Hadlow I the Clares and Their Successors Ii Other Manorial Lords
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© Joan Thirsk, Bridgett Jones, Alison Williams, Anne Hughes, Caroline Wetton All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Published by the Kent Archaeological Society, 2006 ISBN: 0 906746 70 1 II CONTENTS Page iv List of Diagrams & Maps v Acknowledgements vi Authors' Notes & Invitation to Readers Picture Credits INTRODUCTION 1 Subject and Authors CHAPTER 1 3 The Document i Its origin ii Its history CHAPTER 2 5 The Lords of Hadlow i The Clares and their successors ii Other manorial lords CHAPTER 3 7 A First Look at the Hadlow Survey i Knights' fees ii Tenements in general CHAPTER 4 10 A Walk round Hadlow Manor in 1460 CHAPTER 5 25 Tenants' Rents, Dues in Money and Kind & Labour Services CHAPTER 6 30 Manorial Courts and their Business CHAPTER 7 42 Hadlow between 1460 and 1600 CHAPTER 8 47 Getting a Living from the Land CHAPTER 9 54 Rivers: the Medway and the Bourne CHAPTER 10 60 Roads CHAPTER 11 64 Commons CHAPTER 12 67 The Church CHAPTER 13 71 Some Families CHAPTER 14 97 Topographical Problems i Hadlow Stair ii Roadside Crosses iii Law Day Place iv North Frith Park CHAPTER 15 105 Hadlow in a Wealden Context 117 Bibliography The Survey of Hadlow Manor,1460, in Latin with English Translation (see separate file) Appendix: The last pages of the manuscript (see separate file) III LIST OF DIAGRAMS & MAPS Page 6 Map showing Listed Buildings and roadside crosses in Hadlow parish 8 Map showing Hadlow in context with other parishes 9 Map showing position of tenements in Hadlow manor and the sub-manors in Hadlow parish 10 Aerial photo-map showing Hadlow Stair and immediate tenements 11 Plan of Cowling tenement 12 Plan of Kenes tenement 14 Dumbreck's map of Poulthouse and Correnden lands in 1842 16 Plan of Brewis tenement 17 Map showing Palmers, Welshes and Wekerylds tenements 20 Plan of part of Coiffe's tenement 22 Aerial photo-map showing Stoperfield tenement, demesne land, and position of Lawday Place 24 Plan of houses in the village street 47 Chart showing distribution of farms by size in five sample parishes 52 Map showing orientation of the Herberys 52 Plan of the Herberys 54 Aerial photo-map showing aspects of the Medway 57 Map showing contours, bridges over the Medway and ancient course of the river 60 Extract from Symonson's map of 1596 showing Hadlow in context with surrounding villages 61 Aerial photo-map of Hadlow parish, looking south, showing roads and sub-manors 64 Extract from Andrews, Dury & Herbert map of 1769 showing Hadlow Common 71 Fane family tree 79/80/81 Fromond family trees 84 Bishop family tree 90/91 Bealde family trees 92 Stoperfield family tree 101 Extract from Hasted's map of 1799 showing woodland in Hadlow 104 Extract from Speed's map of 1611 showing North Frith IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For help with this work, the authors acknowledge their greatest debt to the late Commander W.D.Dumbreck whose lifelong study of Hadlow's history and topography resulted in notes and transcripts of documents from many sources, and some unique maps, compiled by him, which have proved invaluable. They were deposited by his widow, Mrs Nora Dumbreck, in the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, and the authors are deeply grateful to Mr Stuart Bligh at the Centre for facilitating their use of them. Warm thanks are also due to Mr Ian Coulson, who photographed the whole document when it came into the possession of the Centre for Kentish Studies. This enabled Dr Bridgett Jones to transcribe and translate it, and so, with her generous help, this project was able to get started. The authors also wish to thank Mr Matthew Williams and Mr Donovan Hailstone for taking aerial photographs of Hadlow Stair, Mr Mick Rodgers at North Frith Farm for many insights into the history of North Frith Park and the local history of the iron industry, Mr Roger Stanley and the late Mr Ken Jackson for supplying many of our illustrations, Mr Bill Hughes for his original footpath map of Hadlow Parish, and Mr Ian Goodacre for his help in finding maps of Hadlow. Mrs Margaret Lawrence has shared with us her wide knowledge of the next-door parish of East Peckham. In Chapter 13 the authors gratefully acknowledge all the information given by descendants of some old Hadlow families: they furnished a great many documents and the family trees used in the account. They are Glenda Breslin and Nola Mackey on the Bealde/Bell family, John Causton and Anne Caxton on the Caxton family, and Tim Mitchell on the Stubberfield/ Stoperfield family. Catharine M.F. Davies and Professor Susan Wabuda gave us valuable information about one branch of the Playne family. Ms Jane Bradshaw lent us her dissertation on 'Traditional Salmon Fishing in the Severn Estuary', with photos of weirs, fishtraps, etc., which greatly helped us to understand the same activity on the Medway. Dr Christopher Chalklin, knowing the histories of Hadlow and Tonbridge so well, and Professors Christopher Dyer and Harold Fox, steeped in the history of the Middle Ages, all read our text and saved us from many errors. Permission to cite documents from the family archive of the Viscount de Lisle, on loan to the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone, was generously given, for which we offer warm thanks. Finally, the authors thank the Kent Archaeological Society, for accepting this history of Hadlow on their website, and especially Mr Denis Anstey and his team of helpers for all their work in putting it on the Internet. We also thank the Society for supporting this publication in book form. Indexed by Ella Skene Design and layout by Caroline Wetton V AUTHORS' NOTES & INVITATION TO READERS This e-book is available in book form from Heritage Marketing & Publications Ltd., Hill Farm, Castle Acre Road, Great Dunham, King's Lynn, Norfolk PE32 2LP ([email protected]) but does not include the original Latin text. The published version is fully indexed. The authors welcome any comments, corrections, additions, and discussion of their text which should be sent to: Joan Thirsk, c/o The Library, Kent Archaeological Society, Maidstone Museum, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LH, or by e-mail to [email protected]. We expect to be able to make consequent additions and emendations on the Internet. When interpreting the diagrams of tenements and tenemental pieces, the authors emphasise that they do not depict acreages to scale, and all diagrams omit pieces of land that were detached from the main block, whose location has not been ascertained. PICTURE CREDITS We acknowledge the courtesy of all who have allowed the use of material in their care. In addition to images and illustrations supplied by the authors and immediate family, others were supplied, or are reproduced, by kind permission of the following: the Dumbreck family (14, 67a), Roger Stanley (64), Donovan Hailstone (iii contents), Kent County Council Education and Library Service (108a), Kent County Council Centre for Kentish Studies (3, 4, 56), The National Portrait Gallery (5, 44b), Victoria & Albert Museum (53a), The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (85—Bod.MS 764,141v), The British Library (13a, 15, 27,28,39,40,48b,49,50,85,87,98,102,103b), The Hadlow Historical Society (14, 18b, 30, 55b, 67b, 67c, 69, 99a). The publishers have made every attempt to trace the copyright holders of all images used in this volume. In case of omission please contact the publishers. VI INTRODUCTION This book presents and discusses a survey of Hadlow Manor in 1460. The manor covered about 1200 acres of land, stretching from the Medway in the south, through the village centre, which lies east of Tonbridge, to its boundary in the north with North Frith Park. What was a survey? Surveys, often in the Middle Ages called custumals, terriers, or 1. Harvey, 1984, 15-24 extents, began to appear in the twelfth century and gradually became more common.1 They were drawn up on the order of a manorial lord wanting to know how his land was tenanted, and what rents and labour services were due to him. They can vary greatly in the amount of detail that they give, but at best by the sixteenth century they listed all the land belonging to the manorial estate including demesne and tenant land, the acreages and names of the fields, the current use of the land as arable, meadow, or pasture, the names of the occupiers farming the land, the total size of each farm, the tenure by which each was held, the rents and other dues paid by the farmer to his lord, and the extent of commons and woodland. In the Hadlow case, the document is called a rental or custumal and the information is partial. It does not include the demesne, but, so far as we can judge, it includes all, or nearly all, the tenements, the names of the pieces of land into which the tenements were divided, and the acreages, the use of some of the land, the names of the farmers and farm sizes, and the rents and other dues. It is not free from mistakes, omissions, and puzzling uncertainties of meaning, but it is unusually generous in aiming to give the names of people occupying land to the north, south, east, and west sides of each piece of land. It becomes possible to map the tenements, and gain some idea of the way they were laid out.