January 1984 PRICE 10P Free to Members Cultural Or Heritage Centre
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THE NEWSLETTER OF THE LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY FOR THE LONDON BOROUGH OF BROMLEY Vol 7 No 3 January 1984 PRICE 10p Free to Members Cultural or Heritage Centre The Committee informed the Bromley Council that a local museum should be established in the former School of Sci ence and Art in Tweedy Road. This is a “listed” building THE MARCH FAMILY AND GODDENDENE and would be very suitable as a museum and cultural centre The Bromley Council has agreed to a suggestion by this for the borough. The reply from the Council is as follows: - Society that the home of the famous family of artists, the “The position in a nutshell is that the possibility of the March family, at Goddendene, Locks Bottom, should be Council providing a museum/cultural centre to serve the marked by a suitable plaque. The concurrence of needs of the Borough is in abeyance. The General Pur Sainsburys is being sought. poses Committee received a report setting out various options, with approximate indications of cost, but _decided that it could not recommend the Council to pur MISS PLINCKE sue the matter at the present time, largely because even When Miss Plincke retired from the post of Bromley’s the adaptation of an existing building would require Local History Librarian, the Committee, on behalf of the fairly substantial capital outlay. However, the Commit Society, made a presentation to her and expressed best tee did formally place on record its wish to see such a wishes for a long and happy retirement. The following let project implemented at a future date, when finance ter has been received from her:- allows, and Members recognise that there is a need for “ Would you please convey my thanks to the Committee such a facility. and members of the Local History Society for their most If and when the Council is in a position to give generous gift. The surprise was complete and I am most renewed thought to implementing the project, the ques touched by this appreciation. I would also like to thank tion of where the premises should be located will be members for all the help I and my colleagues at the Lib actively considered, but at this stage no options are rary have received over the years; the information and being discounted”. copies of research projects given and the exhibitions they worked so hard to set up. These things have done OLD PICTURE POSTCARDS much to make my work easier and more rewarding. I Environment Bromley has an increasing range of reproduc wish the Society a continuing and increasing success for tions of old picture postcards of local scenes: Chislehurst, the future”. Farnborough, Downe, Hayes etc. The price is 12p each. Philip Daniell (300 Baring Road, London SE12 ODS) will send you a specimen of each for a deposit of £4 and credit MARY WRAGG AND HER POLISHED COFFIN you for those you return. Mary Wragg who was buried at Beckenham in 1797, stipulated in her will that the vault was to be opened yearly on 28 January, and her coffin which was of mahogany, to ^MEMBERSHIP OF COMMITTEE be well polished, the vault to be swept clean, the locks oiled The constitution of the Society provides that the Bromley and the rails and doors of the vault repaired. The vault was Local History Librarian is ex officio a member of the Com to be left tidy and the exterior painted every three years. If mittee. As members know Miss Plincke has retired and Mr no repairs were required to the vault, the money was to be Alex Freeman has been appointed in her place. Mr used to provide for each of twenty of the poorest Freeman is therefore a member of the Committee. inhabitants of Beckenham parish, eighteen pennyworth of There is power under the constitution for the Committee good beef, eighteen pennyworth of good bread, five to co-opt members. They have decided to co-opt Mrs Joyce shillingsworth of coals and four and sixpence in money. Walker and Mr Les Stevens as members of the Committee According to the Bromley Record these terms of her will and they have agreed to serve. were being complied with up to 1868. She left various bequests to the local people including a sum to the church wardens for an annual dinner for the tradesmen of Beckenham. If the money was not properly distributed to FUTURE the poor of Beckenham it was to go to the poor of M EETINGS Bromley. Members are reminded that future meetings are as WHAT’S IN A NAME? follows:- The oldest place names in Britain of which the origins are 19th Jan. Hayes a hundred years ago. traceable have come down to us from Celtic times. The Mrs. J. Wilson. Celtic tribes who lived in Kent, left a few place names after 16th Feb. Waterways in London Philip Daniell. them, not least because their permanent settlements were not numerous. Many of their place names would have gone These meetings will start at 7.45 pm and will be held out of use completely or been supplanted by those of in the small hall of the Bromley Central Library. newcomers. The names that survive are mostly of rivers - (Continued) ( Continued) Thames, Medway, Darent and Cray. Darent (‘Diorente’ in We must of course, look for a reason why Hayes would Roman times) comes from the British word ‘derva’, an have got its “brushwood” name. For this, we can suggest oak, and means ‘river where oaks are common’. Cray that the plateau where the farmland to the east of the (Saxon form ‘Craegn’, pronounce it cray-y’n, still found village now is — an area which was farmed in Roman times as the River Crane in Middlesex) means ‘fresh water’. and has probably been under almost continuous The name of the river Ravensbourne, appears to be no cultivation for 2000 years — was edged by young trees and earlier than mediaeval, as does the Quaggy. ‘Quaggy’ brushwood spreading up from the wooded valley through means ‘flowing through boggy soil’. The Oxford English which the Bourne flowed. Dictionary records the earliest noted use of the word There is a much bigger problem with “ Baston” , the ‘quag’ as in 1589. name of the mediaeval manor which still exists in name. The present spelling of Hayes is of recent origin. The Canon Thompson’s view was that the name meant earliest known spelling is ‘Hese’, in the Pipe Rolls of 1168. “bastion” (OED: “a large mass of earth or masonry It also appears thus in the Index to Charters and Rolls, standing out from a rampart”) and attempted to justify 1391, in the British Library. Other recorded variations, this by the existence of then Caesar’s Camp ramparts. mostly occurring in the 16th and 17th centuries, include in Subsequently the argument has been complicated by alphabetical order: Haies (Parish Register, 1611, 1636); reference to the remains of a circular tower, 29 feet in Hease (in a will c. 1584); Heese (Cottonian Manuscript, diameter, in the Roman remains near Keston Court. 1177, in the British Library); Heies (Canterbury/Lambeth Whilst this may have been a watchtower, it could hardly be ecclesiastical records); and Heys (local spelling c. 1550- described as a bastion, and Caesar’s Camp is three 1560 and also in a state document in the time of Henry quarters of a mile distant. The word bastion was in fact VIII). Canon Thompson also listed Hays, Hayse, Hees, borrowed from the French in the 16th century, whereas the Heze and Huse — an improbable variation that suggests de Bastane family were the head family in Hayes three careless work with a quill pen. The first known use of the centuries before, by which time mediaeval English spelling “Hayes” appears to have been by the Rector in included the word baston (OED — “one of the warden of 1634 and it appears to have become the definitive spelling the fleet’s men, who attends the King’s courts with a red by 1723. staff, for taking such to ward as are committed by tb The Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names gives Court, and likewise attends on such prisoners as arc—' Hayes as deriving from Old English chaes’ meaning ‘a suffered to go at large by licence”). Baston could also be wood’; it refers to haes, “a word found only in plural spelled bastun, and the de Bastane family name appeared nouns” , corresponding to Low German ‘hees’ or ‘hese’, in the 14th century as Bastian. If all this proves anything, it “brushwood” or “underwood” and related to Middle is that we just do not know the true origin of the name. High German ‘heister’, “young oak or beech” . H. J. Fleure in “A Natural History of Man in Britain Laurie Mack (Collins,1970, p.225) remarks — “Hese is land covered with brushwood” . Kevington Estate Records by Peter M. Heinecke Recently I was privileged to inspect three books of estate as a free gift one guinea for Easter offering.” records from the manor of Kevington in St. Mary Cray. As The remainder of the book consists of memoranda these are in private possession and have not previously which were obviously relevant to the new lord of the been catalogued, I felt that a description and outline of manor: rates of pay (“a common labourer per day 18 their contents would be a worthwhile undertaking. pence”), table and measures, abstracts of Acts of ACCOUNT BOOK 1768-1770. 82 pages. 21 x 28cm. Parliament relating to taxes and dues on property (Bound in leather with flap and ribbon.