THE NEWSLETTER OF THE LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY FOR THE LONDON BOROUGH OF BROMLEY VOL. 5 No. 2 MARCH 1981 PRICE 10p Free to Members BROMLEY LOCAL Kent Archives Office: HISTORY No. 5 Revised Opening Hours The Kent Archives Office now remains open late on Monday evenings but closed all day on Friday. The purpose of this revision is to provide some service to students who cannot visit the office during normal working hours, but also to provide more time for the cataloguing of new accessions, in order to prevent any deterioration in the standards of service in the search room. The new opening times will be as follows: Mondays: 9.00 a.m.-7.30 p.m. The last orders for documents will be taken at 6.30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays: 9.00 a.m.-4.30 p.m. The last orders for documents will be taken at 3.30 p.m. The office will be closed on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; on all public holidays and occasionally at other times by prior announcement. Space in the search room is limited and it is always advisable for intending visitors to make an appointment by telephone or in writing. It is not possible for the County Archivist to guarantee that a space will be available Members are reminded that the Society’s fifth annual without an appointment. □ publication is now available. It contains six articles of great local historical interest, contains 48 pages and includes some excellent pictures and maps. It is selling well and is available in most bookshops in the area. It can be obtained at meetings by members at the special price of 65p or by post from the Secretary, 163, Tubbenden Lane, FUTURE Orpington, BR6 9PS for 95p, which includes postage, etc. The price in bookshops and at the Local History Department of the Central Library, and at other libraries, ,;.n. n M EETINGS 27th M arch Members' Night. The Secretary will be to hear from members who would be LA RGE BRICKS PHILIP DANIELL willing to take up about 20 minutes to talk or show a few slides, on any I am grateful to Mr Maurice Exwood (Hon. Treasurer of subject of local historical interest. the Domestic Buildings Research Group) for the If you have any possessions — a following information about large bricks. photograph or document, etc., — of When William Pitt, in 1784, introduced a tax on bricks local interest, please bring it along there was an incentive to manufacture larger bricks. To to this meeting. deal with this tax avoidance, in 1803 the tax was doubled 10th A p ril W. H. Nelson — Photographer. on bricks if the dimension exceeded 10x3x5ins before Mr. J. Nelson. firing. (Size would be reduced by some 10% in the kiln). In 1839 the bar became 150 cu. ins. The tax ceased in 1850. 24th A p ril Books and Book Collecting Unfortunately this does not help to determine the age of Mr. G. B. Barrow. buildings for, after 1803 there was still an incentive to The above meetings will be held in the Small Hall of the Central produce very large bricks (and pay the double tax). Thus Library, Bromley, and will start at 8 p.m. 11.9 million large bricks were produced in 1833-36. 22nd M ay Walk in Farnborough. Meet at Mr Exwood (64 The Green, Ewell, Epsom, Surrey) 7.30 p.m. at the George, would like to be told of any local, dateable , buildings etc Farnborough. in which large bricks appear. And it would be an interesting bit of local information for our own members. □ 26th June Walk— More of Hayes. Meet at 7.30 p.m. at Hayes Station. 1914-1918 WAR 24th July Walk — Beckenham Byeways. Meet Mr P. J. Flood of 92 Shortlands Road, Bromley, would at 7.30 p.m. at St. George's Church' like to contact members who have local personal Beckenham. recollections and anecdotes of this war. □ 1 1 Scadbury And The Wcdsinghams For many generations the de Scathebery family were the educated at King’s College, Cambridge. He was a zealous lords of the manor of Scadbury and the principal residents protestant and left the country on the accession of Mary to in Chislehurst. John de Scathebury was assessed in the travel on the continent. He returned to England shortly Kings Subsidy Roll of 1301/2 upon the sum of £22.3.0d., after Elizabeth became Queen and being highly gifted by an amount greater than the assessment of neighbouring nature and proficient in foreign languages, attracted the landowners, excepting Sir Peter de Huntingfield at West attention of Lord Burghley. At first he served in various Wickham and Sir William de Hamilton at Cudham. positions abroad and in 1586 was one of the Twenty-nine other persons in Chislehurst were assessed for Commissioners at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, when the same subsidy, but only upon very small amounts. he was accused of forging letters which incriminated her. One record is that about 1347, when there were no male He became a principal Secretary of State and in private life heirs Anne, daughter of John de Scathebury, married was distinguished for his integrity, his frankness and Osmund de Walsingham and the manor passed into the unquestionable honesty. In his religious beliefs he was possession of the Walsinghams, who had originally had drawn towards the rising Puritanism. He was undoubtedly their family seat in Norfolk. Another, perhaps more industrious. The Queen knighted him at Windsor castle on reliable record, shows that Thomas Walsingham bought 1st December, 1577. About this time he sold his father’s Scadbury from Thomas Dale, in 1414. This Thomas was a manor at Footscray. His only daughter Frances, was vintner in London and the son of Alan Walsingham, a married succesively to three of the most distinguished men cordwainer. The Walsinghams afterwards lived at of her time. Her first husband was Sir Philip Sidney. After Chislehurst for many generations and were the most his early death at the battle of Zutphen, she secretly important residents in the parish, for the owners of estates married Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, and had to such as Kemenhole, Tonge and Frognal were either non­ live very retired at his mother’s home. Her third husband resident or not as important as the Walsinghams. was the Earl of St. Albans. Sir Francis Walsingham died at Kemenhole, sometimes referred to as a castle, was his house at Seething Lane, 6th April, 1590, and wr owned by a monastery in 1301, and afterwards came into buried privately at night, in St. Paul’s, without an., the possession of the Poynings family, who were non- manner of funeral solemnity. residents. Tonge was owned by Lesnes Abbey at Scadbury had during some of these years been let to the Woolwich, until Sir Thomas Walsingham obtained it by parents of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal, exchange in the middle of the fifteenth century, Frognal who was the father of the illustrious Lord Bacon, Sir may have been owned by Thomas Ie Barbur in 1254, and Nicholas was born at Scadbury, in 1510. But the chief there is a reference to it being owned by John de Cressel resident was Sir Thomas Walsingham, a cousin of the about 1330. The le Barburs lived in Cudham, so they may famous Sir Francis, and the son of Sir Edmund have been non-resident at Chislehurst. Walsingham. He was buried in Chislehurst church in 1583, James Walsingham, who is believed to have been born at as were also his two eldest sons, Guildford and Edmund, Scadbury in 1460, was a minor., and his mother, after the who left no male heirs. Their younger brother, Sir death of his father, Sir Thomas Walsingham, married Thomas, thus inherited Scadbury. It was about this time John Green, who administered the family estates until the that Queen Elizabeth visited Scadbury and is said to have death of his wife in 1476. A monumental brass which bore planted some fig trees which had come from Marseilles. her effigy, was placed over her grave in Chislehurst These trees were pointed out to Queen Victoria in April, church. Sir James Walsingham was sheriff of Kent and 1872, when she visited Lord Sydney. In the old manor of represented Kent at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Scadbury, was a room known as the Queen’s apartment. He died in 1540 and the brass in the church showed that he Sir Thomas Walsingham died in 1630, and was probably and his wife had seven daughters and four sons. the last of the Walsinghams buried in the family vault at The eldest son, Sir Edmund Walsingham, was Chislehurst. His son, also Sir Thomas, who had been on Lieutenant of the Tower of London for 22 years. He was the side of Parliament during the civil war, sold Scadbury buried in Chislehurst church in February, 1549, and is to Sir Richard Bettenson about 1660 or just before the commemorated by a marble tomb, erected 32 years after restoration of Charles II. He died in 1669 and some fev his death, by his son, Sir Thomas. generations later the senior branch of the Walsingham William Walsingham, a third son, was the father of Sir family tree became merged with the Montague family. —> Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated With the death of this Sir Thomas Walsingham, closed Secretary of State and the most illustrious member of the the long association of this remarkable family with Chisle­ family.