c.21, 1562, wilful persons convicted ofdamaging fishponds, breaking into deer parks, illegally fishing, killing deer or stealinghawks or their eggs could face three months in prison, pay treble damages to theaggrieved party and, after imprisonment, have to find sufficient sureties for seven years'good behaviour or remain in prison for that time.In other ways some aspects of the game laws were softened. The effectivenessof Henry VII's act of 1485, making it a felony to hunt in disguise at night, was reducedafter successive legal judgements gave more weight to common law, which did notregard killing 'wild beasts' as a felony, and thus made the act virtually unenforceable. 45Under Elizabeth I unlawful assembly of between three and eleven people was no longerclassed as a felony punishable by death with confiscation of property, goods andchattels, but became a misdemeanour punishable by one year's imprisonment.46However, in the troubled years of the 1590s the attorney general interpreted the law43 Statutes III, p.830, 1541, 33 Henry VIII c.17.44 Statutes IV part 1, p.449.45 Thompson(1975:58); Statutes II, p.505, 1485, 1 Henry VII c.7 c.8.46 Statutes II, 1411, p.169, 13 Henry IV c.17: p.184, 1414, 2 Henry V c.8: IV part II, p.378, 1558/9, 1Elizabeth I, c.16.246more harshly, considering that if trouble spilled over into several parishes, then riotousassembly of over three people could become a treasonable offence.47The earliest game act in James I's reign, passed in 1603, discouraged theunlawful disposal of venison by imposing a fine of 40 shillings for every deer sold, andlesser fines for other game.48 In 1605 those convicted of deer hunting withoutpermission and taking conies from enclosed grounds at night faced the penaltiesimposed by the act of 5 Elizabeth I, 1562.49 At the same time the qualifications forkeeping hunting dogs, using ferrets, nets or any other equipment for taking game, andusing gun, bow or crossbow to take deer or conies were increased for the first time since1541. The qualifications now became more restrictive and wholly dependent on thepossession of freehold property valued at £40 or copyhold of £80 per annum, and goodsand chattels worth £200.50 Manning points out that because Henry VIII's law hadremained unchanged for so long, inflation in values had allowed the lesser gentry tohunt as time passed, but this pastime was now denied them.51Until James I's reign the law had concentrated on the circ*mstances of the takingof deer in parks, rather than the theft of deer itself, but in 1609 deer stealing became aspecific offence for the first time with the acceptance that an enclosed animal was notwild, but had an owner who could seek restitution for its loss and damage.52 The term'deer stealer' had been introduced by the attorney general, Sir Edward co*ke, in 1599, inrecognition that the theft of deer from parks for profit, rather than as a product ofunlicensed hunting for sport, might form the main motive behind some parkincursions.53 A new word that further embodied this idea was 'poaching' which enteredthe English language in the early 1610s to describe the activities of organised criminalgangs set up to meet London's demand for game.5447 Manning(1998:55-56).48 Statutes IV part II, p.1055, 1603/04, 1 James I c.27.49 Statutes IV part II, p.1088, 1065/06, 3 James I c.13.50 Ibid; Statutes IV part II, p.1055, 1603/04, 1 James I c.27.51 Manning(1993:60).52 Ibid. p.77; Statutes IV part II, p.1169, 1609/10, 7 James I c. 13.53 Manning(1988:295).54 1611,R. Cotgrave, Dictionary in the French & English Tongues, Pocher le labeur d'autruy, to pocheinto, or incroach upon, another mans imployment, practise, or trade (http://www.oup.com).247The impact of this body of law might have been oppressive, had it not been forcertain obviating factors. Firstly, there was the difficulty of apprehending wrongdoers inthe pre-police state; and secondly, the judicial system adopted procedures to try tobalance 'the relative merits of maximum severity with proportionality.' 55In section (iv) of this chapter there are examples of the role deer keepers andborsholders, otherwise constables, played in seeking out evidence and apprehendingsuspects for park offences. Deer keepers carried out searches of premises, confiscatedproperty and detained those caught within parks, and borsholders were required toround up suspects, ordered to make arrests or accompany prisoners to gaol. However,these efforts varied in their effectiveness as borsholders and, to a lesser extent, deerkeepers found it difficult to carry out their duties impartially. In close-knit societiesthey could find themselves 'torn between loyalty to the community in which they livedand their obligations to implement the dictates of superior officials,' a dilemma notmade any easier where the elitist notion of the legislation surrounding parks and gamewas widely unpopular.56 As Wrightson has observed, although the state and the localcommunities within it shared a concern for social harmony, certain legislation had localimplications, which might create new problems of order and obedience 'at the point atwhich precise national legislation came into contact with less well defined localcustom.'57 Thus, there were occasions when culprits were not arrested, poorly guardedprisoners escaped, witnesses were reluctant to give evidence, and borsholders and deerkeepers failed to gain the cooperation of the populace at large.Once a suspect became caught up in court procedure, there were various ways inwhich the full impact of the offence might be reduced. Confessions were encouraged.The 1485 act reduced hunting by night from a felony to a misdemeanour for those whoconfessed.58 Under the act of 5 Elizabeth I c.21 VII, 1562, if, after arrest or even duringthe seven years a convicted person was bound over for good behaviour, he confessedthe offence or offences against parks for which he had been convicted, and satisfied themagistrates of his penitence, he would be released from his recognizances – hence the55 Langbein(1983:116).56 Kent(1981:28) citing A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558-1603,' pp.112-113; Wood(2002:17).57 Wrightson in Brewer & Styles(1980:22).58 Statutes Vol. II p.505, 1485, 1 Henry VII c.7 c.8.248admissions of park incursions made by prisoners.59 Convictions were hard to securebecause confessions and witness accounts made in depositions were not admissible incourt, where evidence had to be given in person, and Langbein found that in all casesdependent on only one witness the defendant was acquitted.60 Judges also preferredacquittal to issuing capital verdicts when those facing them were thought not to deservedeath.61 As far as offences against parks were concerned, it became more difficult tosecure a jury conviction so that, for example, between 1569 and 1624, of 105 menindicted for unlawful hunting in Sussex, only 12 were found guilty, of whom eight pledguilty, leaving only 4 to be found guilty by trial jury.62 With the diminution of the law'sdeterrent effect more owners took their grievances directly to the court of Star Chamber,which goes some way to explain increased litigation there in the late sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries.63The gentry and aristocracy had mixed motives when using the court of StarChamber in the prosecution of park and hunting offences, especially of those committedor organised by gentlemen. Some litigants might have wanted solely to seek justice,others to wear down opponents by involving them in time-consuming and costlyprocedures, but it is likely that most had both aims in mind.64 According to Barnes,illegal hunting suits comprised a highly specialised, but numerically insignificant,aspect of the court's work in which most suits emanated from the highly imparked andenchased areas of the south, west, Midlands and some of the home counties, with almost25 per cent of an unspecified total number of suits, from 1596 to 1641, being brought tothe court by peers.65 In Kent, with few resident peers, only Lord Abergavenny broughtcharges of illegal hunting and park breaking, the other plaintiffs being knights orgentlemen.66 In order for a suit to be heard by the court, charges often included thewords 'riot' and 'rout' to imply that unlawful behaviour was more than a threat to thepark, but might endanger the good order of the state.67 The seriousness of theaccusations, 'for procedural advantage more often than a substantive charge', was59 Statutes Vol. IV part 1, p.449-450; Manning(1988) p.300.60 Melling(1969:30); Langbein(1983:105).61 Milsom(1981:417,422).62 Manning(1988:292,299).63 Manning(1988:73,81); Hindle(2000:13).64 Fletcher(1975:29); Barnes I (1962:240-247).65 Barnes(1978:11).66 TNA STAC8/221/23, undated.67 Barnes(1978:13); Hindle(2000:76) 92 per cent of private suit charges in the court of Star included 'riot'.249designed to be intimidating and to add pressure for an out-of-court settlement.68However, the inveterate defendant could also advantageously manipulate procedures,sometimes escaping punishment for several years, by using delaying tactics to weardown his accuser or by demurrer.69 The adroit use of the demurrer or special pleadingduring James I's reign swung the balance of the court of Star Chamber, from theplaintiff and towards the defendant.70 Hence few suits went the full course.Another factor undermining the enforcement of legislation was the issue ofperiodic general pardons by the crown, which included park infringements until 1610when James I brought in restrictions specifically excluding deer stealers from thepardons.71 Pardons were conditional on future good behaviour and so, at their mosteffective, might have played a part in crime prevention.72 Apart from their judicialfunction, pardons were also a component of royal patronage, as when individualpardons were issued to aristocrats and gentlemen making them virtually immune fromprosecution for illegal hunting or park breaks prior to the date of the pardon. Theindividual pardon could be very wide ranging, as is illustrated by letter patent of 27June 2 James I, 1604, granted to Walter Roberts of Glassenbury, due to appear at thecourt of Star Chamber, accused of illegal hunting at Sissinghurst(79) park in theprevious reign. The pardon encompassed 'all manner of forceable entries riots routsunlawful assemblies conventicles confederacies conspiracies trespasses unlawfulspeeches and all such other offences as are supposed in and by the said bill of complaintcommitted.'73 As a result of the pardon the case was dropped.The legislation on hunting, the protection of game and of parks might have beendifficult to enforce, but was of symbolic significance in its attempt to regulate thisprivileged area of life which accentuated the gulf between the upper and lower extremesof society.74 The enjoyment of leisure distinguished gentlemen from the masses and, asSir Francis Bacon expressed it, the laws existed 'to prevent persons of inferior rank,from squandering that time, which their station in life requireth to be more profitably68 Hindle(2000:76).69 Ibid. pp.16-17; Barnes I (1962:246-247); Manning(1993:184).70 Baker(1978:17).71 Hughes & Larkin(1969) II & III, proclamations of general pardons issued 1, 23, 31, 35, 43 Elizabeth I;Hughes & Larkin(1973) proclamations of general pardons issued 2, 7, 21 James I; Manning(1993) p.76.72 Kesselring(2003:3).73 TNA STAC8/53/5, 1604; see Case Study A p.253-259 and B p.267-274.74 Hindle(2000:136).250employed.'75 The penalties for offences against parks were not as harsh as imposed bythe Black Act of 1723, in which former misdemeanours were redefined as felonies, butas far as Kent park breakers and illegal hunters were concerned they were sufficientlypunitive to make them wary of being caught, but not so desperate as habitually to useforce to resist arrest.76 Overall, Herrup's assessment of responses to theft generally canbe seen to apply to park crime. She perceived the judicial system not as inherentlyflawed, but as administering justice alongside mercy, with petty offenders being dealtwith more leniently than persistent offenders, who were more likely to feel the full forceof the law.77 The legislation against park breaks and illegal hunting was enforceable toa degree, but how many evaded it will never be known.(iv) The nature of park violationsThe wide variation in modus operandi, social status of participants, motivationand range of incidents of illegal hunting and the taking of game from parks in Kentcombine to underline the complexity of the nature of park violations. To date therehave been two approaches – to categorise incidents and to analyse stages withinincidents. Neither system works satisfactorily for park crime in Kent in Elizabethan andJacobean times.Way and Manning have used categories, but the criteria for choice of categoriesdiffer greatly from each other. Way's six categories of park violations are based onsocial class, numbers of offenders and specific types of offences.78 Her researchspanned a vast period, from 1080 to 1760, so some of her categories were simplistic andmore suited to the medieval scene, neither is it often possible to know the exactnumbers and social class of the offenders involved. Manning, on the other hand, usedmotivation as the basis for his categorisation, identifying violations arising from theeconomic necessity of the poor, the commercial consideration of the criminal, and thesocial or political protest of the dispossessed or disgruntled.79 On re-examining what he75 Hay(reprint 1988:191) citing from Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (12thedition 1772) p.218.76 Thompson(1975:270-277).77 Herrup(1984:830); Kesselring(2003:7).78 Way(1997:73) (i) poaching by individual or groups of under three non-gentry (ii) as (i) but by gentryand nobility (iii) peasant-led park breaks for tree felling, fishing, hunting and assault, typified by breakingpark pale (iv) as (iii) but gentry/nobility led (v) park breaks by individual or small groups to gain orregain resources (vi) park breaks by various groups to recover impounded animals.79 Manning(1988:316).251acknowledged to be 'a complex phenomenon' he recognised that most park breakers hadmixed motives and so he developed a more nuanced approach, with six categories, stillbased on motivation, although, for unexplained reasons, omitting the basic motive ofeconomic necessity.80 Not all his categories, for example, court factionalism and localfeuds being played out by targeting rivals' parks, manifested themselves in Kent, sowere not adopted for this study.81 Categories provide a useful overall insight, but do notreadily encompass groups with mixed motives, both individually and across the group,so do not do readily convey the complexities of the subject.Birrell's analysis of peasant poachers in medieval forests separated phases withinincidents by comparing hunting techniques, the time and place hunting occurred, thecompany kept, avoidance of and reactions to detection, and the disposal of the deercarcasses.82 This works well within the context of one social group and over a longperiod covering large areas, such as forests throughout England. The approach servedto identify similarities across a range of incidents and isolated more variable features,but it proved to be difficult to adopt when other social groups were included, and withinthe confines of one county for a shorter period. Moreover, subdivision createsdisjointure in the overall intensity and impact of individual incidents and, in some cases,the interplay between them. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of the threehistorians' approaches, elements have aided this analysis, but have not been whollyadopted.Having examined all known park incursions in Kent it is possible to pick outfour distinctive strands, which is a word adopted to convey a more subtle, less rigidapproach than that of 'category', because violations seldom fall neatly into slots, as willbe illustrated from case studies interposed throughout. Sometimes the subtle interplaywithin an incident shifts emphasis from one strand to another, and sometimes, detaileddocumentary evidence incorporates multiple, often overlapping, incidents, or at theother extreme detail on which to make a judgement is lacking. Nevertheless, theadoption of strands gives a broad structure on which to build an analysis – the strands80 Manning(1993:135-170).81 Ibid. p.136 (i) court factionalism, p.143 (ii) local feuds, p.148 (iii) official corruption, p.152 (iv) localcommunities, p.160 (v) poaching fraternities, p.163 (vi) commercial poaching.82 Birrell(1996:68-88).252being (a) low-key subsistence poaching, (b) covert hunting by groups, usuallygentlemen-led for sport or consumption of deer, (c) high-profile park breaks planned asa conscious form of protest, and (d) deer theft with a commercial or criminal element.(a) Low-key poachingCommon sense would lead one to suppose that undetected low-key forays intoparks for subsistence would be the norm, even though evidence is sparse. Typically,parks were broken into to catch rabbits, or perhaps the occasional deer, with or withoutdogs. Park breakers' methods aimed to be 'effective and discreet' without sport-likeintent, but carried out as unobtrusively as possible to avoid confrontation with deerkeepers, and offering little or no resistance when caught.83Most of those who came before the courts were husbandmen or artisans, such ascarpenters, living near the parks, which they entered to take a few conies for their ownconsumption or to supplement their income. Deer would be more difficult to take, hideand dispose of, and an ordinary man was less accustomed to eat venison. Conies werenetted or ferreted, but in most cases the methods employed were unspecified. Warrensseem to have been most vulnerable from April to September when the conies were attheir fattest, but on one occasion they were taken as late as November. Poachers wentout during the hours of darkness as well as during the daylight hours, although theindictments seldom mention the time of day. Usually two to four men worked together,but on 2 April 1602, the largest known group comprised five husbandmen and a weaverfrom Lenham, who broke into two warrens, one lying in Sir Edward Wotton's park atBoughton Malherbe(10 or 12) where they netted a dozen conies.84There is no evidence that any of these cony thieves resisted arrest. Most choseto run away, as did a servant and three husbandman in Birling(6) park, althoughgamekeepers caught one, after discovering them packing away their nets, having caughtfour conies to eat in an alehouse 'to be merrie together.'85 Fines were reduced ifmisdemeanour was admitted, or perhaps to meet an individual's ability to pay. Whenfour men broke into Tyler Hill(94) park in 1609 the two yeomen were fined three83 Birrell(1996:82,83,87,88).84 Knafla(1994:59,88,96,191,223); CKS QM/SB/1602/1217-1218,1220.85 CKS QM/SB/1279, 29/7/1617.253shillings and 6s 8d respectively, while the husbandman was acquitted, perhaps eitherbecause he had confessed or his straitened circ*mstances led to him being treated moreleniently.86 Two husbandmen from Mersham who pleaded guilty to stealing two rabbitstogether worth eight pence from Mersham Hatch(61) park in 1608 were each fined 3s4d.87 While better-connected men were able to find sureties, not all poorer folk could.Two carpenters and a labourer who hunted conies in Birling(6) park in 1587 werebound over to appear at two days' warning with sureties, 'each two for the other, in tenpounds apiece', while another two carpenters caught ferreting rabbits in Knole(50) parkin 1605 found sureties of £20 each from a husbandman and a musician.88 In contrast,miscreants, like husbandman John Snell, who stole five rabbits from Lynsted(58) parkin 1579 were unable to avoid prison because they failed to find sureties.89Husbandmen and other workmen were less likely to take the initiative to killdeer in parks for their own consumption, tending to play minor parts on the fringe ofgroups with a wider social mix when they did participate in deer hunting and deerstealing incidents.90 Among the exceptions were Peter Maye of Sissinghurst, featuredin case study A below, and Humfrey Latter of Cobham, featured in case study E, whoinitially might have been driven into illegal hunting by poverty, but whose activitiescould be interpreted as a form of social protest, and who soon became enmeshed incriminal circles, or themselves were motivated partly by criminality.91 Most workmenstuck to taking rabbits for the pot, but an element of doubt even creeps into the obvious,if indeed, as Thompson observed for a later period, simple theft 'may turn out to be, incertain circ*mstances, evidence of protracted attempts by villagers to defend ancientcommon right usages, or by labourers to defend customary perquisites.' 92A: Case Study – Sissinghurst(79) park in the mid 1590sThis study illustrates the importance of the extant depositions in enablinghistorians to glimpse 'the mentalities, attitudes and aspirations' experienced by thosesuffering economic hardship, and the temptation a nearby park, like Sissinghurst(79),86 CKS QM/SI/1615/2/5.87 CKS QM/SI/1608/11/8.88 Read (1962:48); CKS QM/SRc/1605/193.89 co*ckburn(1995:169) AC35/21/8/991, 1579.90 Birrell(1996:77-78).91 See Case Study E p.291-298.92 Thompson(1991:72).254posed.93 The first incident takes up the strand of low-key park infringements, and thesecond was multi-layered growing out of necessity, but containing elements ofdisaffection and profiteering.94 The shortcomings of using indictments to indicate thelevel of park crime are evident in this case study. But for the depositions the firstincident would not have appeared in the court records because no indictment followed,and the indictments in the second case were for the illegal use and possession of gunand crossbow, with no mention of misdemeanour against parks.Sissinghurst(79) was a particularly vulnerable park towards the end of thesixteenth century, because of the death John Baker in 1596 in his forties meant that theinheritance was left to his young ten year-old son, Henry. The estate was taken over bythe court of Wards and Liveries to be administered by Sir Henry Guildford, Sir ThomasWalsingham and Sir Thomas Baker until eventually, in 1601, Sir Thomas Baker ofCranbrook was given full wardship, but in the vacuum it proved difficult to maintainorder in the park.95Historians have highlighted the particular economic problems faced by thedepressed cloth industry centred at Cranbrook, the town near Sissinghurst in the Wealdof Kent, which were intensified by the bad harvests of the 1590s.96 Tension betweenthe clothiers and the Baker family dated back to the 1560s when Sir Richard Bakerenclosed woodland to reserve for use by ironworks. This enclosure deprived cloth dyersof a vital source of fuel and by the 1590s when iron making was booming, encouragedlocally by John Baker, Sir Richard's son and owner of one of the mills, it had also led toshortages of domestic fuel. While blast furnaces and gun foundries were working to fullcapacity during the war years, the cloth industry was adversely affected by a fall indemand during the depression.97 Unemployment and underemployment, exacerbated byan increase of 40 per cent in the population of Cranbrook from the 1560s to 1590s,combined with high grain and fuel prices, caused widespread hardship and unrestamong the clothiers and their workforce.98 A conspiracy to sack Baker's ironworks was93 Sharpe(1984:121).94 CKS QM/SB/154; QM/SB/162,163,168; QM/SB/387, QM/SRc/1602/197.95 CKS U24/T283; TNA STAC8/53/4, 1605.96 Clark(1976:366,371-373); Manning(1988:274-275).97 Manning(1988:274); Clark(1976:230).98 Zell(1994:63).255uncovered in December 1594, and other direct action was also planned.99 There aregrounds to think that one form of popular protest was to target Sissinghurst(79) park,and it would not be surprising that incursions into the park were seen as another meansto express anger and frustration, although neither Clark nor Manning specifically madethe link. Manning in his later work cited two of the Sissinghurst cases, one, involvingPeter Maye, to be featured shortly, which he placed in the crime category, and the otheras an example of the actions of a youthful gentry hunter, namely Sir AlexanderCulpepper, whose exploits are explored in case study B.100 There is no date overlapbetween this gentleman hunter and the workingmen of modest status in case study A,although the background circ*mstances of the area are common to both case studies.101Sir Alexander Culpepper's exploits were complex, but the fact that he so readily foundlocal men to aid and abet him might well have been influenced by the hardship theywere suffering and the strong local resentment against the Baker family. In all theinstances involving Sissinghurst(79) park, despite the unpopularity of the Baker familyand the distress in the area, it is significant that there were no allegations that the deerkeepers colluded with the illegal hunting.The first low-key incident in this case study underlines how great a prize a deercarcass was to a workingman and is the only example in Kent, during the period underreview, of an opportunistic discovery of a dead deer, which was more common in easilyaccessible forest areas.102 The accused displayed great reluctance to become aninformer, but might well have been the victim of an informant because the incident onlycame to the attention of the authorities one month after the event, shortly after it hadbeen discussed at a small household gathering comprising husbandman Anthony Banks,Thomas Lawrence and Agnes Greenhill. On 4 January 1596, Thomas Roberts ofGlassenbury examined the three deponents present at the gathering, starting withAnthony Banks, whose more detailed description of the incident might indicate that hewas the informer. The three deponents claimed that Thomas Carpenter had witnessed adeer being killed in Sissinghurst(79) park by a crossbowman, whom he recognised andwho had fled on seeing him.103 As reported by Anthony Banks, Thomas Carpenter,99 Manning(1988:274).100 Manning(1993:164-165,174-175).101 TNA STAC8/53/5, 1604; see Case Study C p.274-280.102 Birrell(1996:77-79).103 CKS QM/SB/154.256thrilled that 'he had happened on such a booty as he should never meet with the likeagain while he lived,' decided to retrieve the prize himself, but left the scene to findAnthony Banks to help him carry the deer away. However, having failed to makecontact, Thomas Carpenter returned to the park to find that he had lost both the deer andthe arrow, which he had hidden, although he spent over an hour searching for them.According to Anthony Banks, Thomas Carpenter defended his decision not to report thematter to the deer keeper by declaring that he felt there was no point, 'to what endshould I hurt the fellow that had killed the said deer and not benefit myself thereby.'When Thomas Carpenter himself was examined, he flatly denied all knowledge of theincident, and as to mentioning an arrow he explained that he had been misheard and thathe was complaining about poor ploughing, 'for that his ploughman at the first setting ondid not draw the first furrow as straight as an arrow.' Whether or not credible, the casewas unproven and no charges were brought against him. Thomas Carpenter's reluctanceto name the deer killer might have come from altruism, from the desire to avoidrevealing uncomfortable details about his own proximity to the killing, from fellowfeeling for or fear of retaliation from the culprit, or from an unwillingness to cooperatewith the Baker family, but his pleasure at the chance discovery of the deer carcass wasreal. As reported by Anthony Banks, Thomas Carpenter was disappointed to have lostthe deer, from which he would 'have caused ii pasties to have byn made therof.' 104Clearly, Thomas Carpenter wanted to benefit from the consumption of at least part ofthe deer, but his motives for concealing the identity of the deer's killer were far lessstraightforward, and his words indicated sympathy for the culprit, with a degree ofacceptance by a kindred spirit that no great wrong had been committed, an example,perhaps, of how attitudes towards park offences differed between the lower orders andofficialdom.105The second case for which Thomas Roberts of Glassenbury started takingdepositions in March 1596 covered park infringements in several parks, again perhapsdrawn to the attention of the authorities by an informer. The common thread concernsthe activities of Peter Maye, a Cranbrook weaver, who became caught up with others,such as John Fosten, who might well have been the criminals Manning considers them104 As Carpenter needed help to move the deer it would have provided venison for more than two pasties,but the depositions do not mention what plans he might have had for the rest of the carcass.105 Sharpe(1984:12,121-122).257to be.106 However, the background revealed by Peter Maye's apprentices implies thatPeter Maye was driven into illegal activity by financial circ*mstances rather thanstarting out with criminal intent. Manning argued that Peter Maye was using alegitimate occupation as cover for criminal activity, but it seems more likely that thedepression in the cloth industry drove a failing weaver to kill deer for survival, beforebeing drawn into the desperation of criminality.Evidence from Peter Maye's former apprentices, William Welche and PascalBarrington, who had served him four years, stated that for three years they had livedwith Peter Maye at Masolden wood before moving with him to Goldford, much nearerSissinghurst(79) park, in their fourth year of service.107 Significantly, it was only afterthe move that Peter Maye's unlawful killing of deer began. The apprentices deposedthat at Goldford they had been given 'sundry times meat of the heads and necks ofvenison' and that the venison had been served with Peter Maye's retort 'they were bettereat that than nothing.' In this context the move to Goldford can be seen as part of thedownward spiral of an impoverished craftsman. Once at Goldford Peter Maye acquireda crossbow and arrows, which he concealed under a loom instructing the apprentices tohide outside if anyone came to search the premises. More damningly, two or threetimes a week, after the household had gone to bed, Peter Maye, on hearing a whistleoutside, with his crossbow under his cloak left the house for two or three hours, 'butseldom sped for that he went most usually to shoot along by the pale side.' Once thetwo apprentices had to fetch deer from the weaving shop and help cut it up, and at othertimes they delivered deerskins to be dressed.One of the unique aspects of this case is the focus on deerskins. Furtherquestioning about the skins showed that Peter Maye had become drawn into a widernetwork of procurers and receivers to such an extent that he became frightened ofexposure and threatened that 'he would kill or procure to be killed whosoever shouldbetray any of the former doings.' However, in his deposition he claimed to haveacquired eight skins legitimately from John Hoben, the deceased deer keeper of Thomas106 Manning(1993:161).107 CKS QM/SB/162.258Pelham esquire whose park was in Sussex.108 This was a clever move since the deadman could not talk! These skins were dressed by Richard Cradock, a glover fromGoudhurst, to whom he paid four shillings for four skins, but did not know what hadhappened to the rest. The four skins he could account for went to Henry Judd, a weaverfrom Cranbrook, by barter for assorted items including remnant sage coloured cloth, achest, ruff bands and four shillings, with a total value of 16s 2d, a huge profit if the fourshillings paid for dressing them was his only outlay.109All this was plausible, but he concluded his deposition by gratuitouslymentioning that John Fosten had visited his house at Goldford with a crossbow and hadshot an arrow from it out of his window, an offence John Fosten later admitted and forwhich he was eventually indicted.110 Perhaps John Fosten was mentioned in order todivert attention away from Peter Maye's killing of Sissinghurst deer, and his possibleinvolvement on the fringe of a more organised unlawful trade in venison and deerskins.If the deponent, John Fosten, was the will maker of 1624, he was a victualler, well ableto dispose of venison through trade distribution outlets, and Peter Maye had been drawninto his circle, graduating from killing deer for his own consumption to killing them forprofit. 111 In this context the deerskins would have been a saleable sideline. Such aninterpretation would explain Peter Maye's frequent night excursions on cue with hiscrossbow, his possession of deerskins, and his use of threats to intimidate erstwhileinformers.John Fosten's deposition, like Peter Maye's, was silent about any intrusion intoSissinghurst(79) park, so the depositions of Peter Maye's apprentices about theirmaster's night time visits there were uncorroborated.112 John Fosten admitted handlingthree deer and their skins from Sussex venues, where, according to him, they had beenacquired legitimately through contacts in the Ashdown Forest, Rotherfield and Eridgewalks in the year prior to the deposition. The first deer had been quartered in Peter108 Manning(1988:48) perhaps at Halland near Heathfield, which had been the focus of riots when 1200-acre park was enclosed from common land in the mid-sixteenth century.109 Wrightson(2002:93) points out the economic interdependence between individuals in rural settlements.110 CKS QM/SI/1597/12; CKS QM/SB/163.111 CKS QM/SB/167; de Launay(1984:288) no.503; Manning(1993:167) links butchers and victuallers with thedistribution of venison.112 The Couchman surname was common in the district, but perhaps there were family links with GilesCouchman involved in the incident in Otford Great(62) park in 1584 (see pp.266-268) and ThomasCouchman co-hunter with Sir Alexander Culpepper in the early 1600s (see p.271).259Maye's house – half being sent to Thomas Raynes of Burham, on the Medway somemiles away, and almost half going to John Fosten himself, leaving Peter Maye with theskin, neck, chine and one shoulder. That Peter Maye received the leftovers gave aplausible reason for serving them to his apprentices, although he did not include this inhis deposition. The unexplained use of Peter Maye's house to cut up the deer is the onlyindication that he and John Fosten had any connection with each other as far as venisonand deerskins were concerned. John Fosten had paid a Sussex deer keeper threeshillings for the second deer and its skin and an unspecified fee for the third. Both thesedeer had been carried wrapped in their skins to Couchman's house in Goudhurst, anddivided between the three huntsmen, with the skins being left for a glover living there.Because this glover was unnamed, doubt arises as to whether the skins purportedlylegitimately obtained by Peter Maye and by John Fosten were the same deerskins, butthe numbers differed and it was likely that both, or Peter Maye as the proxy of JohnFosten, had been supplying deerskins to the glove workshops of Cranbrook, and thatthese deerskins had come from deer shot by Peter Maye in Sissinghurst(79) park.Having examined the evidence, Thomas Roberts ordered the borsholder to arrestPeter Maye under warrant for possession of a crossbow - again no specific offenceagainst parks appeared. However, on his way to Maidstone gaol, he was rescued andreleased by John Weller, a clothier, and Thomas Philip, a painter, both from Cranbrookand whether he ever faced trial is unknown. The rescue makes one wonder about therole of the borsholder in his escape, and whether there was sympathy for Peter Maye'splight, with many in Cranbrook so disaffected and antagonistic towards the Bakerfamily that they did not regard his behaviour as criminal.113 On the other hand, therewas so much intermarriage between clothier families that his escape might have beenorganised by an elaborate family network, which, as Keith Wrightson expressed it,'bound people together within particular localities in a manner which gave "a strongparticularity" to the economic culture of the time.'114 Another less generousinterpretation might be that the criminal network to which he was allied wanted to avoidfurther revelations about its activities. All these possibilities reflect the intertwining ofvarious strands of the unlawful taking of deer and underline the complexity ofunravelling them.113 Sharpe(1984:12).114 Wrightson(2002:84-85).260(b) Covert hunting for sport, usually gentlemen-ledWhereas low-key poaching aimed at skilfully and quickly dispatching prey withminimum fuss, gentlemen who initiated covert hunting relished the excitement of thesport. Covert hunting was an offshoot of the general hunting culture, which mightinvolve lesser gentlemen who were excluded from the sport by the high qualificationcriteria, and without their own parks or the social connections to gain access into theparks of others.115 On these unlawful hunting expeditions, dogs, especially coursinggreyhounds, accompanied the hunters, who often rode on horseback. Althoughgentlemen were not averse to breaking into local parks, they also travelled to moredistant venues. Covert hunting by day differed from covert hunting by night, and thecontrasting approaches might, at first glance, be seen as separate strands, but the leadingparticipants were often the same gentlemen, as with Sir Alexander Culpepper, RichardWaller and John Styler, who feature in case studies B and C.116 In covert hunting byday, the group might comprise up to four men, who, if challenged, concocted anapparently plausible excuse for their presence in the park, but under cover of dark, thegroups tended to be larger and more intimidatory in order to scare off deer keepers or tomeet them head on if necessary.There were some standard excuses used by gentlemen who entered parks indaylight hours. However, their versions of events seldom stand up to close scrutiny,even though accusations against them in the court of Star Chamber suits, which oftenincluded the words 'riot' and 'rout', tended to be exaggerated and highly dramatised.117Manning identified popular excuses as entering the park in pursuit of a stray orwounded deer, or putting the blame on headstrong dogs pursuing a deer, which they hadscented in a park.118 In 1584, Giles Couchman claimed that his master's dogs hadbroken loose from his master's home in Groombridge, and followed his master's partyinto Waterdown forest, where they brought down a doe with its fawn.119115 Manning(1993:232).116 See Case Study B p.267-274 and C p.274-280.117 Barnes(1978:13) the charge of riot had become an allegation for procedural advantage more often thana substantive charge118 Manning(1993:185).119 TNA STAC5/A1/8, 1584.261Thomas Petley, a gentleman from Halstead, offered fabrication peppered withinconsistencies by way of explanation for his entering Hamsell(43) park, near Mayfield,in Sussex in October 1605.120 He blamed his companion, Nicholas Hilliard, forinitiating the unlawful hunting by taking the park gate off its hinges and pursuing andinjuring a deer with a crossbow arrow, after which he himself had entered the park tohelp track down the wounded deer. The discrepancies between events as narrated inThomas Petley's depositions and in Sir Richard Waller's petition of complaint, as ownerof Hamsell(43) park, make Thomas Petley's position as misguided innocent untenable.Thomas Petley claimed that he and Nicholas Hilliard had passed Hamsell(43)park on their way to Brenchley to meet Dr. Smarsett to discuss the suit of marriagebetween Nicholas Hilliard and the doctor's daughter. However, their journey fromHalstead in northwest Kent to Brenchley near Tonbridge would not have required themto enter Sussex, or be near Mayfield. Nicholas Hilliard had carried a crossbow becausethe two men had agreed to kill any stray deer spotted on the way, yet he forcibly enteredthe park to hunt. There are contradictory accounts from Thomas Petley and the deerkeeper about events following the wounding of the deer. Thomas Petley and NicholasHilliard claimed to have contacted the deer keeper immediately, as would have beenwithin the code of gentlemanly behaviour, requesting him to put the deer out of itsmisery and to give them some venison from it, although the deer keeper said thatcontact was not made until the next day. In both accounts, the crossbow ended up in thedeer keeper's custody, according to the deer keeper because he had found it hidden inthe park and, according to Thomas Petley, because he had left it in the deer keeper's safekeeping it being too cumbersome to carry.Thomas Petley denied ever previously entering Hamsell(43) park, but the ownerof Hamsell(43) park cited several occasions in the first ten days of October 1605 whenThomas Petley and Nicholas Hilliard had broken down the park paling and hunted deerfor 'divers hours' at a time. Thomas Petley stated that on his outing with NicholasHilliard he carried only his rapier and dagger 'which he usually rideth withal, and noother weapons.' However, it transpired that the deer keeper already had in his custodytwo crossbows and a gun belonging to Thomas Petley, who said they were there by his120 TNA STAC8/294/6, 1606, but the Petley case (STAC8/190/17) has wrongly been placed with thiscase.262'sufferance and assent', without explaining how so many of his weapons had ended up inthe deer keeper's hands, especially when he had apparently never before been in thepark or carried them with him on the outing with Nicholas Hilliard.Matters came to a head when Thomas Petley sent a party to break into Hamselllodge because, according to his account, the deer keeper had not returned the crossbowor sent a 'piece of flesh' from the deer Nicholas Hilliard had wounded, as he hadpromised. All the weapons were retrieved and a bloodhound, whose ownership wasdisputed by Thomas Petley and the deer keeper, was taken. This deliberate act ofbravado is an example of a practice adopted by gentlemen hunters in other parts of thecountry.121 Thomas Petley's story was clearly flawed, but there is insufficientdocumentation to be sure of his reason for targeting Hamsell(43) park so persistently inthe opening fortnight of October 1605. However, there is a hint of grievance in hisadmission that he had asked the deer keeper for a deer on several occasions, 'but the saidkeeper never but once gave this defendant a deer.' His response to this perceived slightunderlines the frustration of a gentleman reliant on others with parks to fulfil their urgeto hunt and to acquire venison – the thrill of the chase here was tinged with the need toprotest against exclusion from the privileged elite.There are instances of individuals or small groups of yeomen entering parks totake one deer, but without details it is impossible to know whether they were acting ontheir own initiative.122 One particularly enigmatic park break shows the limitation ofofficial court records without the attendant depositions and illustrates the likelypresence of gentlemen who remained in the background when lesser men were caught.Six separate entries in the Quarter Session records indicate that when two husbandmenwere arrested in Lyminge(56) park while hunting with bloodhounds on 14 September1602 with 'other wrongdoers', more influential men were drawn into court procedures,perhaps to avoid being implicated through confession.123 There are several unusualaspects in the brief Quarter Session records that followed the arrest. First, on 22September 1602, the two husbandmen pleaded not guilty and had an attorney to defendthem; second, at their next appearance at court on 11 January 1603, the jurors did not121 Manning(1993:184).122 co*ckburn(197:121) AC35/15/6/878, 25/6/1573; CKS QM/SB/1598/252 (A p.28) 1/5/1598; CKSQ/SR2/13 m3d (C pp.71-72), 21/4/1601; CKS QM/SB/710 (A p.67) 2/10/1606..123 Knafla(1994:51) Q/SR3/287.263appear and a habeas corpus writ was issued to enforce their presence at the next QuarterSessions of 19 July 1603. However, on 8 March 1603, by writ certiorari proceedingswere stopped in the lower court and the whole case transferred to the Queen's bench.124In the meantime, in early October 1602, a few weeks after the arrest of the twohusbandmen, there were three court hearings in which they were bound over to keep thepeace, with the surety of Thomas Holford esquire of London, towards George Hills, theprobable owner of the bloodhounds, and towards Philip Eastland, the deer keeper atLyming(56) park, who had helped arrest the men.125 The use of the binding over wastypical of the period and enabled those in authority to control social behaviour in a waythat was beneficial to the well being of the wider community.126 There is obviously asub-text to all the court entries with influential backers providing legal help andsureties, and the implicit use of threats or bribery unduly to influence witnesses andjury.Gentlemen, such as Sir Alexander Culpepper, Richard Waller and John Styler,alongside others of differing social backgrounds, readily entered parks at night as wellas by day.127 There are relatively few examples of violence, but it was usually at nightthat fights between trespassers and keepers occurred.No contemporary explanations for this violence have been found for Kent, butthe tendency probably stemmed from the mindset of both sides. It is possible that deerkeepers summoned up more determination to combat blatant park breaks, than toprevent low key poaching. There must be reason for Markham to have recommendedthat a deer keeper's lodge be built like a fort with windows at angles or with loopholes'either to shoot, cast stones or scalding water' to prevent the deer keeper being coopedup by assaulting intruders, 'which is the practise of many subtile knaves', and, havingkept them at bay, to 'despight their force' by issuing forth to 'defend himselfe and hischarge against them.'128 This passage predicates the expectation of violence betweenunlawful hunters and deer keepers. Manning noted the mercilessness and lack of124 Knafla(1994:51) Q/SR3/287-288.125 Knafla(1994:111) QM/SM/21/804-805, p.253 QM/SRc/1592, p.127 QM/SI/1603/909, George Hillsonly two days before the Lyminge(56) park break, had entered Elham(30) park to course hisbloodhounds.126 Hindle(2000:103).127 See Case Study B p.267-274 for Sir Alexander Culpepper, and C p.274-280 for the other gentlemen.128 Markham(1616:669).264sympathy during confrontations between deer keepers and gentlemen park breakers, andattributed them to the brutalising influence of the hunting culture.129 In Kent mostexamples of violence stem from gentlemen-led groups reacting to possible arrest, andthere are instances of excessive ferocity on both sides. Deer keepers were undertremendous pressure from intruders, and sometimes they and their deputies wereoutnumbered and powerless to enforce order, as Walter Double found at Penshurst(71)park in 1600.130 On other occasions the deer keepers were able to meet force with force,but occasionally, even though successfully quelling the opposition, they overreacted, asin Otford Great(62) park in 1586.131Why groups containing gentlemen should be more prepared to useviolence is unclear; perhaps they were less wary of or had less respect for deerkeepers. Loss of reputation might have been at stake, although the consequencesof arrest were no more severe than for lesser men, and in many ways less sobecause aristocrats and gentlemen were seldom brought before the QuarterSessions or Assizes, but might instead face the protracted proceedings of the courtof Star Chamber.132 Manning regarded poaching as 'the most violent of all forms of social protestother than armed rebellion,' and considered that gentlemen going into a magnate's parkarmed to the teeth 'apparently thought that knocking a gamekeeper over the head washalf the fun.'133 Beaver, on the other hand, at least as regards conflict over Stowe parkin the reign of Charles I, regarded scenes of violence to be 'carefully choreographed'with a controlled use of force.134 Avowed social protest of those who did not share the'absolute and exclusive rights of private property' in the shape of parks and the 'wild'deer within them, or protest at a subliminal level, might well have played a part inviolent behaviour, but one would have to know more about the individuals concerned129 Manning(1993:191-192).130 See Case Study D p.285-290.131 TNA SP12/197/19 & 32, January 1586, see p.265 to follow.132 CKS QM/SIq/4/29 & 30, one exception being the inquisitions into the activities of Sir AlexanderCulpepper and his confederates, held on 7/12/1605, during the Quarter Sessions.133 Manning(1988:298).134 Beaver (2001:172).265before being certain of the degree of their disgruntlement, compared with the thrill ofthe hunt, the adrenalin of the risk, and the lure of the prize.135Of four known fatalities in Kentish parks, three were the direct result of nighttime raids into parks led by gentlemen, and in each there was a conspicuous absence ofcontrolled use of force.136 In two cases during confrontations with deer keepers, twounlawful hunters were killed, and in the third, two deer keepers coming to the aid ofanother, who had intercepted intruders in Knole(50) park in 1589, mistook each other asthe intruders, attacking with such ferocity that one was cudgelled to death.137 At OtfordGreat(62) park, on 9 January 1586, a small group of unlawful hunters, armed only withstaves, were overwhelmed by nine keepers, obviously expecting trouble and equipped tomeet it, because they were wearing helmets and carried swords, bills and staves. In theuneven struggle, three intruders were beaten 'most cruelly and unmercifully', even whenthey were lying helpless on the ground, resulting in the death of one hunter and leavinganother 'very sore hurt.'138 When faced with the armed keepers, it would seem unlikelythat violent resistance as 'half the fun' of the hunt, as Manning put it, would have sprunginto the victims' minds.139 The only evidence of the third fatality is an inquest, theverdict of which has been obliterated by damage to the document. Eight men, whosesocial status ranged from gentlemen, through yeoman to servant and husbandman, brokeinto Scot's Hall(77) park on 15 December 1597 and had killed two bucks and two doeswith greyhounds before being confronted by the deer keeper with two other men.140 Inthe ensuing fracas, the deer keeper, being wounded and hard pressed by the largergroup, fatally pierced William Richards, gentleman from Baston, in the chest with apiked staff.141Historians such as Manning and Beaver have noticed the practice of servantsaccompanying their masters on park breaks.142 According to Manning 'it was axiomatic135 Manning(1988:4-5).136 co*ckburn(1995:116), AC35/15/1/647, the fourth fatality occurred on 15/9/1572 when LordAbergavenny's servant hunting for food for hawks in Hungershall(47) park accidentally shot John Baker,a yeoman of Speldhurst, hiding in vegetation to escape detection.137 co*ckburn(1995:299) AC35/32/4/1806, 13/8/1589.138 TNA SP12/197/19 & 32, January 1586.139 Manning(1988:298).140 co*ckburn(1995:417-418) AC35/40/3/2545, 20/2/1598.141 Manning(1988:298-299) mistakenly has the park breaker killing the deer keeper.142 Manning(1993:178); Beaver(2008:47-51).266that servants who hunted unlawfully were spawned by disorderly aristocratic and gentryhouseholds,' and this does seem to be the case in the Waller household at Leigh and theWilloughby household at Bore Place.143 During the raid on Otford Great(62) park in1586, three of Thomas Willoughby's servants, together with a servant of MrWaldegrave of Hever, and another of Mr Waller of Leigh, were present. ThomasWilloughby's son and two of his servants obviously already knew Otford Great(62) parkand positioned the smaller groups to take advantage of passing deer they flushed outwith the greyhounds. As will be seen in the case study C for Penhurst(71) park, theWaller brothers of Leigh took their servants with them when they unlawfully enteredPenshurst(71) park in the 1570s.144 Servants might also enter parks without theirmasters' consent or presence. They had the advantage of having access to their masters'dogs, horses and hunting equipment, which could be used with or without permission;they were able to learn hunting techniques from an elite household; and they couldacquire inside information about various parks frequented by their masters. As theorganisers of the Oxford rising found in 1596, servants gave 'ready points of entry intoother communities.'145 Travelling on errands, taking messages and accompanying theirmasters' from household to household made it easier for servants to concoct excuses formoving about the countryside than would be the case for farm labourers or artisans.The name of servant Giles Couchman crops up in three disparate documents,and, if the same man, hints at the existence of servants employed because of theirexpertise in unlawful hunting. In 1584 Giles Couchman, then servant of gentleman,Charles Allen, was called to the court of Star Chamber to answer the charge of illegalhunting with greyhounds with his master and other Groombridge men in Waterdownforest.146 Shortly afterwards, Giles Couchman was briefly employed as an under keeperin Knole(50) park, where he failed to report a group of unlawful hunters he met carryingaway a deer.147 Lastly, it was Giles Couchman, servant of Richard Waller of Leigh,himself heavily implicated in the 1570s incursions into Penshurst(71) park, who broughtalong one of his master's greyhounds for the Otford(62) park break in 1586.148 It143 Manning(1993:178), with reference to 'The English Courtier and Countrey-gentleman' of 1586, inW.C. Hazlitt (ed.), Inedited Tracts (London, 1868) p.40.144 See Case Study C p.274-280.145 Walter(1985:105-106).146 TNA STAC5/A1/8, 1584.147 TNA SP12/197/19, 1597.148 CKS U1475/L17.267appears highly probable that Giles Couchman moved from household to household tocontinue his dubious activities, sometimes in the knowledge of those who employedhim. One wonders whether he came from the same Couchman family, mentioned incase study A helping in the distribution of venison and deerskins in the Cranbrook area,and in case study B involved in unlawful hunting with Sir Alexander Culpepper inSissinghurst(79) park in the 1600s.149Allegations against gentlemen who led covert hunting for their own pleasure andconsumption often ended in court of Star Chamber suits, because the right to enjoy one'sproperty without disruption and in privacy was important to park owners, and suits touphold this are 'a powerful reminder that property was not merely a matter of materialassets, but more fundamentally a matter of rights.'150 In this sense the idea of defendingcustomary rights was not confined to the lower orders, but could be experienced by theupper strata of society. Park owners were determined to uphold their property rightsagainst park violators from all spheres of life, who, in turn, felt they had the right tohunt without constraint.B: Case study – Sir Alexander Culpepper (1581-1629)Four court of Star Chamber suits were initiated against Sir AlexanderCulpeppper of Bedgebury between 1604 and 1606 and, following each other so swiftly,appear to have been a concerted effort to prevent his undertaking further illegal huntingin Sissinghurst(79) park, the Ashdown forest and Hamsell(43) park.151 Sir ThomasBaker of Sissinghurst brought two suits, Sir Edward co*ke, the attorney general, onbehalf of the crown, brought another and Sir Thomas Waller of Groombridge yetanother.Sir Alexander Culpepper's activities between about 1600 and 1604, when in hisearly twenties, will be dealt with broadly in chronological order of events. Themotivation behind his reckless hunting is a matter of speculation, but possible indicatorslie in his background. His father, Sir Anthony Culpepper, inherited the Bedgebury149 See Case Study A pp.253-259 and Case Study B p.267-274. Chalklin(2010:5) Kent Records – NewSeries 5 part 1, Clothier William Couchman of Tonbridge d. 1568 had 7 sons, of which the sixth wasGiles - Thomas, Richard, Gabriel, Edward, John, Giles and George.150 Hindle(2000:80).151 TNA STAC8/53/4, 1607; TNA STAC/53/5, 1604; TNA STAC8/5/13, c.1604; TNA STAC8/294/6,1606.268estate in the Weald from his father, Sir Alexander Culpepper, at the turn of theseventeenth century. Both the father and grandfather of the younger Sir AlexanderCulpepper were recusants, the older Sir Alexander Culpepper suffering imprisonment,very heavy fines, and years of banishment from Bedgebury for his beliefs.152 It wouldnot therefore be surprising if his grandson had become disaffected with authority afterthe family experience. The family's capital had been eroded by recusancy fines and bythe late 1590s part of Bedgebury(4) park had been rented out and the rest followedwhen Sir Anthony Culpepper inherited it. As a keen huntsman, Sir AlexanderCulpepper resented the loss of the family park, as was implied in his justification forhunting in Hamsell(43) park because many of the Bedgebury deer had been transferredthere.153 Deprived of the family park, Sir Alexander Culpepper availed himself of hisneighbours' deer, particularly in Sissinghurst(79) park which was still well stocked andlay not far from Bedgebury, but even closer to Glassenbury, home of his father-in-law,Sir Walter Roberts. Sir Alexander Culpepper was certainly closely associated withmembers of the Roberts family in his hunting pursuits, and the social unrest in theCranbrook area as evidenced in case study A meant that he was able to gather manywilling accomplices around him over a number of years.154As ringleader of the unlawful hunting, he gathered a large following of over 20,although he usually went out with smaller groups at any given time. This loose'federation of convenience' encompassed a broad social spectrum of individuals withdifferent agendas; gentlemen out for the thrill of the chase, clothiers resentful of theBaker family, apprentices and servants following their masters, labourers keen to findfood for the table, butcher and inn keeper in a position to profit from the cutting up anddistribution of the venison.155 While the composition of participants might vary foreach incursion, there was strong overall group identity. The court cases revealed theclose nature of this fraternity with its members remaining loyal to each other and notconfessing when brought before the court of Star Chamber or the magistrates.Moreover, the potential weaker links, such as apprentices Alexander Weller junior and152 Buckingham(1979:20-24); see Chapter Five p.147.153 BL Cart.Harl.76.A.22, 1596; BL Cart.Harl.77.C.44, 1607.154 See Case Study A p.253-259.155 Hipkin(2000:23).269Richard Botten, disappeared from Cranbrook before being brought to trial at the QuarterSessions.156The records are silent about what happened to the numerous deer that SirAlexander Culpepper and his fellow huntsmen killed, but the presence of FrancisHampton, a butcher, indicates that suitable premises were on hand to cut up deerprofessionally, while the alehouse of Anthony Lake would have provided a convenientvenue for the distribution of venison, because little suspicion would be aroused byvarious comings and goings. How deeply involved Sir Alexander Culpepper was withthis putative network for the disposal of deer is unknown, because no one wasquestioned on this aspect of activities.In the first suit, Sir Alexander Culpepper, sometimes accompanied by othergentlemen, was charged with leading at least seven hunting expeditions intoSissinghurst(79) park between October 1601 and March 1603 during which many deerwere killed and wounded.157 These night raids were typical of covert hunting bygentlemen in which up to a dozen men at a time participated. On their first forcibleentry into the park on 24 October 1601, they faced up to four deer keepers, whom they'grievously beat and wounded.' Although the high-profile huntsmen were not at thatstage apprehended, the deer keepers either knew or discovered some of the intrudersand, in the early hours of the morning, burst into the room where two apprentices of theclothier, John Weller, perhaps the same John Weller who had secured Peter Maye'sescape, were still in bed. Although both young men, Alexander Weller junior andRichard Botten, denied any wrongdoing, within two days they were questioned by themagistrate, and later appeared in court to be bound over with recognizances of £20 eachto answer the charge of hunting at night in Sissinghurst(79) park.158 In this instance ithas been possible to match up apparently unrelated Quarter Session depositions with thecourt of Star Chamber suit to show that, rather than the apprentices participating in lowkey crime, which might have been supposed from the Quarter Session indictment, theywere in fact acting with a wider, more organised group of disaffected local people.159Had they been acting on their own in Sissinghurst(79) park, it is unlikely that the156 Manning(1993:160).157 TNA STAC8/53/5, 1604.158 CKS QM/SB 387.159 TNA STAC8/53/5, 1604.270recognizances would have been set so high or that they would have been found. Inaddition, perhaps lest they implicate more important people, not surprisingly they failedto appear for their trial at Maidstone Quarter Sessions of 13 April 1602, when theirrecognizances were forfeited.160Undeterred by the arrest of the apprentices, Sir Alexander Culpepper and theothers continued to hunt unlawfully in the park over the next ten days, culminating intwo does being killed and carried away on the night of 2 November 1601 after 12 menhad broken into the park and hunted and chased deer with seven greyhounds. Theincursions continued into James I's reign, until eventually in October 1604 Sir ThomasBaker took Sir Alexander Culpepper, Richard Roberts, Walter Roberts and 20 othernamed men, including three with the familiar surname of Couchman, to the court of StarChamber. Unfortunately for Sir Thomas Baker, Sir Alexander Culpepper and WalterRoberts evoked the King's personal free pardon granted to them on 27 June 1604 tojustify not answering any questions relating to wrongdoings in Elizabeth I's reign or upto the date of the pardon.161 The court of Star Chamber suit was therefore dropped.However, the Quarter Session records show that, although unable to pursue courtproceedings against the leaders, belatedly in September 1604, nearly four years after theSissinghurst(79) park breaks, four Cranbrook men named in the suit were indicted fortaking part in the violent raid of 24 October 1601 and in the illegal hunting of 2November 1601, but there are no subsequent records to show the outcome.162The incident which provoked Sir Thomas Baker's first suit, occurred early inJune 1604, when typically for daylight park breaks by gentlemen, Sir AlexanderCulpepper was accompanied only by his kinsman, Walter Roberts, and two others, hisfather's servant and Thomas Couchman. Significantly, Sir Alexander Culpepper refusedto answer any questions about the more serious earlier night time raids intoSissinghurst(79) park, which would endanger the fraternity if he divulged anyinformation. He justified the June 1604 incursion with a barely plausible, but typicalexcuse given by gentlemen who entered parks by day. He claimed that the four, havingfailed to track one of his father-in-law's stray deer from Glassenbury(37) park, were160 CKS QM/SRc/1602/197; Knafla(1994:89) no.580.161 See p.249.162 CKS QM/SR1[Q/SR5]16 m2 (C p.204).271returning home past Sissinghurst(79) park when his greyhounds scented a deer and'without any instigation or knowledge of him' broke away and ran into the park killing adeer there, which he found and took away. Here he adopted a common ploy of blaminghis dog, but failed to explain why he had appropriated the deer without seeking out thedeer keeper to report its death. Thomas Couchman helped him remove the deer, becausehis father's servant, with some strength of character in view of his subservient position,had refused to do so.163 It might have been this incident that led Sir AlexanderCulpepper and Walter Roberts to obtain free personal pardons from James I dated 27June 1604, exempting them from punishment for this and all previous unlawful hunting,although why James I would have signed the pardons for illegal huntsmen is open tospeculation. Sir Thomas Baker still opened court of Star Chamber proceedings, perhapsthere being a time lapse in the completion of the legal documents conveying the pardon.After his first experience of the court of Star Chamber, Sir Alexander Culpepperdiverted his attention from Sissinghurst(79) park to find a softer target, namelyAshdown Forest in Sussex, where both red and fallow deer roamed. This royal forest ofnearly 14000 acres was difficult to control, especially as the pale was in a very poorstate of repair.164 In November and December 1604 he illegally hunted in the forestaccompanied by two Sussex gentlemen, Thomas Stillion of Mayfield and LewesMonnoxe of Waldron, both likely to be familiar with the neighbourhood as residents ofparishes adjoining the forest. On at least three occasions within a month eight to tenother men accompanied the three gentlemen on hunting sprees in the forest, killing atotal of 14 red and fallow deer.165 This time the attorney general submitted a bill ofcomplaint, but that is the only extant document for the suit.A year later Sir Alexander Culpepper concentrated on hunting in Hamsell(43)park, near Mayfield, entering 'divers and sundry times' in the company of ThomasStillion who, according to Sir Thomas Waller, the owner of the park, 'hath long been agreat and common hunter of deer.'166 Sir Thomas Waller also suspected that the menhad hunted in his home park of Groombridge(40), and took them before the court of163 Manning(1993:185).164 Smith Ellis(1885:16) on 3/3/1605 Thomas Sackville, earl of Dorset, obtained permission to fell timberto repair the pales in order to preserve the game in which the King delighted.165 TNA STAC8/5/13, c.1604.166 TNA STAC8/294/6, 1606.272Star Chamber to urge punishment as a deterrent to 'other evil disposed persons' whowould otherwise be encouraged and emboldened to follow their example. Once againthe defendants remained silent about more serious charges, admitting only to a lesserone. Thomas Stillion said he had only once entered Hamsell(43) park with SirAlexander Culpepper when one of their dogs had caught a fawn which subsequentlyescaped, and claimed that Sir Alexander Culpepper's justification for hunting withoutthe deer keeper's permission had been because 'his father not very long since gave ....many deer for the storing of the said park.'167 This remark reflects Sir AlexanderCulpepper's keen feeling over the loss of deer from Bedgebury(4) park and hisunderlying attitude that he almost had a right to hunt deer not only here, but whereverthey were to be found.Sir Thomas Baker instigated the fourth court of Star Chamber suit after SirAlexander Culpepper reverted his attention to Sissinghurst(79) park, with mattersreaching a climax on the night of 16 November 1605168 This park break differed fromprevious ones in that no attempt was made at stealth, the maximum damage wasinflicted, and buck stalls, or nets to entrap deer, were employed. Thus undertones ofsymbolic, brazen protest were coupled with possibly criminality, although thecirc*mstances triggering this particular incursion are unknown.On the evening in question, Sir Alexander Culpepper met Richard Roberts,gentleman, and local men including eight clothiers, a hatter and a labourer in ThomasLake's alehouse. From this assorted crowd, Sir Thomas Baker singled out a hardcore offive, headed by Sir Alexander Culpepper, as being 'common night walkers, deer stealersand hunters in parks and chases,' with the others aiding and abetting them. Thepresence among the unlawful hunters of a significant number of clothiers, includingmembers of the prominent Courthop, Love and Couchman clothing families, mightmerely reflect the make-up of the local society or the desire to hunt for its own sake; onthe other hand it is possible that the continuing undercurrent of grievances against theBaker family found expression in park breaks, which lesser men were emboldened toundertake with Sir Alexander Culpepper at their head.169 Individuals, normally divided167 TNA STAC8/294/6, 1606.168 TNA STAC8/53/4, 1607.169 Zell(1994:205).273socially and culturally, were prepared to band together for convenience to achieve theirown varied purposes, and conventional barriers were lowered as they drunk 'great andexcessive quantities of beer' until eleven o'clock.170 Whether the fraternity becamecareless through drink, had become overconfident, or planned the raid as overt protestagainst Sir Thomas Baker or his deer keepers, they moved off noisily towards the parkalmost two miles away. Once there with greyhounds, buck stalls and crossbows theykilled two does, and wounded and chased many deer out of the park. The wantonwounding and dispersal of the deer, if not exaggerated by Sir Thomas Baker as astrategy to embellish his case, can be construed as a gesture of protest in that it wasuntypical of the honourable conduct of a hunt.171 Lastly, the use of buck stalls, with thepotential to entrap several deer at a time on a commercial scale, is indicative that someof the huntsmen were motivated by profit rather than sport, although there is noevidence to show whether Sir Alexander Culpepper had become embroiled in this sideof activities.Those loyal to Sir Thomas Baker, not daring to tackle the hunting fraternitydirectly, reported events to him and, using his position as high sheriff of Kent, havingsummoned his servants, he led them to arrest the park breakers in the early hours of 17November 1605. During the search, three of Sir Thomas Baker's servants came acrossSir Alexander Culpepper, Richard Roberts and three others in a wood alongside thepark and in the ensuing struggle the servants were wounded. Two inquisitions wereheld at the Quarter Sessions on 7 December 1605 concerning the unlawful hunting andthe failure of the five men to 'yield their bodies,' before proceedings were initiated in thecourt of Star Chamber.172The clash between the 'patriarchal' culture of Sissinghurst manor, headed by SirThomas Baker, and the culture of the unlawful hunters, meeting and plotting in thealehouse, was very apparent on the night of the 16/17 November 1605.173 There werethose in the community who disapproved of disorder and were prepared to report backto Sir Thomas Baker, even though their attitude might be at odds with their fellowparishioners.170 Reay(1998:218).171 Hindle(2000:82).172 QM/SIq/4/29 & 4/30.173 Thompson(1991:22).274It is difficult to interpret Sir Alexander Culpepper's full role within this diversegroup, but it seems unlikely that he was merely a youthful gentleman hunter indulgingin unlawful hunting just for sport. James I's pardon of June 1604 was dependent ongood behaviour, but Sir Alexander Culpepper continued his unlawful hunting in asheadstrong a manner as before. He might have been driven by the passion to hunt, buthis actions might equally have stemmed from disaffection and protest against authority,or from frustration following the loss of his family's park. His partnership with membersof the local community was mutually beneficial in providing him with ready recruits,while enabling the harassment of the Baker family, so apparent in the later reign ofElizabeth I, to continue.174 Whether Sir Alexander Culpepper himself financiallyprofited from the deer taken remains unproven, but the inclusion of the butcher, thealehouse keeper and the buck stall owners indicates that some, at least, were in aposition to profit from his activities.Although the four suits were never completed in the court of Star Chamber, thethree still pending together with the direct confrontation with Sir Thomas Baker'sservants in the early hours of 17 November 1605 might have been enough to rein in SirAlexander Culpepper, because no records about further disorderly behaviour by himhave been found.C: Case study - Penshurst(71) park in the early 1570sUnique in Kent, because of their completeness, are the papers relating to anarbitration by mutual agreement following numerous incursions into Penshurst(71) parkin the 20 months between January 1572 and September 1573, with violations againstOtford(62) and North Frith(89-91) parks also admitted.175 The De L'Isle and Dudleypapers include the agreement to go to arbitration, 26 examinations (of which two havebeen lost through damage to the document), and the arbiters' final judgement andpenalties. The documents are similar in style to those that would have been preparedfor a court of Star Chamber suit, but no corresponding suit has been found in that court'srecords, so the complaint was entirely settled out of court. From the depositions it ispossible to re-create the dynamic of unlawful behaviour in Penshurst(71) park where174 See Case Study A p.252-258.175 CKS U1475/L17.275more than 30 men were involved, to a greater or lesser extent, and at least 27 deer weretaken.176 The park breaks were condoned by four corrupt under keepers, and beganwith disparate incursions by lesser men, which escalated in scale when gentlemenhunters took over.At Sissinghurst(79) the deer keepers remained loyal, while unrest in thecommunity intruded into the park, but at Penshurst(61) where there is no indication ofpopular unrest, the under keepers succumbed to pressure. Their initial reluctance toenforce order might have been brought about by the wish to remain on good terms withthose outside the pale. Like constables they would lay themselves open to 'scorn,derision and assault' from below if they stood firm, but there was also pressure fromabove to perform their duties diligently.177 These under keepers were torn betweenloyalty towards the owner, care for their animals, and the bribes and threats of thosewishing to take a share of the game. Temptation proved too strong for them.The vulnerability of Penshurst(61) park lay not in the unpopularity of its owner,Sir Henry Sidney, but in his long absences from 1566 to 1571 as deputy in Ireland, andfrom 1571 to 1575 as President of the Council in the Marches of Wales.178 Althoughhis head deer keeper, John Smith, remained loyal, the collusion of four under keepers,his brother, Henry Smith, Edward Cole, John Crippes, and Raffe Terry(26) was patent.The depositions show that they waited until John Smith was off-duty or away, becauseotherwise they 'durst not enter in because Smith the head keeper was then abroad in thepark.'179 However, when he was absent and they were on duty they let in andaccompanied unlawful hunters on numerous occasions.180Three of the under keepers gave no reason for their disloyalty, and no depositionsurvives for the fourth, Edward Cole. At first they appear to have been persuaded to letfriends in as a favour; occasionally they received a share of the venison, but monetaryinducements eventually proved most alluring. When the servant of the lord mayor of176 See Figure 8.2 'Illegal activities in Penshurst park, 1572-1573' p.276; Herrup(1984:829).177 Hindle(2000:183).178 MacCaffrey, Sir Henry Sidney (1529-1586) (http://oxforddnb.com/articles/25/25520).179 CKS U1475/L17, Peter Woodgate's deposition.180 See Figure 8.2 'Illegal activities in Penshurst park, 1572-1573' p.276.276Figure 8.2 - Illegal Activities in Penshurst Park, 1572-1573Compiled from CKS U1475/L17A B C D E F G H I K L M O P Q R S T U V WP.Woodgate #T.Woodgate #Selyard #Baker #Boucher # #Beche #H.Smith > > > > > > > > > >Crippes > > > > >R.Waller # # # # # # # #J.Styler # # # # # # # # # # #N.Styler # # # # # # # # #Browne # # # #Gregory # # # #Bowman # # # # # # #Stace # # # #Bishop # # # # #Hastlin # # #A.Willard # # #E.Willard # # # #Willoughby #Nuteley # #Terry > > > > > >Cole > > > > > >John #Wyman # #Lily #> keepers# hunters277London, John Rivers of Chafford, a neighbour of the Sidneys, received ten shillings forriding to London to deliver his master a poached buck, he gave two shillings to RaffeTerry. Whether the lord mayor knew the deer's provenance remains unanswered. Thehunters paid the under keepers 2s 6d or three shillings as a group for one course withgreyhounds. John Styler, a gentleman from Leigh, involved in the later hunting, enticedHenry Smith and John Crippes with bribes totalling 26s 8d. However, Edward Coleaimed at higher rewards. On two occasions he killed deer himself, and his disposal ofnine deer also leads to the suspicion that he was supplying venison for profit. In thelater phase of unlawful hunting, when gentlemen dominated the activity, inducementsturned to threats as the under keepers were drawn in deeper than they wished, althoughthere were limits to their compliance.Three under keepers 'would not suffer' John Styler and his brother-in-law,Richard Waller, to use deer stalls or nets to catch prey in September 1573, so there wasno hunting that day. However, under keeper, Edward Cole, allegedly would not havebeen so scrupulous, because John Styler said his group would return when he was incharge.181 Another refusal came when John Styler pressed Henry Smith over a tame reddeer kept in the field of oats in the park, which Henry Smith 'would not for twentynobles consent to the killing or spoiling of the same deer.'182 However, in the absenceof under keepers, John Styler ordered his servant to kill the deer with a crossbow.Unlawful hunting began early in 1572 when a group of three clothiers fromChiddingstone and, later, a group of five labourers from Hadlow entered the park atnight with dogs borrowed for coursing. Each group brought down a fawn, which wasshared between members of the group and the under keepers present.After this modest beginning, unlawful hunting escalated when gentlemen,namely Richard Waller and his brother-in-law, John Styler, both of Leigh, the parishadjacent to Penshurst, became involved. With their inclusion the pressure, intensity andnumber of park breaks increased. John Styler listed 18 men who had occasionallyjoined their party, the group usually consisting of four to six at any given time. Three ofthe Hadlow men involved in the initial low-key coursing sometimes came, as did four of181 CKS U1475/L17, Henry Smith's deposition.182 Ibid; noble = coin first issued 1351, worth half a mark or 6s 8d.278John Styler's and Richard Waller's servants, and, occasionally, two of Sir WalterWaller's servants from Groombridge Place, maybe indicating kinship between theWallers of Leigh and of Groombridge. Thus, the hunters, ranging from gentlemen andneighbours of Sir Henry Sidney, through yeomen, clothiers, carpenter, husbandmen andservants, represented a broad spectrum of society forming a remarkable network, evenon an ad hoc basis.Suitable weather conditions, phases of the moon, the absence of the head deerkeeper, and the availability of the corrupt under keepers were among the factorsaffecting the timing of park violations, but there were preordained meeting places whereindividuals assembled either to await the under keeper or, having gathered, to maketheir way to the park pale to be met there. As has been seen with the refusal of the useof deer nets, the under keepers exercised some restraint including the number and timeof year the deer were killed. As John Styler(11) testified they 'never had above one deerat a time and sometimes went without any deer, but 'the several times certain he can notcall to memory.'183 Additionally, no doe or buck was taken out of their particularseason.184 Of the 27 deer killed, ten were taken at night, one in the morning, while notime was given for the rest. The crossbow was the weapon of choice, bringing downnine deer, either after stalking on foot or on horseback. Otherwise, hunting withgreyhounds, even at night, was enjoyed on at least seven occasions.John Styler sometimes enjoyed hunting for sport, but he also seems to have beenprofit-orientated. His desire to use deer nets to catch a greater number of deer and hisorder to kill the tame red deer were not the acts of a gentleman covert hunter. Thekilling of the tame red deer was pre-planned, because its carcass was quickly disposedof, one half being taken to Sir Walter Waller's house at Groombridge, and the other toMr. Peckham's house at Yaldham, both some distance away. John Styler admitted toentering the park about a dozen times, and he and Richard Waller took 14 deer back totheir homes to cut up and distribute, far more venison than they could possibly haveimmediately consumed. They might have been supplying the black market, although it183 CKS U1475/L17, John Styler's deposition.184 See Chapter Three p.88 for seasons; 8 teg = female deer in 2nd year, 5 fawn, 5 buck, 2 pricket = maledeer in 2nd year, 2 female pricket, 2 sore = buck in 4th year, 2 doe and 1 tame red deer.279is possible that they bestowed largesse venison upon family and friends at the expenseof Sir Henry Sidney.It is unclear how the spate of unlawful hunts came to light, but Henry Smithconfessed that his brother, John Smith, the head deer keeper, had become suspiciousabout his frequent hanging around the park in early September 1573, and after that hehad tried to withhold further cooperation with the park breakers. The under keepersfeared that, with hunting out of control, the depleted herd would be noticed, especiallywhen the inspection of the deer was due later in the month. They were proved correctbecause during the view of the deer, a dead buck was found with crossbow arrow in itshaunch. Perhaps members of staff were then questioned and Henry Smith in particularconfessed. His deposition is the fullest and most contrite about his role in the unlawfulentries and how it affected his relationship with his brother.The settlement process followed with impressive speed. Raffe Bosville andThomas Lovelace, justices of the peace, examined 26 deponents on 28 February, 1 and2 March 1574. On 6 March the unlawful huntsmen agreed to abide by independentarbitration, and the arbitration award itself was drawn up on 20 March - so within amonth the whole affair was settled, in contrast to the long-drawn out and expensiveprocess of taking it to the court of Star Chamber or prosecuting through the countycourts.185John Styler(11) was fined £50, as a procurer of others, and Richard Waller £40to recompense Sir Henry Sidney for the loss of deer and damage to his park. They werealso required to seal and deliver a bounden condition with £40 before 1 May 1574 thatthey would not:-hunt, course, hawk, fish or fowl or by any other means willingly destroy, kill anydeer, conies or take any partridges, pheasants, fish or fowl in any park, grounds,waters or ponds of Sir Henry, forests, parks, chases, waters and groundswhatsoever or in same of Thomas Willoughby without licence or lawful authority.186The remaining culprits, except Thomas Woodgate, Kellame Willoughby and the corruptunder keeper Edward Cole, were fined lesser amounts balancing their ability to pay withthe number and nature of the offences. The under keepers, Henry Smith, John Crippes185 CKS U1475/E31; CKS U1475/E42/1.186 Perhaps to prevent reprisals against Thomas Willoughby's deer park at Bore Place(9).280and Raffe Terry and ten others had to pay between £5 and £6 each. Five were givenfines of between £3 and £4, while two of the initial hunters, who were labourers, paid40 shillings each for trespass. A total of 20 marks from these individuals had to be paidby 1 May along with similar signed condition as required from the gentlemen.187Raffe Terry had already left the employ of the Sidney family when the unlawfulhunting was discovered and was working in Sussex, but in later years other members ofthe Terry family were trusted by the Sidney family to act as deer keepers, so RaffeTerry's lapses were not held against them. What happened to John Crippes and HenrySmith has not been recorded, but perhaps Henry Smith from Penshurst(71) park waslater the deer keeper at Knole(50) park, who on 13 August 1589 was accidentally killedby fellow deer keeper and possible kinsman, Edmund Smith, when, in the dark, eachmistook the other as unlawful hunters.188 No deposition survives for Edward Cole, whohad handled more deer than any of the others, but it might have been one of the twomissing. His omission from the award would lead to the conclusion that he hadabsconded and or was dead, but in view of his conduct the former seems more likely.The weakness of these under keepers had led to uncontrollable and unsustainableunlawful hunting and deer taking, but in the end, with the view of the deer, the loss ofdeer was discovered.(c) High profile, brazen park violationsHigh profile park breaks display different characteristics from the other strands.Manning has termed them 'theatrical poaching' which might include ambush betweenfeuding parties, blatant raids at night (though sometimes in disguise to preventidentification), parading in military style, and vaunting and boasting publicly aboutexploits afterwards.189 Some raids into parks were of a vindictive nature during whichdeer were killed not just for sport or venison, but in such numbers and with suchdisturbance as to wreak havoc on the herd, as the attorney general, Sir Francis Bacon,observed in 1615.190 As with covert hunting by gentlemen, but more common in thisstrand, sworn secrecy between members of the hunt meant that when participants werequestioned during court proceedings, they either refused to answer, demurred or denied187 Mark = weight of gold, usually eight ounces.188 co*ckburn(1995:299) AC35/32/4/1806, 13/8/1589; see p.263.189 Manning(1993:47).190 Ibid. p.210, referring to Calendar of State Papers Spanish, 1568-1579, pp.179-180.281whatever accusations were made against them.191 Manning sees this type of illegalhunting as a symbolic substitute for war, during relative peaceful times within thecountry.192 Beaver has also researched this type of park violation and takes an evenbroader cultural approach by asserting that the pervading lure of the hunt, legal andillegal, lay in the power of its ritualised killing to constitute gentility and honour.193Thus headstrong well-to-do individuals would defy the restrictions on hunting inforests, chases and parks in order to demonstrate their gentility and as marked protestagainst exclusion from the restricted circle of park owners and those with the legal rightto hunt.Sustained 'theatrical poaching' has not been found in Kent where there were noviolent aristocratic feuds or vast areas of forest and chase in which user rights weredisputed, both prerequisites for the very dramatic and sustained 'theatrical poaching'which Beaver and Manning have vividly portrayed.194 However, there were five parkviolations in Kent which illustrate some of the characteristics identified by Manning,and which were apparently triggered by a particular grievance within a local context,although sparse documentation means that the cause is not easily, if at all, identified.195The language in the documents submitted to the court of Star Chamber for these suitsdiffers from those related in the covert hunting by day or by night in that it containswords such as 'havoc', 'spite and malice' and 'spoil' to convey unnecessary wanton deathand wounding of deer and deliberate damage to the park structures; and words such as'vaunting', 'boasting' or 'scoffing' to show that the misdemeanours were openlydiscussed after the event.A mass daylight protest in Canterbury(18) park in May 1609 differed from theother four examples in this strand of park violation in that it was not gentlemen-led,which suggests a different dynamic. It might well be that in this case Canterbury(18)park became a convenient focus for the venting of other grievances, rather than risingfrom resentment specific to the park. This is indicated by the crowd gathering within191 Manning(1993:184).192 Ibid. p.39, citing W. Burkert, hom*o Necans: The anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual andMyth trans. P Bing (California, 1983) p.47.193 Beaver(2008:10-11).194 Beaver(2008) Stowe, Waltham forest, Windsor forest, Course Lawn chase; Manning(1993:136-142)Berkeley v. Dudley.195 Manning(1988:310).282the city of Canterbury itself 'under color of playeing at footeball or other such unlawfullgame or exercise', before being led en masse by a brewer to Canterbury(18) park.196Once at the park the populace indulged in a destructive frenzy against pale and deer,which they did 'very much disquiet.'197 The bill of complaint submitted by the attorneygeneral on behalf of the crown, which no longer owned the park, suggests that therewere wider implications to this disorder than have yet come to light.198At East Wickham(29) and Cooling(24) parks, hunters openly boasting andglorifying park breaks of a vindictive nature point towards these incursions being highprofile. As sworn secrecy prevailed among the hunters the grievances being airedcannot be reconstructed. The incidents in both parks are poorly documented with onlythe bills of complaint and demurrers for court of Star Chamber suits being found, so itwould appear that proceedings foundered.East Wickham(29), near the royal parks at Eltham(31-33) was newly imparkedby the Leigh family in 1610, so anti-enclosure protest cannot be ruled out, but apersonal dispute between park owner, Sir Francis Leigh, and the two gentlemenunlawful hunters seems more likely. Trouble occurred in the summer of 1615 when twogentlemen, Francis Goodyer of Newgate Street, Hertford, and Lambert Cook of NorthCray, a settlement not far from East Wickham, with others unlawfully hunted and killeddeer in the park, and afterwards 'vaunted and boasted of their own misdemeanoursaforesaid and glorying in their unlawful and riotous courses in the presence of crediblepersons.'199 Then on 3 August 1615 the same two gentlemen hunted and killed anunusual 'fair large bald and crop eared buck of especial note', reserved for James I tohunt, and afterwards confronted Sir Francis Leigh and 'did many times in scorningmanner scoff at your said subject for the loss of the said bald buck.'200 Bearing in mindthe caveats about exaggeration in plaintiffs' petitions, Sir Francis Leigh had reason tobelieve the killing of the special buck to be a deliberate insult not only to himself, butalso to the king, and it seems that targeting the buck might well have been a symbolicact of defiance.196 TNA STAC8/16/2, 1609.197 TNA STAC8/16/2, 1609; see also p.65.198 Barnes(1978:9) between 1596-1641 only 52 out of 600 cases initiated by the attorney-general in thecourt of Star Chamber were definitely 'pro Rege', in furtherance of the greater interests of the crown.199 TNA STAC8/198/18, 1617.200 Ibid.283At Cooling(24) park, again no obvious reason for the protest can be surmised,but men, of unknown status, in February 1615 'out of spite and malice' brought in twogreyhounds to hunt deer.201 This was the time of year when deer's stamina was low andthe shock and general disturbance 'made havoc' of the herd, with deer 'spoiled destroyedand many killed and dead.' There was no attempt to avoid detection because trackswere obvious in the heavy snowfall, and, with the venison secured, it was not eaten inprivate, but in company with hearty enjoyment and relish at home or in alehouses, innsand other places, 'among their friends, associates and consorts braving and rejoicingthereat and greatly vaunting of their stolen venison.'202The military style parade was the distinguishing feature of the violation ofShurland(78) park in 1605.203 This court of Star Chamber case is better documentedthan the previous three suits in this strand, and, reading between the lines, the unlawfulentries into the park arose out of a change of ownership and land management, whichdid not suit the protesters.Prior to 1605, the royal park at Shurland(78) had been tenanted by Sir EdwardHoby, who put in sub-tenants, including Walter Tailor, gentleman, to farm the parkwhich probably contained few or no deer at the time.204 Sir Edward Hoby's tenancy wasterminated when James I came to the throne because he was £500 in arrears of rent, asone who, though 'blessed with wealth, had little acumen to preserve it.' 205 James I then,on 1 February 1605, transferred ownership from the crown to his early favourite, PhilipHerbert, earl of Montgomery, who, although only 20, had caught his eye because his'chiefe delight was in hunting and hawking, both of which he had the greatest perfectionof any peer in the realm.'206201 TNA STAC8/23/11, 1620.202 Ibid.203 TNA STAC8/183/34, 1605.204 TNA E178/3925, January 1605, 300 acres of Shurland park were valued at 8 shillings an acrecompared with valuations elsewhere on Sheppey of between 4s 6d to 8s 6d for arable and pasture land,and 8s 6d to 9s for marshland. Although the type of land use is not specified in the park, its highvaluation indicates that it was being farmed.205 Knafla, Edward Hoby(1560-1617)(http://www.oxforddnb.com/articles13/13410) who wrongly locatesShurland as being in Derbyshire; Cave-Browne (1898:92).206 Smith, Philip Herbert (1584-1650)(http://www.oxforddnb.com/articles13/13042) citing John Aubrey,Brief Lives, p.304.284The new royal tenant was keen to create a hunting ground well stocked withdeer and game extending over both the park and the demesne not only for himself, butalso for the king and his guests to enjoy.207 The reversion of farmland to parkland upsetlocal people and trouble flared up within a fortnight of James I's grant to the earl.In order to reinstate the deer park, the earl of Montgomery had terminated the subtenancies, no doubt resulting in their financial loss, and he inconvenienced others byrestricting access across the park, which William Auger, for example, had used 'diverstimes alone and sometimes in the corporation of others' to reach his business.208According to the bill of complaint, those most closely affected by the change ofmanagement orchestrated the protest under the leadership of Walter Tailor. Althoughthe bill of complaint might well have exaggerated the outrages, it is significant that thewording was implicit of protest in contrast to the bills of complaint for Sir AlexanderCulpepper, for example. It was alleged that several men had removed part of the palingaround the park and in the demesne, and had hunted over the land. Finally, on 11September 1605 about ten men armed and arrayed 'marched up and down the said parkuntil they found the whole herd of deer.' They then let loose their dogs and killedseveral deer and 'having taken their full pleasure' marched from the park into thedemesne land nearby where they killed a mature buck and other deer as well as takingpheasants and partridges.209 Sir Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, took the matter tothe court of Star Chamber where the answers of the defendants displayed a widediscrepancy between allegation and counterclaim usual in such a suit. The accusedclaimed that, while Sir Edward Hoby was the crown tenant, they had been contracted toremove 20 rods of old paling lying in the middle of the park.210 They all deniedhunting, and no further documents were submitted to the court of Star Chamber, so thesuit might well have been dropped.It was easier to gain access to parks, however well paled or guarded, than anyother asset belonging to an aristocrat, knight or gentleman, and so they were vulnerableto attacks which challenged park owners' power and prestige. Given the high status of207 TNA STAC8/183/34, 1605, bill of complaint.208 TNA STAC8/183/34, Auger's answers; CPR 1/7/1580, p.180 no.1457, perhaps the William Auger,who in 1580 had been granted a 21-year lease by Elizabeth I to convert part of Shurland house into rentedlodgings for local armed men to defend the Isle of Sheppey.209 TNA STAC8/183/34, 1605, bill of complaint.210 TNA STAC8/183/34, 1605, answers of Smith, Old, Griffin and Auger.285parks, brazen park incursions were potent symbols of protest, which undermined thehonour of park owners. Although these examples of high profile hunting, together withthat which occurred in Penshurst(71) highlighted in case study D, were limited in scopeand duration, they threatened the status of the park owners, who acted speedily againstthe perpetrators.D: Case study – Penshurst(71) park, May 1600At Penshurst(71) park during the nights of 13/14 and 17/18 May 1600, inWhitsun week, two intimidatory park breaks exhibited malicious and symboliccharacteristics which set them apart from other instances of park violations. The parkbreaks were planned publicly to humiliate the owner of the park, Sir Robert Sidney, andhis deer keeper, Walter Double, apparently in retaliation for the dismissal of RichardPolhill from his post as deer keeper of the park, after which threats had been made 'thatneither Double nor John Terry nor any other should keep the same park in quiet untilRichard Polhill was placed there again.'211Events were as follows. On the night of Tuesday 13 May a group of 16 or moremen forced their way into Penshurst(71) park, where they hunted a doe. When thisescaped from the park they pursued it down a lane and, having killed it, struck off itshead and put it on a pole on Ensfield Bridge, south of Leigh, smearing its blood aroundas they went. This valuable beast was deliberately wasted as a mark of contempt to itsowner. Manning and Beaver stress the potent symbolism attached to the slaughter ofdeer with the daubing of the hunters with its blood in the 'blooding' ceremony asritualised conveying of honour, especially when performed by the monarch.212 Theritualised symbolic insults at Penshurst showed disdain and lack of respect at theconventions of the hunt, with blood being smeared on inanimate objects, and the doe'shead placed on a prominent landmark for passers by to see. Thompson associated the'growing' symbolism of blood with revolt in the nineteenth century, but this Penshurstexample would give it a much longer history.213211 TNA STAC5/S74/15, Wilkins deposition; CKS U1475/L18/17, Wilkins interrogatories.212 See Chapter Seven p.189; Beaver(2008:12); Manning(1993:40-41) cites earlier examples from 1273and 1531.213 Thompson(1971:135).286On the night of Saturday 17 May the unlawful hunters entered the park again,this time to be waylaid by the park keeper, Walter Double, and requested to leave. Hiscourageous approach, when he was alone and vastly outnumbered, illustrates the loyaltyof some deer keepers in the face of heavy odds. The unlawful hunters' response was tograb him, bind him hand and foot, and muffle him with his own cloak. He was guarded'until the rest had taken their pleasure,' boasting on their return that they had killed fivedeer - a buck, a pollard sore, a pricket and two does carrying fawns.214 The hunterswere particularly vindictive because in May does were heavily pregnant and likely toabort their fawns in the general alarm and fright. To inflict maximum loss the intruderswent on to drive deer out of the park through a gate, which they had forced open, andthrough gaps they had made in the paling. There was no element of sportsmanship inthe trespassers' actions, rather they were attempting to threaten the viability of the parkby wreaking maximum damage on the deer herd and the park boundary.At the departure of the unlawful hunters, Walter Double, was singled out forespecially humiliating treatment, which was unusual and underlines the shamingelement of the protest action.215 With hands bound and cloak over his head, he wasplaced behind one rider, who rode three miles to Southborough, west of TunbridgeWells, where he was pinned into the stocks for the rest of the night until kindly peoplereleased him.216 The use of the stocks, an official instrument of punishment, adds to thesymbolism of this park incursion, and might represent punishment for Walter Doublehimself, or a further gesture of calculated contempt and defiance at Sir Robert Sidney'sauthority. In the absence of evidence about whether Walter Double played any part inRichard Polhill's dismissal only conjecture remains.Although Sir Robert Sidney was abroad, those acting on his behalf movedswiftly against the unlawful hunters. On Monday 19 May 1600, as soon as WalterDouble had recovered, he bravely rode to confront the suspects at their base atBayhall, one mile south of Pembury, but discovered nothing. However, some ofthe culprits must have been identified and the following day four of them,including Richard Polhill, were examined.214 Pollard soar = male fallow deer in its 4th year, with antlers removed, pricket = male fallow deer in its2nd year.215 Amussen(1995:9).216 See Map 8.1 'Locations featured in the Penshurst park violations, 1600', p.289.287On 24 May Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sidney about 'thebarbarous courses of some in your park at Penshurst at a time so unfit to hunt andkill deer,' and just over a fortnight later he reported that 'some of the outragers inthe Park began to be sorry, seeing it is made a Star Chamber matter.' 217 Here he istacitly acknowledging that the prompt decision to take the matter to the court ofStar Chamber would have raised the stakes of the conflict by propelling it fromthe local into the national arena.218The owner of Bayhall was William Wybarne and his large house was theassembly point of the park incursions, ten of the 16 named 'disordered and evildisposed persons' being there during that Whitsun week.219 Mrs Thomas Chowne,the only independent witness, saw four or more of the suspects leave at 11 o'clockon Saturday night of 17 May with three greyhounds, and testified that they rodeaway for about three hours. Crucially, earlier in the day she had seen ThomasMyles, former servant of Richard Polhill, arrive to have quiet words with JohnWaller of Speldhurst, 'whom she supposeth then to set the match to hunt SirRobert Sidney's ground.'220 Edward Gyles, a former servant of William Wybarne,disappeared shortly after Sunday 18 May and the interrogatories contain severalquestions about his whereabouts. 221 Either he played a key role in events or bothsides saw him as a weak deponent, who might have broken down underquestioning.Evidence of the disturbances at Penhurst(71) park occurs in the De L'Isle andDudley papers as well as in the records of the court of Star Chamber.222 However,tantalisingly, there are significant gaps. There are no examinations of some keyparticipants and there is no indication of judgement or whether the process was evercompleted. The probability is that it was not, because delaying tactics were used in the217 Kingsford & Shaw (1934:463-464) letter of 24/5/1600; ibid. p.467, letter of 7/6/1600.218 Hindle(2000:95); Kingsford & Shaw(1934:467).219 Kingsford & Shaw(1934:467).220 CKS U1475/L18/11, information of Mrs Chowne.221 CKS U1475/L18/3, Tichborne and Godfrey; CKS U1475/L18/14, Threale and Waller.222 CKS U1475/L18/1-17: U1475 E42/2; STAC5/S2/20, 1600-1601; STAC5/S21/31, 1600-1601(duplicates U1475/L18/2); STAC5/S41/5, 1600-1601(duplicates U1475/L18/13); STAC5/S68/33, 1600-1601; STAC5/S74/15, 1600-1601 (duplicates U1475/L18/17). Nearly every procedure is represented inthese documents.288form of the reluctance of the defendants to appear before the court, with an 18 monthperiod from the date of the first examinations on 20 May 1600 to the last set of answerson 2 November 1601.223 Other obstacles to advancing the suit were the disappearance ofa key potential deponent and the conspiracy of silence among the remaining defendants.At least five park violators were gentlemen, living locally or travelling to thearea from London, Surrey, Sussex and north Kent.224 Two men named John Wallertook part - John Waller, gentleman of Speldhurst, and John Waller, keeper of Northpark, Godstone, Surrey. Waller was a common surname, but it may be no coincidencethat men of that surname were implicated in the Penshurst(71) park breaks of 1572 and1573 featured in case study C. Another gentleman participant was George Wilkins,from Stoke in the Isle of Grain, suspected of carrying Walter Double behind him onhorseback to the stocks.225 These gentlemen and other men questioned categoricallydenied ever being in Penshurst(71) park. The lone eyewitness, Walter Double, was thuspitted against several gentlemen, and although willing to identify whom he could, hewas given leave of absence from Sir Robert Sidney's service to recuperate. Indeedduring his ordeal the intruders had beaten him 'without any pity or remorse of mind' andthreatened to kill him unless he swore not to report the outrages then committed or later'offer to resist them or any of their complices and adherents at any other times theyshould happen to resort to the said enclosed ground and hunt.'226The most plausible explanation for the violent and symbolic reaction to RichardPolhill's dismissal would be that he was a corrupt keeper at Penshurst(61) park, who hadaccommodated these men's desire for unlawful hunting, which was now being deniedthem. By choosing May for the protest, the unlawful hunters were deliberately floutingthe rules of hunting, which desisted from disturbing fawn-bearing does, yet during bothincursions does were killed. The two incursions occurred after dark, with no attempt atconcealment, but beyond that each displayed different characteristics of high profile,brazen hunting. The decapitation of the deer, putting its head on public display and thecareless daubing of its blood were, as Beaver put it, instances where 'the superficially223 CKS U1475/L18/5 lists 14 men who had not cooperated with the processes of the court of StarChamber.224 Threale, Tichborne, Tyrrell, Waller, Wilkins, Wybarne; see Map 8.1 p.287.225 CKS U1475/L18/17, TNA STAC5/S74/15, Wilkins interrogatories.226 CKS U1475/L18/2, bill of complaint.289290eccentric often conceals the deeper pattern of culture,' in this case pouring scorn on theestablished order of society, conveying contempt for the norms of gentility and disdainfor the Sidney family.227 During the second park break deer were killed or woundedwithout dispatch, another way in which rules of the hunt were ignored. Other deer weredriven out of the park in a concerted effort drastically to deplete the herd. Finally, thehumiliating treatment meted out to the deer keeper can also be seen as a direct affront tohis employer. The insults to the honour of Sir Robert Sidney were so numerous andsevere that it is little wonder that such speedy action was taken to refer the matter to thecourt of Star Chamber.(d) Poaching with a commercial or criminal elementAs with low-key illegal poaching, individuals or gangs of poachers in Kent arenot well represented in documentary evidence, but possible commercial activity hasbeen mooted in the previous strands, especially centred round vulnerable parks, as withclothier Peter Maye's dealings with deerskins in case study A and under keeper EdwardCole's and gentleman John Styler's disposal of venison in case study C.Just as Kentish men, like Sir Alexander Culpepper, Thomas Petley and JohnFosten, could easily enter Sussex for unlawful hunting and deer stealing, so outsiderscould enter into Kent with the view to raid parks there. In October 1609 BartholomewPysley and Robert Walker, in their thirties and originally from Oxfordshire, werearrested on suspicion of horse theft in Westerham, and found to be carrying usefulpoaching equipment - a crossbow with four forked arrows, a bolt, a fowling piece, aniron gauntlet, and two masks, 'one barefaced, the other of cloth with a great beard.'228Bartholomew Pysley had the means and the knowledge to be a poacher since he was aformer deer keeper in parks such as the royal parks at Windsor and Hampton Court.However, the strongest evidence of commercial poaching in this section relatesto the activities of two Kentish men targeting local parks - John Hayes, yeoman ofCobham, and Humfrey Latter, a husbandman in his employ. Their violations inCobham(23), Birling(6) and Canterbury(18) parks were complex covering several yearsfrom the mid 1590s to 1602, but reconstruction is possible because Sir John Leveson's227 Beaver(2008:ix).228 Melling(1969:48-50).291initial examinations survive among the Sutherland family papers, and there is additionalmaterial related to the offenders to be found in formal court records.229E: Case study – Humfrey Latter from the mid 1590s to early 1600sHumfrey Latter began poaching conies before he met John Hayes, but the keyelement to the crime wave was the association of Humfrey Latter with John Hayes atsome stage during the mid 1590s, when they combined forces, killing both conies anddeer.The criminality of the Cobham poachers lay in their motivation for financialgain, their mode of hunting for supplying others rather than for the personal thrill andenjoyment, and their organised, fairly sophisticated distribution network. It is alsonoteworthy that no gentlemen took part in this illegal hunting and that poachingrepresented a part rather than the whole of their general criminality.230 John Hayes andHumfrey Latter with others also carried out a spate of burglaries for which they wereeventually indicted, although they had first been questioned about park violations beforethey mentioned the burglaries.231 John Hayes' comment to Humfrey Latter 'why shouldone lack money when another hath plenty' reflected a general dissatisfaction withinequalities of wealth and the feeling that any means to redress the balance in theirfavour were acceptable.232The poaching forays went smoothly until a couple of close encounters with parkkeepers led them both to give up poaching for a time. In about 1596, after HumfreyLatter had entered John Hayes' service, John Hayes was badly shaken after beingspotted with Humfrey Latter and a companion pitching a net for conies in Cobham(23)park. He and the unnamed companion fled, while Humfrey Latter had the presence ofmind to grab the dead conies and net before outrunning his pursuers. Perhaps withmore to lose, John Hayes 'declared that he would not have been caught for fortypounds', but the more hardened Humfrey Latter considered the other two to be229 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1 - I am grateful to Dr. Stephen Hipkin for drawing my attention to thismaterial; CKS QM/SI/1598/2/11; QM/SI/1598/2/9; co*ckburn(1995:496) AC35/45/4/3019, February1603.230 Hipkin(2003:45-58).231 co*ckburn(1995:496) AC35/45/4/3019, February 1603.232 Hipkin(2003:55).292'cowardly fellows'.233What seems to have made Humfrey Latter himself more cautiouswas a confrontation with five keepers in Birling(6) park in 1597 when his four unnamedcompanions had to abandon two deer when the keepers 'set upon them', one shooting acrossbow arrow at them.'234 At this Humfrey Latter seems to have stopped enteringBirling(6) park.Late in 1599, John Hayes and Humfrey Latter must have decided that burglarymight bring better returns. They executed or aborted several burglaries, some of whichwere planned by John Hayes following tip-offs from Humfrey Latter, but they stoppedwhen a victim recognised one of the burglars.235 It was after this scare in the autumn of1600 that John Hayes and Humfrey Latter reverted to poaching, during which timeHumfrey Latter, as John Hayes' husbandman, was living with him at a house called Plattoverlooking Cobham(23) park.Several factors made Cobham(23) park more vulnerable to intrusion by poachersat the turn of the seventeenth century. The presence of two inveterate miscreants witheasy access to the park through a gate in the pale 'against the house' would have madethe work of the deer keepers more difficult.236 John Hayes also used the excuse thatdeer had strayed onto his land where it was more acceptable to take action against themfor damaging crops.237 In addition, poaching was more tempting and less risky becauseof the capitulation of Lord Cobham's keepers, Edmund Weekes at Cobham(23) parkand William Jeggers at Canterbury(18) park, to both threats and bribes. DuringHumfrey Latter's earlier cony poaching in the late 1590s Edmund Weekes' son hadreported his suspicion about him to Sir John Leveson, but no charge ensued perhapsbecause Humfrey Latter boasted that he knew how he could get even with EdmundWeekes.238Within a couple of years in the summer of 1601 Edmund Weekes was definitelyunder the influence of Humfrey Latter, and after a bribe of two angels, allowed JohnHeath, an innkeeper from Maidstone, and John Ellis, his brother-in-law from233 CKS QM/SB/1598/252, 1/5/1598, information of Alice and Margaret Bogas.234 Ibid, information of Richard Bogas.235 CKS QM/SB/1598/252; Hipkin(2003:51).236 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 3/1/1603, Latter.237 Ibid. 16/12/1602, Latter.238 CKS QM/SB/1598/252, information of Richard Bogas..293Canterbury, to course at ten o'clock at night in Cobham(23) park when they killed threedeer. These two also took part in a coursing expedition into Canterbury(18) park withthe Canterbury deer keeper's connivance.239 Lastly, the corruptibility of the keepersseems to have coincided with the succession of Sir Henry Brooke, lord Cobham, in1597, for whom there was little respect locally. Even before the discovery of the Byeplot which led to the downfall of the new Lord Cobham, John Hayes was heard to saythat he was 'horny headed and shallow brained ... and would not keep his word, hisfather being very constant therein.'240 It is possible that the new owner of Cobham wasmore lax in the management of his estates at Cobham, and deer keepers and poachersalike took full advantage of this. Certainly, the domestic state papers abound in letterswritten by R. Williams to Lord Cobham about the mismanagement of his more distantland holdings.241The mode of hunting adopted by John Hayes and Humfrey Latter had nosportsmanship about it. Whereas the use of the deer net was usually frowned upon bygentlemen hunters, except those, like John Styler in case study C who were bent onprofit, Humfrey Latter had no qualms about using one to catch deer.242 He and fourothers caught deer this way on at least six occasions in Birling(6) park, before theconfrontation with the five keepers, yet despite being shot at they chose to abandon thedeer in favour of recovering the net, which would have enabled them to go on poaching.In the second phase of poaching in Cobham(23) about six deer were shot with crossbowarrow or gunshot by Humfrey Latter using weapons provided by John Hayes. Whilegentlemen huntsmen regularly used crossbows, guns were not their choice of dispatch.The crossbow was a silent weapon suitable for stalking and stealth, but the explosivegunshot noise might have led to detection. Either John Hayes' house was very remotefrom habitation or the men had little to fear from the deer keepers. Often the excusewas made that the deer had wandered onto John Hayes' land eating oats, wheat or beansgrowing there, but more often than not Humfrey Latter would take aim over the pale atdeer in the park.239 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 1/9/1602, Latter; ibid. 1/9/1602, Weekes; angel = equivalent to a noble or 6s8d.240 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 3/1/1603, Latter.241 Everett Green 5 (1967:511-515) CCLXXVI nos.36-51.242 See Case Study C p.274-280.294Typically, John Hayes incited a willing Humfrey Latter to kill the deer byhanding him a fowling piece and bullets because he did not want to be 'acquaintedtherewith.' However, once he took Humfrey Latter away from reaping to fetch a gunhidden in the cart house to use to shoot at the deer, which John Hayes drove his way.On most occasions both men carried deer away to John Hayes' barn to cut up. One doekilled by gunshot was carried across fields rather than along the lane where they mightbe seen and cut up on a Sunday while others were attending church. Of the deer JohnHayes and Humfrey Latter confessed to have killed, the Hayes' household withHumfrey Latter partaking consumed one, one was killed as a gift for John Hayes'lawyer, but the others were unaccounted for so were likely to have been distributed onthe black market.A coursing expedition to Canterbury park was an unusual venture for HumfreyLatter, who acted as a facilitator rather than a participant seemingly because he knewthe keepers and the Maidstone men, who wished to course their dogs to enjoy the sportusually confined to gentlemen. Humfrey Latter might have made contacts in Maidstonefrom the 1590s when he sold stolen conies in the market.243 John Heath of 'The StarInn' and Thomas Sadgin, who kept a fulling mill, both from Maidstone, led the party,staying at Canterbury with Ingram Ellis, John Heath's father-in-law, soon afterChristmas 1601. 'Old' William Jeggers, the deer keeper, was invited to sup in the Ellishousehold where 'after a sort deny, but after a while he consented' to give them a coursein the park.'244 The party joined by others went to the park with their dogs at about nineo'clock at night, meeting Humfrey Latter at 'The Three Kings' on the way.245 Both 'Old'and 'Young' William Jeggers supervised two courses, but after a couple of hours thedogs ran off and the deer keeper was so drunk that he lost his cloak. Humfrey Latter,who had stayed in the inn, was asked to retrieve the greyhounds and found that they hadkilled a fawn and a doe, which he reported to the deer keeper before returning the dogsto John Heath, receiving three shillings reward for his trouble.246 According to JohnHeath rather than pay money to William Jeggers, he sent him enough broadcloth tomake a pair of hose.247243 CKS QM/SB/1598/252.244 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 3/9/1602, Heath.245 Ibid. 16/8/1602, Latter; ibid. 22/12/1602, Keneston.246 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 16/8/1602, Latter.247 Ibid. 3/9/1602, Heath.295Although in the second phase of poaching John Hayes and Humfrey Latter actedtogether as a team without involving others, disposing of a deer carcass commerciallyposed problems when it was not customary to sell it before 1603 and positively illegalthereafter.248 A fair degree of organisation and pre-planning was necessary to avoidcarcasses being discovered in the possession of poachers and the Cobham network hadat least two butchers and possibly more than one innkeeper strategically placed fromMaidstone to Gravesend.William Nash, a Maidstone butcher, took venison that had come fromCobham(23) park - one side of which was sent to the mayor of Tenterden, although thebutcher claimed that this had come from a London supplier.249 Bartholomew Harding, abutcher from Cobham, was implicated with John Hayes in stealing a steer belonging toRobert Young, butchering it and carrying the meat off to market the next morning, andwas indicted, although found not guilty, for stealing two cows in Charlton on 22November 1601.250 With this record he might not have been averse to handlingvenison. Apart from John Heath's 'Star Inn' in Maidstone there is also a distinctpossibility that there were outlets to be had in the inns of John Hayes' brother, RobertHayes, who owned 'The Ship' and 'The Saracen's Head' at Milton-next-Gravesend and'The Rose' in Gravesend itself.251Humfrey Latter and John Hayes sometimes knew potential recipients inadvance. On one occasion Humfrey Latter was sent to Maidstone to tell inn keeperJohn Heath that a deer was ready for him in Cobham(23) park. John Heath sent hisservant with Humfrey Latter to fetch it, but the deer keeper had come across the deadanimal first.252 William Jeggers, keeper of Canterbury(18) park, regularly killed toorder as testified by Humfrey Latter, who kept in touch and even ran errands for him inthe months following the coursing expedition. Robert Austen of Littlebourne who hadreceived ten bucks during the summer and three does between Christmas and Shrovetide, handed over ten shillings to Humfrey Latter for the keeper. The deer keeper had248 1 James I, c.27, see page 246.249 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 5/9/1602, Nash.250 Ibid. 22/12/1602, Keneston; co*ckburn(1995:481) AC35/55/5/2933 m.21, February, 1602.251 TNA PCC prob/11/159, 1630, Robert Hayes' will listed these properties; Manning(1993:167) linksbutchers and victuallers with the distribution of illegal venison.252 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 3/9/1602, Heath.296also killed and disposed of twelve more does to six other recipients, not only for money,but also in exchange for pigs, wheat or malt.253 The number of deer killed by WilliamJeggers and his use of Humfrey Latter to distribute them seems to indicate that theywere in excess of the deer keeper's usual quota, but the wording of Humfrey Latter'sdeposition is ambivalent on this point.At other times John Heath and Humfrey Latter used their wide range of contactsto distribute venison not already specifically allocated to individuals. Although theLondon market with its anonymity was a strong lure for illegal game caught in Kent,John Hayes and Humfrey Latter found more local outlets. As Manning observed manyrecipients of venison, whether or not in London, neither enquired nor wanted to know ofits origin.254 Evidence from Kent would support this, with examinees for parkviolations in Penshurst(71), Sissinghurst(79) and Cobham(23) listing several apparentlyrespectable gentlemen as well as office holders to whom they had provided venison.255The difficulty for law enforcement was that venison acquired legitimately wasindistinguishable from that which was not.The deposition of Francis Keneston, a Cobham tailor, linked Gravesend with thedisposal of venison. He had once refused to help Humfrey Latter take two deer there.After this refusal, Humfrey Latter borrowed Bartholomew Harding's horse to carry themto Gravesend by himself.256 Humfrey Latter also travelled to London at least once tovisit 'The Greyhound' near Lord Cobham's house in Blackfriars perhaps for a preplanned meeting or to widen his network of contacts. The language of his deposition isobscure at this point and not helped by damage to the document, but it would appearthat he was tackled about stealing deer and at the same time was asked to discover theidentity of other deer stealers.257 His journeys as far afield as London, Gravesend,Maidstone and Canterbury are quite remarkable for a hired husbandman and tend tolead to the conclusion that his occupation merely provided a cover for his criminalactivities.253 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 16/8/1602, Latter.254 Manning(1993:163-165).255 See for example pp. 259, 277, 278.256 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 16/12/1602Keneston.257 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 16/8/1602, Latter.297The second phase of poaching ended after about two years, although it is unclearhow it was detected. Humfrey Latter was first questioned about his activities on 16August 1602.258 He opened up under examination, as did the others who wereinterrogated later. At the first examination he restricted information to hints about thecorruptibility of the Cobham(23) park keeper, Old Weekes, and the under keeper,Young Jeggers, and at length described the deer coursing expedition to Canterbury. Hedid not mention John Hayes nor did he admit any wrongdoing himself, except that hehad found a deer in Cobham(23) park on Monday 26 July at three in the morning,perhaps that was when he was caught. As the investigation intensified much moreemerged and Humfrey Latter fully implicated John Hayes. However, both still stuck totheir poaching partnership and did not mention the more serious burglaries and oneincident of highway robbery. Their undoing seems to have been brought about by JohnHayes, who must have lost his nerve when interviewed on 20 January 1603, admittingto several burglaries of houses selected by Humfrey Latter. The upshot was anappearance at the County Assize for both men, and John Juden, for the burglary ofWilliam Baker's house in Cobham on 29 December 1600. John Juden and John Hayeswere found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, while Humfrey Latter confessed and wasremanded without sentence because he pleaded for a pardon. 259 Hence none of thenumerous park and poaching violations entered the formal court records.John Hayes, hanged as a felon, died a wealthy man. In the 1596 list of Cobhamfarmers possessing grain stocks, he had five quarters of wheat, 100 quarters of barleystocks and 90 quarters of oats (compared with the largest stocks of 150, 60, 120 quartersheld by George Wraight).260 In 1602 he farmed 200 acres of arable land in Cobham,some of which he owned.261 By law his possessions escheated to the crown, but itwould appear that his brother, Robert Hayes, did not declare all his brother's assets andhe was taken to the court of Star Chamber in 1623 for perjury in this regard.262According to the feodary escheator, John Hayes owned eight acres of land calledYorkes, eight acres of land called Bakers, a house and several parcels of land calledOwletts, a messuage by Cobham church, a croft called Scarletts, all in Cobham,258 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1, 16/8/1602, Latter.259 co*ckburn(1995:467) AC35/45/4/3019, February 1603, year of burglary given 1602, but theexaminations of January 1603 refer to three years previously i.e. c.1600.260 StaffsRO S/4/14/14.261 StaffsRO S/4/61/1.262 TNA STAC8/33/4, 1623.298unspecified lands in the Newington parish and a messuage in Gravesend. Theseproperties were being held in the hands of third parties until they passed to his brother,Robert Hayes, who claimed that the lands were held by gavelkind and not in capite andtherefore were not subject to confiscation. Robert Hayes won because he passed theselands to his sons in his will of 3 March 1630.263 Owletts remained in the Hayes familyuntil modern times and is now a National Trust property.264 An inquisition held on 12June 1604 valued John Hayes goods and chattels at £84 11s. Items included hisfurniture, domestic and agricultural tools, cart and horses, cows, sheep, pigs andchickens, all of which went to his wife, Margaret. Additionally, at his death about 20men owed him the vast total of over £1000 from various obligations and agreements.265Although small-scale dealings in credit are well documented in this period, John Hayesextension of credit seems to have been unusual.266Humfrey Latter's financial gains were more modest. He pocketed money fromthe sale of stolen conies, horses and silver spoons and received tips for various errandsand deliveries, but there is no evidence that he made substantial profits from hismultifarious crimes. However, his life was spared. He remained in prison until he waspardoned and released in 1605. His strategy of confession and guilty plea before themagistrates resulted in a better personal outcome, but nothing is known of him after hisrelease.267ConclusionBy concentrating on one county a kaleidoscopic image of park violations hasbeen revealed, participants having contrasting backgrounds, sub cultures, expectationsand methods of operation. Deer could be taken by stealth for the table, in exuberancefor sport, in the bitterness of protest, and in significant numbers for private distribution.Normal social barriers between gentlemen, servants, labourers, artisans, yeomen andsmall businessmen were lowered where unlawful hunting occurred. Social norms wereoverthrown and social distinctions became fused in the joint enterprise. Kent has263 TNA PPC prob/11/59.264 Arnold(1949:91).265 TNA E178/3924.266 Wrightson(2002:93).267 Langbein(1983:105).299produced ample examples of the complexity of park violations, but in the absence ofother county studies no judgement can be made as to the county's typicality.The four strands of park violation had different characteristics, but, as has beenshown in the case studies, where evidence allows a closer examination, incidents wereseldom clear-cut. They were multi-layered and complex, with strands interwoven, andwith varying shades coming to the fore as situations developed. To place park breaksinto categories, therefore, imposes restrictions, which tend to impede a deeper and widerunderstanding of the scope of park crime and the social conflict it reveals. Lowlyindividuals undertook poaching of small game to satisfy immediate household needs,but they also took part in covert hunting initiated by gentlemen. It might be gentlemenoperating in ones or twos by daylight, or with larger groups from a broad socialspectrum at night, that dominated covert hunting, but some were not averse to profitingfrom the deer taken. Covert hunting for sport was not devoid of an element of protest,and protest incursion of parks, though designed to inflict as much damage as possible,was not without an element of sport, and even some who profited from poaching alsoindulged in the occasional course for pleasure.The three parks, Cobham(23), Penshurst(71) and Sissinghurst(79), for whichinformation has survived more fully, show that there was a substantial sub-culture ofpark violation in which networks of perpetrators, receivers and contacts formedextensive albeit loose-knit organisations of mutual cooperation. If this was true forthose three parks during the years of unlawful activity, it is possible that parksthroughout Kent experienced similar disruption, glimpses of which can be snatched incourt records and private papers. However, it might be argued that Cobham(23),Penshurst(71) and Sissinghurst(79) were exceptions rather than the norm. Theassumption in that case being that had other parks experienced similar problems moredocumentary evidence would have come to light. The abundant records of the De L'Isleand Dudley family mean that the likelihood there is that there were two concentratedsets of disturbance, with the upsurge in the 1570s being triggered by lax park keeping.Manning implied that many deer keepers were former poachers, who camefrom poaching backgrounds, but the Kent examples do not entirely back this300up.268 Experienced deer keepers, like modern detectives, would need to besteeped in the ways of their opponents in order to combat them effectively, but ashas been shown in an earlier chapter, evidence suggests that deer keepers tendedto come from respectable yeomanry stock, to which they reverted in retirement.269Many took great care of the deer in their charge and had good relationships withthe park owner, and at least eight deer keepers, whose names are known, stood upto determined poachers, so to that extent their records are impeccable.270 Somedeer keepers, who were regular poachers, such as Edward Cole of Penhurst(71)park or Giles Couchman of Knole(50), might well have infiltrated parks, but as inCobham(23) and Penshurst(71) parks, another scenario is that weak deer keeperswere tempted by bribes or terrorised by threats into aiding or ignoring unlawfulhunting and the taking of deer. Corruptible deer keepers could exacerbateincursions into parks, but parks controlled by loyal deer keepers, such asSissinghurst(79), were not immune from park crime either. The impression is thatdeer keepers who had the robust backing of park owners were more likely be loyaland have the incentive to stand up to intruders and to protect the deer, than thosewhose owners offered a weak or indifferent response. Culprits who could beidentified by powerful owners were taken to the Quarter Sessions or Assizeslocally or, in extreme cases, to the court of Star Chamber, where the suspectswould incur inevitable cost and inconvenience in addition to any punishment thatmight be imposed.Perhaps, because by Elizabethan times most Kentish parks were wellestablished, widespread disorder arising out of disputed user rights, dislocation ofsettlement or social disruption was not experienced in the county. Undoubtedly therehad been earlier resistance to parks in Kent, as evidenced by the first recorded incidentof 'blacking' or disguise at Redleaf park, near Penshurst, in 1450, and by the act of 1Henry VII (1485) arising out of the prevalence of illegal hunters 'with painted faces,some with vizors and otherwise disguised to the intent that they should not be known,riotously and in malice of war arrayed' harassing forests, parks and warrens across the268 Manning(1993:191,193).269 See Chapter Three pp.73-78.270 CKS QM/SIq40/30, Henry Cliffe; CKS U1475/L18/2, Walter Double; CKS QM/SB/710, PhilipEastland; TNA STAC8/53/5, Edward Leedes; co*ckburn(1994:417) AC35/40/3/2545, Robert Reames;CKS QM/SB/162, Philip Round; CKS QM/SI/1599/24/2, Edward Smith; CKS U1475/C36/3, Terry.301Weald of Kent and neighbouring Surrey and Sussex.271 The dozen new parks enclosedin Kent in the period under review are not documented as causing unrest, but lurking inthe background is the 'dark figure' of unrecorded crime so certainty is elusive. InSuffolk 25 new parks between 1551 and 1602, and in Cambridgeshire andHuntingdonshire 20 new parks were created, considerably more than in Kent, but howmuch resistance there was to these has yet to be studied.272 Manning's analysis of antienclosure riots in England from 1558 to 1625 supports the notion that Kent, as part ofsoutheast England, was less disturbed by protests against new parks than elsewhere. Hefound that imparkment caused only 8 per cent (of 105 cases) of anti-enclosure riots inElizabeth I's reign, and 2 per cent (of 119 cases) in James I's reign, and that the tensouthern counties, including Kent, experienced only 17 per cent of all anti-enclosureriots in both reigns.273 However, such attempts at statistical analysis must be treatedwith caution because patchy evidence often fails to enlighten the researcher aboutwhether the parks themselves were the focus of protest or whether park violationsreflected wider transferred protest. Conversely, simmering anti-park protest might havecontributed to protest not directly aimed at parks.It is impossible to quantify the extent to which the presence of parks evokedsocial conflict in Kent. The very fact that large tracts of enclosed land were given overexclusively to the elite was bound to have been resented by many, if not all, localinhabitants, and, in the broadest sense, it is possible to regard park breaks at every levelas tangible signs of protest against the privacy and power of the park owner. However,in Kent park violations seem to have been neither widespread nor coordinated, andwhen they looked as if they were becoming more serious, concerted efforts were madeby the owners to bring perpetrators under control. Honour and status were upheld, butas Hindle has observed at state level, the social fabric was fragile with potential forconflict never far away.274271 Thompson(1975:58); Du Boulay(1964:245-255); Statutes II p.505, 1485, 1 Henry VII c.7 c.8 madeillegal hunting at night or in disguise a felony.272 Hoppitt(1992:71); Way(1997:17).273 Manning(1988:324-327).274 Hindle(2000:232-233).302CONCLUSIONWilliam Lambarde's lists of Elizabethan parks with and without deer inspiredthis perambulation, the route of which required diversions to avoid obstacles, anddeviations when unexpected byways beckoned. There was no detailed map to follow,although stray travellers had partially defined some stretches of road. Mist oftenshrouded the view, but when it cleared glimpses of the overall landscape were revealed.With Lambarde's lists as a starting point, supplemented by the five earliestcounty maps and documentary evidence, it has been possible to reach a more accuratetotal of active parks between 1558 and 1625, and to indicate the number of medievaldeer parks and disparked parks, with a better understanding of the distribution of allthese parks.1 While accepting diversity and variation between parks, it is now known,perhaps unsurprisingly, that the general characteristics of Elizabethan and JacobeanKentish deer parks in many ways followed the tradition of medieval parks. Also, as inprevious centuries, the requirements of deer herds continued to dominate themanagement of parks, while other resources were nurtured alongside. Because detaileddocumentation about the medieval park is even harder to find than for this later period,it has been possible to record more specifically the inner workings of some aspects ofpark management. Uniquely for this period, the management of disparked parks for onecounty has come under scrutiny, with fewer newly failed parks between 1558 and 1625than might be assumed from Lambarde's comments about the rate of disparkment.2In Kent, at least, the resilience of parks in the face of economic and financialpressure and attacks on their exclusivity by the disaffected is remarkable. The strengthof the hunting culture, the role of venison in the exchange of gifts and the continuedstatus of park ownership remained undiminished throughout the reigns of Elizabeth Iand James I, and even received encouragement from the monarchs who shared theexperience and values of the upper strata of society.For the first time for the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, crimeagainst parks has been examined on a countywide basis, revealing, more intimately than1Lambarde(1576:48-49) The Particular of Kent; Lambarde(1596:60-61) The Particular of Kent.2Lambarde(1576:9) The Estate of Kent.303is possible for the medieval period, the intricacy and complexity of incursions into parksas well as the varying social standing and motivation of the participants. Although therewas no concerted attack on parks on a countywide basis, individual parks periodicallyfaced considerable pressure, which determined efforts by owners apparentlyeventuallyovercame.When Mileson discussed his choice of cut-off date for his research into themedieval parks of England, he concluded that the early sixteenth century would be anappropriate point because, 'social changes taking place in the second quarter of thesixteenth century significantly affected the purpose and function of parkland.' 3 Clearly,this study of parks in Kent conflicts with this view. Whatever the upheavals caused bythe Reformation, social distress and political uncertainly prior to the accession ofElizabeth I, the purpose and function of parkland survived in Kent, and it is probablethat a high status traveller-in-time from the Middle Ages would have found both theparks of 1558 to 1625 and the ethos behind them familiar enough to him.While parks were still considered to be one of the prerequisites of a noble orgenteel estate, they remained viable among those with the necessary income willing toinvest in their upkeep. However, strains were beginning to be felt. Inter-family rivalryand personal ambition meant that many members of the nobility and gentry were livingbeyond their means and becoming increasingly dependent on credit, which in the longterm jeopardised the viability of their parks. A steward, like Thomas Golding atPenshurst, even though he thought the sport of hunting was 'not lykely to continewe forever,' accepted that his master's penchant for his 'very fair and sportlyke' park wouldremain unshaken.4 However, John Norden, in his influential book, The SurveiorsDialogue', was more hard headed. He acknowledged the park as existing 'more forpleasure then profit of the Lord,' but rather than condoning the maintenance of parks for'private pleasure', he commended 'more considerate' men who had disparked muchparkland and 'converted it to better use.'5 How many Kentish park owners took hisadvice in the reign of Charles I remains to be researched, but the disruption of the Civil3 Mileson(2009:10).4Shaw(1942:265-267) 6/5/1611.5 Norden(1610:107) The third Booke.304War and consequent sequestration and dismantling of parks proved to be the death knellof many a park.It seems fitting to end with William Lambarde's metallurgical metaphor on theprocess of writing 'A Perambulation of Kent ', which it is hoped would also apply to thisthesis - the ore was dug and gathered, the metal extracted by fire, then cast into 'certeinerude lumps', before creating something 'serviceable and meete for use.' 66Lambarde(1576) To the Right Woorshipfull, and vertuous, M. THOMAS WOTTON, Esquier.305AppendicesAppendix 1 Figure 1.2 Lambarde's list and 5 early maps comparedAppendix 2 Figure 1.3 Active Parks in Kent, 1558-1625Appendix 3 Figure 1.4 All known parks in KentAppendix 4 Map 1.1 Map of Kent showing all known parksAppendix 5 Figure 5.1 DisparkmentAppendix 6 Figure 6.3 New owners of established and new parksAppendix 7 Figure 6.4 Crown parks in KentAppendix 8 Figure 7.2 Rowland Whyte's schedule of lettersAppendix 9 Figure 8.1 Deer Park Violations, 1558-16253061576 List of Parks 1596 List of Parks Saxton 1575 anon.c.1576 1596 Symonson Norden 1605 Speed 1611Active parks (modern spelling) # unchanged + changesAshour (69) #At Ashford (?77, Scot's Hall) #Bedgebury (4) # # # # #Birling (6)Birling , (7)Comforde) # # # # Comforde # Comforde # ComfordCalehill (?98, Westwell) # # #Cobham (23) # # # # # #Cooling (29) # # # # # #Eltham x 3 parks (31-33) # # x2 # x2 # x 3 # x 2 # x2Glassenbury (37) # # #Greenwich (39) # # # #Groombridge (40) # # # # #Halden (41) disparked # # #Hamswell (?Hamsell, Sussex ( 43) # #Hungershall (47) # # # # # #Knole (50) # # # # # #Leeds (54) # # # # # #Lullingstone (55) # #North Frith x3 parks (89-91) # # x2 # x2 # x1 # x1 # x1Otford x2 parks (62-63) 1 park disparked # x2 # x2 # x1 # #Penshurst (71) # # # #Postling (73) #Saltwood (75) disparkedS. Augustines (Canterbury) (18) # # # # #nr Fordwich #Shurland (78) disparked # #Sissinghurst (79) # # # # # #South Frith forest/park (93) # # #South park (12) # #nr Ulcombe #nr UlcombeStowting (marked near Lyminge)(82) # ? # ? #Westenhanger (96) (& 97) # x2 parks # x1 # x2 Ostenhanger # x2 # x 2 OstenhangerTOTAL ACTIVE = 34 TOTAL ACTIVE = 31APPENDIX 1: Figure 1.2 - Lambarde's Park Lists and Parks shown on early Kent County maps3071576 Lambarde's Disparked Parks Added in 1596 Saxton 1575 anon.c.1576 1596 Symonson Speed 1605 Norden 1611Aldington disparked (1)Allington (2)Brasted (15)Broxham (17)Cage (88)Folkestone (34)Henden (45)Hever (46)Ightham (48)Langley (52)Leigh (70)Merewood (60) corrected to MereworthOxenhoath x2 parks (65-66)Panthurst (67)Postern (92)Stonehurst (in Surrey) (81)Sutton (85)Wrotham (100)Parks on maps, not Lambarde listedBoughton Malherbe (10) # # # # #Bromley (16) # # #Eastwell (28) # # #Ford (35) # # # # #Hemsted (44) # #N.W. of Lyminge ?Elahm (36) # ? # ? #Lynsted (58) #nr Sarre (not thought to be a park) #Scot's Hall (77) # # # # #Starborough (mainly Surrey) (80) # # # #Throwley (87) # #Well Hall (95) # Well PlaceTOTAL DISPARKED = 18 DISPARKED = 231576 TOTAL PARKS = 52 1596 PARKS = 54 TOTAL = 27 TOTAL = 24 TOTAL = 31 TOTAL = 27 TOTAL = 29308Pk.No. PARK (bold = direct evidence of deer ) Lambarde Saxton Anon Symonson Norden Speed Documentary evidence of deer(See Park profiles for details)4 BEDGEBURY L S Sy N Sp Doc6 BIRLING L S A Sy N Sp Doc9 BORE PLACE 1596 one reference.deer10 BOUGHTON MALHERBE – OLD S A Sy N Sp Doc12 BOUGHTON MALHERBE - SOUTH L S A Doc16 BROMLEY Sy N Sp18 CANTERBURY - KING'S/NEW L S A Sy N Sp Doc21b CHILHAM 1616 new park23 COBHAM L S A Sy N Sp Doc24 COOLING L S A Sy N Sp Doc28 EASTWELL Sy N Sp 1589 licence29 EAST WICKHAM 1610 licence, Doc30 ELHAM/maps ?NW of LYMINGE Sy N Sp Doc31 ELTHAM – GREAT L S x2 A x2 Sy N x2 Sp x2 Doc32 ELTHAM - MIDDLE/LITTLE L Sy (?2nd park see Great) Doc33 ELTHAM - HORN/NEW L Sy (?2nd park see Great) Doc35 FORD S A Sy N Sp Doc37 GLASSENBURY L Sy Sp Doc39 GREENWICH L Sy N Sp Doc40 GROOMBRIDGE L A Sy N Sp Doc41 HALDEN L S Sy Sp Doc43 HAMSELL, Sussex L S Doc44 HEMSTED S A Sy N Sp47 HUNGERSHALL L S A Sy N Sp Doc50 KNOLE L S A Sy N Sp Doc53 LEE Doc54 LEEDS L S A Sy N Sp Doc55 LULLINGSTONE L Sy56 LYMINGE DocAPPENDIX 2: Figure 1.3 - Active Elizabethan and Jacobean Parks309Pk.No. PARK (bold = direct evidence of deer ) Lambarde Saxton Anon Symonson Norden Speed Documentary evidence of deer58 LYNSTED Sy secondary.evidence 1603 deer61 MERSHAM HATCH 1618 new park62 OTFORD – GREAT L S A Sy N Sp Doc69 PENSHURST - ASHOUR L71 PENSHURST – NORTHLANDS L Sy N Sp Doc73 POSTLING L75 SALTWOOD L77 SCOT'S HALL L Ashford S A Sy N Sp Doc78 SHURLAND L S A Doc79 SISSINGHURST L S A Sy N Sp Doc80 STARBOROUGH (mainly Surrey) A Sy N Sp82 STOWTING L S? A ?87 THROWLEY Sy Sp89-91 TONBRIDGE - NORTH FRITH x3 Lx3 S x2 A x2 Sy N Sp Doc93a TONBRIDGE - SOUTHFRITH L S A93b - SOMERHILL c1622 new park94 TYLER HILL Doc95 WELL HALL –ELTHAM Sp96-97 WESTENHANGER x2 Lx2 S Sy x2 N x2 Sp x2 Doc98 WESTWELL/ CALEHILL L S A Doc99 WEST WICKHAM Doctotal in each column = 34 27 24 31 27 29STATUS IN DOUBT3 AYLESFORD COMMON PARK 1597 one reference to horse13 BOUGHTON MONCHELSEA 1556 one reference to park27 DENSTROUDE 1603 one reference to horse38 GREAT CHART 1604 conies in park42 HALSTEAD 1621 one reference to park63, 64 OTFORD Little and New (63, 64) L x2 L x 2, but disparked by 155874 ROYDON 1590 reference on edge of mapSARRE N Perhaps enclosure not a park76 SCOTNEY 1579 one reference to park310APPENDIX 3: Figure 1.4 – List of all Kentish Deer ParksNo. Name Earliest date/reference(see Park profiles for details)Size date OS reference (generally centre of park)** boundary known/* part known by fieldwork1 Aldington 1165 PipeRoll 680 1624 TR080365 Middle Park farm2 Allington 1304 TNA E326/1398 350approx 1573 TQ752577 castle, park being near3 Aylesford (Common pk) 1597 Quarter Sessions ?TQ 730590 general for Aylesford4 Bedgebury 1544 BL Harley 300 1618 TQ713345 Park wood - more than one park5 Bexley 1273/74 Survey – KAS web TQ510757 Park wood on 1860s OS6 Birling 1341 Patent – licence 100a 969 Great pk 1521 TQ685611* Park farm7 Birling - Comford 1318 Patent 103 Little pk 152 1 TQ685605* middle of park8 Bockingfold 1256 Carta Liberate TQ709446 Bockingfold9 Bore Place 1488 will Alfeigh 307 1600 TQ505490* Bore Place10 Boughton-Malherbe in mid C14th see Furley 98½ 1567 TQ880497 Park/Rough park shaws11 B.Malherbe - Lenham 1490 BL Add mss.42715 124 1559 TQ889520 Park wood nr Chilston Pk Hotel12 B. Malherbe - South 1292 Cal. IPM III 14 88 1559 TQ869467 Southpark wood13 Boughton Monchelsea 1556 rental 6 0approx 1650 TQ774497** existing park14 Boxley a. ex-Abbey b. Lea Parkpre1536 CCA DCB –J/X10.171549 see Zell 90 1596TQ767585 Park woodTQ778578 Park wood15 Brasted 1310 Patent 180 1547 TQ463557** Park wood16 Bromley 1596 Symonson map 61 minimum 1647 TQ407691 to east of Bromley Civic Centre17 Broxham 1294/5 see Steinman 284 2005 TQ457484** Broxham manor18 Canterbury -New/King 1538 see Sparks – new park 350 1547 TR170584* Old Park farm19 Canterbury - Old 1274/5 Hundred rolls –KAS web TR168577** Hospital20 C'bury - Trenley 1071 Book of Seals no.431 296 1086 TR195593 Trenley park wood21 Chilham a. b.1338 Patent1616 new site, see Heron 25 1616TR045527 Park wood, older park TR068535*Chilham castle22 Chislet 1138-1151 Thorne Chronicle TR210629 Chislet park23 Cobham 1559 see McKeen 200 1602 TQ690690* Cobham park24 Cooling 1381 Hasted TQ745759* Cooling castle- park to S311No. Name Earliest date/reference Size date OS reference25 Cudham 1272 Patent 100 1272 TQ439600 Park farm26 Curlswood c.1537 see Morice in Nichols 240 1617 TR242525 station, Aylesham built up27 Denstroude 1603 Quarter Sessions ?TR104617 general for Denstroude28 Eastwell 1589 see Hasted – licence to 1000a 1000 1583 TR017475 Eastwell Park hotel29 East Wickham 1610 see Tester – licence 500a 500 1610 ?TQ460770 open space, park area?30 Elham 1225 Records in Merton College 400 1649 TR160458 Elhampark wood31 Eltham Great 1309 CPR 612 1605 TQ430740** Golf course32 Eltham Middl e 1388 TNA E40/4955 308 1605 TQ420740** most built up33 Eltham Horn c.1465 Hasted - imparked 345 1605 TQ405740** most built up34 Folkestone Walton 1241Carta Liberate 126 1668 TR217382 Round Hill35 Ford nr Canterbury 1405 A of C accounts 160 1638 TR206657 Ford manor36 Fryarne 1346 Hasted TR165469 Fryarne park37 Glassenbury 1488 Charter licence 1600a 1600 1488 TQ747365* Glassenbury House38 Great Chart – Wythen's 1605 Quarter Sessions TQ968524 Goldwell, park site unknown39 Greenwich 1432 Proc. & Ord. PCIV, 138 200 1432 TQ390773** existing park40 Groombridge 1576 Lambarde 225 1610 TQ534376 Groombridge Place41 Halden 1487 BL Add.Ch.9424 429 1544 TQ851337* Halden Place42 Halstead 1621 TNA E178/6020 300 164- TQ482605 Park farm43 Hamswell (?Hamsell, Sx) 1086 VCH TQ552338 Hamsell Manor, Mayfield44 Hemsted c.1360 - Hasted III 168 1599 TQ802338* Benenden School45 Henden 1541 CKS U1450/15/62 300 1544 TQ483504* Henden manor46 Hever 1538 U1450/T5/65 TQ480455 Hever castle47 Hungershall 1531 lease Kent Records XVIII TQ572386* Hungershall Park48 Ightham / West park 1283 Custumal 138 1620 TQ595576** Ightham Court49 Kemsing 1236 Close rolls 160 1530 TQ550585** middle of park50 Knole 1456 Sackville-West, 1922 74/550 1544/ 1610 TQ540543* many changes, existing park51 Langley, Beckenham 1623 map LBB TQ384670 golf course52 Langley, Maidstone 1297 Patent 200+ 1335 TQ797516 Langley Park farm53 Lee 1605 Exchequer bills 336 160- ?TQ419730 adjacent to 31-33 - ? Eltham College312No. Name Earliest date/reference Size date OS reference54 Leeds 1278 TNA C54/98 500 1608 TQ837534** Leeds castle55 Lullingstone 1545 CKS U967 M2 690 fdwk1983 TQ520645** existing park56 Lyminge 1274/5 Hundred rolls – KAS web 400 1649 TR145445 Park wood57 Lympne 1281 Patent 51 Pk wood 1640 TR123345** Lympne park wood58 Lynsted 1569 CKS U1450 E20 TQ947597** Lynsted Park59 Maidstone/ Westre 1396 A of C accounts 27 1555 TQ759554 Archbishop's palace, built up60 Mereworth 1356 Patent TQ668554 Mereworth Castle61 Mersham Hatch 1608 (CKS QM/SI 1608/11/8) TR065408* existing deer park62 Otford - Great 1241 Close rolls 430 1597 TQ528592* Otford palace – park to SE63 Otford - Little 1241 Close rolls 240 1541 TQ527585* middle of park64 Otford - New 1386-1486 TNA C1/4/177 202 1544 TQ527594* Park farm65 Oxenhoath 1576 Lambarde TQ627515 Oxen Hoath Park66 Oxenhoath 1576 Lambarde ? site of 2nd park at Oxenhoath unknown67 Panthurst, Sevenoaks 1348 Patent for Sevenoaks park 390 1614 TQ533516** Panthurst68 Pembury 1396.Charter rolls, licence to enlarge TQ625395 Great Bayhall69 Penshurst - Ashour 1407 Cal.IPM 112approx 1612 TQ547442* Ashour farm70 Penshurst - Leigh 1316 Patent 470 1552 TQ535476 Leigh park farm71 Pensh'rst - Northlands 1290 Patent 354 1552 TQ528440* Penshurst Place, park to N72 Penshurst - Southpark 1316 Patent 120 1552 TQ520426* South Park73 Postling 1246 Patent ?TR150400 Postling wood, no park names74 Roydon 1590 CKS U48 P1 TQ666518 Roydon hall75 Saltwood 1273/74 Survey – KAS web TR161359 Saltwood castle76 Scotney 1579 ESRO D-J607 100 1597 TQ689353* Scotney castle77 Scot's hall a. b. earlier site1575 Saxton TR080398** Scot's Hall plantationTR073388 Park wood78 Shurland 1532 Henry VIII privy purse 300 1604 TQ994715** Shurland79 Sissinghurst 1576 Lambarde 750 1657 TQ818384* Sissinghurst80 Starborough (part Surrey) 1576 Anon. map of Kent TQ426441* Starborough Castle81 Stonehurst (in Surrey) 1555 CKS U1590/T6/9 TQ425412 Upper Stonehurst farm313No. Name Earliest date/reference Size date OS reference82 Stowting 1361 C135/156/9 Survey TR120430* Park farm83 Sundridge 1356 CKS U1590 T318 60 1555 TQ487549* Sundridge Place, park to E84 Surrenden 1621 CKS U350 E4 TQ938453 Surrenden85 Sutton 1086 Domesday TQ803492 Park House farm86 Sutton Valence 1348 Cal.IPM TQ815493? perhaps near castle87 Throwley 1596 Symonson's map TQ989544* Park Lane farm88 Tonbridge - Cage 1327 Patent 400 1570 TQ593479* Cage green, built up89 "- Northfrith C12th chartulary (ArchCantXCVI) 2000(89-91) 15211685(89-91) 1625TQ609502 North Frith farm90 " - N frith - Little 1279 CLL Ch.Ant.T32 TQ634497? Little park, near Hadlow castle91 " – N frith - Wood C12th chartulary (ArchCantXCVI) TQ603514 Dene park, park site unknown92 Tonbridge - Postern 1327 Patent 800 1625 TQ615463 Postern Park93 " – Southfrith a. b. SomerhillC12th chartulary (ArchCantXCVI)1622 CKS U38 T1 new park5000 1571 TQ584448* South FrithTQ603452* Somerhill park94 Tyler Hill, Canterbury 1592 CKS U591/C261/5 TR150592 Hales Place95 Well Hall 1604 TNA E164/44 128 1605 TQ423752* Well Hall, built up96 Westenhanger 1262 VCHI – licence Hanger site? 400 1559 TR124372** Westenhanger97 " - Ostenhanger 1303 Cal. IPM 300 1694 TR142368* Sandling Park98 Westwell / Calehill 1274/5 Hundred roll (KAS web) 200 1624 TQ931470 Park wood99 West Wickham 1313-99 Licence (ArchCantXIII) 304 1659 TQ390647** Wickham Court100 Wrotham / East park 1283 Custumal 97/166 1283/1620 TQ618588* Park farmLater parks 1628-1660 - might be earlier, no evidence found(101) Biddenden 1655 Cal. Ass 35/96/6/1214 ?TQ855385 general for Biddenden(102) Chafford, Ashurst 1638 Cal. Ass. 35/80/11/1580 TQ515395* Chafford park(103) Fairlawne, Shipbourne 1638 Cal. Ass. 35/81/6/1722 TQ598535 Fairlawne(104) Ripton, Ashford 1640 CKS U1095 P3 TQ950425 Hoad's wood(105) Scadbury 1630 History of Chislehurst, Webb ;150 TQ458703* Scadbury park(106) Swingfield 1657 CKS U1475 T95/3 TR273450 Park wood + 2 park woods314No. Name Earliest date/reference Size date OS referenceEarly parks – to 1558 - no evidence found 1558-1625(1) Ashenfield, ?Waltham 1246 Cal. Close 1242-7, 493 TR094470 Park wood(2) Badlesmere 1327 Cal. IPM VII, 90 TR017545 Badlesmere park wood(3) Bertre, Cudham 1272 Cal IPM I, 281 TQ420610 Biggin Hill airport area(4) Brabourne 1291 Cal. Pat., Way p.145 ?TR095406 Park farm(5) Beckenham 1268 Cal. Pat., Way p.145 ?TQ385707 Beckenham Place park(6) Boughton-under-Blean 1273/74 Survey – KAS web ?TR048585 Boughton Church(7) Chevening 1359 Cal. Pat., Way p.174 TQ477583 Park wood(8) Cliffe 1410 Cal. Pat., Way p.193 TQ738765 general for Cliffe(9) Cressy/West, Trottescliffe 1210-16 Hasted IV p.553 TQ635596 West Park farm(10) Dymchurch 1376 Cal. Pat., website p.282 TR103297 general Dymchurch church(11) Ewell medieval Hasted IX p.429 ?TR298436 Oldpark hill TR298439 Old park woodTR303441 Old park(12) Eythorne 1448 Cal. Charter 1427-1516, 102 TR283492 Eythorne village, no sign of park(13) Gravesend 1362 Cal. Pat., Way p.175 TQ647743 Palace/park near church, built up(14) Hall Place, Leigh 1525 PRO Ancient Deeds V, 540.land enclosed with pale – park not usedTQ545466 Hall Place hosue(15) Halling 1274/5 100 roll (KAS web p.79) ?TQ675639 Great park wood(16) Harrietsham 1263 Cal. Pat., Way p.144 TQ878543 Harrietsham manor as ?park site(17) Hildenborough 1274/5 100 roll (KAS web p.80)) ?TQ558483 Hilden Park golf course(18) Hothfield 1327 Cal. IPM VI, 460 ?TQ968442 Park spinney(19) Hylth, Nettlestead 1346 Cal. Pat., Way p.149 ?TQ676509 Hale park wood(20) Iden, Staplehurst 1298 Cal. Pat.1292-1301, 341 TQ750384* Old Park wood(21) Kingsnorth 1448 Cal. Charter, Way p.203 TR009404 Park wood(22) Knockholt 1355-77,Brook, Story of Eltham Palace,p.17, prior of Canterbury's parkTQ467587 general for Knockholt(23) Langham,Bishopsbourne1397 Acc. roll 592, Lambeth PL1273/74 Survey – KAS webTR176511 Langham park farm(24) Littlebourne 1197 Arch. Cant I p.248 ?TR210580 general for Littlebourne315No. Name Earliest date/reference Size date OS reference(25) Mere, Rainham 1310 Cal. IPM V, 123 ?TQ814645 Miers Court, no sign of park(26) Middleton/Milton 1335 Cal. Pat., Way p.165 TQ895645 – general for ?Milton Regis, butWarden/Shurland in this 100(27) Mote 1500 Hasted IV p.292 ?TQ775545 Mote park – ?earlier park on same site(28) Newchurch Hundred 1274/5 100 roll (KAS web p.129) ?TR043353 the park TR044362 Park wood(29) Newington, Hythe 1387 Cal. IPM XVI, 239 ?TR180375 general for Newington(30) Northwood, Bobbing c.1200 Hasted II p.624 ?TR180660 general for Herne(31) Northwood, ?Herne 1325 VCH I p.474, Whitstable 100Cal.Pat., 18 Edward IITQ875660 Great Norwood moated site, no parknames(32) Perryfield, nr Boxley 1200 Pedes finium (Arch.Cant II p.248) ?TQ775590 general for Boxley(33) Preston 1368 Cal. Pat. 1367-70, 76 ?TR260650 – Lodge Farm & Park Road (Preston,Faversham, no park names yet )(34) Redleaf, Penshurst 1451 KAS XVIII, 254 no.33 ?TQ525458 Redleaf wood(35) Ruxley, Bexley 1375 Cal. IPM XIV, 242 ?TQ484687 Pauls Cray Hill park(36) Seyne, Gillingham 1273/74 Survey – KAS web ?TQ796687, general for Grnage(37) Somerden Hundred 1274/5 100 roll (KAS web p.140) includes Penshurst, Leigh, Hever parishes so mightrefer to one of several parks(38) Sutton-at-Hone 1241 Cal. Close 1237-42, 266 ?TQ555700 general for Sutton-at-Hone(39) Swanscombe 1330 Cal. IPM VII, 223 ?TQ600740, general for Swanscombe(40) Terlingham, Folkestone 1295 Cal. IPM III, 168 TR215390 Terlingham Manor farm(41) Tonge 1448 Cal. Chart 1427-1516, 102 ?TQ939637 Tonge castle, no park names(42) Tunbridge (Wells) 1338 Cal. Pat. 1338-40, 182-3 ?Hungershall park was in TW(43) Upende, Crayford 1487 U1450 T555/48 TQ510767 Old park wood on C19th maps(44) Warden, Sheppey 1228 Hasted VI p.271 ?TR020715 general for Warden(45) West Peckham 1274/5 100 rolls NO VERIFIED ?????? ?Oxenhoath park was in WP, no other park nameson map(46) Wingham 1273/74 Survey – KAS web ?TR245575 general for Wingham(47) Wixle, Blackheath 100 1274/5 100 rolls (KAS web p.162) ?even vague location unknown(48) Yaldham, Wrotham 1309 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, 238 ?TQ587587 Yaldham manor316APPENDIX 4317APPENDIX 5: Figure 5.1 - DISPARKMENT IN KENTNo. Name Earliest evidence of disparkmentpre - 150020 Canterbury -Trenley by 1425 - Hasted, History of Kent 9, p.1635 Bexley by 1469 - Du Boulay, Medieval Bexley, 32-331520s-1540s48 Ightham by 1524 - Kent Records XVIII (1964) p.29064 Otford - New by 1525 - CCA Register T folio 25486 Sutton Valence by 1530s - Leland's Itinerary (Part VIII p.88)100 Wrotham by 1536 - Arch. Cant. CXXVIII pp.204-20522 Chislet by 1541 - LPL TA39/114 Boxley by 1542 - TNA E133/6/81534 Folkestone by 1542 - EKAC U270/m285/115 Brasted by 1547 - CKS U1450 T14/617 Broxham by 1548 - TNA IPM C/142/468/8563 Otford - Little by 1548 - TNA E101/497/411550s2 Allington by 1550 - CCA 1576 DCB-J/X.10.1619 Canterbury - Old by 1550 - CCA M4970 Penshurst - Leigh by 1553 - CKS U1475 T61/283 Sundridge by 1553 - CKS U1450 E1981 Stonehurst by 1555 - CKS U1450/T6/959 Maidstone 1556 - C66/899 1556 last mention of deer46 Hever by 1558 - Hasted, History of Kent 3, p.19475 Saltwood by 1558 - Hasted, History of Kent 8, p.22311 B.Malherbe - Lenham by 1559 - BL AddMss 42715No or uncertain evidence – likely pre-155849 Kemsing Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps, ?by 1520s leases45 Henden 1576 - Lambarde, but ?by 1550 after land exchange72 Penshurst - Southpark Not on Elizabethan maps,?by 1552/3 CKS U1475M597 Birling - Comford Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps on site8 Bockingfold Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps25 Cudham Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps36 Fryarne Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps57 Lympne Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan maps68 Pembury Not in Lambarde or Elizabethan mapspre-1576 - Lambarde67 Panthurst by 1567 CKS U1450 T5/4069 Penshurst - Ashour by 1574 CKS U1474/T3352 Langley by 1576 - Lambarde, not on maps65 Oxenhoath by 1576 Lambarde, not on maps66 Oxenhoath by 1576 Lambarde, not on maps318No. Name Earliest evidence of disparkment60 Mereworth by 1576 Lambarde, not on maps85 Sutton by 1576 Lambarde, not on maps88 Tonbridge - Cage by 1576 Lambarde, only evidence92 Tonbridge - Postern by 1576 Lambarde, only evidence73 Postling by 1576 - CCA DCB-J/X.1682 Stowting by 1580 - CCA DCB-J/X.10.20.26 Curlswood by 1586 - LPL TA633/11 Aldington by 1596 - Lambarde's Perambulation9 Bore Place by 1597 - CKS U1000/3 E51603-162562 Otford - Great by 1603 - Camden Society(1868:20).41 Halden by 1610 - CKS U1475 T9293a Southfrith by 1610 - Chalklin, A Kentish Wealden Parish(Tonbridge) 1550-1750, Oxford 1960, p.54 Bedgebury by 1612 - BL Cart.Harl.79.F.347 Hungershall by 1618 - ESRO ABE/52,137 Glassenbury by 1628 - map in private collection319APPENDIX 6: Figure 6.3 - NEW OWNERS OF ESTABLISHED AND NEW PARKSNo. Park Owners who lost parks New Owners Date ofchangeEstablished parks21a Chilham Sir Henry Cheyne Sir Thomas KempeSir Dudley Digges (son-i n-law)1572160378 Shurland Sir Henry Cheyne Crowngrant to Sir Philip Herbert1574160573 Postling Sir Humphrey Gilbert Thomas Smythe of Westenhanger 157999 West Wickham Sir Christopher Heydon John Lennard c.158754 Leeds Sir Warham Sentleger Sir Richard Smythe 1590s80 Starborough ?William Borough, lord Burgh park in divided ownership c.159723 Cobham Henry Brooke, lord Cobham Crowngrant to the duke of Lennox1602/3161249 Groombridge Sir Thomas Waller Thomas Sackville, earl of Dorset 1606/89 Bore Place Sir Thomas Willoughby Bernard Hyde 160950 Knole* Richard Sackville, earl of Dorset various for earl of Dorset's debts 161582 Stowting Reginald Kempe's daughters Josias Clerke of Westerfield, Essex 162162 Otford Great** Sir Robert Sidney Sir Thomas Smythe 162241 Halden*** Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester Sir Thomas Smyhte 1622New imparkments76 Scotney ?Thomas Darell II by 157951 Langley, Beckenham ?William Style ?1580s+28 Eastwell Sir Moyle Finch 158974 Roydon ?William Twysden by 159094 Tyler Hill ?Sir Roger Manwood by 159238 Great Chart Sir William Wythens c.160553 Lee Sir Nicholas Stoddard c.1605320No. Park Owners in 1558 New Owners Date ofchangeNew imparkments29 East Wickham Sir Olyffe Leigh 161042 Halstead Sir Thomas Watson c.1610s21b Chilham Sir Dudley Digges 161661 Mersham Hatch Sir Norton Knatchbull c.161884 Surrenden Sir Edward Dering c.162193b Somerhill Richard Burke, earl of Clanricarde c.1623See Park profiles for sources* Acquired by the family in 1566** Acquired by the family in 1601*** Acquired by the family in 1566321APPENDIX 7: Figure 6.4 – Kentish Parks owned by the CrownFate of park Active or not Status in 1625 (see Park profiles, p.351 onwards, for sources for each park)CROWN KEPT (4) dis = disparked31 Eltham - Great d = with deer32 Eltham - Middle d33 Eltham - Horn d39 Greenwich dKEEPERS/ SOLD (2)18 Canterbury - New d sold 160162 Otford - Great d, dis by 1603 sold 1601GRANTED AWAY (12)41 Halden d, dis c.1610 1566 granted in fee Sidney tenure for life, 1622 Sidney sells to Sir Thomas Smythe49 Kemsing dis ?1520s 1559 grant to Lord Hunsdon in male tail50 Knole d 1559 grant Lord Hunsdon, 1561-66 to Robert Dudley, 1566 to Thomas Sackville67 Panthurst d, dis by 1567 as Knole89 Tonbridge - Cage dis by 1576 1559 grant to Lord Hunsdon in male tail90 "- Northfrith d as above91 " Little - Hadlow d as above92 " Northfrith wood d as above93 " Postern dis by 1576 as above79 Shurland d to Crown c1564 Sir Henry Cheyne exchange, 1605 granted to Herbert by James I97 Westenhanger d to Crown c.1540,1585 grant to Thomas Smythe military service and fine £3+ pa98 " - Ostenhanger d as aboveLEASED/ SOLD (1)2 Allington dis by 1550 30 year leases – Finch, Astley, 1583 sold to Sir John Astley male tail kt's fee, £100+paLEASED (9)1 Aldington d, dis by 1596 21 year leases – Sentleger, Scott5 Bexley dis by 1469 21 year leases322Fate of park Active or not Status in 162514 Boxley dis by 1542 21 year leases, 1581 lease to Baynham for 3 lives30 Elham d 1551 80 year lease to Sir Edward Wotton, via Hamon>Lewknor to Herbert by c.162559 Maidstone dis by 1556 21 year leases63 Otford - Little dis by 1548 21 year leases64 Otford - New dis by 1525 Leased out94 Tonbridge - Southfrith d, dis by 1610 1571 Robert Dudley 50 year lease, to Sidney99 Westwell / Calehill d to Crown c.1559, lease already with John Tufton, 1598 renewed for 31 years at £10 paTEMPORARY (6)15 Brasted dis by 1547 1575 sale to pay Isley's creditors,52 Langley dis by 1576 1570 as above84 Sundridge dis by 1553 1570 as above87 Sutton Valence dis by 1530s 1570 as above23 Cobham d 1603 from Brooke, 1612 grant to Lennox24 Cooling d 1603 from Brooke, but returned to BrookeCROWN pre-1558 (22)6 Birling d 1522 confiscated over implication with Buckingham, but later restored for a fine7 Birling - Comford dis as above8 Bockingfold dis 1554/55 grant to Susan Tonge17 Broxham dis by 1548 1555 to Mary I from William Cromer, who later recovered the park19 Canterbury - Old dis by 1550 1540 sold to William Coppyn20 Canterbury - Trenley dis by 1425 Henry VIII to Sir Henry Browne22 Chislet dis by 1541 1537 to Henry VIII, 1538 Archbishop gave up land in Surrey and bought it back26 Curlswood dis by 1586 1537 to Henry VIII, but he returned to Archbishop because of very long leases34 Folkestone dis by 1542 1541 to Henry VIII, 1554 granted to Lord Clinton & Say36 Fryarne dis 1537 to Henry VIII, back to Archbishop, back to Henry VIII who granted to Heyman45 Henden dis by 1550 1544 Henry VIII sold to Sir Thomas Gresham323Fate of park Active or not Status in 162546 Hever dis by 1558 1558 Mary I granted to Sir Edward Waldegrave48 Ightham dis by 1524 1530s to Henry VIII, long leases, but seems to have left royal hands before 155854 Leeds d 1552 Edward VI sold to Sir Anthony Sentleger 20th kt's fee +£10 pa56 Lyminge ?dis 1540s to Henry VIII, 1546 grant to Sir Anthony Aucher in capite, 20th kt's fee, £4 7s 2dpa68 Pembury dis unclear, but out of Crown hands at latest in 154769 Penshurst - Ashour d 1521 to Henry VIII, 1552 grant to Sir Henry Sidney70 Penshurst - Leigh dis by 1553 as above71 Pensh'rst - Northlands d as above72 Penshurst - Southpark dis as above75 Saltwood dis by 1558 1537 to Henry VIII, several exchanges, 1556 to Cardinal Pole, uncertainty after101 Wrotham dis by 1536 1537 to Henry VIII, Edward VI ?grant/sale to Sir John Mason324Appendix 8Figure 7.2 - Schedule of letters containing references to Otford from RowlandWhyte to Sir Robert Sidney, 1596-1601Compiled from - Kingsford C.L. & Shaw W.A. (editors), Historical ManuscriptsCommission Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley preserved atPenshurst Place, II (London, 1934)15961. 22 September¼ hour with Fortescue1, thought RS2 meant to have 100 deer, said you wouldn't keep such rent and thedeer, but what offered benefit to Q3 more than RS. RW4says RS wants speed from Q who neverbestowed anything on you2. 30 SeptemberQ has been told terms, what repairs would cost her, fees she would save, and rent offered. Q wellinclined, RS to write to Cecils to continue favours. Backing of Fortescue should bring to speedy end3. 2 OctoberRW optimistic, but all things are subject to crosses1596/15974. 18 FebruaryLease delivered to Fortescue, but he and Burghley busy with privy seals5. 25 FebruaryFortescue promises to dispatch Otford as soon as Burgley at leisure6. 28 FebruaryBurghley unwell. Lord Cobham weak, his son wants wardenship of Cinque Ports7. 4 MarchBurghley still unwell, whose hands are bound up this cold weather8. 12 MarchFortescue raised Otford, but Burghley still too busy over Sir Thomas Shirley5affair9. 16 MarchRW would dispatch Otford if in his power, but Burghley not well10. 19 MarchEssex has read letter to Q and Burghley and said it was good. Lady Warwick will deliver when shereturns. He spoke to Stanhope6 who said Cobham had already got park. RW thought to press for leaverather than for park11. 22 MarchRW delivered RS letter re wardenship of Cinque Ports to Q who said Cobham has it. Waited forFortescue 2½ hours, spoke about Otford, but there was more disquiet about the accounts and Shirley. Igrow weary of this fruitless attending upon so vain promises12. 25 MarchRW asks to deal with Otford as he sees fit as letters cause delay13. 26 MarchRS should write to Burghley as great time is lost in attending Fortescue159714. 4 AprilFortescue ill for 8 days. Otford asleep until he is well unless RS gives RW go ahead to approach Burghley15. 5 AprilSuch a hurlyburly over Shirley and the French, not opportune for private suits1 Under Treasurer and Chancellor of the Exchequer2Sir Robert Sidney3The Queen4 Rowland Whyte5Treasurer-at-war in the Low Countries accused of embezzlement of funds6Sir John Stanhope, treasurer of the chamber32516. 13 AprilFortescue better, but RS ought to let RW have a private letter to Burghley about Otford17. 16 AprilWill go on attending Fortescue, but Burghley is well and at Court, will try to bring both together18. 23 AprilFortescue ill but has corrected petition and directs RW to Burghley19. 27 AprilBurghley has read the letter and looked at the inquisition. Q would have to agree at pulling down house.He thinks suit reasonable, leases are usually granted by him. RW asks RS to write to Fortescue andBurghley for their favour20. 30 AprilFortescue has seen inquisition. He agrees needs Q's consent, but thinks offer so profitable Q would agreeunless Burghley opposed21. 4 MayFortescue will approach Q, should be alright unless Burghley opposes22. 12 MayFortescue not at Court, the matter depends wholly on him23. 14 MayFortescue is back, by his advice the petition has been framed24. 25 SeptemberDraft letter to Burghley, for 3 years he has asked money for repairs. The house will fall down and thedeer escape. At his own expense RS has had survey done (copy enclosed), seeks lease for 3 lives andherbage and pannage of the park25. 22 OctoberBurghley absent so can't solicit about Otford1597/159826. 8 JanuaryFortescue not at Court for 10 days, not RW's fault if it does not end well. Petition for 3 lives with herbageand pannage; yearly fee of £6/3/4d to end; RS to repair pale, lodge, maintain deer and give yearly rent asQ imposes. Asks RS to be patient if he is denied27. 19 JanuaryBurghley will approach Q when matters of that nature arise. Q has gracious opinion of RS though youhave as few friends about her as may be. Will contact Essex about RS's leave28. 11 FebruaryWill solicit Burghley about Otford and Essex about leave29. 15 FebruaryWill solicit Burghley about Otford and Essex about leave30. 18 FebruaryEssex says has not forgotten about leave. Burghley has not answered petition about Otford. I find himnot to meddle with suits31. 25 FebruaryWill jog Burghley's memory when he is well159932. 12 SeptemberRW asks RS to write to Burghley to effect it, for you of yourself will never enjoy it33. 27 OctoberLord Cobham with the help of Buckhurst, Fortescue and Robert Cecil to beg for Otford and hasapproached Johns7to buy out his term34. 31 OctoberGoes to Fortescue who says whoever offers most will have Otford. Buckhurst wants reversion after yourlife35. 3 NovemberHas begged Barbara Sidney to come to Court or park will be lost and future leave36. 10 NovemberCobham has sent for Johns to deal for his interest. RW does not know the answer, but Johns has writtento RS about it. Q has denied any grant to him. Buckhurst opposed it. Lady Huntingdon will deliver offer7Johns/Jones deputy keeper of the park appointed by Sir Robert Sidney 30 July 1599326to Q, for RS and 2 sons lives with herbage and pannage; pale with be repaired at £300, your keeper's feeto be £6/3/1d and rent of £10 a year; convenient number of deer to be maintained. Figures to show Q willsave money on this arrangement. P.S. My Lady Walsingham hath gott her husbands life, her own and hersonnes in Eltam Parke. It is under the Great Seale already37. 13 NovemberRW proceeding with good advice so no one will take exception to it. RS letter to Q not to be deliveredbut on good cause and good advice38. 13 NovemberCobham minded to purchase all Otford manor, but Q won't part. No dealing for fee-farm, LadyHuntingdon will proceed for terms of 10 November letter39. 15 NovemberLady Warwick has spoken to Cobham who said he never sought Otford. She will not progress Otforduntil RS's leave granted; in meantime she is not idle in visiting her great friends40. 29 NovemberNot the right moment to press for Otford, perhaps prepare fine present for Q41. 1 DecemberIf Cobham is still trying to get Otford, RW cannot possibly hear of it; yt is donne so secret yf it be done,that I cannot by any meanes com to the knoledge of it. Fortescue denies Cobham is trying and thinks Qwon't part with it1599/160042. 11 JanuaryQ pressed but won't sell Otford house, but content for another survey. Fortescue can't see any reason whyany should have it before RS, and knew of no other suit. RW thinks time to take alarm as suspects reasonfor survey is because Burghley and Cobham will make an offer. Johns offers £4000 towards purchase ifyou will let him join. If Q will sell house and park equal other offers or more43. 14 JanuaryFortescue says if Otford can't be repaired it will pulled down and stuff sent to Eltham and Greenwich.Thinks commissioners will think house should be pulled down, RS likely to be pleased because whilethere will he hard to procure further state in park44. 16 JanuaryOfficers of the works are at Otford45. 19 JanuaryOfficers of the works return from Otford. Kirwin, RS servant, was there, but not for Buckhurst orCobham. No survey of park done46. 24 JanuaryRW spoke with Stanhope to acquaint Q with RS offers and promised his wife 4 fair mares in return.Stanhope confided that Cobham was still trying to get Otford. The certificate of works values Otfordhouse at £200047. 26 JanuaryRS has written to Buckhurst and Robert Cecil who has acquainted Cobham and they have beendiscouraged from pursuing Otford48. 2 FebruaryFortescue says those that were most earnest to get Otford are grown cold. Certificate of work showsrepair of house at £1000, demoliton £800, value for sale £2000. RS has be much abused for it isrumoured he has sold life interest to Johns for £1000, which is the ground work for all this late alarm.Lady Warwick has seen Burghley and Fortescue to deny rumour and 'she very discreetly with some littlevehemency, delivered her mynd to them'49. 9 FebruaryNo leave to be dealt with for RS till near Easter. Lady Warwick has present RS offer to Q. She will taketime to consider. Lady Warwick and Lady Huntingdon say don't give present to Q until she accepts offer50. 14 FebruaryNo more secret moves for Otford. Q says if anybody to have further state in it it would be RS.51. 16 FebruaryRW to go to Court about Otford52. 21 FebruaryQ's reply to Lady Warwick about offer,'God forbyd but that you shuld be preferd before any other, and bemore respected.'53. 25 FebruaryFortescue has agreed to RS offering 2 lives at Otford32754. 1 MarchLady Warwick promises to move Q for 2 lives more55. 11 MarchBurghley has received offer of 2 more lives. He said if RS thought he would get way by offers, he wouldbe out offered. Q not likely to grant further state in it. Cobham was a nobleman, but as he has given hisword to RS he will take Otford no further56. 22 MarchBuckhurst said if Archbishop of Canterbury put in suit for Otford he might get it160057. 2 AprilBuckhurst hopes if RS gets Otford he will sell it to him. RW says RS will never sell. He accused RW ofdivulging their previous conversations, which RW did not deny. Buckhurst said it was Cobham who hadtold him of Johns' buying RS interest in the park as Johns had told him. RW confronted Johns whodenied it. He went to Burghley and both went to Cobham who denied circulating rumours58. 12 AprilSome 'jar' between Buckhurst and Cobham over Otford59. 26 AprilRW has told Buckhurst RS might do a deal if he can persuade Q over giving RS leave. Cobham stilltrying to get Otford park60. 30 AprilCobham still insists RS has sold his interest for £1000. This manner of proceeding is very unfriendly.RW is going to Buckhurst to deny it. Lady Warwick warned about event so she can take care Q may notbe led to wrong RS in his absence61. 3 MayRW has reason to be circ*mspect. Has told Buckhurst, RS won't make deal until he get his leave.Buckhurst will never consent to Cobham getting Otford62. 10 MayCobham continues to try for park63. 12 MayRS did right to write to Burleigh for Cobham stays at Court to get the park. Lady Warwick will seenothing done until RS return64. 13 MayBuckhurst says if RS gets fee-simple, he will desire only a life interest in it65. 17 MayRW thinks Buckhurst honourable and friendly66. 31 MayLord Herbert has told RW that Buckhurst is earnest suitor to Q to get an estate in the park. I cannotbelieve it67. 26 SeptemberBarbara Sidney has told RW that 2 of Buckhurst's men were viewing Otford. He protest much to loveyou328APPENDIX 9: Figure 8.1 – Deer Park Violations, 1558-1625No. Park Offence date Nature of offence Court date ReferenceELIZABETH I *depositions or other details remain9 9 W.Wickham c.1559 killing deer 1559 BL Add Mss 338995 0 Knole c.1560 *suspicious weaponed hunters by park - CKS U1450/F419 9 W.Wickham c.1564 breaking into park 1564 BL Add Mss 338996 2 Otford - Great mid 1560s coursing with greyhounds, killing deer - U1475/L177 1 Penshurst early 1570s hunting many times by 1 - U1475/E42/189-91 North Frith early 1570s twice hunting, killing deer - U1475/L174 7 Hungershall 1572 killing deer - U1475/L174 7 Hungershall 15/09/1572 accidental shooting death, pardoned 19/2/1573 Assize 35/15/1/647 (p.116)7 1 Penshurst 1572-1573 *multiple hunting, coursing - U1475/L17, U1475/E42/1,4 7 Hungershall 13/06/1573 1 with crossbow killed buck, confessed 25/6/1573 Assize 35/15/6/676 (p.121)5 8 Lynsted 3/06/1579 rabbits from warren (?in park), in goal 23/7/1579 Assize 35/21/8/991 (p.169)6 0 Mereworth 1/12/1581 6 break into park, assault servant 4/3/1583 Assize 35/25/9/1211 (p.204).(Waterdown,Eridge park, Sx)Jan-June 1582 *multiple breaks, many men June 1583 STAC5/A56/32(not in park) 31/08/1583 Lulingstone keeper killed man, murder 20/2/1584 Assize 35/26/4/1296 (p.217)(Waterdown, Sx) 10 & 17/6/1584 *Kent men kill deer 5/7/1584 STAC5/A1/82 4 Cooling Sept 1584 3 hunting 25/9/1584 Read(1962) p.352 3 Cobham Aug 1585 rabbit hunting by 4 3/8/1585 Read(1962) p.406 2 Otford Great 9/01/1587 *hunting, killing deer, hunter slain 12&18/1/1597 SP12/197/19 & 32, CKS U1450 E205 0 Knole Lent, 1587 hunting, killing deer 12&18/1/1597 SP12/197/19 & 326 Birling July 1587 rabbit hunting by 3 28/71587 Read(1962) p.485 0 Knole 2-5/11/ 1588 groups killed 1 deer, hurt 1 deer - Barrett- Lennard(1908) pp.126-75 0 Knole 13/08/1589 keepers mistake others, 1 killed, no verdict 23/2/1590 Assize 35/32/4/1806 (p.299)3 1 Eltham Great c.1594 2 accused of hunting discharged 28/3/1594 QM/SB/30A (A p.7)9 Bore Place 23/9/1594 park break, family and servants assaulted,fines, ignoramus, 1 to gaol not paid fine11/10/159424/9/1596QM/SIq/4/1-4 (A p.333)QM/SB/122 (A p.17)7 9 Sissinghurst Dec 1595 *claim of 1 to have found dead deer 4/5 Jan 1596 QM/SB/154 (A p.20)79 Sissinghurst 1595-1596 * 2 + suspected of killing several deer Feb-April 1596/97 QM/SB/162, 163 & 168 (A p.210QM/S1/1597/8 nos. 11-13 (A p.144)329No. Park Offence date Nature of offence Court date Reference*depositions or other details remain3 Aylesford 1597 horse stealing from common park 17/5/1597 QM/SI/1597/11 (A p.145)7 7 Scott's Hall 13/12/1597 8 + dogs kill 4 deer, hunter killed 20/2/1598 Assize 35/40/3/ 2545 (pp.417-418).6 Birling c.1597 *rabbit stealing by 1, by information 1/5/15981/10/1598QM/SB/252 (A p.28)QM/SI/1598/2/11 (A p.157)6 Birling c.1597/98 *group kill 2 deer, assault keepers 1/5/1598 QM/SB/252 (A p.28)2 3 Cobham c.1597/98 *rabbit stealing 1/5/1598 QM/SB/252 (A p.28)5 0 Knole 1599 6 enter park and assault keepers 29/7/1599 QM/SI/1597/24/2 (A p.177))7 1 Penshurst 6/5/1599 3 hunt deer with greyhounds 2/3/1601 Assize 35/43/9/2856 (p.468)7 1 Penshurst 14 & 18/5/1600 *multiple hunting, killing deer, abduction>led to Star Chamber case May 1600 – Nov1601CKS U1475/L18/1-19 (June 1600-Nov 1601),U1475 E42/2; HMC II p.464,467STAC5/S2/20; STAC5/S21/31; STAC5/S41/5;STAC5/S68/33; STAC5/S74/156 Birling c.1601 *multiple rabbit hunting, 2 deer - StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/17 9 Sissinghurst 5/1/1601 *hunting in park 20/10/1604 STAC8/53/56 Birling 12/1/1601 with greyhounds kill 1 deer 21/4/1601 Q/SR2/13 m3d (C p.71-72)7 1 Penshurst ?October 1601 keepers attacked in lane by park - CKS U1475 C36/3 (17 October 1601)7 9 Sissinghurst mid Oct 1601 *hunting in park 20/10/160126/10/1601QM/SRc/1602/197 (B p.457) Knafla(1994)'p. 254/5QM/SB/387 (A p.38); Knafla(1994) p. 89,94, 1767 9 Sissinghurst 2 4-29/10/16012/11/1601*multiple hunting , keepers beaten2 deer at night> led to Star Chamber case25/9/160425/9/160420/10/1604QM/SR1[Q/SR5]16 m2 (C p.204)STAC8/53/52 3 Cobham 1601-1602 *multiple hunting, killing deer - StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/11 8 Canterbury 1602 *coursing with greyhounds - StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/110/11 Wotton's park Spring 1602 *2 stealing rabbits 2/4/1602 QM/SB/429 (A p.43)Knafla(1994) pp.59, 88, 96, 191, 2359 3 South Frith late July 1602 illegal offer of venison 5/9/1602 Kanfla(1994) pp.58, 103, 1973 0 Elham Summer 1602 deer coursing with bloodhounds 12/9/1602 QM/SI/1603/2 (A p.192)5 6 Lyminge 17/9/1602 2+ hunt deer with 2 bloodhounds, case toQueen's BenchMarch 160312/9/1603Q/SR3/287 m8 no.1 (C p.113)QM/SI/1603/2 (A p.192)Knafla(1994) p.51,111,25396? John Smith's pk Winter 1602 illegal hunting.?Westenhanger 11/1/1603 Kent at Law pp. 70,105,2317 9 Sissinghurst 19/3/1603 *many kill deer, in park many times 20/10/1604 STAC8/53/5330No. Park Offence date Nature of offence Court date Reference*depositions or other details remainJAMES I2 7 Denstroude 3/4/1603 1 broke in to retrieve impounded horse 19/7/1603 QM/SR/4/8/8 m2d (C p.157))(Ashdown, Sx) Nov, 23/12/1604 *Kent men kill deer c.1604 STAC8/5/136 Birling not dated *deer, conies taken, night, assault not dated STAC8/221/23 (ND)7 9 Sissinghurst 9/4/1604 greyhound killed doe, 3 fined c.1604 QM/SR4/15 (C p.193)7 1 Penshurst 9/4/1604 4 with dogs kill doe 17/4/1604 Q/SR4/15 m11d (C p.193)7 9 Sissinghurst 3 &7/6/1604 *many kill deer, in park many times c.1604 STAC8/53/57 9 Sissinghurst June 1604 *2 with dogs take deer 20/10/1604 STAC8/53/57 9 Sissinghurst 22/7/1604 3 break into park 25/9/1604 QM/SR1[Q/SR/5]15 m1d (C p.204)7 8 Shurland Feb-Sept 1605 *group, dogs kill deer, pale down Nov 1605 STAC8/183/345 0 Knole Autumn 1605 2 ferreting for conies 22/11/1605 QM/SRc/1605/193 (B p.489)4 3 (Hamsell, Sx) 1 & 10/10/1605 *2 kill deer 4/12/1605 STAC8/290/174 3 (Hamsell, Sx) 1/11/1605 *2 coursing kill deer May 1606 STAC8/294/67 9 Sissinghurst 17/11/1605 *group deer hunting 7/12/160529/1/1607QM/SIq/4/29 & 30 (A p.338)STAC8/53/43 8 Great Chart 18/11/1605 5, night, killed conies with dogs, nets 12/4/160523/7/1605QM/SIq/4/28 (A p.338)QM/SRI[Q/SR5] m6d (C p.217)4 0 Groombridge c.1605 question about deer killed 1606-1607 STAC8/294/65 5 Lullingstone Sept 1606 5 take rabbits 7/9/1606 QM/SI/1606/13/20 (B p.239)5 6 Lyminge 9/9/1606 *group get rabbits, deer, attack keepers 2/10/1606 QM/SB/710 (A p.67)QM/SI/1607/1/17 (B p.243)6 1 Mersham Hatch Summer 1608 2 stole 2 rabbits, fined 16/7/1608 QM/SI/1608/11/8 (B p.251)1 8 Canterbury 22/05/1609 *many break pale, attack deer, keeper c.1609 STAC8/16/29 4 Tyler Hill Summer 1609 4 break into park 8/6/1609 QM/SI/1609/18/8 (B p.260)9 3 South Frith 19/01/1610 *attack on working forge at night 07/02/1610 STAC8/196/18 (1610)63 Otford – Little 1612 2 separate men fishing in river 1612 QM/SRc/1612/59 & 110 (B p.595 & 600)5 0 Knole Winter 1614/15 warrener and others hunted no licence 12/1/1615 QM/SI/1615/2/5 (A p.314)2 4 Cooling Feb 1615 *3 ringleaders, greyhounds, kill doe 29/05/1618 STAC8/23/1129 East Wickham 3/8/1615 *2, night, kill buck and other deer 4/6/1617 STAC8/198/186 Birling Summer 1617 *4 stole rabbits 19/7/1617 QM/SB/1279 (A p.108)331BIBLIOGRAPHYPRIMARY SOURCESSYMONSON6" OSTithe1741/5 Rocque'sBritish Library (BL)Add Ch. 9424 Add.Ch. 41796Add.Mss. 12066 Add.Mss. 33899 Add.Mss. 34214Add.Mss. 36804 Add.Mss. 36805 Add.Mss. 42715Cart.Harl. 75.E.31 Cart.Harl. 75.H.23 Cart.Harl. 76.A.22Cart.Harl. 77.A.35 Cart.Harl. 77.C.44 Cart.Harl. 77.D.10Cart.Harl. 79.F.3 Cart.Harl. 79.F.5 Cart.Harl. 79.F.27Cart.Harl. 80.B.36 Cart.Harl. 83.H.35 Cart.Harl. 85.H.6Cart.Harl. 85.H.13 Cart.Harl. 86.G.54 Cart.Harl. 86.H.16Cart.Harl. 86.H.53Cart.Lans.82.55Map 188.k.3(4)The National Archives (TNA)C142/468/85 C202/21/1E40/4955 E40/4967 E41/75E41/524 E42/431 E44/3E101/497/4 E112/88/319 E112/190/168E122/130/12-13 E133/3/557 E133/6/815E133/6/863 E134/30-31 E134/34E134/31Eliz/Hil12 E134/31Eliz/Hil27 E134/31Eliz/Mich19E134/25ChasII/Mich12 E138/3521 E164/40E164/44 E178/1093 E178/1128E178/1163-5 E178/1179 E178/3924-5E178/3941 E178/5365 E178/6020E214/703 E214/898 E214/1138E251/3367 E314/61/8 E317/8E326/1398 E326/2947 E328/51E328/172 E351/764 E351/3367E351/3393 E351/3541 E354/45Ind1/16822/264 Ind1/16822/319 Ind1/16824/94Ind1/16824/136 Ind1/16824/168LR2/196 LR2/218MPF1/240 MPF1/272 MPI 1/248332PCC prob/11/42 PCC prob/11/44 PCC prob11/63/15PCC prob/11/65 PCC prob/11/87-88 PCC prob/11/112/72PCC prob/11/112/114 PCC prob/11/124 PCC prob/11/127PCC prob/11/133-134 PCC prob/11/142 PCC prob/11/148PCC prob/11/159 PCC prob/11/180 PCC prob/11/259PCC prob/11/951 PRC/0/3/59 PRC/12/13/126PRC/16/208 PRC/16/218 PRC/16/37PRC/16/125/L/1 PRC/17/67/106 PRC/17/53/227PRC/32/30 PRC/32/45 PRC/16/218SC6/HenVIII/1727 SC12/9/4 SC12/9/6SC12/9/46 SC12/9/48 SC12/20/22SC12/27/7SP10/4/27SP12/16/26 SP12/20/52 SP12/25/130SP12/34/25 SP12/75/39-47 SP12/87/1-3 SP12/93/37SP12/98/15 SP12/98/29 SP12/124/10 SP12/126/33SP12/131/39-41 SP12/136/42 SP12/142/19 SP12/143/35SP12/143/41 SP12/148/63 SP12/149/52 SP12/162/34SP12/162/38 SP12/162/40 SP12/162/44 SP12/163/14SP12/163/20 SP12/171/66 SP12/179/12 SP12/180/54SP12/181/24 SP12/186/46 SP12/197/19 SP12/197/32SP12/211/103 SP12/224/80 SP12/235/9 SP12/238/11/1SP12/240/103 SP12/250/42 SP12/250/44 SP12/253/71SP12/253/88 SP12/259/20 SP12/259/82 SP12/262/48SP12/263/107 SP12/264/7 SP12/264/70 SP12/265/20SP12/270/25 SP12/273/25 SP12/274/30 SP12/274/117SP12/274/127 SP12/275/3 SP12/276/39 SP12/277/1SP12/281/57 SP12/234/78 SP12/335/9 SP12/250/42SP12/520/69 SP12/276/43 SP12/908/29SP14/2/7 SP14/4/16 SP14/4/ 33A SP14/6/89SP14/8/7 SP14/9/83 SP14/10/78 SP14/10/85SP14/12/88 SP14/13/58 SP14/13/70 SP14/14/1SP14/14/11 SP14/14/32 SP14/15/20 SP14/15/34.SP14/27/15 SP14/28/58 SP14/31/10 SP14/31/24SP14/32/10 SP14/35/49 SP14/35/58 SP14/35/75SP14/36/13 SP14/36/42 SP14/38/10 SP14/45/62SP14/47/5 SP14/47/41 SP14/53/110 SP14/57/3SP14/58/19 SP14/59/9 SP14/65/5 SP14/69/34SP14/69/71 SP14/70/48 SP14/75/40 SP14/75/49SP14/76/29 SP14/76/45 SP14/108/53 SP14/109/41SP14/109/92 SP14/110/54 SP14/115/68 SP14/117/62SP14/152/75 SP14/153/74 SP14/153/97 SP14/164/71SP14/180/4 SP14/127/62 SP14/128/112 SP14/130/83SP14/131/53 SP14/132/46 SP14/132/97 SP14133/31SP14/133/43 SP14/148/104 SP14/185/19 SP14/209/92SP16/522/133 SP18/17/38-41STAC5/A1/8 STAC5/S2/20 STAC/S21/31333STAC5/S41/5 STAC5/S68/33 STAC5/S74/15STAC8/5/13 STAC8/16/2 STAC8/23/11STAC8/33/4 STAC8/53/4 STAC8 53/5STAC8/183/34 STAC8/196/18 STAC8/198/8STAC8/221/23 STAC8/ 290/17 STAC8/294/6STAC8/295/10Centre for Kentish Studies (CKS)DRa/Pwr/1 DRb/Pwr/4 DRb/Pwr/9/315DRb/Pwr/11/157 Drb/Pwr/11/294 DRb/Pwr/15/53DRb/Pwr/18/128 DRb/Pwr/19 DRb/Pwr/20DRb/Pwr/22/273 DRb/Pwr/23 DRb/Pwr/25DRb/Pwr/27 DRb/Pwr/32 DRb/Pwr/42DRb/Pwr/44PRS/W/14/209QM/SB 1/252 QM/SB 2/9 QM/SB 25/30QM/SB 122 QM/SB 154 QM/SB 162QM/SB 163 QM/SB 167 QM/SB 168QM/SB 387 QM/SB 706 QM/SB 710QM/SB 1598/252 QM/SB 1602/429 QM/SB 1602/1217-1218QM/SB 1602/1220 QM/SB 1606/696. QM/SB 1617/1279QM/SI 1597-8/11-13 QM/SI 1598/2 QM/SI 1606/13/20QM/SI 1608/11/8 QM/SI 1599/24/2 QM/SI 1609/18/8QM/SI 1610/298 QM/SI 1615/165/2/5QM/SIq 4/1-4 QM/SIq 4/29-30QM/SM/21 no.743QM/SR1/15-16Q/SR2/13 Q/SR4/15 Q/SR48/8QM/SRc 1602/196-197 QM/SRc 1605/193 QM/SRc 1606/ 230-232QM/SRc 1612/59 QM/SRc 1612/110QS/SB 398TR 429/1 TR 431/9, Map 5 TR1534/1U24 M23 U24 T207 U24 T279U24 T283 U24 T308 U24 T428/1-4U31 P3 U38/T1 parts1- 2 U47/1 T239:U47/3 T42-44 U47/11 M2-M3 U47/11 M17U48 P1 U78 P31 U93 T11-20U151 P1-2 U195 C146 U214 E19/14U214 E19/21 U214 E19/23 U234 E21U269 A2/1-2 U269 A3 U269 A5/1U269 A41/1/1-2 U269 A41/1/7-8 U269 A41/1/11U269 A41/1/13-16 U269 A41/2 U269 A182/3/1-3U269 C1/1 U269 C1/9 U269 E23/1-2U269 E25/2 U269 E28 U269 E30-31U269 E45 U269 E48 U269 E66/1-3U269 E341 U269 T1 U269 T3U269 T15 U274 E5 U274 T8U312 M U312 P2-P3 U350 E4334U386 P1 U409 M2 U410 T195U442 P102 U480/T1/1 U565 P1U565 T166 U590/T14/4 U591 C261/3U591 C261/5 U681 P31 U708 T14U787 E9/2-3 U787 E9 U787/T1U787/T4 U787/T6 U807/M1U825 P6 U830 T5 U830 T6/1-2U830 T6/29 U908 L1/1-2 U908 P78U908 T6 U951 A2 U951 C261/5U951 C261/9 U967 M2 U1000/1/T1U1000/3 E2 U1000/3 E5-E6 U1000/3 E9U1000/3 E23-E24 U1000/3 E28 U1000/3 E34U1000/7/M19 U1000/2 T1 bundle 2 U1095/P3U1450 E19-E20 U1450 T1/3 U1450 T4/17U1450 T5/22 U1450 T5/40 U1450 T5/62U1450 T5/65-69 U1450 T6/9-10 U1450 T6/12U1450 T6/23 U1450 T6/27-32 U1450 T6/44U1450 T7/87A U1450 T14/6 U1450 T14/17U1475 A6/6 U1475 A11 U1475 A24U1475 A27/7 U1475 A28/4 U1475 A33/2U1475 C12/203 U1475 C36/3 U1475 C50/15U1475 C66/8 U1475 C75/4 U1475 C81/37U1475 C81/48 U1475 C81/82 U1475 C250U1475 E1 U1475 E21/1-2 U1475 E23/1-2U1475 E24 U1475 E31 U1475 E42/1-2U1475 E47 U1475 E55/1 U1475 E55/4U1475 E60-E62 U1475 L17-L18 U1475 M58-60U1475 M73 U1475 M79 U1475 T4/2U1475 T4/7 U1475 T4/13 U1475 T4/17U1475 T4/20 U1475 T9/7 U1475 T27U1475 T33 U1475 T55/22-22A U1475 T58U1475 T61/1-4 U1475 T61/6 –7 U1475 T84-T87U1475 T90 U1475 T92 U1500 C2/3U1500 E1 U1500 E8 U1500 P1U1506 P1/44 U1515 P11 U1515 T1U1515 T75 U1590 E54/6 U1590 T1/3U1590 T1/5-8 U1590 T14/12 U1590 T14/14U1590 T14/17 U1590 T22/9 U1590 T22/12U1590 T22/14 U1590 T22/28 U1590 T23/6U1590 T23/13-14 U1590 T23/27 U1590 T25/3U1644 T1 U1644 T322 U1644 T11629U1776 P1 U1867 P1 U2007 T155.U2035 T32Bromley Local Studies Library (BLS)43/6 43/7a-b 43/943/10a-bCanterbury Cathedral Archives (CCA)CC J/Q/288 QS CC J/Q/401/5 QSDCB-J/X.10.16 DCB-J/X.10.17 DCB-J/X.10.18335DCB-J/X.10.20 DCB-J/X.11.1 DCB-J/X.16DCc ChAnt/C/965 DCcChAnt/C/1238 DCc ChAnt/M/29-38DCc ChAnt/W/230M49 M57Register T folio 254 Register T folio 313Centre for Medway Studies (CMS)DRc/Ac2/5/43 DRc/Elb/1A DRc/Ele/086/12DRc/ES1/18 DRc/T166AU480/P1 U480/T1/1 U565/P1U565/P3 U565/T166 U565/T251U1823/P3Chilham Castle ArchivesHogben survey, 1778Manorial and Estate Documents B, I Court Roll 1638-1644Title Deeds A, bundle I and II, 1569-1720East Kent Archive Centre (EKAC)EK- Ly/7 4/10-11 EK- Sa/ZP/3/242 EK- S/Rm P1/1EK- TR270/4EK- U88 T35 EK- U270/m285/1 EK- U270 T4EK- U270 T11 EK- U270 T119 EK- U373 T41EK- U404 T14 EK- U449 L9 EK- U1496 L1East Sussex Record Office (ESRO)ABE/18/R/1 ABE/52DAP box 32 Dyke-Hamilton 606-607Lambeth Palace Library (LPL)ED1474 MS 952(5) TA633/1-4TA39/1-9 TC1 TC3TC656/1 TD172 TD253TG56Salisbury Papers at Hatfield HouseAccounts 6/35Box S/9Deeds 21/42 no.321 Deeds 42/1 no.15 Deeds 68/17Deeds 115/17 Deeds 145/184 Deeds 145/206-7Deeds 145/209-213 Deeds 190/21 Deeds 242/21Staffordshire Record Office (StaffsRO)D593/S/4/56/1S/4/10/30 S/4/14/14 S/4/42/1S/4/61/1Suffolk Record Office (SuffRO)HA43/T501/242336CALENDARSActs of Privy Council New Series VII, 1558-1570, (ed. 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K., Hunting and Stalking Deer (London, 1980)Wightman, Wightman's Arithmetical Tables (London, 1952)Williams R., Chislet Chronicles (Canterbury, 2001)Williams R.H.I., A Short history of Elham and its Parish Church (KentMessenger,1959)Williamson T., Suffolk's Gardens and Parks (Macclesfield, 2000)Williamson, T. ‘Peeling Back the Layers: Trees in Parks’ pp. 13-17 in The Associationof Gardens Trusts Conference Proceedings - Peeling Back the Layers - the Legacy ofAncient Trees in the Historic Environment (London 2003)Williamson T., The Archaeology of Rabbit Warrens (Princes Risborough, 2006)Willson D.H., James I & VI (London, 1956)Wilson J., Entertainments for Elizabeth I (Woodbridge, 1980)Wilson J.D., 'The Medieval Parks of Dorset XI-XVII', The Proceedings of the DorsetNatural History and Archaeological Society, 92 (1970) pp.208-211, 93 (1972) pp.169-175, 94 (1973) pp.67-69, 95 (1974) pp.76-80, 96 (1975) pp.47-50, 98 (1978) pp.6-10,99 (1980) pp.6-10, 100 (1980) pp.31-35Wilson K., Story of Biggin Hill (Bromley, 1982)Wiltshire M. & Woore S., Medieval Parks of Derbyshire (Ashbourne, 2009)Wingfield-Stratford E., This was a man (London, 1949)Wingfield-Stratford E., The Lords of Cobham Hall (London, 1959)Witney K. P., The Jutish Forest (London, 1976)Wood A., Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Basingstoke,2002)Woodruff C. E., A History of the Town and Port of Fordwich (Canterbury, 1895)Woodruff C.E. , 'Wages paid at Maidstone in Queen Elizabeth's reign' in ArchaeologiaCantiana XXII (1897) pp.316-319Woodward D., 'Wage Rates and Living Standards in Pre-Industrial England', Past andPresent 91 (May, 1981) pp.28-46Woodward F., Oxfordshire Parks (Abingdon, 1982)Woolley L., Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (London,2002) Victoria &Albert MuseumWrightson K., Earthly Necessities(London, 2002)Wyndham K.S.H., 'Crown Land and Royal Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth CenturyEngland', Journal of British Studies 19:2 (1980), pp.18-34Yeandle L., 'Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden Dering and his 'Booke of Expences'(1617-1628)' in Archaeologia Cantiana CXXV (2005) pp.323-344349Zell M.L., 'Mid-Tudor Market in Crown Land', Archaeologia Cantiana XCVII (1981)pp. 53-70Zell M.L., Industry in the Countryside - Wealden Society in the Sixteenth Century(Cambridge, 1994)Zell M.L., 'Kent's Elizabethan Justices of the Peace at Work', in Archaeologia CantianaCXIX, 1999 pp.31-38Zell M.L. (ed.), Early Modern Kent (Woodbridge, 2000) Kent County CouncilZettersten A., ‘The Lambeth Manuscript of the Boke of Hunting’, NeuphilologischeMitteilungen (1969)pp.106-121UNPUBLISHED SOURCESBannister N.R., Historic Landscape Survey of Penshurst Estate, January 1994Bannister N.R., Archaeological and Historical Assessment of the Mersham HatchEstate for Lord Brabourne and the Countess of Mountbatten, June 1999Bannister N. R., The Stour Valley Historic Landscape Survey, Kent Stour CountrysideProject, November 1999Bannister N.R., Scotney Castle Estate Historic and Archeological Survey, volume 1,May 2001Bannister N.R., Sissinghurst Castle Estate Archaeological and Historic LandscapeSurvey, May 2002Bannister N.R. & Pittman S., Birling Place Landscape Archaeology Day Report, 12June 2010Bennett R. G., The Kentish Polhills 1422-1758 (Unpublished, for private circulation,1958)Bowdler R., Historical Account: Cobham Hall Estate, 2002Chalklin C. W., A Kentish Wealden Parish (Tonbridge) 1550-1750, (Oxford 1960,thesis presented for degree of Bachelor of Letters)Colvin & Moggridge, Boughton Monchelsea Park: historic park restoration plan,Draft Interim Report, March 2004Colvin, Moggridge & Filkins, Penshurst Place Park - History and RestorationManagement Plan, volume 1, April 1994Copeland, H.R., From Village to Borough, a brief outline history of Old Beckenham,1962Davis B. F., Bound books of transcripts for the Bromley and District area in BromleyLocal StudiesDebois Landscape Survey Group of Colchester, Chilham Castle, Kent, HistoricLandscape Survey and Restoration Proposals, 2003Dye J., Change in the Norfolk landscape – the decline of the deer parks (MAdissertation for University of East Anglia, 1986)Forge G.A., Westenhanger Castle and Barns Historical Notes, 2003Gulley J.L.M., The Wealden Landscape in the early seventeenth century and itsAntecedents PhD thesis for University of London, 1960)Heron T., Antiquities of Chilham Collected by Thomas Heron esq., 1791Hoppitt R., A study of the development of deer parks in Suffolk from C11th to c17th(PhD thesis for University of East Anglia, 1992)Ibbett F. D. & Co Sale, Particulars map Otford & Dunton Green AgriculturalProperty, July 2 1922LEDA Consultancy, Godinton Park Report Development for Recreation, April 1978Liddiard R., 'The disparkment of medieval parks', unpublished paper delivered at theConference on 'The History, Ecology and Archaeology of Medieval Parks andParkland', Sheffield, 2007.350Mark J.L., The Wealden landscape in the early C17th and its antecedents (PhD thesisfor University of London, 1960)Owlett E., Notes of Mrs Edith Owlett (collection at Cranbrook Museum)Semple J., The Medieval deer parks of Wrotham 1400-1600, incomplete draft articleMay 2006Simpson P., Custom and Conflict in Disputes over Tithe in the Diocese of Canterbury1501-1600 (PhD thesis for The University of Kent at Canterbury, January 1997)Taylor C.C., Leeds Castle Park Report of Archaeological Field Visit 19 July 1996 forLeeds Castle Ltd.Tookey G.W., The History of Langley Park, Beckenham (Beckenham, c.1975)Williams J. J., Hunting in early modern England: an examination with specialreference to the reign of Henry VIII (PhD thesis for The University of Birmingham,October 1998)Wyndham D., Family History of Roberts, 1952OTHER SOURCESConference: Peeling back the layers; The Legacy of Ancient Trees in the HistoricEnvironment – 6 November 2003 (Proceedings of)Conference: The History, Ecology and Archaeology of Medieval Parks and Parklands -Sheffield Hallam University, 17-19 September 2007Conference: Medieval Parks: Recent Research – University of Cambridge Institute ofContinuing Studies, 13 February 2010Lecture: William Lambarde and his Perambulation of Kent, Dr Marion O'Connor, CKS11 October 2007BBC2 TV series: How we built Britain by David Dimbleby –– part on Middle England(C16th)CD: Fox J., The History of Sevenoaks up to 1650 with CD database of West Kent willsto 1650 (Seal, 2002)Websites:Kent Archaeological Society – http://www.kentarchaeology.ac.ukOxford Dictionary of National Biography – http://www.oxforddnb.comOxford English Dictionary – http://www.dictionary.oed.com351PARK PROFILES1st letter of park Page numbersA 351 - 355B 355 - 370C 370 - 380D 380 - 381E 381 - 389F 389 - 392G 392 - 396H 397 - 403I 403K 404 - 409L 409 - 416M 416 - 419O 419 - 426P 425 - 436R 436S 437 - 447T 447 - 455W 455 - 460Abbreviationsa = acre/s c = circa d = died m = marriedArch.Cant. = Archaeologia CantianaBL = British LibraryBLS = Bromley Local Studies LibraryCCA = Canterbury Cathedral ArchivesCKS = Centre for Kentish StudiesCMS = Centre for Medway StudiesCPR = Calendar of Patent RollsdLD = De Lisle and DudleyEKAC = East Kent Archive CentreESRO = East Sussex Record OfficeHasted = The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2nd editionHMC = His/Her Majesty's CommissionIPM = Inquisition Post MortemKAS = Kent Archaeological SocietyKCC = Kent County CouncilLambarde = A Perambulation of KentLC = Cantor L., The Medieval Parks of England - A Gazetteer(Loughborough, 1983)LPL = Lambeth Palace LibrarySMR = Sites and Monuments RecordsSPD = State Papers DomesticStaffsRO = Staffordshire Record OfficeTNA = The National ArchivesVCH = Victoria County HistorySources for Ownership are from secondary sources listed for each park, unless primarysource given352(1) ALDINGTON Parish: AldingtonEarliest reference: 1165 (LC - PRS9,201)Ownership:C14th Archbishop of Canterbury > 1539/40 alienated from the church by Cranmer to HenryVIII > 1548 Edward VI indenture to John Dudley Earl of Warwick (TNA E328/172) >1549/50 reconveyed back to Edward VI in exchange for other land and continued withCrown until Charles ISize: 1624 = 680a, land within the park and fishpond (TNA SC12/20/22)Documentary evidence:1273/74 Kilwardby Survey of the Archbihop's manors in S.E. England (KAS wbesite)1274-5 Kent Hundred rolls, Master Richard de Clifford escheater during vacant see soldwood in Archbishop of Canterbury's park valued at 66s and took 20 deer and more in thesame park. He caused destruction and waste in parks (plural ?more than one park) andfishponds in Aldington at £10 or more.1281 CPR 6 July.hunting and taking away deer from Archbishop of Canterbury1390/1 LPL Archbishop's estates B Account rolls no.139 Aldington parker1540 TNA E328/172 By letters patent Henry VIII made Sir Thomas Cheyne, treasurer ofhis household, constable of Saltwood and the office of keeping his chief messuage atWestenhanger, parks at Hostinhanger, Westenhanger, Aldington and Saltwood.1546 E314/61/8 Woods in king's park of Aldington1556 C66/899 mm24-25 To Cardinal Pole, lands called le Park at Maidstone in tenure ofHenry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the said park. Also with numerous otherslands, park of Saltwood; house and site of late monastery of St Augustine near walls ofCanterbury, the park called Canterbury Park adjacent to the house; the parks of Aldingtonand Otford; the park of Knole late parcel of lands of John, Duke of Northumberland,attainted1559 CPR Licence to alienate manor of Aldington from Warham Seyntleger to WilliamSeyntleger1561 CPR Licence to alienate lands in Aldington William Seyntleger to Blechynden1561 CPR Lcence to alienate lands in Aldington William Seyntleger to Middleton1568 CPR Licence to alienate Warham, William, Nicholas Seyntleger lands in Aldington toBarnam1568 CPR 21-year lease lands in Aldington in Crown hands late of Archbishop ofCanterbury, rents and fine given1569 CPR Licence to alienate lands in Aldington Thwaytes to Jackman1570 CPR Licence to alienate lands in Aldington Lord Burgh (Aldington Cobham al.Estcourt)1577 CPR Blechynden alientated to Spicer1579 CPR Licence to alienate lands in Aldington Nicholas Seyntleger to Fynche1591 SP12/240/103, 22 December, lease to Sir Thomas Scott of the Great Park atAldington, with lodge and cony warren, 21 years, rent £80 p.a.1597 TNA SP12/265/20, 25 November, 21 year lease to Richard and Edward, sons of SirThomas Scott, 21 years Aldington Great park; £80 rent, £30 fine.1607 TNA SP14/28/58 Lease to John Scott of the farm of the park of Addington(sic) (butcounty given as Kent so Aldington meant)1624 TNA SC12/20/22 Rental and Seizures, land within the park and fishpond 680a, Scott353tenant1624 TNA SC12/20/22 Tenant Thomas Scott1649 TNA LR2/196 Aldington survey, still Scott family tenantsSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. L (1938:158)Arch.Cant. LXXXVI (1971:15)Arch.Cant. XCVII (1981:53)du Boulay (January 1952:26) English Historical Review 67, no.262 - ref. DPE A 14; LCMxii, 10, 11du Boulay (1964:279-280) Kent Records XVIIIClark (1997:259) English Provincial SocietyForge (2003:15) Westenhanger castleGrose (1797:86-87) Antiquities of England and Wales IIIHarris (1718:24) History of KentHasted 8 (1797:319)KCC SMR, TR 03 NE 29 KE3826Lambarde (1576 – not included:1596 – disparked)Scott (1876:203-205) Memorials of the Scott Family of Scot's HallSmith Ellis (1885:142) Parks and Forests of SussexVCH I (reprint1974:473)Maps:TNA MPI 1/248 plan of manor of Aldington, Elizabeth IFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR080365 Middle Park FarmAcknowledgements:(2) ALLINGTON Parish: AllingtonEarliest reference: 1304 tenement abutting the park of Allington (TNA E326/1398)Ownership:Moresby married Gainsford sold 1492 > Sir Henry Wyatt> Sir Thomas Wyatt beheaded1554 > Crown (Finch, Astley see below)Size: 1573 = over 350a (CCA DCB-J/X.10.17)Documentary evidence:1361 (Cal.IPM XI,199)LC wood called 'le park'1554 CPRl, Oct m.33 Annuities from Crown surrendered by Mary Finch, widow, one ofprincipal gentlewomen of Privy Chamber, for 30 year lease of Thomas Wyatt's landsincluding castle and park of Allington with lands called Thorne, Codlandes, Cutmyll nowenclosed in said park, lands called le Parke in Maidstone. May 1555 Patent m.14,surrenders some of land, but not Allington park1555 CKS U1644 T322 (Romney) (1629 recital) Patent rolls part 1, no.895 amongexception of grant is lands within the park of Allington near Maidstone in the tenure ofMary Finch gentlewoman, 16s.8d yearly3541555 CKS U195 C146 Particular of Allington Castle estate (latin) includes Park field 9a,and field called Colland south of park held by Thomas Cleggett (also reference toMaidstone park)1568 CKS U1644 T322 (Romney) (1629 recital) Elizabeth I gives John Astley lease inreversion for 30 years of castle and manor of Allington and Boxley (NB seems lands andcastle of Allington in different hands)1569 CPR C66/1055 To Mary Finch of Allington Castle, Allington park and lands inBoxley and Maidstone1569 CPR To John Astley which mentions how this fits in with Finch grant, Astley's grantwith terms, Allington park, site of Boxley Abbey, lots of details1573 CCA DCB-J/X.10.17 Coldwell v Hawk tithe in park dispute – several tenant farmers= pasture & corn, cattle before disparking,, 8a wheat, 40a pasture, 9a wheat fields, grass &agistment 40a, 14a corn & pasture, 30a = 141a aprrox1576 CCA DCB-J/X.10.16 Coldwell v Hawk tithe in park dispute. John Smith saysdisparked 25 years ago i.e. 1550 approx1591 TNA12/238/11/1 Letter from Margaret Astley to cousin about Mr Floyd taking alldocuments from Allington Castle and sending them to Exchequer before her side couldlook at them to see if they could be used against wood felling. Fears it will shorten MrAstley's life to see the son of a Welsh cobbler prevail against him.1623 PRC 32/45 ff.319-320 Will of Robert Goulding assignment of lease of Allingtoncastle via cousin John Best of Newington to Nicholas Cripps and John Harris ... certainwood for fuel from Longsole park (? might have once been part of Allington Park or was itanother park?)1629 CKS U1644 T322 (Romney) (1629 recital) Fields Armitage, Millwey and Park,tenement Colland within the chase of Allington Park1629 CKS U1644 T11629 Son of Sir John Astley granted lands, The Park, Maidstone; Parkof Allington - Parkfield, chase of the Park1629 CKS U2035 T322 Description of lands of Sir John Astley, includes AllingtonParkewood, woodland, 218a, Parkewoddfields, reputed parcels of Parkewood x3 = 8a1638 CKS U2035 T32 Sold to Sir Jacob Astley Park in Allington or Aylesford, ?Boxley(later to the Romney family hence CKS U1644 and U1515)Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XXVIII (1909:354-359)Arch.Cant. LXXII (1958:1- 17)Chandler (ed.) (1993:62) 4 part VIII, John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor EnglandGoacher's unpublished research notes, includes transcription of 1584 PatentHasted 4 (1797:452) – 1583 Crown sale to Sir John AstleyLambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked:86)Worcester (unpublished c.2007) History of Allington CastleMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ752577 Allington Castle, park being nearAcknowledgements:Debbie Goacher, Samantha Lee-Brina355(3) AYLESFORD Parish: Aylesford, Ditton, BurhamEarliest reference: 1597 (CKS QM/SI/1597/11)This is the only reference to the Common Park at Aylesford. It is possible that Sedley putin a park when refashioning house in 1570s, but more likely that was a later park, thismight be common land and not a deer park at all.Ownership:1242 Carmelites traditionally > 1538 Henry VIII royal at Dissolution > 1539 Passed to SirThomas Wyatt of Allington until revolt 1554 when back to Crown > 1570 Elizabeth I toJohn Sedley of Southfleet m Anne Colepepper > sold in 1633 to Sir Peter Rycaut, Dutchmerchant.Size: 1805 map, fields 8-16, 19, 21-30 might be park and are at least 202a, fields 1-30 =269aDocumentary evidence:1597 CKS QM/SI/1597/11 Assault and horse stealing at common park at Aylesford1697 EKAC - Sa/ZP/3/242 Rioters entering park of Sir John Banks at AylesfordSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LXIII (1950:55)Arch.Cant. LXXX (1965:1)McGreal (1998:17-24) History of the Friars, Aylesford.White (1975:127) The Parklands of KentMaps:CKS U234 E21 1805Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) ?TQ 730590 general for Aylesford9 September 2006 – Traced likely boundaries of Sedley's later park, nothing known ofCommon Park.Acknowledgments:(4) BEDGEBURY Parish: GoudhurstEarliest reference: 1544 (BL Cart. Harl.80.B.36)Ownership:1544 Thomas Culpepper > son and heir Sir Alexander Culpepper d.1600 > 1607 SirAnthony with son and heir Sir Alexander Culpepper > 1618 Sir Alexander CulpepperSize: 1618 = 300a, Old Park (BL Cart. Harl.79.F.5)Documentary evidence:1544 BL Cart. Harl.80.B.36 Robert of Glassenbury to Culpepper land late of Bedgeburypark1596 BL Cart.Harl.76.A.22 Refers to Aynesworth claim to wood in new ground inBedgebury park let by Culpepper passed to Millson3561607 BL Cart. Harl.77.C.44 Culpepper to Barrett lease refers to lodge, ferret house, conies,deer very detailed conditions in 'old' park of Bedgebury adjoining Culpepper's 'new' park,'Queen's standing', ponds1612 BL Cart. Harl. 79.F.3 Culpepper to Waller lease refers to lodge, barn, ferret house inBedgebury park, but no deer1618 BL Cart. Harl.77.D.10 Culpepper to Porter refers to sale of woods lately parcel ofBedgebury park, reference to Bedgebury furnace1618 BL Cart. Harl.79.F.5 Lease Culpepper to Tharp refers to lodge, warren, fishponds, inBedgebury park1646 BL Cart. Harl.85.H13 Lease Culpepper to Crispe lodge, conies but not fishponds etcold park of BedgeburySecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. IV (1861:264-265)Arch.Cant. V (1862-3:83)Arch.Cant. LXXXIX (1974:186-187)Bannerman (ed.) (1924:91-93) Visitation of Kent, 1592Batchelor (1996:1) Beresfords of BedgeburyBuckingham (Spring 1979:20-26) Kent Recusant History no.1Buckingham (Autumn 1983/Spring 1984:187) Kent Recusant History no.10/11Cole (1999:186-187) The Portable QueenFurley (1874:743) Weald of Kent II part 2Hasted 5 (1797:466-467)Hasted 7 (1797:192-193)Hovenden (ed.) (1898:61-63) Visitation of Kent, 1619Lambarde (1576, 1596 - deer park)Mee (1936:205-206) KentNichols (c.1977reprint:331) I Progresses of Queen ElizabethRyan (Winter 2000:119) Kent Recusant History 2 no.5Maps:1575 Saxton (Royal 18.D.III, 1575/77 British Library)1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1605 Speed1611 NordenFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ713345 Park Wood - more than one parkAcknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister, Jane Davidson(5) BEXLEY Parish: BexleyEarliest reference: 1274/5 in 100 rolls (KAS website)Ownership:Archbishop of Canterbury > 1537 Crown who put in tenantsSize:357Documentary evidence:1273/74 Kilwardby Survey of the Archbihop's manors in S.E. England (KAS wbesite)1274/5 mentioned in 100 rolls1402-9, 1427-1440, 1490 LPL Archbishop's estates B Account rolls nos. 241-243, 246-252,255 parker, ms, E24, fo.91v1561 CPR Lease for 21 year Westwood with conditions to Somer1566 CPR Custody of fa*ggots of 10 cartloads to Shelton for 21 years which Somer ought torender yearly from Westwood1573 CPR Lease for 21 years Somer for Westwood with details1575 CPR Lease for 21 years Somer to Henshawe1562 CPR Licence to alienate Carell and Hutchinson late of Francis Lovell attainted toOlyffe (of East Wickham)c1597 TNA E178/1163 Wood called Bexley park, felling of crown timberSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LXXI (1957:153)Arch.Cant. XCIX (1983:259)Du Boulay (1966:137, 215, 276) Lordship of CanterburyDu Boulay (1993:32-33) Medieval Bexley, disparked by 1469 when lease does not mentionpark when previous leases didNichols (ed.) (1859:234) Camden Society IX Narratives of the Days of the Reformation,Mileson (2009:169) Parks in Medieval EnglandMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ510757 Park Wood on 1860s OSAcknowledgements:(6) BIRLING (see Comford (7) below)Parish: BirlingEarliest reference (either to 6 or 7):1318 CPR 20 Nov. complaint by Geoffrey de Say about breaking into his park at Birling1341 May 10 CPR licence to impark 100a,Ownership:1432 Elizabeth daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Worcester, 1435 married SirEdward Nevill ... > 1535 Henry Nevill, Lord Bergavenny, d.1587 > 1587-1622 cousinEdward Nevill > 1622- 1641 son Henry Nevill, and it is still owned by the Nevill familySize: 1521 = 969a the Great park (TNA SC12/9/4)Documentary evidence:1318 CPR 20 November, Geoffrey de Say complains about break into his park at Birling1341 CPR 10 May, Licence to impark 100a, wood & path leading between these – newpath to be made – seems addition1433 CPR 26 February, Complaint John Archbishop of York re entering house and park atBirling and stealing goods and deer, assault to servants and threats to tenants, 2 entries3581521/22 TNA SC12/9/4 Survey of manor of Birling, little park and great park, lodges, 300deer. Great park = 430a arable, 77a = 3 tenant farmers, 388 = pasture & woodland, 74a =downland = 969a1521 CKS U787 E9/3, E9/11 Nevill sold Birling to Henry VIII as fine1522 CKS U787/T1 Indenture King and Nevill sale to King, parks1522 CKS U787/T1 Brown has gavelkind premises in great park at Birling1528 CKS U787 E9/2 Nevill paid for use of Birling after King's surveyor valued it1529 CKS U787/T4 Surveyor values it at 100 marks a year, estate effectively restored1530 E328/51 Geroge Nevill sold to Henry VIII manor of Birling, parks, parsonage (adevice connected with his will? see OED)1586-1600 ESRO ABE/18R/1 Accounts for Birling, salaries of 2 deer and 2 coney keepers,Comforte park, site of manor – no profit occupied by eldest Neville son, profit from conies,agistment, 1588 length of pale repaired1587 CKS U787 E9/4 List of lands outside Birling park – 6a part of little park, no otherwoods than in the park1597 CKS QM/SB/1598/252 Humphrey Latter illegal hunting rabbits1597 CKS QM/SI/1598/2.11 Humphrey Latter illegal hunting rabbits (?same case)1600 CKS U787/T6 Godden to Nevill woodland adjacent to park1601 CKS Q/SR2/13 Hunting teg with greyhound1602 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1 Killing deer. Wickes of Cobham keeper gave teg to Birlingkeeper for his marriage1602 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1 Humphrey Latter illegal rabbit hunting1604 TNA STAC8/221/23 Edward Nevill's time (2 Edward Nevills d.1604 or d.1622) deerand conies hunted, keepers attacked, Godden poacher see 16001617 CKS QM/SB/1617/1279 Hunting rabbitsSecondary evidence:Bannister & Pittman (12 June 2010), Birling Place Landscape Archaeology Day Reportco*kayne (reprint 1982:29-44) I The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland and IrelandCole (1999:186-187) The Portable QueenCollins, (1982:6-11) Birling - A backward glanceEland (1960:26) Thomas Wotton's Letter-Book,Hasted 4 (1797:474-493)Lambarde (1576, 1596 - a deer park)Read (ed.) (1962:48) William Lambarde and Local GovernmentRyan (Winter 1993:43-51) Kent Recusant History 2 no.2Straker (1931:257-258, 450) Wealden IronWay (1997) A Study of the Impact of Imparkment on the Social Landscape ofCambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire from c1080 to 1760 - Appendix of calendar rollentries for parksWillson (1956:345) James I & VI, p.345Maps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named as Comford, but in location of Birling Park1605 Norden – as above1611 Speed – as above1652 CKS U1515 P11 - woodland lying near Birling Park359Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ685611 Park Farm4 February 2005, 31 May 2010, 12 June 2010 - Most of N border found, whole extentuncertain, possibly and lesser and greater W boundary.Acknowledgements:Matthew Balfour, Dr Nicola Bannister, David and Guy Nevill, Christopher Whittick, DrDavid Wright(7) BIRLING – COMFORD / COMFORTParish: BirlingThis second park at Birling is not in Lambarde or on early maps, so likely to have beendisparked by 1558Earliest reference (either to 6 or 7):1318 CPR 20 November, Complaint by Geoffrey de Say about breaking into his park atBirling 1341 CPR 10 May, Licence to impark 100a, wood & path leading between these –new path to be made (Way) (Either might be Comford or Birling?)Ownership:As (6)Size: 1521 = 103a (TNA SC12/9/4) Comfort park might be Little parkDocumentary evidence:1341 May 10 CPR Licence to impark 100a, wood & path leading between these – new pathto be made (Way) (Comford or Birling?)1521/22 TNA SC12/9/4 Survey of manor of Birling, Little park = 103a1587 CKS U787 E9/4 List of lands outside Birling park – 6a part of little park, no otherwoods than in the park1586-1592 CKS U787 E9 Summary transcript re Comforte park (likely to mean (6) wherenew residence sited) – no profit as occupied by Edward eldest Nevill sonSecondary evidence:Bannister & Pittman (12 June 2010), Birling Place Landscape Archaeology Day Reportdu Boulay (1964:237) Kent Records XVIIIHasted 4 (1797:474).Mileson (2009:177-178) Parks in Medieval England, cites CPR, 1429-36, 273Way (1997) A Study of the Impact of Imparkment on the Social Landscape ofCambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire from c1080 to 1760 - Appendix of calendar rollentries for parksWingfield-Stratford (1949) This was a manMaps:(See park (6) above)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ685605 middle of park31 May 2010, 12 June 2010 - From church looks like parkland with tree groups. Walkedacross to check possible east, south, north boundaries nothing definite.360Acknowledgements:Denis Anstey, Dr Nicola Bannister(8) BOCKINGFOLD Parish: Yalding, Goudhurst, MardenNot in Lambarde or on the early maps so probably disparked before 1558Earliest reference: 1256 (Cal.Lib. 1251-60, 3000) LCOwnership:C14th de Badlesmere > Robert de Crevequer siding with rebels taken by Crown.Mary I to Tongue c.1554 > Culpepper until 1564 CPR > sold to Revell) > sold to Dyke >sold to Benedict Barnham > via daughter to Soames > sold to George Brown (no dates fortransactions given, but see Zell below, these tenants)Size:Documentary evidence:1554 CPR Royal College of Plessy had leased manor, herbage, mast of the park and alllands for 50 years in 25 Henry VIII. Grant for £300 paid Queen Mary's use to Susan Tonge(Clarensieux) widow, gentlewoman of Privy Chamber reversion of manor of Bokingfold1556 CPR Tonge to Thomas Culpepper of Bedgebury manor of Bokingfold late college ofPlessey, late lands of John Gate attainted,1559 CPR Culpepper licence to alienate Bokingfold manor, park not mentioned1564 CPR Licence for Alexander Colepepper to alienate manor and park of Bockingfold toRoger RevellSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. II (1859:118)Harris (1719:54) History of KentHasted 5 (1797:162)Sprange (1810:243) Tunbridge WellsZell (2000:61) Early Modern KentMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ709446 BockingfoldAcknowledgements:(9) BORE PLACE Parish: ChiddingstoneEarliest reference: 1488 John Alfeigh' willOwnership:pre-1488 John Alfeigh (will 1488) > 1489 Sir Robert Read, chief justice of common pleas,married daughter of previous owner > 1518 Sir Thomas Willoughby, Justice of CommonPleas, via wife Bridget Read daughter of above d. 1545 ... > 1556 Thomas Willoughbyd.1596 > 1596 Sir Percival Willoughby, until 1609 sold to Bernard Hyde of London >361c.1750 Hyde's descendant sold to Henry Streatfield of ChiddingtoneSize: c.1600 = 307a, house and park (U1000/3 E3)Documentary evidence:1488 John Alfeigh (will 1488 no ref. from Cole) mentions capital messuage called the Borewith appurtenances and lands purchased from Sir James Crowmer and all the landsenveloped with the pale called the Park, land called Baylies and all other lands in my ownoccupation. Crowmer had Broxham park so could be that park or perhaps early reference toBore Park, but in context not certain.1574 1573 CKS U1475 L17 (dLD) Willoughby involved with helping Sidney over illegalhunting in Penshurst. Examinations of illegal deer hunting at Penshurst Park1574 CKS U1475 E31 + E42/1 (2 documentss) (dLD) illegal deer hunting of 1573judgement (detailed)c.1590 U1000/3 E28 Lands sold by Thomas Willoughby 1580-89c.1590 U1000/3 E34 Surveyor's drawings of Willoughby estate1595 U1000/3 E6 Debts I owe (Perceval Willoughby)1596 U1000/3 E24 Draft lease of Bore Place – Willoughby to Riches1596 CKS QM/SIq/4/1-4 Entering park and assault Perceval Willoughby's family andservants (wrongly catalogued as 1594)1596 CKS QM/SB/122 Warrant to prison to receive those who entered park and madeassault with intent for deer1596/7 CKS U1000 E2,31597 CKS U1000/3 E5 Inquisition regarding Willoughby lands, capital messuage BorePlace, acreages of land, park not mentioned1597 CKS U1000/3 E9 Draft settlement Seyliard v. Willoughby for latter's debt to former1598 CKS U1000/3 E23 Writ against Thomas and Perceval Willoughby for debtc.1600 CKS U1000/3 E2 3 particulars of Bore estate, no mention of park, probablydisparked1601 QS/SB 398 29 Dec 1601 Sheep stealing in Bore Place Park1605 TNA STAC8/295/10 Willoughby's warren at Penshurst invaded (background)1609 8 November Letter Robert Sidney, viscount Lisle to wife. Bore Place will be sold.£8000 has been offered – he would like it but doesn't think he can afford it (Hanney, M.P.Kinnamon N. J. & Brennan M. G., (2005:150) Domestic Politics and family absence )Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. V (1862/3:28)Arch.Cant. XXII (1897:112)Arch.Cant. XLVIII (1936:109)Arch.Cant. XLIX (1937:26)Bannerman (1924:48-49) Visitation of KentChronicles of Sevenoaks and District – c.1909, newspaper article on Bore PlaceCleese & Crossley (1995:172-173) The Iron Industry of the WealdCole's research into Bore Place and Willoughby family – from Surrey Record OfficeCountry Life article, 1958 JuneDavis transcripts C24/7 Chancery Depositions 36 HenryVIII (BLS)Hasted 3 (1797:218)Ward's research, deposited in KAS LibraryWatson (1999:102-103) A History of the Parish of Chevening362Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ505490 Bore Place2 July 2006 - Nothing definite but strong possibilities of boundaries.Acknowledgements:Lionel Cole, M. Cottrell, Ramon Higgs, Pat and Christopher Waterman(10) BOUGHTON MALHERBE / BOCTON / OLD PARKParish: Boughton MalherbeEarliest reference: from mid C14th Manorial Court rolls (Furley p.704)Ownership:Nicholas Wotton LLD PC reign Henry V acquired by marriage to daughter of RobertCorbye > Sir Edward Wotton 1489-1551 > Thomas Wotton 1521-1587 > Sir EdwardWotton, 1st Baron Wotton of Marley, 1602 Comptroller of Queen's householdSize: 1567 = 98½ a, Old deer park (others South and New distinguished)(BL ADD MSS42715)Documentary evidence:1567 BL Add.Mss. 42715 Wotton record of setting up South Park, how land got, takingdeer from Old park. Also New Park of 1559 in Lenham. Looking on map with details insurvey there seem to have been 3 parks around Boughton Malberbe1580 CKS U24 M23 (Mann/Cornwallis) Quitrents of manors - New Park, Bocton, 24a asfields: Old Park, 138a as fields1580 KAS website transcript Rental of Boughton Malherbe Manor1617-1628 CKS U350 E4 Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden Dering and his Booke ofExpences 1617-1628 (pp.47,174,339) Full transcription www.kentarchaeology.ac on-linepublishing1652 CKS U24 T207/25 (Mann/ Cornwallis) House and park, free warren1602 CKS QM/SB/1602/429 Rabbit poaching in Sir Edward Wotton's park (leased King'spark, Canterbury 1612, othewrise know of no other parks of his and poachers were fromEast Lenham). Same incident in Kent at Law 1602, below1629/30 TNA SC12/9/6 Valor of late Thomas Lord Wotton's lands, park and wood lying inSouthpark, new park in Lenhampre 1652 CKS U24 T207/25 Son Henry Lord Stanhope married Katherine (son = PhilipStanhope, Earl of Chesterfield)CKS U24 T207/25 1652 John vanden Kirkheven married. Katherine (widow of Henry LordStanhope)1652 CKS U24 T207 (Mann/Cornwallis) Court agreement by proclamation, Champion &Sandford v. Stanhope includes park1652 CKS U24 T207 (Mann/Cornwallis) Linked with above. Indenture re Kirkhaven,Stanhope v. Champion and Sandford re mansion and lands includes Bocton park New parkand South park1652 CKS U24 T207/25 Wherein Rt Hon Thomas Lord Wotton lately inhabited363Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LXXXII (1967:124) cites BL Egerton 860Cole (1999:186-187) Portable QueenEland (1960) Thomas Wotton's Letter-BookFurley (1874:704) A History of the Weald of Kent IIKnafla (1994:59,88,96,191,235) Kent at Law 1602Mee (1936:57) KentNichols (c.1977reprint:331) Progresses of Queen Elizabeth IWillson (1956:54-57,126-127,284-285,452-453) James VI and IMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - name on either side of park1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ880497 Park/Rough Park ShawsAcknowledgements:John Hatherly(11) BOUGHTON MALHERBE – LENHAM / NEW PARKParish: LenhamEarliest reference: 1490s New Park in Lenham (BL Add Mss 42715)Ownership:Nicholas Wotton LLD PC reign Henry V acquired by marriage to daughter of RobertCorbye > Sir Edward Wotton 1489-1551 > Thomas Wotton 1521-1587 > Sir EdwardWotton, 1st Baron Wotton of Marley, 1602 Comptroller of Queen's householdSize: 1559 = 124a (BL AddMss 42715): 1629 = about 90a when add the field sizes (TNASC12/9/6)Documentary evidence:1567 BL Add.Mss. 42715 Wotton record of setting up South Park, how land got, takingdeer from Old park. Also New Park of 1559 in Lenham and how father acquired land inHenry VII's reign. Looking on map with details in survey there seem to have been 3 parksaround Boughton Malberbe, but Lenham disparked by 1559 because this documentdescribes arable land and size of fields in the park when measured in 15591580 CKS U24 M23 (Mann/Cornwallis) Quitrents of manors - New Park, Bocton, 24a asfields: Old Park, 138a as fields1629/30 TNA SC12/9/6 Valor of late Thomas Lord Wotton's lands, park and wood lying inSouthpark, divers parcels of land lying in new park in Lenham1652 CKS U24 T207 (Mann/Cornwallis) Linked with above. Indenture re Kirkhaven,Stanhope v. Champion and Sandford re mansion and lands includes Bocton park New parkand South park364Secondary evidence:Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ889520 Park Wood near Chilston Park HotelAcknowledgements:(12) BOUGHTON MALHERBE - SOUTH PARKParish: Boughton MalherbeEarliest reference: 1292 (Cal.IPM III, 14) LC lands called 'Southpark'Ownership:Nicholas Wotton LLD PC reign Henry V acquired by marriage to daughter of RobertCorbye > Sir Edward Wotton 1489-1551 > Thomas Wotton 1521-1587 > Sir EdwardWotton, 1st Baron Wotton of Marley, 1602 Comptroller of Queen's householdSize: 1559 = 88a (BL AddMss 42715)Documentary evidence:1567 BL Add.Mss. 42715 Wotton record of setting up South Park, how land got, takingdeer from Old park. From 1292 reference this might have been reestablishing a medievalpark1652 CKS U24 T207 (Mann/Cornwallis) linked with above. Indenture re Kirkhaven,Stanhope v. Champion and Sandford re mansion and lands includes Bocton park New parkand South park1629/30 TNA SC12/9/6 Valor of late Thomas Lord Wotton's lands park of BoughtonMalherbe, 80a wood lying in Southpark (seems disparked as only woodland mentionedSecondary evidence:Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park, if not Southpark(72) Penshurst)Maps:1575 Saxton1576 AnonymousFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ869467 Southpark WoodAcknowledgements:(13) BOUGHTON MONCHELSEA Parish: Boughton MonchelseaEarliest reference: 1566 rental (formerly CKS U807/MI, now in private hands, lastknown owner Mrs Charlotte Gouch of Benenden)Ownership:1551 purchased Sir Thomas Wyatt > 1551 sold to Robert Rudston d.1591 > 1591-1613 toyounger son Belknap Rudston > 1613-1645 to nephew Sir Francis Barnham, married365Lennard. Stayed in Barham family for many yearsSize: 1650 = approx 60a (CKS TR2212/3): 2006 = 75aDocumentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Boughton Monchelsea Place Guide Book (post 1954)Colvin and Moggridge (March 2004) Boughton Monchelsea Park: historic park restorationplan, Draft Interim ReportHastings (2000:22) Upon the Quarry HillsMaps:1650 Estate map. Photo held by BL RP 1701/B1/72/79) CKS copy TR2212/3, very smallFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ774497 existing park15 June 2006 - Walked inside whole perimeter of present deer park. 1650 boundaries notgreatly dissimilar, except E boundary.Acknowledgements:Mr and Mrs Dominic Kendrick(14 a & b) BOXLEY and LEA Parish: Boxley, MaidstoneEarliest reference:a) pre 1536 reference in 1574 CCA DCB-J/X.10.17b)1549 Sir Thomas Wyatt's new park = Lea park at Boxley (Zell)Ownership:Church > Henry VIII > Henry VIII to Sir Thomas Wyatt > (Hook & Ambrose)Mary I to Mrs Mary Finch (see Allington) > widow and son George Wyatt regained Abbey,1584 Elizabeth I granted lands in Boxley and Allington to John Astley, rest to others(b) 1596 Lea Park of 90a together with Park Wood granted by Elizabeth I to WilliamLlewyn and Robert CranmerSize: (b) 1596 = 90a, Lea Park together with Park Wood 90a (CMS U480/T1/1)Documentary evidence:Unclear in some cases which refer to park (a) or (b), some overlap with Allington -1543 CMS DRc Elb 1A Indenture Dean of Rochester and King parsonage of Boxley1558 TNA E133/6/863 Claim herbage horses, calves in Boxley Park, from pre1542, i.e. inlifetime of Sir Thomas Wyatt senior1563 CPR 10 July 21-year lease to Parker for woodland in Boxley with rents to cut andenclose and use to repair Maidstone palace.1563 CPR Grant in tail to Tomyow site of monastery of Boxley Richard Tomyow latecollector of the subsidy of kersey, broadcloth etc, in the Port of London)(1561 CPR 21- year lease to Edward Warner rent given)(1568 CPR 21- year lease to Edward Wyatt lands in Allington now in Crown hands withdeath of Lady Margaret Halles, rents and fine given)366(1569 CPR 21- year lease Harrison woods and lands ex-Wyatt in Boxley, lands and woodby Lyminge park)1572 CPR 21- year lease to Nicholas Barham of le park of Boxley at end of Mary &Philip's reign lease to Bludder(1573 CPR 21 - year lease to Collier from 1582 having already leased to Edward Warnerfor 21 year from 1561)1574 CCA DCB-J/X.10.17 Hilles v Collyar and Darrell tithe dispute in Boxley park1579 CPR 21- year lease to George Wyatt son of late Thomas Wyatt attainted lands inBoxley and Aylesford1581 CPR Lease for life in survivorship William Baynham and wife with remainder for sonleased by CPR 15691582 CPR Robert Dudley fee simple of site of Monastery of Boxley granted to Thomyowand wife in tail1584 CKS U1644 T322 (Romney) (1629 recital) fields Armitage, Millwey and Park,tenement Colland within the chase of Allington Park1587 TNA Ind1/16820 bill book registerinng case Astley v. Baynham1587 TNA E133/6/815 Astley v. Baynham whether Boxley Park wood or pasture ground –and E133/6/863 Astley v. Baynham. Disparkment by Abbot, therefore pre-15371588 TNA E134/30&31 Elizabeth I deposition by Commission dispute over Boxley Woodalias Boxley Park Wood, Astley v Baynham (lots about background to park), see alsoE134/31 Eliz/Hil16, Hil27TNA E134/34 Boxley Abbey?1590 CKS U951 C261/3 (Knatchbull) Astley dispute about which manor has Parkwood1591 TNA SP12/211/103 Lease to Sir Thomas Fludd of lands in mnaor of Boxley,Stanford and Aldington and to 2 others, 21 years, rnet £21 19s 4d1591 TNASP12/238/11/1 Letter from Margaret Astley to cousin about Mr Floyd taking alldocuments from Allington Castle and lodging them in Exchequer before her side couldlook at them to see if they could be used against wood-felling. Fears it will shorten MrAstley's life to see the son of a Welsh cobbler prevail against him.1591 TNA E134/31Eliz/Hil12 Tithe case dispute1596 CMS U480/T1/1 CPR Park Wood alias Boxley park = 90a1629 CKS U1644 T1 Son of Sir John Astley granted lands (The Park, Maidstone; Park ofAllington - Parkfield, chase of the Park)1629 CKS U1644 T322 Copy of letter patent recital of Crown grants Henry VIII-ElizabethI CKS U1644 T322 (Romney) (1629 recital) Patent 26 Elizabeth I1638 CKS U2035 T32 Sold to Sir Jacob Astley (Park in Allington or Aylesford,?Boxley)(later to the Romney family hence CKS U1644 and U1515)1649 TNA LR2/196 Boxley surveySecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LXVI (1953:50)Hasted 4 (1797:326,334)Hook & Ambrose (1999:Chapter 10, 121) Boxley - story of an English parish, with parksMee (1936:60), KentThirsk (1977:14-15) Horses in early modern EnglandWatson (1999:49) A History of the Parish of CheveningZell (2000:32), Early Modern KentMaps:1697CMS U480 P1 Park House with 88½ acres, with further 139a part of Kiln and Little367FarmsFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ767585 Park wood: TQ778578 Park WoodAcknowledgements:(15) BRASTED Parish: BrastedEarliest reference: 1310 (Cal.Pat. 1307-13, 262) LCOwnership:1310 Earl of Gloucester & Hertford ... > (CKS U1450 E19) Isley until 1553 Henry Isley(attainted) bought by John Lennard > 1575 (U1590 T14/17) Crown to cover William Isley'sdebts, leading to dispute over ownership v lease, but remained in Lennard family until atleast 1630 (CKS U1590 T23/27) IPM for Richard, Lord DacreSize: c.1547 = 180a (CKS U1450 T14/6): c.1570 = 256a (CKS U908 L1/1): 1613 = 193a(CKS TR1534/1)Documentary evidence:1547 CKS U1450 T14/6 (Stanhope) Sir George Harper and William Isley to Sir HenryIsley recovery of manor of Brasted with Brasted park, land outlined, leased out to otherswith 100a in Brasted Park, so park disparked1553 CKS U1450 E19 (Stanhope) Henry Isley to John Isley, lists land, includes parcel thePark 60a Brasted, all lands called Sundrish Park 30ac.1570 CKS U908 L1/1 (Seyliard) Seyliard v. Lennard over ownership of Brasted parkrehearses history re Isley, dispute over area of park. Land in other tenants' hands lies inBrasted Park in which park lies 100a of Sir Henry Isley (c.1547), proofs measuring park,names of tenants and acreages of their leases.1575 CKS U1450 T14/17 (Stanhope) Crown seized late park of Brasted to cover WilliamIsley's debts, leading to dispute over ownership v lease1577 CKS U1590 T22/9 (Stanhope) Manor of Brasted let to Seyliard and demesne landsand lands in the late park of Brasted let to 12 tenants (commissioners to sell lands ofWilliam Isley)1579 CKS U1590 T22/12 (Stanhope) Notes land lately in Brasted park1604 CKS U908 L1/2 (Streatfield) Suit about extent of Brasted park1612 CKS U1590 T22/28 (Stanhope) Sampson Lennard to his son and son's wife citestripartite indenture 1589 Sir Richard Baker of Cranbrook, John Lennard of Knole, EdwardNevill, lord Abergavenny conveying Court Lodge, Brasted with late park in several tenuresto John and Samson Lennard1616 CKS U1590 T23/6 (Stanhope) IPM Sampson Lennard1616 CKS U1590 T23/13 (Stanhope) IPM Thomas Pritchard mentions Court Lodge, landcalled Brasted Park under 9 listed tenants1616 CKS U1590 T23/14 (Stanhope) Samuel Lennard, court of wards, lets possessions ofHenry Lord Dacre to Sir Samuel Lennard late in tenure of Henry's widow.includes landscalled Brasted park occupied by 9 tenants1630 TNA C142/468/85 IPM Lord Dacre includes park, Chevening warren, Cudhammanor368Secondary evidence:Barrett-Lennard (1908:32) An Account of the Families of Lennard and BarrettCole pers.comm. unpublished notesKCC SMR TQ 45 SE 12 - KE86Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Steinman Steinman (1851:32-43) Some Account of the Manor of Apuldrefield in the Parishof Cudham, KentWatson (1999:65,78) A History of the Parish of Chevening,Maps:TR1534/1 1613 Manor of Chevening includes Brasted Park, poor copy in CKS, originalseen at Chevening House (19 June 2006)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ463557 Park Wood9 December 2006 - Having found probable boundaries by mapwork, went to Park Farm toconfirm. Happy with N and W boundaries, fairly happy with S, E unresolved.Acknowledgements:Col R.P.D. Brook, Lionel Cole, David Edgar(16) BROMLEY Parish: BromleyEarliest reference: 1596 Symonson's mapOwnership:Bishop of Rochester (from 955) by 1184 palace thereSize: 1647 = 61a minimum - park by mansion 16+ a, Middle Park 30a, Bushy park 15a(Horsburgh)Documentary evidence:1580 SP12/126/33 Bishop of Rochester has only felled trees to repair his house there, butgreat waste of timber before. (Other bishops also being asked about tree felling on theirland)1647 BLS 43/6 Augustine Skinner sequestration sale with description1647 BLS 43/7a-b Conveyance Sir John Wollaston & others to Skinner, disparked by then1658 BLS 43/10a-b Prospectus of manor (Clayton papers original might be in SurreyRecord Office), survey calls park 'antique'1841 BLS 43/9 Particulars of sale of Bromley demesne landSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XIII (1880:154)Arch.Cant. XXXIII (1918:145)Bromleag Journal (March 2006:6-9)Davis transcripts 1930s, 1597, 1602 title deeds of land adjacent to Bishop's land (BLS)Horsburgh (1929:94,309,367) Bromley from the earliest timesMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous3691605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ407691 to east of Bromley Civic CentrePreparatory mapwork done, built over, street pattern might shadow bordersAcknowledgements:(17) BROXHAM Parish: EdenbridgeEarliest reference: 1294/5 court case (Steinman Steinman p.7 citing BL Lansdowne)Ownership:C13th Apuldrefield > C14 Brocas > C15 Clinton > C16 Cromer > C17 Beresford sold toPetleySize: 284a approx calculated from tithe map divisions backed up by fieldworkDocumentary evidence:1308 CPR 1307-1313, 2620 (LC) Pardon to Thomas son of Simon de Hevere for breakinginto Brokesham park, the close of William Moraunt, and the park of Penecestre1367 CPR May 1, Licence to enclose 90a and 20a wood adjoining park to enlarge it as longas not within bounds of king's forest1548 TNA IPM C/142/468/85 Park now farmland1570 CKS U908 L1/1 (Stanhope) Seyliard v. Lennard, witness states Bellmans Green layopen to Broxham Park on N1604 CKS U908 L1/2 (Stanhope) Bellmans Green, Edenbridge - Seyliard made fence, butthis stopped residents from getting to homes. Arbitration said might keep gate against parkpale, but leave it open for right of waySecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XXIX (1911:258)Cole pers.comm. notes, no references but include William Cromer's attainder in 1555...Broxham held by family until 1623 (Somers-co*cks:63-64)KCC SMR TQ 44 NE 1 - KE2Lambarde (1576, 1596 - disparked)Somers-co*cks & Boyson (1912:57-62) Edenbridge,Steinman Steinman (1851:7) Some Account of the Manor of Apuldrefield in the Parish ofCudham, KentMaps:Lionel Cole's map of Hever parish - shows how field names from documents lay outsidepark, so gives supportive evidence for fieldworkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ457484 Broxham Manor16 October 2004, 12 March 2005 - Fieldwork/photos complete - whole mapped out onmodern OS.370Acknowledgements:Lionel Cole, Alan Dell, Christopher and Pat Waterman(18) CANTERBURY – NEW / KING'S / St. AUGUSTINE's - now Old ParkParish: St Martin's, FordwichEarliest reference: 1538 Henry VIII set up new park (Sparks p.57)Ownership:Land pre 1538 owned by St Augustine's Abbey > 1538 Crown under keepership thenlessees > 1601 (TNA SP12/281/57) sold to Lord CobhamSize: 1547 = 350a (CCA - DCc-ChAnt/C/965)Documentary evidence:1547 CCA - DCc-ChAnt/C/965 Rector compensated for reduction of income due to loss ofland for park1556 CKS U1450 T6/28 (Stanhope) To Cardinal Pole, lands called le Park at Maidstone intenure of Henry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the said park. Also withnumerous other lands, park of Saltwood; house and site of late monastery of St Augustinenear walls of Canterbury, the park called Canterbury Park adjacent to the house; the parksof Aldington and Otford; the park of Knoll late parcel of lands of John, Duke ofNorthumberland, attainted.1558 TNA SPD I, no.10, p.115, List of horses in stables and pastures at Lambeth,Canterbury park and Ford of late Cardinal Pole; no.25, p.116, Permission to dispose of hay,oats, wood and deer in St Augustine's parkActs of the Privy Council, New Series VII, 1558-1570, p.7, 1558 Nov 26, letter to SirThomas Fynche to take charge of manor and park of Canterbury and to see that there wasno spoil or waste; p.17, 1558 December 9 Letter to Finch to deliver to Senor Pryolye cattle,hay and wood felled belonging to Pole and 7 does and 100 couple of conies for funerals ofPole1564 TNA CPR no.784 6 Elizabeth I Lease for 30 years to William Brooke, Lord Cobham> Salisbury son-in-law, must maintain 200 wild beasts and deer for use of Crown,previously in custody of Sir Antony Sentleger or Sir Thomas Fynche deceased1564 CKS U1475 E62 (dLD) Grant of St Augustine's Abbey and park to Lord Cobham andCPR, late in custody of Sir Anthony Seyntleger or Sir Thomas Fynche deceased, fine andrent givenc.1570 CKS U1475 E62 (dLD) Lord Cobham keeper1589 CCA CC J/Q/288 QS, Witness went to Sturry found Mr Thornhurst at bowls in thepark (park name not specified).1594 TNA SP12/250/42, 44, Repair St. Augustine's house, Canterbury, £136/19/3d, andsurvey1600 TNA SP12/274/30 Buckhurst tells Cobham Queen has agreed to his bill forCanterbury1600 TNA SP12/274/127 Lord Cobham instructions to Richard Williams, house, groundsand park not well ordered, wants survey, specially enquire about keeper 's attitude towardsthe game, and how the resident of the almonry uses the ground as I have heard evil reports1600 TNA SP12/276/39 Williams to Cobham, re fine to pay at Canterbury re lease (but nomention that is to do with park).1601 TNA SP12/281/57 Buckhurst to Cobham signing of bill for Canterbury at first utterly371rejected, but on urging queen it was profitable for her she signed it. Main argument wasdeposit had been paid, but now finds that not so, send it quickly. Otford utterly refused.1602 CCA CC J/Q/401/5 QS Incident re huntsmen and dogs in Canterbury, but not directlypark, but Ingram Ellis comes into it so might be connected with StaffsRO below1602 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1 Illegal deer coursing1604 Salisbury deeds 242/21 (at Hatfield) By William Lord Cobham's will 3 trustees tolook after interests in park for 9 years until lease expires. William Lord Cobham had hadnew lease granted by Elizabeth I in 1593 for 21 years and after his death Henry LordCobham purchased reversion for him and heirs, on attainder this escheated to Crown soback to James I1604 Salisbury deeds 68/17 Lease to Leveson with conditions1605 TNA SP14/15/20 Sir John Roper will cheerfully send deer to Salisbury forCanterbury park, hawks he promised will soon be ready1605 Salisbury deeds 115/17 Trustees of William Lord Cobham's will assign over toViscount Cranbourne (Cecil) all interest in leases etc1605 Salisbury accounts 6/35 Leveson's account for rents of Canterbury Park etc –mentions mares pasture, park keeper, no specific mention of deer1608 TNA SP14/38/10 Sir Walter Chute seeks employment from Salisbury, mentionsCanterbury park1609 TNA STAC8/16/2 Palings pulled down of Earl of Salisbury's park, keeper assaulted,hunting under pretence of football1616 CCA - DCc - ChAnt/W/230 Indenture by Wotton confirming Christ Church rights forwater supply, has made new fish stew which could damage supplies1639 EKAC-U449/L/9 Royal Licence to Sir John Finch - Canterbury Park to enclose landto enlarge park. Road diversion included. Inquiry by inquisitions ad quod damnum.Mentioned land of Sir John called Canterbury field alias Town field, road crosses parishesof St Paul and Littlebourne. Park of Lord Wotton lately defunct in parish1639 TNA C202/21/1 Ad Quod Damnum Inquiry allows grant to enclose land as above1640 CCA-DCc-ChAnt/C/1238 Licence mentions the king's park to the eastSecondary evidence:Arch.Can.t XI (1867:200,206)Arch.Cant. XXXI (1915:11)Arch.Cant. XCIX (1983:115)Arch.Cant. CVI (1988:137)Arch.Cant. CVII (1989:305)Cole (1999:88-89,186-187) Portable Queen,Field & Routledge (1893:10) The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Remains of itsMonastic Buildings and the Ancient Church of St. Martin. A Short Guide and History,Hasted (1797:A623) History of Canterbury IIKCC SMR TR 15 NE 138 - KE 4628Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park if 'St Augustune's')McIntosh (1975:135,140) Fordwich the lost portMcKeen (1986:98-103,160,689) Memory of HonourNichols (c.1977reprint:340-352) Progresses of Queen ElizabethOwen (ed.) (1883) Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquess ofSalisbury, 16 no.908, 17 no.19, no.473, 18 no.13, no.292, no.662Sparks (1980:57) Parish of St Martin and St Paul, Canterbury,Tatton Brown (1983:45) Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle 77,Woodruff (1895:135) History of Town and Port of Fordwich372Maps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - park shown to E of Canterbury not named, but in the location1605 Norden – puts park near Fordwich1611 SpeedCCA M49 Map mid-C16th park pale with deerCCA M57 c1600 park pale marked King's ParkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR170584 Old Park Farm24 November 2004, 13 March 2006, 2 June 2006, 18 September 2009 – Tried to confirmboundaries outlined by Tatton-Brown (Arch.Cant, 1983), S boundary fairly clear, rest not.Acknowledgements:Canterbury Woodland Research Group and David Shire, Dr David Wright(19) CANTERBURY – OLD PARK Parish: St.Martin'sEarliest reference: 1274/5 Hundred rolls (KAS website)Ownership:pre-Reformation, St Augustine's Abbey > Crown sold in 1540 to William Coppyn, historyunclearSize:Documentary evidence:1274/5 Hundred rollsSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LI (1939:68)Arch.Cant. XCIX (1983:115)Arch.Cant. CCXVII (2007:69)KCC SMR TR 15 NE 139 - KE4629Nichols (1859:234) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationZell (2000:59) Early Modern KentMaps:CCA M49, Map midC16th, former park enclosure built-up inside, disparkedCCA M57 c1600 Enclosure marked Old Park, park pale marked King's ParkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR168577 Hospital16 October 2006, 9 November 2006 - Have traced borders on map and used Tatton-Brown(Arch.Cant. 1983). Part of W boundary found, good S boundary and followed E.Acknowledgements:Malcolm and Sue Wells of Canterbury Camping and Caravanning Club site373(20) CANTERBURY - TRENLEY / WICKHAMBREUXParish: Wickhambreux, FordwichEarliest reference: 1071 (Book of seal no.431)(Domesday Book only 1 of 2 in Kent)Ownership:1086 Odo Bishop of Bayeux > C13 William de Braose and church to Henry VIII > HenryVIII to Sir Henry Browne, history unclearSize: 1086 = 296a (SMR)Documentary evidence:1274/5 100 rolls, KAS website, For 5 years Lord William de Braose obstructs a certainroyal way through the middle of the park1446 LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no.598 keeper (? says Canterbury Palace)1585 CCA DCB-J/X.11.1 Smith v Campion tithe dispute over timberSecondary evidence:Brook (1960:18) Story of Eltham PalaceHasted 9 (1797:158,163) Mentions park disparked by 1425KCC SMR TR 15 NE 145 - KE 4635Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR195593 Trenley park woodTatton-Brown (Arch.Cant. 1983) has traced borders on map.Acknowledgements:(21) CHILHAM Parish: ChilhamEarliest reference: 1338 (Cal.IPM VIII, 134) LC (old site): 1616 (Heron)Ownership:1480s Crown held by Sir John Scott died 1485 > 1502 Crown to Thomas Manners, Earl ofRutland > 1539 Thomas Manners sold to Henry VIII > 1542 Crown to Sir Thomas Cheney> 1572 Sir Henry Cheney sold to Sir Thomas Kempe, who left 4 daughters > 1603 SirDudley Digges bought out 3 daughters, having married the 4th and remained with Diggesinto Charles I's reign.Size: 1616 = 25a (Heron) - He dates and describes each addition to the park and he came to25a by eliminationDocumentary evidence:Have seen original documents in Castle and I have catalogueTitle Deeds A, bundle I and II cover 1569-1720Manorial and Estate Documents B, I Court Roll 1638-1644 has entry referring to parkSecondary evidence:374Bolton (1912:26) Chilham CastleCH (1916:4-5) Chilham Castle BC55-AD1916Debois (2003) Chilham Castle Historic Landscape Survey 2003Hasted 1 (1797:269)Heron (1791) Antiquities of Chilham Collected by Thomas Heron esqKCC SMR TR 05 SE 46 – KE 9325Oswald (c.1977) Chilham CastleReed (c.1992) Guide to ChilhamRyan (Winter 1995:68-87) Kent Recusant History 2 nos. 3/4Talbot (2003:13) Brabourne in HistoryMaps:1778 Hogben survey of Chilham with key (poor copy from m/film CKS, original atChilham Castle)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR045527 Park wood, older park: TR068535 ChilhamCastle. John Hatherly says Park Wood medieval Chilham park to NW of castle – newC16th nearer castle.13 January 2006 - Not convinced original 25 acres found, and extensions are beyond theperiod of study.Acknowledgements:John Hatherly, Michael Peters, Mr and Mrs S Wheeler(22) CHISLET Parish: ChisletEarliest reference: 1138-1151 Thorne Chronicle of St Augustine's AbbeyOwnership:605 Charter Chislet manor to St Augustine > 1537 29 Henry VIII to Crown (Sparks)1538 Archbishop bought it backSize:Documentary evidence:1299 TNA Lists and Indexes XVII, 44 (LC)1587 LPL TA39/1 Lease Archbishop of Canterbury to Roger Manwood, no deer in park for46 years (c.1541 disparked) because Brook's lease licensed to kill all deer, for 36 years nopale or covert for deer1597, 1602, 1613, 1627, 1630, 1647 LPL TA39/2-9 Series of other leases for Chislet park,Manwood past to Harfelte c16021600 TNA SP12/277/1 Leases of Archbihsop of Canterbury, 1539, £10 p.a., ThomasBrooke, 80 years; 1587 Sir Roger Manwood residue of lease, must keep and leave it inrepair; renewed 3 lives to Peter Manwood in 1597.Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. V (1862/3:28)Arch.Cant. XXXII (1917:93)Arch.Cant. LI (1939:70)375du Boulay (1952) Archbishop Cranmer and the Canterbury Temporalities, EnglishHistorical Review LXVIIHarris (1719:77) History of KentHasted 9 (1797:102)McIntosh & Gough (1984:69-72) Hoath and HerneNichols (1859:234,265) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationSparks (1980:57) Parish of St Martin and St Paul, CanterburyDavis (1934:554) William Thorne's Chronicle of St Augustine's AbbeyMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR210629 Chislet parkSee Rob Williams letter re possible boundariesAcknowledgements:Harold Gough, Kim McIntosh, Rob Williams(23) COBHAM Parish: CobhamEarliest reference: 1559 description of visit by Elizabeth I (Rye p.256)Ownership:C12th de Cobham (Oldcastle) family ... Joane Braybrooke m. Thomas Brooke d.1434 > ..,George Brooke, lord Cobham d.1558 > William Brooke, lord Cobham d.1597 > son HenryBrooke, Lord Cobham, attainted 1602 so to Crown > 1612-1713 (CMS U565 T166) patentto Dukes of Lennox & Richmond.Size: 1602 = 200a (StaffsRO S/4/61/1)Documentary evidence:1576 CKS DRb/PWR15/53 Will of John Kenaston, son Francis1583 TNA SP12/163/57 To Lord Cobham Boys and Pasteriche had mustered horsem*n inLathe of St. Augustine, needed more time for certificates of mares breeding in parks1584 Assize 35/26/5-1343 Birling, early reference to name Humfrey Latter yeoman givingevidence against others1589 Assize 35/31/3 no.1763 Inquest after robbery on highway, jury have names croppingup in other documents1592 Assize 35/34/5 no.2040 2 from Cobham to hang for burlary1592 Assize 35/34/5 no.2055 John Juden (part of Latter's assoicates) confessed to stealing50 sheep1595 TNA SP12/253/71 Lord Cobham granted a buck, which he gives to Standen, helprequired to deliever it.1595 TNA SP12/253/88 From Lord Burghley to son Robert Cecil letter 20 Aug re bothhunting stag1596 TNA prob/11/87 Will of George Wright gentleman of Cobham1596 StaffsRO S/4/10/30 Cobham farmers with corn in stock1596 StaffsRO S/4/14/14 Cobham and other farmers with grain stock1597 TNA SP12/262/48 24 February Will of William Brooke, lord Cobham1598 CKS QM/SB/1/252 Humfrey Latter poaching3761598 CKS QM/SB/2/9 Humfrey Latter theft to make poaching equipment1602 StaffsRO D593/S/4/56/1 Humfrey Latter and others deer poaching Cobham, Birling,Canterbury1602 Assize 35/44/5 no.2933 Bartholomew Harding associate of Hayes/latter indicted forstealing cows, not guilty1602 Assize 35/45/4 no.3019 Juden, Latter, Hayes indicted for burglary1602 StaffsRO S/4/61/1 Purveyance returns 200a in the park1603 CKS DRb/PW19 Will of Gilbert Yonge1603 TNA SP14/4/16 Lord Cobham in prison, much in debt, some of lands and goods inKent seized1603 TNA SP14/35/58 Miles Rainsford, valet of Privy Chamber, keeping of Cobham Hallwhile Cobham under attainder, fees given, also park fee £6/13/4d, master of watrercoursesfor wild beasts, pannage, herbage, tops and lops, browsewood for deer, allowance of wood,stewardship of house1603/4 TNA E178/3521 Possessions of Lord Cobham, inventory of house, no obvious parkreference1604 TNA SP14/10/85 Person who seized lands because of Cobham's debt defrauded king1604 TNA E178/3924 Concerning possessions of executed John Hayes1604 CKS DRb/PW19 Will of Richard Hayes, brother Thomas Hayes and son RobertHayes1604/5 TNA STAC8 33/4 John Hayes has been executed for felony, burglary, brotherRobert accused of perjury over his property1605 TNA SP14/13/70 Weekly support for Cobham in prison paid, and medicine andclothing.1608 CKS DRb/PW20 Will of Gilbert Yonge1609 CKS DRb/PW20 Will of John ClementTNA Ind1/16822/319 Exchequer bill book registering case Wright v TunbridgeTNA E112/88/319 Wright v Tunbridge messuage in Cobham1612 TNA SP14/70/48 Grant of manor of Cobham and other land in Kent to duke ofLennox1612 TNA SP14/131/53 King from Rochester to Cobham to persuade Lady Kildare to sellreasonably to Duke of Lennox.1612 CKS U565 T166 Letters Patent - garden and park 200a, rabbit warren outside park160a to Duke of Lennox1622 TNA SP14/133/43 Grant to Merrill for finding 16a in Cobham of John Hayesattainted land1636 TNA Ind1/16824/168 Exchequer bill book registering case attorney general v.Wright, Awbert, messuage in Cobham1636 TNA E112/190/168 Attorney General v. Wright and Awbert1640 TNA prob/11/159 Will of Robert Hayes1641 CKS U565 P1 Map shows Oulde Park and perambulation of new park (doubling size)1648 Assize - illegal deer killing of James Stuart Duke of Richmond1651 TNA SP18/17/38-41 Search for naval timber in Cobham with what timber markedSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. II (1859:83)Arch.Cant. XI (1877:lxxxiv-lxxxvii, 49-112,199-216)Arch.Cant. XII (1878:68-71,113-166)Arch.Cant. CXXII (2002:16-21)Arnold (1949:10-19,43,91-101,137-141) A Yeoman of Kent377Arnold (c.early 1950s) Cobham Hall - KentBowdler (2002) Historical Account: Cobham Hall EstateChalklin (1965:86,105,142-143) Seventeenth-century KentCole (1999:186-187) Portable Queen,Eland (1960:18-20) Thomas Wotton's Letter-BookEveritt (1966:28,166-167) The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640-1660Harris (1910:3) Cobham Park and EstateHasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 2 (1797:432)Hasted 3 (1797:8,411)Hasted 9 (1797:420)Henderson (2005:4,152,229) Tudor house and gardenKCC SMR TQ 66 NE 11 - KE 1352Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)McKeen (1986:98-103,132-135,362,452-455) A Memory of HonourNichols (c.1977reprint:73,413) Progresses of Elizabeth INichols (c.1977reprint:769-770) Progresses of James INichols (1979:17) Cooling, Kent, and its CastleRead (1962:34,40) William Lambarde and Local GovernmentRye (1865:256) England as seen by foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James ISaul (2001) Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: the Cobham family and theirmemorials, 1300-1500Whitaker (1892) Deer Parks and PaddocksWillson (1956:156-157) James I & VIWingfield Stratford (1959:66-81,92-97) The Lords of Cobham HallWingfield-Stratford (1949:13-24) This was a manMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson – park named1605 Norden1611 Speed1641 CMS U565 P1 1641 Map shows Oulde Park and new park to double size1718 CMS U565 P3 1718 Cobham deer parkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ690690 Cobham Park1 June 2004, 29 October 2005, 14 April 2007 - Went along E and N boundaries. Can put1641 map onto modern OS, athough N boundary obliterated by Channel tunnel rail-linkand M2.Acknowledgements:Members of the Cobham Ashenbank Management Scheme, David Cufley, SylviaHammond, Dr David Wright(24) COOLING Parish: Cooling, FrindsburyEarliest reference: 1380/1 4 Richard II licence to embattle, there was then a large parkadjoining (Hasted 3:518): 1533/4 lease (CMS DRc/T166A)378Ownership: As (23) until 1602 Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, attainted so forfeit toCrown but King allowed Cooling to remain in Cobham family possession. After 1612grant the Duke of Lennox allowed the Brooke family to remain at Cooling until 1668Size:Documentary evidence:1533/4 CMS DRc/T166A Lease Prior of Rochester to Sir George Brook re 40a in CoolingPark, by land of Henry enclosed within the park.and lands of the Prior enclosed within thepark, conditions within 20 years for land to become Brooke's1541 Deeds 190/21 (Salisbury) Sale by Sir Thomas Wyatt to George Lord Cobham oflands in Cooling Park1603 TNA E138/3521 Inventory of bailey and castle1603 TNA SP14/5/9 Sir Roger Aston to be keeper of Cooling park due to attainder of LordCobham?1610 TNA SP14/59/9 Warrant to William Brooke to seize all setting dogs with 5 miles ofCooling park which have been destroying game1612 CMS DRc Ele 086/12 Frindsbury leases Turk to Reade description includes StickfastLane leading to Cooling Park1614/15 TNA STAC8 23/11 Breaking into park, hunting with greyhoundsSecondary evidence:Arch Cant XI (1877:142-144)Arch Cant XXXIX (1927:1)Bowdler (2002) Historical Account: Cobham Hall EstateFox (2002) The History of Sevenoaks up to 1650 with CD database of West Kent wills to1650Hasted 3 (1797:518)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Liddiard (2005:64,145,150) Castles in ContextMcKeen (1986:5,100,360)Nichols (1979:11-14,17) Cooling, Kent, and its Castle)Read (1962:35) William Lambarde and Local GovernmentSaul (2001:52-55,110-111) Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: the Cobhamfamily and their memorials, 1300-1500Maps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named1605 Norden1611 Speed1668 U1823 P3 Cooling ManorFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ745759 Cooling Castle- park to south7 March 2007 – Looked at N boundary to S of Castle and church and part of W boundary,looking at distance at possible E boundary.379Acknowledgements:Christopher Waterman(25) CUDHAM Parish: CudhamNot in Lambarde or on early maps so probably disparked before 1558Earliest reference: 1272 onwards (Cal.IPM I, 281)LCOwnership:1272 William de Say ... > Geoffrey Fiennes died childless 36Elizabeth I > SampsonLennard married Margaret, Geoffrey’s sister amd heir > son Henry Lennard = Baron Dacreby James I (Harris p.91)Size: 1272 = 100a (Cal.IPM I, 281)Documentary evidence:1580 CKS U1450 T5/22 (Stanhope) Sisley to John Phillips recovery of manor1600 CKS U1450 T6/23 (Stanhope) Lease of Cudham, certain place called Cudham Park,Mr Lennard to Puleston to demise to Edward Sisley for 3 years. Also relates to Sisley asLennard's bailiff impounding 4 cows trespassing into park1630 CKS U1590 T23/27 (Stanhope) IPM for Richard, Lord Dacre, includes Cudhammanor1630 TNA C142/468/85 IPM Lord Dacre includes Brasted park, Chevening warren,Cudham manor1699 CKS U1590 25/3 (Stanhope) Though late has field names Great Park wood 80aApfield park 30a occupied by Brasyer familySecondary evidence:Deputy Keeper of Records (1905:161,165,169,170) Descriptive Catalogue of AncientDeeds of the PRO VIHarrington (2004:12-13,18-35,44-45,56-57) Study in Woodlands archaeology, CudhamHarris (1719:91) The History of KentSteinman Steinman (1851:1-11,22-43,54-61) Some Account of the Manor of Apuldrefield inthe Parish of Cudham, KentWilson (1982:2-4) Story of Biggin HillMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ439600 Park FarmAcknowledgements:Joyce Hoad(26) CURLSWOOD / NONINGTON / CROWDSWOODParish: NoningtonEarliest reference: c.1530s (Nichols p.265)Ownership:Church with leases380Size: 1617 = 240a survey (TNA E164/40)Documentary evidence:1586, 1595, 1600, 1617 LPL TA633/1-4 Leases names and rent no descriptions/size,disparked by 1586 lease1593 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) Enclosed land beside the lodge of Crowdeswoodalias Curlswood Park1598 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) Another lease of same1599 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) Lease of Curlswood park lodge1600 TNA SP12/277/1 Leases of Archbihsop of Canterbury, 1585 £1 rent to Miles Sands21 years, 1595 to Richard Massinger, renewed 1598.1606 LPL TC1 Survey includes comment about previous leases in 1602 to Massinger, 1584to Miles SandsTNA Ind1/16822/264 James I Exchequer bill book registering case Archbishop v. William?Selby re Curlswood park1617/18 TNA E164/40 Survey of Archbishop's lands includes Curlswood park - 60a arable,180a wood, no part of any manor, under lease of Archbishop of Canterbury to WilliamSelby, with Pownall as under farmer, 1a wood grubbed up1631 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) Deed poll for Curlswood park lodge1639 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) Another lease for above1706 EKAC U373 T41 (Brook Bridges) 3a at or near Crowdswood Park adjoiningmessuage called Crowdwood ParkSecondary evidence:Nichols (ed.) (1859:234,265) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationMaps:1807 LPL TD253 plan of Curlswood parkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR242525 station, Aylesham built upAcknowledgements:Dr Maurice Raraty(27) DENSTROUDE Parish: BleanEarliest reference: 1603 (CKS Q/SR 48/8)Ownership:Unknown, except seems to be Robert Lewes of Chilham in 1603Size:Documentary evidence:1603 CKS Q/SR 48/8 horse impounded by Robert Lewes of Chilham gentleman in a parkat DenstroudeSecondary evidence:Hipkin (2000:1-35) ‘Sitting on his Penny Rent’: Conflict and Right of Common inFaversham Blean, 1595-1610’, Rural History 11381Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) ?TR104617 general for DenstroudeAcknowledgements:(28) EASTWELL Parish: Eastwell, ChallockEarliest reference: 1589 licence to enclose (Hasted 1, p.269)Ownership:Sir Christpher Hales attorney.general to Henry VIII, died 33Henry VIII > son Sir JamesHales sold to Sir Thomas Moyle chancellor of the court of augmentations mid -16th, died1560 > Katherine Moyle m. Sir Thomas Finch lived there until died 1597 > son, Sir MoyleFinch (knighted 1584, baronet 1611) d. 1623, and remained in family until 1895Size: 1589 = not more than 1000a (Hasted 1, p.269): 1895 = 2120a, Eastwell park, mansionand grounds (CKS U1590 E54/6)Documentary evidence:1617-1628 CKS U350 E4 Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden Dering and his Booke ofExpences 1617-1628 (pp.167,294,296,307,423). Full transcription ww.kentarchaeology.acon-line publishing1895 CKS U1590 E54/6 (Stanhope) Estate Sale brochure (detailed description of park)Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. CXXV (2005:337)Dormer (1999:8-9,36,47-48,52) Eastwell park historietteHarris (1719:111) The History of KentHasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 7 (1797:332)Mee (1936:163)Physick (1973:126-128) Five Monuments from EastwellYeandle, www.kentarchaeology.ac on-line publishing Sir Edward Dering, 1st bart, ofSurrenden Dering and his 'Booke of Expences' 1617-1628Maps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR017475 Eastwell Park HotelAcknowledgements:382(29) EAST WICKHAM / PLUMSTEAD Parish: Bexley, PlumsteadEarliest reference: 1610 TNA SP14/58/19 licence to imparkOwnership:Edward VI to Sir Martin Bowes > Thomas, duke of Norfolk (CPR 1561)> 1562 manorial rights purchased by Sir John Olyffe of Foxgrave, Kent, alderman ofLondon > whose heir Joan m. John Leigh, son and heir of Nicholas Leigh of Addington >1576, son Olyff Leigh much enlarged seat there > Christian the wife of his son Sir FrancisLeigh there in Charles I' reignSize: 1610 = 500a licence (TNA SP14/58/19)Documentary evidence:1561 CPR 8 December, Thomas, duke of Norfolk, fine for alienation1562 CPR 12 February Attainted Lovell land including in E. Wickham to John Olyffe1610 TNA SP14/58/19 Licence to Sir Olliphe Leigh to impark 500 acres in East Wickhamand Bexley1615 C5/13/2 1561/2 (Bexley Local Studies) The Manor of E. Wickham, leter of JanuaryFrancis Leigh to Carew re doe killed for wife's churching1617 TNA STAC8 198/8 Theft of buck reserved for king1658 Assize Calendar 35/99/11/1578 Breaking into park, killing deer of Dame ChristianLee, widow1658 Assize Calendar July 1658 no.1649 Breaking into park, killing 3 deer of DavidCopland owner of the parkSecondary evidence:Harris (1719:332) History of KentHasted 2 (1797:196)Roberts (1999:115) Woodlands of KentTester (1991:5,18-19) East Wickham and WellingVincent (1890:623) The Records of the Woolwich DistrictMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) ?TQ460770 open space might be former park areaAcknowledgements:Joyce Hoad(30) ELHAM Parish: ElhamEarliest reference: 1225 Will of Countess of Eu (Williams p.ix, Records in MertonCollege, Oxford)Ownership:1271 Roger de Leybourne and with family until 1367 when escheated to Edward III > 1397Richard II granted to dean and canons of St Stephens Chapel, Palace of Westminster >Back to Crown in Reformation > 1551 Edward VI to Lord Clinton and Saye, reconveyedback, leased for 80-year lease to Wotton > Wotton's sold interest to Alexander Hamon ofAcrise d.1613 leaving 2 daughters, one married Lewknor who got it and purchased the383reversion of fee from the crown some few years before the expiration of the term whichended in 1625 > in Charles I's reign sold to Sir Charles Herbert, master of the revelsSize: 1649 = 400a, survey (TNA LR2/196)Documentary evidence1297 (CalPat. 1292-1301, 227)LC William de Leybourne's park hunted while he was inGascony 2 entries1332 Lit.Cant.I.491, p.524, 6 does given by prior of Christ Church Canterbury fromWestwell park to Sir William Clinton warden of Cinque Ports for Elham Park1358 CPR Widow of Earl of Huntingdon had deer and other beasts from warren taken andservant assaulted1368 CPR Survey Preston and Elham parks and repair defects in enclosures1403 CPR 26 July Confirmation of grant of manor and park to Abbey of St Mary Graces byTower of London1602 CKS QM/SI 1603/1 Coursing in park1649 TNA LR2/196 SurveySecondary evidence:Hasted 8 (1797:98)Knafla (1994:127) Kent at Law 1602Liddiard (2005:139-140) Castles in ContextRoberts (1999:67) Woodlands of KentMileson (2009:106) Parks in Medieval England (citing Coulson 1979, Journal of BritishArchaeological Association 132, p.75)Williams (1959:ix) A Short history of Elham and its Parish ChurchMaps:1596 Symonson - park shown to E of road not named1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR160458 Elhampark Wood5 February 2005 - Shown one bank, but haven't enough information to know whether thiswas a deer park or wood bank.Acknowledgements:Geoffrey Roberts(31) ELTHAM – GREAT Parish: ElthamEarliest reference: 1309 onwards (Cal.Pat. 1307-1313, 172) LCOwnership:Royal C13th, subsequently in hands of Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, who d.1310,leaving the reversion of it to Queen Eleanor (VCH I p.472), remained with crown intoCharles I's reignSize: 1605 = 612a, survey (TNA E164/44): 1649 = 596a, survey (TNA LR2/196)384Documentary evidence:1309 CPR 8 May, Trespassing into park of Anthony bishop of Durham1428 BL Cott.Ms.Vesp.F.xiii.art.54, Warrant for 6 fat bucks from park to lord mayor ofLondon CPR 1 July, Grant to Queen Isabella of Eltham manor held by king of grant frombishop of Durham1369 CPR 20 July, Prior of Rochester gives up tithes on park in return for other lands kinggrants1376 CPR 26 November, Repair enclosure, racks, have hay, repair lodges for hay storage1378 CPR 6 April, Steward and keeper appointed for 1 year to get hedgers to make hedgeround park at king's expense and arrest the disobedient1386 CPR Retrospective licence to acquire land in compensation for tithes lost on arablemeadow and pasture when park enlargd under late king1422 CPR 17 December, Parker of the parks at Eltham1451 Inquisition Miscellaneous VIII p.138-139, 2 kept manor of Eltham withappurtenances in and without the park, save pasture for wild beasts worth £40 p.a. net1552/3 TNA E41/524, Manor of Eltham granted by Henry VIII to Sir Henry Guldeford1553 CPR 13 Nov, p.404, Jermingham keeper of Great and Horn parks, master of hunt?1561 TNA SP12/20/52 Account of tempest damage, Richmond, Eltham, Greenwich,Hampton Court1568 CPR 27 July, Hatton keeper of Great and Small park and Horn, master of game(wages given) held by Jermyngham or formerly by Gates or Speake. To have keeperslodgings adjoining capital mansion, in reversion all lands in parks, also keeper of gardenand purveyor of manor, keeper and surveyor of woods, and more1572/73 TNA SC12/27/7 Survey of lodges in Eltham parks, 2 lodges, pond, pale decayed1574 CPR for life John Greene keeper of game (hare and game birds from Greenwich toEltham, Woolwich, Lewisham, Deptfond)1586 TNA SP12/186/46 Pett shipwright warrant to take timber from Eltham parks, pricedby woodward, not yet paid for1590 TNA SP12/234/78 Plan of Eltham palace1590 TNA SP12/335/9 Keeper of house and park fee £13/13/4d, of the garden £4/13/11d,surveyor £6 20d1594 TNA SP12/250/42,44 Repair to house and parks, £1143/14/0d, survey of house1594 CKS QM/SB 25/30A Release John Hayt arrested for hunting in Eltham Park, onrequest of Lord Cobham1596 TNA E178/1164 In latin1597/8 TNA E178/1163 Timber felling near park pale; felling licenced and unlicenced inpark, used for lodge and pale1597 TNA SP12/263/107 Grant to Sir William Brooke of keeping Eltham Great park.1597 TNA SP12/264/7, July 4, Lord North after reversion of Hugh Miller keeper Littlepark, 3d day, Great park after reversion of William Brooke, house, fee 6d day, custody ofHorn 16d day, and 10 marks year; with keeper's lodging, the chantry and priest's house,Eltham , + other benefits1599 TNA SP12/273/25 November 10, Reversion of keepership of Great Park granted toSir Thomas Walsingham of Scadbury in succession to Lord North.1600 TNA SP12/275/3 Rreference to horses being taken to run at grass in the park.1605 TNA E164/44/ff3-58 Survey = 612a & 510 deer, 4+miles perimeter, 50 timber trees1606 CKS QM/SB/706 Poaching partridges near King's house1607 TNA E214/1138 Eltham park, land held in trust for parish now enclosed in park1608 TNA E351/3367 J. Tavernor surveyor-general of woods S of Trent including Eltham3851608 TNA SP14/31/10 Grant John Livingstone in reversion after Sir Thomas Walsinghamkeeper of Great park Eltham1608 TNA SP14/35/49 Sir Julius Caesar to Sir Thomas Lake for privy seal for payment ofSir Oliver Leigh of £81/1/4d balance of his account for repairs at Eltham park.1608 TNA SP14/35/75 King reproves Lord Stanhope for negligence in allowing spoil ofgame at Eltham, require greater vigilance and pursuit of law against offenders1609 TNA SP14/45/62 Warrant to pay Sir Oliver Leigh £1200 for surrender as keeper ofGreat park, and £27/10s expended for the railing of park.1609 TNA SP14/47/5 To pay John Dacombe £600, the same as to Sir Henry Lee forredemption of his estate in Eltham park.1609 TNA SP14/47/41 Sir Roger Aston's account for works in Eltham park1612 TNA SP14/69/71 June 17, James I at Eltham1619 TNA SP14/109/41 May 22, King hunted in Eltham park.1619 TNA SP14/109/92 12 June, King killed buck and bathed legs in blood for gout cure.1621 TNA SP14/120/52 28 March, Money, not more than £217/10/4d advanced to keeperPat Maull for repairs in park.1622 TNA SP14/130/ 11 May, king at Eltham or Greenwich1625/6 TNA E178/3977 Presentment as to Crown woods1633 TNA Assize Calendar 35/76/6/1045 Scouring ditch by the highway between 2 parksin Eltham (which 2?)1638 TNA Assize Calendar 35/81/10/1678 Killing deer in park of Queen Henrietta Maria,?which Eltham park1649 TNA LR2/196 Eltham survey - deer destroyed, disparked by soldiery midsummerbeforeSecondary evidence:Adams (1995:158) Household Accounts and Disbursem*nt- Robert DudleyArch.Cant. LXXIV (1960:99)Arch.Cant. LXXXIII (1968:205-209)Barrett-Lennard (1908:42) An Account of the Families of Lennard and Barrett.Brook (1960: 44-45,48) The Story of Eltham PalaceCole (1999:57,186-187) Portable QueenDrake (1886:179-182,186-187,279-280) Hasted's History of Kent – Hundred of BlackheathThe Eltham Society newsletter no. 162 (November 2005:24-27)Gregory (1909:99,195,207) The Story of Royal ElthamHasted 1 (1797:269,455,465,469)Henderson (2005:16) Tudor House and GardenKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1934:246) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley IILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Nichols (c.1977reprint:74) Progresses of Queen ElizabethNichols (c.1977reprint:61,445-450) Progressesof James IRivers (1908:25,34-37,49-52) Some Records of ElthamRye (1865:61) England as seen by foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and JamesSimmons (Sally) 2005 letter, hunting lodge (?Golf clubhouse), under keepers lodge atChapel Farm, Mottingham - no evidenceTaylor (1980) Looking into Eltham's pastTester (1991:18) East Wickham and WellingVCH I (1974:472-473)Webb, Miller & Beckwith (1899:142-152) History of Chislehurst386Willson (1956:184,404) King James VI & IMaps:1575 Saxton - 2 parks shown larger one to west of other1576 Anonymous - 2 parks1596 Symonson - 3 parks at Eltham1605 Norden - 2 parks1611 Speed - 2 parks1741/5 RocqueFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ430740 Blackheath Royal Golf courseSally Simmons (pers. comm. 2005) has outlined park on modern map - E edge of RoyalBlackheath Golf Course bank and ditch = ?remains of park paleAcknowledgement:Sally Simmons(32) ELTHAM – MIDDLE / LITTLE / OLDParish: ElthamEarliest reference: 1290s Park of Bishop Bek of Durham (Simmons pers.comm.); 1388release of lands to Richard II, enclosed into park by Edward III (1327-77) (TNA E40/4955)Ownership:Royal C13th, subsequently in hands of Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, who d.1310,leaving the reversion of it to Queen Eleanor (VCH I p.472), remained with crown intoCharles I's reignSize: 1605 = 308a, survey (TNA E164/44): 1649 = 333a, survey (TNA LR2/196)Documentary evidence:1388 TNA E40/4955 Release of lands to Richard II which Edward III (1327-77) enclosedinto the park1568 CPR 27 July, Hatton keeper of Great and Small park and Horn, master of game(wages given) held by Jermyngham or formerly by Gates or Speake. To have keeperslodgings adjoining capiral mansion, in reversion all lands in parks, also keeper of gardenand purveyor of manor, keeper and surveyor of woods, and more1578 TNA SP12/124/10,18 May, Unlawful felling, Horn Park, Eltham, reference made toLittle park1586 TNA SP12/186/46 Pett shipwright warrant to take timber feom Eltham parks, pricedby woodward, not yet paid for1597 TNA SP12/264/7, July 4, Lord North after reversion of Hugh Miller keeper LIttlepark, 3d day, Great park after reversion of William Brooke, house, fee 6d day, custody ofHorn 16d day, and 10 marks year; with keeper's lodging, the chantry and priest's house,Eltham , + other benefits1597/8 TNA E178/1163 Timber felling near park pale; felling licenced and unlicenced inpark1600/1 E178/1179 Salary of keeper1604 TNA SP14/9/83 Letter to compound owners of land to be added to Middle park3871605 TNA E164/44 Survey - 308a, -3 miles perimeter, 240 deer, 250 timber trees1608 TNA E251/3367 J. Tavernor surveyor-general of woods S of Trent including Eltham1608 TNA SP14/31/24 Warrant to pay John Taverner £204/1/4d to provide stuff forimpaling Middle park1608 TNA SP14/32/10 Warrant to pay Sir Valentine Brown £1000 for ground taken intoMiddle park1609 TNA SP14/47/5 To pay John Dacombe £600, the same as to Sir Henry Lee forredemption of his estate in Eltham park.1610 TNA SP14/53/110 Warrant to pay Sir Roger Aston keeper £20/12 for constructing 4bridges in park and repairing paling and lodgec.1612 TNA SP14/69/34 Hugh Miller spent £14 2s over annual budget for repairing lodgeand fence asks for repayment. Is refused.1620 TNA E351/3393 R Kidwell under-keeper of Middle Park1625 TNA SP14/185/19, 5 March, £33 to keeper John Livingstone for hay for deer.1633 Assize Calnedar 35/76/6/1045 Scouring ditch between 2 parks in Eltham (which 2?)1638 Assize Calendar 35/81/10/1678 Killing deer in park of Queen Henrietta Maria ?whichEltham park1649 TNA LR2/196 Eltham survey - deer destroyed, disparked by soldierySecondary evidence:Brook (1960:44-45,48) The Story of Eltham PalaceDrake (ed.) (1886:179-180,187) Hasted's History of Kent – Hundred of BlackheathGregory (1909:99,207) Story of Royal ElthamLambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Rivers (1908:25,34-37,49-52) Some Records of ElthamSimmons (letter 2005) in 1970s Middle Farmhouse pulled down, antlers, deer bones found,?hunting lodgeTaylor (1980) Looking into Eltham's pastVCH I (1974:472-473)Webb, Miller & Beckwith (1899:142) History of ChislehurstMaps:1575 Saxton - 2 parks shown larger on to west of other1576 Anonymous - 2 parks1596 Symonson - 3 parks at Eltham1605 Norden - 2 parks1611 Speed - 2 parks1741/5 RocqueFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ420740 most built upSally Simmons has outlined park on modern map.Acknowledgement:Sally Simmons(33) ELTHAM – HORN Parish: Eltham, LeeEarliest reference: c.1465 royal park enclosed (Hasted 1 p.455,465,469)388Ownership:RoyalSize: 1605 = 345a (TNA E164/44/3-58): 1649 = 336a, survey (TNA LR2/196)Documentary evidence:1532 TNA E41/524 and E41/113 New Park part of Smiths lands and Newlands within thepark bought from Richard Fermour1553 CPR 13 November Jermingham keeper of Great and Horn parks, master of hunt1578 TNA SP2/124/10,18 May, Unlawful felling, Horn Park, Eltham1568 CPR 27 July Hatton keeper of Great and Small park and Horn, master of game(wages given) held by Jermyngham or formerly by Gates or Speake. To have keeperslodgings adjoining capiral mansion, in reversion all lands in parks, also keeper of gardenand purveyor of manor, keeper and sruveyor of woods, and more1586 TNA SP/186/46 Pett shipwright warrant to take timber feom Eltham parks, priced bywoodward, not yet paid for1597 TNA SP12/264/7, July 4, Lord North after reversion of Hugh Miller keeper Littlepark, 3d day, Great park after reversion of William Brooke, house, fee 6d day, custody ofHorn 16d day, and 10 marks year; with keeper's lodging, the chantry and priest's house,Eltham , + other benefits1597/8 TNA E178/1163 Timber felling near park pale; felling licenced and unlicenced inpark1600 TNA SP12/34/25 John Leigh in reversion to Lord North keeper of Horn park andmaster of wild beasts, 4d a day from customs of London (interlined in James I to say JohnBuchanan is granted it in reversion to John Leigh, both are clerks to the Buttery.1600/1 TNA E178/1179 Concerning office of keeper of Horn Park, order for payments ofsalary to John Leigh as keeper1604 TNA SP14/8/7 Grant to John Buchanan in reversion to John Leigh of keeper of Horn1605 TNA E164/44 Survey - 345a, 3 miles perimeter. 240 deer, 2740 timber trees, some ofS pale decayed1605 TNA SP14/14/11, 14 May, Warrant to pay Sir Nicholas Stoddard £80 for groundtaken into the king's park1607 TNA SP14/27/15, 6 May ,Reversion to Oliver Leigh as keeper of Horn for life1608 TNA E251/3367 J. Tavernor surveyor-general of woods S of Trent including Eltham1622 TNA SP14/128/112 Petition of Sir Nicholas Stoddard to Cranfield for fee farm ofcertain land adjoining his park at Lee, which he has on lease, and has taken in to enlargethe park, a prohibition lately issued against felling wood on land is very injurious to hime,as having paid high price to the wood. The king delighting in his park granted him the feefarm of some adjoining lands, but the chancellor of the exchequer would not pass them infee farm.1622 TNA SP14/130/83 Sir Nicholas Stoddard ordered to attend about free gift toPalatinate but is so oppressed by debt can hardly maintain his family.1623 TNA SP14/148/104 Warrant to underkeeper of Horn £30 for railing in the deer pond1633 Assize Calendar 35/76/6/1045 Scouring ditch between 2 parks in Eltham (which 2?)1638 Assize Calendar 35/81/10/1678 Killing deer in a park of Queen Henrietta Maria, butwhich Eltham park1649 TNA LR2/196 Eltham survey - deer destroyed, disparked by soldiery, 1700 treesmarked for navy, rest 2620 old and decayed.Secondary evidence:389Brook (1960:44-45,48) The Story of Eltham PalaceDrake (ed.) (1886:179-180) Hasted's History of Kent – BlackheathGregory (1909:99,195,207) Story of Royal Eltham,Hart (1882:29) History of LeeHasted 1 (1797:455,465,469)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Rivers, Some Records of ElthamSimmons, letter 2005, Lodge presumed to be Horn Park farmhouse demolished 1930sTaylor (1980) Looking into Eltham's pastVCH I (1974:472-473)Webb, Miller & Beckwith (1899:42) History of ChislehurstMaps:1575 Saxton - 2 parks shown larger on to west of other (perhaps Horn omitted)1576 Anonymous - 2 parks (perhaps Horn omitted)1578 TNA SP12/25/130 Plots about Greenwich includes Horn Park1596 Symonson - 3 parks at Eltham, Horn would be one1605 Norden - 2 parks (perhaps Horn omitted)1611 Speed - 2 parks (perhaps Horn omitted)1741/5 RocqueFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ405740 most built upSally Simmons has outlined park on modern map.Acknowledgement:Sally Simmons(34) FOLKESTONE / WALTON and/or TERLINGHAMParish: FolkestoneEarliest reference: 1241 onwards (Cal.Lib 1240-5, 22) LC Walton Park: 1271 IPM parkcalled Herstling, Reynden and Newenden in Folkestone (Arch.Cant. VI (1864/5:240-243):1295 (Cal.IPM III, 168)LC TerlinghamOwnership:Henry de Crevequer ... > Priory of Folkestone > by 1542 royal (EKAC U270/m285/1) >Edward VI to Lord Clinton and Say (EKAC U270 T4) > 1554 Edward Lord Clinton andSay to Henry Herdson (EKAC U270 T4) > 1620 John Herdson to nephew Basil Dixon(EKAC U270 T4) and stayed in family until 1697 with Sir Basil Dixon to Jacob DesBouverie (EKAC U270/2/T5)Size: 1263 = 82a (IPM in Arch.Cant, VI): 1668 = 126a (EKAC U270 T1)Documentary evidence:1439 EKAC U270/T119 Tenants of Folkestone Park are Hashstede and Lake1541 TNA SC 6/HenVIII/1727 7 1758 Kent Monastic possessions includes FolkestonePark1542 EKAC U270/m285/1 Ministers Accounts of Thomas Cromwell, late earl of Essex,park held by Anthony Aucher1554 EKAC U270 T4 Edward VI to Edward Lord Clinton and Say to Henry Herdson3901561 CPR 6 December, Pardon of alienation with fine to do with Herdson family andpregnancy of wife at husband's death and extra share of estate to go to posthumous son1578 CPR no.3192, 10 April, Edward Hersdon fine for alienation1580 CPR no.1642, 11 February, Pardon of alienation refers to fine of 1579 betweenHerdsons, mentions late of Fynes Lord Clinton and Saye and of Thomas Cromwell earl ofEssex.1620 EKAC U270 T4 John Herdson to Basil Dixon, by now disparked1668 EKAC U270 T11 Lands named and area given, 126a and a warrenSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. III (1860:256)Arch.Cant. VI (1864/5:240-243)Arch.Cant. X (1876:cvi)Chandler (ed.) (1993:44) John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England, 4 part VIIIHasted 8 (1797:160)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Maps:1698 (EK TR270/4 copy, original BL) Park Farm and Great Ford Farm, FolkestoneFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR217382 Round HillAcknowledgements:(35) FORD Parish: HoathEarliest reference: 1405 (LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 1999)Ownership:Archbishop of Canterbury from C14thSize: 1638 = 160a, lease (LPL TC656/1): 1647 = 166a, survey (McIntosh): 1653 =130a,lease (EKAC U88/T35)Documentary evidence:1405 LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 1999 keeper1558 1558 SPD I, no.10, p.115, List of horses in stables and pastures at Lambeth,Canterbury park and Ford of late Cardinal Pole1575 LPL ED1474 Terrier of Ford Park mentioned1624 CKS TRP 429/1 Estate map shows deer in park1632 LPL TG56 Account for repair of part of pale1638 LPL TC656/1 Lease to Stephen Knowler Ford Park 160a1653 EKAC U88 T35 Tenants Hales and Holnes gatehouse or lodge in Ford Park 130a1661 LPL TC3 Survey of park 190a in ruin, good farmSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. VI (1862/3:28)Arch.Cant. XXVI (1904:119)Arch.Cant. XXXII (1917:92)Arch.Cant. XLV (1933:168)391Arch.Cant. LIII (1940:4)Arch.Cant. CXI (2001:251-268) 'The Archbishop's Manor at Ford' by GoughHarris (1719:77,157) The History of KentHasted 9 (1797:98)Lambarde (1576:86)McIntosh & Gough (1984:36-40) Hoath and HerneNichols (ed.) (1859:267) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationMaps:1575 Saxton – park N of Ford and S of Reculver1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson1605 Norden1611 Speed1624 CKS TRP 429/1 Estate map (fragment) shows deer in park, original stolen fromHerne Bay Museum, probably 1650s (Gough)1858 LPL TD172 shows Ford ParkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR206657 Ford manorHarold Gough has outlined possible boundaries through OS and tithe maps.Acknowledgement:Harold Gough(36) FRYARNE Parish: StellingNot in Lambarde or on the early maps so probably disparked before 1558Earliest reference: 1346 (Hasted 8:94)Ownership:Very uncertain. 1537 Archbishop to Henry VIII > Henry VII back to Archbishop, whogranted it to Heyman ..........1720 Sir WIlliam HardresSize:Documentary evidence:1631 TNA E134/7ChasI/Mich16 Clerke v Filmer - Stelling park and the marriage portionsof Anne Kemp, late wife of plaintiffSecondary evidence:Hasted 8 (1797:94)Maps:1720 Estate map in possession of Colin Robbins of Stelling MinnisFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR165469 Fryarne parkAcknowledgements:392Colin Robbins(37) GLASSENBURY Parish: Cranbrook, GoudhurstEarliest reference: 1488 licence to empark 1600a (Charter rolls 16, m13 (8))Ownership:1488 Roberts family > 1522 -1557 Thomas Roberts > 1557-1580 Walter Roberts > 1580-1627 Thomas Roberts, knighted 1603 by James I, baronet 1620, remained in family into theC20thSize: 1488 = 1600a (Charter rolls 16 m13 (8)): 1656 = 40a old park, no measurements fornew park (CKS U708/T14)Documentary evidence:1488 TNA Charter rolls 16 m13 (8) 1600a (600a of land, 1000a of wood in Cranbrook,Goudhurst and Ticehurst to impark and enclose with pales and fence, if wanted1628 CKS U410/T195 Will Sir Thomas Roberts mansion and park to wife in mother's lifeand minority of son1656 CKS U708/T14 Marriage settlement mentions New Park with fields, old park 40awith tenant1686 (privately owned by Sutcliffe) Glassenbury Wood Book lists woods in Goudhurst OldPark Lodge wood 113a + mapCKS U410, Roberts of Glassenbury papers introduction has family treeSecondary evidence:Anon (c.1714) Early History of the Roberts FamilyCranbrook museum, Owlett notes on RobertsFurley (1874:414) The Weald of Kent.Harris (1719:36) The History of KentHasted 7 (1797:92-95)KCC SMR TQ 73 NW 5 - KE 1788Lambarde (1927:16-20) Roberts of KentLambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Sprange (1808:257) Tunbridge WellsWyndham (1952: 44,126,155-156,207-208,222-230) Family History of RobertsMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1611 Speed1628 Map called Old Park shows and names fields, so disparked (Sutcliffe)1642 Hop gardens in park S of house (this and 1628 show bowling alley)1656 CKS U708 T14 mentions New Park, but names fields in it1730s/50 Map of Old Park Wood1748 Copy of Glassenbury part of the estate (Sutcliffe)1810 CKS U78 P31 Cranbrook map for GlassenburyFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ747365 Glassenbury House23 May 2005, 28 August 2005, 10 September 2005 - Various banks, ditches found but393possible park expanded and contracted over time, so nothing definitive found. Walkedalong most of N boundary of Old Park Wood near Iden Green, excellent remains ofboundary for several long stretches – might be medieval Iden Park or extendedGlassenbury Park later reduced.Acknowledgements:Marcus Sutcliffe(38) GREAT CHART Parish: Great ChartEarliest reference: 1605 CKS QM/SR 1/m.6dOwnership:1605 Sir William WythensSize:Documentary evidence:1604 CKS QM/SI/1605/10.10 Illegal rabbit taking in Dutton's close, Great Chart (samemen as below)1605 CKS QM/SR 1/m.6d Illegal rabbit hunting in close and park of Sir WilliamWythe(n)s at Great Chart1605 CKS QM/SIq 4/28 Illegal rabbit hunting in close and park of Sir William Wythe(n)sat Great Chart (Same case)Secondary evidence:Hasted 1 (1797:478)Hasted 7 (1797:504)Lodge (1927:end map) The Account Book of a Kentish Estate (1616-1701)Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ968524 Goldwell, park site unknownAcknowledgements:(39) GREENWICH Parish: GreenwichEarliest reference: 1432 (Proc. & Ord. PC IV, 172) LCOwnership:1432 Duke of Gloucester > royal by Henry VIIISize: 1432 = 200a, licence (Proc. & Ord. PC IV, 172)Documentary evidence:1432 Proc. & Ord. PC IV, 172 Duke of Gloucester licence to enclose and to build tower ofstone in the park1561 TNA SP12/16/26 Gardener at Greenwich to provide Cecil with plants, listed394?1561 TNA SP12/20/52 Account of tempest damage, Richmond, Eltham, Greenwich,Hampton Court1561 TNA SP12/520/69 Account for oats and hay for the deer and for reparations of thepark1572 CPR no.2943, p.422, 28 October, Life grant Howard keeper of park and other thingswith wages1574 CPR no.1397, p.260, 12 March, For life John Greene keeper of game (hare and gamebirds from Greenwich to Eltham, Woolwich, Lewisham, Deptford)1580 CPR no.1332, p.163, 9 June, Life grant Hatton keeper of park and other things withwages1590 TNA SP12/335/9 Keeper of manor and park of Pleaisance £19/2/6d, of the garden£7/4/2d, of the wardrobe £21/ 5d1594 Deeds 21/42 no.321 (Salisbury) Grant to Lord Buckhurst of manor of Pleasaunce andpark of E. Greenwich1597 TNA SP12/264/70 Grant of game in Greenwich manor, fee 8d a day, 26/8d year forlivery1603 TNA SP14/4/ 33A (addenda in vol. 11) Warrant by Sir Roger Aston, keeper of thegame in Greenwich, appointing Robert Cooke, his deputy keeper1604 TNA SP14/9/31 John Chapman in reversion to Thomas Sheffield, keepership ofgardens for life1605 Deeds 42/1 no.15 (Salisbury) Patent to Henry Earl of Northampton for keepership1605 TNA SP14/12/88 In reversion to Viscount Cranbourne after Thomas Sheffield andJohn Chapman as bailiff of East Greenwich and keeper of orchard and gardens there.1605 TNA SP14/12/88c Earl of Northampton grant of keeper of Greenwich park, withreversion to Viscount Cranbourne1605 TNA SP14/60/2 Grant in reversion to Viscount Cranbourne of keeper of Greenwichpark for life1609 Deed 222 Salisbury (at Hatfield) Earl of Nottingham has given keepers (includingGreenwich) to provide Salisbury with his fee deer1610 TNA SP14/57/5 Sir Thomas Lake to Salisbury, retuirns privy seals signed. A clauseis repeated in one fo them for money to Thomas Sheffield for the garden at Greenwich andthe king is so attentive to business that he remembered signing it before1611 TNA E214/703, 4 June, Cecil surrender of patent of 4 May 3James I grantingreversion of office of keeper of the park1613 TNA SP14/75/40 Northampton fears King will displace hims as keeper and with thelodge – has spent £2000 there and begs if King passes Greenwich to QUeen he will providefor him to remain there1613 TNA SP14/75/45 Northampton thanks King for asking Queen for him to remina inGreenwich, but needs express provision in grant for him to feel secure1613 TNA SP14/75/49 Northampton confirmed as keepr of Greenwich park with herbageand pannage1619 TNA SP14/110/54, 11 September, a brick wall building round Greenwich park. Kingmeanly entertained by Northampton – fool said now he had got what he wanted he wasn'tgoing to make any effort1620 TNA SP14/115/68, 11 June, James I building wall 9 miles long round Theobalds parkand also one round Greenwichc.1620 National Maritime Museum BHC1820 'View of Greenwich Palace from One TreeHill'1622 TNA SP14/127/62, 1 February, Accounts of wall to be examined and debts to SirThomas Watson paid to widow3951622 TNA SP14/130/ 60, 11 May, King at Eltham or Greenwich1622 TNA SP14/131/53, June, Lord Mayor knighted at Greenwich1622 TNA SP14/132/97, 14 August, Widow Watson wants money, over £2000 husbandspent to build wall1622 TNA SP14/133/31, 30 September, Money to underkeeper for molecatcher, feedingbucks and paying tithes for enlarged park1623 TNA SP14/121/131 Lennox requests buck from Greenwich for a friend1656 TNA E214/898 John Parker quit claim right under contract of 1652 ot purchase park,castle, lodge and White HouseSecondary evidence:Anon (1974) Greenwich Park (pamphlet)Brennan & Kinnamon (2003:186) A Sidney Chronology 1554-1654Brook (1960:29,45) Story of Eltham PalaceDrake (1886:60-62,187,279-280) Hasted's History of Kent – The Hundred of BlackheathDunlop (1962:Chapter II) Palaces and Progress of Elizabeth IGregory (1909:178,196) Story of Royal ElthamGroos (ed.) (1981:72) The Diary of Baron WaldsteinHart (1882:82-87) History of LeeHasted 1 (1797:269,372-375,397-399)Henderson (2005:71,77,169,174,177,230) Tudor House and GardenKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1934:375,468,481,483) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of LordDe L’Isle and Dudley IILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Mileson (2009:133) Parks in Medieval England (CPR 1429-36, 250, 369; Emery, GreaterMedeival Houses, p.175, 1996)Naunton (ed.) (1889:46-53) Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth byPaul Hentzner (cites Lyson's Environs i, p.519)Nichols (c.1977reprint:69-74,498) Progresses of Queen ElizabethNichols (c.1977reprint:54-62,344,565,510-511,671,704) Progresses of James IRye (1865:106) England as seen by foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James IRoberts (1999:115) Woodlands of KentVCH I (1974:473)Warnicke (1973:11)Webster (1902:3-13,31-38,62-63) History of Greenwich parkWillson (1965:179,184-187,408) King James VI & IMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ390773 existing park23 February 2008 - Bounds as now so can be put on map. C17th wall remainsAcknowledgements:Christopher Waterman(40) GROOMBRIDGE Parish: Groombridge396Earliest reference: 1576 (Lambarde)Ownership:John Waller d.1517 > son William Waller d.1555 > grandson Walter Waller > Sir Thomas2nd son and lieutenant of Dover castle in James I's reign > to Thomas Sackville earl ofDorset and lord treasurer who died possessed in 1608 > 1618 Richard Sackville sold toPhilip ParkerSize: 1610 = 225a, survey (CKS U269 E66/1&2)Documentary evidence:1584 TNA 5STAC/A1/8 Waterdown Forest case involving Groombridge men, notGroombridge park1605 STAC8/ 290/17 Petley from Halstead into Hamsell park, Sussex, owner Waller1606 STAC8 294/6 Hamsell park of Sir Thomas Waller (see STAC8/5/13 same names forAshdown forest poaching)1610/11 CKS U269 E66/1&2 (Sackville) Survey of Earl of Dorset's lands, includes Parkmeadow in manor of Bayhall; Groombridge House and land called park 225a, £70 rent and2 capons; Panthurst Park; Redmillridge (near Groombridge) parcel of land called New Park5a1615 CKS U269 T1 A:8:18 (Sackville) Richard Earl of Dorset to Howard, Rivers andothers manors including Knole and Panthurst to recover debts, Groombridge also RedMilleredge+ counterpartSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XIII (1880:133)Ellingham (1973) A History of GroombridgeFurley (1874:743) Weald of Kent IIHasted 3 (1797:290)Hovenden (1898:129) Visitation of Kent by John Philipot, 1619Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Sprange (1808:140) Tunbridge Wells GuideStrutt and Parker (1991:8) Groombridge Place, sale brochureMaps:1576 Anon1596 Symonson1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ534376 Groombridge PlaceAcknowledgements:397(41) HALDEN Parish: Rolveden, BenendenEarliest reference: 1487 licence to impark (BL Add.Ch. 9424)Ownership:1448/9 Edward Guldeford held manor of Halden (ESRO DAP box 32) and familycontinued there into the 1500s > Jane Guldeforde m. John Dudley, duke of Northumberlandand Halden to crown over Lady Jane Grey m. to his 4th son > 1566 Sir Henry and wifeMary granted tenure for life and stayed with Sidney family until 1622 sold to Sir ThomasSmythe (CKS U1475/T92)Size: 1497 = 1000 (Licence to impark, Roberts): 1544 = 429a (CKS U1475/E23/1): 1609= 429a (U1475/M73): 1616 = 400a (CKS U1475/ T92)Documentary evidence:1448/9 ESRO DAP box 32, 27Henry VI Edward Guldeford held manor of Halden1487 BL Add. Ch. 9424 Licence to imparkc.1537 TNA SC12/9/46 Lands of Sir John Dudley v. John Guldeford - such park at Haldenwhich is in Rolveden, and part in Benenden1540 CKS U24 T308 (unfit for production) Crown grant of office of High Steward ofKeeper of the site of the manor of Halden alias Lambyns and of Halden Park1544 CKS U1475 E23/1 (dLD) Park measured, 5 ponds, watermill1553 CKS U1475 T92 (dLD) Duke and duch*ess of Northumberland and Sir ThomasCulpepper demise to Sir Henry Sidney1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park or Halden1571 CKS U1475 E23/2 (dLD) Account for park1566 CKS U1475 T92 (dLD) Sir Henry and wife Mary granted tenure1573 CKS U1475 A11 (dLD) Charges for work on Halden Manor, barn1609 U1475 M73 (dLD) Halden given as portion of Lady Mary Sidney by Dudley Duke ofNorthumberland. This survey with deer, conies in park, watermill and carp ponds, heronry1610 CKS U1475 T92 (dLD) Marriage between Hobarte and Phillipe Sidney. Hobartegranted Halden and park now disparked1616 CKS U1475 T92 (dLD) Hobarte back to Sydney1622 CKS U1475 T92 (dLD) Sydney sells on to Sir Thomas Smythe and Sir NicholasCrispec. Charles I BL Add. Mss 12066 Sir Thomas Smythe had bought Otford Great park andHalden park for £9000.Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XIV (1882:4,55)Arch.Cant XXII (1897:317)Bowen (1939:Chapter IV) Rolvenden Parish and HundredCrossley (ed.) (1975:182-187) Sidney Ironworks Accounts 1541-1573Furley (1874:743) Weald of Kent IIHannay, Kinnamon & Brennan (2005:173,176,180) Domestic Politicsand Family AbsenceHarris (1719:263) History of KentHasted 7 (1797:186)Lambarde (1576 – a deer park: 1596 - disparked)398Roberts, (1995:61,73,76,106) Tenterden - the First Thousand YearsZell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton1596 Symonson1611 Speed1828/29 map and book of Rolvenden (privately held at Halden)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ851337 Halden Place1 April 2006, 8 March 2010 - Explored the N boundary (road from Benenden toTenterden. Then up to Halden Place and round that part of estate to investigate possible S,W and E boundaries. Field names gave clue for S boundary, but only low bank along thatline. W and E more problematic still. Inside Millpond Wood was a magnificent dam forformer fishpondsAcknowledgements:Edward Barham, Michael Ditton, Dr Paul Lee,(42) HALSTEAD Parish: Halstead, KnockholtEarliest reference: 1621/22 TNA E178/6020 InquisitionOwnership:1280s William de Chelsfield > by 1520s Petley family > by 1620s Sir Thomas Watson,Size: 164- = 300a (U1000/7/M19)Documentary evidence:by 1620s Sir Thomas Watson, built wall round Greenwich park, TNA SP14/110/54, p.75.SP14/115/68, p.151, SP14/117/62, p.341, SP14/132/97, p.440. One of 4 tellers of James I'sExchequer1621 TNA E178/6020 Inquisition of Sir Thomas Watson in the park certain pieces oftimber, bricks, tiles, pales and rails164- CKS U1000/7/M19 3 rentals all about same time - manor house with the great andlittle park, keeper's house, 300a park,c.1645 CKS U214 E19/14 Great and Little Park let to Edward Ashe1662 TNA E134/25ChasII/Mich12 Reference to park at Halstead Place, Knockholt, tithefor rabbits claimSecondary evidence:Kitchener (2000:21-26) Milennial HalsteadWarlow (1934:17,20) History of HalsteadMaps:1921 Estate agent, Cronk's, remaining portions of Halstead Place estate (Park Farm, DeerLeap cottages)Fieldwork:399OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ482605 Park FarmAcknowledgements:Geoffrey Kitchener(43) HAMSWELL Parish: probably Rotherfield, Sussex.Earliest reference: 1086 (Sussex VCH 2, 294) LCN.B. Have taken it to be Hamsell in Sussex although out of county it was owned by Wallterfamily of Groombridge Place on the border and STAC records have been catalogued underKent not Sussex.There is Hamwell, near Eastry, between Knowlton and Woodnesborough parishesThere is Hamsell area in PenshurstOwnership:C14th Despenser holds as Hamsell park ... > Waller family of Groombridge by C17thSize:Documentary evidence:1605 TNA STAC8 294/6 Waller in text - from Groombridge Hall, same case as below. SirThomas Waller says park impaled 12 January 12 Elizabeth I = 15631605 TNA STAC8/ 290/17 Petley from Halstead into parkSecondary evidence:Hasted 3 (1797;290)Hovenden (1828:129) Visitation of Kent by John Philipot, 1619Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park if 'Hamsell')Maps:1575 SaxtonFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ552338 Hamsell Manor, MayfieldAcknowledgement:Margaret Lawrence(44) HEMSTED / KNOLE Parish: Benenden, CranbrookEarliest reference: c.1360 (Hasted 3, 821) LCOwnership:1388 William Guldeford and stayed in family with younger brother remaining here whileHalden lost to family > ...c.Edward VI = Sir John Guldeford d.1565 > son ThomasGuldeford d.1575 > son Henry GuldefordSize: 1599 = 113a park with 55a of wood (1599 SuffRO HA43/T501/242)Documentary evidence:400c.1537 TNA SC12/9/46 Lands of Sir John Dudley v. John Guldeford - such part of park atBenenden1553 ESRO DAP box 32 Edward VI to Sir John Guldeford licence to keep retainers for hisparks, warrens etc. with up to 30 persons1560 ESRO DAP box 32 Will Sir John Guldeford - lands in my park in Benenden andCranbrook1657 ESRO DAP box 32, no.3, Guldeforde papers - Hemsted, but no parkSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. V (1862/63:83)Arch.Cant XIV (1882:4)Arch.Cant. LIX (1947:39)Bowen (1939:Chapter IV) Rolvenden Parish and HundredCole (1999:186-187) Portable QueenLebon (Spring1980:58-69) Guldeford Family History, Kent Recusant History no.3Nichols (reprint1977:334) Progresses of Queen ElizabethRoberts (1995:60-61) Tenterden - The First Thousand YearsMaps:1575 Saxton1605 Norden1599 Estate map, Suffolk Record Office HA43/T501/242, divided into fields, but park withlodge and standing1777 CKS P20/27 Survey of Parish of Benenden1779 CKS U78 P27 Hempsted estateFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ802338 Benenden School7 March 2005, 13 March 2005 - Fieldwork complete, all borders found to put on modernOS map. (Site now Benenden School)Acknowledgement:Ernie Pollard(45) HENDEN / HETHERDEN Parish: Sundridge, Brasted, ChiddingstoneEarliest reference: 1541 park of Henden (CKS U1450 T5/62)Ownership:1537 Henry VIII to Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire and Ormond > 1541 ThomasBoleyn's' daughter Mary and William Stafford forced by Henry VIII to exchange for landin Yorkshire (CKS U1450 T5/62) 1542 Rental list of lands, except Henden Park reserved toEarl of Wiltshire (ie Anne Bolyen's family) > c1544 Henry VIII sold to Sir ThomasGresham of tit*ey > 1590 sold to Charles Hoskins in default on loan and remains withHoskins familySize: 1544 = 300a grant (Cole)Documentary evidence:1541 CKS U1450 T5/62 (Stanhope) Thomas Boleyn's daughter Mary and William Stafford401forced by Henry VIII to exchange for land in Yorkshire, annual rent to Sir Henry IsleySecondary evidence:Cole, unpublished research from Hoskins papers in Surrey Record OfficeFurley (1874:743) Weald of Kent IIHasted 3 (1797:138,164)Lambarde (1576, 1596 –disparked) but likely to have been disparked pre-1550 (L. Cole)Somers-co*cks & Boyson (1912:44) EdenbridgeMaps:c.1768 Copy of Henden manor with field names (Cole)1937 Sale of Henden estate (original held by Cramp)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ483504 Henden manor16 October 2005 - S, E boundaries fairly certain, but remained unconvinced about W and N- moated site on modern OS mapAcknowledgements:Lionel Cole, Dr Gerald Cramp, Bob Felton, Martin Lovegrove, Christopher and PatWaterman,(46) HEVER Parish: HeverEarliest reference: 1538 Indenture mentions Hever park pale (CKS U1450 T5/65)Ownership:1500s Bullen (Boleyn) family > c.1540 by Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves for life >1558 Mary and Philip to Sir Edward Waldegrave and continued in familySize: 1560 = 83a of ground parcel of the park (U1450 T6/10)Documentary evidence:1484 CKS U1475 T4/20 (dLD) Richard Chamberlain inherits manor after death of brotherWilliam, grants to Dun and Culpepper1538 CKS U1450 T5/65 (Stanhope) Indenture mentions Hever park pale1561 CPR II p.370-.371, 28 November, Manor and park of Hever re dispute over will,widow Frances of Sir Edward Waldegrave took over some parts, Englefeld, Throngmerton,Browne and Cornwallis to oversee will1560 CKS U1450 T6/10 (Stanhope) Sublease from John Lennard via Waldegrave toWoodgate, lodge and 83a park, full conditions re conies, ponds, repair fences, deer houseand lodge repair, cattle in rest of park1573 CPR no.2369, p.405, 1 October, licence to Charles Waldegrave to alienate Hevermanor to Cornwallis and others1591 CKS U908 T6 Land purchased by Henry Streatfeild from Lady Katherine Burgh,widow, stretched to Hever park boundarySecondary evidence:Astor (1977) Hever Castle and GardensBarrett-Lennard (1908:13) An Account of the Families of Lennard and Barrett402Cole pers.comm. unpublished researchEnglish Heritage, TQ4745 G417 Historic Parks and Gardens register, with mapFurley (1874:743) Weald of Kent IIHasted 3 (1797:194) Hasted has disparked by 1558Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Maps:1756 map of Hever (privately owned via Cole)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ480455 Hever CastleAcknowledgements:Lionel Cole(47) HUNGERSHALL Parish: SpeldhurstEarliest reference: 1531 lease (Kent Records XVIII, 1964)Ownership:Unknown but Nevill family late C16th, see Birling (6)Size:Documentary evidence:1573 Assize Calendar 35/15/1 no.647 February, accidental death by shooting1573 Assize Calendar 35/15/6 no.676, Killing deer1573 CKS U1475 L17 (dLD) Examinations of illegal deer hunting at Penshurst Park,confession of deer killing in 1572 at Hungershall park, deposition of Boucher(1584 STAC5/A1/8 illegal hunting, STAC5/A56/32 illegal hunting in Waterdown andEridge – links with Nevill, not directly Hungershall)1633 ESRO ABE/52.1 Recites 8 leases back to 1618, which show new tenancies in theformer park from 1618, now disparkedSecondary evidence:du Boulay (1964:294-295) Kent Records XVIIILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Maps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named1605 Norden1611 Speed1850 Manor of Rusthall (via Geoffrey Copus) shows Nevill land in relation to neighbours.Hungershall farm on it. N and E boundaries are adjacent to common land which prettywell would seem to define those.Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ572386 Hungershall Park4033 August 2006 - Fairly satisfied about all the boundaries.Acknowledgements:Geoffrey Copus(48) IGHTHAM / WEST PARK of WROTHAMParish: small portion Ightham, WrothamEarliest reference: 1283 Archbishop of Canterbury custumal (Semple)Ownership:1333 Archbishop of Canterbury > 1530s Crown, by forced exchange, lessees Willoughbyof Bore Place > unknown when Crown withdrew but seems to have been acquired by theWilloughby > c.1600-1627 William James purchased manor of IghthamSize: 1283 = 132a (Semple): 1620 = 138a (Semple)Documentary evidence:1333 CPR 444, 22 March, Deer hunted and carried away1519 PCC Will Manor of Ightham under lease to Sir Robert Rede1583 TNA Assize Calendar no.1368 Lamb stolen in park1660 CKS U830 T6/1&2, 99 year lease of E park, Wrotham, James to Bate, 180a,exception Ightham park in tenure of James and John MartynSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XLVIII (1936:169,179)Arch.Cant. XLIX (1937:1)Arch.Cant. LXXXIII (1968:111)Arch.Cant. CXXVIII (2008:179-209) 'The Medieval Deer Parks of Wrotham' by SempleCharlton (1951:24) The Family of Charlton of Wrothamdu Boulay (1966:215,232-233) Lordship of Canterburydu Boulay (1964:284,290) Kent Records XVIII - lease of 1524, permission to disparkGirouai (26 June 1958), Country Life, article 'Ightham Court'Ightham Parish Council, loose notes in papers kept in Ightham Village Hall. Extractstranscribed from Ightham Manorial Records by Edward Harrison and others (p.141)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Nichols (ed.) (1859:267) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationSemple talk notes of 14 March 2006Maps:1620 CKS U681 P31 Estate map shows park as fieldsFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ595576 Ightham Court6,14 August 2005, 19 April 2007 – All boundaries looked can be traced and put on modernOS. Good banked ditch along part of N boundary, bank along S and ditch along most of E.Acknowledgements:Dr Paul Cornelius, David Fuller, Jayne Semple, Dr Jean Stirk404(49) KEMSING Parish: KemsinNot in Lambarde or on the early maps, probably disparked in 1520s when leases to severalpeople grantedEarliest reference: 1236 (Cal.Close 1234-7, 257) LCOwnership:1236 Eleanor Countess of Pembroke (Close Rolls) > to Crown under Henry III >1525 Crown granted to Sir Thomas Boleyn > 1559 Crown to Baron Hunsdon, Henry Carey(CPR) > 1618 Hunsdon sold to Richard Earl of Dorset (CKS U269/T1)Size: 1530 = 160a (BL Harl 83H.35)Documentary evidence:1366 CPR Earl marshal to get earlof Pembroke's park at Kemsing1525 BL Harl 86G54 From Boleyn to Tebold to several men park of Sele and Kemsing1526 BL Harl 86H16 Grant from Boleyn trustees for the several to gain possession1530 BL Harl 83H35Sir Thomas Boleyn granted 160a land called Park of Seal andKemsing to John Tebold1551 BL Harl 86H53 Polley to Tebold 200 marks for land called Tomlyn’s park in Seal1559 CPR I p.115, 20 March, Male tail grant to Baron Hunsdon, Henry Carey, of manorand lands of Seal and Kemsing granted to Anne of Cleves for life1578 CPR no.3636, p.533, 21- year lease Manwood and 3 others for lands in Kemsing andSeal now imparked in parks of Otford and Knole for the enlargement thereof, by surrenderof Tebod's lease of 1512 & 15371618 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Sold to Richard Earl of Dorset from Carey & Botelermanors of Sevenoaks, Seal, Kemsing and old park and other land in Seal and Kemsinggranted to Anne of Cleves, for £2900 to Lord Hunsdon1619 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset requests Crown grant various lands to SirHenry Carey which Boteler then pays for and assigns elsewhere - Cage, Postern, Northfrith(Tonbridge), manor of Sevenoaks, old park and Lovatt land in Kemsing and Seal1625 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Edward earl of Dorset, Rivers and others buy back fromSmith including Knole house and park, Panthurst park, land called Old Park in Seal andKemsing1629 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Edward Earl of Dorset and others repay Smith of 1625 toregain all landsc.1650 CKS U269 E48 (Sackville) Outlines mortgage to Henry Smith for £10000 byRichard c.1610, and present Earl negotiating new rent, house and park rent £130, but value£1001663 CKS U269 E28 (Sackville) Gamekeepers appointment for birds, conditions, Knole,Kemsing, SealSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. CXVI (1996:329-332) Bowden, 'The Medieval Park at Kemsing'Bowden (1994:17-25) Story of KemsingFox, Williams & Mountfield (2007:14-14) Seal – history of a parishHarris (1719:166) History of KentHasted 3 (1797:54)Maps:405Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ550585 middle of parkBowden (Arch.Cant. 1996) has traced boundaries.Acknowledgements:(50) KNOLE Parish: SevenoaksEarliest reference: 1468 bill for 1000 palings at 6s 8d. (Sackville-West, 1922 p.21)Ownership:1456 land bought by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, from William Fenys,Lord Say of the Seal (CKS U1450 T4/17) > 1480 gift of Knole to see of Canterbury(Ch.Ch.Cant.Regs, f213a) > 1537 Cranmer to Henry VIII (CKS U1450 T1/3) > 1549Edward VI to Lord Seymour (CKS U1590 T1/4) > 1550 grant by Edward VI to Earl ofWarwick (CKS U1590 T1/8) > 1556 Mary I to Cardinal Pole (CPR C66/899 mm24-25) >1559 Elizabeth I to Henry Lord Hunsdon (CKS U269/E30) > 1561 Elizabeth I to RobertDudley (Phillips) > 1566 Elizabeth I grant to Sir Thomas Sackville, reversion of manor ofKnole, subject to lease granted by earl of Leicester to whom Knole had been granted in1561, so it was not until 1603 that he came into possession (Phillips II p.398) > grandsonRichard Sackville, earl of Dorset, d.1624, and remains in familySize: 1544 = 74a (CPR): 1561 = 446a (Ward): 1611 = 550a (CKS U269 E66/1&2): 1614 =550a (CKS U269/T1)Documentary evidence:1456 CKS U1450 T4/17 Land bought by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury,from William Fenys, Lord Say of the Seal, which had been bought by his father William,Lord Say, from Rauf Legh1471 LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 285 receiver's accounts1480 LPL Ch.Ch.Cant.Regs, f213a Gift of Knole to see of Canterbury included profit thatwould come from the enclosed parklands – Knole and Panthurst most likely meant (Philips)1508 CKS U1450 E20/95 (Stanhope) Undated referring to rental of 1508 includes rent dueout of Knole for land taken park1523 LPL MS 952(5) Parker of Knole's receipt £4+ for one year's fees1537 CKS U1450 T1/3 (Stanhope) Cranmer to Henry VIII, wages of keepers of parks ofOtford, Knole, Wrotham wherein deer now be1541 Cal. Letters & Papers XVIII pt 1 p.691 King ordered repairs at Knole with park, withOtford bridge, standing pool, haymaking mentioned1544 CPR 4 February, Tithe dispute with vicar of Sevenoaks settled, Knole = 74a1547 CKS U1450 T6/27 (Stanhope) Edward VI manor of Knole and other lands in Kent toLord Seymour, warrant for his execution 1548/91549 CKS U1475 E60 (dLD) Grant of keeping Knole house and herbage and pannage toSir Robert Southwell1549 CKS U1590 T1/6 (Stanhope) Letters Patent, Keeping of Knole house and of herbageand pannage to Robert Southwell1549 CKS U1590 T1/4 (Stanhope) Patent grant by Edward VI to Lord Seymour of manorof Knole and other lands1550 CKS U1590 T1/8 (Stanhope) Grant by Edward VI to Earl of Warwick castle, manors406of Knole, Sevenoaks, Hadlow, Britons, Panthurst, Northfield, South Frith1552 CKS U1450 T5/67 (Stanhope) Lease Duke of Northumberland to Sir George Harperand Thomas Culpepper of Knole manor (not house and park), Northfrith, Cage, Postern,Panthurst for 40 years1553 CKS U1450 T7/87A & B (Stanhope) Patent of office of keeping Knole Park, EdwardVI to Sir Henry Sidney1553/4 CPR m.14 p.8 John Duke of Northumberland exchanged Otford for Knole1554 CPR, 19 June, Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parksPanthurst, Knole, Southfrith, Northfrith, Postern, and Cage and is then granted them for life1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park or Halden1556 CKS U1450 T5/69 (Stanhope) After Northumberland's attainder Edward VI grantedto Harper and Culpepper the lands of the 1552 lease for 40 years.1556 CPR 66/899 mm24-25 To Cardinal Pole, lands called le Park at Maidstone in tenureof Henry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the said park. Also with numerousothers lands, park of Saltwood; house and site of late monastery of St Augustine near wallsof Canterbury, the park called Canterbury Park adjacent to the house; the parks ofAldington and Otford; the park of Knoll late parcel of lands of John, Duke ofNorthumberland, attainted.1556 CKS U1450 T6/28 (Stanhope) List of land grants including mention of Pole gettingKnole1559 CKS U269 E30 (Sackville) Royal grant of Knole manor to Henry Lord Hunsdon byElizabeth I1560 CKS U1450 F41 (Stanhope) Suspicious hunters backside of Knole Park1561 CKS U1450 T6/29 (Stanhope) Letter patent Knole fee simple grant to Robert Dudleyincludes parks at Knole and Panthurst park etc.1566 CKS U1450 T6/30 (Stanhope) Sublet by Dudley to Rolfe and Lovelace + PanthurstPark, with conditions, enclosed ground with deer and conies and Panthurst enclosed park(no mention of deer, conies here)1566 CPR C66/1025 no.2567, 29 June, Grant to Robert Dudley who will return Knole –exchange of lands. Dudley sells back to Crown for various reversions and otherconsiderations1568 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Lovelace conveys interest via Rolfe in manor and park ofKnole, Panthurst to Morbell1570 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Rolfe deceased has willed his share of lease to Lovelaceand John Dudley, assigns Knole, Panthurst to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, deer andconies mentioned for Knole, not Panthurst1570 U1450 T6/12 (Stanhope) Knole mansion and park, enclosed park of Panthurst to JohnLennard1571 U269 T1 (Sackville) Lovelace via Rolfe to Trevor to take possession of Knole andPanthurst to convey to Sir Thomas Sackville under document of 18 July 15701587 TNA SP12/197/19 & SP12/197/197/32, Killing deer at Otford, one of hunters slain,also hunted in Knole – Williams examined; later entry Williams and Couchman examinedfor Otford1589 TNA Assize 35/32/4 no.1806 When tracking poachers, keepers mistake each others'identity, one keeper killed by another keeper1592 CKS U269 C1/1 Magdalen College obtaining venison on Sackville's request1599 CKS QM/SI 1599/24/2 Assault on park keepers1603 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Lennard sells lease of Knole and Panthurst to Sackville,407except for running subleases (this document clarifies the previous ones)1603/4 CKS U269 A2/1 (Sackville) Account of steward of house mention of Knole park,Panthurst Park1605 CKS QM/SRc 1605/193 hunting rabbits ' in grounds of Duke of Dorset' (might not bepark)1605 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset to Heydon and others grants use of wholeestate, + Panthurst1605 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Sale enrolled by Rowland White and John Williams ofKnole house and park to Thomas Earl of Dorset1610 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Rivers & Smith v. Amherst & Lyndsey recovery of manorsof Knole and Panthurst, Richard Earl of Dorset vouchee1610/11 CKS U269 E66/1&2 (Sackville) Survey of Earl of Dorset's lands, Knole house and550a park; and Park meadow in manor of Bayhall; Groombridge House and land calledpark 225a; Panthurst Park; Redmillridge (near Groombridge) parcel of land called NewPark 5a1612 CKS U269 A2/2 (Sackville) Account of steward of house includes park references1614 CKS U269 E66/3 (Sackville) Lands in various counties held towards payment ofdebts1614 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Particular of manor of Knole, describes house, park withconies (no deer mentioned), 550a, and Panthurst park 390a1615 CKS QM/SI 165/2/5 Hunting without licence1615 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Richard Earl of Dorset to Howard, Rivers and othersmanors including Knole and Panthurst to recover debts, + counterpart1618 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) To Richard Earl of Dorset from Carey & Boteler manors ofSevenoaks, Seal, Kemsing and old park and other land in Seal and Kemsing1619 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset requests Crown grant various lands to SirHenry Carey which Boteler then pays for and assigns elsewhere - Cage, Postern, Northfrith(Tonbridge), manor of Sevenoaks, old park and Lovatt land in Kemsing and Seal1623 CKS U269 E23/1 Carp brought from Hever into Knole stew ponds1623 CKS U269 A3 Accounts for gardens and building new kennel at Knole1624 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset agrees to sell manor of Knole, Knole parkand Panthurst to Sir George Rivers and others; same date King to judge use of recoveryDorset v. Rivers and others1625 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Smith and Edward Earl of Dorset, Rivers and others sellKnole house and park, Panthurst park, land called Old Park in Seal and Kemsing1625/9 CKS U269/1 E66 (Sackville) Letter re gift to Sackville in Essex of a doe, referenceto Lord Willoughby, not obvious Kent1629 CKS U269 A41/1/17 (Sackville) Charge for setting up hop garden in park1629 CKS U269 A41/1/2 (Sackville) Agistments of Knole Park, over 50 beasts mentioned1629 CKS A41/1/11 (Sackville) Monies raised in Knole Park for agistment and conies,hops, grass1629 CKS A41/1/16 (Sackville) Repair to park pales at Knole1629 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Edward Earl of Dorset and others repay Smith of 1625 toregain all lands1629/30 CKS U269 A41/1/1 (Sackville) Blome's account for year, includes massive workon pales for park, pale round hopgarden, warrener's bill, timber cutting and carriage in park1630 CKS U269 A41/1/7, A41/1/13 (Sackville) Warrener's account, bill1630 CKS U269 A41/1/5 (Sackville) Valuation of conies1630 CKS U269 A41/14 (Sackville) Receipt for tithes for Knole Park1630 CKS U269 A41/15 (Sackville) Lady Day half year charges of Knole Park4081630 CKS U269 A41/1/8 (Sackville) Summer agistments for Park, 83 beasts mentioned1630 CKS U269 A41/1 (Sackville) Winter agistments for Park, my lord and my lady'shorses and others1634 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Royal protection for one year from all actions sureties bybond for Richard late Earl of Dorset1647 CKS U269 A41/2 (Sackville) Blome's Michaelmas quarter account, nothing obviousfor park, price of oats influenced by near presence of soldiers; Midsummer quarter account,woodlooker's pay for Knole Park; Christmas quarter, fell timber in park; Blome'sMidsummer disbursem*nts, woodlooker's pay1648 CKS U269 A41/2 (Sackville) Money spent on provisions - beef, pork, poultry, nodeer bought1648 CKS U269 A41/2 (Sackville) Blome's Christmas quarter account, key to park gate;woodlooker for park's pay, account for hopgarden1649 CKS U269 A41/2 (Sackville) Blome's midsummer quarter account, nothing obviousfor park; Lady day quarter, woodlooker for park payc. 1650 CKS U269 E48 (Sackville) Outlines mortgage to Henry Smith for £10000 byRichard c.1610, and present Earl negotiating new rent, house and park rent £130, but value£100Secondary evidence:Anon, Guide to Knole (1883:21) Chapter II - The parkArch.Cant. V (1862/3:28)Arch.Cant. IX (1874:xl)Arch.Cant. XXXVIII (1926:55)Arch.Cant XL. (1928:160)Arch.Cant. LXIII (1950:135)Arch.Cant. LXXXIX (1974:1)Arch.Cant CXXIII (2003:153-184) 'The development of the park and gardens at Knole' byTaylorBarrett-Lennard (1908:10-15,41-47,56-57,107,112-115,116-135,140-141,232-233) AnAccount of the Families of Lennard and BarrettChalklin (1965:105) Seventeenth Century KentClarke and Stoyel (1975:111-123) Otford in KentCole (1999: 186-187) Portable Queen,du Boulay (1952:19-36) Archbishop Cranmer and the Canterbury Temporalities, EnglishHistorical Review LXVIIEland (1960:40) Thomas Wotton's Letter-BookElder (C.1950:7) Otford Past and PresentEnglish Heritage G419 Historic Parks and gardens registerEveritt (1966:166) The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640-1660Fox (2002 on CD) The History of Sevenoaks up to 1650Fox, Williams & Mountfield (2007:39) Seal – history of a parishHarris (1719:278) History of KentHasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 3 (1797:64-79)Holmes (1984reprint) Proud Northern Lady: lady Anne Clifford, 1590-1676KCC SMR TQ 55 SW 17 - KE430 (deer park) TQ 55 SW 2 - KE 416 (house)Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:30) Historical Manuscripts Commission Report on theManuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley preserved at Penshurst Place, 1Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)409McKilliam (1936:276-280) A Chronicle of the Archbishops of CanterburyNichols (ed.) (1859:234,265) Narratives of the Days of the Reformation (CamdenIX)Owen (ed.) (1980:164) Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquessof Bath, volume V, Talbot, Dudley and Devereux papers 1533-1659Phillips, The History of the Sackville Family Vol. I (35, 216-221, 231-237, 262-272, 274-276) Vol. II (333-334,Appendix II p.390-401, XXXV additions and alterations)Sackville-West (1923:58-61,65,74-75,78) The diary of Lady Anne CliffordSackville-West (c.1968:37) National Trust guide of KnoleSackville-West (1922:7,20-21,39) Knole and the Sackvilles, Chapter II, Garden and ParkSteinman Steinman (1851:61) Some Account of the Manor of Apuldrefield in the Parish ofCudham, KentStone (1965:515) Crisis of the Aristocracy,Ward (1931:17,24-25,153-155,215,246,277-281) Sevenoaks EssaysZell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named1605 Norden1611 Speedc.1600 Gordon Ward map showing park in CKS also useful before fieldworkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ540543 existing park, many changes,15 October 2006, 2 October 2010 - Looked at present boundary on both sides of gatehouseand then tried to use footpaths to cross original boundaries - nothing significant came tolight. Found proposed deer course and look at connection between garden and park.Acknowledgements:Geoffrey Copus, Joyce Hoad, Kristina Taylor, Pat and Christopher Waterman(51) LANGLEY, Beckenham Parish: BeckenhamEarliest reference: midC13th Quit claim (Hevey, but copy in BLS not located): 1623Estate map (BL Maps 188.k.3[4])Ownership:1501 John Style of Ipswich, London mercer, bought Langley Park and remained in familyuntil 1679 > 1499-1552 Sir Humphrey Style > 1558-1616 Edmund Style (son) > Sir OliverStyle d. 1622 (of Wateringbury, Borrowman) and Nicholas d. 1615 (brothers of above) >1565-1624 William Style son of Edmund d.1626Size:Documentary evidence:1768 Inquisition ad Quod Damnum gives boundaries, road diversion issueSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. III (1860:191-193)410Borrowman (1910:205-215) Beckenham Past and PresentCopeland (1967:9) The manors of old BeckenhamHasted 1 (1797:269)Hevey (1994:50-51) Early History of BeckenhamHorsburgh (1929:235) BromleyMacdonald, (c.1985:20-21) The History of Langley Park Golf Club 1910-1985Tookey (c.1975:10) The History of Langley Park, BeckenhamMaps:c1485 W Wickham, Hayes, Keston, part Bromley compiled from manorial records byDavis1623 BL Maps 188.k.3(4) Estate map - area in fields, but several 'park' names - lodge,lawn, 4x park fieldsFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ384670 Langley Golf courseVery built up but still some of it open space including golf course. Glancing on mappossible that road pattern formed round park.Acknowledgements:Patricia Knowlden(52) LANGLEY, Maidstone Parish: Maidstone, LangleyEarliest reference: 1297 onwards (Cal.Pat. 1292-1301, 227)Ownership:Ownership unclear. 1297William de Leybourne > 1336 William de Clinton granted licenceby Edward III to enlarge park with 200a... > 1421 Crown (CPR) ... > 1570 William Isley toMartin Culthorpe (U1590 T14/12)Size: 1297 = 200a + (Hasted): early C18th = 88a (Salmon)Documentary evidence:1297 Cal.Pat. 1292-1301, 227 William de Leybourne's park hunted while he was inGascony – 2 entries1335 CPR, Exchange 200a so park could be enlarged by 200a1368 CPR 20 October, Parker 4d day and robe year1374/76 E101/544/23 1368/69 Account for works includes Langley park1383 CPR 1 October, Grant for life of park after death of previous custodian of park1389 CPR 20 May, Custody of park sublet with confirmation1399 CPR 30 October, Parker appointed1421 CPR 14 November, Parker appointed by king1444 CPR 26 April, Park back in royal hands after death of Henry cardinal of England ndbishop of Winchester1447 CPR 30 April, Grant to Thomas and Isabel Kent of manor and park of Langley in lieuof grant surrendered on 26 April 14441449 CPR 21 May, Confirmation of grant to Thomas and Isabel Kent who had at ownexpense fenced the park with gates and entries, with advowson of Langley church until£200 expenses covered4111451 CPR 1 December, Another grant to the Kents getting appurtenances of park until costof repairs covered1451 Inquisitions Miscellaneous p.139 (Calendar) Kents have house, manor, keeping ofpark worth no more than 26s 8d1452 CPR 20 March, Inquiry into true costs incurred by the Kents in repairing park andlodge1570 U1590 T14/12 (Stanhope) William Isley to Martin Culthorpe manor of Sundridge,manor and park of Sutton Valence, manor and park of Langley, manor of Kingsnorth, tomake void debt of £4000Secondary evidence:Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked: 199)Salmon (1982:18-19) A History of Chart SuttonHasted 5 (1797:346-349)Harris (1719:174) History of KentKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:237) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand DudleyMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ797516 Langley Park FarmAcknowledgements:Anne Clinch(53) LEE Parish: LeeEarliest reference: 1605 Exchequer bills 7 CI Trin.94Ownership:Crown and Stoddard see belowSize: 1648 = 336a (Hart p.29)Documentary evidence:1565 CPR 11 March, Lease of 21 years to George Stoddard of lands acquired by crown byexchange with late marquess of Dorset1580 CPR Lease for life to George Stoddard for same lands held under 21-year lease from15651605 Exchequer bills 7 CI Trin.94, James I asking Nicholas Stoddard, son of George, toadd 100a of Crown land - paying tenants to end leases1605 TNA E164/44/ff3-58 Mottingham - Stoddard land in Eltham survey (photo)1605 TNA SP14/9/11 Warrant to pay Nicholas Stoddard £80 for his land taken into King'spark1609 TNA SP14/47/5a £600 each to Dacombe and Lee for redemption of estate intoEltham park1609-1617 E178/3941 Sir Nicholas Stoddard outlines what he has done re new park1622 SP14/128/112 Stoddard wants fee farm on land next to park he has on lease to enlargethe park where King delights in hunting, injured by prohibition to fell trees4121622 SP14/130/83, 15 May Pleads in debt and can't pay free gift for Palatinate1631/2 TNA E178/5365 No obvious park but refers to trees felled in king's groundc.1620/211631/2 Charles I TNA Ind1/16824/94 Exchequer bill book, Registering case Stoddard v.Lewine, Saunderson land in LeeCharles I TNA Ind1/16824/136 Exchequer bill book, Registering case Lewine, Saundersonv. Stoddard land in Lee1649 TNA LR2/196 Lee survey, park names but as fieldsSecondary evidence:Drake (1886:192-194,232-233) Hasted's History of Kent - Hundred of BlackheathGregory (1909:280-283) Story of Royal ElthamGregory & Nunn (1923:181-183) The Story of LeeHart (1882:29-37) History of LeeHasted 1 (1797:269)Nichols (1977reprint:220) Progresses of James IMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) ?TQ419730 adjacent to Eltham parks - ?near Eltham CollegeAcknowledgements:(54) LEEDS Parish: LeedsEarliest reference: 1278 (Letter Close 22 June TNA C.54/98)Ownership:Crown > 6 Edward VI fee simple to Sir Anthony St Leger (TNA SP10/14/47) > 1590s St.Leger alienated to Sir Richard Smythe, 4th son of Customer Smythe, resided there until1628Size: 1608/9 = 500a (TNA LR2/218)Documentary evidence:1421 CPR 7 June, Gate and park keeper appointed 4½d daily1437 CPR 8 January, Appointment of constable of castle and parker1439 CPR 19 May, Appointment of John Steward as constable and parker1439 CPR 5 November, Convent of Leeds have agistment of park for 20 years for rent butJohn Steward had denied this and was taken to court, the convent had rights restored1443 CPR 2 January, 2 others appointed constable and parker after death of John Steward1449 CPR 3 December, Inquiry into defects in buildlings, woods and other places inlordship, castle and park of Leeds1451 CPR 30 May, Life grant to Edward Neville, lord Bergavenny, of survey, rule andgovernance of castle and park of Leeds with free entry1451 Inq. Misc. Leeds castle with park – in king's gift, office of parker wages and fees 3ddaily, dwelling in lodge within the park with profits and advantages usual for the office.1479 TNA E40/4967, E42/431 Land to king to enlarge Leeds park1552 TNA SP10/14/47, p.42, Grant in fee farm to Sir Anthony Sentleger of castle, manor,413park of Leeds1608/9 TNA LR2/218 Survey of Leeds1603 CKS U1475 E61 (dLD) Lease of Leeds Castle to Lord BuckhurstSecondary evidence:Cleggett (1992:23-79) History of Leeds Castle and itsFamiliesGeoffrey-Lloyd & Wilson (1980:5-33) Leeds Castle – a brief historyHasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 5 (1797:485-487) – mentions Sentleger sale to SmytheKCC SMR TQ 85 SW 82 - KE9323Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:237) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley ILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Liddiard (2005:97-98,127) Castles in ContextRyan (Winter 1993:41-51) 'The St. Legers of Ulcombe, Leeds Castle and Deal' in KentRecusant History 2, no.2Taylor (19 June 1996) Leeds Castle Park Archaeological Field VisitMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson1605 Norden1611 Speed1649 CKS U825 P6 estate map shows park into large fieldsFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ837534 Leeds Castle8 January 2005 - Can trace boundaries on modern OS map, former S boundary and part ofthe E retain banks.Acknowledgements:Patricia and Peter Stroud, Andrew Wells(55) LULLINGSTONE Parish: LullingstoneEarliest reference: 1545 Manorial court roll (CKS U967 M2)Ownership:1380-1524 Peche > 1524 Sir Percival Hart, nephew, d.1580 > Sir George Hart d.1586 < SirPerceval Hart d.1542, and remains in family to presentSize: 1930s = 690a (Pittman)Documentary evidence:1545 CKS U967 M2 Survey and rental of Manors of Orpington, Mayfield, Farnborough,Eynsford Castle and Lullingstone - 1st documentary reference to property by park pale1583 TNA Assize Cal 35/26/4/1296 Park keeper murdered a man at Stone1606 CKS QM/SB 1606/696&698 Illegal rabbit hunting, by same as below but in nearbywarren4141606 CKS QM/SRc 1606/ 230.231.232 Recognizances for above case1606 CKS QM/SI 1606/13/20 Same men as above stealing fromwarren at Old Park,Lullingstone1639 TNA SP16/429/66 Peter Pett's carriage of 280 loads of timber for rebuilding 'ThePrince' from Lullingstone park purchased from Sir Percival Hart was charged to the countySecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVI (1886:238)English Heritage GD3566 Historic Parks and Gardens registerHasted 1 (1797:269)Henderson (2005:229) The Tudor House and GardenKCC SMR TQ 56 SW 111 - KE19931Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Pittman (1983) Lullingstone Park - the evolution of a medieval deer parkSackville-West (1923: 74) Diary of Lady Anne CliffordMaps:1596 Symonson1798 Ist OS 1" to mileFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ520645 existing parkPark largely intact though refenced in C18th and now public open space.Acknowledgements:(56) LYMINGE Parish: LymingeNot in Lambarde or on the early mapsEarliest reference: 1274/5 Hundred rolls (KAS website)Ownership:1540 Archbishop of Canterbury to Henry VIII > 1546 King to Sir Anthony Aucher, masterof the king's jewels d.1558 > Edward Aucher, and remained in family into Charles I's reignSize:1649 = 400a (TNA LR2/196)Documentary evidence:1274/5 Hundred rolls, Archbishop has chase and warren in Lyminge. Master Richard deClifford had 23 deer caught in vacancy of see (KAS website)1281 CPR 6 July, Hunting and taking away deer1397 LPL Archbishop's estates B Account roll no. 614, Parkerc.154- Court of Augmentation Survey, portfolio I, p.13, Lyminge park was 3 miles roundwith 60 fallow deer1546 CPR 24 September, Henry VIII to Sir Anthony Aucher - all the park and all thosedeer, male and female in the park. Manor and park clear value £43 11s 7 ¼ for sum of £47s 2d a year, to have and to hold for use and benefit of Anthony Aucher and his heirs incapite by the service of the 20th part of a knight's fee, but to render yearly to us and ourheirs the sum of £4 7s 2d to Court of Augmentations yearly on feast of St Michael the415Archangel. Excepting the office of the keeper of the park and the fee of 3d a day, togetherwith the herbage and pannage of the said park granted to Thomas Hardres kt for the term ofhis life, for the office of ths custody of the park and also all such exemptions as the farmersof the said premises for the time being enjoy by virtue of their indentures and releases.(transcribed by Jenkins below)1559 TNA C54/569 Dame Affra Aucher, widow of Sir Anthony, grants Edward Aucher,son of Bourne Place, Bishopsbourne manor, park and advowson of Lyminge.1569 CPR 21- year lease To Harrison woods and lands ex-Wyatt in Boxley, lands andwood by Lyminge park 1602 CKS Q/SR3 no.288 Hunting deer with 2 bloodhounds1606 CKS QM/SB/710 Assault at park1649 TNA LR2/196 Survey, Elham bounds describes bounds of Lyminge parkSecondary evidence:Arch.Can. IV (1861:45)Furley (1874:524) Weald of Kent II part2Harrington and Hendrick pers.comm, notes on Lyminge and the parkJenkins (ed.) (c.1880s/1890s:11-15) The Chartulary of the Monastery of LymingeKnafla (1994:51,111,253) Kent at Law 1602Zell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR145445 Park WoodAcknowledgements:Duncan Harrington, Margot Hendrick(57) LYMPNE Parish: LympneNot in Lambarde or on the early maps so probably disparked before 1558Earliest reference: 1281 (Cal.Pat. 1272-81, 473) LCOwnership:Archdeacon of CanterburySize: 1640 = 51a Lymme park wood (EKAC S/Rm P1/1)Documentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Anon. (no date) Lympne Castle, Kent - mentions estate map, 1628 (I have yet to find)Harris (1719:183) History of KentMaps:1640 EKAC S/Rm P1/1 Lymme park woodFieldwork: TR123345 Lympne Park Wood19 November 2005 - Think I have found boundaries of larger park on the ground, butrequires other supportive evidence416Acknowledgements:(58) LYNSTED Parish: LynstedEarliest reference: 1569 (CKS U1450 E20)Ownership:1354 Apulderfields > 1477 Sir John Fyneux m Elizabeth Apulderfield, heiress > 1525 JaneFyneux his daughter, widow of John Roper, was left it by her father > mother left it toyounger son Christopher Roper d.1559 > son Sir John Roper created Lord TeynhamSize:Documentary evidence:1523/24 15Henry VIII Will of John Roper (transcribed Arch.Cant. II) mentions lodge atLynsted and Well Hawe, Eltham, but no parks1579 TNA Assize Cal 35/21/8 – 991 Rabbit theft from a warren called The LodgeSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. II (1859:153-174)Arch.Cant XLIV (1932:147-157)Elliston Erwood (1936:7) The Story of Well HallGregory (1909:228-229) Story of Royal ElthamHarris (1719:186) History of KentHasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 6 (1797:300-301)Hovenden (1898:81-83) Visitation of Kent by John PhilipotMcIntosh & Gough (eds.) (1984:40-50) Hoath and HerneMee (1936:297-300) KentSelby (1936:67) Teynham Manor and Hundred,.Sparks (1980:59) Parish of St Martin and St Paul, CanterburyStone (1965:444-445,496-497,592-593) Crisis of the AristocracyMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous, Lodge named in centreFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ947597 Lynsted Park16 May 2005 – Think that road pattern follows park borders, but requires supportiveevidence.Acknowledgements:Christopher Waterman(59) MAIDSTONE Parish: MaidstoneEarliest reference: 1396 (LPL, Archbishops estates B Account roll)Ownership:1537 Archbishop Cranmer to Henry VIII > 1556 Mary I to Cardinal Pole (U1450 T6/28)417To Cardinal Pole > 1558 Crown > Elizabeth I to Mary Finch (CPR) > Elizabeth I toJohn Astley (CPR) > 1638 Crown sold to Sir Jacob Astley (U2035/ T32)Size: 1555 = 27a (U195 C146): 1566/9 = 27a (TNA C66/1055)Documentary evidence:1396, 1397, 1414, 1419, 1442 (LPL) Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 666-7, 672-3,676, 679 Parker1550 CPR part VI m.33,34 Edward VI to Sir Thomas Wyatt, park of Maydeston calledMaydston Parke1555 TNA E318/39/2112 Particulars of grant1555 CKS U195 C146 Particular of Allington Castle estate includes land and pasture ofpark 27a once Archbishop's, lately Wyatt, held by indenture by Henry Smith 1542 for 21years1556 TNA SC11/855 Mary I to Cardinal Pole value of lands in hands of Henry Smythecalled the Park, Maidstone1556 CPR C66/899 mm24-25 (U1450 T6/28 Stanhope) To Cardinal Pole, lands called lePark at Maidstone in tenure of Henry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the saidpark. This is last time deer are mentioned1558 TNA SP11/13/67Value of lands of Archbishop - general1563 CPR 10 July, Lease for 21 years to Alexader Parker of old Maidstone palace andlands in Maidstone, woods in Boxley, will repair palace.1569 CPR C66/1055 Elizabeth I to Mary Fynche of Allington Castle, Allington park andlands in Boxley and Maidstone1570 CPR C66/1070, 26 August, 21-year lease to Wm Baynham of old palace at Maidstonewith lands and woods in Boxley, conditions given1572 CPR 66/1081, 30 July, Lease for 31years to Oswald Wilstrop mansion the Old Palace,Maidstone, with lands1574 CPR no.1463(i) p.270, Lease for 31years to Oswald Wilstrop mansion the Old Palace,Maidstone, with lands, details of rent, similar to above1574 CPR Fee simple reversion to Robert Dudley old palace and lands, patent to Wilstrop,and in 1570 to Baynham lease for 21 years1584 CPR (CKS U1644 T32 (Romney) (1629 recital) Grant to Astley1629 CKS U1644 T1 Sir John Astley granted lands The Park, Maidstone; Park of Allington- Parkfield, chase of the Park1649 TNA LR2/196 Maidstone survey, park not mentioned1720 CKS U1644 T1 Astley to Shovel Maidstone palace and tenement called Park Housewith lands including park meadows.Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. LXXII (1958:1-17)du Boulay (ed.) (1964:279,292) Kent Records XVIIIdu Boulay (1952:23,25) 'Archbishop Cranmer and the Canterbury Temporalies' in EnglishHistorical Review 67 no.262Goacher pers.comm. notes and transcriptionsHasted 4 (1797:302-303)Poste (1847:119) History of the College of All Saints Maidstone,Sayers (ed.) (1965:17-18) Estate Documents at Lambeth Palace Library, includes keeperand park accounts to 1447418Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ759554 Archbishop's Palace, built upDebbie Goacher thinks park with the palace of Maidstone lay on the opposite side of theMedway.Acknowledgements:Debbie Goacher(60) MEREWORTH Parish: WateringburyEarliest reference: 1356 (Cal. Pat. 1354-8, 379) LCOwnership:1356 Royal > 1583 Henry Nevill, Lord Abergavenny, d. 29 Elizabeth I > Mary Fane,Nevill's only daughter m. Sir Thomas Fane > Sir Thomas Fane son made Earl ofWestmoreland 22 James ISize:Documentary evidence:1356 CPR 24 May, To have king's engines carried from Mereworth park to La Newehethby land and water ... for the king's works in palace of Westminster1583 TNA Assize Calendar, March 1583 no. 1211, Park broken into and assaultSecondary evidence:Lambarde (1576 – disparked, spelt 'Merewood': 1596 – disparked)Maps:1590 CKS U48 P1 Part of Wateringbury, some abutting Mereworth ParkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ668554 Mereworth CastleAcknowledgements:(61) MERSHAM-HATCH Parish: Merhsam, SmeethEarliest reference: 1608 (CKS QM/SI 1608/11/8)Ownership:1486 Knatchbull family bought Mersham Hatch which remained the family home > 1564-1589 Richard Knatchbull > 1601-1685 Sir Norton Knatchbull (son) knighted (Bannister),1641 baronetSize:Documentary evidence:1348 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/29 Canterbury Cathedral Priory licence to acquire lands inMersham1547 CKS U1590 T1/7 (Stanhope) Edward VI letters patent manors of Mersham, Charlton419to Sir John Mason1564 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/30 Cathedral licence to Richard Knatchbull to enclose land onhighway or common1589 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/31 Cathedral licence to Richard Knatchbull to enclose forestall,piece of Hatch common if tenants agreec.1600 CKS U951 C261/5 (Knatchbull) Manwood of Tyler Hill, Canterbury, to Knatchbullasking advice on setting up warren1608 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/33 More common to be enclosed, but with exchange of land1608 CKS QM/SI 1608/11/8 2 Men stole conies, finedc.1618, probably 1650s, CKS U951 C261/9 Knatchbull offering high rent to take over landto extend park. Catlogued 1618, but names of tenants same as in 1655 and 1661 documents1618 CKS U274 E5 Grant of free warren in Mersham Park, right to enclose with pale =when set up1654-60 CKS U951 A2 (Knatchbull) Very faint general accounts, a few park references1655 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/34 survey of common re park and enclosures1656 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/35 (CKS U274 T8) re licences to enclose 8a common near park1658 CCA DCc ChAnt/M/36 (CKS U274 T8) and measured which Sir Norton Knatchbullhad enclosed within his parkSecondary evidence:Bannister (1999:25-26) Archaeological and Historical Assessment of Mersham HatchEstateHasted I (1797:269)Hasted 7 (1797:592-593)Knatchbull-Hugessen (1960:xv,98,129,133-134,143,164) Kentish FamilyTalbot (2003:6-7) Brabourne in HistoryMaps:1737 CKS TR 431/9, Map 5Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR065408 existing deer park26 February 2006, 18 November 2006 - Went round present deer park, no banks seen E, N,S, stream with sttep bank up along W. Looked to S nearer house also. Think original parkmight have been nearer house, but no certain evidenceAcknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister, Graham Bolden(62) OTFORD – GREAT Parish: OtfordEarliest reference: 1241onwards (Cal.Close. 1237-42, 275) LCOwnership:1241 Archbishop of Canterbury > 1538 to Henry VIII > 1602 Elizabeth I sold to Sir RobertSidneySize: 1541 = 212a (Survey): 1553 = 438a (CKS U1475 E21/1&2): 1597 = 430a (Survey)Documentary evidence:4201273/74 Kilwardby Survey of the Archbihop's manors in S.E. England (KAS wbesite)1404, 1410. 1414, 1424-6,1433, 1439,1443, 1446 LPL Archbishops estates B Account rollnos. 840, 848, 851, 855-6, 862, 867, 873, 876 Parker1423 CPR 14 July, Archbishop of Canterbury's deer taken and his servants assaulted1537 CKS U1450 T1/3 (Stanhope) Cranmer to Henry VIII re King's purchase of his land -wages of keepers of parks of Otford, Knole, Wrotham wherein deer now be1541 Survey (quoted transcription, Elder, puts date at 1547, but 1541 seems correctcompared with document below) ref deer at release and deer coursing with greyhounds,140 deer, 2 lodges in park (Long lodge, ?Old Lodge), keeper in park lodge in tiling andtimber building1541 Calendar Letters & Papers XVII, p.691; XVIII p.124) King increased stock by gettingtwelve score deer to park. 1541 Sir Richard Long appointed keeper of Otford, Knole andPanthurst1544 CPR 4 February, Tithe dispute with vicar of Sevenoaks settled, Great park = 264a1548 TNA E101/497/4 Survey1553 CKS U1475 E21/1&2 (dLD) 438a compass 3 miles1551 CKS U1590 T1/11 (Stanhope) & U1475 E61/1 (dLD) Manor of Otford granted byEdward VI to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick1553/4 CPR 4 March, John Dudley Duke of Nhumberland exchanged Otford for Knole1555 TNA KB9/985 Men broke into park and hunted and took away deer1556 C66/899 mm24-25 25 (U1450 T6/28 Stanhope) To Cardinal Pole, lands called lePark at Maidstone in tenure of Henry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the saidpark. Also with numerous others lands, park of Saltwood; house and site of late monasteryof St Augustine near walls of Canterbury, the park called Canterbury Park adjacent to thehouse; the parks of Aldington and Otford; the park of Knoll late parcel of lands of John,Duke of Northumberland, attainted.1569 CPR C66/1054 no.2118, 16 April, 21-year lease to Multon incoluding lands enclosedin Otford park1573 CKS U1475 L17 (dLD) Examinations of illegal deer hunting at Penshurst Park, menadmitted illegal hunting 8-10 years before in Otford park1573 BL Lansd.82 no.65 Extent of the royal manor of Otford1578 E133/3/556 Whitley wood dispute between John Lennard and Edward Cranewell andother queen's farmers of the wood alleging is parcel of Otford manor or honour and thattimber there always used for repairs and maintenance of queen's house and park of Otford1573 BL Lansd.82 no.55 Extent of royal manor of Otford includes Great and Little parks(this is at back of 1596 Survey)1587 CKS U1450 E20 (Stanhope) Notes copied by John Lennard1587 CKS U1475 E61/2 (dLD) 1604 copy of 1587 grant to Viscount Lisle for stewardshipof Honour of Otford, and elsewhere, and keepership of Otford Park1587 CKS U1475 T86 (dLD) In deed of 1599 below refers to Letter Patent by Elizabethgiving Sir Robert Sidney office of keeping mansion of Otford and park1587 TNA SP12/197/19 & 32 Deer killed, one of hunters slain by keepers1592 CKS U1475 C66/8 (dLD) Bailiff of Otford (Golding) summoned to give account ofOtford to Queen1594 CKS U1475 C81/37 (dLD) Sidney to wife approving of what she had done for Otford(no idea what)1594 TNA SP12/250/42 Repair Otford house estimated £507/18/0d1596 CKS U1475 C81/82 (dLD) Sidney to wife re lease herbage and pannage of the parkof Otford1596 BL Lansdowne 82/55 (Readable duplicate of TNA SP12/250/42 above) Survey of421house and park with conditions Sidney will make if he can take it over saying he hadperused papers including Mr Secretary's letter touching hunting in Otford Park1596 TNA SP12/259/20 Letter 21 June to Burghley with offer to buy Otford1596/7 TNA E178/1164 Exchequer Commission headed Survey of House and Great Park1596/7 TNA E178/1165 Survey of house and park (unreadable)1597 CKS U1475 C12/203 (dLD) Whyte to Sidney re warrant by Queen to survey mansionand park1597/8 TNA E178/1163 Felling licenced in park1599 CKS U1475 T86 (dLD) Sidney appoints deputy to oversee mansion and park,keeping deer, conditions1600 CKS U1475 C75/4 (dLD) Woodward to Sidney re custom of yearly buck to tenants1600 TNA SP12/274/117 Lease on surrender by the Commissioners for 21 years to LadyUrsula Walsingham of Otford park, pastures and proftis belonging, rent £20, fine £20.1601 TNA SP12/281/57 Buckhurst (Lord treasurer) to Cobham signing of bill forCanterbury at first utterly rejected, but on urging queen it was profitable for her she signedit. Otford to Sidney utterly refused1601 CPR 5 November, Sidney buys the capital messuage and Great park of Otford1601 CKS U1475 T86 (dLD) 20 & 29 December, Sir Robert Sidney grants mansion ofOtford and Great Park for others to raise money for daughter's marriage1604 CKS U1475 T90 (dLD) Lease to Cheesman by Sidney with others for 19a close inpark1605 CKS U1475 T86 (dLD) Sir Robert Sidney enters complicated arrangement to raisemoney for daughters's marriages via Otford manor and the Great Park. In 1601 he hadalready granted those involved house and park1605 CKS U1475 T85 (dLD) Links with above giving 20 years lease to 2 involved1615 CKS U1475 T85 (dLD) Links with 1605 adjustments made because of marriage ofone of the daughtersc.Charles I BL Add.Mss. 12066 Detailed account of Sir Robert Sidney's income andexpenditure over several decaides, includes use of sale of Otford to offset borrowed money1647 CKS U1515 T75 (Romney) Loan by 3 to Robert Smythe in exchange for grant ofmanor and Great Park, Otford1647 CKS U1515 T75 (Romney) Lease Smythe to Gore of mansion, manor and enclosedGreat Park1648 CKS U1515 T75 (Romney) House and enclosed Great Park let to Sir John Gore byRobert Smyth in 1647 demised back1649 TNA LR2/196 Otford surveySecondary evidence:Adams (ed) (1995:71-81) Household Accounts and Disbursem*nt Books of Robert Dudley,Earl of LeicesterArch.Cant. V (1862/3:328-330)Arch.Cant. XX (1893:100-101)Arch.Cant. XXXI (1915:2-24) 'The Manor House and Great Park at Otford' by HeskethArch.Cant. XXXIX (1927:156)Arch.Cant. XLI (1929:1-11) 'The Making of the Great Park at Otford' by WardArch.Cant. LXXIII (1959:116-124)Brennan & Kinnamon (eds.) (2003:150,161,164,166-171,174,179,188,190) A SidneyChronology 1554-1654Bruce (ed.) (Camden1868:20) Diary of John Manningham XCIX - 1602 says park beingdisparked)422Clarke & Stoyel (1975:114-123,132-133) Otford in KentCole (1999:80-81,186-187) Portable Queendu Boulay (1952:19-36) 'Archbishop Cranmer and the Canterbury Temporalies' in EnglishHistorical Review 67 no.262du Boulay (ed.) (1964:223) Kent Records XVIIIdu Boulay (1966:225,262) Lordship of CanterburyEdwards (1988:114-115) The Horse Trade of Tudor and Stuart EnglandElder (c.1950s:6-11) Otford Past and PresentHanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (eds.) (2005:45-46,48,50,59-60,87,91,129-131) DomesticPolitics and Family AbsenceHarris (1719:229) History of KentHay (1984:50-57,152-155,189) The Life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester 1563-1626KCC SMR TQ 55 NW 18 - KE315 Archbishop's palace, parkKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:xi,240,300) HMC on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley IKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1934:107& series of letters Whyte to Sidney 1596-1600) HMCReport on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley IILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park: 460)Owen (ed.) (1980:137) Calendar of the Manunscripts of the Most Honourable theMarquess of Bath 5Nichols (ed.) (1860Camden:265-266) Narratives of the Days of the ReformationPhillips (1930:vol.I, 210-211, vol.II,395) History of Sackville FamilyShaw (ed.) (1936:88,417,421-422,431) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley IIIShaw (ed.) (1942:265,310) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and DudleyIVVCH I (reprint1974:473)Ward (1980:80-81,86-87,128-129,157-161,204-205,215-217) Sevenoaks EssaysWatson (ed.) (1999:28-29,38) A History of the Parish of CheveningZell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ528592 Otford Palace, park lies to southeast18 May 2004 – Inconclusive preliminary visit.Acknowledgements:Peter Mayer, Cliff Ward(63) OTFORD – LITTLE Parish: OtfordEarliest reference: 1241onwards (Cal.Close. 1237-42, 275) LCOwnership:4231241 Archbishop of Canterbury > 1575 leased for a series of 21 years to Sidney familySize: 1541 = 240a (Survey): 1645 = 83 acres (CKS U93 T11-20)Documentary evidence:1525 CCA Register T folio 254 Archbishop to Sir George Marsham indenture demesnelands in manor of Otford includes fields called New Park, Little New Park1526 CCA Register T folio 313 Archbishop to John Palmer indenture demesne lands inmanor of Otford includes fields called New Park, Little New Park1548 TNA E101/497/4 Survey, pale rotten, almost fallen down. Length 6 furlongs 8perches. 7 watercourses clogged up1553 CKS U1475 E21/1&2 (dLD) Edward VI, Survey - in 2 parts both with differentaspects of information1553 CPR 2&3 Philip and Mary, Little park ordered to be disparked1556 CKS U1450 T6/28 (Stanhope) Mentions Patent of Edward VI in 1553 to HenrySydney, then disparked1556 C66/899 mm24-25 (U1450 T6/28 Stanhope) To Cardinal Pole, Little park of Otford,then disparked, lands called le Park at Maidstone ... Also with numerous others lands, parkof Saltwood; house and site of late monastery of St Augustine near walls of Canterbury, thepark called Canterbury Park adjacent to the house; the parks of Aldington and Otford; thepark of Knoll late parcel of lands of John, Duke of Northumberland, attainted.1560 CKS U1475 T87 (dDL) Sir Henry Sidney demises all grounds etc. (but not huntingrights) to servant John Walker for 20 years, to send wheat, malt, oats to Penshurst, repairhouses and enclosures, Sidney free to come to hunt1565 CKS U1475 T87 (dDL) All above, but for 17 years1567 BL Add Mss 36804 Sydney fine of £13/6/8 for Little park1568 CPR 21-lease to disparked park to Henry Sidney, considering surrender of 30 yearlease from Edward VI in 15531569 BL Add.Mss. 36805 as 1567 above but for £201569 CPR 21-year lease to Multon for lands including lands enclosed in Otford park inconsdieration of surrender of indenture of Henry VIII in 15311573 BL Lansd.82 no.55 (transcript Arch.Cant. V) Extent of royal manor of Otfordincludes Great and Little parks1578 CPR 21-year lease to Pawlyn, Stone, Llewin demesne lands in Otford including landsenclosed in Otford park leases to Multon in CPR15691580 CPR 21-year lease to Henry Sidney1600 SP12/273/117 Lease 21 years to Lady Ursula Walsingham widow, rent £20, fine £201601 CPR 3 May As above1607 Will of 7 August, Thomas Sackville has taken over the lease1611 CKS U269 E45 (Sackville) Cicelie Dowager duch*ess of Dorset gives John Bloomepower of attorney to receive rents and take action against defaulters1612 CKS QM/SRc 1612/59 & QM/SRc 1612/110 Two cases of illegal fishing1631 CKS U93 T11-20 Sale by Sir Thomas Brodewick, Alco*cke and Shalcrosse toLangton and Spurstowe demesne lands in manor of Otford includes fields called New Park,Little New Park and all disparked Little Park1645 CKS U93 T11-20 Farnaby holds lease, fields in Little Park listed1645 CKS U1000/1 T1 (Farnaby) will of Thomas Farnaby proved 1647, mentions LittlePark now disparkedc. 1650 CKS U269 E48 (Sackville) outlines mortgage to Henry Smith for £10000 byRichard Sackville c.1610, and present Earl negotiating new rent, house and park rent £130,424but value £100Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. V (1862/3:328-330)Arch.Cant. XLI (1929:1) 'The Making of the Great Park at Otford' by WardClarke & Stoyel (1975:116-123) Otford in Kentdu Boulay (ed.) (1964:276-277,285,291) Kent Records XVIIIHarris (1719:229) History of KentHasted 3 (1797:24-29)Hewlett (1974:94-110) 'Reconstructing Historical Landscape: Otford in Kent' inAgricultural History ReviewKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:300) HMC on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle andDudley ILambarde (1576 – a deer park: 1596 – disparked) (compare 1553 CPR 2&3 Philip andMary)Phillips (1930:232,271) History of Sackville Family IVCH I (reprint1974:473)Ward 1980:215) Sevenoaks EssaysMaps:1575 Saxton1575 Anonymous1702 CKS U1867 P1 (original missing and only 1 part of 1 photocopy found in CKS)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ527585 middle of park18 May 2004, 8 May 2007, 17 & 19 June 2007 – Picked up parts of E, W and Nboundaries, M26 hampered search for S.Acknowledgements:Peter Mayer, Cliff Ward(64) OTFORD – NEW Parish: OtfordEarliest reference: 1386-1486 breaking into new park (TNA C1/4/177)Ownership:1386 Archbishop of Canterbury > 1537 to Henry VIII > Leased outSize:1515 = less than 90a, but originally larger (Clarke): 1544 = 202a (Phillips II, p.395)Documentary evidence:1386-1486 TNA C1/4/177 Henry Archbishop of Canterbury v. others breaking the newpark and kill deer, assaulting the parker1525 CCA Register T folio 254 Archbishop to Sir George Marsham indenture demesnelands in manor of Otford includes fields called New Park, Little New Park1526 CCA Register T folio 313 Archbishop to John Palmer indenture demesne lands inmanor of Otford includes fields called New Park, Little New Park1544 CPR 4 February, Tithe dispute with vicar of Sevenoaks settled, New park = 202a4251577-1611 CKS U2007 T155 Indentures via letters patent of Elizabeth I of Otford manordemesne land includes New Park, leases passed from Fludd, Multon, Lambarde etc.1631 CKS U93 T11-20 Sale by Sir Thomas Brodewick, Alco*cke and Shalcrosse toLangton and Spurstowe demesne lands in manor of Otford includes fields called New Park,Little New Park and all disparked Little ParkSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XLI (1929:1) 'The Making of the Great Park at Otford' by Warddu Boulay (ed.) (1964:276-277,285,291) Kent Records XVIIIHewlett (1974:94-110) 'Reconstructing Historical Landscape: Otford in Kent' inAgricultural History ReviewPhillips (1930: vol.I -232,271, vol.II -395) History of Sackville FamilyWard 1980:215) Sevenoaks EssaysMaps:1819 Sale plan of New Park (Copy in Otford Parish Archives, GW NG 03)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ527594 Park Farm18 May 2004, 21 August 2005 – Rough idea about most borders, needs refining.Acknowledgements:Peter Mayer, Cliff Ward(65, 66) OXENHOATH Parish: West PeckhamEarliest reference: 1576 2 disparked parks (Lambarde)Ownership:pre 1370 Culpepper family > 1484 Sir Richard Culpepper d. > daughter Mrs WilliamCotton, their son Thomas sold to John Chown of Fairlawn, Wrotham > 1626 sold toNicholas MillerSize:Documentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant CXI (1993:237)Cole (1999:186-187) Portable QueenHasted 5 (1797:63)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked x2)Maps:1621 CKS U31 P3 copy and copy BL 188.j.2. (15) Manor of Oxenhoth, all fields includingThe Warren, Upper Park, Lower Park with some paling shownFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ627515 Oxen Hoath Park: site of 2nd park unknown426Acknowledgements:(67) PANTHURST / SEVENOAKS Parish: Sevenoaks(See also Knole(50) park profile – both held together C16th into C17th)Earliest reference: 1348 patent of 28 January licence to impark Sevenoaks Park (Way)Ownership:1479 acquired by Archbishop Thomas Bourchier (TNA C143/145/21) > 1537 fromArchbishop Cranmer to Henry VIII (CKS U1450/T1/3 > > 1550 grant by Edward VI toEarl of Warwick (CKS U1590 T1/8) > 1556 Mary I to Cardinal Pole (CPR C66/899 mm24-25) > 1559 Elizabeth I to Henry Lord Hunsdon (CKS U269/E30) > 1561 Elizabeth I toRobert Dudley (Phillips) > 1566 Elizabeth I grant to Sir Thomas Sackville, after surrenderby Dudley (Phillips II p.398) > 1625 Smith buys from Edward Earl of Dorset (CKS U269/T1) > 1629 Edward Sackville Earl of Dorset and others repay Smith to regain lands (CKSU269/T1)Size: 1544 = 60a 2 roods (1544 CPR 4 February): 1555 = 120a (CKS U1000/2 T1): 1614 =390a (CKS U269/T1): 1630 = 424a (CKS U442/P102)Documentary evidence:1471 LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 285 Receiver's accounts1537 CKS U1450 T1/3 (Stanhope) From Archbishop Cranmer to King1544 CPR 4 February, Tithe dispute with vicar of Sevenoaks settled, Panthurst park = 60a2 roods1547 CKS U1590 T1/5 (Stanhope) Edward VI grant of office of keeping Panthurst park +other things to Sir Thomas Seymour1554 CPR Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parks Panthurst,Knole, Southfirth, Northfrith, Poster, and Cage and is then granted them for life1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture John Dudley Duke of Northumberland toHarper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl75H23 lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfirth, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park1555 CKS U1000/2 T1 (Lambarde) Indenture, on back says Sevenoaks Park, 120aWildgoose/Wilkinson to Potkyn 120a1556 CKS U1450 T5/69 (Stanhope) Late Duke of Northumberland's lands granted toHarper and Culpepper now Panthurst to Christopher Roper1556-59 CKS U1000/2 T1 (Lambarde) Receipts/invoices between Wildgoose and Potkynre Sevenoaks Park1559 CPR Manor of Sevenoaks to Baron Hunsdon, Henry Carey1561 CPR 1 March, Fee simple to Robert Dudley includes parks at Knole and Panthurstpark rent etc. given1566 CKS U1450 T6/30 (Stanhope) Sublet by Dudley to Rolfe + Panthurst Park, withconditions, Knole enclosed ground with deer and conies and Panthurst enclosed park1567 U1450 T5/40 (Stanhope) Executors of Rolfe re Panthurst Park, describes all thesubdivisions within park and who rented them1569 U1450 T5/66(Stanhope) Grant by Thomas Bacon to Davy Treavor and wife of parkof Panthurst by executorship of will of Christopher Roper, late husband of Treavor's wife1569 CKS U1450 E20 (Stanhope) Memorandum over title of park1570 U1450 T6/12 (Stanhope) Knole mansion and park, enclosed park of Panthurst to John427Lennard1571 U269 T1 (Sackville) Lovelace to Treavor to take possession of Knole and Panthurstto convey to Sir Thomas Sackville under document of 18 July 15701573 U1450 T6/31 (Stanhope) John, Sampson and Margaret Lennard assign Panthurst andpark to Henry Lennard1574 U1450 T6/32 (Stanhope) Davy at request of Thomas Sackville assigns Panthurst parkto Henry Lennard, granted to Sackville by Thomas and Elizabeth Bacon1578 TNA E133/557 Cranwell v. Lennard re park and wood demised by John, late Duke ofNorthumberland to Sir George Harper and Thomas Culpeper and by them leased toChristopher Roper in trust for late Cardinal Pole1578 CKS U1450 E20/21 (Stanhope) Testimony back to Cardinal Pole's time from RichardBulleyn who lived in Panthurst Lodge re oxen and cattle in park1578 E133/3/557 Cranwell v Lennard. Duke of Nhumberland demised this and Whitley toSir George Harper and Thomas Culpepper and by them leased to Chrstopher Roper in trustfor late Lord Cardinal Pole,1603 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Lennard sells lease of Knole and Panthurst to Sackville,except for running subleases (this document clarifies the previous ones)1603/4 CKS U269 A2/1 (Sackville) Account of steward of house mention of Knole park,Panthurst Park 40 rent lambs paid for part of rent by Moses Oliver1605 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset to Heydon and others grants use of wholeestate, + Panthurst1605 SP14/13/58 Grant to Rowland White and others of lordship of Knole etc. (seems toinclude Panthurst)1606 Will of Moses Olyver yeoman, farmhouse I dwell in, lands + appurtenances inPanthurst park leased from Sampson Lennard1610 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Rivers & Smith v. Amherst & Lyndsey recovery of manorsof Knole and Panthurst, Richard Earl of Dorset vouchee1610 U269 E66/1 & 2 (Sackville) Survey of lands of Earl of Dorset includes land lying inPanthurst Park of 150a tenanted by Thomas Hounden for £100 pa1614 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Particular of manor of Knole, describes house, park withconies (no deer mentioned), 550a, and Panthurst park 390a, lodge, with pale, besides 30ameadow occupied by Earl of Dorset, in tenure of William Lond by lease to Moses Oliver1615 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Richard Earl of Dorset to Howard, Rivers and othersmanors including Knole and Panthurst to recover debts, + counterpart1624 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset agrees to sell manor of Knole, Knole parkand Panthurst to Sir George Rivers and others; same date King to judge use of recoveryDorset v. Rivers and others1625 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Smith buys from Edward Earl of Dorset, Rivers and othersKnole house and park, Panthurst park, land called Old Park in Seal and Kemsing1629 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Edward Earl of Dorset and others repay Smith of 1625 toregain all lands1629/30 CKS U269 A41/1/1 (Sackville) Blome's account for year, includes cutting bushesin Panthurst Park)1632 CKS IPM Samuel Lone, father of George, includes Sevenoaks Park and warren1634 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Royal protection for one year from all actions sureties bybond for Richard late Earl of Dorset1648 CKS U1000/2 T1 bundle 2 Lone and others to heirs of Tymperly 80a park, landoutlinedc. 1650 CKS U269 E48 (Sackville) Outlines mortgage to Henry Smith for £10000 byRichard Sackville c.1610, and present Earl negotiating new rent, house and park rent £130,428but value £1001654 CKS U1000/2 T1 bundle 2 Lone and son to Lambarde impaled park of SevenoaksParkSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant XXXVIII (1926:54-55)Barrett-Lennard (1908:113-125) An Account of the Families of Lennard and BarrettClarke and Stoyel (1975:110-123) Otford in KentCraig (undated, unpaginated) Weald in Days Gone ByFox (2002) The History of Sevenoaks up to 1650 with CD database of West Kent wills to1650Fox, Williams & Mountfield (2007:36) Seal –history of a parishHasted 3 (1797:64-79)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Phillips (1930:vol.I, 35, vol.II,394-401) History of Sackville FamilyWard (1980:17-19,42-44,182-185.215-216) Sevenoaks EssaysWay (1997:Appendix 7) A Study of the Impact of Imparkment on the Social Landscape ofCambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire from c1080 to 1760 - Appendix of calendar rollentries for parksZell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:1630 CKS U442 P102 Panters park map1877 (from Ward, 1927) Homelands and Panthurst Famr of Multon Lambarde, shows fieldnamesFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ533516 Panthurst14 May 2005 – All boundaries as on 1630 found on the ground and could be draws onmodern OSAcknowledgements:Ramon Higgs(68) PEMBURY Parish: PemburyNot in Lambarde or on the early maps so probably disparked before 1558Earliest reference: 1396 Licence to enlarge (Cal.Chart. 1341-1417, 368) LCOwnership:Uncertain which manor (Pembury or Bayhall) the park was attached to and ownership alsovery uncertain. Pembury came to Henry VIII via the Reformarion and Bayhall in 1521after the attainder of the Duke of Buckingham. Henry VIII granted Pembury to theWybarnes who retained it via two daughters. Bayhall was granted in 1547 by Edward VIto William Parr > 1551 Sir Anthony Browne > 1552 William Wybarne > ... 7 James IWybarn sold to Robert Sackville (but see 1577 below)Size:Documentary evidence:4291577 CPR no.1646, 1 May, Licence to alienate manor of Pembury Thomas Sackville toThomas Smyth1610 U269 E66/1&2 Survey of Earl of Dorset lands, includes Manor of Bayhall, south ofPembury, capital messuage and land called Park meadow and other land and woodlandSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant.XLII (1930:173-178)Buckingham (Autumn1983/Spring1984:189) 'Inflation 1581' in Kent Recusant History,nos. 10-11Harris (1719:236) History of KentHasted 5 (1797:264-267)Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ625395 Great BayhallAcknowledgements:(69) PENSHURST – ASHOUR / ASHOWERParish: Penshurst, Bidborough, LeighEarliest reference: 1407 (IPM vol.XIX 7-14 Henry IV)Ownership:1460 Crown to Henry Stafford 1st Duke of Buckingham > 1521 Duke of Buckinghambeheaded, back to Crown > 1552 Edward VI to Sir William Sidney d.1586 > son Sir RobertSidney d.1626 and remains in family to presentSize:1552 = 342a (CKS U1475 M59): 1612 = 122a (CKS U1475 T55/22, below old warren50a, lands called Ashore 72aDocumentary evidence:1407 IPM vol.XIX 7-14 Henry IV Philip Sentclere died possessed of Ashour the park socalled of the earl of Stafford of his castle of Tonbridge by the service of a quarter of oneknight's fee, valued at 8/4d1552 CKS U1475 M59 Sir Henry Sidney's extent of grant included park and lodge inAshore park, with acreage for park (not named after description, but in same documentsizes for Leigh, Northlands and South parks are given – only leaving Ashour)1553 CKS U1475 T33 (dLD) Sidney rented out park, bounds described, warren but no deermentioned1560 CKS U1475 E1 (dLD) Sidney to Rivers of London indenture South Park and woodsfrom Ashore park1570 CKS U1475 T33 (dLD) Sidney to Somer lodge in park, lands1571/2 CKS U1475 A6/6 (dLD) Bailiff's account includes half year farm of Ashower park1574 CKS U1475 T33 (dLD) Sidney to Cole, lodge in park, bounds with bank, part of farmof Ashower park, cony game1612 CKS U1475 T55/22A (dLD) Sidney to Constable lease for old warren alias Brixhill1623 CKS U1475 E55/4 (dLD) Timber felled in Ashower4301640 CKS U1475 T55/22 (dLD) Earl to Fuller cottage, old warren 50a, lands called Ashore72aSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. CXXIV (2004:104)Bannister (1994) Historic Landscape Survey of Penshurst EstateColvin, Moggridge Filkins (1994) Penshurst Place Park - History and RestorationManagement PlanCrossley (ed.) (1975:31) Sidney Ironworks Accounts 1541-1573Furley (1874:429) Weald of Kent II part 2Hasted 3 (1797:259-260)Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:235-236) HMC on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle andDudley ILambarde (1576, 1596 – deer park) But leases above indicate disparkment perhaps in1550sShaw & Owen (eds.) (1962:43) Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley VMaps:1740 CKS U1500 P1 Survey of Penshurst, new and old parks, deer in old park, fields innew.Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ547442 Ashour FarmNicola Bannister in Survey of 1994 has identified boundariesAcknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister, Viscount De L'Isle,(70) PENSHURST – LEIGH / NORTHParish: LeighEarliest reference: 1316 (Cal.Pat. 1313-1317, 586) LC (North and South Parks – locationsuncertain)Ownership:1460 Crown to Henry Stafford 1st Duke of Buckingham > 1521 Duke of Buckinghambeheaded, back to Crown > 1552 Edward VI to Sir William Sidney d.1586 > son Sir RobertSidney d.1626 and remained in family into Charles I's reignSize:1551 = 300a (CKS U1475 M58): 1552 = 470a (CKS U1475 M59): 1594 = 600a (CKSU1475 T61/4)Documentary evidence:1414 CPR 27 October, King grants to Smetheley Dent and Spayne lands of Philip Sentclereat death in king's hands because of minority of heirs, park called Leigh North park and100a adjoining1485 CKS U1475 E1 (dLD) Chamberlain to Golding and Wande oaks in Leigh Park1551/2 CKS U1475 M58 (dLD) Exchequer survey and gift of manors late of Sir Rauf Fanenow Sidney. Northland park 250a with deer, Leigh park 300a in hands of John Weston4311552 CPR 26 June Grnat of land at Penshurst to Sidney includes North park of Leigh1552/3 CKS U1475 M59 (dLD) Survey, extent of grant = Northland park 354a within pale,South park within bounds and closures 120a, Lighe park 470a within compass of pale1553 CKS U1475 T61/2 (dLD) Sidney to servant John Harrison let park Northeighe park500a with lodge for 20 years with conditions1562 CPR 10 September Granted licence of alienation by Sidney to Dudley and others -covenented lands including N park of Leigh, involves Henry Sidney's wife being sister toAmbrose earl of Warwick and Robert Dudley1576 CKS U1475 T61/3 (dLD) Sidney to Willoughby, Weston, Willard about wood takenand price, conditions of sale in Leigh or North Park in parishes of Leigh and Tonbridge1579 CKS U1475 E1 (dLD) Sale of woods in Leigh park to Willoughby, Weston, Willard1594 CKS U1475 T61/4 (dLD) Sidney to Polhill, his servant, Leigh Park 600a in Leighparish now with Harrison for 21 years with 2 lodges, old pales to be replaced with hedge1601 CKS U1500 E1 (dLD) Costs of repair lodges in Leigh Park, document on ' the decaysof certain farmhouses'1607 CKS U1475 T61 (dLD) James I grant of Leigh Park alias Northpark with lodge and500a, sale of oaks in park to Viscount Lisle1607 CKS U1475 T61/1 (dLD) Sale of 1000+ oaks in Leigh park, Chamberlain to others1615 CKS U1475 T61/6 (dLD) Lisle to Polhill 21-year lease for 2 lodges, 500a Leigh park,rent money, oats, pig, calf1623 CKS U1475 E55/4 (dLD) Timber felled1629 Havard Law School library BHC2720 - Sale Earl of Leicester to Leeche andWhitfield of land except the park called Lee alias Leigh Park alias the North Park of Leigh1639 CKS U1475 T61/7 (dLD) Earl of Leicester to Webb and Turner 2 lodges, 500a leasefor 20 years., Lee alias Leigh park alias North park of Leigh. This lease has location pointswhich indicate this park was N of road through Leigh and therefore not the areaimmediately N of Penshurst PlaceSecondary evidence:Arch. Cant CXXIV (2004:104)Crossley (ed.) (1975:31) Sidney Ironworks Accounts 1541-1573Deputy Keeper of Records (1905:deed1525) Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds of thePRO VIFurley (1874:429) Weald of Kent II part 2Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (eds.) (2005:55,59,133) Domestic Politics and FamilyAbsenceHarris (1719:189) History of KentHasted 3 (1797:258)Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:xxiii,11,13,14,235-236) HMC on the Manuscripts of LordDe L’Isle and Dudley ILambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ535476 Leigh Park FarmAcknowledgements:432(71) PENSHURST / NORTHLANDS Parish: Penshurst, Leigh(North park and Northlands park can get confused – have put early references for Northpark here because it appears to have been the main park before the C16th, but by 1550s thetwo parks are more clearly differentiated)Earliest reference: 1290 onwards (Cal.Pat. 1281-92, 407) LCOwnership:1460 Crown to Henry Stafford 1st Duke of Buckingham > 1521 Duke of Buckinghambeheaded, back to Crown > 1552 Edward VI to Sir William Sidney d.1586 > son Sir RobertSidney d.1626 and remains in familySize: 1551 = 250a (CKS U1475/M58): 1552 = 354a (CKS U1475/M59): 1740, Old Park =626a, New Park = 431a (CKS U1500/P1)Documentary evidence:1308 Cal.Pat. 1307-1313, 2620 (LC) Pardon to Thomas son of Simon de Hevere forbreaking Brokesham park, the close of William Moraunt, and the park of Penecestre1356 CKS U1475 T4/2 (dLD) Quitclaim William son of Sir John Pulteney to LoveyneOspringe, Penshurst, Yenesfield, Northpark1359 CKS U1475 E1 dLD) de Pultney gift to Madole and Smyworthe chaplains ofPenshurst Yensfield and Northpark, Ashore, Emmotelands, lands in Leigh, Tonbridge andBidborough1371 CKS U1475 T4/13 (dLD) Bishop of Winchester grant to various people of all estatesin Penshurst, Northpark1356 CKS U1475 T4/2 Pulteney to Loveeyne touching manor of Northpark1370 CKS U1475 T4/13 grant by Bishop of Winchester to variou of all estates inPenshurst, Northpark1424 CKS U1475 T4/7 Chamberlain re manor of Northpark after death of mother Margaret1424 CKS U1475 T4/17 (dLD) Richard Chamburleyn confirming 15 manors includingNorthpark inherited via mother1484 U1475 T4/20 (dDL) Charter of Richard Chamberlain transferring manors ofPenshurst, Northpark, Hever inherited through death of brother William1551/2 CKS U1475 M58 (dLD) Exchequer survey and gift of manors late of Sir Rauf Fanenow toSidney - Northland park 250a with deer, Leigh park 300a1552/3 CKS U1475 M59 (dLD) Survey, extent of grant = Northland park 354a within pale,South park within bounds and closures 120a, Lighe park 470a within compass of pale1553 CKS U1475 T61/2 (dLD) Sidney to servant John Harrison let park Northeighe parkwith lodge for 20 years with conditions1562 CKS U1475 A24 (dLD) Account of clerk of works at Penshurst, work on levellingand paling garden, reference to swine mast in Northlands for a year1571/2 CKS U1475 A6/6 (dLD) Bailiff's account includes taking of deer 19s 2d1573 CKS U1475 L17 (dLD) Examinations of illegal deer hunting at Penshurst Park1574 CKS U1475 E31 + E42/1 (2 docs) (dLD) illegal deer hunting of 1573 judgement(detailed)1589 TNA SP12/224/80 Names of horses in keeping of Thomas Underwood, many fromPenshurst with Sidney family named1595 CKS U1475 T33 (dLD) Sidney to Whitfield lease land outside pale1599 TNA Assize Calendar March 1601 no.2856 Hunted deer with greyhounds1600 CKS U1475 L18 + U1475 E42/2 (dLD) Many trespass and unlawfully hunt,433depositions and examinations in preparation for Star Chamber (very detailed)1599-1601 TNA 5STAC S2/20, S21/31, S68/33, S74/15, S41/5 all relate to CKS U1475L18 etc1601 CKS U1475 C36/3 (dLD) Sidney to Golding re poachers in lane outside parkattacking parkers1603 CKS U1475 E47 (dLD) Terry, deer keeper's note of deer, what killed, why and when1604 CKS Q/SR4/15 Men hunted and took deer in park in Penshurst & Leigh1605 TNA SP14/14/1 Robert Lord Sidney created Viscount Lisle1619 CKS U1475 T33 (dLD) Sidney to Whitfield lease land outside pale1620 TNA SP14/108/53 Earl of Leicester's debts being very great1622 TNA SP14/132/46 Discharge to earl of Leicester for all liabilites of debt on goods orlands due to Crown from Sir Henry Sidney, his father, a similar pardon having been latelygranted to the earl of Clanricarde and his countess (Sir Philip Sidney's widow) by whomthese debts should have been paid1624/5 CKS U1475 A27/7 (dLD) Deer eaten in the house, rabbits from the park1628/9 CKS U1475 A28/4 (dLD) Servants wages, no park keeper there, but 34 namedservants and roleBL Add.Mss. 12066 c. Charles I Detailed account of Sir Robert Sidney's income andexpenditure over several decaidesSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XLII (1930:173-178)Arch.Cant. CXI (1993:43-56) 'Sidney of Penshurst - Robert 2nd earl of Leicester' by HullBannister (1994) Historic Landscape Survey of Penshurst EstateBrennan & Kinnamon (2003:163,168,200,218) A Sidney Chronology 1554-1654Buckingham (Autumn 1983/Spring 1984:189) Kent Recusant History no.10/11Chalklin (1965:12-13) Seventeenth Century KentColvin, Moggridge Filkins (1994) Penshurst Place Park - History and RestorationManagement PlanCrossley (ed.) (1975:182185-186,197) Sidney Ironworks Accounts 1541-1573de Launay (1984) Cranbrook Kent: Wills 1396-1640 - for Woodgate familyEland (1960:44-45) Thomas Wotton's Letter-BookEnglish Heritage G421 Historic Parks and Gardens registerEveritt (1966:166-167) The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640-1660Hanney, Kinnamon & Brennan (eds.) (2005:135,148,157,160-164,199,202,207,255-257)Domestic Politics and Family Absence Domestic PoliticsHasted 1 (1797:297)Hasted 3 (1797:228-241,558)Hay (1984:50,52,54-55,57-58,155,161,171,186-188,191,208) Life of Sir Robert SidneyKCC SMR TQ 54 SW 26 - KE 9315 medieval deer park, walled gardens. Penshurst Placelisted Grade 1 building.Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:xi,236-237,242,257,300 ) HMC Report on the Manuscriptsof Lord De L’Isle and Dudley IKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1934:427,463,467) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord DeL’Isle and Dudley IILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Mileson (2009:40-41) Parks in Medieval EnglandNichols (1977reprint:xvi-xvii) Progresses of James IOwen (ed.) (1966:153) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley VISackville-West (1923: 75-78) Diary of Lady Anne Clifford434Shaw (ed.) (1936:155,190,386,431) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle andDudley IIIShaw (ed.) (1942:265-266,302,308,310) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley IVShaw & Owen (eds.) (1962:56,412-413) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord DeL’Isle and Dudley VStraker (1931:219) Wealden IronStone (1965:514-515) Crisis of the AristocracyThirsk (1977:6-7,14-15) 'Horses in early modern EnglandThirsk (ed.) (2008:51,115) HadlowZell (1994:22-23,42) Industry in the CountrysideMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1605 Norden1611 Speed1740 CKS U1500 P1 Survey of Penshurst, new and old parks, deer in old park, fields innewFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ528440Penshurst Place, park to northAugust 2004, 22 January 2005, 14 March 2005, August 2006 – Walked through parkland.S, W borders more certain but need to check E and N. Extent of park in Tudor timesunknown.Acknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister, Dr Michael Brennan, Lionel Cole, Viscount De L'Isle, Dr JamesGibson, Dr Noel Kinnamon, Ian Scott, Professor Germaine Warkentin, ChristopherWaterman(72) PENSHURST - SOUTH Parish: PenshurstEarliest reference: 1316 (Cal.Pat. 1313-1317, 586) LC (North and South Parks– locationsuncertain)Ownership:1460 Crown to Henry Stafford 1st Duke of Buckingham > 1521 Duke of Buckinghambeheaded, back to Crown > 1552 Edward VI to Sir William Sidney d.1586 > son Sir RobertSidney d.1626, and remained in family into Charles I's reignSize: 1552/3 = 120a (CKS U1475/M59)Documentary evidence:1407 IPM Philip Sentclere IPM vol.XIX 7-14 Henry IV – 80a pasture value 20s calledSouth Park of Robert Lovell and Walter Polle of their manor of Fawkham in gavelkind byfealty 8s rent and suit of court annual value 10s1414 CPR 27 October King grants to Smetheley Dent and Spayne lands of Philip Sentclereat death in king's hands because of minority of heirs. 80a pasture called Southpark1552 CKS U1475 M60 (dLD) Lands at Penshurst and house adjoining South Park; LadyWilloughby living near4351552/3 CKS U1475 M59 (dLD) Grant to Sidney; extent of grant = Northland park 354awithin pale, South park within bounds and closures 120a, Lighe park 470a within compassof pale1539 CKS U1475 E1 (dLD) King's officers to Willoughby, Courtland and Southpark leasefor 21 years1560 CKS U1475 E1 (dLD) Sidney to Rivers of London indenture Courtlands and SouthPark and woods from Ashore park1570 CKS U1475 E55/1 (dLD) Rivers bought from Sidney timber in 1550 'to be taken andfelled within 21 years', Sidney now recovers as Rivers did not pay in full1605 CKS U1475 T27 (dLD) Viscount Lisle to his baker, tenement, land and pasturewithin park, seems no deer thenSecondary evidence:Kingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1934:427,438,482) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord DeL’Isle and Dudley IILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park, but likely to mean South Park(12), BoughtonMalberbe)Thirsk (ed.) (2008:76) HadlowMaps:1743 U1500 P3 Survey of woodlands of South ParkFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ520426 South Park23 May 2005, 12 March 2007 – Can put all but SW section of modern OS map.Acknowledgements:(73) POSTLING Parish: PostlingEarliest reference: 1246 CPR of March confirmation of lease (Way)Ownership:1546/7 Henry earl of Arundel alienated to Sir Anthony Aucher of Ottenden d.1556/7 > sonJohn with 1 daughter m. Sir Humphrey Gilbert > 1579 Sir Humphrey Gilbert to ThomasSmythe of Westenhanger and stayed with Smiths into Charles I's reign.Size:Documentary evidence:1576 CCA DCB-J/X.16 Hawkins v Boughton and Sladen tithe dispute, mentions sheepkeeping in park, but unclear whether that is over all the land, no direct reference todisparking1579 CPR 29 May, Pardon of alienation Gilbert to Thomas Smythe manor and parks ofPostlingJames I PROP E44/3 Lease from King to Court of Wards for 3 to administer for ThomasSmyth in minority, heir to Sir John SmytheSecondary evidence:Hasted 8 (1797:210,213-215)436Mileson (2009:152-153) Parks in Medieval England Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Way (1997): A Study of the Impact of Imparkment on the Social Landscape ofCambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire from c1080 to 1760 - Appendix of calendar rollentries for parksMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) ?TR150400 Postling Wood, no park namesAcknowledgements:(74) ROYDON Parish: East PeckhamEarliest reference: 1590 land called The Lady Goldings Parke (CKS U48 P1)Ownership:early C16 - 1557 acquired by Thomas Roydon > 1557 to wife, then 5 daughters. Elizabeth(3rd daughter) bought out others. She m. William Twysden(1), Cuthbert Vaughan(2), SirThomas Golding(3). She d.1595 > 1595-1603 Roger Twysden, son by (1) succeeded >1603-1628 William Twysden, son, knighted 1603, baronet 1611, m Anne d. of Sir MoyleFinch of Eastwell > 1622-1672 son Sir Roger TwysdenSize:Documentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. IV (1861:196-197)Arch.Cant LVIII (1936:44)Arch.Cant CXXIV (2004:137-141) 'The Religion of Sir Roger Twysden' by PetrieChambers (1974:2-9) Roydon Hall - a brief historyHasted 5 (1797:96-97)Harris (1719:234) History of KentWard (1939:109,123) The Family of Twysden and TwisdenZell (ed.) (2000:88-89) Early Modern KentMaps:1590 CKS U48 P1 has land called The Lady Goldings ParkeFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ666518 Roydon HallAcknowledgements:Sue Petrie, Margaret Lawrence437(75) SALTWOOD Parish: SaltwoodEarliest reference:1273/74 Kilwardby Survey (KAS wbesite)Ownership:Archbishop of Canterbury > 1537 Archbishop Cranmer exchanged to Henry VIII > 1556Mary I to Cardinal Pole > after that uncertain – unable to distinguish line of ownership ofpark from manorSize: c.1521 = 1½ mile circuit (TNA SC12/9/48) (by calculation this would be about 114aDocumentary evidence:1273/74 Kilwardby Survey of the Archbishop's manors in S.E. England has Saltwood park(KAS website)1281 CPR 6 July, Hunting and taking away deer from Archbishop of Canterbury (LC)1391 LPL Archbishops estates B Account roll no. 946. Parkerc.1521 TNA SC12/9/48 Henry VIII survey of castle and manor - 1½ mile circuit, 100 deer1548 TNA E328/172 By letters patent Henry VIII made Sir Thomas Cheyne, treasurer ofhis household, constable of Saltwood and the office of keeping his chief messuage atWestenhanger, parks at Hostinhanger, Westenhanger, Allington and Saltwood1556 C66/899 mm24-25 (U1450 T6/28 Stanhope) To Cardinal Pole, lands called le Park atMaidstone in tenure of Henry Smyth, all kinds of deer and wild beasts in the said park.Also with numerous others lands, park of Saltwood; ... the park called Canterbury Parkadjacent to the house; the parks of Aldington and Otford; the park of Knoll late parcel oflands of John, Duke of Northumberland, attainted.Secondary evidence:Grose (1797:108-111) Antiquities of England and Wales IIIHarris (1719:270,383) History of KentHasted 8 (1797:222-225) Hasted has disparked by 1558Lambarde (1576 – a deer park: 1596 –disparked)Liddiard (2005:58,64,150) Castles in ContextMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR161359 Saltwood Castle19 November 2005 - Went round Brockhill Country Park in case it was part of SaltwoodPark some time.Acknowledgements:(76) SCOTNEY Parish: Lamberhurst, GoudhurstEarliest reference: 1579 lease (ESRO Dyke-Hamilton 607)Ownership:1411-1600 Darell family > 1491-1559 Thomas Darell > c.1513- 1598 (son)Thomas Darell> 1578-1639 William Darell438Size: 1597 = 100a wood called Scotney park (ESRO Dyke-Hamilton 607)Documentary evidence:1579 (ESRO Dyke-Hamilton 606) Thomas Dyke of Chingley furnace lease lands includingScotney Park1597 )ESRO Dyke-Hamilton 607) Darrells lease Dyke Chingely furnace and 100a woodcalled Scotney parkSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVII (1887:46-48)Bannister (2001) Scotney Castle Estate Historic and Archaeological Landscape SurveyHussey (1970) A History of Scotney CastleSprange (1808) The Tunbridge Wells GuideStraker (1931:451-453) Wealden Iron (London, 1931)Maps:1619 CKS U1776 P1 (Romney) Scotney Park, dense wood.1872 OS 6" to mileFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ689353 Scotney castle17 & 23 June 2007- Bannister (2001) describes extant boundaries of 1619 park, but I wasunable to verify all of these.Acknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister(77) SCOT'S HALL Parish: SmeethEarliest reference: 1575 Saxton - park near Hastingleigh could be thisOwnership:Scotts descended form William Baliol the Scot, established in Brabourne c.1290 bymarriage ... > Sir John Scott d.1485 > Sir William Scott d.1524 > Sir Thomas Scott d.1594and continued in Scott familySize:Documentary evidence:1597 TNAAssize Cal 35/40/3 no.2545 Poaching deer, poacher killed by keepersSecondary evidence:Cole (1999:186-187) Portable QueenHasted 8 (1797:6)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park if 'at Ashford')Scott (1876:99-102,194-197,203-204) Memorials of the Scott Family of Scot's HallTalbot (2003:27-33) Brabourne in HistoryMaps:1575 Saxton - park near Hastingleigh could be this4391576 Anonymous1596 Symonson1605 Norden1611 Speed1656 CKS U274 P1, deer shown in park and further south woodland called Olde Parke1819 BL PS1/33791851 Estate map original in Lodge House, estate belonging to Lady Fanny CatherineKnatchbull, based on Tithe mapFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR080398 Scot's Hall plantation: TR073388 Park wood,earlier site9 February 2005 - Borders found, some doubt about N.Acknowledgements:John and Jan Talbot of Lodge House, Jeremy Secker(78) SHURLAND / SHORELAND Parish: EastchurchEarliest reference: 1532 Privy Purse Expenses of October (Daly)Ownership:Sir Robert Shurland's daughter m. Sir William de Cheney > great grandson Sir JohnCheney ... > Sir Thomas Cheney d.1558 > Sir Henry Lord Cheney of Tuddingtonexchanged manor of Shurland in 1560s with Elizabeth I > 2 James I granted to Sir PhilipHerbert and contunued with his descendantsSize: 1572 = just under 400a (TNA SP12/87/1-3): 1604 = 300a (TNA E178/3925)Documentary evidence:?1570 TNA SP12/75/39-47 All concern Sheppey, decay of Shurland House, renewal oflease including park under Holstocke1570 TNA MPF1/272 Goes with Survey below1572 TNA SP12/87/1-3 Map of Sheppey (above), survey of manor (below),1572 TNA SP12/87/1-3 Survey of Sheppey, 220 deer, able to have 500, lodge on hill,underkeeper chamber accessed in house, good building for hay1574 TNA SP12/98/15 Defence of Sheppey1574 TNA SP12/98/29 Shurland House and only 40 deer left in park. Queen to take over.1579 TNA SP12/131/39-41 Offers for lease of Shurland House from Aucher, Sentleger andothers1580 TNA SP12/143/35 Holdstock's answer to charges of neglect at Shurland1580 TNA SP12/143/41 Report on survey and neglect of Shurland1580 CPR Gorges and Auger mansion, lands and park 21-year lease, interesting conditionsinclude building 10 houses for men with guns to defend the island1604/5 TNA E178/3925 Manor of Shurland survey, park of 300a, but no deer specificallymentioned1604 TNA SP14/10/78 Lease in reversion to Sir Philip Herbert and wife Susan and heirs ofmanor of Shurland and other lands in Sheppey, parcels of possessions of Thomas lordCheney.1605 TNA SP14/14/1 Sir Philip Herbert made Baron Herbert of Sheppey and earl ofMontgomery.4401605 TNA STAC8 183/34 Philip Herbert earl of Montgomery v. Walter Taillour etc. deerstealing, poaching, destroying fenceSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. VII (1868:lviii-lix)Arch.Cant. XXIII (1898:88-93)Arch.Cant. XXIV (1899:122-125)Daly (1975reprint:136-151,165-194) History of the Isle of SheppeyHasted 6 (1797:250-251)Hasted 7 (1797:lix)Lambarde (1576 – a deer park: 1596 – disparked: 256)Mee (1936:318-319) KentZell (ed.) (2000:10,24-25) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1572 TNA MPF1/240 Isle of Sheppey, with the park shownFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ994715 Shurland30 September 2006 - All boundaries investigated to some degree, excellent E boundarybank/ditch found.Acknowledgements:Dr Paul Lee, Jonathan Fryer(79) SISSINGHURST Parish: CranbrookEarliest reference: 1576 LambardeOwnership: lay1490 Thomas Baker > 1497 (son) Richard Baker > 1504 –1558 Sir John Baker > son SirRichard Baker d.1594 > John Baker d.1596 aged 40 > 1596-1623 Sir Henry Baker (son,minor, Sheriff of Kent 1604-5, knighted 1606, bought Baronetcy 1611. > 1623-1653 SirJohn Baker Bt, boy when father died in 1623Size: 1657 = 750a (CKS U24/T279)Documentary evidence:1501 CKS U24 T428/1 (doc outside dated 1524) (Mann/Cornwallis) Richard Baker's will -nothing obvious re park1557 CKS U24 T428/2 (Mann/Cornwallis) John Baker's will (no mention of parks obvious)1559 CKS U24 T283 (Mann/Cornwallis) Court of Wards and Liveries grant, no parkmentioned1573? TNA SP12/93/37 Account of consumption of woods for clothing industry, exceptthose spent by Sir Ricahrd Baker for his iron works1583 TNA Assize 35/9/4/1236 Affray and killing at Goudhurst - no park but surnamessame as in illegal hunting1591 CKS U24 T428/3 (Mann/Cornwallis) Richard Baker's will, includes Sissinghurst park4411596 CKS U24 T283 (Mann/Cornwallis) Court of Wards and Liveries grant, mentions park1596 CKS QM/SB/154 Killing deer with crossbow1596 CKS QM/SB/162 & 163 Depositions about killing deer1597/8 CKS QM/SI/11-13 Peter Maye arrested for illegal deer shooting on way toMaidstone gaol 2 others rescued him, 12 = Fosten discharging gun, 13 = Maye withcrossbow1598 CKS QM/SB/168 Examination about illegal deer killing here and at Rotherfield,Eridge, Ashdown Forest1601 CKS QM/SB/387 Examinations about illegal deer hunting,1602 CKS QM/SRc 1602/197 Apprentices bound over for illegal hunting1604 CKS QM/SR1/15 & 16 Park broken into and deer killed in 16011604 CKS QM/SR1[Q/SR5/5]/15 Three broke into parkc.1604 TNA STAC 5/13 Culpepper hunting in Ashdown Forest1605 TNA STAC8 53/5 Culpepper and other killing deer, rabbits, pulling up fence,assaulting Baker's servants, offences back to 16001605 CKS QM/SIq 4/29 & 30 Hunting with greyhounds, killing deer, later assaulted thosearresting them1607 TNA STAC8 53/4 Deer stealing, Baker v. Culpepper1623 CKS U24 T428/4 (Mann/Cornwallis) Sir Henry Baker's will - no park mentioned1631 CKS U24 T283 (Mann/Cornwallis) Court of Wards and Liveries grant, mentions parkwith parcels of land1657 CKS U24 T279 (MannCornwallis) Baker surrenders manor of Sissinghurst and otherland to others (Final agreement), document (Deed of settlement) refers to Sissinghurst Parkwithin the pale called the new pale, lands within the new park pale and the divisionsenclosed within the same of 750aSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. IX (1874:xci-xciii)Arch.Cant. XXXVIII (1896:5-27) 'Notes on the life of Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst' byBakerArch.Cant. LXXXIX (1974:186)Bannister (2002) Sissinghurst Castle Estate Archaeological and Historic Landscape SurveyCole (1999:186-187) Portable Queende Launay (1984) Cranbrook Kent: wills 1396-1640Furley (1874:743) Weald of Kent II part 2Harris (1719:85) History of KentHasted 7 (1797:10-101)Knafla (1994:89,94,176, 254/5) Kent at Law, 1602Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Melling (1969:39) Kentish Sources VI, Crime and PunishmentMelling (1961:104-113) Kentish Sources III, Aspects of Agriculture and IndustryNichols (1977reprint:331) Progresses of Queen ElizabethNicolson (1964:5-25) Sissinghurst Castle, an illustrated historyPile (1981) Cranbrook Broadcloth and clothierSchwerdt & Kreutzberger (1969:4-5,11-12) Sissinghurst Castle, an illustrated guideSprange (1808:272) Tunbridge WellsStraker (1931:321-322) Wealden IronZell (1994:62-63,153-277) Industry in the CountrysideMaps:4421575 Saxton1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named1605 Norden1611 Speed1622 CKS U1506 P1/44 Sissinghurst Place, difficult to locate plotsFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ818384 Sissinghurst14 December 2005, 1 March 2006, 12 October 2006 - Most of W and N boundaries seen. Sis probably along road, and lower part of W boundary uncertain, probable tE boundary wastrack on 1800 map.Aknowledgements:Dr Nicola Bannister, Geoffrey Copus, Cranbrook Museum, Peter Dear, Robert Lewis,National Trust, Adam Nicolson(80) STARBOROUGHParish: mainly Lingfield, Surrey/ EdenbridgeEarliest reference: 1576 Anon. map of KentOwnership:Cobham family, no male 1471 went to daughter m. Lord Burgh of Lincolnshire ... >Thomas, lord Burgh, d.1550 > ..... younger son William Borough d.1597 and land to 4daughters, Sir Thomas Richardson got 3 shares, fourth to Seymour Coppinger – landremained splitSize:Documentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Cole pers.comm. notesHasted 3 (1797:214-215)Saul (2001:123-192) Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: the Cobham familyand their memorials, 1300-1500Maps:1576 Anonymous1596 Symonson - named1605 Norden1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ426441 Starborough Castle23 October 2007 - Not convinced much of any boundary found, some possibilities.Acknowledgements:Lionel Cole, Alan Dell, Christopher Waterman443(81) STONEHURST Parish: Chiddingford, Surrey, W of CowdenEarliest reference: 1555 lease (CKS U1450/T6/9)Ownership:Cobham family, no male 1471 went to daughter m. Lord Burgh of Lincolnshire (seeCobham) > last William Borough d.1597 and land to 4 daughters, Sir Thomas Richardsongot 3 shares, fourth to Seymour Coppinger – land remained splitSize:Documentary evidence:1555 CKS U1450/T6/9 Trees in and around the park to be felled. Burgh to Rookwood,quarters of wood etc. divided Isley, Lennard, Weston – indicates disparkment1566 CKS U1450/T6/44 Lennard to Weston rest of lease of Stonehurst park left fromBurgh to Rookwood mentions corn and animals feeding in parkSecondary evidence:Hasted 3 (1797:214-215)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Saul (2001:123-192) Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: the Cobham familyand their memorials, 1300-1500 (Oxford, 2001)Maps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ425412 Upper Stonehurst FarmAcknowledgements:(82) STOWTING Parish: StowtingEarliest reference: 1361 Manor of Stowting survey (TNA C135/156/9)Ownership:1434 Edward Nevill, Lord Bergavenny, whose son Sir George Nevill sold to > Sir ThomasKempe d.1488 > 1488 (nephew) Sir Thomas Kempe of Olantigh... > Sir Thomas Kempe ofOlantigh d.1607 > brother Reginald Kempe d.1612 ... > 1621 his 3 daughters sold to JosiasClerke of Westerfield, EssexSize:1361 = 69a (C135/156/9 f.6): estimated at unspecified date 200-300a (Roberts, p.67)Documentary evidence:1361 TNA C135/156/9 f.6 Manor of Stowting survey ... also a park lx-x acres worthnothing after deductions sustaining wild animals1582 CCA DCB-J/X.10.20 French v Hill tithe dispute, implies disparkment in late 1570s1609 BL Add.Ch. 41796 10 February, Josias Clerke of Wetherfield Sx gent sells to SirJohn Honywood of Elmsted kt manor of Stowting including park (but in very long list to444cover all) for £600Secondary evidence:Hasted 8 (1797:46-49)Hitchin-Kemp (c.1902:38-39,59-61) A General History of the Kemp and Kempe FamiliesLambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Roberts (1999:67) Woodlands of KentSimpson (1997:62) Custom and Conflict in Disputes over Tithe in the Diocese ofCanterbury 1501-1600Maps:1575 Saxton - one shown NE of Stowting1576 AnonymousFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR120430 Park Farm5 February 2005 – Went round and borders can be put on modern OS.Acknowledgements:Colin Robbins, Geoffrey Roberts(83) SUNDRIDGE Parish: SundridgeEarliest reference: 1356 meadow abutting park (CKS U1590 T3/8)Ownership:1553 Henry Isley to John Isley > 1555 lands restored to William Isley (son) > 1570William Isley to Martin CulthorpeSize: 1555 = 60a parcel of park (CKS U1450/E19): 1813 = 246a Arch.Cant XLIV(1932:206 )Documentary evidence:1356 CKS U1590 T3/8 (Stanhope) Meadow abutting park1553 CKS U1450 E19 (Stanhope) Henry Isley to John Isley, lists land, includes parcel thePark 60a Brasted, all lands called Sundrish Park 30a1570 U1590 T14/12 (Stanhope) William Isley to Martin Culthorpe manor of Sundridge,manor and park of Sutton Valence, manor and park of Langley, manor of Kingsnorth, tomake void debt of £40001575 CKS U1590 T14/14 (Stanhope) Survey of manor of Brasted, includes SundridgePlace with the Parke land and other fields, named; parcel of Sundridge park of 45a. parkmead 5a. Sutton Place with enclosed park, fields named in Sutton and ChartSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant XLIV (1932:190,206-207)Cole (1999:192) Portable QueenHasted 3 (1797:514-515)Watson (ed.) (1999:88) A History of the Parish of CheveningZell (1994:32-33) Industry in the countryside445Maps:Map of Brasted parish with part of Sundridge with field names (Cole) ?from tithe map,shows Great and Little Park for SundridgeFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ487549 Sundridge Place, park to east2 December 2006 - Went round but no boundary definitely found.Acknowledgements:Lionel Cole(84) SURRENDEN Parish: PluckleyEarliest reference: 1621 in Sir Edward Dering's book of expenses (KAS website)Ownership:Dering family in Pluckley from C15th at leastSize:Documentary evidence:1617-1628 CKS U350 E4 Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden Dering and his Booke ofExpences 1617-1628 (pp.24,27,47,53,55,60,210,309). Full transcriptionwww.kentarchaeology.ac on-line publishing.Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. CXXV (2005:328-329,336-337)Chalklin (1965:204) Seventeenth Century KentHasted 1 (1797:269)Mee (1936:358-359) KentMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ938453 SurrendenAcknowledgements:(85) SUTTON Parish: Chart Sutton, Boughton MonchelseaEarliest reference: 1086 Domesday Book (LC)Ownership:Unclear. In 1627 Sir Edward Hales bought 101 acres of land in Chart Sutton and Langley.He also acquired lands of the Spence family of Chart Sutton, and lands of the estates ofChart and Sutton ValenceSize:Documentary evidence:4461390 CPR 15 October, Grant to king's servant Thomas Brenchesle keepership of king'spark of Sutton1575 CKS U1590 T14/14 (Stanhope) Survey of manor of Brasted, includes SundridgePlace with the Parke land ... Sutton Place with enclosed park, then called Sutton Park,fields named in parishes of Sutton and Chart1585 CCA DCB-J/X.10.18 Hayman v Franklyn tithe dispute, headed Sutton Valence butreference to Chaney Court and parishes of Sutton and Chart make it more likely to beSutton park and not Sutton Valence parkSecondary evidence:Deputy Keeper of Records (1905:526,deed1564) Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deedsof the PRO VILambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Salmon (1982:18-19,59) A History of Chart SuttonMaps:F144 Estate map (can't trace this reference now or find copy of such a map)1575 Saxton - park near Ulcombe could be thisFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ803492 Park House FarmAcknowledgements:(86) SUTTON VALENCE Parish: Sutton ValenceEarliest reference: 1348 (Cal.IPM IX, 116) LCOwnership:Unclear. 1348 Earl of Pembroke ... > Henry VIII > Clifford family > Sir Thomas Nevillefrom the elder brother of the Cliffords ... > 1570 William Isley to Martin Culthorpe(U1590/T14/12)Size:Documentary evidence:1376 CPR 29 January, Sutton Valence with the park of Demchurche grant of wardship ofearl of Pembroke's now royal1570 U1590 T14/12 (Stanhope) William Isley to Martin Culthorpe manor of Sundridge,manor and park of Sutton Valence, manor and park of Langley, manor of Kingsnorth, tomake void debt of £4000Secondary evidence:Chalklin (1965:10-11) Seventeenth Century KentChandler (ed.) (1993:88) John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England part VIII –disparked - 'where was a park'Deputy Keeper of Records (1905:526,deed1564) Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deedsof the PRO VIMaps:Sutton Valence map CKS U 151 P1,2, No obvious park area447Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ815493? perhaps near castleAcknowledgements:(87) THROWLEY Parish: ThrowleyEarliest reference: 1596 unnamed on Symonson's map: 1605 Speed's mapOwnership:Sondes. 1584 Sir Thomas SondesSize:Documentary evidence:Secondary evidence:Eland (ed.) (1960:53-54) Thomas Wotton’s Letter-Book, 1574-1586McKeen (1986:424-429) A memory of honour: the life of William Brooke, Lord CobhamMee, Kent (1936:444-445) KentMaps:1596 Symonson - not named but unambiguous1611 Speedc.1870 OS 6" to mileFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ989544 Park Lane Farm20 May 2006 - Drove past Park Lane cottages along possible E boundary. No obvious parkbanks along side of road. Drove round putative perimeter along N and W boundaries, butno earthworks immediately visible. Time prevented walk along possible S boundary.Highly probable that the other boundaries are defined by the present road patterns, exceptof modern road alteration near the churchAcknowledgement:Alastair Malcolm, John Owen, Christopher Waterman(88) TONBRIDGE – CAGE Parish: TonbridgeEarliest reference: 1327 onwards (Hasted 2, 330 Cal.Pat. 1327-30, 207) LCOwnership:1327 Gilbert de Clare > 1329 Elizabeth de Burgh... > 1533 Thomas Earl of Wiltshire ... >1552 Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI's regent, purchased from the Crown > 1556 toCrown > 1559 to Henry Carey, lord HunsdonSize: 1570 = 400a (CKS U1475/E24): 1625 = 340a (TNA SP16/522/133)Documentary evidence:1552 CKS U1450 T5/67 (Stanhope) Lease Duke of Northumberland to Sir George Harperand Thomas Culpepper of Knole manor (not house and park), Northfrith, Cage, Postern,448Panthurst for 40 years1554 CPR 19 June, Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parksPanthurst, Knole, Southfrith, Northfrith, Postern, and Cage and is then granted them for life1555 BL Harl. 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl. 75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park1556 CKS U1450 T5/69 (Stanhope) After Northumberland attainted Edward VI granted toHarper and Culpepper the lands of the 1552 lease for 40 years.1559 CPR 20 March, Grant in tail, reversions and rent to Hunsdon of Tonbridge castle,Lee, Cage, Northfrith parks, late duke of Northumberland's, formerly Buckingham's lands1560 CKS U1450 T5/68 (Stanhope) Henry Carey, baron of Hunsdon's lease to revert toQueen when expires1570 CKS U1475 E24 (dLD) Demesne lands in hands of Alexander Culpepper includesCage park, Northfrith Little park, Northfrith and Northfrith wood rent includes 15 bucksand does a year1571 TNA E178/1093 Commission to enquire into loss of timber1619 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset requests Crown grant various lands to SirHenry Carey which Boteler then pays for and assigns elsewhere - Cage, Postern, Northfrith(Tonbridge), manor of Sevenoaks, old park and Lovatt land in Kemsing and Seal1625 TNA SP16/522/133 Survey of Tonbridge Cage, all Northfrith and Postern1651 1651 TNA SP18/17/38-41 Search for naval timber in CageSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVI (1886:48-53).Arch. Cant. CXXIV (2004:102-103,109,112)Chalklin (1960) A Kentish Wealden Parish (Tonbridge) 1550-1750 – thesisChalklin (1965:12,132) Seventeenth Century Kent,Deputy Keeper of Records (1905:deed1533) Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds of thePRO VFurley (1874:428) The Weald of Kent II part 2Hasted 5 (1797:216)Roberts (1999:67) Woodlands of KentWitney (1976:166-167) Jutish ForestZell (2000:86-89) Early Modern KentZell (1994:42) Industry in the countrysideMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ593479 Cage Green, built upChris Owlett has provided map of possible boundaries of Northfrith and Cage from herfieldwork.Acknowledgements:Chris Owlett449(89) TONBRIDGE - NORTHFRITH(3 parks in Lambarde see (90) Tonbridge – Northfrith, Hadlow/Little Park/LarkholeGreenand (91) Tonbridge – Northfrith, Northfrith Wood)Parish: Tonbridge, Hadlow, Shipbourne, West Peckham, HildenboroughEarliest reference: early C12th Chartulary (Arch.Cant.XCVI:124)Ownership:1327 Gilbert de Clare > 1329 Elizabeth de Burgh (CPR) ... > 1533 Thomas Earl ofWiltshire ... > 1552 Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI's regent, purchased from theCrown > 1556 to Crown > 1559 to Henry Carey, lord HunsdonSize:1541 = 7 miles circuit of 3 parks in North Frith (Kingsford & Shaw I p.237): 1625 = 1685a- 1180a Outwood, Northfrith, Lark Hall, Little Park + 550a Trench (TNA SP16/522/133)Documentary evidence:1550 CKS U1590 T1/8 (Stanhope) Grant by Edward VI to Earl of Warwick of Warwickcastle, manors of Knole, Sevenoaks, Hadlow, Britons, Panthurst, Northfield, South Frith1552 CKS U1450 T5/67 (Stanhope) Lease Duke of Northumberland to Sir George Harperand Thomas Culpepper of Knole manor (not house and park), Northfrith, Cage, Postern,Panthurst for 40 years1554 CPR 19 June, Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parksPanthurst, Knole, Southfrith, Northfrith, Postern, and Cage and is then granted them for life1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park1556 CKS U1450 T5/69 (Stanhope) After Northumberland attainted Edward VI granted toHarper and Culpepper the lands of the 1552 lease for 40 years.1559 CPR 20 March, Grant in tail, reversions and rent to Hunsdon of Tonbridge castle,Lee, Cage, Northfirth parks, late duke of Northumberland's, formerly Buckingham's lands1560 CKS U1450 T5/68(Stanhope) Henry Carey, baron of Hunsdon's lease to revert toQueen when expires1570 CKS U1475 E24 (dLD) Demesne lands in hands of Alexander Culpepper includesCage Park, demesne land in farm parcel of Northfrith, little park of Northfrith, Northfrithwood1571 TNA E178/1093 Commission to enquire into exploitation of timber1573 U1475/L17 (dLD) Walter Beche admitted illegally hunting in Northfrith1619 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset requests Crown grant various lands to SirHenry Carey which Boteler then pays for and assigns elsewhere - Cage, Postern, Northfrith(Tonbridge), manor of Sevenoaks, old park and Lovatt land in Kemsing and Seal1625 TNA SP16/522/133 Survey of Tonbridge Outwood, Northfrith, Lark Hall and LittleParkSecondary evidence: Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVI (1886:48-53)Arch Cant XXII (1897:269)Arch.Cant. LXXII (1958:140-145)Arch.Cant. XCVI (1980:124)450Arch.Cant. CXXIV (2004:102-103,109,112)Barrett-Lennard (1908:113-125 An Account of the Families of Lennard and BarrettChalklin (1960:1-8,60-66) A Kentish Wealden Parish (Tonbridge) 1550-1750 - thesisChalklin (1965:12,132,134) Seventeenth Century KentFurley (1874:428) The Weald of Kent II part 2Harris (1719:321) History of KentHasted 5 (1797:180-181,216,230-231)Kent Downs Orchid (Autumn/Winter 2005/6:16) Dene Park Wood walkKingsford & Shaw (eds.) (1925:237) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isleand Dudley ILambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)Liddiard (2005:56) Castles in ContextSalzmann (ed.) (1932:156) Chartulary of the Priory of St. Pancras of Lewes Sussex RecordSociety XXXVIIIStraker (1931:219,222) Wealden IronThirsk (ed.) (2006:9,43,47,51-53,71-75,101-107,114-116) HadlowWitney (1976:164-167) Jutish ForestZell (2000:60-61,86-89,92) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton – 2 parks1576 Anonymous – 2 parks1596 Symonson1605 Norden1611 Speed1575 Saxton - 3 unnamed near Shipbourne and N of Tonbridge, Sfrith wood namedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ609502 North Frith FarmChris Owlett has sent OS map with projected boundaries of The Trench, Little Park, OldPark and the Cage – adjacent forming one big block.Acknowledgements:Chris Owlett(90) TONBRIDGE – NORTHFRITH – HADLOW / LITTLE PARK / LARKHOLEGREEN Parish: HadlowEarliest reference: 1279 (CCL Ch.Ant.T32), but see (89)Ownership: See (89)Size: See (89)Documentary evidence:See (89) until after 16251560, 1636 CKS U1006 T48 (Hussey) Refers to land adjacent, lane from/to Little Park1667 CKS U1048 T2 Seyliard and Petley 2 manors in Hadlow, Goodwyns and Craiber(?) ,capital messuage Hadlow Place and all lands including all that disparked park sometimesenclosed with pale 25 acres451Secondary evidence:Lambarde (1576, 1596 – probably one of the 3 deer parks at Northfrith)Thirsk (1977:14-15) Horses in early modern EnglandMaps:1575 Saxton – perhaps 1 of 2 parks at Northfrith1576 Anonymous – perhaps 1 of 2 parks at NorthfrithFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ634497? Little Park, near Hadlow CastleChris Owlett has sent OS map with projected boundaries of The Trench, Little Park, OldPark and the Cage – adjacent forming one big blockAcknowledgements:Lionel Cole, Chris Owlett(91) TONBRIDGE - NORTHFRITH WOODParish: Tonbridge, Hadlow, Shipbourne, West Peckham, HildenboroughEarliest reference: See (89)Ownership: See (89)Size: See (89)Documentary evidence:See (89)Secondary evidence:Lambarde (1576, 1596 – probably one of the 3 deer parks at Northfrith)Maps:1575 Saxton – perhaps 1 of 2 parks at Northfrith1576 Anonymous – perhaps 1 of 2 parks at NorthfrithFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ603514 Dene park, park site unknownChris Owlett has sent OS map with projected boundaries of The Trench, Little Park, OldPark and the Cage – adjacent forming one big block.Acknowledgements:Chris Owlett(92) TONBRIDGE – POSTERN Parish: Tonbridge, HadlowEarliest reference: 1327 onwards (Hasted 2, 330 Cal.Pat. 1327-30, 207) LCOwnership:1327 Gilbert de Clare > 1329 Elizabeth de Burgh (CPR) ... > 1533 Thomas Earl ofWiltshire ... > 1552 Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI's regent, purchased from theCrown > 1556 to Crown > 1559 to Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon452Size: 1520 = 3 miles (Arch. Can.t XVI): 1625 = 464a Postern arable and 330a PosternMidden– around 800a (TNA SP16/522/133)Documentary evidence:1552 CKS U1450 T5/67 (Stanhope) Lease Duke of Northumberland to Sir George Harperand Thomas Culpepper of Knole manor (not house and park), Northfrith, Cage, Postern,Panthurst for 40 years1554 CPR 19 June, Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parksPanthurst, Knole, Southfrith, Northfrith, Postern, and Cage and is then granted them for life1556 CKS U1450 T5/69 (Stanhope) After Northumberland attainted to Edward VI grantedto Harper and Culpepper the lands of the 1552 lease for 40 years.1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1555 BL Harl75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park1559 CPR 20 March, Grant in tail, reversions and rent to Hunsdon of Tonbridge castle,Lee, Cage, Northfrith parks, late duke of Northumberland's, formerly Buckingham's lands1561 BL Harl 85H6 Lease Culpepper to Willard park, forest, lands tenements, iron-millcalled Postern and lands in Southfrith1571 TNA E178/1093 Commission to enquire into exploitation of timber1619 CKS U269 T1 (Sackville) Earl of Dorset requests Crown grant various lands to SirHenry Carey which Boteler then pays for and assigns elsewhere - Cage, Postern, Northfrith(Tonbridge), manor of Sevenoaks, old park and Lovatt land in Kemsing and Seal1625 TNA SP16/522/133 Survey of Tonbridge, Postern arable and Postern MiddenSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVI (1886:48-53).Arch.Cant. CXXIV (2004:102-103,109,112)Chalklin (1960:1-8,60-66) A Kentish Wealden Parish (Tonbridge) 1550-1750 - thesisChalklin (1965:132,134) Seventeenth Century Kent,Cleere & Crossley (1995:350-351) The Iron Industry of the WealdFurley (1874:428-429), The Weald of Kent II part 2Hasted 5 (1797:216)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Witney (1976:166-167) Jutish ForestZell (2000:86-89) Early Modern KentMaps:Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ615463 Postern ParkAcknowledgements:(93a,b)TONBRIDGE – SOUTHFRITH and SOMERFIELD / SOMERHILL (93 b)Parish: TonbridgeEarliest reference: (a) early C12th Chartulary (Arch.Cant. CVI:124) (b) by 1623 (CKS U38/T1)453Ownership:1552 Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI's regent had bought this and Tonbridge parksfrom the Crown > 1553 reverted to Crown under lessees of Dudley > c.1571 Rober Dudley,earl of Leicester into Sidney families > 1575 Sir Henry Sidney > 1588 Sir Philip Sidney'sestate went to widow Frances Walsingham who remarried Devereux, earl of Essex, thenBurke, lord Clanricarde who continued to lease from CrownSize: 1571 = 5000a (Chalklin)Documentary evidence:1550 CKS U1590 T1/8 (Stanhope) Grant by Edward VI to Earl of Warwick of Warwickcastle, manors of Knole, Sevenoaks, Hadlow, Britons, Panthurst, Northfield, South Frith1554 CPR 19 June, Joan duch*ess of Northumberland surrenders manors and the parksPanthurst, Knole, Southfrith, Northfrith, Postern, and Cage and is then granted them for life1554 TNA E354/45 Grant of manor, chase or forest, park of Southfrith to monarchs byEdward Nevill1555 BL Harl75H23 Lease Pole to Harper and Culpepper includes Northfrith, Postern,Cage, Panthurst, but not Knole Park1555 BL Harl 75E31 Inspection of indenture Dudley to Harper and Culpepper1561 BL Harl 85H6 Lease Culpepper to Willard park, forest, lands tenements, iron-milland lands in Southfrith1570 TNA E178/1098 Inquisiition and certificate as to forest or park of Southfrith1571 TNA E178/1093 Commission to enquire about iron mills in Southfrith1571 CPR no.2647. 28 November, 50-year lease to Robert Dudley forest and parkincluding iron mills from end of Harper and Culpepper's lease, rents given1573 BL Harl77A35 Culpepper surrender of lease to Queen1609 TNA STAC8 196/18 Forcible entry and forge damage1623 CKS U38/T1 part 2 Jointure of Lady Anne. Manor house of Somerhill with park,Southfrith park, mansion house, the great lodge, furnace + cottages1635 U38/T1part 1 Manor house, Somerhill, with park. Southfrith park, mansion house thegreat lodge, furnace + cottages1664 CKS U214 E19/23 Survey of Southfrith or Somerhill, fair park 414a with 2 lodgeswell paled and woodedSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XVI (1886:48-53)Arch Cant. XXII (1897:269)Arch.Cant. LXXII (1958:146)Arch.Cant. XCVI (1980:124)Arch.Cant. CXXIV (2004:98,102-103,109,112)Brandon (2003:132-133,136-137) The Kent and Sussex WealdChalklin (1960:1-8,60-66) A Kentish Wealden Parish (Tonbridge) 1550-1750 – thesis.Disparked c.1610, p.5 cites Chancery Proceedings: Roynarsden division (C.9) 27/108Chalklin (1965:12,132,134) Seventeenth Century KentCleere & Crossley (1995:347) The iron industry of the WealdCunningham (ed.) (2005:12-14) Four Hundred Years of the Wells,Harris (1719:322) History of KentHasted 5 (1797:230-231)Knafla (1994:53,103,197) Kent in Law, 1602Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park)454Mee (1936:351) KentSalzmann (ed.) (1932:156) Chartulary of the Priory of St. Pancras of Lewes Sussex RecordSociety XXXVIIIShaw (ed.) (1942:267,300,302) HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle andDudley IVStraker (1931:219,222) Wealden IronWitney (1976:166-167) Jutish ForestZell (2000:86-91) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton - Southfrith wood enclosed and named1576 AnonymousFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ584448 South Frith: TQ603452 Somerhill park9 Sepember 2006 - Walked most boundaries of what I conjected was Somerhill park, somestill parkland. E boundary problematic.Acknowledgements:Chris Owlett, Joyce Hoad(94) TYLER HILL / ST. STEPHEN'S / HACKINGTONParish: HackingtonEarliest reference: 1599 letter (CKS U951 C261/5)Ownership:Archdeacon of Canterbury had residence at Hackington until Reformation > c.1562Elizabeht I to Sir Roger Manwood d.1592 > son Sir Peter Manwood d.1625 > son Sir JohnManwood alienated to Sir Anthony Culpepper 1637Size:Documentary evidence:1568 BL Harl. 79F27 sale to Roger Manwood of manor of Halle/Hawle and tilehouse atTylers Hill1599/1600 CKS U951 C261/5 Peter Manwood to Norton Knatchbull re making a warren,refers to how to be done, deer in park1609 CKS QM/SI 1609/18/8 Tyler Hill common and breaking into park of the sameSecondary evidence:Arch. Cant. XLV (1933:200-204)Arch.Cant. XLVIII (1936:238-240)Bannerman (1924:135-136) Visitation of Kent, 1592Cole (1999:193) Portable QueenEland (ed.) (1960:52-53) Thomas Wotton’s Letter-Book, 1574-1586Hasted 1 (1797:269)Hasted 9 (1797:44-49)Maps:455Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR150592 Hales PlaceAcknowledgements:(95) WELL HALL Parish: ElthamEarliest reference: 1605 Survey of manor of Eltham (TNA E164/44)Ownership: lay1439 John Tattershall, then via daughter Margery Tatteshall m. John Roper d. 1488 >John Roper son d. 1524 > William Roper son (1495-1577) m. Margaret More daughter. ofSir Thomas More > Thomas Roper d.1597 > William Roper and remained in family until1733Size: 1605 = 128a (TNA E164/44)Documentary evidence:1597 TNA SP12/264/7, 4 July, Grant to Lord North of keepership of Eltham Little, Great,Horn park in reversion after current holders, manor and lordhsip of Eltham (Roper's) andmore all in Eltham1605 TNA E164/44 The park besides the several grounds within the pale 128a, the Parklodge and ground within the same 2aSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. II (1859:153-174)Drake (1886:180,279) Hasted's History of Kent - Hundred of BlackheathElliston Erwood (1936) The Story of Well HallGregory (1909:194-195,210-230) Story of Royal ElthamHovenden (1898:83-84) Visitation of Kent, 1619Sally Simmons pers.comm. notesMaps:1611 SpeedFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ423752 Well Hall, built upAcknowledgements:Sally Simmons(96) WESTENHANGER Parish: StanfordEarliest reference: 1262 (VCH I, 473) LC licence to empark Hanger site (possiblyWestenhanger)Ownership:pre1540 Sir Thomas Poynings gave it up to Henry VIII > 1585 Elizabeth I to ThomasSmytheSize: 1559 = 400a (CKS U269/E341)456Documentary evidence:1540 PRO E328/172 By letters patent park mentioned1540 PRO E328/172 By letters patent Henry VIII made Sir Thomas Cheyne, Treasurer ofhis Household, constable of Saltwood and the office of keeping his chief messuage atWestenhanger, parks at Hostinhanger, Westenhanger, Allington and Saltwood.1559 CKS U269 E341 Survey of Sackville lands includes Westenhanger with 400a park inSir Richard Sackville's hands (only mentions one park)1564 CPR Grant and release for Richard Sackville for fine of rent due under patent 1552 ofEdward VI to Edward Fynes, lord Clinton and Saye and Herdson for park and manor housewith wild beasts in park, 20th part knight's fee1603 CKS QM/SM/21 no.743, Two hunt in park of Mr John SmithSecondary evidence:Arch Cant XVII (1887:193-205) 'Thomas Smythe of Westendhanger' by WadmoreArch.Cant. XX (1893:76-81)Arch.Cant. LXXXVIII (1973:206)Arch.Cant. CXXI (2001:218,229-231)Arch.Cant. CXXIV (2004:104)Chalklin (1965:198-199) Seventeenth Century KentCole (1999:185-186) Portable QueenForge (2003:15) Notes on Westenhanger CastleGrose (1797:86-87) Antiquities of England and Wales IIIHasted 8 (1797:672-75)KCC SMR TR 13 NW 3 - KE 4272, Grade 1 listed building, scheduled ancient monument(22777)Knafla (1994:70,105,231) Kent at Law, 1602Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park, 1 park in 1576 version, 2 parks in 1596, seeOstenhanger(97) below)Mileson (2009:152-153) Parks in Medieval England pp.152-153,Nichols (1977reprint:335-336) Progresses of Queen ElizabethPhillips I (1930:135) History of the Sackville Family ITalbot (2003:12,14) Brabourne in HistoryToulmin Smith 4 (1964:44) The Itinerary of John Leland part VIIIVCH (I:473)Zell (2000:60) Early Modern KentMaps:1575 Saxton - one park shown near Sellinge1596 Symonson - names park Ostenhanger, but in position of Westenhanger1605 Norden – 2 parks1611 Speed – 2 parksFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR124372 Westenhanger Castle23 September 2006 - Went to open day at Westenhanger Castle. Tried to look at allboundaries, but CTRLrail and M20 have affected N boundary, felt Stone Street to form Eboundary and Ashford Road the S, W boundary dubious, looked at 2 options.Acknowledgements:457Geoffrey Roberts(97) WESTENHANGER / OSTENHANGERParish: Saltwood, StanfordEarliest reference: 1303 (Cal.IPM IV, 102) LCOwnership:Sir Thomas Criol d. 1451, daughter sold to Thomas Fogg > sold to brother Sir John Fogg ofRepton > c.1509 Sir John Fogg sold to Sir Edward Poynings ... > pre1540 Sir ThomasPoynings gave it up to Henry VIII > 1585 Elizabeth I to Thomas SmytheSize: 1694 = 300a (EKAC Ly/7/4/10)Documentary evidence:1540 TNA E328/172 By letters patent Henry VIII made Sir Thomas Cheyne, Treasurer ofhis Household, constable of Saltwood and the office of keeping his chief messuage atWestenhanger, parks at Hostinhanger, Westenhanger, Allington and Saltwood.1632 CKS U1475 M79 (dLD) Rentals of manor of Ostenhanger, quit rents by name andamount, no property names1694 EKAC Ly/7 4/10 1694 Case of payment of tithes for Ostenhanger park - 300a1705 EKAC Ly/7 4/11 1705 Case of payment of tithes witness knew Eastenhanger newpark for 60 years, when stocked with deer, reputed to belong to Rt Hon Philip LordViscount StrangfordSecondary evidence:Lambarde (1576 – 1 park at Westenhander: 1596 – 2 parks, so one Ostenhanger)Hasted 8 (1797:215)Maps:1596 Symonson – has park at Ostenhamger, calls Westenhamger Ostenhanger.1605 Norden – 2 parks1611 Speed – 2 parksFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TR142368 Sandling Park23 September 2006, Ostenhanger – Fleeting visit, W boundary perhaps Ashford Road, Sboundary Hythe Road, E boundary uncertain, N boundary probably obliterated by CTRL.Acknowledgements:Geoffrey Roberts(98) WESTWELL / CALEHILL Parish: Little ChartEarliest reference: 1274/5 Hundred rolls (KAS website)Ownership:Prior of Christchurch Canterbury > 1559 Elizabeth I took it into her hands held by Tuftonfamily under leaseSize: 1624 = 200a (TNA SC12/20/22): 1649 = 203a (TNA LR2/196)458Documentary evidence:1274/5 Hundred Rolls (KAS) When archbishopric vacant royal escheator broke intoWestwell park and took 16 wild beasts1292 Lit.Cant.III. 43.Valoynes trepass into park and warren, £10 surety for good behaviour1303 CPR 1301-7, 178, January 5, Carrying away deer from park1332 Lit.Cant.I.491. 6 does given by prior of Christ Church Canterbury from Westwellpark to Sir William Clinton warden of Cinque Ports1474 CCA Ch Ch I/90 Letter - visit to Westwell to count deer and control hunting, removepigs. 101 deer, pigs ruining woods1557 CKS U24 T428/2 (Mann/Cornwallis) John Baker's will, my whole interest and termof years in the park of Westwell. (Sir John Baker's daughter m. John Tufton)1559 CPR Elizabeth I ordered survey of lands of void bishopric of Hereford, which she hastaken over, includes Westwell with bailiwick to queen from archbishop of Canterbury byexchange1567 BL Add.Mss. 42715 Tufton gave 30 deer from Westwell Park to Wotton for newSouth Park1624 TNA SC12/20/22 Survey – 200a land, arable, meadow and pasture - in tenure ofRichard Baker @£10 pa. No parkland mentioned – appears to have been disparked1649 TNA LR2/196 Manor survey, Tufton lease from 36 Henry VIII and 40 Elizabeth I,for 31 years at £10 pa.Secondary evidence:Arch.Cant CXXVII (2007:175-195)Hasted 7 (1797:414-417)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – a deer park if by 'Calehill' he means Westwell)Mee (1936:284) KentSheppard (1877Camden:26-27,309,384,524) Literae CantuariensisMaps:1575 Saxton - one shown near, but can't read name1576 Anonymous1639 CKS U386 P1 Estate map shows Darell estate with Old Park and park names inCalehillFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ931470 Park WoodAcknowledgements:Pat Winzar(99) WEST WICKHAM Parish: West WickhamEarliest reference: c.1313-1399 licence to impark (Arch.Cant.XIII p.256)Ownership:1469 Sir Henry Heydon purchased > 1555 Sir John Heydon (son) > Sir ChristopherHeydon (son) > 1580 Sir William Heydon sold at latter end of Elizabeth's reign toJohn Lennard of Chevening, d.1618, gave to 2nd son Sir Samuel Lennard 1618Size: 1659 = 304a (CKS U312/P2)459Documentary evidence:1503 Court Leet U312/M Add.Mss. 33899 Animals twice impounded for damage to park1558 Court Leet U312/M Add.Mss. 33899 (as above) Broke into park and took away deer1564 Court Leet U312/M Add.Mss. 33899 (as above) Broke into park1587 CKS U1590 T22/14 (Stanhope) Seems to be mortgage by Lennards with Stanford andJames for manors of Chevening, West Wickham and others, no park mentionedSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XIII (1880:256-257)Arch.Cant XLVI (1934:152)Arch.Cant LXXVIII (1963:1-21) 'Wickham Court and the Heydons' by GregoryChalklin (1965:58-59) Seventeenth Century KentClinch (1889:174-178) Antiquarian Jottings related to Bromley, Hayes, Keston and WestWickhamDavis transcripts (1930s) Book 1, West Wickham, in BLS: 1485 Terrier, 1555 Compotus,1567 Account, 1599 Manorial Court RollsKnowlden (1980:24) West Wickham Land Holdings and Population Change, 1310-1484,Knowlden (1986:31-41,53-62) West Wickham, past into presentTookey ( c.1976:15-16) The History of Langley Park, BeckenhamWalker (1994:5-6) The Parish Church of St John the Baptist, West WickhamWatson (1959:4-9) History of West Wickham,Maps:c1485 West Wickham, Hayes, Keston, part Bromley compiled from manorial records byDavis1632 CKS U908 P78 West Wickham with demesne land, deer park (84a), old park (110a)and spring park (132a), none adjoining, fields between - disparked1659 CKS U312 P2 West Wickham, old park coppice, middle old park, east old park,warren, west old park (park divided)Fieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ390647 Wickham Court18 December 2004, 14 January 2005 - E, W, S borders clear, N uncertain.Acknowledgements:Patricia Knowlden, Christopher and Pat Waterman(100) WROTHAM / EAST PARK OF WROTHAMParish: WrothamEarliest reference: 1283 Custumal (Semple): 1333 (Cal.Pat. 1330-4, 444)LCOwnership:1537 Cranmer to Henry VIII (CKS U1450/T1/3) > Edward VI to Sir John Mason > c.1556he alienated it to Robert Byng and remained in family until 1649Size: 1283 = 97a (Custumal, see Semple): 1620 = 166a (Semple, 2008 p.185): 1660 = 180a(CKS U830/T6)460Documentary evidence:1333 CPR 22 March, Deer hunted and carried away1419-21, 1426 (LPL) Account rolls B, nos. 1152, 1154, 1155, Parker1423 CPR 14 July, Taking of Archbishop of Canterbury's deer and assaulting servants1537 CKS U1590 T1/3 (Stanhope) King's purchase of Knole and other lands, includingWrotham wages of keepers of parks of Otford, Knole, Wrotham wherein deer now be1658 CKS U830 T5 for £1000 manor of Wrotham with parcels of land called Wrotham orEast park. Binge to JamesSecondary evidence:Arch.Cant. XLVIII (1936:179)Arch.Cant. CXXVII (2007:298,304,306-307,317)Arch.Cant. CXXVIII (2008:179-209) 'The Medieval Deer Parks of Wrotham' by Semple.Up to 1536 East Park continued as a park, but then accounts ceased.Clarke and Stoyal (1975:110-111) Otford in Kentdu Boulay (1964: 284,290) Kent Records XVIII (1964)du Boulay (1966:215,232-233) Lordship of CanterburyHasted 5 (1797:8-13)Lambarde (1576, 1596 – disparked)Nichols (ed.) (1859:234,265) Narratives of the Days of the Reformation (CamdenIX)Semple talk notes of 14 March 2006Today article (Dec/Jan 2005:5-11) Wrotham PalaceMaps:1620 CKS U681 P31 Part of manor of Wrotham1841 Tithe, several park names1867 OS 6" to mileFieldwork:OS Explorer (2½inch to mile) TQ618588 Park Farm24 September 2005, 31 August 2006, 14 September 2006 - looked at part of E boundary atNepicar farm and found bank in wood. Looked at W boundary S of M26, but access toother boundaries poor.Acknowledgements:Alice Porritt, Maysel Dawson, Jayne Semple, Nepicar Farm ownerAPPENDIX 4
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
The CampaignTo Save the London Trams1946-1952Based on the Collected PapersOfThe late Alan John WatkinsByAnn E. Watkins1THE LONDON TRAMS CAMPAIGN: 1946-1952Table of ContentsIntroduction page 2Chapter One Reasons for the Abandonment of the trams in London page 4Chapter Two Light Railway Transport League’s reasons for retaining The London trams page 14Chapter Three Congestion, Safety and Pollution page 21Chapter Four Cost of Keeping and of Abandoning the trams page 24Chapter Five Fare increases after tram scrapping page 27Chapter Six A Question of Capacity page 31Chapter Seven The Kingsway Subway page 35Chapter Eight The End of the Road page 39Chapter Nine The Effects of Tramway Abandonment page 45Chapter Ten Campaign Satire page 48Chapter Eleven Conclusion, The End, A New Beginning page 53Chapter Twelve A Brief Biography of Alan John Watkins page 57Sources Consulted page 60Index page 61Acknowledgements page 65List of IllustrationsLondon Transport Tramways map 1933 page 3Tram 97 at Woolwich market page 9Revamped LUT car Shepherds Bush page 15LUT Feltham car at Uxbridge page 16Map showing the Kingsway subway page34Tram entering the Kingsway subway page 35Tram in the Kingsway subway page 37Bus above entrance to Kinsgway Subway page 38Last Day Kingsway Subway Tram page 38Stan Collins driving last tram 7th April 1951 page 39Tram 1951 at New Cross Depot page 42Feltham tram at Penhall Road page 43Last Tramweek in London 1952 page 44Last Tramweek ticket page 44Last tram in London snow broom 022 page 52Docklands Light Railway train at Greenwich station page 53The beginnings of Croydon Tramlink page 54Tramlink trams outside East Croydon station page 56Alan Watkins page 57Alan Watkins at Cwmcarn Gwent 1989 page 59Alan Watkins at Smallbrook Junction Isle of Wight page 59Cover Page Car 1934 on the Embankment 1952© Ann E. Watkins 20102INTRODUCTIONThe reason for writing an account of the campaign to save the London trams is that, tomy knowledge, little has been fully recorded or documented concerning the fact that agroup of London tramway enthusiasts fought a long hard campaign with which mylate husband, Alan J. Watkins, was closely involved to retain the extensive tramwaysystem of London which was threatened with extinction. Unfortunately, the campaignwas unsuccessful.Nevertheless, several years after this event, the need for the development of Light RailTransit systems in our major towns and cities is growing. Transport planners arebeginning to realise that there is a traffic congestion and pollution problem in ourlarge conurbations.Alan Watkins and his fellow enthusiasts foresaw this happening and argued againstthe destruction of a fine tramway system. They did not want to retain a decrepitsystem, but to develop a modern streamlined one akin to those of many continentaland some American cities.Having understood the significance of that campaign, I felt that it was important toresearch it in order to fill a gap in transport history. I have a collection of materialrelating to the campaign, which consists mainly of my late husband’s correspondenceand newspaper cuttings.My aim is to use this material to document the campaign. As I do not possess anytechnical or engineering knowledge, and as I have a Humanities background, I shallwrite this account from a social and historical basis.3London Transport Map of the London Tramway System 1933. © London Transportby kind permission. (A.J. Watkins’ collection).4CHAPTER 1REASONS FOR THE ABANDONMENT OF THE TRAMSIN LONDONIn this chapter, I aim to co-ordinate the various reasons for the withdrawal of tramsfrom London. To the majority of tramway enthusiasts, the reasons for abandonmentwere all too commonplace, and the subsequent results were an anathema to them.However, to portray a balanced background to the campaign of Alan J. Watkins andhis fellow enthusiasts, the reasons for and against tramway withdrawal need to bestated.It is apparent that the whole issue was determined by the political attitude of theLondon Transport Executive (LTE) under Lord Latham and of the London PassengerTransport Board under his predecessor Lord Ashfield. The tram was doomed infavour of the trolleybus and later the motorbus. The London Transport Executivewould neither consider any opposing point of view, nor would they consider any formof compromise. The government of the day did nothing to prevent the abandonmentof the trams either.To substantiate this account, various sources of information have been consulted, themain source being Modern Tramway 1949-1952, in which lies a wealth of informationfrom articles and correspondence.Another useful source of information which gives a full account of tram scrapping isan excellent book by Mr. J. Joyce entitled: Operation Tramaway. In his book, MrJoyce states that Operation Tramaway was London Transport’s code name for thereplacement of trams to buses. In the book reference is made to the first post-warannual report wherein it is stated that it was an urgent necessity to replace the trams inSouth London by a more modern and attractive form of transport (i.e. the bus). MrJoyce also states that:As late as 1948, the London Transport chairman, Lord Latham, declared that theconversion of South London tramcars would have to wait probably five years becauseof slowing down of manufacture of new buses due to national requirements.The ideas for scrapping the London tramway system came to fruition in 1933 with theformation of the LPTB, which was the result of the London Passenger Transport Actof 1933. Section 23 of this Act stated:Subject to the provisions of this section The Board may abandon either in whole or inpart any tramway forming part of their undertaking.At least three months before the date on which any such abandonment is to take effectthe Board shall give notice of the proposed abandonment and the date upon whichthat abandonment is to take effect to the highway authority responsible for the roadon or above which the tramway is laid or erected.Upon any such abandonment the Board may, and if so required by the responsiblehighway authority, shall, within a period not exceeding three months from the dateupon which the abandonment takes effect or such longer period as the highwayauthority may allow, take up, remove and dispose or the rails, conduits, paving setts,5posts, poles, wires and other works used or provided for the purpose of the tramwayso abandoned (in this section collectively referred to as “tramway equipment”.Subject to the provisions of this section, the Board in any such case shall forthwith fillin and make good the surface of the road to the reasonable satisfaction of thehighway authority to as good a condition as that in which it was before the tramwayequipment was laid or erected.Once the tramway has been abandoned, the Board ceases to be charged for anyexpenses incurred: and for the repairing of the roads.This first part of the Act said it all. The London Passenger Transport Board decidedto abandon the whole system rather than any part of it.In a speech entitled “Moving the Londoner” (which is quoted in full in ModernTramway May 1949). Lord Latham stated that:The urgent problem for the future is the replacement of the tram in South London.Trams were to be replaced by another form of transport, namely buses. Buses wouldprovide a service to the public, which, in the altered circ*mstances of today, would beno more costly than the trolleybus. The bus, not being attached to fixed wires, wascompletely mobile. A fixed form of transport would be unsuited to the changing plansand highway structure of London.In the Journal Passenger Transport of August 1949, it is mentioned that:The changeover from trams to buses in South London was much in accordance withthe modern trend of thought regarding the most efficient mode of transport for streetpassengers.Surprise was expressed in this journal that there was a body calling itself “TheTramway Development Council.”It was stated in Modern Tramway May 1949 that Lord Latham advocated thescrapping of the trams in order to rid the London streets of traffic congestion. It wasmaintained that because trams ran on rails, thus fixing them to a route, other vehiclescould not bypass them and, consequently, caused severe traffic congestion.Following on from this, in the same article, the Chairman of the British TransportCommission, Sir Cyril Hurcomb, expressed his thoughts on the abandonment of theSouth London trams.The decision for the replacement of the South London trams by buses was taken afterprolonged consideration of the alternatives:1. Buses would give greater co-ordination with existing bus routes.2. Extension of the routes will serve better traffic objectives.6Sir Cyril stated that the problems of tram retention were as follows:1. The necessity of expanding the electricity distribution system.2. Expansion of the cable system would be needed.3. Electrical equipment and cables were in short supply and delivery dates along way ahead. 14. The erection of trolley poles and overhead wires would have to includeWestminster Bridge and the Embankment, which were both close to theHouses of Parliament. This would result in a loss of civic amenity in the heartof the capital.(That was the real pièce de resistance).Apparently, the Light Railway Transport League invited Sir Cyril Hurcomb for aninterview to discuss these problems. He declined on the grounds that as the League’sviews were already known, no useful purpose would be served.There was also a strong financial reason why London Transport wanted to scrap thetrams. It was alleged that the trams were losing about one million pounds per annum,and that both vehicles and track were worn out. The cost of replacement and renewalwould be great.As a result of correspondence in the Kentish Independent in 1949, Alan Watkinswrote several letters to one of the correspondents, a Mr B. Hichisson. This is MrHichisson’s first letter:Whilst agreeing that trams are fast, they can only be silent when run on first-classtracks. However, most of the tracks in London are completely worn out, and I amafraid that if a modern vehicle were run on the Plumstead Road and High Street routethe noise would be just as appalling as it is now. There must be many thousands oftons of good metal buried in the roads of our great cities, apart from the overheadwires and standards.What a great opportunity to make good our shortage of scrap, and how much neaterand tidier we shall be without all these hideous wires and etceteras. And lastly it willgive us poor main road dwellers a good night’s sleep.In reply to this letter Alan J. Watkins wrote:Dear Mr. Hichisson,As the tramway correspondence in the “Kentish Independent” is now closed, I amtaking the liberty of replying personally to your letter.I quite agree that London’s tram tracks are in bad condition, but the logical thing is,surely to relay them. Even with the existing trams this would greatly reduce noise andthe provision of reserved sleeper tracks (quite possible in the Eltham area) wouldassist still more in this direction. Finally, new trams, similar to the Blackpool car,would eliminate all objectionable noise. Where reserved tracks cannot be provided,the relaying could be part of a general scheme of road resurfacing and improvements.The fact that tramway equipment would yield much scrap metal should not be takenas a reason for abandoning the trams. All forms of transport use a considerableamount of steel, and if we carried the process of salvage to its ultimate conclusion wewould have no transport left.1 At that time when these ideas were being discussed, a major war had just ended. There was extensiverationing and many goods were in short supply.7Worn out tramway equipment should certainly be salvaged, but it must be replacedwith new equipment. With regard to overhead equipment, I would like to observe thatstandards (and often overhead span wires) are required for street lighting. Tramwayoverhead equipment should, of course, be supported by the same standards, and inthis case there would not be a great deal of extra equipment.In reply to Mr. Watkins’ letter Mr. Hichisson wrote:Dear Mr. Watkins,I thank you for your letter of 29th May 1949, and am glad that at least someone hasread my letter to the press with obvious interest. The photos enclosed are veryinteresting. I do agree that these vehicles are excellent. They could be extremelyuseful if run, say on the Victoria Embankment but are far too unwieldy for theaverage London tracks. On the Plumstead route from the Ferry to Abbey Wood – forinstance – there are many single tracks and there appears to be no hope of any roadwidening without terrific cost. I have often got on a tram preceded by a barrow boypushing his wares and before long a dozen cars were piled up waiting behind. Thisholds up valuable traffic and taken over the year must cost business firms much delayand incidentally loss of business.There are many places in London with single tracks, which are a single nightmare tothe police; and don’t you agree that the overhead wires are an eyesore. Parts ofBeresford Square and many other centres are covered with miles of these uglyoverheads – which are constantly breaking and causing more traffic delays.No sir, I think the day of the tram has finished and more vehicle traffic is needed. Themodern bus is beautiful to travel in and is very much faster and more mobile.Incidentally, I notice you live in a quiet road- 25 years in my house has nearly drivenme deaf – we cannot sleep at nights with the windows open and at times we canhardly hear the wireless. So roll on the buses!In reply to this letter, Alan Watkins wrote on 19th June 1949:Thank you for your letter of May 31st, which I read with interest, although I cannotagree with your views.Firstly, there are many London roads suitable for street or reserved tramways, and Iwould mention, among others, Kennington Road, Blackfriars Road, Brixton Road(and most of the route hence to Croydon and Purley), New and Old Kent Roads,Bromley Road, Eltham Road, Westhorne Avenue and Well Hall Road. At bottle-necksand busy junctions (e.g. the Croydon main street, and Elephant and Castle) subwayscould be constructed. These methods would provide a rapid transit system at afraction of the cost of tube railway (which, I feel will become necessary if the tramsare withdrawn) and would be more accessible. In addition, heavy passenger trafficwould be largely removed from the roads, and accidents and congestion accordinglylessened. Incidentally, tramcars of the types shown in the photographs I sent youwould not be unwieldy. Trams 40 feet long1 operate quite successfully on the routesfrom Embankment to Purley and from Victoria to Southcroft Road via Clapham andvia Brixton.There is not much single track in London. In pre LPTB days, the total single- trackmileage in the County of London was about 3.69 miles. Some of this has since been1 A 40 foot long tram is a Feltham car.8abandoned, and with the addition of the Croydon area, the mileage cannot nowexceed this figure.The only single- track routes are:1. Plumstead High Street.2. Lewisham to Greenwich.3. Brigstock Road Thornton Heath.The remaining sections are short, odd lengths here and there, but the above accountsfor almost all the greater part of the mileage. The last section mentioned is in a fairlyquiet road, and, from personal observation, works quite well. The Plumstead route is,I agree, far from satisfactory, but, quite frankly, I feel that it is hopeless for any formof heavy public transport, and I think that one of the following courses should beadopted:1. Widening, the objection being the heavy cost, although this course is mostdesirable. (Residents and shopkeepers would strongly object to their premisesbeing confiscated and demolished).2. Tram subway, possibly cheaper than the above.3. Doubling the tram track. This could be done, and would establish a “clean”traffic flow. The road is a two-lane one, and overtaking is very undesirable.I do not claim that overhead is beautiful, but if we are to have the superior electrictraction, either from tram or trolleybus, I think it is worthwhile. Experienceelsewhere has, however, shown me that London overhead appears to be unnecessarilyheavy, especially that for trolleybuses.Although I now live in a quiet road, I have had some experience of living on a busroute, and I can assure you that they do their best to drown the wireless. I have beenvery disappointed in the new London buses, and feel that they are little better thanthose they replaced. Frequent travelling between Bexley and Eltham has shown methat they have a peculiar and unpleasant motion, which I can best describe as“shuddering”. This view is held by several people I know, not all of them pro-tram. Ican assure you that the Blackpool type of tram would give no trouble due to noise,and I think that similar trams should replace the present London ones.In reply, to Alan J. Watkins’ letter of 19th June 1949, Mr Hichisson wrote:Thank you for your letter and I hope you will forgive me for continuing our littlecontroversy. Evidently we have something in common – an argument – I should liketo meet you at my club, Eltham Conservative Club, over a beer or two. The trams foryears have been the pet of the LCC - a pet, however, which has been very expensive tothe citizens of London as they have never paid (£100,000 down last year on revenue).They are my pet aversion and, believe me, I have cause for complaint. Outside myhouse there is a tram stop (downhill). Every tram that passes is braked hard (evenwhen stopping for passengers) – there is a further stop 50 yards down the hill andevery vehicle hurls down braking and re-braking until the full agony of the full stop isheard.I have complained of this several times but to no effect. Every driver seems to lookupon this stretch as a nice little spot to test out their brakes (at our expense – nervesand all). Heaven forbid one of your Glasgow monsters hurtling by and repeating thesame performance – especially at 4 o’clock in the morning when one is supposed to9be getting some sleep! I have taken the trouble to make a note of every tram that isnoisy and report them to LPTB. Only recently I was travelling on tram No. 97 – thenoise was so appalling that I had to get out and change to another car. How theconductors can stand it all day I do not know.Car 97 at Woolwich Market (author unknown).The noisiest tram in London.No traffic in these modern times should be allowed to run on the streets metal tometal. They may be fairly quiet at first but the tracks soon get worn by the otherheavy traffic and we have all this racket over again. Railways are the only exceptionas their tracks are entirely used for one purpose and last many years. If we are goingto pull up tracks let us pull them up for good and have modern travel on rubber tyresas all other traffic has these days. The buses will improve in time. I consider them tobe most comfortable and very quiet and very fast moving and no doubt in a few yearswill be the perfect machine.I work in Woolwich and am looking forward to retirement some day (if I am still aliveand sane). A nice little cottage in the country will suit me – then I can sit down andthink of the new owner listening to a Glasgow tram hurtling down the hill outside hishouse (heaven forbid). The buses can come as soon as they like (the sooner the betterfor my nerves and health)- and others too!10Alan Watkins replied to this letter as follows:Dear Mr. Hichisson,Thank you very much for your letter received this weekend. I shall be very pleased tosee you some time, and suggest one Saturday or possibly Friday evening. I leave youto suggest a time, but for your guidance, I am free on July 16th, or any Fridayevening.The trams may have been a pet of the LCC, but they were certainly not expensive tothe London public. Nearly every year they continued to make a profit until after theLPTB took over. In fact, they continued to make a profit until 1937/38. The presentlosses can be attributed to:1. Neglect of the system before the war, with consequent heavy maintenance. If ahigh standard of maintenance had been policy throughout, the present costswould be lower. This applies to tracks as well as cars.2. The running of buses and trams together over the same route. This is verywasteful, as full use is not being made of the tramway assets. Londontransport is, in effect, competing with itself!3. Payment, from tramway revenue, of outstanding charges on abandonedroutes. This has happened in many towns, and is probably occurring inLondon at the present moment. Such charges should be paid by the replacingform of transport.I would stress that, at the present day, it is very difficult to obtain financial figureswith regard to London Transport. The tramway account is, in any case, incorporatedwith the trolleybus account, making comparisons very difficult. At the same time, Idoubt whether any London Transport services are making a profit, and I have heard(unofficially, of course) that both the Underground and the Green line coaches areworking at a loss. It may well be that the tramway loss is not as heavy as we thinkwhen compared with other services.You will notice that the profits declined as routes were abandoned (as is to beexpected), but the loss of 1938/39 can probably be attributed to the large number oftrolleybus conversions during the previous year or so.The trouble of which you complain concerning brakes is obviously due to the form ofbraking used on London trams (i.e. the magnetic track brake). On many modernsystems, including Glasgow, air brakes are used, and they are almost silent inoperation. They would certainly eliminate the trouble you mention. Modern tramsare very quiet in operation, and experiments in Blackpool (and also the USA) haveshown this is so on worn track as well as on good. From personal experience, I havefound that the latest Glasgow trams are more comfortable and smooth running thanthe latest London buses, and they are also fast. I certainly prefer them to anything wehave in London, and I certainly think that they should be introduced down here.Looking forward to seeing you,Yours sincerely,A.J. Watkins11The result of the meeting between Mr. Hichisson and my late husband isunknown. It remains a mystery as to whether or not Mr Hichisson was convinced byAlan’s arguments. They probably agreed to differ amicably.There is an excellent essay on the subject of cost by Ian Yearsley in Tramway Londonby Martin Higginson and Ian Yearsley and published by the LRTA in 1993. MrYearsley expounds in great detail the economic and financial factors behind thedecisions to scrap the trams.There also appeared to be much apathy on the part of the Londoner regarding thescrapping of the trams.People did little to oppose the change to buses, yet the passing of the trams wasmourned during the last tram week.In the March issue of Modern Tramway 1950, it is written that only organised bodies,acting on legal advice, could make their objections known to a tribunal. Ordinarypeople did not have the wherewithal to do this.The April issue of Modern Tramway 1950 quotes, in abridged form, correspondencebetween the Chairman of the LRTL and the Operating Manager (Trams andTrolleybuses) of the LTE. This correspondence shows the intransigent attitude of theLTE towards tramway development and the feasibility of having modern tramcars inLondon instead of the rundown vehicles now operating.The League suggests, therefore, that a preliminary demonstration of the moderntramcar be made soon and a frank discussion be obtained for Londoners and that themost suitable routes be reprieved…and a final decision be made after discussionbetween the Executive and the public.The Chief Public Relations Officer LTE replied as follows:As you know the decision to replace the London trams by another form of transportwas taken as long ago as 1935, when a large proportion of the trams and of the tracksand ancillary equipment were nearing the end of their useful life. The completion ofthe replacement plans was delayed by the war and it was in 1946 that the decisionwas finally reached to substitute oil-fuelled buses for the trams that then remained.The reasons that led to this decision were explained in the report of the LPTB for thatyear. It was a decision that was reached only after very careful consideration of allthe factors that were involved affecting, as they do, not only the operation of theLondon Transport Road Services, but also every type of traffic that uses the Londonstreets. You will see, therefore, that the London Transport Executive is committed tothe policy, which they consider to be right and proper. In these circ*mstances, theExecutive regrets that they cannot avail themselves of the offer you have made.In Modern Tramway November 1950, a letter was published from Transport World5thAugust 1950 which stated:The travelling public of London will miss their trams, which for 80 years have servedthem well and faithfully. Nevertheless, even the most hardened tramophile must admitthat they have had their day, and if their departure is tinged with a little sadness, thenthere is consolation that progress cannot be stayed.12By August 1950 the outlook for trams over most of the country was a bleak one.Tramway systems were abandoned without recourse to the scope and possibilities ofthe type of public transport advocated by the LRTL. The decision to abandon thetrams was made upon the advice of managers and consultants. In July 1950, LordLatham announced Operation Tramaway. The abandonment of the trams was tocommence in October 1950 and to be completed by October 1952. In fact, the entiresystem was withdrawn by 5th July 1952.The December edition of Modern Tramway 1950 reported that London would becomean All bus city. The London Transport Executive regarded the Light RailwayTransport League as a “ bunch of cranks.”The London Transport Executive stated that the cost of track maintenance was astrong reason for the abandonment of trams and that many roads were too narrow totake them.Mr A B.B. Valentine, one of the five full-time members of the London TransportExecutive, stated that buses easily deserve first prize for the relief of trafficcongestion.Therefore the main reasons for tramway abandonment can be summarised as follows:1. Road congestion.2. Flexibility of the bus.3. Environmental aesthetics, such as overhead wires.4. Economic/Financial – cost of replacing tracks and vehicles. (The cost of thenew buses was not taken into consideration).5. Cheap petrol and diesel fuel.6. Road safety – very often, passengers had to board trams in the middle of theroad.Regarding the demise of the tram, Modern Tramway July 1950, stated that:Tramways have not failed – it is the regulations governing their use which havecaused them to fail.In a personal statement, J.W. Fowler, the chairman of the LRTL, said:July 5th 1952 was the blackest day in the transport history of London.Mr. Fowler thanked the members who rallied around the original cause. The attemptto save London trams had failed, but the efforts were worthwhile. Mr. Fowlerreferred to the Tramways Act, 1870 and the Royal Commission Report of 1930. Boththese documents had been damning to trams.The Tramways Act, 1870 stated that the local authorities had to maintain the roadbetween the track and 18 inches of road either side of the track. The RoyalCommission did not recommend that the tramway operators be relieved of thisoperation. The Commission recommended that no new tramways be constructed andthat although no definite time limit would be laid down the trams would graduallydisappear and give way to other forms of transport of equal capacity without thedisadvantage of the tram. These recommendations were doom for the tram.13It seemed at one time, i.e. until 1946, that London Transport wanted to replace thetrams, which still survived after the war, with trolleybuses in the same way as almostall the pre-war abandonment of the trams. However it did not have the courage to sayso outright. The whole tramway abandonment scheme was a political decision thepart of London Transport, who would not countenance any form of suggestion orcompromise. More than fifty years later, it can be seen how wrong and misguidedthey were.14CHAPTER 2THE LIGHT RAILWAY TRANSPORT LEAGUE’S REASONS FORRETAINING THE LONDON TRAMSPrior to analysing Alan Watkins’ material relating to the campaign to save the Londontramway system, it is important to outline the general reasons the Light RailwayTransport League gave for the retention of the network. As in the previous chapter,the main source of information is Modern Tramway 1949-1952, where gooddocumentary accounts can be found concerning the pros and cons of the situation.This chapter aims to co-ordinate the various accounts dealing with tramway retention.Having read these interesting articles, it is apparent to me that a kind of ‘trenchwarfare’ existed between the Light Railway Transport League and the LondonTransport Executive.The Light Railway Transport League proposed sensible and valid reasons for theretention of the London Tramway System in a modern form, not the run-down systemin being at that time. Notwithstanding any arguments, the London TransportExecutive was determined to close down the tramway system in its entirety, andrefused to listen to the proposals of the League.It is ironic that over fifty years after the demise of the tram in our major cities, someof these cities have brought back light rail rapid transit systems, similar to those onthe continent. The reasons for doing so are the same as those advocated by theLeague over fifty years ago and are as follows:1. Light Rail is a good method of moving large numbers of people in an urbanenvironment quickly and efficiently.2. Light Rail is beneficial to the environment as there is no pollution fromvehicle exhaust.3. Provided that the tram is modern, the track well maintained, and it is operatedin a manner to maximise its potential, there is no substitute for it.The League wanted the London Transport Executive to adopt a style of vehiclesimilar to an American vehicle known as the President’s Conference Committee tramor PCC that was efficient, comfortable and quiet. It was light in weight, modular indesign and very smooth running.An article in Modern Tramway June 1951 entitled The Case for the Tramcar byElmer C. Wrausman, discusses the merits of the modern PCC tram. The excellentcharacteristics are listed as follows:1. The modern PCC car provides a quality of ride and passenger capacityunmatched by any other surface transit vehicle.2. Due to its smooth but rapid acceleration and deceleration, it has the ability tocommand its place in traffic.3. Unquestionably, it has by far the longest life of any existing surface transitvehicle – at least three times the life of some buses.154. Due to its acknowledged reliability, the PCC car record for availability isvery high. Hence the number of spare vehicles necessary to maintain peakhour schedules is less with this proven unit.5. PCC car maintenance and operating costs are low.6. The PCC car can be stored outside throughout the year. It cannot freeze up.7. This modern car not only serves more people per unit than any other surfacetransit vehicle but serves them with superior comfort, convenience and safety.8. The PCC car is clean. No combustible fuels are used, hence no obnoxiousfumes or oily smoke is encountered on the highway.This was the type of vehicle the LRTL enthusiasts had in mind. This vehicle wouldhave wide aisles with large double doors at the front and centre, which wouldfacilitate the smooth flow of passengers. Some PCC cars had three door openings,front, rear and centre. For these operations, the PCC car equipment in properapplications has definitely proved its ability to provide pleasing and profitableservice.One of the complaints about the London tram was that it was bone shaking and noisy.This was because the vehicles and track were very run down, especially after the lastwar.Charles Klapper in an article in The Journal of the Institute of Transport November1953, called The Decline and Fall of the London Tramways, wrote:It has sometimes been argued that Londoners never had the opportunity of seeingmodern type trams for themselves. That is not altogether so, for when the LondonUnited Tramways Uxbridge Road cars were re-seated and re-motored the revenueincreased. Similarly, with the introduction of the handsome 64 seat Feltham carswhich had been designed by the Underground Group with a view to using reservedtrack light railway to Uxbridge, revenue rose again. Revenue rose still further whentrolleybuses replaced the trams.Revamped LUT car at Shepherds Bush. (author unknown).16The tramway enthusiasts believed that a modern vehicle running on reserved trackscould play a vital role in the transport system of London. Their battle cry was:Let them try a modern tram on an efficient line.In Modern Tramway July 1950, there is an article by. F .K. Farrell entitled A Futurefor London Tramways. The salient points of this article are:1. Most of the London lines can be modernised.2. The most suitable lines can be retained in order to operate them as an expressservice to compensate for the lack of tube service in some areas.3. The single track in Lewisham Road could be an express-way.4. There could be separate lines in an up direction in Lewisham.5. On Lewisham, Lee Green, Woolwich routes, the roads are wide enough for areserved track.6. Associated North London tramlines offer fair possibilities of modernisation,especially if the Manor house line were to be diverted via Petherton Road.7. Junction layouts could be simplified.8. In conclusion, this could be a short-term experimental programme to lead to afuture development of rapid transit transport.LUT Feltham car at Uxbridge. (author unknown).The London Transport Executive stated that the bus would provide a smoothcomfortable and efficient service. However, it was pointed out that more buses wouldbe needed to replace the tram because the tram had a greater passenger carryingcapacity. For example, on the Catford to Victoria via Camberwell route, 109 busesreplaced 99 trams. This constituted a wasteful use of resources.The closing of the Kingsway Subway was another folly. This route could haveremained a fast link connecting North and South London. The route was put forwardas a prototype for an express-way. The Light Railway Transport League said aboutthis closure:17The closing of the subway to trams was the crowning folly of London Transportpolicy.It was during this time of arguments and counter-arguments that Alan Watkins wasactive. He spoke at the meetings of the South London Group where he put forwardvarious enthusiastic proposals for tramway retention. He gave one lecture on thepossible local applications of trams in the Brixton area. He was always in favour of abalanced integrated public transport system, as his campaign literature shows.In Modern Tramway December 1950 is a report of the South London Committee ofthe LRTL of which, Alan Watkins was the Chairman. He said that:The public campaign had included meetings at Streatham, Brixton and Lewisham.These meetings were preceded by handbill and leaflet distribution as well as postaldistribution of literature. The activity of the few members who had distributed leafletswas appreciated. The Press Campaign in the local papers had been reasonablysuccessful, but less successful in the national and evening papers. In general, theCommittee received less support from League members than might be expected andhoped that the position might be improved in this respect.In the Chairman’s opening address at the LRTL annual general meeting, whichreported in Modern Tramway December 1950, it is stated that:The London situation is pretty grim. It has long been threatened and now looks asthough we shall be fated to be an all-bus town, in spite of the warning of Manchester(to choose a place of considerable size as an example). We are asked from time totime what we are going to do about it. What can we do? We have put in our protestsseveral times, we have sent out many thousands of circulars, we have had anenormous expression of support for our efforts from citizens in South London and weknow that thousands of people are dissatisfied with the decision of the LondonTransport Executive.I am afraid that the London Transport Executive are inclined to look upon us as abody of cranks, whereas all we want to do is to obtain a fair hearing and to representthe views of a considerable body of their “customers”, who are totally unrepresentedat 55, Broadway. The select body of the Executive have such power that it isimpossible to find a parallel anywhere.I’ll say no more on the subject, but I feel, as you all do, furious that there will not beeven one tramline in London in a few years time. Even the Kingsway Subway and theEmbankment routes will go.Another reason for the abandonment of the London trams was the cost of running thesystem. London Transport stated that the system was losing one million pounds perannum at 1950 prices. However, there was no forthcoming information about thecost of track maintenance.An article written in Modern Tramway 15th March 1951 entitled Track Costs whereinan eminent transport officer in England stated that:18One mile of double track would cost £36,290. The overhead construction would cost£2,670. The total cost of a mile of double track street tramway at the present day isthus under £40,000, and after allowing for all possible contingencies it is difficult tosee how it can be legitimately increased to more than £45,000. This is a 25%reduction on the commonly accepted figure of £60,000.In the long term, a replacement bus service could be more costly as more vehicleswould be required to move the same number of people and more crew would beneeded to man them. The LRTL proposed a single-deck tramcar with a pay-as-youenter system. A letter by Gerald Druce advocating this idea, was published in ModernTramway in February 1952.Sir,I congratulate you on the leading article published in the January issue of “ModernTramway” suggesting the introduction of high-capacity single-deck cars on Britishtramways, with which I am in full agreement. Whilst the design of car would havebeen modified to suit the needs of each individual system, it would be a greatadvantage if a standard design could be evolved which would be capable of runningon the majority of the existing systems. Since this design would then be required inrelatively large numbers the initial cost of each car could be kept to a minimum.Whilst the pay-as-you-pass system of fare collection would not present manydifficulties for a system with a simple fare structure, such as Edinburgh, some delaysmight be caused through the slow collection of fares on systems that have a largerange of different fares. On such systems the introduction of season tickets and theprovision at busy points of ticket machines (similar to those in use on the LondonUnderground) might be desirable.When considering the economics of single-deck operation, the reduction in trackmaintenance costs due to the better riding qualities of these cars compared with adouble-deck car, and the reduced cost of any future subway construction, should beborne in mind.Yours faithfully,Gerald Druce.The late. John Walton, also a close friend of Alan Watkins, wrote a letter in a similarvein to Modern Tramway in April 1952.Sir,Regarding single or double–decked trams, I believe that any attempt to foist on thetravelling public in this country a street vehicle with a high –standing capacity isdoomed to failure. While they will put up with the overcrowding which occurs on theLondon Underground and on most suburban railways, I very much doubt if theywould put up with it on trams and buses.As single- deckers are usually cheaper to construct and maintain, I suggest that a typecould be evolved to seat about the same number as the existing London double-deckedtrams, with a standing capacity of about 25 which would bring the total capacity to100. The dimensions of this type would have to be those of the PCC type, i.e. 51feetoverall (50 feet body) and 9 feet wide with 3 and 2 seating. The conductor’s positionwould be fixed, and as the design I have in mind would be double-ended, the19conductor’s desk itself could be made so as to be easily transported from one end ofthe car to the other, the seat at the end not in use could be used for passengers.Trusting this suggestion will make a good compromise between those who believe insingle-deckers, and those who, like myself, believe in high seating capacity.Yours sincerely,John E WaltonLondon 19th February 1952The LRTL had contacted all the political parties but, although the main politicalparties expressed some interest, the result was still negative.The Department of Transport examined the situation and the reasons for and againsttramways; but because of the highly complex legislation concerning tramways, itcould not recommend the extension of tramway transport.An address given by Mr G.F. Sinclair, Chief Technical Planning and Supplies Officerof the LTE, at a Passenger Transport Association conference was published inModern Tramway June 1949, in which he stated:What was needed was a broad system of transport with a close affinity to the lives ofthe people.There should be a functionally sound relationship between transport and townplanning.Roads should be on two levels. Upper level for buses, lower level for a subsurfacerailway, plus high speed motor roads.He continued to say that the size of the bus was inadequate to carry large numbers ofpeople and what was required was a longer traffic unit to bridge the gap between thedouble-decker bus and the multiple-unit stock train.The tramway enthusiasts argued that the tram was the very vehicle to do this. Theenthusiasts also maintained that a tram running on rails took up no more lateral spacethan its own overall width, whereas any large steered vehicle needed a considerablemargin of safety on each side.The arguments and ideas for tramway retention in London of the late Alan Watkinsand his contemporaries, some of whom are still with us, were ahead of their time.Like many visionaries of previous centuries, they were not taken seriously. Theywere “voices crying in the wilderness”.However, the ideals and principles held by Alan Watkins and his fellow enthusiastsare alive today and are beginning to bear fruit.The following items are copies of material published by the LRTL at the time of thecampaign to raise public awareness of the importance of modernising and retainingthe London tramway system.20Re-Develop London's Tramways,and relegate buses and trolley-buses to lightly loadedouter routes.MODERN TRAMWAYS———Are safe, swift and silent.———Assist the orderly flow of traffic.———Deal easily with large crowds.———Cause queues to clear quickly.———Provide the most comfortable travel.———Use neither imported oil fuel nor imported rubber.——Use British coal for power and British steel for track.———Do not wear out the roads.———Emit no poisonous fumes.———Operate equally well in streets, in subways, or on special private tracks.——CHARGE LOWEST FARES.Publicity material produced by theTHE LONDON PASSENGER TRANSPORT BOARDhas scrapped more than half of the tramways which formerly operated in andaround London.In consequence————Street fatalities have increased.—There is less room in vehicles.—There are more replacing vehicles on the road to cause congestion.—You have to wait longer to board vehicles.—Journeys are no quicker.—You travel over bumpy roads instead of smooth steel rails.—There is no passenger transport available in foggy weather.—THE CHEAP FARES of tramway days have DISAPPEARED.*TRAM SCRAPPING POLICYhas so far cost the Board several million pounds. YOU are helping to pay forthis mistake.DO YOU W'ANT THE DOSE REPEATED?* See over for the solution of London's Transport Problem.Issued by the LIGHT RAILWAY TRANSPORT LEAGUE a voluntarynon-profit-making body independent of all political and commercial interests, and workingfor the public good by advocating the greater use of modern tramways and light railways.use of modern tramways and light railways. London Office: 245, Cricklewood Broadway,N.W.2.21CHAPTER 3CONGESTION, SAFETY, POLLUTIONThe main reasons the enthusiasts had for tramway retention were:• Many people could be carried safely by tram.• The air was not polluted by petrol and diesel fumes.In a letter to the Reveille newspaper on 20th June 1949, Alan Watkins wrote:Unrationed petrol will bring severe road congestion, especially in big cities. To banprivate motorists from central city areas would help, but it is obviously unfair.Another solution is to remove heavy public transport from the roads. This can best bedone by a system of electric light railways, operating in shallow subways or onreserved tracks along main roads. In addition, such lines, operated by fast, silentelectric rail coaches at cheap fares would greatly benefit travellers.There was a valuable informative book dealing with this subject entitled TowardsIdeal Transport, by CR Bizeray, published by the LRTL in 1947.The London Transport Executive’s argument for abandoning trams was that theycaused traffic congestion in so much as they run on tracks, so they could not swerve toavoid other vehicles thus resulting in a traffic jam.The supporters of the tram argued that as trams ran along parallel lines, they wouldimpose road discipline onto other vehicles.There was much concern about the overall safety of tram travel, especially for cyclistsbecause the front wheel of the cycle would catch the edge of the track and the cyclistswould be thrown off.In a letter to the CTC Gazette, May 1949, Mr. Smallwood, referring to theBirmingham tramway system, wrote:Leeds has tram tracks wide enough to allow cyclists that extra bit of scope for cuttingacross the lines and straightening up; but in Birmingham, there arenarrow-gauge tracks and, in most places, wood setts. That makes a great deal ofdifference, and in wet foggy weather a cycle requires a great deal of careful handlingwhen braking on wood blocks and crossing tram lines, though travelling in a straightline. Moreover, in wet weather, the tramlines collect water after a storm, as every carpasses it splashes water on to you. I shall therefore be glad to see the tramlinesremoved.As for buses, in Birmingham, we have some bad drivers, but a large proportion ofgood ones.22In a letter to the Evening News dated 11th July 1949, Alan Watkins wrote:Cyclists might be more willing to see cycle tracks if they were decently paved, did notthrow you on to the roads at awkward and dangerous places, and were not used bypedestrians.Why should tram tracks stop cyclists pursuing a straight line? I have cycledextensively in London and Southampton, and have noticed no tendency to swerve, norhave I experienced any inconvenience from the presence of trams or tracks.Overall, the tram was quite a safe vehicle. In a letter by T.F. Dowden of ThorntonHeath dated 1949 it is said:Trams do not normally skid, they slow up and regulate the traffic and it is the pacethat kills.Another argument was that tram travel was unsafe because people had to walk outinto the middle of the street in order to board them, this would have been a dangerousthing to do even taking into the consideration the lower traffic levels of that time.In a letter to The Star in October 1949, Alan Watkins advocated the use of loadingislands in the road for passengers to board the tram, thus obviating the necessity forpeople to walk into a busy thoroughfare to board a tram.Some people, not just tramway enthusiasts, were concerned about the increased levelof air pollution from petrol and diesel powered vehicles should the trams beabandoned. Alan Watkins, writing to the News Chronicle (now defunct) in July 1949,said:Exhaust fumes from vehicles must be detrimental to public health but, despite this,there is a growing tendency to replace electric public service vehicles by motorbuses.The air in large towns would become purer if trolleybuses were to replacemotorbuses.Among Alan Watkins’ papers relating to this campaign, I found an interesting letterwritten by the prospective Liberal candidate for South Lewisham and published by theKentish Mercury on 8th December 1950 entitled:Abandoning the Trams – Ridiculous and StupidRidiculous and stupid was the opinion expressed by Mr. K. C. Korn on the decision toabolish the London trams, the last of which will leave the rails at the end of 1952.Mr. Korn was speaking at a meeting of the Light Railway Transport League, held atSt. Dunstan’s Hall, Brookehowse Road, Bellingham, on Saturday.How would Rushey Green look at the end of the peak hours with buses following eachother at 20 second intervals? It would spell chaos and hopeless congestion andwould it not be wiser to spend the money on the modernisation of trams?However he made it clear that he was not advocating the retention of the present outdated trams. Modern tramway systems, such as operated in Blackpool, Leeds,Aberdeen and Glasgow and in various parts of the world, would on the other hand,23immensely benefit the public not only from the point of view of speed and comfort,but also because of their low cost.What would happen to those tram drivers who had given up a lifetime to their job? Heasked. It is not easy for a man of 45 or 50 to learn to drive a bus. There were alsothe skilled engineers whose job was to maintain the trams. What is going to happento these people? He believed they would be thrown out of work and eventually become a burden onthe taxpayer. There was also the question of extra fuel needed for the running ofbuses. It would have to be bought from dollar areas.And where are they going to get the rubber for the tyres from? I haven’t seen anyrubber plantations in this country. Obviously we have plenty of hard currency tothrow away. He commented.(This was written five years after the end of the Second World War, when rationingwas still in force).Replying to these statements, Alan Watkins wrote to the Kentish Mercury 9thDecember 1950 and said:In these days of traffic congestion and economic problems, it is refreshing to hear of arealistic approach to the transport problem, and Mr. K.C. Korn is to be congratulatedon his remarks relating to tramway abandonment, especially as regards imports.It is essential that imports be reduced to a minimum, yet they will be increased by thevast quantities of oil and rubber required for the additional buses. Trams, however,use home produced power, and the hard currency saved by tramway modernisationcould be used for more essential imports (e.g. food).In addition, tramway abandonment means inferior facilities, as witness the strongcomplaints about the replacing buses in the Wandsworth area, and the heavy fareincreases when the first tram routes were closed.On balance, it was felt that the tramway system in London needed to be modernisedand not abandoned. Much work needed to be done, but the motorbus, with itstendency to swerve and its unreliability in bad weather as well as its choking exhaustfumes was clearly not the answer to the problems of urban public transport and of thetransport of London in particular.24CHAPTER 4THE COST OF KEEPING AND ABANDONING THE TRAMSFrom 1935 to 1939 the London Passenger Transport Board stated that tramcars oughtto be replaced with trolleybuses. Those plans were put aside, resulting in the partcompletion of the trams to trolleybuses conversion. The LTE said now that themotorbus, being the more modern and attractive vehicle, should replace the trams.Regarding these statements, J. Eldridge in a letter to the Evening Standard on 4thDecember 1951 wrote:Both statements cannot be correct, and, in my opinion, the modern tramcar is still theideal vehicle for the busy route. Besides being cheaper to run than the bus, themodern tramcar is more comfortable, faster and safer. It also has a greater peak loadcapacity.The above letter expressed the main feelings of the pro-tram group at that time.The financial details of the cost of running the London trams are mentioned in arecent publication called Tramway London, by Ian Yearsley and edited by MartinHigginson published by the LRTA, 1993.The aim of this account is to document the thoughts and ideas of those involved in thecampaign to save the London trams.At the time of the campaign, it was thought by the pro-tram group that LondonTransport was secretive in not giving any statistical evidence for the economic detailsof tramway conversion. The public had a right to know, but that right was denied.The following letters by Alan Watkins illustrate this point.The Chief Public Relations Officer of London Transport stated that the change overfrom trams to buses would improve services. (London Transport was asked forfurther details).From the non-appearance of a reply from London Transport, I presume that thesedetails have not been supplied. Doubtless there are facts and figures to support thetram scrapping policy, but as they were not produced, it is not surprising that thereare people who have no faith in the buses-for-trams scheme.Alan J Watkins, the Kentish Mercury 28th April 1951The scheme to replace trams was a costly one, and consequently, an increase in fareswas announced. Although it would cost a lot to modernise the system, the costincurred would be comparable to the cost of abandonment. The LTE maintained thatwith tramway abandonment, services would be cheaper to provide when the busestook over.25Those who supported the trams said that more buses would be needed to carry thesame number of passengers and that petrol and diesel oil would be more expensivethan electricity.Alan Watkins wrote in the Sunday Graphic on 4th October 1949:The devaluation of the pound is leading to increased prices for petrol and oil. Inaddition, considerable quantities come from dollar sources, and dollar saving isimportant. In view of this, it is not desirable that buses should replace electrictransport, yet some authorities intend to replace trams and trolleybuses bymotorbuses. This should be stopped immediately.L. Scadding of Richmond wrote in the Evening News on 23rd May 1950:Fares must go up in London when trams are due for scrapping. Yet the manager ofBlackpool Corporation stated a few weeks ago:“The trams in Blackpool still run at pre-war fares and contribute £1,000 a week tothe local rates. What is wrong in London?”Similarly, a letter in the Streatham News dated 7th October 1949 by G. Druce, statedthat without the trams, fares in London would be higher and Londoners would bemore disgruntled. Mr. Druce’s reasoning is that if other tramway systems can make aprofit, why cannot London?There were also great social implications concerning tramway abandonment. Therecould be much unemployment as no overhead wires and no tracks would be made.Tram depots would be closed. There would also be the health hazards fromatmospheric pollution from diesel and petrol fumes, which would add to the cost ofmedical care under The National Health Service.In a letter to the Kentish Independent of 8th May 1949, Alan Watkins wrote:The threat of unemployment to many workers at the London Transport ExecutiveCharlton repair shops, due to the proposed move to Ruislip, must largely arise fromthe decision to replace the 800 trams by 1100 buses, and the consequent necessity of arepair depot to deal with the 300 extra vehicles. If the tramways were retained andmodernised, Charlton works would be tied to South London, and the threat ofunemployment removed.When the trams are withdrawn, the electrical and permanent way staff will also belikely to become unemployed.Writing in the Kentish Independent dated 14th May 1950, Alan Watkins stated:As a passenger who is likely to help pay for the tram scrapping by 100% increase ofhis daily fares, may I protest about the expenditure of several thousand pounds on theconstruction (and subsequent demolition) of a large depot1 the purpose of which is thescrapping of tramcars.1 Penhall Road “Tramatorium” at Charlton, Woolwich.26Disposal of the trams must create a problem, but I have heard of no other system thathas employed such expensive means.Also, the twenty-four permanent way men would be better employed on the muchneeded relaying of existing tracks.Regarding the new garages that are required, the one at Stockwell necessitates thedemolition of several houses. In view of the present housing situation, this should notbe allowed.(There was a serious housing shortage after the 2nd World War).On studying this correspondence, it seems that yet again, London Transport failed tothink things through regarding the overall implications of abandoning the trams.The economical statements said that buses were cheaper to run – yet more wererequired to provide the same level of service.More than fifty years on from the abandonment of the trams in London on 5th July1952, the reasons, expressed above, for retaining the trams still ring true.In order to give a balanced account of the battles raging around the abandonment ofthe trams, I have included some anti-tramway correspondence published in theKentish Independent on 21st October 1949. J.I. Taylor wrote:I see by your editor’s table that the LTE has definitely decided to dispense with tramsin London. This dispelled the pro-tram Canutes as far as the sea of people in Londonare concerned. One has often read letters in the Press from those who declare tramsare cheaper to run, yet I see that figures produced by the LTE for 1948 show a loss ofmore than 4 million pounds.A PleaHow can anyone honestly say that they like riding on or even hearing a tram? TheRTL bus type is progress, and you always get these people who don’t like it. I myselfwould like to have my own car, but being a humble shop assistant, I have to usepublic transport, and I know that the bus will be much better than waiting at Dicksonroad each morning and sometimes getting one out of three trams going only part ofthe way to Beresford Square, rain, snow or sunshine. Also, need the oil only comefrom dollar countries? So, I say, hurry up with part 2 of stage 3 of the changeoverfrom trams to buses for the Woolwich area.R.J. Young of Well Hall.27CHAPTER 5FARE INCREASES AFTER TRAM SCRAPPINGAll the trams in South East London will be replaced by the end of 1952. We trust thatthis will contribute a noticeable improvement in transport facilities in that area.So stated George Dodson-Wells, the Chief Public Relations Officer for the LondonTransport Executive, in the Kentish Mercury on 16th February 1951.During the period 1949-1952, much concern was expressed about increased passengerfares after the demise of the trams.K.G. Harvie wrote a letter to the Kent Messenger dated 18th May 1951, which wasentitled:London Transport and the PassengersSince London Transport’s compulsory acquisition in 1933, trams and track have beenneglected and no new vehicles built. The two penny cheap fare, one shilling all dayreturn and workmen’s tickets have been abolished together with the useful transferfacilities. Last October fares were raised to offset the cost of tramway abandonment,and now we face another fare increase. London Transport has not inherited theLCC’s concern for the passenger’s welfare.Replying to this letter F. Muskett said:Yet, we are told, buses are cheaper to operate than trams. If this is so, why do notfares drop when the trams are withdrawn?The truth is that trams have always provided the cheaper fares, and this is still true incities using the modern tram. In London there have been heavy fare increases sincetram scrapping began, in some cases of 200 or 300%.In a similar vein, a letter was written to The Star on 6th September 1950.A Word For TramsLondon’s fares are high enough now. Would these increases be necessary if thetrams were modernised instead of being scrapped? Modern trams give a betterservice than is possible with buses.A .J. Watkins replied:In all large towns that have abandoned tramways, fares have risen steeply, and arestill rising. Let Londoners take warning and press for tramway modernisation evenwhen there are hints of still more increases.28The matter of fare increases was also debated by the London County Council, and wasreported by the Evening News on 7th March 1950, under the heading:Tory Challenge On London FaresThe Leader of the London County Council asked: Is there a safeguard?Mr. I. J. Hayward, Labour leader of the LCC, will be asked at tomorrow’s councilmeeting if he proposes to take any steps to safeguard the interests of the travellingpublic in London in view of the Transport Commission’s proposals to revisepassenger fares in London.The matter is expected to be raised by the Tory councillor for the Hampstead division,Mr. Geoffrey Hutchinson, KC, who leads for his Party on the Finance Committee.Mr. Hutchinson has tabled a question asking the leader whether the proposals willinvolve an additional burden amounting to £3.5 million a year to the travelling costsof the people of London, and whether they will involve abandoning workman’s fareson trams and trolley buses without providing an adequate compensating advantage.Many Londoners were concerned about the loss of workman’s tickets. Apparently,trams and trolley buses were legally obliged to provide workman’s fares but the buseswere not. This amounted to an increase in fares for the travelling public.Mr. Clayton, branch organiser of the London Passenger Association, said that:The public were not informed as to what may or may not happen – so they thoughtthat nothing would happen.. A .J. Watkins wrote in The Star on 7th February 1950:The proposed fare increases will cause hardship to the average passenger. Althoughcheaper rail fares are promised, this is no comfort to those who have no convenientrailway to use, whilst the railways cannot, at peak hours, absorb additional trafficresulting from fare increases. Passengers will have to continue to use road transport– at higher fares.It is significant that the increases are to take effect in October, when the Wandsworthtram routes are to be withdrawn. Tram scrapping has always resulted in higherfares, apparently London is to be no exception.To summarise:• Tram scrapping would result in higher fares.• Trams were more economical to run.• The system had to be modernised and improved.• The ideas of the pro-tram group were not heeded by the LTE.29The Modern Tramway March 1950, has an article entitled London Transport FareAdjustments. The article states that:Under the title of the London Area (Interim) Passenger Charges Scheme, the BritishTransport Commission is submitting to the Transport Tribunal a number of proposalsfor the elimination of the “many inequitable anomalies” which result form the“existing different levels of fares” obtaining on the various modes of transport in theLondon area, including the suburban services of the Railway Executive.Among other things, it is proposed to replace the workmen’s fares at present limitedto trolley bus, tram and train by a system of cheap early morning fares available onall forms of transport except Green Line coaches. The new early morning fares willbe higher, in general, than the present workmen’s fares and in all cases lower thanthe proposed ordinary fares. These, on London Transport services will b e revised toa basis of about 1 ¼d a mile. The existing 1½d minimum fare for about one mileremains; the 2½ fare is raised to 3d ; the 4d and 5d fares remain: above that, fareswill be increased as required to the 1¼d a mile scale. Transfer fares (mainlyconfined to trams) will cease.The commission are seeking authority to introduce these changes on 1st October1950, when the conversion of the South London tramway to bus operation is due tobegin. The estimated net effect of the lowering of some fares and the raising of othersis to increase the gross receipts from passenger services in the London area in a fullyear from about £74,250,000 to about £77,750,000.I conclude this chapter with a lengthy letter to The Star 14 – 8-1950 written by A. J.Watkins in which he set out clearly his reasons for not scrapping the trams.The Editor The StarDear SirAt the end of 1949 I offered some comments on the effect that the London tramwayconversion scheme could have on fares, and you raised the matter with LondonTransport. I stated that the authorities refused to give an assurance that the schemewould not entail higher fares, and this led me to the conclusions:1. Economic implications of the scheme were not known, which renderedcommencement of work unjustified.2. That the general effect was known, but the authorities did not wish to divulgethis until the full scheme was prepared. The statement was made in February1950, by which time work on conversion was in hand.Subsequent events justified conclusion (2), but in view of the date of publication, it isevident that the general information that I desired could have been given whenrequested.The evidence given at the Transport Tribunal has made it clear that the conversionscheme has considerably influenced the fare proposals. Although the reason given is30an intention to ‘level’ road and rail fares, it should be stressed that the bulk, if not all,of the increased revenue (£2.5 to £3.5 million) will go to a concern already making aprofit. Rail single fares will, in some cases, be reduced but day return tickets do notappear to be altered (e.g. Bexley to Charing Cross will remain at 2/10d), and mostpeople use return tickets. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the increase is topay for the tramway conversion scheme, and this has been partially admitted. It isalso verified by the fact that, in most large towns to scrap trams, fares have risenconsiderably, as witness the following examples:1. Manchester Trams gone and fares are still rising.2. Liverpool Fares rise and cheap facilities are withdrawn as each tramroute is closed.3. London There have been two fare increases since tramwayabandonment commenced.Witnesses at the Transport Tribunal have suggested that tramway modernisationcould remove the necessity for such heavy fare increases, and certain figures werepublished in “The Star” recently. It should be stressed that heavy capitalexpenditure after a short period is an economic necessity with the busprogramme, but the expenditure on a tramway modernisation programme couldbe spread over a period, as much of this equipment could be used.It has been suggested that London’s trams are on their last legs, but while this istrue of some, it is not true of the whole fleet. 92 trams are to be sold to anotherauthority, and about 200 others may also be sold. Transport authorities wouldnot buy old junk! An improved standard of maintenance would eliminate thepresent uncomfortable riding and breakdowns, and in connection with this Iappend details of capital expenditure over the period 1941-1947.Another aspect is that of fuel and rubber. Both buses and trolley buses use rubberand buses imported diesel oil, but trams use neither apart from the comparativelysmall amounts used for insulation and lubrication. In view of the economicsituation it is necessary to curtail imports to a minimum, and the increased use oftrams, and, to a lesser extent, trolleybuses, would help in this direction.I appreciate the publicity “The Star” has given to the efforts to prevent the fareincreases, and hope these comments will be of use to you.Yours faithfully,A. J. Watkins31CHAPTER 6A QUESTION OF CAPACITYReplace trams, cut down queues!This was one of the arguments of the LTE for tram scrapping. The LTE implied thatthe bus would be more flexible and thereby cut down long queues.The pro-tram group argued that this could not be so as a 56-seater bus would replace a74-seater tram. They said that more buses would be required to carry the samenumber of people as were carried by tram.A letter was published in the Kentish Mercury 19th May 1950 entitled:Buses for Trams - A Question of Capacity.I do not know whether the public of South London have considered the difference inthe number of passengers which will result from the conversion of trams to buses, butthe outlook is rather gloomy.In a recent “Mercury” article it was stated that 800 trams are to be replaced bynearly 1200 buses. The great majority of trams are 74-seaters, with a total carryingcapacity of 59,200, but the new buses only carry 56, which means the total capacity of1,000 buses will be 56,000. Assuming all vehicles are on the road at the same time,3,200 passengers will be left behind. Add to this the fact that the buses almostcertainly will not cover exactly the present tram routes but will no doubt extendbeyond, it is easy to see now that more buses will be needed to provide the sameservice.What are these other 3,200 would be passengers going to do to get to work? Go byUnderground? Impossible, there is not an adequate system in any part of SouthLondon; there is, of course, the Southern Electric, but these trains are grosslyovercrowded as it is. To provide a complete and satisfactory service, I think at least1,200 buses will be needed to replace the trams.We in South London, especially the South East, must see to it that we are not leftbehind, as so often has happened in the past. Alan F. DeverellIn reply to the above letter, A. J. Watkins said:Mr. Deverell’s fears that tram replacement will result in a lower passenger carryingcapacity are well justified, as tram scrapping elsewhere has often resulted in longerqueues. This would be overcome by providing additional vehicles, but is influencedby the problem of street congestion. This is steadily growing and several extravehicles will only hasten the trend towards chaos. A large increase in the number ofroad vehicles is undesirable, and high capacity passenger vehicles are necessary.In London, these are supplied by 74 seat tramcars, whilst higher capacity trams, e.g.Blackpool’s 84-seaters, are operated on modern systems. The use of similar cars inLondon would mean better services with no extra vehicles.32I do not suggest that London’s tramway system be retained in its present form, butmodernised until it can be replaced by electric light railways, running on reservedtracks or in subways, and operated by high capacity rail coaches.Here are some extracts from readers’ letters published in the Kentish Mercury in1951. The letters quoted below illustrate the need for good public transport inLondon.S.E. London Transport. A Reader’s DemandsWhen the LPTB took over the running of buses and trams after smashing all privateenterprise, they gave us a slogan: “ Cheapness and Efficiency.” Those in Lewishamwho have memories now emit a hollow groan every time they recall –as they must dothe very many efficient services we used to have under private competition.There are no prizes for the answer, but can anyone tell me if there is any worseservice anywhere in the world than a number 58 service tram.Perhaps the LTE would like to explain to the hundreds of people who wait anythingfrom 15 to 25 minutes at King William’s Walk, Greenwich, in all weathers afterworking all day, their idea of “Cheapness and Efficiency.” When the LCC ran thecars along that route we had two services (Nos. 58 and 62) and a rush-hour service(No. 50).We have repeatedly been told that the LTE are taking the trams off the roads andsubstituting three buses for every two trams, but I invite the people to considercarefully what will happen when they do. During December we had a fair example ofdifferent classes of weather and what happened? Buses were practically at astandstill in fog and frost. The people who on one night waited over half an hour fora bus opposite the Town hall, Catford, could give an answer to that. The trams werestill moving occasionally, although perhaps not in the direction that everyone wanted.The South-East of London is being very badly served and everyone could demand thatwe should have the services we are entitled to, and if the LTE cannot supply them,someone else should be allowed to.A tube should at once be considered and started. This would serve a dual purpose ofproviding an atom bomb shelter and a passenger transport service in any weather.A .B. StewartArrangements made to send letter and literature to Mr Stewart, and an official letter tothe paper. (A.J.Watkins)33In reply to Mr. A.B. Stewart’s letter to the Kentish Mercury, Mr. George DodsonWells, Chief Public Relations Officer for the London Transport Executive, wrote:I would assure you that we are doing all we can to give travellers in this part ofLondon the best possible facilities. As regards tram route 58, to which your readersparticularly refer, a service of 15 trams an hour is scheduled to operate on this routeduring the peak periods, with six extra trams to Catford, at the busiest times, in theevening.When fully operated, this service is ample for the requirements of the traffic. Thetrouble to which Mr. Stewart refers, which is greatly regretted, has occurred becausethe route has been affected by acute staff and rolling stock difficulties, which depletedservices on a number of occasions.Supervision is given by an official to the queues at King William Walk, Greenwich, onall possible occasions to ensure that the services are operated to the best advantage.A separate queue for route 58 faces the queue for routes 36, 38, and 40 to makeconditions as easy as possible, and, when the situation permits, trams are turned backtowards Catford and Forest Hill.Perhaps, I may add that the trams on route 58 are to be replaced by buses in Octoberthis year and that all the trams in South East London will be replaced by the end of1952. We trust, despite your correspondent’s fears, that this will contribute anoticeable improvement to transport facilities in that area.Published in the Kentish Mercury 16th February 1951.34Map showing the Kingsway Subway drawn by the late John C. Gillham and given tothe author. Reproduced with his kind permission.35CHAPTER 7THE KINGSWAY SUBWAYA tunnel running from the Embankment, under Aldwych through Kingsway, toBloomsbury still exists. This was once part of a tram route linking South and NorthLondon.The Kingsway Subway was five eighths of a mile long. The gradient from theKingsway to the Strand was one in twenty. It had bright new stations and there weretrams every six minutes from five o’clock in the morning until ten minutes pastmidnight. The journey from Southampton Row to Charing Cross took six minutes.The subway was an excellent fast link from North to South London giving goodconnections with the East End of London.Tram entering the Kingsway Subway. (A.J.Watkins’ collection).There is a very detailed account of the history of the Kingsway subway by C. SDunbar in his book on the Kingsway subway, entitled:London’s Tramway Subway, published by the LRTL in 1948.In his account it is stated that approval for the subway was granted in 1902 to linkTheobalds Road to the Embankment at Waterloo Bridge.On 29th December 1905, a new line was inspected by the Board of Trade in RoseberyAvenue and St. John’s Street to the Angel at Islington. Public service from the Angelto the Aldwych began on 24th February 1906. Smoking in the cars was not permittedbecause of the risk of fire. On 16th November 1906 the route was extended toHighbury station. The Embankment tramway also opened as powers for the subwaylink had been obtained. Through services using single deck F Class cars commencedon 10th April 1908, but the tunnel was not high enough for the double-deckers.In 1929 the London County Council decided to increase the headroom to sixteen feetsix inches. The roof of the tunnel was raised at the northern end and all the rest of the36tunnel was deepened. Service using double-decker vehicles commenced on 14thJanuary 1931 and a batch of new E3 cars were allocated to subway services.Sadly, on 5th April 1952 trams ran through the subway for the last time carryingmembers of the Light Railway Transport League.The members of the Light Railway Transport League wanted to retain, extend anddevelop this route as a rapid transit route.In a letter to the Evening Standard 18th May 1950, J. Thompson of Tooting wrote:Why Not Retain the Tunnel?Reader W.H. Bett says that the Kingsway tramway tunnel is unsuitable for motortraffic. Surely this justifies the retention and modernisation of the three tramwayroutes using it?As an advocate of a modern light rail transit system for London, Alan Watkins wasstrongly in favour of retaining the Kingsway subway. Writing in the Evening Newsdated 27th June 1950 he said:In suggesting that London trams should be replaced by some form of railway, readerA.P. Tatt, writing in the “Evening News” on 26th June 1950, apparently realises thatreplacement by buses will not improve the transport situation, but will worsen streetcongestion and slow down services. Abandonment of the Kingsway tram subwaymeans three surface bus routes, which may disorganise traffic in this area. Retentionof the subway and development of a system of reserved-track tramways and subwayswould, therefore be beneficial.In a letter to The Star dated 18th October 1949 entitled Tramway Subways. S.P..Harriswrote:One of the most useful and efficient methods of underground travel – the Kingswaytram subway from Bloomsbury to the Embankment- may be abandoned when SouthLondon’s trams are replaced by buses. The principle of tramway subways is one thathas not been exploited sufficiently in London.In a letter to Modern Transport dated 25th January 1950 Alan Watkins wrote:Mr. Joyce’s Birmingham experiences confirm my own. The tramways there havemany good points, and are superior to London’s, being in better condition, andproviding more reliable services. I found congestion to be mainly away from the tramtermini, the present trouble in Martineau Street being non-existent as the Perry Barrand Witton trams were then running. Trams were arriving and departing regularly,as was the case at the other termini.The reserved tracks are an asset to the city, and should be a feature of most largetowns. In conjunction with tram subways, they give many of the advantages of anunderground railway (and are cheaper to construct) combined with the accessibility37of street tramway and bus routes, and greatly assist in improving traffic conditions.The replacement of trams by buses does not lead to better traffic flow, and the onlyreal solution is to remove the heavy passenger transport from the streets.Reserved tracks exist in many systems and are capable of considerable expansion,whilst the value of tram subways is shown by the speedy and congestion-free servicesgiven by the Kingsway subway in London.Tram in the Kingsway subway 1946© GF Ashwell.1 (AJ Watkins' collection).The following extract is taken from an article in the Kentish Independent dated 12thAugust 1949 entitled:They want Trams under the StreetsThe members of the Tramway Development Council, anxious to stop London fromdiscarding its tram system, visualize modern subway tram systems bigger and betterthan the Kingsway Subway, capable of carrying thousands of passengers in silentcomfortable high-speed trams. These could speed safely through the tunnels at 25second intervals. Subway tramways are cheaper to build than tube railways. It saysthat its system could be installed for an average cost of £200,000 a mile, and no costlysignalling equipment would be required. A tube line costs more than £1,500,000 amile.Although the proposed scheme would mean that subways would have to be built underthe streets in congested districts, the trams would come to the surface where there issufficient room, and run on lines fenced off from the adjacent roads. In this way, it isclaimed, that the trams would offer no obstruction to other traffic.The leader of Woolwich Borough Council said:1 The author has been unable to trace the present copyright holder of GF Ashwell’s photographs thatthe late Alan Watkins had in his collection.38As I don’t think the proposal would be acceptable to the LTE I have not given it anyfurther consideration.To summarise the thoughts expressed in this chapter, the foundations for a rapidmodern improved tramway system for London were in situ. Instead of developingthis system, the LTE abandoned it.Their philosophy of total tramway abandonment did not bring order out of chaosinstead it eventually led to greater congestion, chaos and atmospheric pollution thatLondon’s legacy is today.Bus above entrance to Kingsway subway 1947 © G.F. Ashwell.(A.J.Watkins’ collection).The Last Day of the Kingsway Subway Tram in London. (A.J. Watkins’ collection).39CHAPTER 8THE END OF THE ROADDuring the years 1951-1952, the Light Railway Transport League accelerated itscampaign to modernise and retain the London tram. On 7th April 1951, there was aspecial tram tour of South London. This was held on the last Saturday along thePurley and Thornton Heath route before stage three of the abandonment, seventymembers attended. Modern Tramway reported that the well-known driver, StanCollins drove the last tram. Proceeds from the sale of tickets went to charity.Stan Collins driving the last tram on 7th April 1951 (LT Museum).In March 1951, Croydon passengers complained of inadequate bus services alongroutes not served by trams.On 24th November 1951, the Chairman of the LRTL gave an address that wasdamning to the enthusiasm of the South London campaigners. He said:Although we still believe in our principles, the weight of the LTE is too much for us.The London Transport Executive is a power of its own. I have come to the conclusionthat no matter how one appeals to them with reason, they will not budge from theirposition that they will supply the type of public transport they think fit. The publichave no voice whatsoever, even Parliament, I understand, has no voice in this matter.Alan Watkins, referring to the Chairman’s address, asked that an ExtraordinaryGeneral Meeting be held to determine the future of the League.In Modern Tramway December 1951 there is a letter from Ken Farrell advocatingtramway retention and I quote from part of it.40The case for tramway retention is undoubtedly stronger in Glasgow, Birmingham,Pittsburgh and Lille than in London…but, nevertheless there is a strong case fortrams especially for outer suburban and interurban services. In London the South London trams served an area penetrated by only oneunderground railway, already loaded to capacity, as were also the surface electriclines of the Southern Region.There were various factors for tramway abolition, many of which have already beenmentioned heretofore. The major factors were:• London Transport did not like them!• Buses were cheaper to run and were more flexible.• Trams were regulated, but buses were not.• Expiry of 21year tram leases whereby the local authority was given the right topurchase a privately owned undertaking after a period of 21 years from thetime when the providers were empowered to construct it and for every sevenyears after the initial twenty one as stipulated in the Tramways Act of 1870.• Vehicles and tracks were in need of renewal and repair.• Buses were a cheap alternative to this.Charles Klapper in an article for the Journal of the Institute of Transport November1953 wrote:After the formation of LPTB in 1933, it was decided to extend the trolleybus route tothe rest of the South London system to Bexley, Erith, and Dartford where the trackand cars were worn out. When the South London scheme came up for review in 1945after the second world war, the motorbus was favoured instead of the trolleybus. Atthat time (before taxation changes) diesel fuel cost less than traction current. In 1946a bus scheme for London was prepared. In the last stage, 114 buses replaced 162trams. 737 trams were taken out of service and were replaced by 768 buses.In volume 10 no. 2 September 1989 of The Journal of Transport History Richard J.Buckley wrote:Capital cost was the reason for tramway abandonment. Once fresh capitalexpenditure was envisaged. It became clear that the tramway would cease to beviable. In 1951, bus capital costs were less than the capital costs for trams. This waslargely due to permanent way renewal.In 1952, at the time of the abandonment of the trams, The Economist dated 5th July1952 published an article entitled: A Street car named Defunct wherein the reasonsfor tramway abandonment were listed:• Trams were not allowed to run in the West End of London.• Prejudice against trams.• Limited allowance of trams into the City.• With its narrow streets, London was not like continental cities.• 1870 Tramways Act, which stipulated that the road between the rails andpavement 18 inches either side had to be maintained by the operating powers.41• Housing developments which were away from tram routes made tramwayextension expensive.• Continental cities did not have the same amount of urban sprawl. Therefore,tramways were economically viable.The article cites costs:RECEIPT FOR TRAMSEXCESS RUNNINGCOSTS VEHICLE COSTS£2,360.000 £1,250,000 TRAMS £8,000-£11,000 BUSES £3,500-£5,000 TROLLEYBUSES £6,000The article states that:The capital cost per seat provided is about the same for a bus and trolley bus – andabout half what it is for a tram..The article concludes with the negative thought:The tram is still a major form of transport in Europe, with the exception ofFrance…yet there are signs on the Continent that the tram will not go on forever.During the years from 1948-1950, the campaign to save the tram became veryvigorous. In 1948 the LRTL South London Branch sent postcards to 6,000 people.One tenth of the replies received favoured modernising the trams.At that time, the South London Press was sympathetic towards the trams and printedmany pro-tram letters, articles and reports on what was happening. On the whole, thenational press was not sympathetic and seemed to be indifferent to the whole matter.42Tram 1951 at New Cross Depot 5th July 1952. (Author unknown).In 1949, the Tramway Development Council, whose headquarters was at Peckham,was formed to save the London trams. The Council staged a leaflet campaign thatadvocated modern single-deck trams to carry about 80 passengers. There was also aSouth East London Action Group, in which the late Alan John Watkins was involved,which met at the Progress Hall, Eltham.On 25th March 1950 a meeting was held at St. Leonard’s Church Hall, Streatham, atwhich 80-100 people were present. It was proposed to delay tram scrapping in favourof replacement by modern vehicles.On 15th June 1950, a public meeting was held at the very large Lambeth Town Hall,Brixton. Several speakers for tramway retention were present, but the hall was onlyhalf full.London Transport publicly stated that the trams were to be scrapped in order to secureintegration with other transport services!In 1952 the campaign to save the London tram ended in failure.43Fletham Tram in 1952 at Penhall Road waiting to be scrapped (A.J. Watkins’collection).The last tram week in London, which signified the end of a particular transport era,has been well documented by both the national and local press as well as by sometransport journals. The selected letters and articles used in this account tell their ownpoignant tale.However, 1952 is not the final chapter in the story of this campaign. The seeds for agood clean efficient transport system sown by those who campaigned for one fiftyyears ago are beginning to germinate. There is now the Croydon Tramlink and theDocklands Light Railway in London. There is talk of bringing more trams back intoCentral London. Suddenly, the tram seems to be a good idea. Politicians are at longlast beginning to agree with the pro-tram arguments of 1952.44Front and reverse of tram ticket portraying Last Tram Week July 1952. Given to theauthor by Diana Burfield. Reproduced by kind permission.Last tram week in London. July 1952. (A.J. Watkins’ collection).45CHAPTER 9THE EFFECTS OF TRAMWAY ABANDONMENTThe late Alan Watkins early in 1952 wrote the following account of the repercussionsof abandoning the trams in London:Recently London Transport has stated that the abandonment of tramways has resultedin a big improvement in traffic conditions. This has not been the experience ofseveral independent observers (except in the lane of New Cross Gate), and it issuggested that, where there has been some slight improvement (as at Kennington), thesame could have been achieved by road and track improvements, which, in mostcases, have been long delayed. The following examples are selected:1. New Cross Gate: Considerable delays have always been experienced owing tothe trams running in and out of the depot, and the changing of crews whichwas often carried out with anything but smartness. This point isunsatisfactory for a depot, but the following improvements could have beenmade: A double triangular junction into the depot, eliminating the necessityfor reversing cars running in. Quicker crew changes.Even so, little improvement could have been effected by the use of buses had not manyof the replacing buses been operated from Rye Lane garage, Peckham. This has quitenaturally led to coincidental improvement at New Cross Gate, but much of the troublehas been transferred to the narrowest part of Peckham High Street, almost on top ofthe busy Rye Lane junction.2. Elephant and Castle: Improvement here can be attributed to the new trafficarrangements, whereby road traffic is now controlled by the general flow ofthe trams.3. Brixton: The position here is steadily worsening as the trams are removed.Large traffic blocks are prevalent, and conditions are so bad that the busesare forced to load and unload in the middle of the road. This representsdeterioration as tramway passengers could use a loading island.Some years ago, an independent body proposed a tramway subway under Brixton.Had this scheme been followed, considerable improvement would have beeneffected, as the following services could have been removed from the street (basedon existing routes):TRAM NOW BUS8-20 5722-24 5016-18 10910 9578 17833 Tram service still running464. Victoria (Vauxhall Bridge Road) Considerable improvement has beenclaimed. This can hardly be so as some bus services now turn in the middle ofVauxhall Bridge Road, blocking all traffic by so doing. This was not so in thedays of the trams as, although there were often several trams waiting to enterthe terminus, the rest of the road was free for other traffic.5. Embankment Traffic congestion has increased since the introduction of buses.Formerly, all public transport was virtually segregated from other traffic.There have been at least two serious accidents due to the conversion.6. Kingsway Subway The full effect in Kingsway cannot be judged until thewithdrawal of tram routes 33-35 in April. Despite several questions, noauthority has yet explained how closing the subway can improve trafficconditions in this part of London.From the foregoing it will be seen that:1. The improvement in traffic conditions due to withdrawal of the trams isgenerally negligible.2. That the reverse often occurs.3. That at least £9,000,000 has been spent on the conversion scheme that willshow no long-term good results. The money could have been better spent,with better results, on tramway modernisation.Before proceeding to discuss the advantages of installing a new rapid transit tramwaysystem, the effects of the conversion on services should be mentioned. It should besaid that the tram services were far from satisfactory. Journeys were often delayedand many cars never reached their destination. The vehicles were often dirty and badriding.It is quite true that in many cases the buses are running less erratically and arekeeping better to schedule. This has been claimed as a vindication of the scheme, butthe following should be borne in mind when considering this aspect: Operation of the trams was inefficient. Many tram drivers deliberately wentat a slow speed, even when higher speeds were possible. It is doubtfulwhether any encouragement was given from higher quarters. There is no doubt that the trams could have been operated more efficientlyand it is interesting to note that many tram systems operate their carsregularly, frequently and efficiently. The London trams were dirty because no one bothered to clean them, and badriding because maintenance was poor. No effort was made to put the track into first-class condition. In thecirc*mstances, it was hardly surprising that the trams were unpopular. As regards the effect on passengers waiting to board vehicles, the result hasbeen definitely retrospective. Queues have lengthened because the capacityof the routes has, in most cases, dropped considerably. On top of this, many services have been cut. The result of the conversion is therefore, in general, a deterioration ofservices.47EconomicsIt has been claimed that the trams in South London were losing £1,000,000 perannum. For 100 miles of route, this is fantastic. It is suggested that, if they werelosing this amount of money, the department concerned is inefficient, and the mattershould be investigated. Glasgow has the largest tramway system in the country and,although, at the moment it is also losing money, it is doing so at only a third of therate in London. (The financial result of the re-introduction of penury. Fares on theGlasgow trams, and in some cases, buses will be watched with interest).It was admitted at the Transport Tribunal in 1950 that the increase in fares (whichcame into effect on October 1st 1950) was not considered unreasonable in view of thecost of the tramway conversion scheme. Now fares are to go up again!GeneralDespite the objection of many Londoners to the trams, several quarters have asked fora trial of modern trams. London Transport has refused all these requests and alsoturned down all offers to provide a tram for this purpose.It will be seen that the public have not been allowed to have a say in the matter. It isfeared that the authorities have decided that the trams must go, and that the policymust be carried through despite all protests and adverse effects.It has already been mentioned that the public were not given an opportunity to see apractical demonstration of modern tramways. Despite this, a modernisation plan,based on existing routes, was prepared and submitted to the Executive for theirconsideration. The plan could not be considered on the grounds that the Executivewas committed to the tram scrapping policy – a rather peculiar statement, since theyinstigated the scheme.In a letter to the Kentish Mercury on 18th August 1950, Alan Watkins wrote:Sir,As a regular user of London’s trams, I welcome the scrapping of the existing vehicles,but do not think that buses are best as their replacement. Having subscribed to thecry “Scrap the trams,” I have since experienced all forms of public road transport,and visited cities where trams are modern, fast (no swaying or lumbering), andoperated efficiently at cheap fares (Glasgow- 14 miles for 4d). Also, the usual resultsof tramway abandonment have been longer queues, inferior service, more accidentsand congestion, and higher fares. This will be so in London if the trams go; and onemajor inconvenience is the increase of the 7d maximum fare to 1s. 3d. I thereforewelcome, however belated, any plan for tramway modernisation as an alternative tothese inconveniences.Yours faithfully,A. J Watkins48CHAPTER 10CAMPAIGN SATIREParticipants in this campaign produced a satirical magazine called Bell Punch. I havea copy of some of these magazines in the late Alan J. Watkins’ handwriting. I thoughtthat it would be interesting to include some excerpts from them. One article isparticularly amusing and not entirely related to tramway campaigning.WRITING TO THE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER.The diversion of writing to the PRO is a most unrewarding one. Those used to it donot usually expect a reply, but do at least get a good laugh from it.The life history of a letter to the PRO is interesting to trace. Having arrived at the headquarters of the transport authority in question, all lettersare sorted into grades labelled:1. Praise2. Enquiry3. Protest4. StinkingThe number of letters in the first and second categories is negligible, while categoriesthree and four comprise the bulk of the correspondence. Letters in the first andsecond categories are normally answered promptly i.e. in ten or twelve days. Lettersin the other categories do not usually receive answers for some time, this presumablyin the hope that the writer had forgotten what he protested about, for the reply oftenbears no resemblance to the subject of the original letter.Category four is the most interesting, and we will follow the history of such a letter.A gentleman one day waits an abnormally long time for his transport, and decides totell the operators where they get off, and with pen dipped in poison, proceeds to retailthe sins of his local transport services.The massive missive is conveyed via the usual channels to the palatial headquarters ofthe wrongdoers and together with other similar epistles is sorted as above.“Stinking” letters are conveyed by officials wearing rubber gloves, gas capes andrespirators to a place where they are allowed to cool off.When the dust is thick enough the letter in question is first opened, then read andforwarded to the “Stock Phrases and Platitudes Dept.” Round the walls are largecabinets full of phrases designed to confuse the issue and divulge nothing.The reply, having been duly processed and vetted, probably appears as follows:Dear Sir,We thank you for your letter of the 14th ult.Buses on service run at 3 minute intervals and full investigation has failed to revealany irregularity at the time and date to which you refer.As you are no doubt aware, the trams are being replaced by a more mobile form oftransport, but trolleybuses were not chosen as these vehicles are route bound in muchthe same way as trams.49We are sorry that the state of certain trams gives cause for complaint, and sections oftrack are, in your opinion, in bad repair. Last year, miles of track way were relaid,and tramcar maintenance accords with the highest standards of safety.You refer to the apparently unnecessary removal of stop signs, station nameplates,etc., and their replacement by new type signs. We assure you that all signs replacedhave reached the end of their useful life.We thank you for drawing our attention to the above matters. Yours , etc.And this is what he could have written in an uncensored reply:Dear Sir,After several weeks of dust gathering, the department has condescended to open yourletter.We agree with you that service is atrocious. The buses run how and when they like,but we do not intend to do anything about it.So you dare to question the policy of replacing trams by buses, instead oftrolleybuses! We have no more to say on this subject.We agree that the trams and tracks are falling to bits, but you must realise thatspecially low standards of maintenance are part of our policy.Perfectly good signs and nameplates are removed and replaced by others bearinggarish replicas of our insignia, the sign of the greatest transport authority in theworld.So, if you intend to write to the PRO you know what to expect!Another amusing item was a satire in verse that could be sung to a chorus from “ThePirates of Penzance” by Gilbert and Sullivan. It is entitled:,TRAMATHOLOGYO! What a glorious opportunityTo scrap the trams with impunityFor we must have vehicles with elasticicity,-We want nothing on the road that runs on electricity.At Penhall there is every facility,To carry out our latest imbecilityFor it can be nothing but insanity,Preventing this is an asset to humanity.Satire was also portrayed in this mock advertisem*nt:LATHAM BARNES & CO. UNLTD.DEMOLITION CONTRACTORSFA(I)RE RAISING A SPECIALITYALL FORMS OF DESTRUCTION WORK UNDERTAKEN.50SPECIAL TERMS FOR RAILED VEHICLESOUR NEW REFUSE DESTRUCTOR CATERS FOR ALL TYPES OF BUSES.NO ONE CAN MATCH OUR QUOTATIONS WHICH ARE HIGHLY FARE.HEAD OFFICE: BROADWAY THEATRE, LONDON. TEL: RELapse 000 Dear.WORKS: PENHALL ROAD, CHARLTON. TEL: CRD 1597 (No Extensions).TELEGRAMS; TRAMAWAY, LONDON, E.1.FIRE SUBSTATION: CHANGE-PIT, DOWNHAM. TEL: C(L)A 1796.CIRc*msTANCES (FORTUNATELY) BEYOND OUR CONTROLLEADS TO OUR FELTHAM DEPOT BEINGCLOSED.TEL. ENQUIRIES – B (R ) N 109.On the political front in December 1951:The motto of the new Government seems to be, ‘Nothing succeeds like recess.’A complaint from the LRTL.The League complains that little information is forthcoming from members intramway centres. Certainly news from London, Liverpool and Birmingham is on thescrappy side.Another (not very complimentary) advertisem*nt:VISIT THE FLEECE SHOP55, BROADWAY, S.W.1.THE BEST SHEEP LIVE HERELet us pull the wool over your eyes.ADVICE TO BEGINNERS:HOW TO TRAVEL BY BUSORDID YOUR MOTHER COME FROMLEYLAND?Owing to circ*mstances beyond their control, many people are faced with thefrightening necessity of having to go about their daily business by bus. This article isdesigned to lessen the fears of those unaccustomed to this form of transport.51The first thing to do is to find the bus terminus. This is not as easy as it sounds. Indistricts where tramways have been scrapped this is usually hidden cunningly away insome inaccessible side street.This is done on purpose, so that the service seems adequate to cope with the traffic.There is no redress, however for the Executive is not responsible for the failure ofpassengers to find the bus terminus.The exhausted passenger arrives at the terminus, the conductor and driver, who themoment beforehand, have been loafing against the radiator, leap into frenzied action.The bus starts with a jolting, and all standing passengers assume a horizontal position.If one intends to brave the top deck, the conductor may ask for one’s fare on theplatform; at this instant the bus turns a sharp corner, and it is a toss up between youand centrifugal force.It is well to read the regulations regarding public service vehicles before travelling.How many passengers know that it is an offence not to raise your hat when enteringthe London Transport area; also that it is an offence to alight from a vehicle other thanby the doors and openings provided for that purpose. Though we feel that an exitfrom the top deck window would prove hazardous in normal circ*mstances. Theregulation forbidding the throwing of money on the pavement to be scrambled forseems unnecessary; you couldn’t do this after paying your fare.The sensible passenger thus boards the bus and mounts the stairs, bracing himselfa*gainst the top of the staircase for the first pause in the transmission. If he hurries tohis seat, he will be just in time to miss the second pause. However, his troubles havejust started. A sharp look out should be kept for ruts in the road, drain covers and thelike.Looking out of the window, the passenger observes little groups of people waving atthe bus every few hundred yards. This is not applause, but (intending) passengerswaiting at request stops. The usual method of obviating the nuisance of having tostop is for the driver to wait for the bus in front to stop, and then rush past the stop.How can a driver keep to schedule if he has to stop on the route?Sometimes drivers become lonely when there are no other buses about, and so run inconvoy; this is “a banana service.” Other bus driving tactics include the “pincermovement”, in which any vehicle approaching a bus stop is forced into the kerb, andthe “kerb-polishing erosion service,” much in evidence in narrow streets.Some years ago, the heads of the bus industry got together to design a bus in whichthe lower deck passengers would bump their heads, and the upper deck passengerswould be unable to see out of the windows. This is known as the low-bridge bus, andthe occupational disease of their passengers is “low-bridge bus neck.”The observant passenger notices that buses are divided into different types:Uncomfortable and very uncomfortable. The Regent Type (AEC) is chieflydistinguished by the fact that it is the only bus that lurches violently when it isstanding still. This is due to the improved air compression brakes which announce52their approach by a loud shrieking noise. The foregoing remarks also apply to theRegent Type (Leyland), but in addition, this type can be identified be the pneumaticdrill motion of the steering column, to which drivers are introduced by a spell with apermanent way gang.Of course all these bumps and vibrations cause such a rattling in the bus that, after atime, conversation is impossible, and this is out of the question anyway on one type ofbus that has such a rough engine that ones voice is turned to sand paper.Sometimes in winter bus drivers haven’t the foggiest idea where they are going, butthe passengers are taken on a cheap mystery tour. The torchlight processions are oneof the sights.Even the hardiest bus traveller must recoil from a journey in icy conditions. If there isa steep camber on the road, it often happens that the vehicle cannot restart, which is,perhaps, just as well. It is useful to remember that, if the bus cannot remain in anupright position, passengers may break the glass to escape (having previouslyobtained the permission of the Executive.)But, strange as it may seem, there are still people who actually like buses!This article concludes my selection from Bell Punch. The magazine during its briefperiod of publication contained many satirical articles, poems and advertisem*nts.Maybe, the enthusiasts and campaigners felt that a little fun at the LTPB’s expensehelped to keep them sane.The last tram in London. 21/7/1953. © F. Merton Atkins. 1 Under this tarpaulin issnow broom 022 , former LCC B class car 106 at Penhall Road . This has now beenrestored by London County Council Tramways Trust as an open top car and now runsat The National Tramway Museum at Crich in Derbyshire.(A.J.Watkins’collection).1 The author has been unable to trace the copyright holder of Mr. F. Merton Atkins’ photograph.53CHAPTER 11CONCLUSION: THE END AND A NEW BEGINNINGOn July 5th 1952, the last tram ran in London. Most of the trams were burnt at the“tramatorium” at Penhall Road, Woolwich. Julian Thompson in his book LondonTrams in Camera states that on July 4th 1952, the League said:Tomorrow we come to what is surely the blackest day in tramway history.A few trams were saved for posterity. July 5th 1952 marked the apparent failure of along campaign.No one would have imagined that 35 years later a light railway would emerge inLondon. The Docklands Light Railway opened in 1987, and has proved to be sopopular that it has been extended to link Lewisham with Greenwich thus providing avital link between South London and the City.THE DOCKLAND’S LIGHT RAILWAYA FLOURISHING AND GROWING SYSTEMDocklands Light Railway cars at Greenwich Station 2008. (Author’s photograph).54In 1991 the feasibility of a tram link in Croydon was mooted and in 1992 the CroydonTramlink Act was passed. The construction of the tramway system caused muchdisruption to the centre of Croydon and some people were opposed to Tramlink.Nevertheless the year 2000 saw trams running again on the streets of Croydon. Thelivery of the cars is the same as that of the old trams and the numbers of the carsfollowed on from the last number of the last old tram, which was a nice touch!Tramlink is proving to be very popular with people and one can now hear being saidYou can take the tram to such and such a place!The Croydon Tramlink begun. (Author’s photograph 1994).New tram tracks in George Street, Croydon. (Author’s photograph 1994).55The seeds of modernising the trams to provide a fast, clean and efficient transportservice were sown in that campaign. As a result, the campaign did not fail.The vehicles of both the Docklands Light Railway and the Croydon Tramlink are welldesigned, light and airy and cater for the needs of all passengers.Other light railway systems have been developed in some of our other major citiesnamely:System Year OpenedTyne and Wear Metro 1980Manchester Metro 1991Sheffield Supertram 1994Midland Metro 1995Nottingham 2004Dublin 2005Readers of Tramways and Urban Transit, formerly Modern Tramway, will be awarethat there are now many proposals for further tramway development in London andother large conurbations.It must be a wonderful feeling for members of the Light Rail Transit Association,previously the Light Railway Transport League, who participated in the campaign of1946-1952, to be able to see the positive results of their action.However, articles in Tramways and Urban Transit stress that the campaign for lightrail must continue.In the June 1998 issue of Tramways and Urban Transit there is an article entitled,London is Grinding to a Standstill. It states that the average speed of vehicular travelis 10 mph on account of traffic congestion! It is very strange that the argument forgetting rid of the trams in London in 1952 was to cure traffic congestion! Theenthusiasts for retaining the London trams always said that the trams would alleviatecongestion! Today, those in power and in charge of transport development embracethis philosophy! If these people had been listened to then, London trams would havebeen modernised to a high standard, and much money would have been saved.In the November 2001 issue of Tramways and Urban Transit there is a brief reportentitled:Livingstone seeks public views on the London Tram.Forty seven years after 1952, a leading member of the Light Rail Transit AssociationMr. G.B.Claydon writing in Tramway and Urban Transit” July 1999:Reliable, fast, frequent,clean, safe and secure – that’s the tram!The tram is dead! Long live the tram!56Trams outside East Croydon station. October 2000. (author’s photograph).57CHAPTER 12ALAN JOHN WATKINS 1926-1993: SOME BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILSAlan John Watkins was born in Welling, Kent, on July 7th 1926, the only child ofFlorence and Walter Watkins. His father became Senior Technical Officer at W.T.Henley’s Cable and Telegraph Works at North Woolwich; and his mother trained as adressmaker, but did not work after her marriage.Passport photograph of Alan John Watkins.Alan had a middle-class upbringing and received a mainly private education, namelyat the now defunct Upton College, Bexleyheath, and, from 1940-1944, at DartfordGrammar School for Boys. He experienced some state education during the early partof the Second World War when he went to stay on the Isle of Wight. Alan had a yearin the Sixth form at Dartford and wanted to attend University, but his parents refused.Alan was disappointed – but did not argue with his parents!To avoid going into the armed forces, Alan was apprenticed as a Mechanical Engineerat Eastleigh Locomotive Works. Alan suffered from asthma and the apprenticeshipwas considered to be better than square bashing! The apprenticeship wascommensurate with a degree from Southampton University, but work and asthma tookits toll and he failed to graduate.Later, in 1955, he embarked on an external course in Transport Studies at LondonUniversity and obtained a Certificate in 1963. To gain the Certificate, Alan had to sitseveral examination papers and write a dissertation, which was entitled:The Social Effects of the Motor Car on Public Transport.In 1950, Alan left British Rail Southern Region locomotive works at Eastleigh tocommence work as a wages and general clerk with F. Trevillion Ltd., which was afirm of haulage contractors at Slade Green, Erith, Kent. From 1951-1964, he held apost as a cost and invoice clerk with the Reliance Telephone Company Ltd.Cheapside, London. The firm relocated to Wellingborough, but Alan did not wish to58live there, so he took voluntary redundancy, and subsequently obtained a post withEngelhard Industries as a sales and invoice clerk.On account of relocation to St John’s Street in London and the poor workingconditions there, he took early retirement with voluntary redundancy in 1983. A fewmonths later, he obtained a post in the Works Department at Queen Mary’s Hospital,Sidcup. In 1990 he contracted cancer and retired early.Alan’s hobbies and interests were wide-ranging. He was passionately interested intransport, especially tramways, railways and paddle steamers. In connection with hisinterest in transport, Alan and various friends travelled extensively, especially in theHome Counties.In connection with his interest in transport, Alan would occasionally meet one of theapprentices from Eastleigh works, a Mr. E. Trotter, who told me that in 1946 Alan hadinvited him to Bexley where they travelled by three tram routes and one trolley bus.Mr Trotter had hit his head on the trolleybus roof. Alan said “you can’t stand up inthese, you are not on a tram, now.’” This rather tortuous journey from London toBexley was primarily to show Mr Trotter a part of the tramway system. The returnjourney by rail was much shorter.Alan, together with fellow enthusiasts, travelled over all the tram and bus routes ofLondon, thus acquiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of transport in the Capital. Hewent on many of these journeys in the company of Mr. John Walton, now many yearsdeceased, and the well-known author of tramway books, Mr. Julian Thompson, whonow resides in the Philippines. Being interested in various forms of public transport,they visited the newly opened Shenfield Electric line in 1949. They took paddlesteamer trips to Southend and did the return journey by train. Mr. Thompson informedme that, until 1954, you could ride on the trolleybuses there.Later Alan met Mr Trotter at a boat show! Apparently, Alan was contemplating anarrow boat holiday. (Alan could not swim!)Mr Trotter last saw Alan was at Neasden Works open day in 1963 to commemoratethe centenary of the Metropolitan Railway the predecessor of the LondonUnderground. Knowing his interest in steam traction, Alan said, rather drily, “Whatare you doing among all this electrical equipment?”On one occasion, Alan did the journey by paddle steamer from Ilfracombe toSwansea, arriving at Swansea at 2a.m., and was surprised to find that there wasnowhere open for breakfast, especially after a very stormy crossing!Not only was he interested in transport but he also was a keen rambler and a memberof Morley College Rambling Club, where he used to lead walks and youth hostellingweekends. He had a detailed knowledge of Ordnance Survey maps and railwaytimetables, which made him an invaluable member of the club. Alan was patient withpeople and took great trouble in giving fellow members the help and information theyrequired. He also enjoyed classical music, especially the music of Elgar, Holst andVaughan Williams.59 It was through Morley College rambling club that Alan met me, as I was working inthe library there at that time.We were married on 25th March 1972 and were very happy because we were able toshare very many interests together walking music travel and transport.Alan contemplating the scene at Cwmcarn Scenic Drive, Gwent. June 1989. (author’sphotograh).We had many interesting discussions on wide ranging topics. He was a veryknowledgeable and stimulating companion. Alan died on 10th August 1993. Hisdemise was untimely, and I hope that by writing this account of his part in thecampaign to save the London tramways I have contributed a little to transportknowledge.Alan at Smallbrook Junction Isle of Wight Steam Railway. July 1990. (author’sphotograph).60SOURCES CONSULTEDPeriodicalsThe Economist 5th July 1952Journal of The Institute of Transport November 1953Journal of Transport History September 1989Modern Tramway 1949-1952Modern Transport 25th January1950Passenger Transport 5th August 1949Tramways and Urban Transit June 1998 & July 1999Transport World 5th August 1950NewspapersEvening News 11th July 1949Evening News 7th March 1950Evening News 23rd May 1950Evening News 26th June 1950Evening News 27th June 1950Evening Standard 4th December 1951Evening Standard 18th May 1954Kentish Independent 12th August 1949Kentish Independent 21st October 1949Kentish Independent 14th May 1950Kentish Mercury 19th May 1950Kentish Mercury 8th December 1950Kentish Mercury 28th April 1951Kentish Mercury 18th May 1951News Chronicle July 1949News Chronicle 19th May 1950News Chronicle 8th December 1950News Chronicle 9th December 1950News Chronicle 28th April 1951News Chronicle 18th May 1951Reveille 20th June 1949The Star October 1949The Star 6th September 1949The Star 7th February 1950The Star 14th August 1950Streatham News 7th October 1949Sunday Graphic 4th October 1949BooksBizeray, C.R. Towards Ideal Transport. L.R.T.L. 1947Dunbar, C.S. London’s Tramway Subway L.RT.L. April 1948 London County Council Tramways Direct Services Via Kingsway L.C.C. January 1931 Higginson, M. and Yearsley, I Tramway London L.R.T.A 1993Joyce, J. Operation Tramaway Ian Allan 1987.Klapper, C.F. The Golden Age of Tramways Routledge & KeganPaul 1961Thompson, J. London Trams in Camera Ian Allan 197161Indexabandonment, 4, 5, 12, 13, 17, 23,24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 36, 38, 41,45, 47Abbey Wood, 7Aberdeen, 23Air pollution, 22Aldwych, 35Ashfield, Lord, 4atmospheric pollution, 25, 38Bell Punch 48, 52Bellingham, 22Beresford Square, 7, 26Bett. W.H., 36Bexley, 8, 30, 40, 57, 58Bexleyheath, 57Birmingham, 21, 36, 40, 50Bizeray, C.R, 21Blackfriars Road, 7Blackpool, 8, 10, 22, 25,31Bloomsbury, 35, 36brakes, 9, 51Brigstock Road, 8British Rail Southern Region, 57Brixton, 7, 17, 42, 45Brixton Road, 7Bromley Road, 7Buckley, R., 40bus, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19 ,23,26, 29 , 30, 31, 32, 36, 38, 39, 40,41, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52,58buses, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18,19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29,30,31,32, 33, 36, 40, 41, 45 ,46, 47,49, 50, 51, 52Camberwell, 16campaign, 2, 4, 14, 17, 19, 22, 24, 39,41, 42, 43 ,48, 53, 55, 59Campaign Satire, 48capacity, 12,14, 16,18, 19, 24, 31, 32,40, 46capital expenditure, 30, 40Catford, 16, 32, 33Central London, 43Charing Cross, 30, 35Charlton, 25, 50Chief Public Relations Officer, 11, 24,27. 33Clapham, 7Claydon, G.B., 55Clayton, 28Collins, S., 39congestion, 2, 5, 7, 12, 20, 21, 22,23,31, 36, 37, 38, 46, 47, 55cost, 6 ,7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18 , 20, 23,24, 5, 27, 28, 37, 40, 41, 47Croydon 7, 8, 39, 54Croydon Tramlink, 43, 54, 55Croydon Tramlink Act, 54cycle tracks. See tracksCwmcarn, 59Dartford, 40Dartford Grammar School for Boys, 57Deverell, A.F., 31Dickson Road, 26Docklands Light Railway, 43, 53, 55Dodson-Wells, G., 27, 33double-deck bus,17double-decker bus, 19Dowden, T.F., 22Druce, G., 18. 25Dunbar, C.S., 35Eastleigh, 57Eastleigh Locomotive Works, 57Economist, 41Edinburgh, 18Eldridge, J., 24Elephant and Castle, 7, 45Eltham 6, 7, 8, 42Eltham Road, 7Embankment, 6, 7, 17, 35, 36, 46Engelhard Industries, 58enthusiasts, 2, 4,15, 19, 21, 52, 55,58Erith, 49, 57Evening News, 22, 25, 28, 36Evening Standard, 24, 36Farrell, F.K., 16, 39fare collection, 18fares, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29,30,47Feltham cars, 15Forest Hill, 33Fowler, J. W., 12Glasgow, 8, 9, 10, 23, 40, 47Government, 4, 50Green line coaches, 10, 29Greenwich, 8, 32, 33, 53Hampstead, 2862Harris, S.P., 36Harvie, K.G., 27Hayward, I.J., 28Henleys Cable and Telegraph Works,57Hichisson, B., 6, 7, 8, 10, 11Higginson, M., 11,24Highbury station, 35Houses of Parliament, 6Hurcomb, Sir Cyril. 5, 6Hutchinson, G., K.C., 28Ilfracombe, 58Isle of Wight, 59Islington, 35Journal of the Institute of Transport,15, 40Journal of Transport History, 40Joyce, J., 4. 36Klapper, C., 15, 40Kennington, 45Kennington Road, 7Kent Messenger, 27Kentish Independent, 6, 25, 26, 37Kentish Mercury, 22, 23, 24, 27, 31,32, 33, 47Kingsway, 35Kingsway subway, 16, 17, 34, 35, 36,37, 38, 46Kingsway tram subway, 36Kingsway tramway tunnel, 36Korn K C., 22, 23Lambeth Town Hall, 42Latham, Lord, 4, 5,12, 49LCC, 8, 10, 27, 28, 32, 52Leeds, 21, 22Lee Green, 16Lewisham, 8, 16, 17, 22, 32 ,53Lewisham Road, 16Light Rail, 2, 14, 36, 55Light Railways, 20, 21, 32Light rail rapid transit systems, 2, 14Light Rail Transit Association, 55Light Railway Transport League, 6,14, 17, 20, 36, 39Lille, 40Liverpool, 30, 50Livingstone K., 55London, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24,25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36,37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46,47, 5o, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58London County Council, 28, 35London Passenger Association, 28London Passenger Transport Board, 4,24London tram, 2, 15, 39, 43, 55London trams, 2, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17,22, 24, 36, 40, 42, 46, 53,55London Tramway System , 3, 4, 14,19, 32London Transport, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12,13, 17, 24, 26, 27, 29, 33, 40, 45, 47,51London Transport Executive, 4, 11, 12,13, 16, 17, 21 25, 27, 33, 39London Underground, 18, 58London United Tramways, 15London University, 57Loss of civic amenity,6LPTB, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 32, 40LRTL, 11, 12, 15, 17,18,19, 21, 35, 39,41, 50LT.E, 4, 11, 19, 24, 26 ,28, 31, 32, 37,39Manchester, 17, 30, 55Metropolitan Railway, 58Midland Metro, 55Modern Tramway, 4, 5, 11,12 14, 16,17, 8, 19, 29, 39,55Morley College Rambling Club, 58, 59motor bus, 4, 22, 23, 24, 25 ,40multiple-unit stock train, 18Muskett, F., 27National Press, 42Neasden works, 58New Cross Gate, 45New Kent Road, 7News Chronicle, 22noise, 6 , 8, 9, 51North London, 16, 35North Woolwich, 57Old Kent Road, 7OperationTramaway, 4, 12overhead, 6,7, 12, 18, 25PCC. 14, 15, 18Peckham 42, 45Penhall Road, 43, 50, 52, 53Perry Barr, 36Philippines, 5863Pittsburgh, 40Plumstead, 6, 7, 8Plimstead High Street, 8Plumstead Road, 6Progress Hall, 42pro-tram group, 24, 28, 31Public Relations Officer, 48Purley, 7, 39Queen Mary’s Hospital, 58rail coaches., 21, 32Reliance Telephone Company Ltd, 57replacement bus service, 18reserved tracks, 6, 16, 21, 32, 36, 37reserved tramways, 7retention of the network, 14Reveille, 21road congestion. See congestionRosebery Avenue, 35Royal Commission Report of 1930,12RTL bus, 26Ruislip, 25Rushey Green. 22Rye Lane, 45St. Leonard's Church Hall, 42Scadding, L., 25season tickets, 18Sheffield Supertram, 55Shenfield, 58Sidcup, 58single deck, 18, 19, 35, 42single deckers. See single decksingle track, 7, 16Slade Green, 57Smallwood, 21South East London, 27, 33, 42South East London Action Group, 42South London,4, 5, 17, 29, 31, 35, 39,40 41, 47, 53South London Committee, 17South London Group, 15South London Press, 42Southampton, 22Southampton Row, 35Southampton University, 57Southcroft Road, 7Southend, 58Southern Electric, 31Southern Region, 40St Dunstan's Hall, 22St John’s Street, 58Stewart, A.B., 32, 33Stockwell, 26Strand, 35Streatham, 17, 42Streatham News, 25subway. See Kingsway subwaysubways, 7, 20, 21, 32, 36, 37Sunday Graphic, 25Swansea, 58Tatt, A.P., 36Taylor, J.I., 26The Council. See TramwayDevelopment CouncilThe Department of Transport, 19the League. See Light RailwayTranssport League.The Star, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 36Theobalds Road, 35Thompson, J., 36, 53, 58Thornton Heath, 8, 22, 39ticket machines, 18track, 6,7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17,18,20, 21, 27, 36 , 40, 45, 46, 49tracks, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16, 20, 21,22, 25,26, 32, 36, 40, 49, 54traffic congestion.,2, 5, 12, 21, 23, 44,55tram, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15,16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36,37, 38, 39, 40, 41,42, 43, 44, 45, 46,47, 49 52, 53, 54, 55, 58tram drivers, 23, 46tram replacement, 31tram scrapping, 4, 25, 27, 28, 31, 42tram scrapping policy, 20, 24, 47tram systems, 37, 46tram tracks. See trackstramatorium, 53Tramlink( see Croydon Tramlink)trams, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13,14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37,40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,53, 54, 55, 56tramway abandonment, 12, 13, 23,24, 25, 27, 30, 38 40,41, 45, 47Tramway Act, 1870. 12Tramway Development Council, 5,37, 4264tramway enthusiasts, 2, 4, 16, 19, 22tramway modernisation, 23, 27, 30,47tramway retention, 14, 17, 19, 21, 39,40, 42tramway subways, 36, 45tramway system, 2, 3, 4, 12, 14, 19, 21,22, 23, 25, 32, 37, 46, 47, 54, 58Tramways and Urban Transit, 55Transport Tribunal, 29, 30, 47,trolleybus, 4, 5, 8, 10, 40, 58trolleybuses, 8, 11, 13, 15, 22, 24, 25,30, 41, 48, 49, 58Trotter, E, 58Tyne and Wear Metro, 55Underground,10, 15, 18, 31, 36, 40, 58Upton College, 57USA, 10Uxbridge, 16Uxbridge Road, 15Valentine A. B. B., 12Vauxhall Bridge Road, 46Victoria Embankment, 7Victoria, 7, 16, 46Walton, J., 18, 19, 58Wandsworth, 23, 28Waterloo Bridge, 35Watkins, A.J., 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 1014, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27,28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39,42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 57, 58, 59Watkins, Florence, 57Watkins, Walter, 57Well Hall, 7, 26Well Hall Road, 7Welling, 57Wellingborough, 57Westhorne Avenue, 7Westminster Bridge, 6Witton, 36Woolwich, 9, 16, 26, 37, 53workman's tickets, 28Wrausman, E., C., 14Yearsley, I., 11, 24Young, R.J. 26ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI would like to thank the following publishers and individuals for granting me theirkind permission to quote from their publications. Ian Allan publishing” LondonTrams in Camera” by Julian Thompson and “Operation Tramaway” by J. Joyce. Theeditors of The Economist “A Tramway named Defunct.” The editors of the SouthLondon Press and Mercury Group for allowing me to quote various passages from:The South London Press, Kentish Independent and Kentish Mercury. The editor ofTramways and Urban Transit for permitting me to quote from “Modern Tramway.”And “Tramways and Urban Transit.” The editor of the Kent Messenger Group. Theeditor of The Evening Standard. The editor of The Evening News. The Cyclist’sTouring Club for allowing me to use a letter published in “The Cycling Gazette.” TheLondon Metropolitan Archives for allowing me to quote from “The KingswaySubway” which was published by the now defunct London County Council. ProfessorJohn Armstrong the editor of “The Journal of Transport History”for allowing me toquote from an article by Mr. Richard J. Buckley in Journal of Transport History vol.10.1989. Mr. Ian Yearsley for allowing me to quote from his book “TramwayLondon.” The Assistant Curator, Film and Photo Collections, London TransportMuseum for permission to copy London Transport maps. (These maps are part of mylate husband’s transport collection.)I should like to thank the Librarian of Crich Tramway Village for sending me materialand the Librarian of Greenwich Local Studies Library for the use of their microfilmednewspapers.I should like to thank Ms Diana Burfield for her kind donation of her last tram weekticket.I am grateful to Messrs Robert Harley, John Gillham, Ken Farrell, John Barrie, KenThorpe, E. Dawes and Dr. Gerald Druce, also Ron Gee, Alan Pearce, Graham Bird,Graham Feakins and John Prentice for all their help and encouragement in this projectand to my colleagues Mrs Barbara Roberts and Miss Pat Stevens for reading themanuscript and for correcting any errors.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETYeARTICLEThe Pilgrims’ Way Revisited:The use of the North Downs maintrackway and the Medway crossingsby medieval travellersDerek Bright© 2010 Derek BrightLicensed for personal &/or academic use1IntroductionPopular notions that the trackway that skirts the southern edge of the North Downs once served as theprincipal thoroughfare for pilgrims travelling to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury are commonplace.However, by the latter half of the last century, the predominant view amongst those with more than apassing interest in the North Downs trackways, was that whilst there was evidence to suggest that muchof the Pilgrims’ Way follows the course of an ancient prehistoric trackway, it was far less evident that ithad been used as a route of medieval pilgrimage.A reassessment of how we view the usage of the North Downs trackways and in particular a reexamination of the possibility of their use by medieval travellers enroute to Canterbury or the Channelcoast, may help us reappraise the Victorian and Edwardian antiquarians. In doing so, it may allow us toplace the work of pilgrimist writers such as Albert Way, Julia Cartwright and Hilaire Belloc in a morerealistic context.Part I deals with options facing medieval travellers in relation to crossing the River Medway. The rivervalley known as the Medway gap is significant because it serves as a focus for revisiting a number ofarguments regarding the convergence of routes from London and the west of the country; the optionssuch routes presented for medieval travellers and their likely responses to these options.In reassessing the use of the North Downs trackways by medieval travellers, reference is made to morerecent research undertaken by Patrick Thornhill regarding the Medway’s geological features in relation tothe changing characteristics of the Medway crossings over time.1 In addition the article also takes anumber of additional factors into consideration. These include a re-examination of the argumentspurporting difficulties of travel using the North Downs trackways east of the Medway and takes intoconsideration (i) the risk of highway crime and (ii) the difficulties associated with the right to travel and(iii) suspicion of those that travelled in feudal society. Finally the article provides a re-examination of theactual distances involved. The combination of these factors is shown to be a key determinant as to whymedieval travellers may have favoured one route rather than another. It is this decision as to which routemedieval travellers would choose that the author has termed ‘the Paddlesworth choice’.Part II of this article argues that an assessment needs to be made of the actual numbers of the populationeligible to undertake an extended pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. By working backwards from BenNilson’s and Frank Elliston-Erwood’s work regarding offerings at Beckett’s shrine combined withworking forward from Domesday statistics, taking account of geographic location and social class, amuch more realistic estimate of the numbers of medieval travellers that may have chosen to use the NorthDowns trackways can be arrived at.1 Thornhill Patrick, ‘The Medway Crossings of the Pilgrims Way’; Archaeologia Cantiana , 89, 1974.2Part I - The Paddlesworth ChoiceIt is generally accepted, as both Ivan Margary and Oliver Rackham do, that prehistoric travellersjourneyed along the North Downs trackways and that it was an important main trackway.2 Withoutrecourse to maps, way-markers or modern navigation aids, early travellers could follow these trackwaysalong the chalk escarpment on the southern edge of the North Downs. Such paths may have originallybeen the preserve of wild animals and later followed by ancient man as he hunted in their tracks.3Today’s walker can follow the North Downs Way and anyone who has walked the National Trail willknow from experience that at the start of each morning one can survey the day’s journey that lies ahead,simply by observing the span of the North Down’s ridge stretched out before one.Ancient trackways such as these followed the chalk ridges or ran along the sides and tops of valleys.According to Valerie Belsey, such tracks probably made up the five principal prehistoric routes acrossEngland believed to date from before 2000 BC. These are: (i) the Harroway; (ii) the Ridgeway; (iii) theIcknield Way (iv) the South Downs Ridgeway and (v) the North Downs Ridgeway.4 These routesevolved, not only because their geological qualities offered good drainage; firm ground underfoot andrelative ease of passage, but also for the very reason that due to their natural and recognisablecharacteristics they served as obvious navigation aids.To the south of the chalk escarpment another geographical feature influenced the route taken by earlytravellers. Here was to be found the vast expanse of the Weald or forest of Kent and Sussex that lay tothe south of the North Downs chalk escarpment. For the prehistoric traveller the Weald presented itselfas an unknown wilderness. This huge tract of wilderness and woodland followed the southern flank of theNorth Downs for 90 miles between Lympne in the east of Kent through to Petersfield in east Hampshire.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that this wood was known as Andredesleag and it continued to beknown as Andredsweald up until 1018.5 The stated size of the Saxon Weald was 120 miles long and 30miles broad, which according to Peter Brandon would have ‘extended it westwards across Hampshire intothe New Forest’.6Until recently the prevailing view had been that the Andredsweald was a fairly impenetrable forest. MarkAnthony Lower informed his readers in 1870 that Bede described ‘the whole of Anderida as all butinaccessible, and the resort of large herds of deer, and of wolves and wild boar’,7 but current researchsuggests that the Wealden area was more similar to ‘wood pasture than a solid block of impenetrablewoodland’.8 Nevertheless, the Weald still presented numerous difficulties for the early traveller, whichundoubtedly made the geographic and geological features of the chalk scarp an obvious choice of passagefor those travelling across southern England from or to the west.There are four breaches in the North Downs’ escarpment, each the product of river erosion that formedthe valleys of the Wey, Mole, Medway and the Stour as they cut paths through the soft chalk downland.It is the breach in the downs carved by the river Medway, known as the Medway gap, which presents thelargest natural obstacle for any traveller following the trackways running along the chalk scarp betweenthe Surrey Hills and Folkestone.The description of the North Downs trackways in the plural is deliberate. As Rackham informs us,travellers using such ridgeways could choose between the upper or lower ‘ways’, depending upon theweather and the season. For this reason these routes along the chalk scarps evolved as both ridge waysand terrace ways, often running in parallel. The Trottiscliffe to Snodland stretch of the Pilgrims’ Way,offers both extensive sections of ridge way and terrace way. This stretch passes very close to the ancientNeolithic megaliths known as the Coldrum Stones, which lie about 200 metres to the south of thetrackway, just after the village of Trottiscliffe. From here the Pilgrims’ Way starts its approach towards2 Margary Ivan – see ‘The North Downs Main Trackway and the Pilgrims’ Way’, ArchaeologicalJournal volume CIX; p.40 and Rackham – see The Illustrated History of the Countryside; first published1994, this ed’ Phoenix 1997.3 Belsey Valerie, The Green Lanes of England, Green Books Ltd, 1998, p.30. Belsey suggests that thePilgrims Way and the Icknield Way date back to the time when man the hunter first followed the tracksof wild animals.4Ibid, p.32.5 Brandon Peter, The Kent and Sussex Weald, Phillimore 2003; p.43-43.6Ibid, p.44.7 Lower Mark Anthony, History of Sussex Vol 1, London John Russell Mith, 1870, p.22.8 Bannister Nicola Dr, The Cultural Heritage of woodlands in the South East, South East AONB’sWoodlands Programme, October 2007, p.73the Medway valley, and begins a gradual curve in a north easterly arc following the west bank of theMedway Gap towards Rochester.The approach into the River Medway is described by Hillaire Belloc in The Old Road and is an excellentway to explore the Medway Gap on foot and check out Belloc’s favoured river crossing at Snodland.9The first mile due east from the Trosley Country Park car-park follows the upper ridge path, which ismarked in gothic typeface as the course of a trackway on current OS Explorer Ordnance Survey maps.After a mile, take a turning right and descend down to the lower terrace way via a hollow-way, eventuallyemerging at the field line just above the Coldrum Stones. Continue due east along the terrace way at thefoot of the escarpment for a further two miles before leaving this lower trackway and turning right acrossa field following a farm track, towards Paddlesworth Farm.The track leading from the Pilgrims’ Way to Paddlesworth farm is shown on an 1845 tithe map ofPaddlesworth as running between Hackett’s & Upper Danvil Field and North Field to PaddlesworthFarm. A survey commissioned by Thomas Wotton of his land in 1559 refers to this connecting trackwayas the ’Kings Highway’.10 A further point to note is that Rev. C. H. Fielding in his Memories of Mallingand its Valley (1893) includes a map that appears to have been drawn by A F Bowker, CE.; F.R.G.S.11This map is noteworthy because it shows the Paddlesworth Road as directly following the course of theKings Highway to join the Pilgrims’ Way rather than continuing west of Paddlesworth farm to thejunction with the Stangate Road and Birling Hill as it does today. As such this suggests that thePaddlesworth Road once served as a continuous thoroughfare linking the Pilgrims’ Way with the rivercrossing at Snodland.The Pilgrims’ Way approach into the Medway valley follows along the foot of the south facing chalkescarpment, at a height that is just a few metres above the cultivated fields of the vale. For the next fewmiles this track displays all the signs of a classic chalk and flint terrace way. Julia Cartwright, in herbook entitled The Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury (1895), captures the view from thePilgrims’ Way as it approaches the Medway Gap, when she describes how it:“…continues its course over Wrotham Hill and along the side of the chalk downs. This part of the trackis a good bridle road, with low grass banks or else hedges on either side, and commands fine views overthe rich Kentish plains, the broad valley of the Medway, and the hills on the opposite shore”.12Walking the route today, shelter from the elements is provided by a canopy of foliage that lines thetrackway. Ivan Margary, the leading historian of ancient British roads, makes the point that ‘thesouthward facing escarpment causes the terrace way at its foot to be very hot in summer, when movementalong the Ridgway would have been preferred’.13 Margary also refers to problems associated with theridge of the downs being capped with deposits of clay-with-flints and as such suggests that the terraceway would be preferable, especially in winter, so as to avoid a summit that became ‘very wet and stickyin rainy weather’.14 Given these considerations the sheltered terrace way in winter has an appeal andlogic, with which it is hard fault. Nevertheless for today’s walker, in the height of summer the terraceway is cloaked with a welcome cover of foliage providing plenty of shade.However this section of the trackway may not always have been so shaded. Jusserand informs us in hiswork ‘English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages’ that in 1285, Edward I introduced legislation that9 Belloc Hilaire, The Old Road; first pub’ 1904; this ed’ Constable & Co 1921, Illustrated by WilliamHyde, p.253 (Moreover, Belloc discusses the crossing of the Medway in the Wrotham to Boxley sectionp.231-255).10 British Library Manuscript Add: 42715. Vol. 1. Surveys, made 1557-1560 (with later additions at theends. of some of the sections) in connection with the disgavelling of the estates of Sir Edward Wotton (towhom Thomas Wotton had succeeded at the. time of the survey) in consequence of a private Act ofParliament.11 Rev. C. H. Fielding, Memories of Malling and its Valley (West Malling, 1893); also a modern reprint in1997). Information regarding the Wotton Survey and Memories of Malling kindly provided by DrAndrew Ashbee at the Snodland Museum.12 Cartwright Julia, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury; first published in GB 1895; thised’ 1911 John Murray, illustrated by A H Hallam Murray with 8 colour plates n; Julia Cartwright wasalso a novelist writing under the name of Mrs. Henry Ady, p.137.13 Margary Ivan D, The North Downs Main Trackway and the Pilgrims’ Way; Archaeological Journalvolume CIX; p.40.14 Ibid p.40.4decreed the edges of highways should be clear and there should neither remain ‘coppice nor brushwoodnor hollow nor ditch which might serve as a shelter for malefactors’.15 Today, in the summer months thebenefit of the shaded terrace way is very evident and is noticeably missed where there are breaks in theshade or if one has to leave the trackway to strike out across open fields, as at Paddlesworth, withreflective chalky soils underfoot. If the Pilgrims’ Way was used as a medieval thoroughfare to any greatextent, then this present protection from the elements may not have always been evident.A change of dates upon which Thomas Becket’s death was celebrated occurred in the early 13th century.Originally the key date was naturally the anniversary of his martyrdom, which fell in the winter on the29th December 1170. However following the translation of Beckets’ relics on 7th July 1220, it wouldappear from the work of Dean Stanley that the latter became more frequented.16 Obviously this datewould make the passage by pilgrims to Canterbury much easier than travelling in the winter months. Assuch any shade along this section would have been welcome. However encouraging mass pilgrimage inJuly, even once account is taken of the change form the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, seemssomewhat at odds with the labour requirements of a primarily medieval rural economy, with secondploughing, sheep shearing and hay making taking place in June and July. This begs the question as towhich members of medieval society were actually able to leave the manor to embark on any form ofextended pilgrimage.Those of the opinion that medieval pilgrims seldom used the North Downs trackways, re-assert theirarguments with vigour, with regard to the pilgrimage route east of Rochester. Critics of Pilgrims’ Waytheories tend toward the view that between the Medway and Canterbury, the Roman road, known by theMiddle Ages as Watling Street would have been a traveller’s route of choice.Certainly, Roman roads remained a key part of England’s road network throughout the middle ages.Hindle, in Medieval Roads (1989) informs us that there were 8,000-10,000 miles of Roman road built byAD 150 that provided a basic network and that very few new roads were built in the medieval period.The evidence of the Gough Map includes about 3,000 miles of main roads by1360.17 Medieval roads alsohad a different character than Roman roads, is as much as Hindle states, ‘the road was not a physicalentity’. Instead it was a right of way, which would diverge and deviate onto new routes as and whenconditions underfoot required.18Therefore a recurring theme in the story of the Pilgrims’ Way and pilgrimage is the question as to whymedieval pilgrims would choose the North Downs trackways in preference to the Roman roads that madeup so much of the medieval road network. As Jusserand reminds us:“There was in England a very considerable network of roads, the principal of which dated as far back asthe Roman times”.19 The argument in favour of pilgrims using the Roman road network is developed in an essay by E GCrump (1936) in his criticism of both Brayley (1850) and Albert Way’s (1855) enthusiasm for thePilgrims’ Way. Edward Brayley claimed to have discovered a portion of the trackway crossing the parishof Albury and wrote that ‘the ancient path called the pilgrims way, which led from the city of Winchesterto Canterbury, crosses this parish, and is said to have been much used in former times’ (author’semphasis). 20 Crump’s scepticism of Brayley’s assertion turns to open disagreement when he considersAlbert Way’s hypothesis, which Crump argues extended what he saw as the misconstrued theory of theNorth Downs pilgrimage route east of the Medway. Of Albert Way, Crump writes:“And yet to him, and to no other, is due the great discovery that the Pilgrims’ Way did not go to Strood,but crossed the river Medway and took its course along the slope of the downs to Charing and thence toCanterbury.”2115 Jusserand J J, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages; first pub’ 1888, this ed’ T Fisher Unwin1909, Chapter III Security of the Roads p.151.16 Stanley Arthur P, D.D. (Dean), Historical Memorials of Canterbury, published 1912 includes essayswritten by Dean Stanley in 1854 in 1855 p.210-211.17 Mortimer Ian, The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England, Vintage Books 2009, p.125.18 Hindle, Brian Paul, Medieval Roads, Shire Archaeology 1982, this ed’1989, p6-719 Jusserand, Op cit, p3620 Brayley Edward, Topographical History of Surrey, quoted by C G Crump; History, quarterly June 1936p.24.21 Crump C G, History, quarterly June 1936 p.25.5Crump’s view of the theories expressed by both Brayley and Albert Way is very apparent from hiscomments as follows:“If he had gone further (referring to Brayley’s statement in 1850), and surmised that it had once beenused by pilgrims from Winchester to Rochester, whence the pilgrims could easily reach Canterbury, itwould have been fantastic, but perhaps not absurd”.22Whilst Crump falls short of ridiculing of Brayley’s contention about the pilgrimage route, it is fairlyobvious that he viewed Albert Way’s extension of the Pilgrims’ Way due east of the Medway and alongthe North Downs scarp, with incredulity. Robert H Goodsall, who lived close to the trackway at StedeHill overlooking Harrietsham, which as it happens is situated on that part of the Pilgrims’ Way east of theMedway, summarised the theme of the detractors when he wrote: ‘… that there is a good deal of evidence of a negative kind to disprove its use by pilgrims, at all eventsfrom the Medway crossing to Canterbury’.23Terrace-way, Pilgrims’ Way near Trottiscliffe approach to Medway Gap22 Ibid, p.25.23 Goodsall Robert H, The Ancient Road to Canterbury – A Progress through Kent; first published 1960(subscription edition 1959), this edition 1960, p3.6Paddlesworth Farm, Paddlesworth Road looking towards SnodlandGoodsall, in The Ancient Road to Canterbury (1955) concedes that, whilst the part of the trackway lyingacross the western portion of the county may have been used as a pilgrimage route, he repeats the doubtsexpressed as to whether pilgrims would have continued along the southern flank of the downs. Whilstsuggesting that the trackway east of the Medway may well have been used as a long distance route for thepurpose of transporting chalk from the many chalk pits found along the southern flank of the downs, henevertheless doubts its use as a thoroughfare for pilgrims. Goodsall argues that:‘from the Surrey Kent boundary to Snodland on the Medway, may have been used by Pilgrims comingfrom the west of England and the shires, but on reaching the latter point, it is far more likely that theywould have continued via the trackway which led to Strood and Rochester, crossed over Rochester bridgeand journeyed along Watling Street to Canterbury, so joining the main stream of pilgrims coming fromthe north’.24According to Goodsall, one of the reasons why pilgrims would spurn the southern flank of the downs infavour of Watling Street is because the villages along the way lie: ‘well south of the downland foot, often at a distance of a quarter to half a mile, and weary pilgrims,seeking a night’s shelter, would hardly have welcomed the extra toil in reaching them’.25However there may have been very good reasons why many medieval travellers may have preferred aroute that did not pass directly through areas of population. Such reasons may have included problemsassociated with freedom of movement in a feudal society as well as a greater threat of crime on the mainthoroughfares. As Diana Webb notes in Pilgrimage in Medieval England (2000), ‘whenever they could,pilgrims used well worn tracks which were passable and as secure as possible’.26 Jack Ravensdale(1989), explores the route taken by Chaucer’s pilgrims, primarily along Watling Street, and makes thepoint that ‘in places, however, there were also ancient, often prehistoric trackways which pilgrims mighttake when they seemed safer or easier than Watling Street’.27 It is noteworthy that Shakespeare built asub-plot in Henry IV around Falstaff’s plans to rob pilgrims on the Gads Hill approach to Rochester.Chaucer also alludes to the threat of robbery on Watling Street at Boughton Hill. Other commentators24 ibid, p425 ibid p.426Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledon and London 2000, p.221.27Ravensdale Jack, In the Steps of Chaucer’s Pilgrims, Guild Publishing 1989, p.19.7have pointed to the fact that immense pressure could be asserted by sheriffs upon villeins in their roll astithing men at the local level to ensure that culprits were found in cases of wrong doing. This wouldoften result in the apprehension of strangers whenever a local crime was committed. Ian Mortimer(2009) in his book, ‘The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England’ draws on Summerson’s ‘Structureof Law Enforcement’, when he states that:‘If you begin to look at those indicted for serious crime, it soon becomes apparent that many of them arestrangers. In some places as many as thirty per cent of all suspected murderers and thieves are describedas vagrants’.28Throughout the middle ages there are numerous attempts by monarchs to enact legislation to prohibit thelower ranks in feudal society from leaving the land and taking to the roads. Jusserand informs us that theCommons of the Good Parliament in 1376 renewed prohibitions against going out of a man’s ‘owndistrict’.29 In 1388-89 statute was enacted in response to labour shortages and vagabondage, whichforbade movement by people who served and laboured without testimonial letters justifying theirmovements. Diana Webb quotes from a Statute of the Realm, under Richard II, which stated:‘no servant or labourer, be he man or woman, shall depart at the end of his Term out of the Hundred,Rape or Wapentake where he is dwelling, to serve or dwell elsewhere, or by Colour to go from there inPilgrimage, unless he bring a Letter Patent containing the cause of going and the Time of his return, if heought to return, under the King’s Seal’.30It would appear that those from the lower ranks in society did face the risk when travelling of beingmistaken for peasants out of bond. Jusserand noted that during the 14th century, laws existed to prohibitthe villein leaving his masters domain without special licence and argues that ‘escaped peasants broughtthe most numerous recruits to the wandering class’.31 The ancient trackway along the North Downs,which passes just above all the spring line villages but not through them, may therefore have offered asafer as well as more discreet alternative for many medieval travellers enroute to Canterbury.Finally, recent arguments have been put forward to suggest that Duke William’s conquest of Kent in1066 and his army’s subsequent passage to London followed the terrace way along the side of the NorthDowns rather than marching up Watling Street and crossing the Medway at Rochester. The hypothesisfor this is based upon an ‘unexplained decrease in the fiscal value of certain manors as set out in theDomesday Book’.32 So despite the view that the route presented difficulties for small groups of pilgrims,it would appear to some that it presented less of a problem for an invading army. Similarly, NigelNicholson suggests that in AD 43 the Roman Army advanced on a broad front that incorporated theNorth Downs from the line of Watling Street to the north and the Pilgrims’ Way along the southern edgeof the Downs.However, notwithstanding the above arguments, it is clear that there is a body of opinion that holds theview that pilgrims would not have opted for the what has been described as the ‘more laborious route’along the Pilgrims’ Way as an alternative to using the old Roman Road between Rochester to Canterbury.As such the critics of the North Downs route point to the fact that Watling Street takes a straightcontinuous course between Rochester and Canterbury, as opposed to deviating south along the MedwayValley; then east along the foot of north downs escarpment; then back up in a north easterly directionalong the west bank of the Stour valley, only to rejoin Watling Street within a mile or so of Canterbury.Even Julia Cartwright, one of the first in the pilgrimist tradition, was prepared to lose a few pilgrims tothe Watling Street route when she said some “might, if they pleased, go on to Rochester, three mileshigher up, and join the London pilgrims along the Watling Street to Canterbury – the route of Chaucer’spilgrimage”.3328 Mortimer Ian, The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England: Vintage 2009, p.223. Mortimer’ssummation of Summerson’s findings in ‘Structure of Law Enforcement’, p.326.29 Jusserand J J, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages; first pub’ 1888, this ed’ T Fisher Unwin1909. p.261.30 Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England; Hambledown and London 2000, p.231.31 Jusserand J J, Op citp.256 -258.32 Lawson and Killingray (ed), An Historical Atlas of Kent;@ Kent Archaeological Society, published byPhillimore 2004, Chapter 14 Guy Banyard p.34.33 Cartwright Julia, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury; first published in GB 1895; thised’ 1911 John Murray, illustrated by A H Hallam Murray with 8 colour plates n; Julia Cartwright wasalso a novelist writing under the name of Mrs Henry Ady, p.141.8It would appear that Cartwright is in fact merely restating the thoughts of Captain E R James, when hewrote in 1871:‘But it will be well to state that on arriving at Cuxton, in Kent, the difficulty of crossing the RiverMedway would induce many to continue their journey about three miles down the river to Rochester,where they would fall into the stream of Pilgrims going to Canterbury by the old Roman Road WatlingStreet, known as Chaucer’s route from the tabard at Southwark; and this would be the easiest way tothose who were wise enough to choose it’.34The choice of Watling Street or Pilgrims’ Way also concerned Elliston-Erwood in the revised secondedition (1923) and largely rewritten version of his original The Pilgrims’ Road (1910). In his chapter thataddresses pilgrimage and its prevalence Elliston-Erwood notes that:‘Chaucer’s pilgrims – who form the basis of the popular pilgrim notion – are taken as typical, yet they didnot follow the alleged pilgrim route: they came from London along the old Watling Street.’35 Erwood, a one time pilgrimist, before committing a self confessed volte-face with regard to the claims ofthe Pilgrims’ Way being a key route of medieval pilgrimage, felt compelled to confess to his readers thathis early enthusiasm for all things medieval had led him ‘into accepting things that never should havebeen accepted without much more enquiry than I gave to them’.36Again in William Coles Finch’s In Kentish Pilgrim Land (1925), it is suggested that the way was‘traversed by large numbers of devout pilgrims because of its historic and religious associations’. ButColes Finch also argues that:‘by far the greater number from other parts, including London, traversed the Roman road, familiarlyknown as Watling Street, of Chaucer’s pilgrims’ fame, and kept to it throughout the whole journey toCanterbury, for it was more direct, and offered more comfortable conditions of travel and companionshipthan did the Pilgrims Way’.37Whilst Coles Finch, unlike Goodsall or even Cartwright, does not actually suggest that pilgrims from thewest of England would have necessarily transferred from the Pilgrims’ Way onto Watling Street, he doesimply that the Roman road held distinct advantages in terms of directness and was associated with morecomfortable conditions of travel.Finally, Albert Way’s essay ‘The Pilgrims Path or Path towards the Shrine’, referred to by Dean Stanleyin lectures given at Canterbury and published in Stanley’s Historical Memorials of Canterbury -Appendix Note D in 1855, made reference to the original ancient track that: ‘…proceeded along the high ground on the west of the river Medway, towards Strood and WatlingStreet. This might have been reasonable to suppose, the more convenient mode of pursuing theremainder of the journey to Canterbury.’38Yet, Albert Way goes on to outline a theory that is was ‘more probable that the Pilgrims’ Way crossedthe pasture of the Medway, either at Snodland or Lower Halling’, whilst also suggesting that WatlingStreet for many might present the more convenient route to Canterbury. Nevertheless these views needs to be considered more closely in the context of alternative Medwaycrossing points upstream from Rochester as well as key pilgrimage sites, such as Boxley Abbey situatedclose to the North Downs trackway east of the Medway Gap. Furthermore travellers’ concerns regardingsafety and security on Watling Street and the London to Canterbury routes may well have led many to optfor the North Downs route along the ancient trackway for the reasons outlined above. Moreover34 Captain E R James, ‘ Notes on the Pilgrims’ Way in West Surrey’ London, Edward Stanford, 1871,p.2135 Elliston–Erwood FC, The Pilgrims Road, first ed’ 1910, this revised ed’ 1923, The HomelandAssociation, p.31.36 Ibid, p.9.37 Finch William Coles, In Kentish Pilgrims Land, First pub 1925, this ed’ 1925, The C W DanielCompany, p.81-82.38 Stanley Arthur P D.D. (Dean) Historical Memorials of Canterbury; first pub 1855, this new editionpublished 1912 includes essays written by Dean Stanley in 1854 and 1855 and Albert Way’s essay inNote D of Appendix entitled The Pilgrims Way or Path towards the Shrine of St Thomas of Canterburypublished in 1855.9difficulties associated with the ease of travel; freedom of movement and the practice of hue and cry inmedieval society may also have led travellers to opt for the more secluded trackway along the downs, bypassing the spring line villages unless so desired.Finally, closer examination of the actual distances involved shows that the North Downs trackway wasnot necessarily a less laborious route compared with Watling Street, as Crump and Goodsall suggest.Those approaching the Medway Gap from the west of the country would have to make their choice ofcrossing at or around Paddlesworth. The distance from this point, which the author has set where thePilgrims’ Way crosses Birling Hill, to the upper crossing at Snodland is 2.2 miles. The distance fromPaddlesworth to Rochester Bridge is 6.2 miles. The journey from Snodland to Canterbury using theNorth Downs trackway is 33.5 miles, whereas the journey from the Rochester Bridge along WatlingStreet to Canterbury is 27 miles. Therefore a traveller deciding at Paddlesworth whether to take theWatling Street or the North Downs trackway to Canterbury would have the choice of a 33.2 mile journeyvia Rochester and Watling Street or a 35.7 mile journey via the Snodland causeway and the North DownsTrackway. The latter route using the Pilgrims’ Way is in fact only 2.5 miles longer than the lesslaborious Watling Street. Distance may not therefore have been the primary consideration when makingthe Paddlesworth choice. This equates to approximately an additional hours walking or approximatelyand additional 30 minutes each day.An estimation of the distance that pilgrims on foot could cover has been made by Diana Webb, inPilgrimage in Medieval England (2000), in which she states:‘Although probably less well-shod and well nourished than the modern day recreational walker, themedieval pilgrim may have been hardier and more accustomed to walking in his daily routine, so it doesnot seem unreasonable to assume that some at least could average between two and three miles an hourover such a path, as a modern day walker will, depending on the state of the going, the energy and fitnesslevel of the individual and the amount of time taken for rest and refreshment’.39Webb’s assessment is based upon walking through the Kings Wood section of the Pilgrims’ Way, whichis approximately 7 miles from Canterbury. The inclusion of Kings Wood in the Pilgrims’ Way storyowes much to the Rev. W. Pearson, who in the mid-nineteenth century informed Albert Way that anancient track known as the Pilgrims’ Road ran above and parallel with the Ashford and Canterburyturnpike road.40This stretch of the way is usually rutted and muddy throughout the best part of the year. Observationsfrom organising walking holidays along this section of the Pilgrims’ Way over a period of seven yearsconcur with Diana Webb’s view of the distance that could be covered by a traveller on foot. Therefore ifa medieval traveller walked at a pace of 3 miles an hour for approximately 5 - 6 hours day, they wouldcomplete the journey between Paddlesworth and Canterbury in just two days with only one overnightstop. Moreover they would by-pass most of the spring line villages at the bottom of the scarp by keepingto the North Downs trackway.In giving further consideration to the route taken by pilgrims east of the river Medway it is useful todivide travellers into two distinct groups for the purpose of assessing why some would choose thetrackway along the edge of the Downs in preference to Watling Street. In the first group (Group A) areincluded those travellers that commenced their journey to Canterbury from London as well as alllocations north of London. In the second group (Group B) are included those that commenced theirjourney from locations west of Kent and south of London.For the latter group (Group B), a decision as to which crossing of the River Medway to take, would needto be made at a point shortly after Trottiscliffe, close to the Coldrum stones, particularly if the Medwaywas to be crossed within the vicinity of Aylesford or at the southern or upper most crossing point. Anassumption that the latter group (Group B) would have followed the edge of the Downs through Surreyand into Kent rather than take the route from Guildford up to London using the Roman road has also beenmade. On this latter point, it should be noted though that the Guildford to London Roman road routewould appear to be C G Crump’s preference when he says ‘from Guildford they went up to London byRipley and Kingston, as men go today; and from London they went, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, to39 Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledown and London 2000, p.222.40 Way Albert, The Pilgrims Way or Path towards the Shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury written in1855; see above, p264.10Canterbury. And that is the road marked on the fourteenth century map in the Bodleian Library, of whichRichard Gough published a facsimile in the first volume of this British Topography in 1780’.41The decision of which river crossing medieval travellers would have adopted needs to take account of (i)the arguments already considered by Belloc in the ‘The Old Road’ vis-à-vis the crossing points atAylesford, Snodland, Upper Halling and Cuxton (albeit that Belloc’s arguments are primarily concernedwith the evolution of a prehistoric ancient trackway) as well as (ii) the arguments of Elliston-Erwood,Crump and Goodsall, the proponents of a direct hike along Watling Street, once the Medway had beencrossed (who are considering this in the context of medieval travel). In addition attention should be givento Rochester and the Watling Street crossing for the reason that a bridge of some description existed atRochester since the time of the roman occupation. It is believed that Rochester’s first medieval bridgedates from about 960 and that earlier wooden medieval bridges were replaced by a stone bridge in 1391.Diagram: Approaches into and crossing points of the Medway GapTherefore the question of where to cross the River Medway has a number of facets; at least two timeframes (medieval and prehistoric) and deals with travellers approaching the Valley from two differentdirections, which we have called Group A (Watling Street) and Group B (Pilgrims’ Way). Our questionalso raises considerations about the characteristics of the river and its surrounding terrain in prehistoricperiod’s and how these factors impacted upon the development of the ancient trackway. This latter pointis significant because of the need to address not only the development of a pre-historic trackway but howonce established it in turn influenced routes adopted in the middle ages.Whilst due cognisance should be taken of Belloc’s discussion of the four likely Medway crossing points,i.e. the Aylesford; Snodland; Halling and Cuxton, Belloc’s assessment was in the context of the prehistoric traveller, not the medieval pilgrim. Belloc acknowledges that post-prehistoric travellers such asthe Romans had overcome problems associated with the Gault Clay in the Medway Gap, throughbuilding a causeway at Aylesford, but discounts the Aylesford crossing for three reasons - which hedescribes as being insuperable. To paraphrase Belloc’s words these reasons are as follows:(i) the immense width of the valley and qualifies this by adding that the valley would bean ‘immense tract of uncertain wooded way’;(ii) the belt of Gault Clay that would have to be crossed to reach the ford at Aylesford;41 C G Crump, Op cit; p.3311(iii) and finally, pre-historic sites such as Kits Coty lie north of the Aylesford crossing andtherefore ‘a man crossing at Aylesford would have to turn back upon his generaldirection’.42A number of counter arguments can be made in respect of Belloc’s reservations regarding a crossingpoint near Aylesford. Oliver Rackham suggests that even by the time of the Roman occupation thecountryside ‘can hardly have been much more wooded than it is today’.43 Moreover the upper Medwayvalley around Aylesford includes Gault Clay mixed with chalk, which would have encouraged Neolithicland cultivation. As Champion noted, the Coldrum stones ‘lie on top of well developed lynchets, whichmust have been formed by hill wash from ploughing that took place before their construction’.44Therefore the cultivation of the land probably pre-dated the construction of the Coldrum Stones. TheColdrum stones are also situated within the border of the Gault Clay belt and therefore there is everylikelihood that the area of Neolithic cultivation stretched considerably further east towards a Medwaycrossing point. Given these considerations there is sufficient reason to doubt whether ‘an immense tractof uncertain wooded way’ as Belloc suggests, presented such a problem for the pre-historic traveller.However if Belloc’s concern about the gault clay still stands, it is equally applied (as Belloc rightly does)too both the Snodland and Halling crossings. Nevertheless during the summer months the surface wouldbe passable for the same reason, as Belloc himself argues, that the Gault Clay would be hard and dry onthe approach to a crossing at Snodland, because it is south facing, and not in the shade of the Holboroughknob, as is the case with the approach to a crossing at Halling.Patrick Thornhill (1974) reviewed The Medway crossings of the Pilgrims Way in an article of the sametitle, in light of studies undertaken of alluvial deposits in the Medway estuary by J H Evans (1953) and RKirby (1969) as well as borings taken in the Snodland and Burham area in 1973. Taking account of Evansand Kirby’s earlier work, Thornhill states that ‘there has been a striking change in the valley floor sinceprehistoric times’. Essentially, he argues that the studies of Evans and Kirby show that ‘through theMesolithic period (10,000 – 5,000 years ago) the sea-level rose as the northern ice-sheets melted. Theriver was shrinking, slowing down and dropping its gravel in its own channel, for it could now carry onlyits finer sediments down to the advancing sea. This gravel filled channel, five or six times as wide as themodern Medway at Snodland was eventually to become the ‘buried channel’.Thornhill also noted that examination of borings taken for the riverside extension of the Snodland PaperMills, as well as across the river for a new station of the Medway Water Board, showed no signs of aNeolithic peat layer at the base of the alluvium deposits and therefore ‘it is reasonable to conclude thatthe surface of the buried channel at Snodland was not covered with alluvium until well after Neolithictimes.’ This leads Thornhill to assert that:‘…if the Way be older than the megaliths that cluster around it, which can hardly be denied, it must havebeen well established before the alluvium was deposited and the marshes created’.45Importantly, he goes onto add that the Neolithic Medway was:‘…was not yet tidal and it flowed among the gravel and the sand banks of the channel, which probablysplit into a number of interlacing streams that could be forded without difficulty’.42 Ibid, p.24843 Rackham, Oliver; The Illustrated History of the Countryside,p.36 this ed’ 1997 Phoenix Illustrated44 Champion, Timothy; The Archaeology of Kent to AD 800 (edited John H Williams); The Boydall PressKent County Council 2007, p.74.45 Thornhill, Patrick, ‘The Medway Crossings of the Pilgrims Way’; Archaeologia Cantiana Volume 891974, p.9412Top: Medieval bridge at AylesfordBottom: Coldrum Stones, Pilgrims’ Way near TrottiscliffeThornhill suggests that for the Neolithic traveller the river was less of an obstacle than muddy marshlandwas to later to make it, whereas, when Belloc was considering the Medway crossing, the view thatprevailed was that the upper Medway valley consisted of gault clay and marshland.Finally, Belloc’s last point as regards turning back upon oneself to reach Kit’s Coty House and Boxley istenuous. The journey from the Coldrum Stones on the west side of the Medway Gap to Kits Coty House13via Aylesford on the east side of the Medway Gap circ*mscribes a southerly arc of 6.5 miles in length.Compare this with the Snodland crossing from the same points and the distance is 6.2 miles. Even iftopography of the area may have influenced any decision, in spite of the points made above, distancealone can only be considered to be a marginal factor.Nevertheless, Thornhill makes reference to the fact that the surface of the gravels of the buried channel issufficiently thick and extensive to be dredged south of Snodland. In conclusion it is Thornhill’s view thatby Romano-British times, as tides progressively advanced up the Medway valley, wayfarers were forcedto use the Snodland rocks crossing rather than the lower Holborough crossing.Even though Belloc’s argument concludes that it is less likely that pre-historic travellers crossed atAylesford it is interesting to note the number of post Ice Age (last ice-age) archaeological finds in thearea in the upper Medway Gap in line with Wrotham and Blue Bell Hill. These finds include ‘the largestconcentration of Mesolithic’ flints at Addington;46 an assemblage of early Mesolithic tools found atDitton (Clark 1932 70-71),47 situated one mile west of Aylesford; and axe’s made from fine grained rockheads, which Ashbee describes as ‘an integral feature of our Neolithic’ found at New Hythe.48 Thiscertainly suggests that within a broad 6 mile arc passing through the Aylesford area between Coldrumand Kits Coty there is ample evidence of many forms of prehistoric human activity.Moreover Neolithic burial chambers at Addington and the Chestnuts are on a direct line and mid-waybetween Wrotham and Aylesford. Again these long barrows have revealed a number of Neolithic findsincluding potsherds.49 Later, important Bronze-Age finds were made at burial sites to the north-west ofAylesford church. Three burial cists made of tufa and sandstone contained a number of bronze items,including a bronze bound bucket and an imported Italian jug and pan.50Gold work in the form gold bracelets was also found at Aylesford, ‘enclosed in a box which was allegedto have been thrown into the river’.51 Paul Ashbee suggests that from Neolithic times onwards there arehints of Kent ‘having an especial role in the country’s trading activities’.52 Champion notes theprehistoric sources of copper and tin found in the Kent area and suggests that trading links with westernEngland amongst other places may have existed.‘South Eastern England has no native source of copper or tin, so all the metalwork found there must bemade from imported materials. The copper may have come from western England, Wales or Ireland, orpossibly from sources on the continent’.53This of course fits with but does not necessarily support Grant Allen’s tin road theory, which most of thepilgrimist writers give particular credence too.54Therefore given all of the above arguments, it is less inconceivable than Belloc argues, that prehistorictravellers crossed the river as high as the Aylesford area, given the arguments about deforestation preColdrum and the distance in comparison with other routes, combined with Neolithic finds in the vicinityof Aylesford, outlined above.Legend, according to Francis Watt, writing about the Medway megaliths in 1917, has it that ‘– an avenuelined with those mammoth blocks ran from Kits Coty House to Coldrum; it led to a rude temple orancient place of burial. Some have professed to trace this avenue through the Medway which runs by46 Champion, Timothy; The Archaeology of Kent to AD 800 (edited John H Williams); The Boydall PressKent County Council 2007, p.73.47 ibid, p.7248 Ashbee, Paul; Kent in Prehistoric Times; p.98 Tempus 2005.49 ibid, p.87- 11850 Champion, Op cit, p.124-124; Ashbee, ibid p.12551 Ashbee, Op cit, p.150, the quote from Ashbee also contains within it a quote from Pretty (1862).52 ibid, p.149.53 Champion, Op cit,, p.95.54Cartwright op cit, p.4-5; Belloc, op cit, p.21 and 88, Belloc merely touches on the metals of theDevonian peninsula and the growth of the Sussex Weald iron industry but does not refer to GrantAllen, unlike Cartwright. Grant Allen’s Tin Road theory published in Cornhill Magazine November1889 ‘The Bronze Axe’, originally taken as abstract from two chapter from Science in Arcady, byGrant Allen, London, Lawrence and Bullen, chapters 12 The Bronze Axe, p212 and chapter 13, TheIsle of Ruim, p231.14Aylesford’.55 If such a line of stones did mark an avenue across the Medway Gap, it is also interesting tonote that the Coldrum stones and Kits Coty House stand at the same height above sea level on either sideof the Medway Gap. As regards the stones respective heights, the facts cannot be disputed and bothmegaliths lie at a height 95 metres above present sea-level at a distance of six miles part either side of theMedway Gap. Perhaps an avenue of stones stretching across the valley is somewhat more fanciful.William Coles Finch (1925) also makes reference to an authority, which is James Fergusson, DCL, FCS,who described an avenue of stones on the east bank of the Medway Valley.56 Fergusson was referring toa much shorter avenue, approximately three quarters of a mile in length, at the rear of Kits Coty and LittleKits Coty, running from Spring Farm to Hale Farm and states:‘…there exists, or existed, a line of great stones, extending from a place called Spring Farm, in a northeasterly direction, for a distance of three quarters of a mile to another spot known as Hale Farm, passingthrough Tollington, where the greater number of stones are now found’.57Fergusson also refers to the fact that an elderly stonemason recounted to him how he had been employedin his youth to utilise many of the stones and pointed out the position of those he remembered.Therefore, perhaps it is less surprising that Coles Finch informed his readers in 1925 that from hisresearch ‘the three quarters of a mile of great stone is no more’. Christopher John Wright, in his guide tothe Pilgrims’ Way also mentions the tradition of an avenue of stones that stretched between the ColdrumStones to Kits Coty House. However, rather than at Aylesford, he suggests that the ‘river crossing atSnodland would be the natural route between the two’.58Belloc’s favoured crossing point is at Snodland, which has also given up a number of prehistoricarchaeological finds within the vicinity, including Neolithic pottery.59 As Goodsall notes ‘the many findson both banks prove the importance of the area in Roman times’.60 Belloc suggested that the river bed atSnodland may have been artificially hardened to create a causeway. However Goodsall states at this spotthere is a natural outcrop of greensand (ragstone) which has defied all dredging operations in the past’.61Nevertheless it has also been suggested that the ‘causeway is a feature in the river bed known as the'Snodland Rocks' - 'a bar of iron-cemented conglomerate, with large and small flints and pebbly materialvisible at low tide’.62In 2005, the BBC South East weather presenter, Kaddy Lee -Preston, with the help of the Kent FireService, waded across the River Medway at Snodland. The BBC had consulted local Snodland historianAndrew Ashbee who advised the film makers as to the exact location of the hard base and the fact that itcould be crossed at low tide. In 2009 the author was introduced by Andrew Ashbee to Robert Coomber,a local Snodland resident and volunteer worker at the Snodland Museum. He described how as a youngman, in the late nineteen forties he had crossed the River Medway on foot to retrieve a pigeon he hadshot, which fell onto the far bank. Mr. Coomber crossed at a point at TQ 714615, situated slightly southof the Horseshoe Reach and adjacent to Brookland Lake, with Burham marshes on the opposite bank. Hedescribed the river bed’s surface as consisting of fist sized rocks that provided for a secure and firmpassage underfoot.63Nigel Nicholson’s article in Current Archeology 157 makes the point that it is now thought that theRoman army led by Aulus Plautius defeated the British tribes on the west bank of the Medway in AD 43.He suggests that Vespasian led his legion of 5,000 armoured men across the river at Snodland. He alsostates that the army used the North Kent coastal plain, the North Downs and also the Pilgrims’ Way asroutes from the Kent coast through to the Medway.Given that there is only a marginal difference in distance between the Coldrum Stones and Kits Coty onBlue Bell Hill going either by the Snodland crossing or the Aylesford crossing, combined with the55 Watt Francis, Canterbury Pilgrims and their Ways; Methuen & Co Ltd, 1917, p.22256 Finch William Coles, In Kentish Pilgrims Land, First pub 1925, this ed’ 1925, The C W DanielCompany, p.29557 Fergusson James, DCL FRS, Rude Stone Monuments, their Ages and Uses; John Murrey, 1872, p.11758 Wright. Christopher John; A Guide to the Pilgrims’ Way and North Downs Way; A Constable Guide;first published in GB 1971; this edition 1993, p.200.59 Ashbee, Op cit, p.115.60 Goodsall, Robert H, The Ancient Road to Canterbury – A Progress through Kent; first published 1960(subscription edition 1959), this edition 1960, p57.61 ibid. p.5762 Snodland Historical Society web site, http://www.snodlandhistory.org.uk/index.htm63 Interview with Robert Coomber at Snodland Museum, Sunday 15th November 2009.15evidence of human activity in the region it is just as likely that prehistoric travellers crossed at bothSnodland and Aylesford.Moreover these crossing points may well have changed due to seasonal variations in the weather inaddition to changes over longer periods of time as discussed above. Belloc also argues that the existence of churches on either side of the Snodland crossing is a positivefactor. This surely is hardly relevant, as Belloc is considering the development of a prehistoric route andnot a medieval crossing. Even if he could argue that churches may signify religious sites of a muchearlier date, he does not suggest this nor considers if this is even relevant to an earlier society. Ifanything, the proximity of the churches so close to one another, on either side of the river at Snodland,suggests if anything that crossing in the medieval period was not an everyday task. Anyway, it wouldappear that key sites (i.e. the megaliths), which may have held some prehistoric spiritual significance aresituated at the western and eastern periphery of the Medway Gap. Ivan Margary picks up on this pointand states Belloc seems ultimately ‘too much swayed by the presence of religious buildings quiteunconnected with prehistoric considerations’.64 Nevertheless, the Norman churches at Snodland andBurham may have held some significance for medieval pilgrims.Belloc also argues that the Horseshoe reach at Snodland is favored because it is the upper limit of wherethe sea town (Rochester) has jurisdiction over the lower Medway. He suggests that this is always thetraditional crossing point of a river. Again, this factor is of no relevance to the prehistoric traveler and assuch does not apply.Kits Coty House situated on the east bank of the Medway Gap64 Margary Ivan D, The North Downs Main Trackway and the Pilgrims’ Way; Archaeological Journalvolume CIX; p.49.16Kits Coty HouseFinally, manorial records for the Manor of the Bishop of Rochester report that on 8th April 1720, JohnMay ‘lately obstructed and diverted the King’s Highway in a field called the twelve acres leading fromSnodland to Gravesend’.65 Whilst it is beyond the scope of this article to suggest that a direct routeexisted between Snodland and Gravesend that could have been used by medieval travellers, it is knownthat Hasted refers to a ferry between Essex and Lillechurch at Higham near Gravesend, which hedescribes as being used up until the dissolution.66After Snodland, Lower Halling is the next lowest crossing point considered by Belloc apart from Cuxton.Belloc suggests that at Halling the alluvial soil is less broad than at Snodland and ‘no clay intervenesbetween the chalk and gravel’ and as such ‘the primitive traveller would have dry land all the way downto the river’.67 Nevertheless Belloc discounts Halling in favour of Snodland. His reason being that thespur known as the Holborough knob, which jutted out from the chalk escarpment into the valley, leftSnodland on the dryer south side of the spur and Halling on the north side of the spur. Today most of theHolborough knob has been cut back through quarrying. As a result of this quarrying the hillside nowlines up with the general line of the curve of the west side of the chalk escarpment rather than jutting outtoward the river bank. The previous position of the Holborough knob therefore leads Belloc to argue that‘in such a conformation only the southern bank alone would have any chance of drying’.68 However thisis somewhat contradictory as Belloc already has testified to the lack of clay between the chalkescarpment and the gravel of the river, making for dryer ground underfoot on the approach to Halling.The lack of antiquities found at Halling compared with what Belloc describes as numerous finds atSnodland is for Belloc another factor. Belloc also suggests that the Snodland crossing had a ford whereasthe river bed is soft at Halling and a ferry crossing would need to be undertaken. Nevertheless, at thetime of writing he did not have the benefit of Patrick Thornhill’s research in light of the boringsundertaken at Snodland and Halling (see above).65 Manorial Records, Manor of the Bishop of Rochester - Medway Archives, 1202-1754; Halling withappertances of Cuxton and Holborough. 8th April 172066 Hasted, Edward, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 3; 1797, p.481-498.67 Belloc, Op cit, p.249.68 Ibid, p250.17Moreover the notes of Rev. Henry Dampier Phelps, Rector of Snodland 1804-1865, written in the 1840s,suggest both road access and a river crossing at Halling, when he wrote:‘Many other proofs of the Romans having a Station in this Parish still remain; especially one of theirRoads, which now forms our Northern Boundary and runs in a line from the Hills to the River where theycrossed and where the Road is again found pointing directly up from the River*.’ (Rev Phelps adds in hisfootnotes*) ‘In digging on the Wouldham side, to make a sheep wash, it was found that the Bank of theRiver had been paved to admit of a ferry and facilitate crossing at low water’.69Phelps’ argument for a crossing at Halling, which was served by a roman road, is also supported byreference to map drawn by A.F. Bowker C.E.; F.R.GS., entitled ‘Malling and its Valley’ published in theRev. C. F. Fielding’s Memories of Malling and its Valley (1893). This shows a straight road running dueeast from Chapel House, following the line of the Parish boundary, to the river, then continuing in exactlythe same line on the east bank and joining up with the Rochester Road leading to Kits Coty.Edward Hasted (1798) also makes reference to a river crossing at Lower Halling and states:‘In the northern part of the parish next to Lower Halling, is the hamlet of Holborough, usually calledHoborow, no doubt for Old Borough, a name implying the antiquity of this place. Many are inclined tobelieve, that the usual passage across the river in the time of the Romans, was from hence to Scarboroughon the opposite shore’.70The lowest crossing point Belloc considers is Cuxton, which he discounts despite acknowledging that theancient trackway continues north along the side of the chalk downs on either side of the river and wouldappear to converge towards a crossing point at Cuxton, which would necessitate a ferry (see map above).Moreover Belloc states ‘as a constant tradition maintains, the crossing of the river by pilgrims wascommon’.71 Not withstanding this, Belloc is judging this from the viewpoint of prehistoric travelers andargues that to continue down stream until the Cuxton crossing ‘would add five or six miles to hisjourney’.72 He adds that the bottom is soft mud, the width of the river is considerable, the tidal currentstrong, and of all the points at which the river might have been crossed, it is the most distant from thedirect line’.73Captain E Renouard James, the Ordnance Survey Officer, who is a significant figure in the developmentof pilgrimist theory, states in his published ‘Notes on the Pilgrims Way’ (1871) that he believed Cuxtonto be the point where pilgrims crossed the Medway, unless they chose to go onto Rochester. The authorhas assumed that Captain E R James comes down in favour of Cuxton because he tracked the course of aNorth Downs trackway along the west bank of the Medway beyond North Halling towards Cuxton. Hedoes not say in his notes whether medieval travelers would have crossed the river at Cuxton by ford orferry, but given Thornhill’s conclusions with regard to the changing state of the valley floor sinceprehistoric times, it would appear that lower crossings should not be discounted. Moreover IvanMargary, whilst concluding that ‘it would be misleading to point to any one spot as ‘the crossing’’, doeshowever argue that Belloc did not give sufficient consideration to a Cuxton crossing, when he states:‘But why then should the terrace way continue north? The reason may well be this. Below Halling, nearHolborough, the river widens into a tidal estuary, though sheltered, and with firm ground right down tothe water on both banks, especially near Cuxton and Borstal. If a raft or boat had to be used in any case,it might well be easier to use this where firm ground gave good landings on either bank, even if thisinvolved a somewhat longer water crossing’.74Whilst it is known that the Romans established a bridge at Rochester, what is not known is if the bridgewas constantly maintained following the Roman occupation. A bridge existed in the 13th century, in theform of a wooden structure and according to Stow’s ‘Annales’ 1631, this entirely collapsed due to severe69 Phelps, Rev Henry Dampier Rector 1804-1865; Notes on Snodland Volume III – History, Flora andFauna, Published for Snodland Historical Society, Andrew Ashbee, 214 Malling Road 2005, p.13.70 Hasted, Edward: The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 4; 1798, p.463-47.71 Belloc, Op cit, p.244.72 Ibid, p245.73 Ibid, p.245.74 Margary Ivan , The North Downs Main Trackway and the Pilgrims’ Way; Archaeological Journalvolume CIX; p.49.18weather in the winter of 1281.75 Crossing the Medway at Rochester was not without its dangers as DianaWebb informs us when she states:‘…but pilgrims were among those who from time to time were drowned crossing the Medway by ferrywhen the bridge was broken, which happened no fewer than nineteen times between 1277 and 1381’.76In 1387 the first stone bridge was built, situated 100 yards upstream from the original Roman Bridge.The dangerous state of the old Rochester Bridge prior to the construction of the new bridge at the end ofthe 14th century may well have been another determining factor as to why some travellers opted for usingthe crossing higher upstream and then following the North Downs trackway as their chosen route toCanterbury or Dover. However, Sean Jennet makes the counter argument and suggests that in wintermonths the upstream crossings may have proved the more difficult and this could have influencedmedieval travellers (GROUP B) to continue the few additional miles on into Rochester and use thebridge.‘We have to remember that for the first fifty years of pilgrimage to Canterbury the month of December inwhich Becket died, was the prime occasion of the veneration of the saint. In that month it was alwayspossible that after days of rain or snow the river would be swollen and perilous, the valley floods, andferry-boats untempting. At Rochester however there was a bridge, and there a man might cross theMedway in safety’.77Given the importance of Boxley Abbey, it is likely that some pilgrims coming from the London directionmay have chosen to leave the Watling Street route after crossing the Medway at Rochester Bridge.Pilgrims would have then followed the terrace-way track, today known as both the Burham Road and thePilgrims Way, to Kits Coty and onto Boxley Abbey, which lies on the eastern fringe of the Medway Gapand within close proximity to the North Downs trackway. The Abbey was founded in 1146 and remaineda prominent Cistercian monastery until the dissolution. Boxley Abbey became a case of notoriety at thetime of the reformation when the Rood of Grace and the figure of St Rumbold, which took on life likequalities when presented with offerings by pilgrims, were exposed as mere mechanical tricks operated bythe monks. William Coles Finch, in his book entitled ‘In Kentish Pilgrims Land’ informs his readers that‘no pilgrim of medieval days would leave the Abbey unvisited.’78Having examined all the Medway river crossings it would appear that there is strong case that travellersin Group B, approaching the Medway Gap from the west of England and south of London would haveused the crossings up stream such as Aylesford, Snodland or Halling. There is also reason to accept, inview of the popularity of Boxley Abbey as a pilgrimage destination, that some of those in Group A mayhave crossed at Rochester Bridge or Cuxton and picked up the trackways along the east bank of theMedway to Kits Coty.75 Jusserand, J J, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages; first pub’ 1888, this ed’ T Fisher Unwin1909 p.65 , footnote quoting Stow’s Annales, London 1631, p.201.76 Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledown and London 2000, p.228, makingreference to N Yates and J Gibson, Traffic and Politics: The Construction and Management of RochesterBridge, AD 43 -1993, Woodbridge 1994. In the eyre roll of 1292-94 the deaths of quidam peregrineignoti are recorded (p.39 n.98)77 Jennett Sean, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury, published Cassell & Co 1971,p.211.78 Finch, William Coles, In Kentish Pilgrims Land, First pub 1925, this ed’ 1925, The C W DanielCompany. P.202.19Top: Snodland Rocks, reproduced with kind permission of the Snodland MuseumBottom: St Benedict’s Chapel, PaddlesworthPART II - Population and PilgrimageMuch of the criticism of pilgrimist theory with regard to the use of the North Downs trackways as a routeof medieval pilgrimage is aimed at what is probably fair to describe as the exaggerated claims ofantiquarians writing in the nineteenth century regarding the numbers undertaking the journey.Nevertheless, despite such criticism, these claims have been subject to little in depth scrutiny. Byworking backwards from the scale of offerings at Beckett’s shrine combined with working forward fromDomesday statistics, thereby enabling account to be taken of geographic location and social class, thisarticle argues that the evidence suggests a limited scale of extended pilgrimage to Canterbury. As such,not only could the North Downs main trackways sustain the relative low levels of medieval pilgrimage20but for many travellers from the west of the country the route also presented an attractive option incomparison with the decaying, ill maintained and risk laden Roman road network.Elliston-Erwood, was one of the first critics to suggest the likelihood of there having been far fewerpilgrims than had been claimed by pilgrimist writers. In 1925 he wrote that ‘the mediaeval religiouspilgrimage is a matter that has been grossly exaggerated in the past’.79 His conclusions were based uponhis application of a quantative assessment of the recorded offerings made at Beckett’s shrine. To this end Elliston-Erwood divided the published accounts of offerings to Beckett’s shrines by his ownsuggested average offering of 4 shillings per pilgrim. In so doing he arrived at a figure of 1,000 pilgrimsper year. He then estimated across the year and arrived at an average of two pilgrims a day outside of thegreat festivals. As Elliston-Erwood states:“Thus pilgrimage is reduced to more reasonable dimensions. Chaucer’s pilgrims become moreilluminating; and the effect of such travellers on a country road becomes negligible”.80For dissenters from the view that the trackway was used by pilgrims, there is an array of targets. As theclaims of the pilgrimists, with regard to the numbers using the North Downs trackway increased, so didthe ease by which their statements became open to criticism.It is not too difficult to see how the claims of some pilgrimists appear to build upon one another overtime.In 1767 the antiquarian Owen Manning asked William Bray, a Surrey based solicitor from Shere to helpedit his notes for a work on the history of Surrey. Bray was noted in his own right for his antiquarianwork and held the position of Treasurer to the Society of Antiquaries between 1803 and 1823. Manningand Bray’s three volume The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey was researched over 40years and published between 1804 and 1814. Surrey County Council state that it is ‘still acknowledgedas one of the finest county histories of its day’.Manning and Bray’s history refers to two sections of road in Surrey that were known as the pilgrims’ laneor road. One length is in Reigate and Merstham and the other is in tit*ey and Tatsfield. According toManning and Bray the first is a lane that:‘…in the parish of Merstham retains the name Pilgrims’ Lane. It runs in the direction of the chalk hills,and was the course taken by pilgrims from the west who resorted (as indeed from all parts) toCanterbury’.81The second reference to the pilgrims’ road in Surrey is at tit*ey and Tatsfield where according toManning and Bray the:‘Pilgrims’ Road (so called from the passage of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket atCanterbury) which is now perfect, not nine feet wide and still used as a road’.82However, a staunch critic of the pilgrimist tradition, E G Crump, noted that Manning and Bray onlyclaimed that the route was used by pilgrims from the west. They did not enumerate further about thescale of the route’s usage. Crump’s essay, published in June 1936, shortly after his death, was steeredthrough to publication by Charles Johnson on his behalf. He asserts his own scepticism about thePilgrims’ Way from the outset and explains to the reader that for some forty years he had ‘thoroughlydisliked the Pilgrims’ Way’ and ‘believed it to a be a fond thing grounded upon no uncertain warranty ofhistory, and so intrinsically absurd that it was not worth criticism’.83 In fact Crump was only stirred intowriting about the Pilgrims’ Way in reaction to an article that had been published the previous year inHistory (June 1935) by Dr Peter Brieger. In Brieger’s article he stated that:79 Elliston-Erwood Frank C, The Pilgrims’ Way, its antiquity and its alleged medieval use’ ArchaeologiaCantiana Vol 37 1925 p.1.80 Elliston-Erwood Frank C; The Pilgrims Road; first published 1910, this edition 1923; The HomelandAssociation, p.37.81 Manning and Bray, The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey; Vol II p.253 (1804-14); thisquote is taken from C G Crump’s The Pilgrims Way pub’ in History quarterly, June 1936.82 Ibid, p.408.83 Crump, C G; The Pilgrim’ Way; History Quarterly June 1936 p.2221 ‘The religious spirit of the Middle Ages thronged the roads with pilgrims on their way to Rome and theHoly Land. Even more numerous were those who undertook pilgrimages to Holy Places in Englanditself. The most celebrated of these was the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury, and the Pilgrims’ Waybetween Winchester and Canterbury was in consequence by far the best road in England’.84Crump lays out in chronological order what he believes are the exaggerated claims of the pilgrimists anddemonstrates how these claims compound over time. He points out that by 1850 Edward Brayley in hisTopographical History of Surrey Volume V, upon discovering a section of the way in the parish ofAlbury, informs readers that the ‘the Pilgrims Way, which led from the city of Winchester to Canterburycrosses this parish, and is said to have been much used in former times’ (author’s emphasis).85However the notes of Captain E Renouard James were overlooked by Crump. By 1871 Captain E.R.James, the Ordnance Survey Officer responsible for denoting stretches of trackway running along theNorth Downs scarp on OS maps as the Pilgrims’ Way, was describing the route as one that had been‘frequented by crowds of pilgrims’.86 In his Notes on the Pilgrims Way in West Surrey published as apamphlet and drawn from his notes for a lecture he gave at the Exhibition to the Bath and West ofEngland and Southern Counties Association held in Shalford Park, Captain James stated that pilgrimsusing the trackway:“…came, doubtless, the greatest numbers from the royal; and ecclesiastical city of Winchester, wherethey assembled from Salisbury and all parts of western England, and thence followed the old Roman roadto Farnham.”87Nevertheless despite omitting Captain James’ contribution towards Victorian descriptions of evergrowing numbers of medieval pilgrims using the North Downs trackway, Crump does quote a letter fromsomeone he describes as a true believer published in Notes and Queries, dated 21st September 1850, inwhich is described ‘a vast influx of pilgrims’ as using the road. According to the letter’s author thepilgrims started their pilgrimage to Beckett’s shrine from its true commencement at Otford.Crump goes on to note that by 1895 Julia Cartwright was referring to ‘thousands of pilgrims’. In factMrs. Ady states in her opening chapter that:‘this route it is, which, trodden by thousands of pilgrims during the next three centuries, may still beclearly defined through the greater part of its course, and which in Surrey and Kent bears the historicname of the Pilgrims’ Way’.88Crump reminds us that nine years following the publication of ‘The Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester toCanterbury’, Hilaire Belloc’s ‘The Old Road’ describes how hordes of international pilgrims streamedtowards Beckett’s shrine. Belloc lists their places of origin as the south western peninsula of England;Brittany; the Asturias and the western ports from Vigo to Lisbon and says ‘all these sent their hordes toconverge on Winchester and thence to find their way to Canterbury’.89By 1925 William Coles Finch, in his In Kentish Pilgrim Land informs his readership, based upon areference by A S Lamprey in a Guide to Maidstone that:84 Op cit, p22 quoting from Dr Peter Brieger’s article in History June 1935 entitled Relations in History,Geography and Art.85 Op cit, p.2486 James, Captain E Renouard, Notes on the Pilgrims Way in West Surrey, London, Edward Stanford,1871, p.687 James, Captain E Renouard, Notes on the Pilgrims Way in West Surrey, London Edward Stanford,1871, p.788 Cartwright, Julia, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury, first published in GB 1895, thisedition re-issued Wildwood House 1982, Julia Cartwright was also a novelist writing under the name ofMrs Henry Ady, p.5.89 Belloc Hilaire, The Old Road, first pub’ 1904, this edition Constable & Co 1911, Illustrated by WilliamHyde p. 91.22‘Along that mysterious road known as the Pilgrims’ Way travelled as many as a hundred thousandpilgrims a year to the shrine of Thomas a Becket’.90It’s of little surprise therefore that the pilgrimist writers came under attack from the likes of Crump;Elliston-Erwood; Captain W H Knocker and Wilfrid Hooper. Perhaps the biggest mistake made by thepilgrimists is that they over egged the pudding. Hooper argued in an article published in Volume 44 ofthe Surrey Archaeology Collections in 1936, that writers like Belloc and Cartwright accepted the‘pilgrimist theory as an established historical fact’. But more importantly he notes that:‘In their train have followed the host of guide-books and popular writers who have expanded andembellished ad libitum as fancy prompted’.91Nevertheless a fundamental problem does exist with regard to much of the criticism of the pilgrimistwriters in that it has been undertaken with little analysis of the actual numbers of that would haveengaged in medieval pilgrimage. Any consideration of the scale of pilgrimage needs to be undertakenwith an understanding of the population in terms of class, in as much as how this affected an individual’sright to freedom of travel beyond their own manor. Moreover such analysis would provide a betterunderstanding of the numbers that may have used a particlaular route, such as the North Downstrackways. Any such analysis also needs to take due cognisance of demographic trends during the periodof medieval pilgrimage. However Ronald C Finucane noted that we know very little about the ordinaryperson and pilgrimage for the reason that little was actually recorded. As Diana Webb states:‘Among the various types of documentation thus created, the records of offerings at shrines, whichnaturally survive most often from the larger churches, occupy one extreme of objectivity. Although theseare obviously of the greatest value, not least in making possible some idea of the popularity of shrinesand alters over a period of time, the ordinary pilgrim as an individual does not feature in them; his pennyor his candle is subsumed in the mass’.92Nevertheless there is evidence that suggests substantial numbers of pilgrims did journey to Canterburybetween the 12th and the 16th centuries. Reference to the scale of pilgrimage is mentioned in one of thePaston letters, believed to be written in the year after the fifth jubilee of Becket’s translation. In Sir JohnPaston’s letter to John Paston, 28th September 1471, he states:‘As ffor tydyngs, the Kyng and the Qwyen, and moche other pepell, ar ryden and good to Canterbery.Nevyr so moche peple seyn in Pylgrymage hertofor or at ones, as men seye’.93 To date, one of the only methods of quantifying the numerical scale of pilgrimage to Canterbury hasbeen to examine the shrine accounts and the offerings made at Becket’s shrines. This was undertaken byBen Nilson’s work, which looked at the Canterbury Cathedral Priory’s receipts between 1198/9 throughto 1531/2 for the years when the treasurers’ accounts were maintained.Taking Nilson’s figures and using the same average minimum and maximum offering figures applied byElliston-Erwood in his research, we find that the highest number of pilgrims could have been 128,400 inthe year of the 1220 jubilee, assuming an average offering as low as 2d per pilgrim across all shrines,including the main shrine; the martyrdom; the corona and the tomb – or as low as 5,355 pilgrimsassuming an average offering as high as 4 shillings per pilgrim. Applying this method to other yearswhere the total offerings to all the shrines were recorded, we can calculate possible maximum orminimum numbers of pilgrims using Elliston-Erwood’s minimum or maximum average offerings perpilgrim as the divisor.The year of the translation of Beckett’s relics in 1220, represented the numerical highpoint, increasingfrom 74,000 pilgrims in 1200/01 assuming an average of 2d per pilgrim or as few as 3,100 assuming anaverage of 4 shillings per pilgrim. Between 1320 and 1340 the average number of pilgrims each yeardecreases to a maximum of 4,800 or a minimum of only 200 pilgrims. Between 1370 and 1379 the90 Finch William Coles, In Kentish Pilgrims Land, First pub 1925, this edition 1925, The C W DanielCompany. P.77 makes reference to AS Lamprey, M.A., Cantab’, Guide to Maidstone, p.3.91Hooper, Wilfred, ILD, The Pilgrims’ Way and its supposed pilgrim us, Surrey ArchaeologicalCollections Volume 44 1936, p.56.92 Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledon and London 2000, p.181.93 Gairdner James (ed), The Paston Letters AD 1422-1509, New Complete Library Edition, Vol 5, 1904Constable p.112.23average number of pilgrims each year increases to a maximum of 10,320 or a minimum of 430. By theyear of the fourth jubilee in 1420 the maximum number of pilgrims has risen to 68,400 or a minimum of2,850. In the decade leading up to the dissolution offerings decline and suggest a maximum of 1,639 or aminimum of 68 pilgrims per year. The receipts for offerings are shown in the table below, which is dataderived primarily from Ben Nilson’s research.24TABLE 1: Recorded combined offerings to the main shrine, tomb, corona and the martyrdom.Year Total No’ of pilgrims given 2dav’ offeringNo’ of pilgrims given 4/-av’ offeringNotes1200/01 £620 74,000 3,100 King John’sCoronationAv’ 1198-1207£426 51,120 2,130 Average overperiod1219/20 £1071* 128,520 5,355 Year oftranslation1320-1340 £40 4,800 200 Average overperiod1370-1379 £86 10,320 430 Average overperiod1419/20 £570* 68,400 2,850 Jubilee 4thAnniversary1531/32 £13-13s.3d 1,639 68All figures for offerings taken from Ben Nilson’s research ‘Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England’p.147-155, except those marked * from Elliston-Erwood F C, The Pilgrims’ Way, its antiquity and itsalleged medieval use, Archaeologia Cantiana Vol 37 1925.The above figures offer a means of quantifying the scale of pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine between1198/99 and 1531/32. However such a broad brush approach does not tell us where these pilgrims camefrom nor does it inform us of the social background of those that made these offerings. Both thesequestions are relevant to any inquiry regarding the numbers of medieval pilgrims that may have taken theancient trackway as their chosen route to Canterbury.Social position within a feudal society is important in as much as there were large numbers of thepopulation that due to their social status could not exercise any choice to go on an extended pilgrimage.It was not only slaves that would have had their freedom of movement restricted. Large numbers ofvilleins and cottagers were tied to the manor due to their position in the feudal social hierarchy. Thequestion of social position may also offer clues as to the size of offerings over time, within the range ofofferings discussed above.It is well documented that at various times legislation was enacted with a view to restricting who couldleave the land. Moreover such legislation would often refer directly to those leaving the manor for thepurpose of undertaking pilgrimage. Diana Webb referring to legislation enacted in 1388-89 notes inPilgrimage in Medieval England, that:“The statute include the stipulation that ‘all of them that go in pilgrimage as beggars and be able totravail, it shall be done as Servants and Labourers, if they have no Letters testimonial of theirpilgrimage”.94The extent to which pilgrimage undertaken by the lower classes was perceived as threatening to the socialorder was reflected in a directive to the sheriffs of London in 1473, which forbade people fromundertaking pilgrimage if they could not perform it without alms. As Webb suggests, the ‘thrust, asbefore was ostensibly against mendicancy and not against pilgrimage undertaken by respectable peoplewith money in their purse’.95An Alternative approach to calculating Pilgrim numbersIn addition to the above methodology of working backwards from offerings as a means of betterunderstanding the scale of pilgrimage, an alternative approach would be to work forwards from thepopulation base using Domesday records. Using Domesday we can make an assessment of the numericalsize of the population that would have been eligible to undertake an extended medieval pilgrimage.Furthermore Domesday also allows us to estimate the size of the population and its geographic location.This alternative approach has been undertaken with particular reference to counties situated to the west ofthe country and south of London, i.e. locations from which travellers may have chosen to use the NorthDowns ancient trackways as a pilgrimage route to Canterbury. It should be noted at the outset that theauthor is fully aware of the well-known pitfalls in using Domesday data and in making the various, often94 Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledon and London 2000, p.231.95 Op. cit, p.232.25heroic, assumptions that are required. All the steps in the calculations are described in detail for thereader to follow.In undertaking this exercise, the author has over-estimated by inclusion wherever there is doubt, so as toincrease the numbers of potential travellers rather than limit numbers. This has been done because theexercise is aimed at demonstrating that far fewer members of the population were able to undertakepilgrimage than may have been previously assumed.For this reason the whole of the following nine counties have been included, as follows; Cornwall,Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire. In reality, simply due toproximity and location, it would not have been practicable for the populations of large geographic areasof some of these counties to have accessed the North Downs trackways.Furthermore, adjustments need to be made to the Domesday population figures as Domesday does notprovide a census of the population in 1086. As Robert Bartlett points out:‘Domesday book was not intended as a population census. It lists a rural population of 268,863individuals, but that is certainly not the population of England in 1086, and in order to obtain that figurewe have to make some assumptions about what Domesday leaves out’.96The total recorded rural population of Domesday England is 268,863, which as H. C. Darby suggests ‘weare left to suppose that each recorded man was the head of a household’.97 By using a multiplier, derivedthrough evidence from the 13th century, that suggests a peasant household of 4.7 persons, Bartlett offersa figure for the total rural Domesday population of 1.26 million. The multiplier applied in this exercise isthe slightly higher conventional one of 5, as suggested by H .C. Darby’s research.98Account should also be taken of what H C Darby suggests is the Domesday exclusion of thenorthernmost counties. In addition Bartlett notes the exclusion of: the urban populations includingWinchester and London; the secular aristocracy and their dependents as well as ecclesiastics and theirservants. This brings a total population for Domesday England of 1.5 million. This alternative approachtakes account of these adjustments below. A further adjustment also needs to made to allow for a possible unreported number of sub-tenants andlandless persons, which could account for a further 750,000 people. This brings Bartlett’s estimate ofEngland’s Domesday population to an approximate total of 2,250,000.It has been estimated that by 1230 the population had increased to 5.8 million, which represents anincrease of 156%. However by the aftermath of the Black Death it is believed that the total populationmay have decreased to 3.5 million. These changes in population over time should be borne in mind whenconsideration is given to the use of Domesday data for determining the size of the population that mayhave been eligible to undertake an extended pilgrimage. However within the scope of this article it is feltthat the output figures derived from the 1086 data remain indicative of the scale of pilgrimage, but thereis no reason why the final numbers should not be weighted to reflect the above variation in populationover time.Applying Darby’s multiplier of 5 to the Domesday population total of 89,594 for the nine counties wearrive at a rural population of nearly half a million.99 This total of 447,846 individuals is the sum of thenine Domesday social groups and is divided between villagers / villeins 202,585 (45%); smallholders143,710 (32%); slaves 66,370 (15%); ancillary 40 (0%); freemen 135 (1%); priests 31; cottagers 11,030(2%); burgesses 12,960 (3%) and others 10,985 (2%).96 Bartlett, Robert; England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075 – 1225’, p.290-29497 Darby H.C., Domesday England, 1977, Cambridge University Press, p.87.98 Domesday population estimates using the conventional multiplier of 5: H.C. Darby, 'Domesday England', A NewHistorical Geography of England (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 33, 45, 54.99 Palmer, J. et al. , Electronic Edition of Domesday Book: Translation, Databases and Scholarly Commentary, 1086 [computerfile]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], September 2007. SN: 5694.26Table showing Domesday population in the nine counties from which medieval travellers may haveaccessed the North Downs trackwaysA number of social groups can be discounted from those that would have been eligible to leave the manorto go on pilgrimage. Those classifications that have been discounted areslaves and cottagers or cottars. It is generally regarded that cottars formed one of the lowestfree men**X 5 Priests Cottagers X 5 Burgesses X 5 Other PopulationRecordedPopulationTotal0 0 0 0 0 68 340 0 0 5339 266950 0 1 19 95 263 1315 371 185517267 863310 0 2 203 1015 164 820 209 10457394 369620 0 4 0 0 20 100 0 0 9695 484590 0 12 309 1545 840 4200 0 0 12565 627770 0 3 329 1645 518 2590 208 104013299 664830 0 0 276 1380 32 160 0 0 4136 206800 0 5 783 3915 391 1955 0 0 10004 500000 0 4 287 1435 296 1480 1409 70459895 49459Total numbers x 5 0 31 11030 12960 89594 447846Percent of total pop' 0% 2% 3% 100%County VillagersX 5***SmallholdersX 5 SlavesX 5 AncillaryX 5 Freemen *x5CORNWALL 1705 8525 2411 12055 1155 5775 0 0 0 0DEVON 8428 42140 4868 24340 3316 165801 5 0 0DORSET 2625 13125 2955 14775 1233 6165 3 15 0 0HAMPSHIRE 3903 19515 4004 20020 1764 8820 0 0 0 0KENT 6788 33940 3411 17055 1175 5875 4 20 26 130SOMMERSET 5283 26415 4837 24185 2120 106000 0 1 5SURREY 2389 11945 936 4680 503 2515 0 0 0 0SUSSEX 5890 29450 2522 12610 413 2065 0 0 0 0WILTSHIRE 3506 17530 2798 13990 1595 7975 0 0 0 0Total numbers x 5 ***202585143710 6637040 135Percentage of totalpopulation45% 32% 15% 0% 0%27* Freemen or sokemen, males with socage - Palmer, J. et al. , Electronic Edition of Domesday Book: Translation, Databases andScholarly Commentary, 1086 [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], September 2007. SN: 5694.** Free men (freedmen) or liberi homine – Palmer, J. et al. , Electronic Edition of Domesday Book: Translation, Databases andScholarly Commentary, 1086 [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], September 2007. SN: 5694.*** Multiplier of 5 applied to Domesday recorded heads of households to estimate population numbers see H C Darbygroups within the peasantry and as such were considered below most of the villeiny in terms of socialstatus. Of the other 6 social groups from the remaining 7, it has been assumed that most of those fromthese groups, i.e. small holders, ancillaries, burgesses, freemen, priests and others would have been freeto choose to go on pilgrimage. The final and largest social group, the villeins or villeinage were the leastlikely to be free to leave the manor. This group comprised 45 per cent of the Domesday population.Jusserand states that the:‘The villein who, without special licence, left his master’s domain, only entered the common life againafter putting himself at his mercy, or, which was less hard, after having passed a year and a day in a freetown without leaving it and without the lord having thought of interrupting the prescription’.100Bartlett argues that the compulsory provision of labour services to the lord was one of the factors thatdetermined the features of villeinage, when he suggests:‘One of the most obvious distinctions amongst the peasant tenantry was between those who had to marchoff to work on the lord’s farm for two or three days a week and those who did not. Although labourservices in themselves, particularly the obligation to help with the ploughing and harvestry, did not implyservile status, the heavy burden of weekly work, and in particular the uncertainty of services required,could be taken as a defining feature of villeinage’.101Therefore if one concludes that ‘most villeins do not travel more than a few miles from their manor, onaccount of their bond to their lord, but freeman can – and do – travel much further afield’, then it wouldnot be unreasonable to discount a large proportion of villeins from those that would be eligible toundertake pilgrimage.102 As Jusserand noted it was ‘escaped peasants that brought the most numerousrecruits to the wandering class’.103 Moreover tensions within English feudal society demonstrated inevents such as the peasant’s revolt resulted in the introduction of legislation in 1376 prohibiting themovement of individuals out of a man’s own district.104Nevertheless some recent approaches to understanding medieval society have looked beyond the feudalstructure of the manor. Schofield remarks that:‘Historians now look for and find peasants in contexts beyond the manor and villages, in markets, incountry courts, in military levies, or on pilgrimage’.105Furthermore Sumption commenting on the bequests made by pilgrims to the four Canterbury Jubilees inthe late middle ages, noted that they ‘drew large crowds of pilgrims but the great and wealthy stayedaway’ and states that:‘declining social status of pilgrims was a general phenomenon of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,and its immediate effect was to reduce the income from offerings while increasing the number of visitorswho needed free food and board.’106Nevertheless, no evidence exists to indicate the number from within the villeiny that may have been ableto travel on an extended pilgrimage. Therefore in consideration of the arguments that peasants could befound in contexts beyond the manor, the author has only discounted two thirds of the population that fallwithin the category of villein from being eligible to undertake pilgrimage, but has included one-third or68,528 villeins.Bartlett suggests that (i) based upon H C Darby’s estimate, 120,000 should be added to the Domesdaypopulation to take account of the urban population; (ii) together with a further 66,000 to account for thesecular aristocracy and their household dependents and (iii) 50,000 to account for ecclesiastics and theirservants. 107 This is an additional 236,000 over and above Domesday’s total rural population. Bartlett100 Jusserand J J, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, first pub’ 1888, this ed’ T Fisher Unwin1909, p.257-258.101 Bartlett Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075 – 1225’, p.324.102 Mortimer Ian, A Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England, Vintage 2009, p.68.103 Op cit, Jusserand p.258.104 Ibid, p.261.105 Schofield Philip R, Peasant and Community on Medieval England 1200 -15, Palgrave Macmillan2003, p.3106 Sumption Jonathan, Pilgrimage, first pub’ Faber and Faber 1975, this edition 2002, p.165107 Darby H C, Domesday England, Cambridge University Press, p.89, 1977 and Bartlett Robert,England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075-1225, Oxford University Press, 2000, p.29128therefore adjusts the Domesday total by 18.7% (The author has not included Darby’s adjustment of33,000 for the northernmost counties within the 18.7%). All these groups are included within the eligibleto undertake pilgrimage category.Therefore if we add Bartlett’s adjustment of 18.7% proportionately to the population for the ninesouthern and western counties of England of 447,846, i.e. those that could have accessed the NorthDowns ancient trackways, we arrive at a total of 531,593. From this we need to subtract 135,057 toaccount for two-thirds of those that fall within the social group of villeins that would be least likely to beeligible to travel away from the manor on pilgrimage. This gives a population eligible to undertakepilgrimage from the 9 southern and western counties of nearly 400,000. From this we also need todiscount cottagers and slaves which account for 77,400, which reduce the number eligible to travel onpilgrimage to roughly 320,000. It’s been argued by M M Postan that up to one third of the total population, amounting to 750,000 waslandless and therefore excluded from Domesday. In effect Bartlett adds 59.5% to the Domesday ruralpopulation total of 1.26 million to account for this108. 59.5% of the 9 counties Domesday rural populationis 266,468. We have to decide whether or not those that fall within the category of landless would havebeen eligible to undertake pilgrimage. For the benefit of doubt the author has included half of this group(133,234) as eligible to undertake pilgrimage. This brings the total number from the population eligibleto undertake pilgrimage from the nine counties of southern and western England in the region of 450,000.108 Bartlett Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075 – 1225’, p.324.29Table: Number of people from the population of the 9 southern and western counties likely to commencepilgrimage to Canterbury on any single dayThose eligible to travel from southern andwestern west counties450,000 450,000 450,000 450,000Those within age range for pilgrimage i.e.between 14 and 65 = 55% pop’*247,500 247,500 247,500 247,500Those that choose to go on pilgrimage toCanterbury in lifetime ( 50%, 30%, 20 %, or10% of population)123,750(50%)74,250(30%)49,500(20%)24,750(10%)Those that choose that year in which to travel(divide by 29)**4267 2560 1707 853Those that commence pilgrimage on anysingle day in that year (182)***23 14 9 5* Based upon 1377 poll tax returns that show 40% of population was 13 years of age or less and 5% ofpopulation was over 65 years of age. (Hatcher, Plague Population from Mortimer Ian, 2009)** Assumes one extended pilgrimage taken during an average twenty nine available years to travel basedon Crude Expectation Ages for those reaching 15 years of age. Russell Josiah Cox, British MedievalPopulation, University of New Mexico, 1948, p.176.) *** Assumes choice to commence pilgrimage on any one day across 6 months (182 days) of the year. Ifcommencement day was evenly distributed across whole year (365 days) then average daily numberswould reduce to: 12, 7, 5 or 3 respectively.Therefore a figure in the region of 450,000 represents the total number of the population eligible to travelon pilgrimage from the nine counties to the south and west of London. From this total we need todiscount those that would have been to young or old to undertake an extended pilgrimage. We have tomake an assumption that only during a proportion of an individual’s lifespan would they be within an agerange to undertake an extended pilgrimage. To this end the author has included 55% of the populationthat was between 15 and 65 years of age, derived from Hatcher’s research on the 1377 poll tax returns.109Account also needs to taken of the number of those that would have chosen to take a pilgrimage in theirown lifetime. The author has applied factors representing between 50% to 10% of those eligible to travelas a range of those that would have actually chosen to undertake pilgrimage in their own lifetime.Account also needs to be taken that each individual would only undertake a pilgrimage once rather thanin each available year within their lifespan. Therefore the author has divided the number of thoseeligible to undertake an extended pilgrimage by Russell’s average lifespan for those reaching the age offifteen.110 As such the total has been divided by 29. Finally it has been assumed that about half of thedays within the year would provide suitable weather conditions to undertake an extended pilgrimage. Assuch based upon the above loose assumptions when applied to the Domesday population it can be seenthat if pilgrimage was undertaken by 50% of the eligible population then on any one day across 6 monthsof the year one could expect to see 23 pilgrims using the North Downs trackways. If only 10% of theeligible population from the nine southern and western counties undertook a pilgrimage to Canterburythen on any one day across six months of the year one could expect to see 5 pilgrims using the NorthDowns trackways.However given that up until 1220, the period of major pilgrimage coincided with the 29th December, thedate of Beckett’s martyrdom, then until the translation of Beckett’s relics on the 7th July 1220, it wouldappear that pilgrimage was undertaken in the winter months as well. As such the average daily numberof pilgrims commencing pilgrimage could be reduced further still if their numbers are spread across thewhole year.Nevertheless, this model does not allow for pilgrims from overseas entering the country at Southamptonand using the North Down trackways as a route to Canterbury, rather than sailing to one of the Kent seaports. It is beyond the scope of this article to evaluate the number of overseas pilgrims, and their reasonsfor using the North Downs trackways, although it can be seen that even if overseas pilgrims doubled thetraffic, the numbers would still remain relatively small.The above model overestimates numbers as it based on the assumption that all those undertakingpilgrimage to Canterbury from the nine southern and western counties found the North Downs trackways109 Hatcher, Plague Population from Mortimer Ian , 2009110 Russell Josiah Cox, British Medieval Population, Table of Crude Expectation Ages 1- 20a, Universityof New Mexico, 1948, p.17630to be the most suitable route, which for large geographic areas within these counties, would not have beenthe case. Once consideration is given to the size of, and restrictions of movement, pertaining to themedieval population, it can be seen that the number of pilgrims travelling along the North Downstrackways would have been very small. A scale that was much smaller than the exaggerated claimsimagined by the pilgrimists.CONCLUSIONIn conclusion there is less reason than previously supposed that the North Downs trackways could nothave served as a viable route, used by medieval travellers as their chosen route to Canterbury. Moreoverit can be argued that whilst detractors of the Pilgrims’ Way as a pilgrimage route have been eager to pointto the exaggerated claims made by Victorian and Edwardian pilgrimists, they have been less inclined tooffer any quantitative assessment of the limited scale of mass pilgrimage overall. If this is undertakenthen the use of the North Downs’ ancient trackways should be reconsidered within the context of muchlower levels of pilgrimage traffic. Given this reassessment of numbers it can be argued that the NorthDowns trackways could easily have sustained the limited numbers of pilgrims travelling from the west.Moreover, once account is taken of the marginal difference in distance between transferring onto WatlingStreet or staying on the North Downs trackways to Canterbury, then in terms of the ‘Paddlesworthchoice’, maintaining the well defined route along the escarpment may have appeared more attractive thanmany commentators have previously thought. In addition the ease of route finding without maps byfollowing the scarp, with its well defined features, was undoubtedly an important factor for the medievaltraveller.Concerns regarding crime and safety as well as the relative seclusion of the trackway, away from butwithin easy reach of the spring line villages, may also have served as a positive rather than a negativefactor for medieval pilgrims. Blink and the villein working in the field would miss the daily pilgrim as hepassed by on the distant hillside.31BibliographyAdair John, The Pilgrims Way – Shrines and Saints in Britain and Ireland, published 1978, Book ClubAssociates.Bartlett Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075 – 1225, Oxford University Press,2000.Belloc Hilaire, The Old Road, first published, 1904, this edition Constable & Co 1921, illustrated byWilliam Hyde.Belsey Valerie, The Green Lanes of England; Green Books 1998.Cartwright Julia, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury; first published in GB 1895, thised’ re-issued Wildwood House 1982.Cobbett William, Rural Rides Vol 1 and 2, first pub’ in this edition 1912.Coles Finch William, In Kentish Pilgrims Land, first published 1925, this edition 1925, The C W DanielCompany.Crump C G, The Pilgrims’ Way, History Quarterly June 1936.Darby H.C., Domesday England, Cambridge University Press, 1977.Darby H.C., 'Domesday England', A New Historical Geography of England (Cambridge, 1973).Elliston-Erwood F C, The Pilgrims’ Way, its antiquity and its alleged mediaeval use.Goodsall Robert H, The Ancient Road to Canterbury – A Progress through Kent; first published 1960(subscription edition 1959), this edition 1960.Hart Edwin, FSA, ‘The Pilgrims Way from Shere to tit*ey as traced by public records and remains’,Surrey Archaeological Collections , XLI, 1936.Hippisley Cox. R, The Green Roads of England; first pub’ 1914, this ed’ 1948.James Captain E. Renouard, Notes on the Pilgrims’ Way in West Surrey; London: Edward Stanford,1871.Jennett Sean, The Pilgrims’ Way – from Winchester to Canterbury; published Cassell & Co 1971.Jessop R F, The Archaeology of Kent; Methuen 1930.Jusserand J. J., English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages; first pub’ 1888, this edition T Fisher Unwin1909.Knocker Capt H W, ‘The Valley of Holmesdale – its evolution and development’, ArchaeologiaCantiana, XXXI, 1915.Lawson T. & Killingray D., An Historical Atlas of Kent; Phillimore and Co, 2004.Laxton Howard, Pilgrimage to Canterbury, published David and Charles, 1978.Margary Ivan D, ‘The North Downs Main Trackway and the Pilgrims’ Way’, Archaeological Journal,volume CIX.Moncrief A R Hope, The Pilgrims’ Way – chapter V from Surrey; described by Moncrief & painted bySutton Palmer; London 1906.Mortimer Ian, The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England: Vintage 2009.Nilson Ben, Shrine Accounts and offerings from Cathedral Shrines and Medieval England, p.147.Rackham Oliver, The Illustrated History of the Countryside, first published 1994, this edition Phoenix1997.Ravensdale Jack, In the Steps of Chaucer’s Pilgrims, Guild Publishing 1989.Stanley Arthur P, D.D. (Dean), Historical Memorials of Canterbury, first published 1855 includes essayswritten by Dean Stanley in 1854 and in 1855 and most importantly Albert Way’s essay in Note D ofAppendix entitled The Pilgrims Way or Path towards the Shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury written in1855.Schofield Philip R, Peasant and Community on Medieval England 1200 -1500, Palgrave Macmillan,2003.Sumption, Jonathan, Pilgrimage, first published Faber and Faber 1975, this edition 2002.Thornhill Patrick, The Medway Crossings of the Pilgrims Way, Archaeologia Cantiana Volume 89 1974.Ure John, Pilgrimages – The Great Adventure of the Middle Age, Carroll and Graff 2006.Ward H Snowden, The Canterbury Pilgrimages, first published 1904, Adam and Charles Black.Watt Francis, Canterbury Pilgrims and their Way, Methuen & Co Ltd, 1917.Webb Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, Hambledon and London 2000.Williams, John H, The Archaeology of Kent to AD 800; KCC Boydell Press 2007.Way Albert, The Pilgrims Way or Path towards the Shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury written in 1855,published as Annex D in Stanley Arthur P (Dean) Historical Memorials of Canterbury, John MurreyLondon, 1855.Wright Christopher John, A Guide to the Pilgrims’ Way and North Downs Way, A Constable Guide, firstpublished in GB 1971, this edition 1985.3233
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETYThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. The author hasplaced the paper on the site for download for personal or academic use. Anyother use must be cleared with the author of the paper who retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyright clearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes thesubmission of papers. The details can be downloaded from the website.C. N. Kidd's Chalk Mineat Shepherds Lane,DartfordR. F. LeGearMAAIS AIFA© R. F. LeGear 2009Charles Newman Kidd came to Dartford in 1868 when he acquired William Miskin’s Brewery,having learnt the brewing trade at the Holmes and Styles Medway Brewery. He rapidly becamea well-known brewer, businessman and civic dignitary. One of his business interests was brickmaking and he was listed as such in various local directories from around 1884 until 1903,although he is probably best remembered for his Steam Brewery in the town.In the latter half of the 19th century, a large number of brickfields were in operation aroundthe suburbs of London and north-west Kent, to supply the growing demand for buildingmaterials for the expansion of towns following the coming of the railways. These brickfieldssprang up almost anywhere that a suitable clay or brickearth could be found in order toproduce the distinctive yellow ‘stock’ bricks, which are such a part of our Victorian townscapes.The ingredients of the stock bricks produced by these works consisted of brickearth, finelycrushed chalk and sifted ashes or breeze. The breeze was obtained from town refuse (an earlyexample of re-cycling) which was added to the clay and chalk mix so that the raw, or ‘green’,bricks contained combustible material. A liquid slurry of the above ingredients was fed bywooden troughs or ‘launders’ into large settling ponds known as ‘washbacks’ or ‘malm ponds’.Here the water would slowly drain off to leave a stiff hom*ogeneous paste that could be handmoulded to size and then left as green bricks to dry further before burning in large openclamps. The addition of chalk to the mix reduced the tendency for the freshly moulded bricksto crack and shrink when drying. During firing the chalk formed a silicate of lime, which madefor a very durable, yet cheaply produced product. The usual amount of chalk added wasbetween 15 and 20%, below this figure the distinctive yellow colour was not achieved. Thechalk was obtained as close as possible to the works, from a local quarry if it was practical andeconomic to do so.It was much more common, however, to win the chalk from a mine sunk in the floor of thebrickearth pit.Kidd had two brickearth pits in Shepherds Lane, Dartford – one to the north of the roadbetween the later developments of Somerset Road and Christchurch Road (TQ 5301 7395), andone to the south (TQ 5301 7389). A small service tunnel connected the two pits under theroad, which at that time was little more than a cart track less than half its modern width. Froma study of contemporary maps and plans it would appear that the actual brick making activitywas carried out to the north of the road, the excavated brickearth from the southern pit beingbrought into the works via the shallow tunnel.The chalk required for the process was obtained from a deep mine under the south-eastportion of the northern pit. This portion of the pit also contained the chalk crushing mill andother plant for the mixing processes etc. The mine had been wisely sited well away from therow of washbacks that were at the northern boundary of the works. A great deal of waterdrained off these settling ponds into the ground below. If situated above the mine the constantingress of water concentrated in one area could seriously weaken the roofs of the galleries andthus cause falls and subsidence. A chalk mine associated with a brickfield at Plumstead insouth-east London (Cemetery Brickfield) suffered a disastrous collapse in 1904 that was sosevere that the mine had to be abandoned and new shaft sunk to re-start extraction in a saferarea.When the Dartford mine ceased operation, probably around 1912, the brickearth pits wereused as two rubbish tips for Kidd’s brewery in the town. The shaft of the mine had not beenpermanently sealed at this time and was still accessible although probably fenced off for safety.In 1920, local council workmen entered the mine via the shaft and drove a small tunnel fromthe mine to intercept a well shaft that was near to some western galleries. A 15inch (380mm)diameter drain, which connected to the surface water sewers of Shepherds Lane, was let intothe well shaft and thus the mine was converted into a giant soakaway for rain run-off from thelocal roads. The well top was capped with manhole access and the original entrance shaftcapped with a concrete raft, also with a manhole, although the site of the latter then slowlydisappeared under landfill. Around this time the local council was also utilising the brickfieldsite as a tip for road sweepings.The brickearth had been excavated down to the junction with the chalk in parts of the pit,some 3 to 4m below the original ground level. The refuse from the brewery and road refusefilled the southern half of the pit to almost its original level. The fill consisted of boiler ash andclinker, bottles and various miscellaneous rubbish. It is possible that some tipping hadcommenced even before the works had finally ceased, as the quarrying operations forbrickearth were concentrated in the western portion of the pit towards the end of its life.The site of the old brickworks remained more or less unused for several decades. In World War2, an air-raid shelter was built in the south-east corner near to the road and at some time latera scout hut and an electricity sub-station were also constructed.In 1980, Kent County Council, who owned the site at the time, wished to sell off the land forhousing development. [Plate 1] Before this could happen, it was necessary to gain entry to themine to check the accuracy of a plan of the workings made around 1920 by the localauthority. Thissomewhat styliseddrawing showed thegeneral layout of thegalleries and theapproximatepositions of the wellshaft and mainhaulage shaft. [Fig 1]By the 1980s, alltrace of the formerbrick makingindustry haddisappeared and amechanicalexcavator was usedto remove some ofthe landfill in anattempt to re-exposethe main shaft. Thiswas unsuccessful,although the remainsof the chalk-crushingmill were foundtogether with the topof the well. The wellshaft had been capped with a re-enforced concrete slab supported by steel girders with ahinged metal manhole set in the centre to controlled access.Entry to the underground workings was gained on 12th December 1980. On that date H.Pearman and T. Reeve of the Chelsea Speleological Society together with the writerrepresenting the Kent Archaeological Society and a Mr Coe of Golder Associates (theconsulting Engineers for the KCC), descended the well shaft by means of wire ‘caving’ laddersand entered the mine via the soakaway tunnel. A quick survey of the underground gallerieswas undertaken at the time to compare with the earlier plan. The 1920s plan was found to beflawed, especially with the depiction of the south-western galleries.The access well shaft was found to be 23m deep, 2m wide and brick lined for the top 5mwhere the shaft passed through Thanet Sand. The rest of the shaft was unlined through Chalk.The remains of wooden cross beams were found in the shaft, which would have originallysupported the water pipes, used to draw water up to the surface for use in the brick makingprocess. The active 15inch (380mm) drain entered the shaft 2m below the surface withanother disused pipe of similar size at the same level. An examination of the tool marks in theaccess tunnel confirmed that it had been dug from the mine to intercept the well shaft. Thissmall tunnel, 1.6m high, is in sharp contrast to the high galleries of the mine.Plate 1 Aerial Photograph of the SiteThe mine was found to be in very good condition, mainly due to the care with which theminers had executed their work. The chalk tunnels were dug on a ‘Pillar and Stall’ miningprinciple in which galleries were dug at right angles to each other thus leaving large squarepillars of chalk to support the ground above.Plate 2 Typical Gllery (Photo: H. PearmanThe shape of a chalk mine tunnel was very important to the stability of the roof and theDartford miners had cut the galleries to a safe arched profile. [Plate 2] The galleries were, onaverage, 3m wide at the base reducing to 0.5 to 1.0m wide at roof level, which varied between7 and 10m above the floor. Additional stability was gained by ‘off-setting’ the pillars so that thecross passages did not cross straight over the main tunnels but were staggered to lessen therisk of roof weakness at the junction of four tunnels.The method of working the mine was quite unusual for this type of excavation. Instead ofproceeding forward in a series of steps or benches about 1 to 1.5m high by 1 to 2m deep, theDartford miners cut steps only a few centimetres high and less than 1m deep in most of thegalleries. As the chalk was cut out and tumbled down to the floor, the steps broke up leaving asteep slippery climb to the working face. This must have made working conditions bothdifficult and dangerous for the workmen.Deep grooves were found at the base of the original shaft that had been formed as the heavyloads swung back and forth on the hauling rope as they were pulled up to the surface some25m above. [Plate 3] Iron supports for a fixed ladder were still in-situ although the ladder hadbeen removed when the mine ceased operation.Plate 3 Main Shaft with ladder supportsApproximately 400m of passages had been excavatedduring the mine’s active life and a rough calculationgives a conservative estimate of around 6000 tonnes ofchalk extracted.In some larger chalk mines, such as those at theWickham Lane Brickfield in Plumstead, the chalk wastransported from the work faces to the haulage shaft bymeans of small hand propelled trucks running onnarrow gauge rails or plate-ways. A small mine such asKidd’s, however, rarely employed more than three orfour men underground at any one time and it was notconsidered worth the expense of installing any suchunderground transport system. It was more economicto take the chalk to the shaft bottom in barrows.In the floor of one gallery to the south of the shaft wasa deep fissure in the floor into which much of the floodwater drained.An interesting feature found just off a main gallery nearthe shaft was a small room cut inside a pillar andentered by a flight of four steps. A low narrow bench orseat cut in the chalk ran around the sides of this smallroom, which was probably used to store tools andwhere the men could take meal breaks. [Plate 4] This isshown on the plan as ‘manager’s room’. At this period,a manager of a chalk mine was not an executive orPlate 4 Small Room with BenchSeatPhoto: H. Bottermanadministrator but more a skilled charge-hand or foreman. He would closely supervise thecutting of the roof profiles and the arching of the pillars where galleries joined.Some other pillars near the shaft showed similar signs of ‘pillar robbing’ where miners wouldcut small tunnels though pillars to get a little extra chalk without having to go all the way to aremote working face. This usually occurred toward the end of the mine’s life when long termstability issues were regarded as minor considerations.Near the base of the shaft were found a number of ‘tally boards’ scored in the walls of maingalleries. [Plate 5] These were used by the miners to record the number of loads that hadbeen taken out of particular areas of the mine. As a miner was usually paid on the number ofloads it was in his interest to keep a record of loads sent up to the surface.At the base of the shaft were a number of carefully cut inscriptions “COME UNTO ME ALLYE THAT LABOUR” and “GOD IS LOVE”, [Plates 6 and 7] also the owners name “C N KIDDDARTFORD”Plate 6 Base of Shaft InscriptionPlate 5 'Tally' BoardsPlate 7 Base of Shaft InscriptionAt one point in the workings, a miner’s progress along a side gallery could be traced from thepatches of soot left on the roof from his candle. As he advanced the face a metre or so, hemoved his light source to create another soot mark. At the end of the tunnel the metalcandleholder was found still in its last position jammed in the wall, with a neat row of blackmarks leading back to the main gallery.At the end of some tunnels, miners had smoked their initials in the roof. [Plate 8] In otherplaces, they neatly carved their names on the walls. The mine was active from the mid 1880sto 1912 although the main bulk of dates found were between 1901 and 1911. One laterinscription, “A E J PRICE 28.11.31”, was probably made by a Council official inspecting thesoakaway.One name of interest that was found cut into the wall of a cross-gallery was that of R. Faulker.[Plate 9] He was the ‘Engine man’ of the mine and was responsible for operating the haulingmechanism and maintaining the winding engine. In March 1900, he assisted the localantiquarians Ralph and Ernest Youens to descend and record a three chambered mediaevaldenehole that had opened up in the worked out southern brickearth pit. Details werepublished in ‘Man’ May 1928 and reprinted in the West Kent Advertiser 18.5.1928.Plate 8 Smoked Initials on RoofPlate 9 'Rubbing' of FaulkerInscriptionPlate 10 Remedial WorksPhoto: H. BottermanAfter the 1980 examination of the chalk mine the land was finally sold off for buildingdevelopment. In 1986 the mine was re-entered by contractors who conducted an instrumentsurvey of the chalk caves and undertook some remedial works to comply with safetyrecommendations. These measures took the form of spraying the roof in some parts withconcrete to prevent small flakes of chalk falling [Plate 10] and modifications to the drain andwell shaft. The Kent Underground Research Group assisted the contractors by undertaking aphotographic survey on their behalf. At the same time the Group’s surveyors completed theirown survey, building on the measurements taken in 1980. [Fig 2]Once the remedial works were completed, a small housing estate, Sullivan Close, was built onthe site. Today there is nothing to enlighten the modern visitor to this quiet cul-de-sac of theonce busy industrial site beneath their feet.
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETYON-LINE e-BOOKFor the Good of This Town:The Jurats of Maidstone, 1549 -1660Judy BuckleyPhotograph of 1640 memorial in All Saints Church by the AuthorText 2009 ©Judy BuckleyForewordYou shall True Faith bear to our Sovereign Lady, the Queen's Majesty that now is, Her Heirs and Successors,Kings and Queens of this realm.You shall have that regard and respect unto the Mayor that governeth this Town and Parish for the time being asis fit.And the lawful Franchises, Usages and Customs of the same Town and Parish, advance and maintain to theutmost of your power.And the same (as much as in you is) from unlawful grievance and damage shall keep.And as a Freeman of this Town and Parish, you shall bear yourself for the good of this Town, as it is fit andconvenient. So help you God. AmenThe freeman's oath, anciently administered in Maidstone. (Gilbert, Antiquities, 1865, p.126)This book is about the mayors and other jurats (aldermen) who led Maidstone from the granting of the first BoroughCharter by Edward VI in 1549 until the end of the Commonwealth and the Restoration of Charles I in 1660. The periodhas been chosen to match Chapter III of The History of Maidstone (1995) by Peter Clark and Lynn Murfin. In thatchapter they covered all aspects of Maidstone life, but this study will focus on the closely knit group of ninety sevenmen chosen by the common council - a traditional Tudor oligarchy - who influenced Maidstone during those years.Seventy six of them took office as mayor, but all ninety seven will be studied in this article. They, collectively, had thegreatest influence over the character of the town as it doubled its size from just under 2,000 to nearly 4,000 people,emerging from a small but flourishing river port to become the leading administrative town of West Kent. (Clark andMurfin, 1995, pp.42, 72)Kent as a county, with sporadic references to Maidstone, has been thoroughly explored over this period in TheCommunity of Kent and the Great Rebellion (1961) by Alan Everitt, Seventeenth Century Kent (1965) by ChristopherChalklin, English Provincial Society 1500-1640 (1977) by Peter Clark and Early Modern Kent (2000) edited byMichael Zell. Zell defined the century 1540 -1640 as being the era when Kentish people began to see themselves ashaving a county identity, which was imposed from outside, in addition to regarding themselves as English andProtestant. The events he cites as shaping this image began with reactions of horror to the prospect of England beingcontrolled by Spain after Queen Mary's marriage, continued as protest against excessive taxation and over-strictreligious control over the county clergy. All of which was neatly summed up as Kent, the first Christian, last conquered... one of the most ... fruitful provinces of England, with a spirit of independence expressed in the county motto Invicta.(Zell, EMK, 2000 pp. 2-3)In this setting, Maidstone was the largest town in West Kent, with roughly two-thirds the population of Canterbury,threatened in size, temporarily, only by Sandwich and Dover. (Bower, EM, 2000, p.160) The power of the CinquePorts was declining simultaneously with an expansion in litigation, which swelled the ranks of the legal profession inKent. (Prest, 1972) Maidstone, only forty miles from London, on the Roman road from the Weald to the riverMedway and operating four wharves for shipping goods via the Thames, was in an excellent geographical position tocompete as a venue for the assizes, and become a significant county centre for both merchants and lawyers. This bookaims to give a more cohesive and detailed view of Maidstone's chief citizens with the power to steer the town's destiny.When quoting from original sources I have spelled surnames consistently to aid alphabetical sorting. I have modernisedspelling, capitalisation and punctuation, expanding abbreviations to clarify the sense of a passage. Dates are given inthe old (Julian) style, but with the year beginning on 1st January. Abbreviations are incorporated in the bibliography,and an alphabetical list of jurats is also provided.I dedicate this book to the memory of my neighbour Mrs Aileen Newman, whose love of Maidstone, where she lived allher life, was most infectious. It is based on my dissertation for an MA by Research at Greenwich University in 2008. Iam especially grateful for help from Dr Jackie Bower (my first tutor in Kent history), Dr Rivkah Zim and Dr StephenYuille, who gave me invaluable encouragement. Also to staff at the Centre for Kentish Studies, especially MissElizabeth Finn and Mrs Deborah Saunders. Also to Mr Denis Anstey, Mrs Margaret Lawrence, Dr Robert Spain, MrIan Wallace and Mr Michael Perring of the Kent Archaeological Society, my sister Mrs Sarah Roberts, my daughterMrs Kate Gould and my neighbour Mrs Margaret Yates, who helped me with proof reading, and last but not least, myhusband, Sir Michael Buckley, for unstinting support and helpful discussions.For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 1/30Chapter One: The Origins and Occupations of the JuratsThomas Beale ... maior villae ... cuius pater William Beale ... bis Portgrevius ... atavus Williamus sua etate etiamportgrevius et unus de primis fratribus domus fraternitatis huius villae ...Thomas Beale ... mayor of this town ... [whose] father William ... [was] twice Portreeve ... and [whose] ancestorWilliam ... was one of the first brothers of the [Corpus Christi] fraternity of this town. This extract is taken from theLatin inscription at the base of the lovely brass family tree in All Saints Church, Maidstone, showing six generations ofBeale family before 1600. The family, who supplied Maidstone with a portreeve and three jurats, rose to prominence aswine-coopers. Their descendants included Sir John Beale Baronet (1621-84) and Colonel Thomas Beale (born 1619)who emigrated to Virginia.A shop was sold in Maidstone in 1248 and mention of a charter granted to Archbishop Boniface (who owned the manor)survives from 1261, so by 1549 it was possible for the same family, if their descent had continued that long, to havebeen trading there for 300 years. (HM, 1995, p.22) By the mid sixteenth century the town, with a population of justunder 2,000, was the largest in West Kent, with a weekly market and three fairs every year. (HM, 1995, p.44) Beforethe granting of Maidstone's first borough charter in 1549, the affairs of the town, with its wharves on the Medway, hadbeen conducted by a Portreeve responsible to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who owned Maidstone manor until theReformation, when it had reverted to the Crown. (HM, 1995, p.38) The first charter replaced the title of portreevewith that of mayor, and made provision for 12 more jurats, who served for life, and a common council of 24. (James,1825 pp.1-26) On 2nd November each year the mayor was chosen from two jurat nominees to serve for a year. 76 ofthe 97 jurats who held office in Maidstone between 1549 and 1660 served at least one year as mayor. Although 21 ofthe 97 jurats were never mayor, all thirteen of them, at any one time, represented the borough, accompanying the mayorto All Saints Church in their gowns, and supporting him in administrative duties, some of them being sworn in asmagistrates to sit in the borough courts. Once a year four jurats accompanied the mayor on a boat trip up the Medway toFarleigh Bridge to claim the liberties granted to Maidstone by the Queen's letters patent. (Martin, 1926 p.20)The list of mayors appears in histories of the town, and is engraved in the council chamber of the town hall. (Russell,1881, pp.410-411) Other jurats have been identified using the borough charters, surviving chamberlain's accounts andentries in the burghmote records. (James, 1825; CKS Md/FCa/1; Md/ACm/1, 1561-85; Md Acm/2, 1586-1643; MdACm/3 1644-94) Of the 76 jurats who did become mayor, fifteen were mayor twice, usually with a gap of about tenyears between appointments. Among them was the oldest jurat, James Franklin, who lived to be 92. (CKSPAR241/1/E1, 1618, Folio 217) Five others managed to be mayor three times, with similar gaps. They were WalterFisher, who served 31 years; Gabriel Green, 44 years; Stephen Heeley, 35 years, and two Maplesdens (Edward, whoserved 40 years and Gervase II, 30 years) all of whom lived to be over 60, in fact probably over 70. (Russell 1881,pp.410-411)Assessment of the jurats' geographical origins depends on tracing surnames and reconstructing their families, and somehad ancestry in the town for over 200 years. The earliest surviving list for Maidstone parish, of men assessed for a laysubsidy in 1335, includes Fishers, Franklins and Halls. (Hanley and Chalklin, 1964) According to the Beale brasspictured above, Beales were in the town before 1399, and the surnames of Basse, Brook, Down, Goar, Reeve, andTilden appear on a 1474 list of townsmen attending a Portmote meeting. (Martin, 1921, p.6) Those ten families, whocan surely be regarded as well-established Maidstone stock, supplied 14% of the jurats who served during the wholeperiod of this study.As Professor Peter Clark has already said, early modern England was a highly mobile society with a great deal ofmigration from the countryside to towns, and one reason for this was the Kent tradition of gavelkind, which split landamong brothers when their father died. (Clark, EPS,1977, p.7) The Maidstone branches of established Kent families,like the Besbeechs, Courthopes, Eppes, Lambs and Maplesdens, had contemporary cousins in Wealden villages likeCranbrook. (de Launay, 1984) Families were large, and distinctive Christian names were rare, so, in the case of moreuniversal surnames such as Smythe, Reeve, Taylor and Wood, it is impossible to make valid connections even wherewills have survived. The more unusual the surname, the surer one can be, especially if those families had strongcontingents in Maidstone. And in spite of the fact that the Smythe family (still spelt thus, not as Smith) remained astimber merchants in the town until 1970, exact relationships can only be surmised. (www.travisperkins.co.uk, 2008)All Saints baptism and burial registers survive back to 1559 in the form of copies made c.1598, now available onmicrofilm, and they have proved more helpful than one might expect. (CKS PAR241/1/A1, CKS PAR241/1/E1) Thiswas because it was important for freemen to be able to prove that their children were Maidstone born, and All SaintsFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 2/30was a prestigious place to be married. The parish clerks at All Saints Church almost always mentioned that a man was ajurat when they recorded events in his immediate family, and the more important the family position in the town, thesurer one can be that families have been reconstructed correctly. However, a man was not likely to become a jurat untilhe was about forty, so early baptism registers only include men elected after about 1600. This rules out findingMaidstone births for half of the jurats under review, and the first provable entries of baptisms of future jurats were forAmbrose Beale in 1575 and Gervase Maplesden II in 1583.On average over the ten decades, each year saw about one new jurat elected. Sixteenth century borough records (CKSMd/ACm/1 Burghmote Minutes 1561-1585 and CKS Md Acm/2 Burghmote Minutes 1586-1643) do not provide exactdates of elections of all new jurats, but it has been possible to construct a chart marking the years when a man became afreeman, a jurat, a chamberlain, the mayor, or was mentioned in some other records, like borough chamberlains'accounts. (CKS CKS Md/FCa/1)Bearing in mind that jurats served for life, that a new jurat had to be elected after every death, and that the total numbershould add up to 13, it is possible to arrive at a estimated election date for each man, in order to sort them by electiondate and look for trends. It has been found that almost all the jurats who were elected before 1600 had families whoappear in the All Saints Registers from at least 1550, and some of them, like Richard Basse, John and Thomas Beale,Thomas and Robert Goar, Robert Gosling, William Reeve, William Tilden, John Beale, Richard Lee, Thomas Franklin,Walter Fisher and Edmund Hall had ancestors in Maidstone in 1474. (Martin, 1921, p.6)Before 1600, almost all the jurats came from families with proven Kentish origins. A few of them have been hard totrace, like James Catlet (elected 1551) and John Bateman (elected 1576) Robert Tinley (elected 1584) John Romney(elected 1591) and James Spencer (elected 1580), but even they will probably eventually be linked to families in otherparts of the county. There were Catlets in Sittingbourne, Bapchild and Teynham. (Cowper, Vol.1, 1892, p.81; Vol.21894, pp.183-4) There were Spencers in Sandwich and Cranbrook. (Visitation of Kent 1574, p.111-112) The Wardenof St Bartholomew's Hospital in Rochester, who confessed to Lutheran beliefs in 1524 was a Thomas Bateman. (Zell,EMK, 2000, p.181)Some of the traceable jurats, like the Maplesdens and William Plomer, had roots in Marden, which had earlier been partof Maidstone parish. Some, like the Ippenburies and Mowshursts of Yalding, had origins in the upper Medway valley,and some owned land in the parishes immediately adjacent to Maidstone, like the Barhams of Teston, Edward Heron ofBarming, and the John Fremlin of Linton. (Hasted, 1798) John Eppes, (elected 1582) from Ashford, had travelledfurther, but the only Elizabethan jurat who might remotely have been regarded as an incomer was George Manningham(elected in 1593) a cousin of Manninghams from Cambridgeshire who bought Bradbourne manor in East Malling, andwho had long been married into the Reeve family. (Cave-Browne,1901, p.1)After 1600 the proportion of jurats elected from the old Maidstone families was declining, but still included ThomasBrook, Ambrose Beale, Walter Fisher, James Franklin and Thomas Reeve. Some of the old families were inevitablydying out, but there was also a tendency in the seventeenth century (not surprising considering the growth andincreasing affluence of the town) for promising and able freemen to move in from further afield than hitherto.Significant among them were the Banks family from Ashford, the Cromps, possibly from Leeds, and the Swinnocks,whose origins have yet to be established, but who possibly also came from the Ashford area. (Cave-Browne, 1901, p.41;Ruderman, 2009) Some served apprenticeships to older jurats, like John Bigge, who was born in Cranbrook. (CKSP11/1/15; de Launay, 1984) Bigge and Robert Swinnock both married jurats' daughters, Robert Withinbrook married ajurat's sister, and James Ruse's mother was a jurat's daughter. (Cowper Vol.1, 1892, p.403; Cowper Vol.2, 1894 p.98;Cave-Browne, 1901 pp.37; CKS PRC32/43/25, 1618)So, for 1549, when Edward VI granted the town's first charter, it is possible to say only that, out of thirteen jurats, onehad a family which had been taxed in Maidstone Hundred in 1335 and at least four had ancestors who attended aMaidstone Portmote held in 1474. At least nine were members of the ad hoc committee of reformers (some of whosesignatures are illegible) formed to sell the vestments and plate of All Saints Church in 1547, two years before thecharter was granted, to fund a Grammar School. (Gilbert Antiquities, 1866, p.42) At least four of them were tenants ofSir Thomas Wyatt, whose failed uprising against Queen Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain in 1554 caused them all tosuffer personally. Peter Maplesden was probably hanged, John Denley died in prison, and the others were heavilyfined. Without doubt all of them were fiercely Protestant, but their religion, and the resulting loss of the town's firstcharter, will be discussed in Chapter Three. (Russell, 1881, p.50-69)When Queen Elizabeth granted Maidstone its second charter in 1559, four of the Edwardian jurats, William Green,Thomas Goar, Richard Hooker and William Tilden, still fit and active, were re-instated. (James, 1825, p.31) Of thenew men, John Beale was descended from a Portreeve, and Ambrose Ippenbury and William Mowshurst were bothFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 3/30related to Edwardian jurats. They were joined by at least four other men who are known to have been involved in the1547 sale (Nicholas Austen, James Busbridge, Clement Lutwick and William Smythe) and the other two (WilliamCollett and James Catlet) could well have been two of the illegible entries on that list. Collett was married at All Saintsin 1545, where he was serving as Sexton in 1547. (Russell, 1881, p.101) Catlet bought a house in Maidstone in 1551.(Beale Post Notebooks, c.1830)So most of the 13 Elizabethan jurats were men whose roots were in Maidstone and the immediately surroundingparishes. The Tudor idea of oligarchies as small knots of trusted men relied heavily on family ties to guaranteetrustworthiness and, typically, this group formed the nucleus of the borough elite, stood as overseers or witnesses foreach others' wills (Lutwick for Basse, Ippenbury for Mowshurst) married their daughters to each other's sons, and werein a position to watch out for suitable replacement jurats to elect, when one of their number died. The cursus honorumor progress to becoming a jurat will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. (Tittler, 1997, p.196)The origins of most of the jurats who were born outside the town stretched east as far as Ashford (17 miles), west toMereworth (6 miles), south to Romney Marsh (30 miles) and north just to Boxley (1 mile) enclosing an area of theparishes within a 12 mile radius which might be expected to send apprentices into their nearest town, but extending agood deal further to the south than to the north. This was because the movement tended to be towards, rather than awayfrom, London, and many apprentices and tradesmen came into the town from the Wealden areas around Cranbrook (13miles via Linton) and Tenterden (16 miles via Headcorn) that made the luxury broadcloths which were traded at theMaidstone fairs. The large cloth-making parishes at the height of the Kent industry from around 1500 to 1600, likeCranbrook and Marden, provided a vast pool of lucrative employment. Wealden families, like the Maplesdens, whomade their fortunes in broadcloth manufacture probably found it advantageous to apprentice their sons in Maidstone,where they could keep in pretty close contact with their cousins living in the Weald. And although Kent cloth makingdeclined gradually from around 1620, it lingered on past the Restoration. (Andrewes, 2000, pp.110-115;Md/FCa1/1577; Md/FCa1/1579)Maidstone jurats' wills also show ownership of land over quite wide areas. The Maplesdens, who originated inGoudhurst and Marden, spread to Maidstone and Rochester. The Ippenburies, with roots in Twyford Hundred in 1335,lived in Hadlow, Yalding and East Peckham in the fifteenth century, and Maidstone in the sixteenth century, owned landin Sevenoaks; the Mowshursts who originated in East Sussex and moved to Yalding, where they owned Beltring andother property as well as a house in Stone Street. (CKS U282 T60, 1549 Quitclaim; NA PROB11/49, 1566); the Greenswho owned Newerk in Maidstone, also held land in Stockbury, Bicknor and Marden; the Downs had land in EastPeckham, Yalding, Brenchley, Tudely and Wateringbury; and the Bank's who came from Ashford, owned land onRomney Marsh. (Beale Post Notebooks Vol.4; KAS Gordon Ward Notebooks Sevenoaks VI p.38; PRC32/31/374)Which of these families formed the hub of town government? Six in particular are notable for providing several longserving jurats. All of them had periods when two members (but never more than two) were serving at the same time,and it has been possible to establish, using the All Saints registers and wills, how closely they were related within eachfamily. In the period under study, by far the most prominent family in Maidstone were the Maplesdens, who suppliedseven jurats giving 149 years of service to the town between them. When Susan Maplesden, the widow of juratGervase I died in 1603, she left five sons and six daughters, whereof three sons and four daughters were married andhad issue, so that they and their children were four score and ten [90] souls before her death. (Russell, 1881, p.139)Next came the Green, Beale and Franklin families who provided three jurats each, giving 79, 77 and 74 years of servicerespectively. Equally influential, but not until the seventeenth century, were the incoming families of Banks andSwinnock, both of whom gave 70 years service, by two and three jurats respectively.The seven Maplesdens covered the years 1549-54, 1575-85, 1586-1626, 1590-96, 1604-31, 1617-47 and 1644-65.Thus, apart from a 16-year gap in the 1660s and 1670s, there was at least one Maplesden jurat throughout the wholeperiod. And at least nine other jurats were closely connected with them. Those nine were William Mowshurst (whosesister married a Maplesden), John Eppes (whose wife's mother was a Maplesden), Thomas Barham (brother-in-law toEdward Maplesden), Robert Swinnock, John Bigge and George Ongley (who all married Maplesdens), John Cromp andJohn Sanders (the former a cousin, the latter a loving neighbour to Maplesdens).The Barhams, Beales and Franklins were also closely interwoven. Some of the Beales, having been involved inMaidstone affairs from the early 1400s, had moved by 1650 to London, although they still owned substantial land in thetown. The Barhams, of Digons in Knightrider Street who also owned Christian's Mill on the river Len in the towncentre, were a significant Maidstone family in their own right and Richard Barham's sisters married Beales andFranklins. (Cave-Brown, 1902; Goodsall, 1957 on www.millarchive.com/Kent/Home/mapofkentmills.html, 2009)James Ruse (elected 1642) was the grandson of jurat James Franklin the elder (elected 1580).For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 4/30The Fisher family, who owned Week Mansion House in Maidstone from at least 1511 until 1617, were also related toseveral other jurat families. (Russell, 1881, p.222; Lilly, Map of Week Estate, 1619). Henry Fisher was Town Clerk andRecorder from 1559 until his death in 1584 and MP for Maidstone in 1562. Alexander Fisher of Detling, a Bencher ofGray's Inn, who had acted professionally for the town in 1583 and probably at other times, succeeded him as Recorderin 1584. Two of Alexander's daughters were married to jurats; Thomasine married John Epps and Mary married JohnBanks, who paid £13 6s 8d for his Maidstone freedom in 1612, although he traded in London as well. Henry Fisher'swidow married jurat Guy Hunt in 1640, and Samuel Marshall (elected 1631) referred to the Fishers in his will ascousins. The Swinnocks also seem to have arrived in the town because of their family connections with bothMaplesdens and Fishers, and after the Maplesdens, the Banks and Swinnocks gave the longest service among the earlyseventeenth-century jurats. They became the centre of the group influencing the Puritan rule in the town, which will bediscussed in Chapter Four.What of the occupations of these Maidstone jurats? John Beale and his son Robert who died in 1461 and 1490respectively (recorded on the family brass shown at the beginning of this chapter), were wine merchants in the dayswhen the Archbishop of Canterbury and his College dominated the town, but by 1600 their descendants had becomeeither merchants or gentlemen. Maidstone apprenticeship records for the sixteenth century are patchy. The other mainsource for trades (jurat's wills) mostly stated merely that the testator was of Maidstone, and either a jurat or a gentleman,leaving too few known trades from which to draw any conclusions. Trades have been established so far for only 35 ofthe 97 jurats. Before 1590, 9 jurats were in the cloth trade (2 mercers, 4 drapers, 1 fuller, 1 weaver) compared with twoin the building trade (a mason and a glazier) a pewterer, and one yeoman farmer. One of the Elizabethan jurats (JohnEppes) was a lawyer. Between 1590 and 1630 the town elected 7 jurats from the cloth trade (4 mercers, 3 drapers) onemerchant, a brewer, a baker, a tanner and, in 1626, another lawyer, James Franklin. Between 1630 and 1660 new juratsincluded two drapers, two in the beer trade (a brewer and a maltster), a cutler, two pewterers and another lawyer,Andrew Broughton.The relative status of trades can be seen from a list made in 1603 of Maidstone's four trade companies, which addedhelpfully (since dyers somehow managed to get listed twice) if any question hereafter happens about this division themayor ... hath the deciding thereof.The Company of Mercers; such as sell mercery or grocery [wholesale] wares, linen cloth ... weavers of linen fustians ornew stuff ... fustian dressers, dyers, thread-makers, goldsmiths, physicians, surgeons and petty chapmen.The Company of Drapers; drapers, tailors, shearmen, dyers, woollen weavers, hatters and fullers.The Company of Cordwainers; shoemakers, tanners, sadlers, curriers, collar-makers and others working in leather,smiths, joiners, carpenters, cutlers and other like artificers.The Company of Victuallers; maltsters, innkeepers ... victuallers, badgers or buyers and sellers of corn, bakers, brewers,butchers, millers, husbandmen and common labourers not being artificers. (Martin, 1926, p.63)If a man described himself as a mercer, it is he was not necessarily in the cloth industry, but could actually be makinghis living in a variety of different ways. The mercers were clearly the most prestigious company, including physiciansand goldsmiths as well as grocers (luxury wholesale merchants) and as such included prominent citizens. However, inthe seventeenth century when Quarter Sessions or Assizes were increasingly held in the town which was full of inns,brewers and maltsters were also influential. (Bower, EMK, 2000, p.166) On the somewhat flimsy evidence that hassurvived, it seems that Maidstone's corporation was no exception to Peter Clark's description of the Kent urbanoligarchies as almost invariably made up ... of craftsmen and increasing numbers of merchants with a few lawyers.(EPS, 1977, p.140)It is perhaps surprising, in view of the importance of the Kent cloth industry, that there seem to be no clothiers amongstthe jurats, but Jane Andrewes has explained the way that the broadcloth industry was organised. The clothier lived in theWeald close to his workforce. He had to be on the spot, to buy wool from the farmers and organise its progress from oneindependent craftsman to another, through the processes of washing, dying, spinning, weaving, fulling and dressing. Hecame to Maidstone only to buy special imported fleeces and to sell the finished cloth. In 1524 the clothier AlexanderCourthope's principle messuage wherein I now dwell was in Cranbrook, with the dyehouse and all manner ofimplements thereto belonging, but he also owned a messuage and lands in Maidstone which I bought from MargaretBrode. Furthermore, he left a significant bequest of 5 marks in his will for the repair of the highway betweenCranbrook and Linton, which would have improved access to Maidstone. Another Cranbrook clothier, John Bigg, inaddition to considerable property in the Weald, owned a house in Maidstone and land in Linton. These were left in1605 to his elder son Smallhope, but intended for his much younger son John, when he reached majority, provide thatFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 5/30John waived his right to the family home in Cranbrook. (de Launey, 1984) And that is what happened. John wasapprenticed to a Maidstone mercer, became a freeman of Maidstone in 1625 aged 27, married a Maplesden and laterbecame a jurat. (Cowper Vol.2, 1894, p.98)Ashford and Cranbrook were not the only sizeable places where jurats had family connections. From the 1580s a linkwith Tenterden was provided by the Curtis family, who served as jurats there, but not in Maidstone until after theRestoration. (Russell, p.411) In 1582 Dorothy Curtis, whose brother Stephen was mayor of Tenterden, married EdwardMaplesden. In 1616 her much younger brother George Curtis married Bridget Knatchbull, granddaughter of Sir JohnAstley. (Cowper Vol.1, 1892, p.117; Visitation of Kent,1619 p.89; CKS P241/1/A1) Links to Rochester were providedby the Lee and the Maplesden families. When he died in 1573 Richard Lee (of Earl's Place in Maidstone and GreatDelce in Rochester) requested his loving friend Gervase Maplesden of St Margaret's Rochester (mayor of Rochester in1583) to be guardian of his children if his widow should remarry. (CKS PRC32/32/61; Smith, 1928, p.495)Surviving All Saints Registers record the burials of only 60% of the 97 jurats, but this figure is probably misleadinglylow. (CKS PAR241/1/E1) This is partly because Maidstone registers have not survived before 1559, so burials for JohnBasse, Robert Gosling, William Reeve, Peter Maplesden, Richard Amey, Richard Heeley, James Barrett and JohnMowshurst are missing, although Richard Heeley, for one, requested burial at All Saints in his will (NA PROB11/04,1558) Peter Maplesden was probably executed after Wyatt's rebellion, and John Denley died in prison at Uxbridge in1555. (Russell, 1881, pp.105-6) The numerous Maplesden family clearly had a family plot in All Saints churchyard,since in 1575 John Maplesden left directions for his burial in All Saints churchyard on the south side thereof, nigh untothe burial of his ancestors. But in 1596 jurat George Maplesden wished to be buried simply in the parish church ofMaidstone. (Russell, 1881, p.138) Legally jurats never retired, but burghmote minutes show that their attendance atmeetings declined in old age, and a few did move away. John Fremlin was buried at Linton, Nicholas Coveney wasburied at Ash near Wrotham, John Eppes left Maidstone for his home parish at Brookland in Romney Marsh, AndrewBroughton who signed the death warrant of Charles I, fled to Switzerland at the Restoration and died there, ThomasStanley was buried at West Peckham. Searches in other parishes for jurats whose burials cannot be found in All Saintsregisters may reveal more retirements, and some may have died away from the town while on business trips.Almost all the 97 jurats in the Maidstone oligarchy throughout the period came from families who originated inMaidstone, neighbouring parishes, the upper Medway valley or the western Weald as far east as Ashford. The earliesthad truly Maidstone roots, and the core of the oligarchy was closely connected by marriage, with the Maplesden, Beale,Fisher, and Franklin families at the centre. It survived relatively seamlessly from the accession of Queen Elizabeththroughout the early Stuart reigns and Commonwealth, right up to the Restoration. The Maplesdens, the largest clan,were not only influential in a dozen or more Kent villages, but provided an Alderman in Rochester, and marriage linkswith Cranbrook and Tenterden, which helped to keep Maidstone closely in touch with quite a large area.Maidstone enjoyed a reliable clean water supply from the borough conduit, probably built in the early sixteenth century,and certainly well before 1562. (Russell, 1881, p.227) The conduit piped spring water from Rocky Hill across theMedway to a cistern in the High Street by the Star Inn, and it was maintained by the corporation. (Grove and Spain1650 map, 1977) In 1577 the borough chamberlains paid 12s 2d to Squier for mending of the conduit 8th May, and in1595 all the charges of the conduit this year amounted to £5 10s 2d. (CKS Md/FCa/1, 1577 and 1595) Sevenoaksinhabitants, by comparison, were still fetching water from springs in buckets in 1640. (Fox, 2002, Appendix 17) Theattractiveness of the town amongst Kent gentry has already been mentioned, and favourable comments made by visitorshave been quoted in all the existing histories, using phrases like well-builded, sweet, large and populous, and verypretty. (HM, 1995, p.1) The medieval town plan provided spacious streets with some fine large houses, and the riverLen with its mills joined the Medway near the Palace (HM,1995 p.23, Grove and Spain 1650 map, 1977) Some jurats'families, like the Beales, Bankses and Ongleys, move on to London but they seem to have retained strong Maidstonelinks. There was, after all, no reason for successful merchants, in a period of economic expansion in Kent, not tosupport several generations of their families with flourishing businesses and a very acceptable lifestyle in their hometown. The wealth of the Maidstone jurats will be the subject of Chapter Two.For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 6/30Chapter Two: The Wealth of the JuratsTo Fremlin Willoughby ... my daughter's eldest son ... my chain of gold weighing almost seven ounces ... my dialof gold with a pendant cluster of pearls to the same, my brooch of gold with an agate and four rubies, my sealring of gold wherein my coat of arms are graven, together with my gold ring wherein is set a small pointeddiamond, and my ring of gold made to the similitude of a serpent with an amethyst stone in the head and a pearlin the mouth thereof, and all my plate viz. three tankards of silver with covers to them, three bowls of silver, threesalts of silver with covers to every of them, and a pepper box ... fifteen silver spoons ... and to my daughter Igive all my English books ... and to her husband ... all my other books, and my best apparel.Extract from the will of jurat John Fremlin Esquire, written on 1st March 1600. He left bequests of over £1,000,a house in Maidstone, another in Loddington and land at the Bower, and was buried in Linton in March 1605.(CKS PRC34/41/069; P229/1/21 1558-1694) A dial was a watch, rather unusual at the time. In 1600Shakespeare wrote and then he drew a dial from his poke, and ... says very wisely, it is ten o'clock.(Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 7) Small watches, driven by a spring, with hour hands only, anddesigned to hang on a chain, were made in London from the mid sixteenth century. (http://antiqwatch.com,2009)John Fremlin, mayor in 1590, was an example of an educated and wealthy jurat who possessed a coat of arms. Moreresearch needs to be done into how Fremlin acquired his wealth, and indeed he may have inherited it, since he referredto his brother Thomas as a gentleman. John bought 80 acres at the Bower in West Borough in 1561, at which time hewas described as of Newington, Sittingbourne. (Russell, 1881, p.170) In the mid 1580s his only daughter Joan marrieda lawyer, Thomas Willoughby, son of the Dean of Rochester who had already left him all my Latin, Greek and Hebrewbooks in 1581, on condition that he does not give them away, but uses them to the increase of his learning and study.(NA PROB11/64)How wealthy were other jurats in the period under review? Financial information has only survived for 61 of them,about two-thirds, so any attempt to derive averages would be pointless. It is likely that the wealthier the man, the morelikely he was to make a will, unless he died unexpectedly. At least five jurats died intestate, but will or no will, aprobate inventory would have been made, although they have not survived in any great numbers. Where they do existthey provide a valuation for goods (comparable with a tax assessment made on goods). Wills are capable of givinginsight not only into the value of possessions, but also into the levels of marriage portions for daughters and theprovision of annuities for widows and under-age children. They also itemised land in considerable detail, sometimesindicating the income that could be expected from it (compared with a tax assessment made on income from land).Kent, with good agricultural land, woodland and waterways, had long been famous as one of the richest counties inEngland, and there had always been a flourishing local land market in the county, which increased after the dissolutionof the monasteries. This was mainly due to Gavelkind, a law, specific to Kent, which determined that land was equallydivided between all surviving adult sons upon the death of their father. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesKent landowners who wanted to leave their estates whole could not Disgavel them without a specific, and expensive,Act of Parliament. (www.hereshistorykent.org.uk 2008) Kent, being close to London, supplied the capital with food, soland well farmed by a tenant could provided excellent returns. (Zell, EMK pp.40-41, 48-49, 74) The result was that itwas easy to buy quite small parcels of land, which, in a period of inflation, allowed investors a better place for theirspare cash than a strong chest under their bed, since the land could be sold again equally easily when cash was neededagain.Michael Zell quotes figures from F.J. Fisher's The Development of the London Food Market 1540-1640 which indicatethat the quantity of grain shipped to London from Kent nearly trebled between 1580 and 1615 and more than doubledagain between 1615 and 1638. This was a tremendous investment opportunity for Kent landowners. Not only that, butgrain prices more than doubled over the period. Grazing land and market gardens were in demand as well. Kentfarmers were able to increase their standard of living, buying imported luxuries from the grocers. (Zell, EMK, 2000,p.73) Londoners themselves were also investing in Kentish land; the Merchant Taylors' Company bought 243 acres ofthe Week Manor Estate in Maidstone from the Fisher family in 1617. (Lilly, 1619, Week Estate Map)Given the survival of the right documents, a jurat's capital assets, of which examples are given below, are easier toestablish than his annual income. Nevertheless a rough idea can be given of income compared with that of his much ashis servants. National taxation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was low and only affected the very rich,although local rates were paid by a larger section of the population. Servants wages at the beginning of the period, setby statute in 1563, were proclaimed in Maidstone on Market Day, Thursday 23 September, because the scarcity anddearth of ... victuals and other necessities ... at this instance ... [is] so dear, (Woodruff, AC, 1897,pp.316-319) TheyFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 7/30were specified both with and without livery (the cost of board or meat, drink and cloth ) and the difference between thetwo was about 20%. The lower rate, paid to living in servants, compares better with annuities for widows, if they wereliving with their grown-up children, although the wealthier ones often kept their own homes. The higher rate, paid tomore senior servants who lived out with their own families, compares best with the annual earnings of craftsmen or thestipends of the clergy. The lowest earners were boys (aged 14-18) who commanded 20s a year without livery or 6d aquarter (2s) with livery. The best manservant earned about double that, at 46s 8d without livery, or 40s with livery, andthe best female servant had 26s 8d without livery. Foremen for bakers, brewers or clothiers earned 60s 8d and theannual stipend for the Minister of All Saints Church from 1577-1618 was five times that of a servant at 200s. TheGrammar School Master received £10 from the Borough plus 4s each from 14 pupils, totalling 256s, and a MasterMason is estimated to have earned about 300s a year around the same date. In 1589 John Heron of Teston, Gentleman,left his widow an annuity of 100s, and in 1595 jurat John Balser left his widow an annuity four times larger at 400s.There were, of course, even richer people elsewhere. An Exeter alderman's widow or a London attorney could enjoyincomes of £100 (2,000s) or more, while one of the wealthiest men in England, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who earned £1,200a year plus gratuities when he was appointed Lord Keeper in 1558, was commanding an income of £5,500 by the timehe died in 1579. (Burnett, 1968, p.101)Subsidies also throw some light on incomes. Subsidies were countrywide taxes levied at a given rate (specified bystatute) on the value of an individual's income from land (or his movable goods) whichever was the greater. Liabilityfor payment of subsidies started at annual income from land of over £1 or goods worth over £3. Parliaments were heldby Tudor and Stuart monarchs only when they needed MPs to vote them money in the form of subsidies for specificpurposes. Queen Elizabeth summoned Parliament twelve times, in her 1st, 5th, 8th, 13th, 14th, 18th, 23rd, 27th, 29th,35th, 39th and 43rd years of her reign. (d'Ewes, 1682, 2008) Unfortunately searches of the lay subsidy rolls at theNational Archives produced only the totals collected in the town, without any taxpayers' names. And even during thereigns of James I and Charles I, only two documents can be found which actually mention individuals. The first is for1605, a certificate of non-distraint for Eyehorne, Maidstone and Calehill of the second payment (third instalment ) ofthe second of four subsidies granted in 1601 which does not include any jurats. The second is an auditor's book pagefrom 1628 which will be mentioned in Chapter 4. (NA E179/127/487 & NA E179/127/497, 1589; NA E179/127/498 &NA E179/127/540, 1605;NA E179/266/7, 1628)A local copy of a lay subsidy assessment for Week Borough, which survived in borough records and has been publishedby K S Martin, throws light on the finances of part of the town in 1585, allowing a comparison of the wealth of some ofthe jurats with other Maidstone citizens, including the Dutch clothworkers who had arrived 18 years earlier in 1567.The Parliament of 1584-85 had granted the Queen a subsidy to pay for building naval ships. Week was probably thelargest area of the town, with over 130 households, and the list of taxable residents there includes several jurats. 47households in Week Borough were assessed on land, another 47 on goods, and a further 39 stranger [Dutch] householdspaid a special poll tax.Week Borough residents assessed on land included a jurat's son and two current jurats. The largest income from land in1585 was that of Richard Lee, eldest son of the jurat Richard Lee, who had left him Earl's Place and substantial otherland holdings twelve years earlier. Lee was assessed at £10 a year from land, but he was descended from a Lord Mayorof London, and his father had been the first large landowner with a claim to be gentry who was elected a Maidstonejurat, a fact that will be further discussed in Chapter 4. Two more jurats, John Bateman and John Eppes, were bothassessed at £8 a year. Four future jurats were also assessed on land; Edward Maplesden, the son of jurat GervaseMaplesden who died in April 1585, who was elected a jurat himself in 1586, was assessed at £5; Edward Heron, thegreat-grandson of Henry VII's Master of Jewels, to be elected in 1589, was assessed at £4. Robert Goar (elected 1593)and Walter Fisher (elected 1600) were assessed at £1. Milliner William Swinnock, the elder brother of future juratThomas (elected 1609) was also assessed at £1. For comparison, four other residents who were never jurats, EdmundEllis, Francis Kelsham, Richard Reeve and John Smythe, were assessed on land worth £8 a year, and all the otherincomes were lower.In 1585 the mayor, the mercer James Franklin, was assessed on goods valued at £8. Also assessed on goods were fivemen who became jurats later, William Simmons (elected 1587) at £8, Robert Emmott (elected 1595) at £7, JohnRomney (elected 1591) at £10, and William Plomer (elected 1595) at £6, Thomas Greenfield (elected 1603) at £3.Maidstone lawyer John Cavell was assessed on goods worth £10, but no other assessments on goods exceeded £5. SixDutch cloth-makers were assessed on goods, the wealthiest being Anthony St Cecilia at £5, with Jacob van den Busch at£4 and four other men at £3. The pattern that emerges from the 1585 Week borough assessment is that several juratswere at least as wealthy as local gentry. H.R. French has described wealth as a minimum definition of social standing atthat time and since, in addition to goods, some jurats owned significant acreages of land, they satisfied two of the basicrequirements to be gentry. (French, 2000, p.283)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 8/30The best that can be done is to provide a list (Appendix 2) of the assets of 61 of the 97 jurats, which highlights aselection of interesting cases. The first of these is James Barrett, owner of The Swan Inn who died in 1559, who musthave been wealthy, since he required his eldest son to pay his two brothers the large sum of £600 each when he cameinto his inheritance. One crucial feature in the Maidstone story which must not be forgotten is that some early jurats,among them Peter Maplesden and William Tilden, had property confiscated or were heavily fined after Wyatt's rebellionin 1554 (when Maplesden's three sons were forced to sell Chillington Manor). That may also have been the reason whyNicholas Austen was forced to mortgage his home and sell land during his mayoral year in 1567, leaving bequests ofonly £37 in 1582.A rough overall estimate will be attempted for the last two decades of the sixteenth century, when the average totalvalue of moveable goods or bequests left by 14 jurats of the 16 who died 1580-1600 was just under £340. Wealthiest ofthese was Thomas Beale, who left bequests of £865 in 1594 with property in Maidstone and Linton and land at Fant inWest Borough and on the Isle of Sheppey, all to be divided among six sons. Beale, who described himself as yeoman,owned at least one shop. His youngest two sons by his second wife were not out of their apprenticeships when he died,but he left them each £300 to be paid to them at the age of 26. Hardly less rich was the draper Robert Emmott who diedin 1596 leaving goods worth £782 including cloth worth £360 in a newly built shop.Robert Tinley, another draper, who had also been fined after Wyatt's rebellion in 1554 but survived another 37 years,had long enough to rebuild his fortune and left an inventory valued at £444 in 1591. From 1600 the number ofsignificantly wealthy jurats increased. Unfortunately no probate records can be found for John Mills, Thomas Franklin(who owned land at Buckland in West Borough) Thomas Swinnock or James Spencer. However, the average totalvalue of moveable goods or bequests left by the 10 wealthiest jurats of the 16 who died in the first two decades of theseventeenth century was £670. Richest of these ten was the Brewer John Sanders who left goods worth £2,349 in 1612and John Fremlin who left bequests of over £1,000, houses in Maidstone and Loddington and land at the Bower.Fremlin acquired arms in the 1598 visitation and married his daughter to the Dean of Rochester's son. Less wealthywere two mercers, John Romney and Thomas Greenfield. Romney left bequests of £33 in 1607 plus an annuity of £20for life to his younger son. Greenfield left bequests of £12 in 1608, having been at great charges in sending his eldestson to university.In the seventeenth century Robert Tittler found that the period between 1590 and 1640 was a particularly fertile patchfor the incursion of oligarchic rule when no fewer than 65 English boroughs sought incorporation. Peter Clark calledthe early years of the seventeenth century Kent's years of prosperity which began when James I made peace with Spainin 1604, enabling the re-establishment of traditional English markets in northern Europe. He says that the Kentisheconomy was buoyant after 1604, and by 1608 nearly a third of the county's resident Justices had invested in one ormore of the great Jacobean trading companies. They were joined by the Sandwich and Dover corporations, both ofwhich took up shares in the Virginia Company. Although there is no evidence that Maidstone did the same, Sir EdwinSandes, who took over as Treasurer of the Virginia Company in 1617, was sworn a freeman of Maidstone in 1625.Another connection between Maidstone and Virginia was Sir Francis Wyatt of Boxley, who was Governor of Virginia1621-39. At least five Kentish families which produced Maidstone jurats, the Banks, Bigges, Fishers, Halls, andGreens, had relations among the early settlers in Virginia. (Tittler, 1999, p.188; Clark, EPS, 1977, p.300)In the seventeenth century Maidstone jurats were equally wealthy. The accounts of Thomas Henman and ThomasHighwood, surveyors of the highways drawn up in April 1620, showed work costing £45 15s 7d completed in 1619, forwhich £41 3d had been collected. 290 householders were assessed in the town; 22 in Westree and 5 in Loddington.The only people who had not paid (either in cash, in stones or the loan of a cart) were Mr Thomas Philpot, Mr Johnson,Mr Turner and the two surveyors themselves. The lowest amount paid seems to have been 6d, with a few people listedbut paying nothing, perhaps exempted. The mayor and jurats were, as might be expected, among the highest rate payersbetween a maximum of 6s and 3s with jurat John Banks paying 8s for his own paving outside his house. (CKSP241/20, 1620)In 1630 when commissioners visited Kent to investigate the value of land held by wealthy men who had not presentedthemselves for knighthood at the coronation of Charles I on 2 February 1626 that six Maidstone inhabitants werequestioned, of whom two were jurats. The fine known as distraint of knighthood was based on a 13th Century customwhich prescribed that all freeholders with land worth more than £40 p.a. must give knight's service to the crown. Thecost of buying a knighthood, and future liability for taxation resulting from increased social status was not popular, andmany wealthy tradesmen tried to keep a low profile to avoid extra expense. Richard Maplesden, mayor at the time,made the excuse that he owned land worth only £32 2s and that his wife owed £90. She was his second wife, andshortly afterwards he bequeathed her £6 6s if she made no claim on his executor (his son George currently on a seavoyage, or in his absence son John) because he had left her a jointure of £10 a year for life. (CKS PRC32/49/49) Theother jurat, Robert Swinnock replied that he had not owned £40 in land until 8 months after the Coronation. OtherFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 9/30excuses came from Gervase Maplesden, the son of jurat Edward, who said that he had not inherited his land from hisfather until six months after the coronation. Shoemaker John Wall admitted that he had £40 at the coronation, but saidthat he had sold it soon afterwards. George Curtis said that at the time of the coronation he had been living in theCinque Ports and did his service there. Henry Maplesden of Marden merely denied having such land at that time. If onecalculates the capital value of land on the basis of twenty years' purchase, then income of £40 from land made a manworth about £800. (Davies, 1936, p.83; NA SP16/180/25; Habakkuk, 1952, pp. 26-45)The result of the commissioners visit, was probably that all the men involved were fined, as follows; RichardMaplesden £2:10s, Gervase Maplesden £4 (with a marginal note that Gervase Maplesden was returned to us out of theExchequer) John Wall £1:0s, Robert Swinnock £5, George Curtis £5. It is a pity that Thomas Stanley was not amongstthose Maidstone names, probably because he was living in West Peckham at the time, and neglecting his Maidstoneduties (a subject for Chapter 4) but in 1635, casting his accounts, he reckoned that he was worth £10,655 (includingEarl's Place which he valued at £640 and a brewery in Rochester worth £1,800) Stanley was seriously wealthy, andunfortunately his excuses for not taking up knighthood are so far unknown. (NA SP16/180/25; Robertson, 1887, p.354)How did the Maidstone jurats deploy their wealth? First, to provide for their families, arranging annuities for widowsand support for children who had not yet attained their full age of 21. Dowries for daughters, usually payable at age 21or marriage (whichever came first) were left only by the younger men, since married daughters had already been settled.Maidstone jurats left generous dowries. In 1573 Richard Lee left his daughters £100 each, a year later James Busbridgeleft his £30, and in 1609 Thomas Barham left his daughter £250. In 1643 John Bigge, who admittedly could afford itsince he left total bequests of around £800, gave £100 as a marriage portion to Damaris, the eldest daughter of thepopular Revd. Thomas Wilson, of whom more in Chapter Three. On that occasion there must have been some delay inpayment, since a little before the insurrection in Kent in the year 1648, one hundred pound was brought into Mr.Wilson's house (being a legacy given to his eldest daughter, by a gracious man Mr. John Bigge, one of the jurats ofMaidstone, and I believe the greatest portion any of his children had) which money in the time of the insurrection wasby the soldiers (when they searched the house for arms) discovered and taken away (though quickly restored again) Mr.Wilson being then at London. In 1649 the well-endowed Damaris married John Chowning. In 1650 George Gilliattleft dowries of £100 for his daughters. In 1659 Robert Swinnock left £200 for his granddaughter, and John Sanders IIleft dowries of £200 to his daughters. Sons needed to be educated and then set up in business. In 1588 William Downleft his eldest son (then aged 20) three instalments of £20 during his apprenticeship as well as two pieces of land inMaidstone. Thomas Beale left his youngest son £300 at age 26 but £50 of his portion when he hath served hisapprenticeship. In 1643 John Bigge left £20 for his widowed sister Johnson to put her son out to apprentice at 14. In1649 Pewterer Samuel Marshall left his godson all the working tools in the shop including clamps, a pair of pliers,casting blocks, and moulds of various sizes.Several jurats sent their sons to university, which was a fairly costly enterprise. Although one undergraduate managedto spend a year at Cambridge for a total cost of £9, he must have done it on a shoestring. Thomas Greenfield son ofJurat Thomas also went to Magdalen Hall as a plebian in 1596. In 1608 his jurat father bequeathed him only his bestcloak and best gown because I have already been at great charges in bringing him up to learning in the university.Robert Mowshurst, eldest son of jurat William, who was born around 1550, was sent to Oxford where he graduated,became a Fellow of All Souls, and left to marry. When he died childless in 1586 aged about 36 he referred in his willto £150 laid out for him in books by the Puritan stationer Garbrand Hawkes (1539-90) which he intended to repay, afterhis wife's death, by leaving Hawkes his house. Later in the century Tobias Tinley and Thomas Baseden, went toMagdalen Hall, and jurat Robert Tinley's son James attended university then returned to Maidstone as a schoolmaster.William Simonson (probably the son of the Master, and aged about 7 when his father came to Maidstone) went toMerton College, Oxford aged 16 in 1594. Richard Emmott, son of jurat Robert went to Magdalen Hall Oxford in 1596and took his BA in 1599, but was back in Maidstone in April 1602, when he died, aged 23. And in 1600 GervaseMaplesden, eldest son of jurat Edward matriculated as a plebian (commoner) at St Alban Hall, Oxford. (Burnett, 1967,p.92; Foster, 1892; Venn, 1954)Jurats also used their wealth to control the parish church. The Puritanism of the Maidstone jurats will be the subject ofChapter Three, but mention may be made here of the willingness of jurats to spend money on educating the poor. In1596 Maidstone yeoman Thomas Ayerst (father of the attorney mentioned above) bequeathed so much money as willbuy Mr Calvin's Institutes in English of the fairest and plainest letter together with a chain to be fastened to a desk atthe lower end of the parish church ... for the better instruction of the poor and simple there.Several jurats lent or gave money to the Borough, particularly after the expense of the new charter in 1619. In the 1620sAmbrose Beale, Caleb Banks, Thomas Stanley, Thomas and Robert Swinnock, all lent the town money, and RobertSwinnock not only waived his interest, but purchased a town farm for £185, which covered the current debts. £10towards a new mace for the corporation of Maidstone was bequeathed by John Bigge in 1643. (Martin, 1927, pp. 90-91)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 10/30In 1643 John Bigge left his mother, sister and brother-in-law £20, £20 and £10 a year respectively out of his land inNew England, where the latter clearly lived, with the proviso that if the land failed to yield £70 then his mother was tohave her annuity paid from Cranbrook holdings. Income from the New World cannot have been reliable, but £70would have been the equivalent of nearly £9,500 today. (Cresswell, 2008, p.9;www.famousamericans.net/sirfranciswyatt, 2008; http://members.tripod.com/~DAllen1989/Virginia-Settlers, 2008,NA PROB11/191)Luxuries could be bought in Maidstone as well as in London. Jacqueline Bower found that Robert Tinley stockednearly 100 different fabrics in his shop in 1590, while Robert Sadler at the same time was selling Latin books as well asEnglish ones. (Bower, 2000, p.170) Most jurats left silver, at a time when ordinary people usually possessed onlypewter. In 1559 James Barrett left a silver goblet to each of his three sons, and, since he was the purchaser of the baseof the silver gilt cross from All Saints in 1547, it is quite possible that he had them made from it. (CKS PRC32/28/50b,1559) Other luxuries which were mentioned in jurats' wills included (in addition to the Fremlin bequests alreadydescribed at the beginning this chapter) a Karadagh rug from Persia (Robert Balser in 1577) silver trenchers, bowls, saltcellars and spoons (Gervase Maplesden in 1585, Thomas Basden in 1592, Thomas Beale in 1594, James Franklin in1641), stone pots with silver covers (William Simmons in 1590, George Maplesden in 1596) and maps (Robert Tinleyin 1591). It was also common for mourning gowns and rings to be left to numerous friends and family. In 1611 JohnGreen left gold rings each worth 20s to three close friends and their wives. In 1669 Caleb Banks left gowns worth £10to his three unmarried sisters, £30 for mourning clothes to his daughter-in-law's parents, and gold rings worth 12s toabout twenty other close friends. And a most endearingly frivolous bequest was made in 1643, when jurat John Biggebequeathed 20s for a sugar loaf to his friend Mrs Mary Duke. (CKS PRC32/33/44, 1577; CKS PRC32/35/166, 1585;CKS PRC21/12/146, 1592; NA PROB 11/83, 1594; NA PROB11/187, 1641; NA PROB 11/75, 1590; CKSPRC32/38/113, 1596; CKS PRC32/37/3, 1591; CKS PRC32/42/1, 1611; NA PROB11/331, 1669; NA PROB11/191,1643)Four years after 1660 a Maidstone Hearth Tax list showed five jurats living in conspicuously large houses. Caleb Banks,Michael Beaver, Thomas Fletcher, Richard Bills and James Ruse, were listed amongst forty householders who weretaxed on 8-10 hearths. (Harrington, 2000, pp.180-191) The Hearth Tax was introduced in England by the governmentof Charles II in 1662. Liable householders (people whose house was worth more than 20s a year, whose income wasnot more than £100 a year, and who contributed to local church and poor rates) were to pay one shilling for each hearthwithin their property for each collection of the tax. Payments were due twice annually, at Michaelmas (29 September)and Lady Day (25 March). (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk, 2008) In Maidstone the largest houses were owned by SirJohn Tufton (who lived at The Mote and was assessed on 24 hearths in Stone Borough) Sir John Beale (19 hearths inthe Bullock Lane area) and Dame Ann Astley (18 hearths at Maidstone Palace in High Town). Fifteen otherhouseholders were taxed on more than ten hearths, and they probably included the tenant (possibly Lady Culpeper) ofjurat Thomas Stanley who owned and let Earls Place, but lived himself at West Peckham. (Robertson, 1887,pp.353-354)Which brings us to the fact that towards the end of the period Maidstone wealth was the foundation of much greaterprosperity for two jurat's sons. The first was John, the eldest son of jurat Caleb Banks, who was born in Maidstone in1627, almost certainly educated at Maidstone Grammar School, and admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in1644. Soon afterwards his wealthy father set him up as a merchant, since, by 1652 when he was only 25, he was aalready a member of a syndicate engaged in victualling the Navy. In 1654 he married the daughter of Alderman JohnDethick, Lord Mayor of London in 1655, and after that he moved ahead rapidly in trade and finance, becoming ashareholder in the East India Company and a member of the Levant Company. John Banks served as MP forMaidstone from the year of his marriage throughout the Commonwealth, and followed a moderate royalist line at theRestoration, buying Aylesford Priory and becoming a baronet in 1662. Samuel Pepys followed his advice and regardedhim as a very wise man, and they became close friends. (Latham & Matthews, 1972, Vol.6 p.265;Vol 7 p.24; Vol.9p.496) He died in 1699 worth about £180,000, and founded the almshouses in St Faith's Street which are still standingtoday. (ODNB, 2004) The second was Samuel Ongley, the younger son of jurat George Ongley, who was born in1647, the year before his father was elected a jurat. His father died in 1670 when he was 23 and newly out of hisapprenticeship in London. His elder brother George inherited the family property in Maidstone, and Samuel and histhree married sisters received bequests of £5 each. Presumably by that time his father had already set him up inbusiness, since he later became a very wealthy man, a Director of the East India Company and the South Sea Company.He bought an estate in Bedfordshire at Old Warden, where he died in 1726, leaving bequests to his relations theTroughton and Edmonds families back in Maidstone. (CKS PRC32/54/177; PROB11/61; Sperling, 1961, pp. 191-202;www.bedscc.gov.uk/CommunityAndLiving/ArchivesAndRecordOffice, 2008)From the early jurats who left considerable estates and paid heavy fines after Wyatt's rebellion in 1554, to thesubstantial merchants trading in the town in 1660, this story is one of men who not only made large fortunes, but spentFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 11/30them in ways which enhanced the town. Jurats' wealth increased significantly during a period of great opportunity,being at least equal to that of surrounding Kentish landowners, and it enabled them to buy land themselves, marry theirdaughters into the landowning class and send their sons to university or set them up in businesses in London. TheMaidstone elite were happy to stay in the town, since opportunities for becoming very wealthy and enjoying acomfortable lifestyle were available at home.For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 12/30Chapter Three: The Prestige and Influence of the JuratsWe the mayor, jurats and commonalty of this town do hereby declare and solemnly protest that is is our earnestdesire to live in peace and to have amity and good correspondency with ... all ... gentlemen which now dwell andhereafter shall dwell within the limits and liberties of the said corporation ... and shall most willingly assent toany proposition tending thereunto ... consonant to equity and reason ...Extract from a resolution recorded in the Burghmote Minutes for 1624 in the mayoralty of Gervase Maplesden(Martin, 1926, p.88)When the Mayor and other jurats made their customary summer survey of the Medway from the quay inMaidstone to Hawkwood, it pleased Sir Francis Barnham of his love of the town with his lady and my LadyOnslow her sister, and my Lady Sackville and James Franklin Esq. ... to meet them on the water.Burghmote minutes for 1629 (Martin, 1927 p.94) The Barn hams lived at Hollingbourne. Sir Francis' wife wasElizabeth (nee Lennard) and her sister was Mary, widow of Thomas Onslow of Knowle, Surrey, who had died ofsmallpox in 1616. She may have made her home with her sister. Lady Sackville lived at Stone House.Maidstone jurats were responsible for town and the parish, and there is little doubt that they were respected andaccorded due reverence by most of the town's ordinary inhabitants, as they accompanied the mayor on importantoccasions in their gowns (albeit on pain of a fine). Their shared responsibility included acting as assessors for laysubsidies, and in 1585, for the subsidy described in Chapter Two, the assessors for Week Borough included four jurats,John Balser, Thomas Beale, William Down and Robert Tinley, who must all have lived in other areas of the parish;(Stone Borough, East Lane, Maidstone or West Borough) (Martin, 1927, pp. 227-231; Russell, 1881, p.218; Morant,1951, pp.210-214) They were also called upon to stand surety for local people who were summoned to court andneeded bail. In 1603 jurats William Plomer and Richard Maplesden, stood £10 each as surety for a recognizance takenat the Quarter Sessions in Maidstone on 3rd May, for Thomas Pattenden of Borden to appear at the next session atCanterbury Castle. (CKS-Q/S/R/4/m.2) Every mayor dispensed charity on behalf of the town, being afterwardsrefunded by the chamberlains, and Robert Tinley, while mayor, sponsored a conspicuous success. First the localsurgeon, John Bennett, who must have been very skilful, was paid £3 for amputating both the legs of a young girl andcuring her. The reason for the amputation is unknown, but the maiden seems to have had no family in the town, soperhaps she suffered an accident at one of the fairs. Her keep was then paid while she convalesced for 29 weeks, livingwith Alice Northern. Finally she was provided with a wooden leg, a pair of stilts [crutches, OED] and a frieze petticoat.All of which cost £7 11s, which was fairly expensive, but an amazing recovery for 1587. (CKS Md/FCa/1 1587) Theminister of All Saints and the parish clerks recorded births, marriages and deaths in their families with special dignity,and all the wills which have survived for jurats included bequests to the Maidstone poor. Examples include StephenHeeley, who left 6d each to no less than 100 poor people in Maidstone in 1628, and Samuel Marshall who left 40s for40 poor people in Maidstone in 1649. (CKS PR32/48/239; PROB11/210). Mention has already been made in ChapterTwo of jurats who made special bequests to the church or the town, and several paid for edifying sermons to bepreached to the assembled townspeople at their funerals. In 1585 Gervase Maplesden left 6s 8d for a sermon by somelearned man in the truth of God's word. In 1588 William Down left 10s to Mr Carr for a sermon at his funeral. In 1600George Manningham left 20s to Mr Carr for a sermon in 1600, £5 for the poor and 20s for the repair of All Saints. (CKSPRC32/35/166, 1585; NA PROB 11/073,1588; CKS PRC32/38/280, 1600)Chapter One showed that some of the jurats were born into families who bore arms, and Chapter Two showed that manyjurats were as rich, if not richer than Kent county gentry. How much influence did the jurats have in their dealings withthe noblemen and gentlemen responsible for the administration of the county? From 1558 county affairs throughoutEngland were led by the Lord Lieutenant, usually a peer and often a privy councillor, and in 1595 there were seventeenof them for twenty nine counties. (Rowse, 1950, p.383) Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, was the first LordLieutenant of Kent, and his son Henry, Lord Cobham, succeeded him in 1598. Lord Cobham was granted 400 acres atBuckland in Maidstone Parish, but borough records do not reveal any direct contact between him or his son and thecorporation, and they lived, when not in London, at Cobham Hall, which was 14 miles north west of Maidstone. TheBrooke families in the town, one of whom, Thomas Brooke, was a Royalist jurat in 1643, may have been cousins, butthey seems to have been less important to Maidstone that the Wyatts, also Brooke cousins, who were much closer atAllington and had tenants in the town. Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and Sir Thomas the younger sat in the Commons asknights for the shire in 1542 in 1547 respectively. (EMK 2000, p.36) The Wyatt influence will be described again inChapter Four, but politically it ceased in 1554 before Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. Sir George Blague, theMaidstone Steward was also a Brooke cousin, but he died in 1551. More influential in Maidstone were the WottonFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 13/30family of Boughton Malherbe. Sir Thomas Wotton, Sheriff of Kent in 1559 and 1579, was noted by Clark and Murfinfor his especially beneficial patronage of the town, and Edward, Lord Wotton was Lord Lieutenant in 1609. (ODNB,2004; Hasted, 1797, pp. 231-234; HM 1995, p.60) Both the Wottons sent the town gifts of venison for ceremonialoccasions, and so did Sir Thomas Fane one of the two deputy lieutenants who undertook the day to day administrationof the county. Sit Thomas and Sir John Leveson, another deputy lieutenant both had strong links with the corporation,who sent reciprocal presents of capons to him and other worshipfuls. (ODNB, 2004; CKS Md /FCa1/1586, 1589) In1577 the chamberlains paid the beadle, Richard Kennet (whose official fee was 20s) and extra 23s for capons andfeeding of them for town's use. (CKS Md/FCa/1, 1577) Such exchanges have been described by urban historianRobert Tittler as the common coin of relationships between corporations and county landowners, and although theyindicated goodwill between the corporation and their gentlemen neighbours, the very term worshipful indicates aconsiderably lower status given to the jurats,. (Tittler, 1998, p.168)Sir John Leveson, who lived downstream on the Medway at Halling, and actively promoted the navigation of the river,was MP for Maidstone in 1596. (ODNB, 2004) Sir Thomas, Lieutenant of Dover Castle, lived eight miles fromMaidstone at Buston in Hunton. His nephew, Francis Fane (born in 1560 at Badsell in Tudeley), was educated atMaidstone Grammar School, but Sir Thomas's only child was a daughter. Deputy lieutenants in their turn weresupported by local landowners who acted as Justices of the Peace, in Petty Sessions and Quarter Sessions, and it wasthese men who were nearest to the jurats in prestige. The number of J.P.s in Kent rose from roughly 40 in 1550 to about90 in 1600, and the Maidstone jurats, whose senior members sat as magistrates themselves in the borough courts, wereon an equal legal footing. (Zell, J.P.s , 1999, p.4) Michael Zell described the close knit groups among the ElizabethanJ.P.s where families had several members on the bench at the same time, as well as recruiting their sons to givecontinuity. (Zell, J.P.s, 1999 p.10) Alan Everitt, writing about the Kent gentry community from the Civil War to theRestoration, described the county in 1640 as dominated by a knot of closely related families of comparable standing.His estimation that around Maidstone more than half those families were of Kentish origin, is borne out by the fact thatthe jurats shared those same origins. (Everitt, 1966, p.35-37) Indeed some, if not all of them probably enjoyed the samestanding, although there were local families whose support for the town was not given by service in any of the boroughoffices.Magistrates who lived nearest to Maidstone, but whose families do not seem to have provided junior members as juratsfor the town, were the Barnhams of Hollingbourne (Visitation of Kent 1619 p.168) Bufkins of Gore Court in Otham(Visitation of Kent, 1592, pp.86-7) Fanes of Buston in Hunton (Visitation of Kent, 1574, p.43) Filmers of East Sutton(Visitation of Kent 1619 p.167) Fludds of Bearsted (Visitation of Kent 1574 p.51) Hendlys of Otham (Visitation ofKent 1619 p.95) William Lambard of Halling (Visitation of Kent 1619 p.167) Robert Rudstone of BoughtonMonchelsea (Visitation of Kent 1574, p.27) Thomas Randolph and Laurence Washington of Maidstone. (Clark, EPS,1977, p.130; ; ODNB; Russell, 1881, p.342) Some of them, like Sir Nicholas St. Leger of Ulcombe (Russell, 1881,p.409) and William Gull, from Ightham and Sandwich (Visitation of Kent 1619 p.134) served the town in the capacityof Recorder or MP, which offices, as Robert Tittler has stated, had to be held by local gentry, and when they did, theywere usually granted honorary freedom. Sir Francis Fane, born at Mereworth and educated at Maidstone GrammarSchool, and whose family were strong supporters of the town, served as MP for the town when he was only 21. (HM1995 p.60; Russell 1881 p.342; Gilbert, 1866, Antiquities p.63) In May 1625 Sir Edwin Sands took his oath as afreeman, and the earlier oaths of the Earl of Westmorland and Lord Burghersh and Sir George Fane were recorded at thesame time. The oath they took began with due allegiance to the King You shall true faith bear to our sovereign Lord theKing's Majesty but continued with proper civic dignity you shall have that regard and respect unto the mayor thatgoverneth this town ... and the lawful franchises usages and customs of the same, advance and maintain to yourpower ... and bear yourself for the good of this town ... so help you God. Such an oath, placing the good of the boroughabove that of the gentlemen taking it, might give a reasonable expectation that town rates and some service to the townmight be counted upon. But that was not always the case. Sir Humphrey Tufton of the Mote in Maidstone who sworehis oath gratis when he was chosen MP in 1640, regularly refused to pay his rates. (Martin, 1926, p.86-89; Hasted,1798)Sir Francis Barnham served as MP for Maidstone between 1614 and 1640. (Everitt,1966 p.38; HM, 1995, p.60;ODNB, 2004) Sir Levin Bufkin of Gore Court in Otham, also a JP, married his daughter to jurat John Balser. (CaveBrown 1902, p.10; Visitation of Kent, 1592, pp.86-87) The Fanes, who had estates nearby at Hunton and Mereworth, aswell as at Badsell, were loyal supporters of the town who served as borough MPs. (REF) The Fishers supplied thetown with a Recorder and other legal assistance. (Martin, 1927, p.271); Visitation of Kent 1574, p.51) Sir ThomasFludd of Milgate in Bearsted was MP for Maidstone in the 1590s. (Russell, 1881, p.409) The Hendlys of Otham,originally clothiers from Cranbrook, had important business ties with the town. (HM, 1995, p.51) LawrenceWashington, who bought The Priory in Knightrider Street in the late 1580s, was elected MP for the town in 1603 withthe young Sir Francis Fane. (Martin, 1926, pp.85,89) Washington was then in his late forties, a Kent JP since 1590 anda Maidstone freeman since 1600. (Zell, Kent J.P.s) On the other hand, the presence of the Astley family at MaidstoneFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 14/30Palace, Sir John the elder, Master of the Jewels to Queen Elizabeth and Sir John the younger, Master of Revels to JamesI, capable of providing useful direct connections to the Court, seems to have been less helpful . (ODNB, 2004;Memorial in All Saints Church) Other Kent gentry who kept houses in the town and christened their children at AllSaints, but made no obvious contribution to town government the Willoughbys (descendants of the Dean of Rochester,one of whom married a Fremlin), Blounts, Codds, Darcys, Fords, Gellibrands, Kelshams, Lakes and Violets. (CKSP241/1/A1 All Saints Baptism Register; PROB11/64; PRC32/41/69)In spite of the proximity of a fair number of influential gentlemen, Maidstone's independent spirit shows in the armschosen at the College of Herald's Visitation of Kent in 1619. Whereas the Gravesend arms incorporated the hedgehogof the Sidney family, Maidstone's showed the three red roundels of Archbishop Courtney and a wavy fess representingthe River Medway, surmounted by the lion of England. (www.civicheraldry.co.uk) The Corporation, not forgetting theirhistoric links with a long-dead Archbishop, nor the strategic geographic position to which they owed their prosperity,and abandoning the device on their Elizabethan seal showing a maiden standing on a stone, were clearly stating thatthey owed their allegiance direct to the Crown. (Martin, 1927, frontispiece) And they had reason to be grateful to theKing. Only nine years earlier, in December 1610, the tradesmen of Maidstone had collectively taken a case direct toKing James against the mayor, Walter Fisher, who was trying to move the corn market to a position that they disliked.Judging from subsequent entries in the Burghmote Book, the royal decision was made in their favour. (Martin, 1926,pp.66-67; Registers of Petitions to James I 1603-1616, 2006)In 1549 Maidstone's first charter stipulated that the corporation, the mayor, jurats and commonalty of the town had to beelected from the inhabitants of the town. (Martin, 1926, p.8) It is nowhere made exactly clear, but the commonaltyseems to have consisted of the freemen augmented by freeholders of parish land, and only those two groups couldattend Burghmote meetings. Principal inhabitants of the town who might be chosen jurats were very likely to befreeholders, or to have bought their freedom, but neither of these were strictly necessary. As more gentlemen movedinto the town this ambiguity caused confusion, and finally, in July 1619, the fourth charter clarified the situation bystating that any inhabitant of the town and parish could be chosen, but only a freeman could be fined if he refused totake office. This effectively meant that a gentleman inhabitant who neither owned freehold land nor needed freedom inorder to trade, could refuse to accept office with impunity. In Chapter Two it has been shown that many of Maidstone'sjurats were as wealthy or wealthier than the local gentry, and some of them owned significant acreages of land, althoughit is hard to gauge the value of it. Chapter One showed that some of the town's Elizabethan jurats came from thecounty gentry. So what was the social status of the jurats, and how did they deal with increasing numbers of countygentry coming into the town?H.R. French has described the difficulties that historians have experienced in defining social categories in the earlymodern period, quoting some categories of the middle sort based on occupations. He quoted V. Brodsky-Elliott's foursocial categories within the middle sort of citizens in the social band between the gentry (in which he includedphysicians, lawyers and overseas merchants) and the poorer sort. :-1. Large-scale shop-keepers, wholesalers and innkeepers.2. Tanners, butchers, skilled metal and woodworkers.3. Weavers, tailors, shoemakers and petty retailers. (French, 2000, pp.277-293)The Maidstone trade companies described in Chapter One do not seem to have been especially hierarchical. All foursupplied jurats, but if a man was a successful wholesale merchant or large innkeeper he probably had more hope ofbeing chosen than a man in groups 2 or 3 above. William Harrison, a contemporary country parson, held that the gentryin 1577 included the clergy, students of the arts and sciences and lawyers, whoever their fathers had been, and indeed inAll Saints parish registers members of that group were given the title Master. In 1609 the author Barnabas Rich heldthat Master might apply to lawyers, university men and physicians as well as esquires and gentlemen, thus embracinganyone who could afford to live without manual labour, whether or not he had a coat of arms. A coat of arms wasmerely the confirmation of gentle status, enhanced by a pedigree, since the heralds on their county visitations requiredproof of the right to bear one. And with that recognition, as we have seen in Chapter Two, might come the unwelcomefinancial burden of higher national taxation. (Campbell, 1942 pp.34-35)Only three of the jurats whose wills have survived described themselves as yeomen. All of them died before 1600, andthereafter the term Gentleman [shortened to Gent] became more popular. Yeoman was used in two senses, and mightindicate occupation (as a worker of the land who was senior to a husbandman, and thus addressed as Goodman) orsocial status (marginally below the gentry) and the latter, in Kent, was used especially proudly. One of the threeyeoman, Clement Lutwick (chosen jurat in 1559) who was running a sizeable farm growing malt for local breweries,may actually have been describing his trade, but Thomas Beale (chosen 1569) who was a very wealthy man, descendedfrom a family of Maidstone Portreeves, was almost certainly using the term as a mark of proud Kentish independence.For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 15/30Beale requested My good friend Master John Smythe, Gentleman to be his overseer, conferring on him the title whichhe himself was accorded by other people. Less is known about Nicholas Coveney (chosen 1567) except that hisgrandmother was a Culpeper. (NA Catalogue Chancery Papers, 1558, C2Eliz/C4/50) The Culpeper family had beenappointed to the county commission for the peace before the reformation, and were well-established Kent Gentry,although Maidstone borough records do not include may references to them. (Zell, J.P.s, 1999; Everitt, 1966, p.36)Coveney died childless in 1593 at Ash near Wrotham where he founded a charity, leaving his house there to his widow,with reversion to a nephew, who also inherited his land in Boxley. (NA PROB/85)Thomas Fuller's concept of upward mobility that a yeoman is a gentleman in ore, whom the next age may see refined,was particularly apt when applied to Maidstone, where two of the three essentials for gentility (wealth and education)could be and were available to the jurats who fitted into the social category of the middling sort identified by BrodskyElliott. (Campbell, 1967, pp.35-36) But as increasing numbers of the gentry visited the town, for the assizes andquarter sessions, to consult physicians, to bring their sons to the Grammar School, to buy luxury goods from (andapprentice their younger sons to) the increasingly wealthy local merchants, jurats were able to meet them on more equalterms and be addressed as Master instead of Goodman. (Campbell, 1967, pp.35, 50) By the time he was chosen ajurat, his shop, if he still had one, was probably run by his sons or apprentices, and he had time for town administrationand politics.Senior Maidstone jurats acted as magistrates in the Borough Courts, and as Michael Zell has noted, being a JP was apublic recognition of one's superior status in the community and a valuable accretion of practical power. The dignity ofoffice, acting as magistrate in the borough court and attending the mayor in his gown to church and at civic functions,combined with his wealth, gave a jurat contact with and standing among other Kent J.P.s. And he could consolidate hissocial advancement by marrying his children well. Into this category came the families of Balser, Beale, Bigge,Coveney, Crompe, Emmott, Greenfield, Gosling, Haselam, Hunt, Ippenbury, Jeffery, Lutwick, Maplesden, Marshall,Ongley, Ruse, Sanders, Simmons, Startout, Swinnock and Tinley. Some of them, as will be seen below, haddescendants who moved on to London, others purchased country estates, but many remained loyal to Maidstone. Theyhad started as tradesmen, but worked their way up through the traditional system of borough preferment, universallypopular among the freemen, likened by Robert Tittler to the Roman cursus honorum. (Tittler, 1998 pp.196-7)A prospective jurat needed first to be a freeholder or become a freeman. Regular attendance at official town meetingswould exhibit suitability for junior office, and only freeholders or freemen of the town could be present at BurghmoteCourts, Common Council meetings, or the election of the Mayor. No one could have freedom by apprenticeshipunless he himself had been born in the town and served seven years apprenticeship with a freeman master. A boy's ageat apprenticeship was normally fourteen, so he became a journeyman (paid by the day by his master) around 21. Hecould compound for his freedom later in his twenties if he became established independently of his master and wantedto take his own apprentices. Once a freeman he could become a common council member and be appointed to junioroffice as constable or freemen's chamberlain.Unfortunately, dates for freedom have survived for only 32 of the 97 jurats, mainly in the later part of the period understudy. For them the training process, before being chosen a jurat, varied quite widely, and possible reasons for thosevariations need to be found. The longest training periods were those of Thomas Taylor, Thomas Brooke and Guy Hunt,who were all freemen for over 30 years before being chosen jurats in the early 1640s. It is likely that these men wereeither less able, or less popular, or somewhat reluctant jurats. In the middle range were 23 men (72%) eight of whomwaited 20 years or more, nine waited between 10 and 20 years, and six waited between five and ten years, which wasthe expected training that might be expected if a freeman in his late twenties became a jurat in his forties. Bearing inmind that lives tended to be shorter then, it is surprising that the Oxford City Council in 1585 boasted respectiveaverage ages of 50 for common councillors, and slightly over 60 for aldermen, but it must be remembered that a fewvery old alderman could pull the average up in a fairly small group. (Hammer, 1978, pp.1-27) In Maidstone averagescannot even be guessed at, but the oldest known jurat in 1618 was James Franklin who that year aged 92, and AmbroseBeale and Thomas Swinnock lived to be 80 and 79 respectively. (Martin, 1927, pp.18-19; CKS P241/1/A1 and CKSP241/1/E1)Some examples of the majority group who followed the cursus honorum after serving apprenticeships in Maidstonewere Nicholas Austen, of Loose, given permission in 1566 to go abroad with his master, the mercer and jurat EdmundHall, Thomas Swinnock who was apprenticed in 1577 to his brother William a Petty Chapman or Milliner, JamesSpencer apprenticed in 1571 to Baker Austen Bull, Martin Jeffery apprenticed in 1622 to jurat and mercer StephenHeeley and Jonathan Troughton who served his apprenticeship with grocer and jurat James Ruse. Thomas Greenfield,constable in 1584 was chosen a jurat in 1604. (CKS Md/FCa/1 1568) Robert Tinley, who served as warden of thedrapers' company in 1568, was chosen a jurat in 1584, but the other three wardens that year, Richard Kennet, WilliamGonsley and William Lee never became jurats. (CKS Md/ACm/1, 2 and 3)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 16/30Acting as the freemen's chamberlain was important but not obligatory training for a jurat, but several men who servedas freemen's chamberlain once or even as many as four times never became jurats. Examples of such chamberlains areRoger Ball (freemen's chamberlain in 1593) John Barefoot, Thomas Besbeech (1636 and 1637 respectively) EllisBingham (1585) Henry Cooper (1606, 1607, 1608) William Dabbs (1612) William Emmott (1604, 1605) RichardFenner (1570) John Fowle (1611) James Jackson (1610) Francis Lamb (1644) Robert Marshall (1616, 1617, 1622,1623) John Nicholson (1570) Robert Nynn (1604) Gilbert Pearce (1579) John Taylor (1587) Richard Usborne (1649)never became jurats. (Chamberlains' Accounts CKS Md/FCa/1) All these men may have been potential jurats, whosepromotion never happened, and Gilbert Pearce for one died two years after serving as Freemen's Chamberlain. (NAPROB11/69) In 1613 William Acton, possibly a member of a clothier family in Leeds and Sutton Valence, or possiblyfrom Yalding, served as Freemen's Chamberlain, was chosen jurat the following year, but mysteriously disappearedfrom records in 1615. (Cowper Vol.1 1892, p.1)The six jurats who trained for less than three years between becoming freemen and being chosen jurats, are likely tohave been members of the gentry, or relations of jurats. Thomas Franklin of Buckland on the west bank of the Medway(chosen 1589) about whom, unfortunately, little can be found, was a landowning nephew of jurat James Franklin.(Visitation of Kent, 1592, p.100) John Banks (chosen 1613), was a draper who had recently arrived in the town fromAshford, the son-in-law of the Recorder, Alexander Fisher. (Visitation of Kent 1574, p.98) Robert Golding (chosen1617) was probably related to the Goldings of Sevington near Ashford, and is known to have held the lease of AllingtonCastle when he died in 1623, and probably already had it when he was chosen. (Visitation of Kent CKSPRC32/45/319b) Less is certain about James Allen and Robert Heath, who were both chosen jurats after less than ayear during the upheavals of the Commonwealth. Allen was possibly a relation of Christopher Allen from Borden,Sittingbourne, who married an Astley granddaughter in 1621. (Visitation of Kent 1619 p.16) Heath, a grocer, seems,from a surviving letter, to have been a distant cousin of Sir Robert Heath of Brasted. (NA Catalogue DR98/1652/46)More information is needed about all five.Robert Tittler found that the election of gentlemen as jurats was generally uncommon throughout England, and when itdid happen it was always because the ruling clique wished to make a temporary sacrifice of the traditional custosrotorum to strengthen their control. The reason might come from outside the town, as it did in the Duchy of Lancasterwhere the great northern magnates, the Earls of Derby, wished to control expanding towns such as Liverpool, or frominside for a specific local reason. (Tittler, 1999, p.198) In contrast, Wallace MacCaffrey argued that the social originsof Exeter mayors 1540-1640 were almost as diverse as their geographical provenance. (MacCaffrey, 1958, p.257) InMaidstone, which was not controlled by a great local magnate, the motive for electing gentlemen probably came frominside, perhaps because the ruling tradesmen needed supportive gentlemen to pull with them instead of against them.Kent was an notably egalitarian county, and the Maidstone practice of choosing gentlemen jurats was established almostfrom the second charter, if not from the first. In the 1570s Richard Lee, a landowning descendant of his namesake,Sheriff of Kent in 1479, was chosen a jurat, accepted the position, and served as mayor a year later. The Lee familyowned the manor of Great Delce in Rochester as well as Earl's Place in Maidstone. (Hasted, 1798) Another earlygentleman jurat was Edward Heron, descended from Sir John Heron, Master of Jewels to Henry VIII, who was madefree in 1588 and chosen a jurat in 1589 (when he served as chamberlain) but who died in 1590. (Visitation of Kent,1574 p.64) William Mowshurst (chosen 1559) was the grandson of Richard Fane Esq., of Badsell by his mother, SusanFane. (Visitation of Kent, 1574, p.43)In January 1619, using a clause in the new charter which allowed the choice of jurats who were inhabitants, but notfreemen, and following the death of three jurats in the preceding two years, the Common Council proposed the electionof no less than three gentlemen, whose consent does not appear to have been requested. The motion, passed in theirabsence, included this hopeful (rather convoluted) rider; ... with this respect had to them, as to other jurats formerlychosen, for clearing of all pretences and question, that by these their elections they be neither in places nor estimationswhich they now hold among us any way prejudiced, as we take it the place being of government doth rather grace thanlessen the esteem of any. (Martin, 1926 p.73)The first of the three was the younger brother of Sir Edward of Cossington in Aylesford, Richard Duke, who hadmarried around 1612, as his second wife, Mary the daughter of William Curtis of Tenterden. (Visitation of Kent 1592p.98) In September 1618 he had accompanied the mayor [Stephen Heeley] and three other jurats on a postponed rivertrip to East Farleigh bridge to view the weirs and other nuisances of the river and take order for the amendment of them.The postponement occurred because a great tempest in August which did endanger the town by lightning breakingthrough a house in the middle of it. But God delivered us from the same as likewise from divers fires that year ... hisname be always praised. (Martin, 1926, p.73 ) The second gentleman chosen was William Horspool, son-in-law ofLawrence Washington. He was a Londoner of Leicestershire origins, whose mother was the sister of Sir John CustomerSmythe of Westenhanger, and he had married Mary Washington at Maidstone in 1602. (Visitation of Kent 1619 p.143)Soon afterwards he had bought Great Buckland on the western side of the Medway, and their children were baptised atFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 17/30All Saints from 1606. Washington had introduced Horspool to local government at a Burghmote meeting in 1612.(Martin, 1927, p.67) The third was Thomas Knatchbull, second son of Richard of Mersham Hatch near Ashford. Hiselder brother Sir Norton, knighted in 1603, a loquacious lay theologian who lived at Mersham, had married Bridget,daughter of Sir John Astley. (EPS p.217 Shaw, 1971, p.131 Memorial in All Saints) Thomas, who had spent time atthe Middle Temple under Henry Hall of Digons in Maidstone in 1588, married Bridget Astley's younger sister Eleanorin the early 1590s, and had children christened at All Saints 1595-1613. (CKS P241/1/A1 EPS 1977, p.276) All threerefused to serve. (Martin, 1927, p.72) The Burghmote decided to press the point, and impasse was not resolved for fiveyears, during which time the number of jurats was reduced to ten.In April 1620, in the mayoralty of Robert Swinnock, the jurats, acting on their own, decided that the gentlemen chosenjurats and not sworn, shall not be sued ... for refusing their oaths, nor be urged to take their oaths without their liking,until such time as a new choice of jurats shall be propounded, because they had been chosen in love and hope of theirwilling acceptance for the good of the town. (Martin, 1927, p. 77, HM 1995, p.60) In July 1620 it was agreed by themayor and jurats that Knatchbull, Horspool and Duke should be discharged, if the Common Council assented, but itdidn't. (HM, 1995, p.60) In May 1621 when Robert Golding was mayor, after disagreement between lawyers aboutthe legality of the election of the three gentlemen, the situation was still unresolved, so the Burghmote referred theproblem to the mediation of Sir Francis Fane and Sir Francis Barnham. They sent their decision from MereworthCastle on 8 June 1621, that; for maintaining and increase of the ancient love and mutual peace and for quieting of allfuture questions about this business ... those gentlemen be from henceforth forever absolutely and freely dischargedfrom the said election. (Martin, 1927, p. 78)In April 1624, in the mayoralty of Gervase Maplesden, further proceedings were taken against Richard Duke and newones against Mr Thomas Carkaredge, who, although living in Maidstone, had also refused to serve as a jurat. He wasthe 57 year old son of Gervase Carkaredge, of Godmersham, and a cousin and close friend of James Franklin II (chosena jurat two years later in 1626 and afterwards Recorder) whose sister Anne he had married before 1619. Anne, daughterof Arthur Franklin of Wye, was the niece of James Franklin I, Maidstone's oldest jurat, who had died in 1618.(Visitation of Kent 1619 p.57; Hasted, 1798, pp. 340-368) Carkaredge's family connections were probably the reasonwhy his service as a jurat was sought, and them, it is odd that he was not willing to comply. However he produced thevalid excuse, which was confirmed by the Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Zouche, that he held the post of gunner atSandgate Castle. (ODNB, 2004) Sandgate, a very small fort, was garrisoned in 1651 (only 25 years later) merely by agovernor, two corporals, one gunner, one mate, two matrosses [artillerymen] with twenty private soldiers. Since therewas only one gunner, the post was unlikely to be a part-time one, although it is odd that it did not require a youngerman. (Journal of the House of Commons: Vol.7: 1651-1660 (1802), pp. 15-18.) Whatever his real reason for refusal toserve as a jurat, and whether or not he paid the fine of 20 marks at 4 marks a year imposed on him if he continued tolive in the parish, (he had estates at Godmersham and Wye), he was buried at All Saints when he died in 1639 aged 72,and his monument can be seen in the North Aisle. (Martin, 1927 pp.81-83; Hasted, 1798, Volume 7 pp. 340-368)Cave-Brown, in his history of All Saints, thought that Carkaredge's effigy, kneeling at a desk opposite his wife, wasdressed in a black civic gown, but in fact he never did take civic office. (Cave Brown, 1890, p.178)The disappointed corporation persisted in their attempts far enough to check both refusals, not only (in the case ofCarkaredge) with Lord Zouche, but also with the Privy Council, who finally responded with an order dated 11 June1624 which was copied into the Burghmote book. The Privy Council informed the Burghmote that after long debateand the discovery that Richard Duke would rather quit his dwelling in the town than be charged [burdened]with the ....place of jurat they ordered that he should be given convenient time for his removal without any let or hindrance. Theyfurther advised the Burghmote to be very wary that they did not elect any other inhabitants as jurats who were of aquality evidently superior to the [post of jurat] or otherwise unable to bear the burden thereof. In July Duke wasordered by the Burghmote to leave his home in the town by Michaelmas or else accept his election as a jurat. The threegentlemen who refused to be jurats in 1619 do not seem to have taken their removal orders very seriously. Knatchbullwas still in Maidstone in 1623 when he died. He left seven sons, one of whom, Thomas Knatchbull of Hollingbournewas taxed by the Cromwellian County Commission in 1655. (Broomhill, 1983, p. 25) Horspool was still a rentingborough property for 26s 8d in 1626, although his main residence was slightly out of the town (but still within theparish) at Great Buckland. He eventually sold Buckland, probably during the 1630s, to Thomas English of Sussex, andmoved to Buckinghamshire where he died in 1642 at Great Marlow. (Md FCa 1/1626) Duke died in 1626, but was notburied in Maidstone (most of his family were buried at Aylesford) His widow, who survived him for eleven years,retained a house in Maidstone until she died, in 1637, at the home of her married daughter in West Malling. (NAPROB11/174) In 1626 two more Kent gentlemen, Arthur Honywood and William Rayner (about whom nothing can befound) were chosen jurats. Honywood seems to have refused and moved away, and Rayner served less than two years.(Tittler, 1998, p.198; Zell J.P.s 1999, pp.129-133)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 18/30In 1623 the town successfully recruited another gentleman, when Thomas Stanley was sworn a freeman. In this caseno training was needed because he had previously served as a most assiduous and efficient jurat in Gravesend for 14years. Thomas Stanley's three marriages gave him a complicated network of relations, including landowners andtradesmen, whom he loyally supported, including step-daughters for whom he arranged marriages and a step-nephewwhom he sent to university. (Robertson, 1887 pp.353-371) Born eight miles west of Maidstone in West Peckham, hewas the eldest son of John Stanley, a distant relation of the earls of Derby, who came from Wilmington in Lancashireand bought Hamptons in West Peckham in 1570. (HM, 1995, p.48; Zell, J.P.s, 1999, p.36) His mother was Dorothydaughter of Thomas Tuttesham of West Peckham, sometime Portreeve of Gravesend. (Visitation of Kent 1574, p.39 Itseems that his grandfather may have set the younger Thomas up in business as a brewer there, since by 1605 he hadpaid his fee of £3 6s 8d and been sworn a freeman of Gravesend. In 1607 he married Margery (or Margaret), thewidow of Gravesend brewer and jurat William Leiston, who died in 1606. The marriage was probably influenced byThomas Tuttesham, who had married Cecily, widow of Robert Leiston sometime Portreeve of Gravesend, as his secondwife. William was Robert's son, and hence the stepson of Thomas Tuttesham, and a year later a third alliance betweenthe two families occurred when Thomas Stanley's younger brother William, a Maidstone Mercer, married AudreyLeiston. The Leistons were shipwrights with significant property in in London, Kent and Essex, including the CrossKeys in Gracechurch Street and the co*ck in Gravesend. By 1609 Thomas Stanley was a jurat in Gravesend himself,elected Portreeve in 1611 and 1617. During his second year as Portreeve his father died, but Thomas remained a juratin Gravesend until 1623, when he was sworn a freeman in Maidstone at the age of 42. (CKS Gr/Ac1 Folios 123-300)Two years later in 1625 he was chosen a jurat, and in 1626-1627 he was both mayor and MP for the town. His presencewas clearly valued, as in 1628, when he had been a jurat for 4 years, he was officially thanked for his "love, pains andtravail" on behalf of the town. (Martin, 1927, p.90)Why did Thomas Stanley regard borough office as acceptable when other gentlemen did not? It may have been familytradition. On his father's side members of the Stanley family, his distant cousins, including the Earl of Derby himself,served as mayors in Liverpool five times between 1568 and 1640. (Tittler, 1998 p.198) His mother's father, descendedfrom the Tutteshams of Tuttesham Hall in West Farleigh, was a Gravesend jurat. (Hasted, 1798, pp. 136-145). Hissurviving letters show him to have been an extremely energetic and organised man, who served for 14 years in themilitia, owned breweries in Gravesend, Rochester and Maidstone for which he personally bought malt, acted aschurchwarden for West Peckham Church, writing the parish registers in his own hand.After what seems to have been a sort of honeymoon period, Stanley's relationship with the other Maidstone juratsdeteriorated. In those early days he probably lived at Earl's Place, but by 1631 he was spending more time at WestPeckham, and the corporation understandably wanted to discharge him as a jurat for living outside the town, andmissing too many Burghmote meetings. They may have been sympathetic, since his neglect of his duties were probablycaused by his family situation. His first wife died childless in 1633 after 26 years of marriage, and his second wife diedin 1634 after six months marriage, very likely during a much wanted pregnancy. In 1635 his third wife presented himwith a daughter, and and he resigned from his juracy in 1636. Four years later in 1640, however, he came back and tooka fresh oath as a jurat, serving a second term as mayor in 1642. (Robertson, 1887, pp.356; Martin, 1926 pp.109-220)The Astleys, whose closeness to the royal court has already been mentioned, had extended family who bought homes inMaidstone, but do not seem to have made much beneficial contribution to the town, Sir John the younger (1572-1640)who owned the Palace from 1596 to 1640 disliked paying borough taxes and his name headed a 1621 list of people whohad not paid the local tax for the water conduit; Sir John Astley 20s, Lady Sackville 10s [crossed out, so presumably shepaid late] Mr Thomas Knatchbull Esquire, 10s. (Md FCa 1/1621) He also complained about fishing and the public useof a cart-way under his palace walls, and defence of his legal actions cost the town dearly. In October 1629 in themayoralty of James Franklin, it was recorded that, of the £170 bill for defending the men who had been accused by SirJohn of illegal fishing, only £73 6s 8d had actually been paid. An order therefore had to be made that £20 would bepaid out of the chamber for 5 years to discharge the rest. (Martin, 1927, p.96) In the 1620s the jurats expended timetrying to resolve arguments between the town and Sir John, while William Horspool, Thomas Carkaredge and MrLamb seemed to have aligned themselves with him. Sir Humphrey Tufton of the Mote, was also a member of the heseems to have earned the town's gratitude as a peacemaker. In August 1625 they recorded their conclusions in theBurghmote Book.These were that the town would not in future condone fishing under the palace walls on either side of the Medway, ifSir John agreed not to prosecute the poor men he had caught doing it any further. The ancient customary causewayunder the cliff would be marked by stakes so that horses passing did not undermine the foundations of the palace bygoing too close to the walls. The gentlemen would not be assessed for payments for the conduit or any law suitundertaken by the town. Furthermore the gentlemen would be excused the current double assessment for the poor, ifthey agreed to help the poor in future according to their own ability and the poor's necessity. Finally, no gentlemanliving in the town would be asked to serve the town as Constable, Churchwarden, Overseer of the Poor or in any otherFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 19/30meaner office. But the problems were not fully resolved. Five years later, in 1630, Sir John Astley and Sir HumphreyTufton were both claiming that they should not be taxed for the repair of Maidstone Bridge. As before Sir Humphreywas the more conciliatory, offering to abide by the order of an indifferent learned counsel and the Burghmote wiselydecided to defer any action until after the next County Sessions. (Martin, 1927, pp. 234, 237) The eventual outcome isnot known.Alan Everitt and Jacqueline Eales have described the Civil Wars in Kent, and J.M. Russell and Hilary Watson havecovered Maidstone's part in them, which need not be repeated here. (Everitt, 1966; Eales, 2001; Russell 1881,pp.245-274 Watson, 1981, pp.61-66;) Jacqueline Eales linked opposition to the Crown with religious dissent, bothbeing strongest in urban centres such as Maidstone. She considered that, because of the geographical, strategic andadministrative importance of Kent, a broad spectrum of opinion existed among local people in the 1640s and 1650s,some of it strongly held. She doubts that the county was as strongly Royalist as some historians have suggested, even ifsome ordinary people followed conservative gentry in the three uprisings against Parliament. (Eales, KECW, p.1, p.8,p.48) Maidstone itself escaped direct involvement until 1648, although Everitt lists Maplesdens and the Biggses ofMaidstone among a group including the Dukes of Cossington, also supported by all the vain company in [Maidstone]who gathered against Parliament at Aylesford in 1643. He considered them to be moderates rather than Cavaliers, andit is questionable who the Biggses were, since the jurat John Bigge, whose Puritan family lived in Cranbrook, died inJanuary 1643 leaving no children. (Everitt, 1966, p.191-192; NA PROB11/191) Possibly it was the Bills family wereinvolved. Two men named George Bills, a brewer and a clothier, appear in All Saints registers in the 1620s, andRichard Bills, sworn a freeman in 1641, served as mayor in 1656 and, being a Royalist, again at the Restoration. (CKSP241/1/A1; CKS MdACm/3 )Most of the Maidstone jurats seem to have had very little direct or willing involvement in the Civil Wars. They weremost probably very desirous of peace in which to pursue their businesses. Thomas Stanley, certainly the jurat whosuffered most, estimated his financial loss at £1,780 over the six years to 1649. (Robertson, 1887, p.356) Stanley wasremoved form the corporation again in 1644 for allegedly usurping the office of mayor two years earlier, and causingdivisions between the jurats and the common council. (Martin, 1927, p.99) His contribution had been appreciated, butwhat really finished him in the eyes of the Puritan jurats was his suspected royalist stance in the Civil War. But in thisopinion they were mistaken. During the Commonwealth the county Commission (who mistakenly listed his home asPlaxtol, a parish adjacent to West Peckham very close to Hamptons) suspected him of anti-Parliament activities, butperhaps they were unaware that, when the Royalists took up arms in 1643, Stanley had tried hard to persuade them tocome to terms with the Parliamentary leaders, acting as peacemaker to prevent any Royalist resistance to theParliamentary capture of Tonbridge. (Bloomfield, 1983, p. 27; Robertson, 1887, pp.353-371) The Puritan jurats alsoousted suspected Royalists Guy Hunt and Thomas Brook with Stanley in the mid-1640s. (Martin, 1927, pp.115,119)The Cromwellian County Commission held nearly all their meetings between 1655 and 1657 in Maidstone, and thelocal lawyer Andrew Broughton (chosen a jurat in 1647) was a member. The Committee were empowered to curtailany anti-Parliament activities of suspected Royalists, disarm them, and sequester their estates if necessary. In 1655William Polhill of Maidstone was responsible for collecting a tax from malignants (on payment of 3d in the poundcollected) but the resulting list included only four Maidstone men; John Bode, Daniel Bickman of Stone borough,(descended from Dutch immigrants), Richard Duke (the son of Richard Duke who had refused to serve as a jurat) andWilliam Gobbeere. Also included was John Maplesden of Boxley, who was probably the son of jurat Gervase II.(Broomhill, 1983, pp.12, 21, 22-27; Grove and Spain 1650 Map, 1975)In 1648, when Maidstone, temporarily manned by Royalist troops who did not know the area, was the site of a brief butbloody battle won by Lord Fairfax for Parliament, the town's leading families, including the Minister, Thomas Wilson,had time to evacuate the town leaving houses in the centre empty. Royalist soldiers shot at the Parliamentary army fromthe windows of house in Gabriel's Hill as they stormed the town from the South. The Royalists who were not able toescape, were quickly overcome and taken prisoners at St Faiths. Two days later the Parliamentary Army had also leftMaidstone, and that was, no doubt, the signal for the evacuees to return and repair the damage to their homes. (Russell,1881, pp.259-264) As Clark and Murfin have already said, even through the political uncertainties of theCommonwealth, there is no evidence of an economic or social crisis in the town. On the eve of Charles II's restorationin 1660 the corporation was firmly in charge of the leading town in West Kent. (HM, 1995, pp.68-69)The Restoration of Charles II in 1662 led to a purge of Parliamentarian jurats. Six jurats and sixteen commoncouncillors were dismissed for refusing the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy. (HM, 1995, p.96) The six jurats wereJames Allen, Robert Heath, Gervase Maplesden III, George Ongley, James Ruse and Jonathan Troughton, all of whomwere almost certainly Puritans. Andrew Broughton, who had been the lawyer to the commission for the death warrantCharles I, and was succeeded in a hurry by Richard Bills as mayor, had already fled England for Vevay on LakeGeneva, where he died in 1688, aged 85. (Martin, 1927, pp.145-9; Boorman, 1965 p.51; Russell, 1881, p.197)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 20/30Robert Tittler found that conflicts with local landowners occurred in many other towns after incorporation, because thenew boroughs were able to control town affairs independently of county duties. (Tittler, 1998, pp.166-68) Maidstonewas perhaps unusual in this respect, because no such conflicts occurred until the second decade of the seventeenthcentury. This was probably due to the uniquely egalitarian nature of Kent society which meant that junior members ofthe minor gentry had always served as jurats side by side with substantial tradesmen of the middling sort. Whenconflict did occur it was because the common council assumed that no able inhabitant would refuse a duty that othershad accepted before them. They were disappointed when increasing numbers of gentry wished to benefit from the goodfacilities in the town without contributing in any way. Perhaps the irresponsible refusal in the 1620s of the Astleys andtheir relations to serve as jurats (and to pay their town rates) was a local example of the sort of Royalist arrogancewhich contributed to the Civil War. Furthermore, some of the gentlemen who failed to contribute to town governmentwere incomers. Further study is needed to assess the prestige and influence of the jurats who served after 1660, but itmight be predicted that the proportion of Kent gentry among them continued to decline.For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 21/30Chapter Four: Godly RuleWhere pride doth hold the helm in hand, the ship to rule by wilful will,Oft-times we see on rock or sand, both ship and goods do jointly spill.The like thing may be seen each day, in ship of public governanceWhere only pride and will bear sway, seeking all discord to advance.Wherefore if I might counsel give, when as the matter lies in choice,Blind ignorance should not achieve, to win to rule by common voice.Have this therefore before your eyes; whom henceforth ye do choose or take,Virtue embrace, and vice despise. A right good choice so shall ye make.A ditty published in The Court of Virtue (1562) by John Hall of Maidstone (1530-68)He that is ever trading and thriving in godliness, need not fear that he shall prove bankrupt.The Revd. George Swinnock, (1627-73), son of Maidstone merchant Thomas Swinnock (died 1641) andDorothy (nee Maplesden), who was brought up by his uncle, the jurat Robert Swinnock, from the age of 15.Religion in Kent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been discussed by Professor Peter Clark (EPS, 1976) DrMichael Zell (EMK, 2000, pp.207-241) and Jacqueline Eales (EMK, 2000, pp.279-313). Peter Clark and Lynn Murfin(HM, 1995, pp.26, 37-39, 62-66) have also discussed the effect of the Reformation on Maidstone and the subsequentreligious life in the town during the period. But as well as focussing on the Maidstone jurats in particular, this chapteradds evidence from wills and other sources hitherto unused.It is not easy to find surviving evidence for the worship of middle class people, but in the 1440s, when anyone caughtreading the Bible in English would be severely punished, there was an worshipping sect established by Lollards inMaidstone, (HOM p.38) which means that 100 years before the Reformation some independent townspeople weredoing just that. They were reading handwritten copies of the bible in English in their own homes. In 1506 WilliamGrocyn, a leading English Renaissance scholar, was appointed Master of the College of All Saints by ArchbishopWarham, (ODNB 2004); and his presence there for 13 years may have had a modernising influence on education in thetown. The Roman Catholic litany was still, of course, unaltered, in the parish church of All Saints. (Patston, 1966) In1511, when Archbishop Warham launched a sudden and fierce campaign against Lollardy in the Canterbury diocese,and thirty-nine people were accused of it within the county, sects still existed in Maidstone, Tenterden and Ashford.(ODNB, 2004; Hasted, 1798) By 1526 they could have been reading printed copies of Tyndale's English NewTestament from Geneva which could be bought in England for only 3 shillings. (Patston, 1966) And it wasn't just thelaity who were showing independent tendencies; in 1530 Thomas Hinton, sometime curate of Maidstone, was burnt forspreading continental heresy. (HOM, 1995 p.38) However, the tide began to turn towards official protestantismEngland in 1534 after the Act of Supremacy declared the King supreme head of the Church of England, and thefollowing year over 700 monasteries in England were dissolved. (Patston, 1996) In 1537 Archbishop Cranmersurrendered his palace at Maidstone to the Crown. (HM, 1995 p.58) In the same year, part of the shrine at Boxley wasexhibited in Maidstone town centre, where it was shown to be a mechanical fraud. (Gilbert, 1866) By 1541townspeople were complaining openly about the high church liturgy of John Leffe, the Master of All Saint's College.(HOM, 1995 p.38) The College survived until 1547, and when it was dissolved only eight Maidstone inhabitants, aswill be seen later, objected to the sale of assets to pay for the new Grammar School. (Gilbert, 1865, p.42)Meanwhile, a significant shift towards Protestant preambles in the wills of Kentish gentry from the 1530s through KingEdward's reign (1547-53), which even persisted into Queen Mary's reign, has been noted by both Peter Clark andMichael Zell. (EPS p.58-9; EMK p. 200-201) The gentry particularly connected with Maidstone were notablyProtestant. George Brooke, Lord Cobham, who owned 400 acres of the demesne land from All Saints College atBuckland in Maidstone Parish from 1549, (ODNB, 2004; Russell, 1881, pp.91-92) employed Protestant tutors for hissons. When those sons joined their cousin Sir Thomas Wyatt in his rebellion against Queen Mary's Spanish marriage in1554, and their father was embarrassingly commanded by the Duke of Norfolk to quell the uprising, he managed to putup a mere token resistance. (Russell, 1881, p.59) Lord Cobham's brother-in-law Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder ofAllington Castle was a also a Protestant (albeit a moderate one) who reflected in later life that he thought he shouldhave more ado [trouble] ... to purge myself of suspect of a Lutheran then of a Papist. (ODNB, 2004) Sir ThomasWotton of Boughton Malherbe, a notable patron of Maidstone (HOM, p.60), was imprisoned in Queen Mary's reign;For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 22/30(ODNB, 2004) The courtier Sir John Astley, of Maidstone Palace was close to Queen Elizabeth, and married hergoverness. (ODNB, 2004) Robert Rudstone of Boughton Monchelsea was involved in Wyatt's rebellion against QueenMary and Sir John Leveson of Whorne's in Halling supported Puritan clergy in 1584. (EMK, 2000. pp.221, 300)But during the reign of Henry VIII extreme Protestant affirmations were still unacceptable, and the Six Articles of 1539had reaffirmed Roman Catholic doctrines including transubstantiation (i.e. that the sacrament was actually Christ'sbody and blood). Defaulters risked the death penalty, and the Steward of Maidstone Manor was one of them. GeorgeBlague (c.1512-1551) cousin of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder (1503-42) and grandson of John Brooke, seventh BaronCobham, a courtier attached to Henry VIII's Privy Chamber, exhibited his Protestant beliefs so publicly that he nearlydied for them. In 1542 he became involved in an attempt to free the Protestant agitator John Porter from prison, and in1546 he walked to the stake with convicted Protestants Anne Askew and John Lassells, risking charges that could haveled him to his own death. In the same year he was accused of denouncing the mass in the hearing of two of his fellowMPs. On that occasion he had allegedly posed the trick question of the validity of the consecrated host which is eatenby a mouse, and added that in his opinion it were well done that the mouse were taken and put in the pix, that is, held upfor adoration. This was going too far. He was arrested, and despite his denials and legal manoeuvres, condemned todeath. (ODNB, 2004) In prison he wrote a poem, blaming the bishops for his troubles;But otherwise, alas, now hath it hap'tOur guides have erred and walked out of the wayAnd we, by them, full craftily are trappedWhom they would lead, they drive out of array. (Muir, 1963)Happily the King, who liked him, and nicknamed him his pig, personally intervened to pardon him. Afterwards thegrateful Blague was reported as saying; if your Majesty had not been better to me than your bishops were, your pig hadbeen roasted ere this time. Blague had been appointed chief steward and bailiff of Maidstone Manor in 1544, andalthough, as a courtier, he may have delegated most of his responsibilities for the manor, local people must have beenaware of their steward's story. (Starkey, 1985, pp.116-17, 127)Soon after Henry VIII's death in January 1547, Edward VI repealed the Six Articles, and accelerated Protestant reform,which according to Michael Zell, was, on the whole, welcome in Kent. (EMK pp.207-209) It seems Maidstone was noexception, since, when the College of all Saints was finally suppressed, about 90% of influential Maidstone inhabitantsimmediately seized the opportunity to annex the College lands to found a Grammar School, and wrote to the PrivyCouncil for permission. (Gilbert, 1866, p.42) Unfortunately, they were required to raise enough money to buy the landby selling church possessions, and this did not meet with unanimous approval. As Clark and Murfin haveacknowledged, the sacrilegious sale of crosses, candlesticks and censers, and the dissolution of the Guild of CorpusChristi, which had played a major role in the town, may have induced mixed feelings. (HOM 1995 p.38) However, thedissidents were soon silenced. In September 1548 Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector, a sincereProtestant himself, wrote encouragingly to his loving friends the inhabitants of Maidstone. We understand that beingpurposed amongst you to do some things that may tend to a common benefit and a charitable act a few of you, to thenumber of eight persons, should not be so well bent to it as the rest, but that the Privy Council, having a desire thatthings of charity and good acts might proceed universally in the realm ... be loath to hear that a few should behinderers ... when the greater number upon honest considerations, determine anything ... for the ... advancement ofGod's honour ... and things laudable in a common (or town's) wealth. (Gilbert, Antiquities 1865 p.43)As part of the charter provisions in 1549, the corporation secured control of the parish church, and at last there was nolonger any need for independent worshipping sects, since both the English Bible and Cranmer's first English Book ofCommon Prayer were legally kept in all churches. (Patston, 1966, p.34) But after only six years King Edward died, thenine-day reign of Jane Grey was quashed, and Queen Mary began her fervent restoration of the Roman Catholicreligion.In Kent she met with resistance, and Maidstone inhabitants even sent a request to London, asking to be allowed tocontinue their Protestant services. Jurat William Smith, who delivered the petition, was imprisoned for a week, buteventually released, probably on payment of fines. By December 1553, the prospect of the Queen's Spanish marriagewas known, and Maidstone men, including jurats, were ready to join Sir Thomas Wyatt in his rebellion against it earlyin 1554. Michael Zell considers that the importance of Maidstone as a recruiting ground for Wyatt should not beunderestimated, and that the religious factor in the rebellion was significant. The rebellion began with a proclamationin Maidstone town centre, and several of the jurats were heavily involved. (Russell, 1881 p.52) They included JohnDenley, condemned in Essex, who died in jail at Uxbridge in 1555, Peter Maplesden who forfeited his estates, WilliamGreen, William Smythe and William Tilden, who all paid heavy fines. (Russell, 1881, pp.66-69) Wyatt himselfafterwards insisted that he had not intended treason, saying at his trial; mine whole intent and stir was against theFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 23/30coming in of strangers and Spaniards and to abolish them out of this realm, and his popularity was undiminished.Onlookers at his execution dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, and within a few days his head had been taken downas a martyr's relic. (Russell, 1881, p.68)Wyatt's failure is considered by Michael Zell to have been caused by tactical mistakes rather than lack of support. (Zell,EMK, 200, pp.218-9, 221) As a result of the insurrection, Maidstone's Borough Charter was forfeited, and townspeoplemust have become even more anti-Papist and determined to support the Protestant cause. And there was more misery tocome in the next four years. In August 1555 John Newman, a Protestant Maidstone pewterer, who had become afreeman of the Artificers' Company four years earlier, was burnt at the stake at Saffron Walden. (Russell, 1881, p.105)In 1557 seven Protestants including Maidstone inhabitants, Walter and Petronella Appleby (who were married at AllSaints in April 1547) Joan Manning and a blind girl called Elizabeth Lewis were burnt, in the Fairmeadow, in July. Onthat occasion the sermon was preached by John Day, curate of Maidstone since 1553, and he was reported later, in aletter to Foxe by Maidstone surgeon John Hall, to have exclaimed; good people, ye ought not in any wise to pray forthese obstinate heretics, for look, how ye shall see their bodies burnt with material fire, so shall their damnable soulsburn in unquenchable fire of hell everlastingly. Which words, according to Hall, he repeated in All Saints on thefollowing Sunday. Last but not least, in 1558, about six days before the Queen Mary's own death, two of the last fiveMarian martyrs were Christopher Brown of Maidstone and Katherine Knight alias Tinley of Thurnham, were burnt atCanterbury. (Gilbert, All Saints, 1865, pp.78-81)Katherine Tinley was by then an aged woman. (Foxe, 1583, Book 12, p.2053) She was the widow of George Tinley ofBoxley, who died in 1547, and had presumably afterwards married, as her second husband, a Mr Knight of Thurnham.George Tinley's will mentions three sons and two daughters, among them Robert, a Maidstone draper, who hadsupported Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion in 1554. (CKS PRC17/26/115) Robert, who was Warden of the Draper'sCompany in 1568 and chosen a jurat in 1584, had, according to Foxe, been in trouble all Queen Mary's time,presumably for his conspicuous protestantism. Foxe, whose informant may have been John Hall, recounted thatKatherine, not hitherto particularly religious, found a passage in a prayer book which intrigued her and asked her son,who must then have been in his early thirties, to explain. The text was specified by Foxe, and comes from Acts Chapter2 Verse 17; I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: your old menshall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants, and upon the maids in thosedays will I pour my spirit. (Foxe, 1583, Book 12, p.2053) Katherine was not reading the bible, but a prayer bookwhich, since it was in English, could have been published illegally either in 1549 or 1552. After Robert had explainedthe passage to her, Katherine began to take hold on the Gospel, growing more and more in zeal and love thereof, and socontinued unto her Martyrdom. The official reason given for the burnings was that all five, on the authority of St Paulin the Bible, had refused to agree to the doctrine of transubstantiation. They also refused to pray to the Virgin and thesaints, because they were not omnipotent, and insisted that, because St John had forbidden it, it was idolatry to creep tothe cross. (Foxe, 1583, Book 12, p.2054)Onlookers in Canterbury, just like those in Fairmeadow two years before, must have been struck forcibly that themartyrs, who had done no physical harm to anyone, and who were stating beliefs that had been legal a mere five yearsearlier, perished to the sound of such dreadful words; We do give here into the hands of Satan, to be destroyed, thebodies of all those blasphemers & heretics ... so that by this thy just judgement ...thy true religion may be known ... tothy great glory, and our comfort. Comfort cannot have been the chief feeling shared by Maidstone townspeople whohad travelled to Canterbury to see their friends burn for publicly upholding beliefs of many. And it is understandable ifthey, who had seen their town flourish briefly under Edward VI, hated Papism even more than before.Queen Elizabeth's accession so soon after those burnings in Canterbury must have been a relief, but with rather mutedjoy for the martyr's families. Maidstone inhabitants who had left the town for Europe in Queen Mary's reign returnedhome. Gilbert named Roger Newman, whose brother John had been martyred at Uxbridge, Matthew Mills, PeterBrown, Richard Crisp, and Thomas Stanley. None of these men ever became jurats (this Thomas Stanley is not to beconfused with his probably unrelated namesake born in 1580), but they soon joined with others to petition theArchbishop for the removal of John Day from all Saints, which was finally achieved in 1563. (Gilbert, All Saints, 1866,pp.78-81) At last it was safe again to use the Edwardian Prayer Book at All Saints, and when Maidstone's ElizabethanCharter was granted in 1559 the Grammar School was re-opened. In the 1560s Archbishop Parker, who was activelyorganising the transformation of the county to Protestantism, found 70% of the county's Justices of the Peace and mostof the clergy could be relied upon to conform. (Zell, EMK, 200, pp.235-240) Thus it was within a generally Protestantcounty that at least half of Maidstone's Elizabethan jurats are known to have been publicly Protestant. To the fourEdwardian jurats who were reinstated (Thomas Goar, the Mayor, William Green, Richard Hooker and James Catlet.)were added two more Wyatt supporters (William Smythe and Clement Lutwick). The religious persuasions of the otherseven jurats are not so easy to assess, but they included William Mowshurst, who was first cousin to the Wyattsupporter Sir Thomas Fane of Badsell. (Visitation of Kent, 1574, p.43)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 24/30Jurats were chosen by their fellow members of the Common Council. No personal papers survive to give any clueabout the qualities they looked for in their leaders, so given that a jurat needed sufficient ability and willingness to dothe job, how did the Council choose one man over another? This question can perhaps be answered, for Maidstone, ina book published by the aforementioned correspondent of Foxe, Protestant Maidstone surgeon John Hall, who hadpractised in the town since 1551, four years after the first charter. Hall was an able doctor, a member of the LondonCompany of Barber Surgeons from 1555, and he must have treated many of Maidstone's prominent citizens. (ODNB,2004; CKS Md/Rf3/1 Register of Freemen 1551; Barber Surgeons Admission Registers Ref: C/4/1 folio 5) He had acircle of Protestant friends, some of whom had been deeply involved in Wyatt's rebellion, and strong opinions abouthow towns should choose their governors for virtue wisdom and learning ... by all means laudable, to keep from rulethe proud envious and wilful wicked men: lest the prince be dishonoured, and they themselves abused and oppressed.The book was not published until 1565, but Hall's Court of Virtue described by R.A Fraser as a sequence ofdescriptions in verse, delineating man's life, and the virtues and vices that compound it, included a whole section onchoosing good governors, beginning with the verses quoted at the heading of this chapter. (Fraser, 1961, pp.240-241)Dr Rivkah Zim was the first to notice and investigate thirteen acrostic verses in the book, hiding the names of Hallhimself and twelve of his Maidstone acquaintances. Acrostics were popular in the mid sixteenth century and Hall, whomay well have been inspired by the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir George Blague, was modest about his ownpoetic skill. (Zim, 1986 pp.320-327)My wit is rude, and small my skill,To stand and supply such a place.Yet must I needs walk in the trace [harness]That virtue did assign me in;Therefore in her praise I begin.But however modest Hall was about his poetic skills, The Court of Virtue was written for a local audience of themiddling sort, and throws light on the careful choosing of the Maidstone oligarchy of his day. Dr Zim believes thatnine of the people whose names he used seem to have earned his approval as right good choices, but that theremaining three have poems which indicate Hall's disapproval. (Zim, 1986, p.321, 324) Richard Hooker, who hadbeen elected a jurat in 1549, served as chamberlain 1560-63. Henry Fisher, Town Clerk and Recorder 1560-1584was MP for the town in 1562. Two more were elected jurats in 1570; Hall's cousin, Edmund Hall, later to beoverseer of his will, and Richard Barham. And his friend John Nicholson, later to be his executor, served asfreemen's chamberlain in 1570, although he was never a jurat. Robert Tinley was elected a jurat 1584. John Clark,a freeman from 1562, was never a jurat, but he married Margery, daughter of Portreeve William Beale, sister of juratThomas Beale, and cousin of Richard Barham. He was later the second overseer for Hall's will. Richard Tannerwho lived in the Town House and kept the jail, appeared often in Burghmote minutes, but was never a jurat,although he lived to be 92 and died in 1608. (Gilbert, Antiquities, 1867, p.153) Edmund Hall and John Nicholsonwere witnesses to the will of Maidstone's first mayor, William Green. (PRC32/31/374, 1569) The only womanincluded was Mary, widow of Thomas Isley of Mann's in Bredgar, who was executed and attainted after Wyatt'srebellion in 1554 leaving her with five daughters and scant possessions. (Hasted, 1798) The Isley family came fromSundridge, and owned land closer to Maidstone including, at various times, Gore Court in Otham and Pimp's Courtand the manor of Half Yoke in East Farleigh. (Kent Visitation 1574; Kent Visitation, 1619, Hasted; 1798) MaryIsley must have known Maidstone well, and before her land was returned to her in 1556, she was probablysupported by loyal friends there, including Robert Tinley, to whom she bequeathed £5 when she died in 1583. (NAPROB 11/65, 1583)Very little can be discovered about the remaining three acrostic names. William Jordan must have been a member of anold local family who once owned Jordan's Hall in Stone Street, and a Thomas Jordan had been the master of NewerkHospital in West Borough in 1312 ( (Hasted, 1798; Russell, 1881, p.23) Robert Bedingfield married in Maidstone in1542 and died there intestate in 1563. (CKS PAR242/1/E1) Thomas Woodman has not yet been identified, although aMargery Woodman was buried at All Saints in November 1565. (CKS PAR242/1/E1) John Hall himself died in 1568,aged only 41. (NA PROB11/83) The Court of Virtue appears to have been written for a Kentish audience who wouldrecognise and appreciate the acrostics, and it most probably reflected a predominant local desire, at least among theliterate, for upright Protestant governance.Two years after the Court of Virtue was published, Queen Elizabeth acceded to a petition from the mayor, jurats andcommonalty of Maidstone for a licence to allow sixty Protestant households from the Netherlands skilled in makingcloth (and other products not made locally) to live and work in the town, for the purpose of training local people in theirskills. Lord Burleigh, whose letter accompanied the licence, thought that Maidstone would provide a suitable place fordivers especial considerations, and 30 households (each fewer than 12 people) were allowed to settle on severalFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 25/30conditions, one being that they would be given freedom of worship. Valerie Morant thought that the specialconsiderations he cited included the town's (futile) petition to Queen Mary to be allowed to continue Protestantservices, indicating that Maidstone people might be suitable tolerant of an independent church in their midst. As wehave seen in Chapter Two, the Dutch, as they were called locally, although not initially allowed any part in towngovernment, made substantial financial contributions to its welfare. In 1572 they were given the church of St Faiths fortheir worship, and eighteen years later in 1585 there were 43 family groups in Week Borough. (Morant, 1951pp.211-212) Their enduring contribution to Maidstone was the skill of thread-twisting, which flourished until the midseventeenth century. (HM, 1995, p.81)Like the wills of the Kent gentry, preambles to the wills of some prominent Maidstone inhabitants have producedeloquent examples of Puritan beliefs, which are here emphasized by italics. In 1577 the Town Clerk, Queen's SergeantNicholas Barham of Digons in Knightrider Street, who built five pews in All Saints Church in the 1560s, died at Oxfordfrom jail fever contracted at a trial. (ODNB, 2004) Barham, who clearly believed in justification by faith alone, askedfor burial without all vain and frivolous pomp of the earthly which profiteth nothing. His will was written the daybefore he died visited with infirmity and sickness and the preamble is Calvinist in its references to Total Depravity:-I commit my soul to God most humbly by and through Christ; assuring myself, by the merits and passion of thesame Christ only, to obtain clear remission of all my offences ... acknowledging myself nothing towards thesatisfaction of any of them, but all my works whatsoever to be unprofitable and merely [purely] insufficient to allrespect in judgment and justice of God; and therefore, with an humble and penitent heart, do crave from thebottom of my heart, and firmly do believe and trust to obtain, through full faith, had concerning my justificationin and by Christ only, my only advocate and peacemaker before God the Father, and by his promises; mycorrupted flesh always bent to wickedness and never being able to do any good thing nor not so much as to thinkany good thought, of myself, not being drawn thereto by God the Father, and directed by his Holy Spirit, butalways repugning the same Spirit with froward and willful disobedience. (NA PROB 11/05, 1577)The preamble to Robert Tinley's will is the most vehement and lengthy of them all. It is of a Calvinist persuasion,believing in irresistible grace and limited atonement, and poignantly phrased by a man whose mother was one of the lastMarian martyrs, burnt for her public adherence to a faith acquired late in life, in which her son had encouraged her.Tinley wrote it himself; this is my will and by myself perused, confirmed and avowed again the 23 day of October 1583... with mine own hand written.In the name of God, Amen. My soul I bequeath unto god my Saviour Jesus Christ, and my body to the earth, forearth it was and to earth it shall return again, until such time as it shall please my blessed Christ to restore thismy soul unto this my body again, at the latter day; beseeching my blessed Saviour Jesus Christ to put this mysoul and body unto God his father, as one of his poor sheep, whom he hath with his obedience, righteousness,virtue and holy passion, redeemed to be of his holy fold flock and everlasting kingdom for ever, and time withoutend. And this do I trust shall as verily come to pass, through the goodness of God, now become my father by themeans only of Christ my Saviour, and [the] working of the Holy Comforter, as I am sure that this my earthlybody must die and sleep in earth till Christ shall it call and me, most lovingly, awake, to meet with his mostglorious majesty above the clouds; and with his servants, the perfect saints and angels, to see his gloriousmajesty gloriously and triumphantly divide his sheep, whom he did bring home out of the wilderness upon hisbloody shoulders, and the stinking goats asunder, and with him and by him only do I hope to go into glory forever, and there to see god our father by means of this Christ my Saviour, to whom with the Holy Comforter I trustto sing praises forever and ever Amen. Amen. O Lord grant it me, who hath said ask and you shall receive, andagain whatsoever you ask the father in my name he will give it you, and whom he loveth, he loveth to the end,and by him we live move and have our being. To him again and again be glory for ever and ever, so be it.(CKS PRC32/37/3)Two other members of the group to whom John Hall's acrostics were dedicated, Richard Barham and Mary Isley, leftwills with less notable preambles, and wills have unfortunately not yet been found for the rest. (NA PROB11/64, 1582;PROB 11/65, 1583) Jurats were not the only Maidstone inhabitants who left wills indicating strong Protestant leanings.In 1596 Maidstone Yeoman Thomas Ayerst bequeathed as much money as will buy Mr Calvin's Institutes in English ofthe fairest and plainest letter together with a chain to be fastened to a desk at the lower end of the parish church inMaidstone for the better instruction of the poor and simple there. He also willed as sermon to be preached before myburial that the people may be the better admonished of their mortality. (CKS PRC32/38/65)Robert Tittler held that the quest for godly rule was ... part of the fall-out of the Reformation on the provincial urbanscene, and this was certainly the case in Maidstone. (Tittler, 1998, p.207) Peter Clark has described the gradualincrease of control over All Saints, from the Elizabethan charter onwards, with a trend towards Puritanism. (HM, 1995,For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 26/30pp.62-63) In 1568 the borough chamberlains paid local lawyer Mr Stephen Austen for twice writing a supplication tomy Lord of Canterbury for a preacher. (CKS Md/FCa/1, 1568) In 1575 the corporation took charge of the payment ofthe Minister, Richard Storer, in quarterly instalments for his peace and ease. (Martin, 1926, p.27) Storer was admitteda freeman in 1578, and during his seven year ministry from 1574 to 1581, and the thirty-seven year ministry of RobertCarr from 1581 to 1618 relations between corporation and church seem to have been excellent.In 1618 however, Carr was succeeded by Robert Barrell, whom Russell understood to be a nominee of the ProtestantArchbishop Abbott, to whom Barrell had dedicated a pamphlet referring to the sandy foundations of the Papistical faith.(Russell, 1881, p.112) Barrell began well, but before very long his increasingly high-church leanings alienated themore Puritan members of the corporation. In 1627 their power was strengthened by the election of the wealthy,energetic Robert Swinnock (son of jurat Thomas Swinnock) who had married Margaret the daughter of jurat EdwardMaplesden. Robert's piety was described, years later, by his nephew, George Swinnock, as follows:- (ODNB)His manner was to pray twice a day by himself, once or twice a day with his wife, and twice a day with hisfamily [household] besides singing psalms, reading, and expounding scriptures, which morning and eveningwere minded. The Sabbath he dedicated wholly to God's service, and did not only himself, but took care that allwithin his gate should spend the day in secret and private duties, and in attendance on public ordinances; oftheir proficiency by the last, he would take account upon their return from the assembly. (Yuille, 2008, pp.2-3)In August 1629 a long-running battle between Robert Barrell and the jurats about the choice of parish clerks came to ahead. An entry in the Burghmote book recorded; the appointing of a clerk ... hath been anciently by the mayor andjurats with the assent of the parishioners ... Mr Barrell hath lately claimed to himself alone the election and displacingof clerks ... without the consent of the parish. Since the clerk was empowered to begin a suit against a parishioner inthe ecclesiastical court for parish dues, the corporation naturally wanted to choose him. Such independent actions bythe parish minister were not at all what Maidstone jurats were accustomed to, and a decision was made to defendfreemen from any such suits, if necessary at the expense of the town (to be paid by assessments on all freemen).(Martin, pp.95-96) In 1631, when Robert Swinnock succeeded the elderly moderate Richard Maplesden as mayor,much stronger initiatives were taken for the replacement of Barrell. The story of them was recounted forty years laterby George Swinnock in his biography of Wilson, written in 1672:-There were many serious understanding Christians in Maidstone, much troubled ... at the deadness and dullnessof that Ministry under which they lived. Alas, the children asked bread, and their spiritual father ... [Barrell]gave them stones, that their souls were ready to famish for want of food. Whereupon Mr. Robert Swinnock anactive godly person, one of the ... jurats of the town, got the presentation of Otham, upon the death of theincumbent, and consulted with his friends and Christian neighbours, how he might procure an able minister forthat place, aiming herein not only at the benefit of that parish, but also of the Christians at Maidstone, whomight with a little trouble and travail reap the fruit of his labours. In pursuance of this ... they heard ... Mr.Wilson ... preach at Dorking in Surrey, to their great satisfaction. After Sermon they acquainted him with thecause of their coming ... and desired him to accept the presentation of Otham. He who was never hasty,especially in matters of such weight, asked the judgement of his neighbour ministers in the country, and others ofthe City of London, who did concur and agree in this, that in regard of the necessities of those that feared Godabout Maidstone, and the great opportunity he should enjoy there of doing good to many souls, he ought toembrace the Call. Upon the declaration of their opinion he was presented to Otham. (Swinnock, 1672, p.9)After that, Maidstone Puritans who disliked Barrell's ministry chose to travel four miles to attend Wilson's services atOtham, despite censure in the church courts. Meanwhile, further efforts were made to dislodge Barrell and get Wilsonto Maidstone. In January 1632 in the mayoralty of Robert Wood, the Burghmote agreed to Barrell's suggestion that theweekly lecture, late ceased, apparently for lack of funds, should be renewed and that they should be given by sixministers, namely Barrell himself, Mr [Edmund] Henshaw [of Sutton Valence] Mr Whittle, Mr [Thomas] Wilson ofOtham, Mr [Freegift] Tilden [of Langley] and Mr John Swinnock [Robert's brother]; paid for by voluntary contributionof the inhabitants of ability. (Swinnock, 1672)In 1633 William Laud was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1634 his Act of Uniformity ordered all Englishborn aliens to worship according to the rites of the Church of England. This made some descendants of the MaidstoneDutch settlers return to the continent. (Morant, 1951, p.214) Two other events in Maidstone were direct results ofArchbishop Laud's policies. First, it was because of his opposition to Papists that the only reference so far found to arecusant in the Maidstone Burghmote Book can be found. It ran; William Hardy, Gent., suspected a recusant, took theoath of allegiance before Robert Wood, Mayor and William Gull Recorder, 14th September. Second, because he had, in1633, persuaded the King to re-issue his father's 1617 Book of Sports, in which he declared that he wished that hissubjects, having first done their Sunday duty to God by attending church, to be free afterwards to take part in lawfulFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 27/30games and recreations. Clergy were required by law to read the book in church, and many strict Puritans refused,including Thomas Wilson at Otham, were deprived of their livings. Wilson had to leave Otham in 1635, and hisMaidstone supporters seized the opportunity to offer him accommodation in the town, where to the Christians ... he wasa great help ... and from them he received some supply and support for himself and his family. This was indeed tradingand thriving in godliness. The jurats were both wealthy and Puritan and they were determined to make Wilson theirminister whatever the cost. (Swinnock, p.99)In these endeavours Robert Swinnock enlisted the help of his wife's sister's widower, John Bigge, a wealthy Maidstonedraper from a Puritan Cranbrook family. Bigge, who had recently married his second wife, Sybil Beacon from Otham,was another Wilson follower, and in 1635 he was elected a jurat. Two other new jurats that year, Martin Jeffery andRobert Withinbrook, who both married sisters of jurat Robert Marshall, further strengthened the Puritan faction in thegroup. The March Burghmote record included the fact that Mr Barrell the curate of this town hath of late refused topublish the court of Burghmote in the church, contrary to ancient custom, and decreed that notices should be postedaround the town and horns blown at seven in the morning eight days in advance of court days instead. (Martin, 1926,p.101) An official petition against Robert Barrell was eventually organised in 1641, but he was not immediatelyremoved. On 23 August 1641 John Reading (1588-1667), a severe Calvinist very much resorted to for his frequent andedifying sermons, delivered an assize sermon at Maidstone which condemned the state-threatening schismatics, andtook as its motto Romans 16:17, I beseech you brethren, mark them who cause divisions and offences, contrary to thedoctrine ye have learned, and avoid them. (ODNB, 2004) The address seems to have caused offence to many of thosewho heard it and Reading subsequently claimed that his only desire had been to persuade to an holy unity in Christ.Reading may have been aiming his sermon at Catholic recusants visiting in Maidstone for the assizes, for it is unlikelythat many of the townspeople were Catholics. But unfortunately the Protestation returns collected in 1641-42 forMaidstone parish, which would have named them, have not survived to bear out this opinion.In February 1642 at the beginning of the Civil War, Sir Edward Partridge, the anti-papist, anti-court MP for Sandwich,successfully proposed in Parliament that Thomas Wilson (the popular Puritan minister of Otham) should be appointedtown lecturer in Maidstone. (EMK 2000 p.295) At the end of that year Wilson was also chosen as one of the Kentrepresentatives to the Westminster assembly of divines appointed to advise parliament on reform of the church. Despitebeing a member of the Westminster assembly, he did not neglect his duties in Maidstone and he also preached regularlyat the assizes, although none of his local sermons were printed. (ODNB) In April 1643 Robert Barrell was imprisonedby the House of Commons, and his living sequestrated. In June 1644 Thomas Wilson testified about his suspension atthe Archbishop Laud's treason trial, and in the same year Robert Barrell was finally ejected by the Burghmote, whichleft the Maidstone ministry vacant for Wilson:-As soon as the way was opened to his induction into Maidstone, (through the ejection of the old incumbent, bythe Committee of Plundered Ministers) his old hearers there, whose hearts were close knit to him, longed for hissettlement among them. But the Parliament ordering that Plundered Ministers should first be provided for,where any Livings were vacant, they could not at present obtain their desire; for one Master Smith, an able holyman, of the number of the aforesaid Ministers, was by the Committee of Plundered Ministers sent down toMaidstone. Mr. Smith had not been long in Maidstone, but a rumour was spread, that eminent persons should beremoved to great towns and cities, that they might be capable of doing the more good, and that Mr. Wilsonshould be removed from Otham, to some considerable place. At which news the people of Maidstone were muchstartled, fearing they should lose their beloved pastor. To prevent which, they applied themselves to Mr. Smith,desiring him to accept of some other living, that Maidstone might be free for Mr. Wilson. Mr. Smith consideringthe vehement desires of the good people after Mr. Wilson, yielded to refer the business to six judicious ministersof the Assembly, whereof three to be chosen by himself, and three by the Christians of Maidstone. The Ministersmet accordingly, and having heard what could be said on both sides, and weighed the matter thoroughly, gavetheir advice that it would be best for Mr. Smith to resign the place to Mr. Wilson, which also he did, and having aconsiderable place, some six or seven miles from Maidstone provided for him, viz. Harrietsham, he took his owntime to remove thither.Once in post as perpetual curate at Maidstone, Wilson so reformed the town that one of the assize judges observed thatin all his circuit, he never came to a town where the Lord's Day was so strictly observed. After Divine service theMinister used to go to Robert Swinnock's house for supper, and the scene was afterwards described by his nephewGeorge:-By that time he had supped, there would be hundred or more gathered together to Mr. Swinnock's house, to joinwith him in the conclusion of the day. Many times to my comfort, I have seen two rooms, one considerable forlargeness, through which persons of all ranks (the mayor, jurats and their wives by their patterns encouragingothers) to worship the great God. After supper [Wilson] came among them, begun with a short prayer, thenFor the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 28/30would read the verses he had expounded in that day, ask what observations were raised from such a verse, thenproceed to the next, so through all the verses he had expounded forenoon and afternoon, then enquire what thetext were, the doctrines, the explications, reasons, uses, all in order as preached, seldom named one headhimself, but still heartened them to speak, and assisted them when they were at a loss, then they sung a psalm,and he ended the day with prayer about ten a clock at night. (Swinnock, 1672, p.29)George Swinnock, who was born in Maidstone and lived in his uncle's household after his father's death in 1642,graduated BA at Cambridge and MA at Oxford, and was installed as Vicar of Rickmansworth in 1650. His beliefs aboutthe duty of magistrates, learnt in Maidstone where his grandfather and uncle were jurats, were strong. He was aneloquent preacher, whose sermons are widely read today, and the text of his sermon at Hertford Assizes in August 1653,on the Dignity of Magistracy and the Duty of Magistrates, was admired so much that it was printed. (Hall andSwinnock, 1653, pp.275, 278, 279) Sermons in those days were very long, and this one amounted to ninety pages ofbiblical references applied to all aspects of magisterial duties. An excerpt from the final paragraphs will serve to showthe high standards to which the godly magistrates in Maidstone aspired :-Consider the Day of Judgement, God will then search and sentence you, discover and reward you according toyour works. Ye that examine and try others, shall then be examined and tried your selves, and ye that acquit andcondemn others shall then be acquitted and condemned your selves ... How wary shouldst thou be in thy deeds,believing that thou shalt appear at the Judgement Seat of Christ to give an account of everything done in thebody of flesh, whether it be good or whether it be evil! ... O think of that day, and let it move thee to a faithfulzealous discharge of thy duty. (Hall and Swinnock, 1653, pp.275, 278, 279)In 1653 Minister Thomas Wilson, becoming ill with a fever, and realising that he might not recover, was exceedingsolicitous for the Town and Parish and called some of the town (who were wise and gracious) to him, and advised themto consider of some able good minister to succeed him, and he commended Mr. John Crump a worthy minister to themas the fittest that he knew to be their pastor. (Swinnock, 1672, EEBO 2008, p.60) John Crompe of Loose, aPresbyterian, was closely connected to the corporation. He was the nephew of jurat John Crompe who bequeathed him£2,000 in his will. (CKS PRC32/46/114) In July 1654 the Burghmote passed an order; Upon a motion now made at thedesire of Mr Crompe, the minister of this parish, that the liberty may be granted unto him of the schoolhouse any Lord'sdays in the evening for the repetition of the sermons preached in the public place upon Lord's days, and unto those asshall from time to time desire to partake thereof and of other duties of piety at the said times - It is ordered that the saidliberty be allowed for the purposes aforesaid. Crompe, who married Anne, the daughter of the Puritan lawyer HenryHall of Chillington House in 1654, almost certainly continued Wilson's perfectionism, and his evening conventicle inthe School lasted until the Restoration. (Martin, 1927, pp.129-132)Having highlighted non-conformity over the period under review, it is perhaps necessary to compare some more of theshorter preambles among wills of the Maplesden family, who, as shown in Chapter One, provided seven jurats with 145years service between them. No will has survived for Peter Maplesden who died, presumably intestate, after Wyatt'srebellion, but he was clearly a strong Protestant. Four other Maplesden jurats wills survive, of which GeorgeMaplesden's is the only one to have particularly Calvinist wording; First I commend my soul into the hands ofAlmighty God my only maker redeemer and saviour through and by whose precious blood shedding I hope to be savedand numbered amongst his elect and chosen. (CKS PRC32/38/113, 1596) Gervase I, Richard and Gervase II hadbrief, conventional preambles, and Richard's will appears to have been a nuncupative one (CKS PRC32/35/166, 1585;CKS PRC22/16/123, 1626; CKS PRC32/49/49, 1631; NA PROB11/203, 1647)During the reign of Queen Mary, during which several inhabitants left England for Europe and several perished forpublicising their staunchly anti-Catholic beliefs, the town suffered badly. The accession of Queen Elizabeth began ahundred years of unhindered Puritan worship. But the Maplesdens, however strong their personal beliefs, had seen andsuffered the penalties of extremism, and fully understood the importance of discretion and diplomatic conformity.The last word on godly rule here, should be given to George Swinnock, who published The Christian Man's Calling in1663. In his writing about godliness at work he said:-When thou art called to the Lord, thou art not called from thy labour, nay ... thou art bound to be serviceable tothy country, in some mental or manual calling; but thy diligence therein must proceed from conscience, not fromcovetousness - from subjection to God's word, not from affection to thy wealth ... Godliness must be the key toopen the shop ... the whip to drive the cart ... the clock to call thee off from thy work ...the principle, the rule andthe end if thy work. Holiness to the Lord was written upon the bridles of the horses. (Yuille, 2008, p.101)For the Good of This Town: The Jurats of Maidstone 1549-1660 © Judy Buckley 14/06/09 29/30The evidence collected here confirms that Maidstone, which had included independent sects long before theReformation, and with few if any Roman Catholic inhabitants, whole-heartedly welcomed the reforms of Edward VI.Jurats strongly believed they were answerable to God, not merely satisfying a personal desire for power and wealth, andgoverned in an admirable way, to the great benefit of the majority of inhabitants. But it is also true that no sacrificeswere necessary, since the advantageous position of the town allowed them to prosper financially at the same time asleading upright lives. In fact Puritans believed that God rewarded their devotion to Him on earth by allowing them toprosper. As George Swinnock put it, He that is ever trading and thriving in godliness, need not fear that he shall provebankrupt. And indeed some Maidstone jurats were so exceedingly far from bankruptcy that the next generationproduced, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, two of the England's wealthiest financiers, Sir John Banks (friendof Samuel Pepys) and Sir Samuel Ongley. 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List of Virginia Early Settlers on http://members.tripod.comKnights of England, Vols I and IISommerville, J.P., The Personal Rule, 1629-40 on http://history.wisc.eduSperling, J.G.,Sprunger, K.L., Dutch Puritanism on http://books.google.co.ukBibliography For The Good of This Town; The Jurats of Maidstone, 1549-1660 Judy Buckley, 2009The Colonial Council of Virginia in William & Mary College Magazine, Vol.3 No.1 pp. 65-67. (USA 1894)Starkey, D., The Reign of Henry VIII; Personalities and Politics (London 1985)Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (London 1977 revised 1979)Streatfield, F., An Account of the Grammar School in Maidstone Chapter IV pp. 17-31 (Oxford 1915)Register of Admissions to the Hon. Soc. of the Middle Temple (15C to 1944) (London 1949)Tait, J The Medieval English Borough ManchesterTate, W.E., The Parish Chest (Cambridge 1946 Reprinted 1983)Tittler, R., The Reformation and the Towns in England..1540-1640. (Oxford 1998)The Making of the Book of Common Prayer in Faith and Worship No.64 (London 2009)Life in an English Town in 17th Century (London 1992)Venn, J., (Ed) Alumni Cantabrigiensis Part 1 (Cambridge 1954)Visitation of Kent, 1619 For the 1619 Visitation of KentWatson, H.C., The Book of Maidstone (Kent 1981)The Lost History of Wyatt's Rebellion in Renaissance News, Vol.15 No.2 pp.129-133 (1962)Woodruff, C.E., in Arch. Cant. Vol. 22 pp.316-319English Society (London 1982)Yuille, J.S., (Michigan 2008)Zell, M., Kent's Elizabethan J.P.s at work in Archeologia Cantiana Vol.119 (Kent 1999)Zell, M., (Ed) Early Modern Kent, 1540-1640 (Kent 2000)Zim, R., in Notes and Queries September 1986 pp.320-27Stanard, W.G.Sturgess, H.A.C., (Ed)Tolley, G.,Underdown, D.,www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/england/Kent/visitationWiatt, W. H.,Wages Paid at MaidstoneWrightson, K.,Trading and Thriving in Godliness; The Piety of George SwinnnockThe Maidstone Burghmote and John Hall's Court of Vertue (1565)For the Good of This Town Alphabetical List of Jurats Page 1 of 2 © Judy Buckley, 2009Name Residence Free Jurat Service Died Will referenceAllen, James East Lane 1652 1653 27 1680 PRC32/55/1071549 6 1555Austen, Nicholas High St 1559 23 1582 PRC32/35/025aBalser, John Stone St and the Chequer 1577 18 1595 PROB 11/086Balser, Robert Stone St 1561 16 1577 PRC32/33/044Banks, Caleb High St, Week St, Bullock Lane 1622 1628 41 1669 PROB11/331Banks, John Week St 1611 1613 29 1642 PROB11/190Barham, Richard Christians Mill 1570 12 1582 PROB 11/064Barham, Thomas Waterside 1601 8 1609 PRC32/41/233Barrett, James Star Inn, High St 1549 10 1559 PRC32/28/50bBasden, Thomas 1569 23 1592 PRC AdmonBasse, John 1549 1 1550 PRC32/23/6Bateman, John Week St 1576 14 1590 PRC32/36/183Beale, Ambrose East Lane 1598 1617 38 1655 PROB 11/248Beale, John 1560 13 1573Beale, Thomas 1569 25 1594 PROB 11/083Bigge, John 1625 1635 8 1643 PROB 11/191Bills, Richard Week St 1620 1650 20 1670Brooke, Thomas High St 1600 1643 4 1647Broughton, Andrew Bullock Lane [Earl St] 1630 1645 43 1688 Died abroadBusbridge, James 1559 15 1574 PRC32/32/080bCatlet, James 1551 10 1561Collet, William 1559 18 1577 PRC AdmonCollins, John Week St 1600 1627 17 1644 PROB11/192Coveney, Nicholas Week St 1567 26 1593 PROB 11/85Crompe, John 1604 1610 14 1624 PRC32/46/114Crompe, Thomas 1618 1644 1 1645Denley, John 1549 6 1555Down, William NOT Week St 1571 17 1588 PROB 11/073Edmonds, Thomas Pudding Lane 1562 30 1592 PRC32/37/053bEmmott, Robert Pudding Lane 1595 1 1596 PRC32/38/132Eppes, John Week St 1582 45 1627Fisher, Walter Week Manor, then East Lane 1600 31 1631 PRC32/49/048Franklin, James I Week St 1580 38 1618 PRC32/43/25Franklin, James II Week St 1619 1626 15 1641 PROB11/187Franklin, Thomas Buckland in West Borough 1589 1589 21 1610Fremlin, John The Bower and Loddington 1589 16 1605 PRC32/41/069Week St, East side 1630 20 1650 Get referenceGoar, Robert Week St 1593 6 1599 PCC AdmonGoar, Thomas 1549 20 1569 PRC22/6 1569Golding, Robert 1617 1617 6 1623 PRC32/45/319bGosling, Robert 1549 3 1552Green, Gabriel Stone Borough 1583 44 1627 PRC AdmonGreen, John 1592 19 1611 PRC32/42/001bGreen, William 1549 21 1570 PRC32/31/374Greenfield, Thomas Week St 1603 5 1608 PRC32/41/240Hall, Edmund 1570 19 1589 No will foundHaselam, Thomas Stone St 1574 7 1581 PRC32/34/112bHeath, Robert II 1652 1653 12 1665Heeley, Richard 1549 9 1558 PROB 11/040Heeley, Stephen High St 1593 35 1628 PRC32/48/237Heron, Edward 1589 1 1590 PRC32/36/204bHighwood, Richard West Borough? 1600 17 1617 PRC32/43/274Hooker, Richard 1549 21 1570Hunt, Guy High St and Rose & Crown 1608 1642 2 1644 PROB 11/208Amey RichardBournegate, High Stee*tstone St, near Tovil LaneGilliatt, GeorgeWestreeFor the Good of This Town Alphabetical List of Jurats Page 2 of 2 © Judy Buckley, 2009Ippenbury, Ambrose 1559 11 1570 PCC AdmonIppenbury, John 1549 6 1555Jeffery, Martin High St 1616 1636 8 1644Lee, Richard Earls Place 1572 1 1573 PRC32/32/061Lutwick, Clement 1559 12 1571 PRC32/31/311Manningham, George Mansion in Detling 1593 7 1600 PRC32/38/280Maplesden, Edward, MP High St and East Lane 1586 40 1626 PRC22/16/123rMaplesden, George Mill Lane 1590 6 1596 PRC32/38/113Maplesden, Gervase I 1575 10 1585 PRC32/35/166Maplesden, Gervase II High St 1604 1617 30 1647 PROB 11/203Maplesden, Gervase III 1636 1644 21 1665Maplesden, Peter 1549 5 1554Maplesden, Richard 1604 27 1631 PRC32/49/049Marshall, Samuel High St and Sun Tavern 1604 1631 18 1649 PROB 11/210Mills, John 1578 22 1600Mowshurst, John 1549 10 1559Mowshurst, William Stone St 1559 7 1566 PROB 11/49Ongley, George East Lane (High Town ) 1628 1648 28 1676 PRC32/54/177bPlomer, William Week St 1595 12 1607 PROB 11/110Rayner, William 1626 24 1650Reeve, Thomas I 1607 9 1616 PRC32/43/262Reeve, Thomas II High St 1605 1624 1 1625Reeve, William 1549 4 1553 PRC22/2/24Romney, John Pudding Lane corner 1591 16 1607 PRC32/40/198Ruse, James High St North side 1622 1642 23 1665Sanders, John I 1610 2 1612 PRC32/41/154Sanders, John II Black Bull 1636 1652 7 1659 PROB 11/295Simmons, William Week St, Black Bull 1587 3 1590 PROB 11/075Smyth, Richard Bullock Lane [Earl St] 1590 12 1602 PRC32/39/052bSmyth, William 1559 9 1568 PRC32/31/155Spencer, James 1580 1597 23 1620Stanley, Thomas, MP Hamptons and Earl's Place 1623 1625 43 1668Startout, John 1568 11 1579 PROB 12Swinnock, Robert High St, North side 1622 1627 23 1650 PROB 11/212Swinnock, Thomas I 1603 12 1615Swinnock, Thomas II High St 1600 1609 33 1642 PRC19/25/595Taylor, Thomas Middle Row 1600 1645 15 1660Tilden, William 1549 11 1560Tinley, Robert NOT Week St 1584 7 1591 PRC32/37/3Troughton, Jonathan Week St 1639 1652 31 1683 PRC32/55/82High St South side 1625 1637 23 1660Wood, Robert Middle Row 1604 1627 8 1635Chillington HouseBrewhouse on River LenDynes, Black BullWithinbroke, Robert
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETYWALKING HOME FROM THE FISHPOND: LOCAL ALLUSION IN WALTEROF BIBBESWORTH’S 13 C. TREATISEFOR HOUSEWIVESWilliam SayersThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. The author has placed the paper onthe site for download for personal or academic use. Any other use must be cleared with the author ofthe paper who retains the copyright. Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyright clearance. The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes the submission of papers.The submission details can be viewed on the website at http://www.kentarchaeology.ac1In 1995 and in these pages Neil R. Aldridge summarised the history of a large moatedenclosure at the Trinitarian priory of Motynden at Headcorn in Kent.1 Evidence for fishponds was found among traces of moat and field systems, and a rabbit warren. Naturally thespecific features of a fish-pond, whether man-made or natural, leave relatively little in thearchaeological record. As recently as 1988 Brian K. Roberts could write of the “rediscoveryof fishponds”.2 Yet additional information on early fish farming may be available from anunexpected source with Kentish affinities. First, some general considerations.The early medieval literatures of Britain, in English, Anglo-Norman French, Welsh,and Latin, make frequent references to the necessities of life, prime among which food, butalways in passing. Something as common as fishing or brewing seldom rises to the level ofnarrative motif or an element of theme. Figurative use of household essentials such as foodand clothing is often made in Christian homiletic works, but this offers little insight intoprocess. Utilitarian writings, such as account books, do provide a basic vocabulary for manytechniques but these are often paratactic entries, unconnected among themselves.Nonetheless, such documentation often offers the first recorded instance of large blocks ofmedieval technical vocabulary. But well before the first household manuals in vernacularlanguages of the late fourteenth century, British literature does offer a little utilized source forthe vocabulary in French and English of several domestic activities.In the late thirteenth century the Essex knight Walter of Bibbesworth composed aTretiz or treatise under the patronage of Dionisie de Munchensi, the mistress of Swanscombein Kent and of vast estates in western Britain and Ireland.3 Editor William Rothwell statesthat the work “was written in order to provide anglophone landowners in late thirteenthcentury with French vocabulary appertaining to the management of their estates in a societywhere French and Latin, but not yet English, were the accepted languages of record.”4 The2fictional addressee of the tract is, however, not the male landowner but rather the mistress ofthe house, mesuer in Anglo-Norman French, housewif as glossed in Middle English. Theassumption of the work is that she will be prepared to pass along accurate French vocabularyto her offspring.5 Walter passes in review such specialized vocabularies as the terminologyfor the human body, clothing, collective terms for various domesticated and wild animals andtheir vocalizations, fields and their crops. He then addresses fishing and fish ponds. Hisobjective is not so much an explanation of techniques as a simple communication of pertinentvocabulary. In one of the best preserved of the many manuscripts, the columns of rough-andready French verse have interlinear English glosses in red ink.In this essay, the vocabulary of fish farming in the French text and English glosses isthe object of a detailed examination. This and similar passages may be considered lightlynarrativised catalogues. One of the rules of this popular medieval sub-genre was that no termbe mentioned more than once or twice. Context and the better known terms then assist us inaddressing those more difficult from our often imperfect knowledge of medieval technology.Given Walter’s objectives, terminology rather than technique will have to be our chiefconcern, although the bilingual nature of the treatise will permit some degree of crossillumination of the two cultural traditions. The possibility of lexical and/or technicalborrowing will be explored, and the origins of the two fairly discrete fish pond vocabularies,Anglo-Norman French and Middle English, will be examined. Here, it should be noted thatetymology is no sure guide to later meaning. Similarly, new technologies may generate orintroduce appropriate new terminology, especially in the event of a technical transfer betweencultures. Conversely, an established technical term may persist, even when its originalreferent has been superseded by new techniques and artifacts, so that the old word wins a new3signification. What is the historical depth of medieval British fish farming as recoverablefrom simple lexical evidence?In the following, the Anglo-Norman text is first given in full, with the interlinearEnglish glosses moved to the right margin. Walter’s key terms are examined for theirmeaning, history, and origin.6 The interface between French terms and English glosses willbe addressed. This detailed examination will yield a full English translation of the passage,appended to this article. First, then, Walter’s text, which begins with the subheading “Nowthe French for the fisher in fish ponds or pools.”Ore pur peschour en viver ou en estauncke le fraunceis:Si saver voillez la manereCum pescher devez en vivere, fischeVivere est proprement noméOu ewe vif est trové;E euwe de servour primes espuchez, 5 laden houtCar du peissoun la ne faudrez,E si vous faudrez a cel estauncke poleOu le eauwe est a descoraunt, alweiAlez dount saunz delai abindingeOu espleiteromes tut dreit au lay 10 grete polCar c'est eauwe en butemay. muireLa coveint pescher de nace szyneOu petite rei ne trove grace. nethIl I ad nace e crivere ausi, szine ridel4Commune fraunceis a chescuni. 15La nace est menuement overez, smaleMes plus large partuz assezAd le crivere pur quei le di.Car autre difference n'ad ici.Mes returnoms a la matire 20Ki de pescher vous voille dire.Le gurget de nace revercez, the bothem torn hepL'ordure leins engettez; fultheCrapaude e lezart ne esparniez, tode heveteSerpent e colure ausi tuez; 25 neddre snakeGravele e cailloun eruez, greet flintE lymaçoun ausint destruez. snaylSi du pesschun I trovez,Par les vemberges le pernez. gillesCi il seit mulewel de mer, 30 kelingeOverer le devez e espander,Le no tantost en oustez,Bouwele e eschine ensi le frez.Si returnez ver mesounDu gardin par cele crevessoun 35 gappeTant cum venés au vert terail grene balkeOu le pastour est ou le aumail,Puis par ceo bois en cel umbrail szadewe5Passerez desouz le hourail. wode heveseMes dount servent a tant des peres 40Ki sunt appelez passueres stepinstonesPur passer secke lé russeles stremesKi sunt si clers e si beles.II I ad ourail par .h. escrit,Orail ausi saunz .h. est dist. 45Desouz le hourail se kevre laroun, hevese lindes huidesE par le orail oil meint horn.Mes einz ki passez plus avaunt,De terail vous ere plus disaunt, balkePur ceo qu'il ad plus de sens 50Dunt tel I ad il difference.II ad tenoun e terail,E tenailles ki n'est merveille.Li tenoun tent li cotuyer, handel tilierE par le terail passe meinte ber, 55Mes tenailles servent des carbuns tonges collesEn yver quant au fu seoms,E au fevre servent de custume smithQuant du martel fert sur 1'enclume.6Walter’s title for this section refers to the French terminology needed by the fisherman(peschour) and appears to make a distinction between viver and estauncke. The formerderives from Latin vivarium ‘a place where living creatures are kept’ and suggests both thatthe pool is artificially constructed, or at least adapted from its natural state, e.g., a stream witha weir, and that its stock of fish may have been introduced rather than being native.Estauncke, later glossed pole, is a natural formation such as a pond or small lake, with nosignificant inlet or outlet (estauncke, var. estanc, Modern French étang, < estanchier ‘toblock off’ [cf. English staunch] < Late Latin *stanticare, ultimately < Latin stare ‘to stand’,and thus related to English stagnant). In the ensuing verses, however, Walter states thatvivere is properly used of a site on a stream. This is likely a bit of a folk etymology, with the“liveliness”, the quality of being vif, transferred from the fish to the water. Thus, Walterestablishes a different distinction than we recognize between vivarium or fish pond and pool,one based on whether or not there is running water. A third term, servour, is now introduced.Other usage suggests that this is also a term for a reservoir or vivarium (< Latin servare ‘tokeep, retain’; cf. Eng. reservoir). The water, most likely after being dammed up with a weir,is to be scooped out of the reservoir to facilitate taking up the fish–or so Walter’s text and itsEnglish gloss laden hout would seem to suggest.If the fish farmer is unsuccessful at a site by a stream or, more likely, does not havethis option, he should go to a body of water such as lake (French lay < Latin lacus‘reservoir’; English gloss, grete pole) or large pool that is fed with water draining from higherland or the heath. The author’s phrase is eauwe en butemay; ‘bog water’ we might say. Thelatter part of the phrase is derived from Latin bitumen ‘pitch’ but has been extended from the‘tar’ to the ‘pit’ where it is found. The Middle English gloss muire ‘moor, heath’ assists inthis identification. On balance, we must judge Walter’s text relatively uninformative as7concerns the actual creation of a vivarium, whether it be in a partially blocked stream or in apool on the heath.The treatise now turns to fishing methods. In lakes and large pools Walterrecommends a seine (nace < Latin nassa ‘seine’, szyne in English) rather than a smaller net(petite rei, neth). Nets are also to be distinguished from the crivere (< Latin criblum <cribrum ‘sieve’; Modern French crible). This is glossed ridel in English and would designatea riddle or sieve, although Modern English would not use this terminology of a fishing basketor cage. If not a true net, the riddle may have been some kind of wickerwork construct thatwould trap the fish but permit the release of the water. Walter states that the seine is smallmeshed (menuement overez ‘small-worked’), while the openings (partuz) in the “riddle” arelarger. But they have the same function.The author then passes to the actual handling of the seine when it is taken up. The“neck” (gurget < Late Latin gurga < Latin gurges ‘gulf, abyss’; English gloss, bothem‘bottom’) of the seine, where the fish are trapped, is to be turned out and cleaned of debris,stones, and any toads, lizards, snails, or other vermin that has found its way into the net. Anyfish in the net, a mulwel for instance (glossed kelinge in English), is to be lifted out by thegills (vemberges, English gilles), split and spread out.7 Fins, guts, and back-bone are to beremoved. Walter’s account then takes a very curious and perhaps personal turn.The addressee of the treatise, Walter’s patroness or a more general “reader”, isimagined as leaving the pool and its fish, and returning to the house from the garden (gardin),which we must imagine as rather large, by an otherwise unspecified “gap” (crevessoun),perhaps an opening in a hedge or fence surrounding the pond. The gap gives on to a greenband of uncultivated land, terail in French, balke in English. Here will be found the herd andhis flocks (aumail ‘domesticated animals’). Then the housewife continues either through the8woods or along their shadowy edge (French hourail, glossed hevese ‘eaves’ in MiddleEnglish). She comes to a stream with stepping-stones, called passueres in French (“passers”)and so can cross the beautiful, clear stream without getting her feet wet.In trying to plot this walk back to the manor, we may propose two spatial models.The first is concentric, with the manor on the floor of a valley, a garden on one side, thenpasture land surrounding the estate, with a further concentric ring of woods, and finally thedistant heath. The other model would be based on altitude or height differentials. The highheath, then woods, meadows, stream, garden, and manor house. But neither of these seems auseful backdrop onto which to project the housewife’s itinerary, which begins in the garden,then proceeds to the gap, strip of green pasture, the edge of the woods, and on to the streamwith its stepping stones.8 Of course, a linear trajectory need not be envisaged. This puzzleneed not occupy us further but it does raise the question of just what, in terms of extent andcontent, was understood by gardin in the late thirteenth century.One could speculate that this scene was addressed to his patroness and reflected theactual circ*mstances, however common, of one of her estates.9 Of Dionisie’s holdings, whichincluded Pembroke in western Wales and Wexford in Ireland, the estate of Swanscombe innorthern Kent seems a likely candidate, given that Walter himself was from Essex. Certainlythe higher ground on three sides of the settlement could easily be imagined behind Walter’sdescription. We may chose to call this scene a semi-pastoral locus amoenus but what weshould note is that it is the husbandry exercised on the farm land and woods that ishighlighted. Its focus is domesticated nature, tilled and tended, rather than the mystic charmof the wilderness. Such glimpses are relatively rare in medieval literature and may go someway to alleviating our disappointment at not learning more about medieval fish farming.After the stepping stones, Walter abruptly shifts and begins a little disquisition on9hom*ophones, taking hourail ‘edge’ as point of departure. This discussion of changes rung onhorail ‘edge’ and terail ‘strip of land’ occupies a further sixteen verses, and give snapshots ofthieves lurking under eaves, the ploughman holding the cross-piece of the plough handles,tongs used to rearrange the coals in a fireplace in winter, and the smith’s tongs used to holdfirm the piece being forged on the anvil. None of this terminology is of special interest andthe shifting topics mean that we do not have the same concentration of technical terms thateven the brief disquisition on fishing provides.Compared to other sections of Walter’s Tretiz, in particular those dealing withdressing flax, spinning linen thread, baking bread, and brewing ale, the author’s treatment offish ponds and fishing is less informative.10 While these other vocabularies are basically ofLatin origin, there are also terms from Celtic and Germanic, pointing to processes andinstruments inherited from the Gauls or introduced by the Franks. Some even suggestcultural loans from Scandinavia via the settlement of the Northmen in the future Normandy.In these sections, the glosses provide early attestations in Middle English of a technicalvocabulary also open to external influences. But here, in the section on fish ponds, thesedimensions are unrepresented, perhaps because operations were at a greater remove from themanor house and less visible to a member of the minor gentry. Instead, the author indulgeshis taste for disambiguating hom*ophones and, as compensation, treats the reader to a vividlyimagined walk back to the house from the fish pond or lake, perhaps one with pleasantmemories for his patroness.10AppendixNow the French for the fisher in fish ponds or poolsIf you wish to know the way in which you should take up fish from a vivarium, vivere is thecorrect term where running water is found. First, then, draw off the water from the reservoir,for you will not be lacking in fish there. And if you don’t succeed with a pool where there isrunning water, go, then, without delay to where we can directly access a lake or large pool,for this is water that will have gathered on the heath. There it is suitable to fish with a seine,since you won’t do well with a fine-meshed net. There is the seine and also the fishing basketor cage, each with its standard French name. The seine is worked with small meshes but the[wickerwork?] cage has rather larger openings, which is why I mention it, for there is noother real difference [in function]. But let us get back to our subject, which is fishing that Iwant to tell you about. Turn out the neck of the seine and clean out any filth in it. Don’t sparethe toads and lizards. Kill, too, any adders or snakes; throw away pebbles or stones, and alsodestroy any snails. If you find any fish in the seine, take it by the gills. Whether it is amulwel from the sea [or another fish] you ought to split it and spread it out. First remove thefins, and do the same with the innards and backbone. Then you will go back toward thehouse from the garden by way of the opening until you come to the green strip of unploughedland, where the herd is with his flock. Then through the woods in the shade you will passunder the edges [of the overhanging trees]. But there you will be served by the stones thatare called “passers” (stepping stones), in order to pass dry-shod across the streams that are soclear and fine. There is a word ourail written with an h-, but there is also an orail without h-.Under the horail (eave or forest edge) hides the thief and with his orail (hearing) many aperson hears the horn. But before you go any farther, I wanted to tell you more about terail,because there is more than one meaning and there are differences among them. There is11tenoun and terail, and tenailles, which is hardly surprising. The ploughman holds the tenon(the cross-bar between the handles) and many a coffin passes into the terail (ground), buttenailles (tongs) serve to handle coals in winter when we sit before the fire, and theycommonly serve the smith, when he strikes with the hammer on the anvil.12ENDNOTES1 Neil R. Aldridge, “The Trinitarian Priory of Motynden at Headcorn,” Archaeologia Cantiana:Being Contributions to the History and Archaeology of Kent, CXV (1995), 177-212.2 Brian K. Roberts, “The Rediscovery of Fishponds”, Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds inEngland, ed. Michael Aston, 2 vols, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1988, 1, 9-16. Seealso R. B. Delderfield, “The Origins of Ancient Woodland and a Fish-pond in Pound Wood,Thundersley, Essex,” Essex Archaeology and History: Transactions of the Essex ArchaeologicalSociety, 17 (1996), 322-24, and Christopher K. Currie, “Southwick Priory Fishponds: Excavations1987,” Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, XLVI (1991), 53-72.3 On her husband’s feudal relations, see Huw W. Ridgeway, “William de Valence and hisfamiliares, 1247-72”, Historical Research, XLVIII (1992), 239-57. As a corrective to myths aboutKentish land-holding conditions, see R. J. Smith, “The Swanscombe Legend and the Historiographyof Kentish Gavelkind”, Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman,ed. Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 85-103.4 Walter of Bibbesworth, Le Tretiz, ed. William Rothwell (London: Anglo-Norman Texts Society,1990), 1. This edition, however welcome, is without lexical notes or glossary. In all, sixteenmanuscripts of Walter’s work have been preserved. Earlier editions include Wright’s in Femina, ed.W. Wright (London: Roxburghe Club, 1909), which reproduces the text from British Library,Arundel 220, ff. 299-305, and Le Traité de Walter de Bibbesworth sur la langue française, ed.A.Owen (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1929), which publishes Cambridge UniversityLibrary MS Gg.1.1. The Owen edition, with its many shortcomings, is now superseded byRothwell’s edition of the same manuscript.5 Walter names his patroness in his preface but, since Joan de Munchensi (her better knownname) was a descendant of William the Marshall, and her husband, William de Valence, wasFrench-born, there can be little doubt about the family’s linguistic competence in French. Thestated aim of providing good French vocabulary for their offspring may then be a literary fiction.6 Walter’s vocabulary in this section is rather less demanding than elsewhere in the Tretiz andmost terms are readily identified. Principal lexicographical resources for addressing his AngloNorman and Middle English lexis are Altfranzösiches Wörterbuch, comp, Adolf Tobler and ErhardLommatzsch (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1925-2001); Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. William Rothwell etal. (London : Modern Humanities Research Association, 1992), Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub,
Jacob Scott Jacob Scott
1PAPER No. 021A Directory of Medical Personnel Qualified and Practisingin the Diocese of Canterbury, circa 1560-1730Ian Mortimer, BA MA PhD FRHistS RMSAThis paper has been downloaded from www.kentarchaeology.ac. Theauthor has placed the paper on the site for download for personal oracademic use. Any other use must be cleared with the author of the paperwho retains the copyright.Please email admin@kentarchaeology.ac for details regarding copyrightclearance.The Kent Archaeological Society (Registered Charity 223382) welcomes thesubmission of papers. The necessary form can be downloaded from thewebsite at www.kentarchaeology.ac2IntroductionThe question of how many medical practitioners served urban and rural communities in theearly modern period has exercised social historians for many years. A century ago, theseventeenth century provincial practitioner was looked upon as a rare beast, more often thannot a quack or charlatan, with the vast majority of ‘proper’ physicians being resident inLondon. This view was strongly reinforced by early historians of medicine, who, as a result oftheir eagerness to demonstrate how society had been improved by the profession,concentrated on applauding the achievements of the great men of science. Of course, many ofthese great men emerged from the provinces - Kent’s own William Harvey is a prime example- but they tended to base themselves either in the university towns or London, and their workwas anything but routine or characteristic of the profession as a whole. Although local recordsoften revealed practitioners functioning successfully in localities, and evcn gaining wealth,status and political eminence in towns, the idea that there was a large cardre of provincialphysicians, surgeons and apothecaries was normally dismissed. This view first came to be challenged in the 1960s. In 1961, McConaghey usedecclesiastical records (particularly those of the diocese of Exeter) to describe the licensingsystem over the period from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth, andchurchwardens’ and municipal accounts to illustrate the medical relief available to the poor.1In so doing he demonstrated that there were several hundred licensed practitioners in Devonand Cornwall between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries. The following yearJohn Raach’s much more straightforward solution appeared, entitled A Directory of EnglishCountry Physicians 1603-1643.2 In this he identified a total of 814 'doctors' for the provincialcounties in the period. Unfortunately, his definition of a 'doctor' was influenced heavily byearlier historians of metropolitan medical practitioners, who had adopted contemporary elitistterminology to exclude anyone who was not a licensed physician or the holder of a M.D.degree, and he excluded surgeons, apothecaries, females and unorthodox practitioners.Nevertheless, it was a good point well-made: London was not the sole source of medicalexpertise in the early seventeenth century, nor even the main one for the majority of thepopulation. Very soon afterwards, R.S. Roberts shifted the question on to a much moresophisticated and professional level an influential article in the journal Medical History.3 Inhis opening lines Roberts demonstrated why the history of medicine in the provinces had been1 R.M.S. McConaghey, 'The history of rural medical practice' in FNL Poynter (ed.), The Evolution of MedicalPractice in Britain (1961), pp. 117-143. 2 John Raach, A Directory of English Country Physicians 1603-1643 (1962). 3 R.S. Roberts, 'The personnel and practice of medicine in Tudor and Stuart England: part 1: the provinces',Medical History vi, 4 (1962), pp. 363-382.3ignored, stating 'the smallness of the number of physicians who belonged to the exclusiveCollege of Physicians has made it appear that the mass of the people who lived outsideLondon relied for medical attention on quacks'.4 In the same opening paragraph he drewattention to the important implications of Raach's work, and moreover demonstrated itslimitations, suggesting that it was wrong for historians to ignore surgeons and apothecaries inany systematic appraisal of practitioner availability in provincial England. Over the next twopages he developed this theme, introducing for the first time the key methodological problemswhich inform the debate to this day. He questioned the validity of a list along the lines ofRaach's, as the recorded presence of a M.D. or a M.B. in a particular place does notnecessarily imply that he practised there, and many such men indeed had retired. Mostimportantly, he questioned the very nature of the provincial physician's training andoccupational identity. In his words:A directory of physicians implies that the term physician is a fairly distinct type of medicalpractitioner performing a function in medicine not carried out by the subordinateapothecaries or surgeons. This of course has usually been assumed to be so until theapothecary became a general practitioner some time after the Plague, and contemporarywriters... all believed in such a hierarchical and differentiated professional structure. Thusthere is no hint in the Directory that in fact some of the people listed were surgeons andapothecaries by training who at this early date took out episcopal licences to establish, orconfirm their practice. This fact is important for when such men became 'physicians' theydid not practise in the same way as the true consultant-like physicians, whose prescribedtreatment was actually carried out by apothecaries and surgeons. This new type ofphysician kept his apothecary's or surgeon's shop, run by apprentices, and did all thetreatment himself.5This is the crux of the problem. What is a medical practitioner? Two or three hundred yearsbefore the advent of the modern Medical Register, it is not easy to say. Is it accurate to call agrocer who deals in medicinal substances and is occasionally called an apothecary by hisclients a medical practitioner? Should we not refer to an experienced woman whoseprofession is nursing the sick and healing children’s ailments also as a medical practitioner?In this work Roberts singlehandedly showed the weaknesses of the traditional approach andopened the gate to the modern study of the social history of medicine. The identification of practitioners by name continues to have validity, however,especially when combined with more recent numerical modelling and sampling techniques.Perhaps the most influential essay on the social history of medicine yet published, byMargaret Pelling and Charles Webster’s 1979 essay, ‘Medical Practitioners’, used a verysimilar methodology, ennumerating the numbers of practitioners active in a locality at a4 Roberts, 'Personnel and practice', p. 363.5 Roberts, 'Personnel and practice', pp. 364-5.4specific time and comparing this with the local population.6 They identified sufficient‘practitioners’ (defined as anyone who was practising medicine, excluding nurses andmidwives) to suggest practitioner:population ratios of 1:400 in London at the end of thesixteenth century and 1:220 in Norwich (a figure later revised by Pelling to 1:200).7 Althoughthey found it difficult to expand on this and suggest how many practitioners were operating inrural areas, the point had been emphatically made. In 1600 there were more practitioners perhead of the urban population than there were in a twentieth-century city. No real advance on this position was made until recently. In 2002 the present writerexamined the probate accounts for the dioceses of Canterbury, Salisbury (including thearchdeaconry of Berkshire) and Chichester in order to quantify changes in medical assistancepurchased on behalf of the seriously ill and dying in the seventeenth century. The Canterburycollections proved extraordinarily rewarding. They suggest that between c.1590 and c.1710there was an increase of between 360% and 1,130% in the use of medicine and medicaladvice by the seriously ill and dying (depending on social status and geographical location,the rural poor seeing the greatest change). As a result, there may be no doubt that theseventeenth century saw the medicalisation of society in East Kent, in the sense that at thestart of the period few individuals except the rich sought the help of occupationally-definedmedical practitioners when seriously ill - most relied on amateur, family and local help -whereas by 1700 almost all non-destitute people had access to medical practitioners orspecially prepared apothecarial wares deemed suitable for their needs.8This massive increase in the use of medical strategies to cope with illness and injurybegs one very important question. How was this possible? Traditionally the answer has beenthe assumption that more competition must mean more business, which in turn must meanmore businessmen or practitioners. But as Pelling and Webster’s essay suggests, there weremany practitioners operating in London and Norwich c.1600, so where would be the evidencefor a massive increase in their numbers?Fortunately, in East Kent it is possible to answer this question in detail, partly using theprobate accounts themselves. This is because one may determine reasonably accurately howmany practitioners were operating in c.1690 compared to c.1620. The details of payments tonamed practitioners allow us to calculate how deficient a directory of names built up fromlicensing and similar records may be. The result is that the numbers of occupationally-definedmedical practitioners (excluding nurses) in East Kent was an average of about 191 in the6 Margaret Pelling and Charles Webster, 'Medical Practitioners' in Charles Webster (ed.), Health, medicine andmorality in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 165-236. 7 Margaret Pelling, 'Tradition and diversity: medical practice in Norwich 1550-1640' in Instituto Nazionale deStudi sul Rinascimento, Scienze Credenze Occulte Livelli di Cultura, Convegno Internazionale 1980 (Florence,1982), pp. 159-171.8 See Ian Mortimer, ‘The Triumph of the Doctors’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, xv(2005), pp. 97-116.5period 1620-40 and about 195 in the period 1670-1710.9 These figures implypractitioner:population ratios for the diocese of about 1:370 for the earlier decades and 1:410for the later, commensurate with the 1:400 proposed by Pelling and Webster for sixteenthcentury London in ‘Medical Practitioners’.10So who were they, these medical practitioners who provided this medical revolution tothe people of East Kent? While we cannot answer this question in every case, it is possible togive an indication for the majority. Just as the probate accounts for the diocese of Canterburyare without parallel, the records of diocesan licensing are very good indeed, including notonly grants of licences but (after 1660) applications to obtain licences to practise medicine.The records of Canterbury freemen are also available, so too the records of those from Oxfordand Cambridge for those who obtained medical degrees and/or licenses to practise medicine.Raach’s directory is not without its uses, and the indexes at the Centre for Kentish Studies ofprobate material - such as wills and inventories - give many more references to medical men.All these sources were used for compiling this directory.The most important source by far for this directory, however, is the collection ofprobate accounts. There are three crucial reasons why this is so. The first has already beenalluded to: by comparing the qualified practitioners with the active ones, we can work out theproportions of active practitioners who had no qualification and who would otherwise notappear in such a directory (and make allowance for them in quantifying their numbers). Thesecond reason follows on from this: we can also often name and locate these ‘unqualified’individuals on the basis of their records of activity, allowing us systematically to amplify thisdirectory in a way possible for no other diocese in England. This is important, for it revealsthat many well-established practitioners were operating with no known official identity withthe acquiesence (tacit or otherwise) of the local authorities. Although in order to charge forperforming medical services, any practitioner was legally required to hold a licence or amedical degree, at least forty per cent of Kentish practitioners had no such qualification.Some of these were apothecaries who only supplied medicines, and did not prescribe them,but many ‘physicians’ and ‘surgeons’ were sanctioned only by local trust. As the presentwriter has argued elsewhere, this suggests that although the licensing system was deficient inmany respects, it formed part of a local means of medical control.11 Lack of a licence could beused as a means of controlling those practitioners who fell foul of local trust, or moved theirpractices into a locality against the interests of a trusted practitioner, or without the9 Ian Mortimer, ‘Medical Assistance to the Dying in Provincial Southern England, c.1570-1720’ (PhD thesis, 2vols, University of Exeter, 2004), i, pp. 157-8. It should be noted that the number is not static, due to thecessation of ecclesiastical licences during the Commonwealth. It is perhaps most likely that the number ofpractitioners was declining by c.1680.10 This is based on an estimate of the population of the diocese derived from parish returns for the ComptonCensus of 1676. See Mortimer,’Medical Assistance to the Dying’, I 129-30 ; Peter Brandon and Brian Short,The South East from AD 1000 (1990), pp. 190-6.’11 Ian Mortimer, ‘Diocesan licensing and medical practitioners in South-West England, 1660-1780’, MedicalHistory, 48, 1 (January 2004), pp. 49-68.6acquiesence of the local gentry. Otherwise local support was sufficient licence in itself. Thus,although Kent shows a higher preportion of licentiates among its practitioners than elsewherein southern England, it also shows a high toleration of unlicensed practitioners and acommensurate high level of trust in their services.The third reason why the probate accounts are the most important single sourceunderlying this directory is the question of practitioner identities. Hitherto practitioners havetended to be described as falling into one of three camps: the physicians (those who advisedand prescribed), the surgeons (those who cut into the body and attended to the outer skin), andthe apothecaries (those who supplied medicines). Historians have realised for a long time thatthis is too rigid an understanding to be applied in every case, but only through a study of theprobate accounts has it become apparent how loosely it applied. Many practitioners whoobtained a licence to practise surgery were described as ‘doctor’ by their patients, especiallyafter 1660. Many apothecaries who were supplying physic were also supplying advice, andperforming the role of a physician, often with the result that they were called ‘physician’ or‘doctor’ by their clients. In the modern, qualification-dominated world, we would normallysay that a man licensed to practise surgery was a surgeon, or a freeman apothecary was anapothecary and not a physician, but this was not necessarily so in the seventeenth century. If aman had a shop from which he sold medicines, he was an apothecary to his clients, regardlessof whether he held a licence to perform surgery and regardless of whether he was officially afreeman or not. Alternatively, a physician who practised surgery on occasion was no less aphysician for the diversity of his trade, although it would not be incorrect for the beneficiariesof his surgery to describe him as a surgeon. In some cases a practitioner was described as anapothecary and as a physician and also held a licence to practise surgery. In short, practitioneridentities were very loose, and as our evidence is so often directly contradictory, it is clearthat most medical practitioners were fulfilling a range of medical roles, especially after 1660.FormatThe following directory includes a total of 832 entries to named practitioners, plus a few'supplementary' entries (included on account of the difficulty in determining to whichpractitioner they relate). All of these were working - and almost all were also resident - in thediocese of Canterbury. Practitioners noted as resident elsewhere have only been included ifthey are known to have practised within the diocese on the evidence of payments, e.g. JohnKevell of Rye, Sussex. Famous practitioners who were born or grew up in Kent have not beenincluded unless there is evidence of their practising within the diocese. Thus this list does notinclude such Kentish medical illuminaries as William Harvey, Robert Sprackling, ThomasHall, Edward Bodenham, Robert Conny or Robert Fludd. Fifty-three names have been7included without a very firm foundation for regarding them as practitioners; these have beenincluded on the strength of a payment to them in the probate accounts for providing medicinesor physic. Some of these will be references to apothecaries, but others will be reimbursem*ntsto non-medical people for obtaining medicines on behalf of the dying person. Nevertheless,even if all fifty-three entries relate to reimbursem*nts, it is by far the most complete directoryof practitioners for early modern England yet compiled, with 779 names for 170 years. Entries here appear in two parts. The first part, headed by the name of the practitioner,includes the official details about the practitioner derived (on the whole) from sourcesassociated directly with an official act, e.g. licensing, grants of probate, degrees etc. Withinthe first part of the entry, the first line (in bold) is given over to the name of the practitionerand his vital dates (where known); the second line is his professional identity and place ofresidence (and/or place of practice, where an alternative is known); the third and fourth linesinclude details of qualifications, and finally personal details (such as a grant of thepractitioner’s own probate) appear in the last line.The second part of each entry relates to specific instances of medical assistancepayments, and are all taken from the Canterbury diocesan and archdeaconry probate accounts,held in the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (CKS). These follow the following form:Year: [Name of deceased] of [parish], [occupation, if known] ([gross value of thedeceased’s estate]) ‘transcript of entry’ [cause of death, if known; or ‘Multiple infection’if more than one died of an unknown disease] (doc. reference),for example:1610: John Dunckin of Canterbury, Mr (£732) "Item paide unto Mr Charles Annot ofCanterburie chirurgion for medycine for the famylie of the said deceassed visited andinfected as afore is saide with the plawge and for his paines and diligence in attending onthe said famylie divers weekes together verie carefully" [Plague] (CKS PRC20/2/122).In most cases, specific amounts paid have not been given as these tend to be confusing: insome cases it is not possible to separate the medical payment here cited from other payments;in other cases payments might include transport and thus be totally uncomparable with otherentries which list transport separately but which do not specify the practitioner’s name. Thusalmost all have been dropped, and researchers will need to consult the original documents (orthe microfilms of them). As for identifications, many of these are very tentative. The mosttentative are indicated by the entries being italicised. With regard to the date, it is important toremember that the date prefixing each payment is the date of the account, which may be onlya few months after the death but which might be as much as ten or more years. Most entries,however, will relate to medical help within the previous four years.This list omits signatories of licence applications unless their presence and medicalqualifications (in the broadest sense) are confirmed, either by a by-line alongside the signatureon a licence application, or medical payments mentioned in the accounts. For example,8Nicholas and Robert Day are not included on this list, although they signed medical licenceapplications. This is on the grounds that often signatories were men from outside the diocese,especially London physicians.This list also omits female practitioners. This is not due to a prejudice but rather toreflect that in East Kent in the seventeenth century there was a striking line of demarcationbetween male and female practitioners serving the seriously ill and dying in a paid medical (asopposed to nursing) capacity. The medical identities which people here would recognise (e.g.doctor, physician, surgeon, apothecary) were almost exclusively male. The only instances offemale surgeons specified in the probate accounts are two unnamed women. With regard tofemale physicians, in all these thirteen thousand five hundred accounts, there are only twounambiguous references to a woman being paid for giving medical advice to a seriously ill ordying person (except to children, and with regard to midwifery and females’ skin complaints,which lay outside the scope of the study for which this index was created). The first is apayment of 32s on behalf of a man from Postling, ‘to one Mrs [blank] Wright of or aboutCanterbury for phisick by her ministred to the said testator in the time of his sicknes and forher advise thereabouts and her paynes and charges in coming and horsehire in fetching hertwise from Canterbury to Postling to doo the same’, in an account dated 1635 (CKSPRC2/33/12.). The second is Mrs Jacob of Canterbury, who was almost certainly a member ofthe very extensive family of practitioners based in that city, multitudes of references to whomare included in this directory. In 1639 10s was paid on behalf of one William Maxted, ‘to MrsJacob for her directions in physic’ (CKS PRC1/3/14). This Mrs Jacob was probably the sameas the Mrs Jacob mentioned in a 1649 account giving advice in conjunction with her son, 14sbeing paid on behalf of a Canterbury man, ‘to Mrs Jacob and her son for their advice andcounsell and for physick had of them in the time of the said deceased's last sickness whereofhe died’ (CKS PRC1/8/36).12With regard to sources: all references to Canterbury freemen have been taken fromStella Corpe’s lists of the Freemen of Canterbury. It is not presumed that apprentices becamepractitioners; and apprentices have been excluded from this list unless there is some otherevidence of service. All references to archiepiscopal licences which do not have a specificreference to Haggis or Raach (see list of abbreviations) or a similar source have been takenfrom the freely available indexes to the registers at Lambeth Palace(http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/holdings/Catalogues/medics/medics_abc.html). Theoriginal registers were not consulted. Similarly, references to degrees and licences from theuniversities have been taken from the appropriate Alumni volume for each university. Allother sources have been cited in full or abbreviated form.12 For further information about the medical roles of women in giving help to the dying and their children, and anextensive discussion of the nursing roles of women in the period, see Mortimer, ‘Medical Assistance to theDying’, i, pp.241-2, and Chapter Five of the same thesis.9AbbreviationsApp. Apprentice of, or apprenticed toArch. ArchiepiscopalB.D. Bachelor of DivinityCKS Centre for Kentish Studies, MaidstoneD.D. Doctor of DivinityDiocesan applicant Application for a diocesan licence to practise medicine or surgeryHaggis: Haggis MSS in the Welcome Library, London, MS 5341. The references suchas ‘'Liber G'’ refer to the original volume from which Haggis wook his information inthe diocesan collection (currently at Canterbury Cathedral Archives). The referencesto page numbers are to the relevant archiepiscopal section of his index.Jun. JuniorLic. med. university or college licence to practise medicineMatric. matriculatedM.B. Bachelor of MedicineM.D. Doctor of MedicineODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Raach: J Raach, 'A Directory of English Country Physicians 1603-43' (1962)RCP Royal College of PhysiciansReg. RegisterSen. seniorSignatory Signed an application for a licence to practise medicine or surgery on behalfof another practitioner.Conventions• Square [brackets] denoted editorial insertions, italic within these brackets beingeditorial comment.• Angled
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