Tales of Forgotten Kent E-Book

Malcolm Horton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 205

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Tales of Forgotten Kent is a collection of twenty-two essays about the people and events that have largely been neglected by historians, but remain an integral part of Kent's rich tapestry, featuring the eccentric, unusual and often overlooked tales buried within the garden of England. Who would have thought that the cradle of British aviation was the unfashionable Isle of Sheppey, home to Britain's first licensed pilots and the world's first aircraft manufacturers; or that the greatest technological change in printing – computer typesetting – occurred in the small town of Westerham; and that the poet who wrote the first sonnet was not actually Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Wyatt of Allington Castle, lover of Anne Boleyn; or that Britain's oldest school is The King's School, Canterbury, whose alumni includes the controversial playwright Christopher Marlowe, and still plays host to ghostly legends. Read on to unearth more of Kent's best kept secrets and keep its forgotten tales alive.

Leseprobe

Front cover image credit: The Estate of the late Dennis Flanders RWS RBA.

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Malcolm Horton, 2024

The right of Malcolm Horton to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 747 6.

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Selling’s Unique Mesolithic Past, 5,000 BC

2 The Oldest School In Britain, AD 597

3 The Legend of St Mildred of Minster-in-Thanet, AD 670

4 Hempsted Park, Wealden: Home to a World-Famous School, 1086

5 Cardinal Kempe’s Wye Legacy, 1431

6 Jack Cade, Captain of Kent, 1450

7 The Tokes of Godinton, 1496

8 Father of the English Sonnet: Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1503

9 Princess Pocahontas: A Gravesend Enigma, 1617

10 The Scandal of the Dering Roll, 1629

11 Richard Lovelace: The Cavalier Poet, 1642

12 The Father of Electricity and his Ecclesiastical Helper, 1729

13The Ingoldsby Legends, 1837

14 Lord Harris: The Father of Kent Cricket, 1870

15 Tragic Cuthbert: Kent’s Greatest Sporting Icon, 1872

16 Sir Charles Igglesden: Sauntering Through Kent, 1899

17 The Isle of Sheppey: Cradle of British Aviation, 1909

18Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Count Zborowski, 1920

19 H.E. Bates and The Darling Buds of May, 1930

20 The Tithe Rebellion, 1935

21 The Romanovs in Kent, 1949

22 Decline and Fall of a Flawed Genius in the Forgotten Art of Printing, 1950

Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank the following:

The Estate of the late Dennis Flanders RWS RBA for the permission to use the two paintings featured in Chapter 2 and painting in Chapter 5.

Dennis Roxby Bott for his painting in Chapter 2.

Jane Carpanini RWS RWE for permission to use the two paintings in Chapter 4.

David Burke, present owner of Ripley Court, for providing a photograph of his famous dwelling in Chapter 6.

James Buss, Mine Host and owner of the Dering Arms for the last 35 years, for supplying information about the Dering Hunting Lodge.

Introduction

This collection of twenty-two essays was written mainly for Bygone Kent, with others appearing in This England, Kent Life and the late lamented Journal of Kent History. The criteria for these essays were legend, folklore, people and events that have largely been neglected by historians, but all are part of Kent’s rich tapestry associated with its unique position as the gateway to England, going back to early Stone-Age settlers 400,000 years ago. It was where, in 55 BC, Julius Caesar first set foot on English soil.

St Augustine, who brought Christianity to England in AD 597, landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet. And on that same island, St Mildred, the second abbess, gave her name to Minster Abbey, which her mother, Princess Domneva established in AD 670 in recompense for the murder of her two princely brothers by King Egbert of Kent’s evil counsellor, Thurnor, who met a fitting end when the ground opened up and swallowed him. Minster then became the capital of Thanet.

The Jutes, part of the Anglo-Saxon influx, first established themselves in Kent, and it was two early Anglo-Saxon tribes who divided Kent, east and west of the River Medway, and gave rise to the soubriquets ‘Men of Kent’, born east of the Medway, and ‘Kentish Man’ to those born west of the Medway.

Who would have thought that the cradle of British aviation was the unfashionable Isle of Sheppey? Or that the greatest technological change in printing, computer-assisted typesetting, first took place in Europe in the small town of Westerham in 1965, just a stone’s throw from Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell, and just a few miles from where the father of British printing, William Caxton, was born in the Weald – possibly Tenterden or Hadlow – in 1450?

It also seems hard to imagine that the Weald of Kent was, in the sixteenth century, the centre of the English iron-smelting industry, fuelled by charcoal from the abundant oak trees and local iron ore deposits. It only moved to the coal-producing areas of south Wales and the north of England in the seventeenth century.

It seems unbelievable that the first and only recognised American royal princess, Pocahontas, is buried in Gravesend or that the poet who wrote the first English sonnet was not Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, a reputed lover of Anne Boleyn, from Allington Castle near Maidstone. Also revealed is the connection in the village of Bridge, near Canterbury, between James Bond, a dashing 1920s motor-racing driver, Count Louis Zborowski, and the children’s novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

According to the writer H.E. Bates, Kent was one of the healthiest parts of England in which to live because it was rich in iodine because Kent is practically an island, surrounded by the sea and the rivers Thames and Medway.

The Kent countryside is defined by two parallel ridges that traverse the county from west to east, the chalk North Downs (home to the Pilgrims Way) and the sandstone Greensand Ridge. South of these two promontories is the clay Weald of Kent, once richly forested by oak trees and home to the thirty-four ‘den’ hamlets – Tenterden, Benenden, Bethersden, Biddenden and Smarden, among others. Dens were originally clearings where pigs and boars could winter and feed off the acorns from the abundant oak trees.

It was these special characteristics, defined by the writer E.H. Thomas as the ‘South Country’, which were the catalysts that persuaded writer and poet H.E. Bates to forsake his native Rushden, in Northamptonshire, and move to Little Chart, near Pluckley, and to immortalise Kent in his books A Moment in Time, Down by the River and his most famous Kent evocation, The Darling Buds of May. This book is a celebration of this wonderful county, which has been home to my family (most likely of Jutish origin) for over 500 years.

Finally, for those who wish to learn more of Kent and its customs, folklore and history, I would heartily recommend Sir Charles Igglesden’s thirty-five volumes of A Saunter Through Kent with Pen and Pencil, written between 1899 and 1946 and covering 242 of Kent’s villages.

1

Selling’s Unique Mesolithic Past, 5,000 BC

The first part of this essay is an extract from Sir Charles Igglesden’s articles from the Kentish Express, published between 18 December 1942 and 15 January 1943, although his visit must have been made earlier in the war because he is refers to boughs being heavily laden with fruit. Strict press censorship in the early part of the war delayed publication until censorship was eased in late 1942. He was clearly a man on a mission to find the so-called Pulpit and other ancient artefacts for which the Perry Wood area of Selling was famous.

The second part of the essay is a follow-up visit I made in 2023 to see how Selling had changed since Igglesden’s visit and whether more ancient relics had been discovered in the eighty years since his visit.

Charles Igglesden’s Visit to Selling, c.1942

Try to find a little village among the hills of north-east Kent named Selling. In these winding lanes, happily, they have been spared the formal main road that normally kills scenery – you can lose yourself in normal times, but war was on, I tried to find Selling without any sign-post to guide me. But what a glorious bit of countryside when you reach the busiest part of the village, with its inn, the White Lion, newly built on the site of an older one; its couple of general shops and a long low red brick building that originally did service as a workhouse, but is now converted into a row of cottages. And that’s all I could find in the so-called Street. Facing the end of the road is one of the entrances to the park, the seat of Earl Sondes.

But alongside the roads can be glimpsed old-world residences and farmsteads standing isolated amid all sorts of trees a wealth of orchards and, now and again, a hop garden. But hops are no longer grown in the same abundance as they were, before the powers-that-be ruthlessly cut down the acreage in all parts of England. There is one fine stack of oast-houses. But if several hop gardens have gone, the cherry orchards remain. Acres of them.

When I was in their midst with heavily laden boughs with ripening fruit, I and my friends became good specimens of human beings whose fate is to have their mouths water at the thought of joys to come. For we were a week too early to taste the full flavoured fruit and watch the fruit gathering in the orchards from Faversham and adjacent places. One picture was worth remembering – a Land Girl in a green jersey at the top of a ladder picking early cherries. A sign of the times when women were doing their bit for England, smiling uncomplaining.

In Domesday, Selling is spelt Sellinge and the confusion of this village with Sellinge near Hythe led to many disputes, even of a legal character. One testator left property in ‘Sellinge, Kent’, and one of his nephews who lived in Selling claimed it, while the other also argued that he was the beneficiary as his uncle also had property in Sellinge. The Selling man won and incidentally became bankrupt; for law costs were as heavy in the seventeenth century as they are today. And here is another case of the clash of names. Sellinge claims to be the birth place of William Selling, a notable prior of Christ Church Canterbury, where he was buried in 1494. Most old biographies give Selling priority in its claim to call the learned prior as one of its famous sons. Before he became prior, he was a monk and is described by one of his biographies as being possessed of learning and wisdom.

The people of Selling are proud of their Pulpit, a mound in the heart of the woods. ‘How do I get to it?’ I asked. The reply of my guide was probably familiar to the native, but it was confusing to hear that turning sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, many of them, would bring me to the Rose. Yes; there was the inn staring me in the face, and in front – it was not yet opening time – was a group of young khaki-clad soldiers, some lounging against it, some sprawling on the dusty roadside, all very cheerful, all very sun-burnt. But if you wish to glean the whereabouts of any place nowadays, don’t ask a member of His Majesty’s Forces for good reason – he will probably know the direction and, if he does, regulations very properly forbid him to give the information.

I was in search of something connected with war – not Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, although a few of the youth of the district joined the forces of that ill-fated knight. No, what I intended to search for was some ancient fortification vaguely referred to by many Kent historians without giving any defaults as to position.

That the Pulpit had some connection with the ancient camp I was convinced, so I must find it first and then take my bearings. I followed the simple method of asking two small girls where the Pulpit was. They pointed to a fine display of small trees, the clump rising to a considerable height. ‘How do I get there?’ I asked. ‘I dunno’ one replied and the other shook her head till a truant lock of curls hung over her eyes. But it was not the information they gave but their happy smiles that won the pennies. And their waving hands as they went away was a cheery sight and a friendly gesture that would have won them another copper had they not been so far away.

And then along the lane came a figure in khaki breeches and jersey with swinging gait. Brown her face, delightful her features, bright her eyes – a picture of the type of health that only the countryside could give. I should have liked to be inquisitive – what in peace time was the sort of air she breathed. Was it in a close street and a stuffy office which meant a pale face and less physical vigour and enjoyment? I do not know but she made me proud of those Land Girls who are helping us to win the war. She knew where the Pulpit was and pointed to the same spot selected by my two little schoolgirl friends. And she walked on with the same easy gait not withstanding a long day’s work on the land. Her parting smile was worth ever more attraction than the smiles of my little friends – but you don’t give pennies to Land Girls.

Then along came a perfect specimen of the race that has given rural England the foremost place in the agricultural world. He may have been sixty or seventy, but by his walk he was nearer the age of the townsmen of fifty. While whiskered, he was with a healthy colouring to a face that would probably retain the brownish tint throughout the snow falls and frost of winter; that friendly good-natured smile and lazy drawl with a true Kentish accent. In reply to my question ‘Where was the Pulpit?’ his eyes lit up with pride, for as I have said before, the Selling people think much of their possession, though few, methinks, know that in the nearby wide are the remains of an ancient camp.

Close to the inn is a footpath or narrow lane leading to a clump of trees you have seen from the road. One side is obviously banked up and this is part of the scarp of the ancient earth-work. Yes, certainly very ancient. But antiquaries disagree as to its date – Saxon, Danish or Roman. There is no reason why it should not date back to pre-Roman times, for when the Germans invaded Britain during the fifth century they came in three distinct batches at different times. The earliest arrivals were the Jutes and they settled in the south-east and for the most part in Kent. The Romans probably discovered the old site and selected it as a summer camp and added to its defensive strength. It is impossible to trace any but part of the old fortress, but careful inspection brings to light undulating ground with a distinct earth wall facing the level country to the south-east.

The so-called Pulpit was a mound erected as an observation post which in extremity the defences would find useful for a last stand against an enemy that had broken through the trenches. On this mound, a rough wooden structure was erected in the last century and it is recorded that preachers of religion addressed the people from this spot. Even Courtenay, the Kent fanatic who was eventually shot in Blean Woods, used this mound as a platform when addressing his followers. Now-a-days the spot is a happy rendezvous for picnic parties and in peace time vehicles by the dozen were drawn up in a roadway close by. One feature of Shottenden Hill – the present local name for it – is the number of springs and running water which would emphasise its value as a camp.

In several parts of Selling stone implements of early English have been dug up. On one occasion an old antiquary was walking in a wood when he saw two boys playing with what they probably thought were ordinary stones, but they were in fact, fine Palaeolithic specimens and are now in the British Museum. Now hidden by a clump of trees is an ancient tumulus, about half a mile north of the Pulpit. I wonder what old Roman warrior lies buried there. Thus, this quiet and simple little Kentish village of Selling has a history dating back many centuries.

Selling Revisited, 2018

Igglesden spent much time trying to find the old archaeological workings and the Pulpit. The common denominator geographically is the Rose & Crown hostelry, to the north of which is the Perry Wood earthworks which contain the remains of ancient Mesolithic (10,000–5,000 BC) settlements. Relics from the late Stone Age to Iron Age periods have been discovered, such as flint axes and pottery. In the 1970s, Swale Borough Council bought Perry Woods from Corpus Christi College Oxford as a public amenity. In 2008, the Mid-Kent Downs Partnership became involved, and excavations in Perry Wood have since taken place. The mound site of the earthworks, Windmill Hill, was once occupied by a post windmill that was constructed in 1596 and was still in use until the early twentieth century.

South of the Rose and Crown, the woods are more properly known as Conduit Woods and this contains the Pulpit, from which, as Igglesden explains, great orators have preached. It stands 504ft above sea level and affords spectacular views over the Weald of Kent. Its wooden structure has been replaced many times.

It was while examining the Pulpit in June 2023 that I experienced an Igglesden moment. A local senior citizen was with a small boy, scrabbling around assiduously examining stones. The old man was explaining to his grandson that he might find stone implements from a bygone age. Engaging him in conversation, he told me that thirty years before he had found a stone flint axe that he took to the British Museum. He assured me that they had told him that it was from the Palaeolithic period (500,000 years old). He may have got that wrong – more like Mesolithic – but, nevertheless, a wonderful discovery, and worth an afternoon out to distract bored grandchildren.

The Rose and Crown.

The Pulpit.

The White Lion.

One major change since Igglesden’s visit: Selling Court is no more. It was pulled down in the 1960s, and together with the Earl of Sonde’s Park, is now an attractive, beautifully landscaped, executive-style housing estate. Rhodes Court, however, has been tastefully restored and is still home to the Gaskain family.

Perry Woods also contains the Bandstand, which is also known as the Drawing Room and is so named because Salvation Army bands once played here, and teas were served. The whole area is now served by three public car parks, such is its popularity as a social amenity, with woodland walks all year round.

There is an excellent circular walk from Selling car park that takes in the two special woodland areas as well as being served by two excellent hostelries at either end (the other one is the White Lion, The Street, Selling). And there’s always a chance you might find a stone hand tool from the Mesolithic period and retire to either pub to discuss its provenance.

2

The Oldest School in Britain, AD 597

It is now generally accepted that King’s Canterbury is the oldest school in Britain. The distinguished historian A.F. Leach, after exhaustive research and at first proclaiming St Peter’s, York, as the oldest, finally concluded that the King’s Canterbury was an even earlier foundation.

He based this judgement on the fact that each cathedral had within its precincts a school. Church services were in Latin, and so it was necessary to teach the converts the Latin tongue – hence the need for a school. Therefore, the oldest cathedral – Canterbury – must, by definition, contain the oldest school. King’s Canterbury can trace its origins back to about AD 597, when Augustine founded the cathedral. Based on A.F. Leach’s reasoning, King’s School, Rochester, would rank as the second-oldest school in Britain, with the appointment of Justus to the See of Rochester by Augustine in AD 604.

Further weight is given to Canterbury’s claim to be the oldest by a statement made by the Venerable Bede of Jarrow (c. AD 673–735), Britain’s early medieval historian. He wrote in AD 631, ‘Sigbert presided over the Kingdom of East Anglia [c. AD 629–634] and founded a school with the assistance of Bishop Felix whom he had got from Canterbury and who in turn appointed ushers and masters after the custom of the Kentish folk.’

King’s owes its name to Henry VIII. When he abolished St Augustine’s Monastery, he re-endowed the school in 1541 and continuity was maintained by reappointing the same headmaster. At this time, the same re-endowment process and change in nomenclature was taking place in the other ‘new’ king’s schools throughout England. Henry VIII also provided King’s Canterbury with new statutes by which the school was to consist of ‘50 poor boys who were destitute and were to be maintained by the church’.

St Augustine Great Gate. (Painting by Dennis Roxby Bott)

The chief purpose of cathedral schools such as Canterbury was to teach Latin, so they became known as grammar schools. Additionally, the school admitted eight choristers, who attended the song school for a less-demanding education than the grammar school. However, the choristers were allowed to sit together with grammar schoolboys at one table and both were allowed 2d a week for ‘commons’ (food).

The King’s School is inextricably entwined with the towering presence of the great cathedral and its associated buildings, which formed a quadrangle around the Mint Yard within the cathedral precincts. It remained confined in this way until 1976 when St Augustine’s Abbey, which is outside the city walls, was acquired.

Connecting the school from its Green Court to the cathedral buildings is the Dark Entry, a passageway passing through Prior Selling’s fifteenth-century gateway. According to a school legend made popular by Richard Barham in his Ingoldsby Legends, the passage is haunted by the ghost of Nell Cook. She was a servant girl to an elderly canon and became annoyed when he engaged in an affair. When the canon and his lover both died from poisoned food, the finger of suspicion pointed at Nell. Her punishment was to be buried alive under the flagstones that pave the Dark Entry. Her ghost walks the area, particularly on a Friday evening …

The Norman Staircase. (Painting by Dennis Flanders)

Speech Day in 1956. (Painting by Dennis Flanders)

The Ingoldsby Legends were published in 1837 and were very popular throughout the nineteenth century. The canon’s lover was said to be his niece, but Nell had her doubts:

Now welcome dearest niece

come lay thy mantle by

The canon kissed her ruby lips

he had a merry eye

But Nell Cook askew did look

it came into her mind

They were a little less than kin

and rather more than kind

It is said that anyone unfortunate enough to see the ghost of Nell Cook will die soon after. The Dark Entry can be seen in Dennis Flanders’s painting of the 1956 ‘Speech Day Garden Party’. It is to the left of the enormous marquee in the centre of the painting.

Perhaps the most famous building on the cathedral site is the Norman staircase that leads up to the Old School Room and dates from 1150. This is shown in Dennis Flanders’s second painting of the school, completed in 1991, which was commissioned by the headmaster, Canon Anthony Phillips. He was keen to include female pupils in the painting to demonstrate the school’s new status as fully co-educational, although girls had been admitted to the sixth form since 1972.