The lost Manor and Church of Elnothington

THE LOST MANOR AND CHURCH OF ELNOTHINGTON ALLEN GROVE, F.S.A. When volume five of Hasted's The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent was published in 1798, his son Edward had been Vicar of Hollingbourne since 1790.l But Hasted Senior does not seem to have benefited much from this contact with the parish and perpetrated two outsize mistakes concerning it. He confused the Barnham family of Hollingbourne Hill2 with the Barhams of Chillington Manor, Maidstone - now the Society's headquarters - and equated Eyhorne Green at the southern entrance of the village with Broad Street.3 Therefore, it is no surprise to find that his description of the geography of Elnothington (now absorbed into Hollingbourne) is contained in one and a half lines. It was 'of eminent account in this (Hollingbourne) parish and Bersted'. In Domesday Boole4 the entry for Hollingbourne under Eyhorne Hundred was twofold. Hollingbourne Manor was a property of the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and had a church the successor of which is the present All Saints in Upper Street. Another church, at Elnothington, was mentioned under the main heading 'Terra Episcopi Baiocensis'. Bishop Odo's man, Hugh de Port, was the Elnothington tenant and the place-name was transcribed by the scribe as 'Alnoitone' which modern authorities such as Wallenberg and Ekwall equate with Allington, a farmstead on the Pilgrims' Way east of Broad Street.5 1 E. Hasted, The Historical and Topographical Survey, v, 478. 2 The Ancestor, ix, 191-209. 3 Hasted, op. cit., 462 and 469. 4 (Eds.) John Morris and Philip Morgan, Domesday Book, Kent, 1983, reference 3.3. 5 (a) E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, Oxford, 1951, under 'Allington, Kent, near Lenham'; (b) J.K. Wallenberg, The Place-names of Kent, Uppsala, 1934, 218. 153 A. GROVE It is instructive, in order to gain some idea of the relative importance of the two manors, to study the respective entries in Domesday Book. The Christ Church manor contained six sulungs, twenty-four ploughs, sixty-one villagers and two mills and was worth thirty pounds at the time of the survey. The parallel statistics for Elnothington were three sulungs, eight ploughs, eighteen villagers, two and a half mills and it was valued at twelve pounds so it clearly merited Hasted's description of 'eminent account', the more so when it is realised that the other Hollingbourne manors mentioned by Hasted - Greenway Court, Ripple, Murston, Pen Court and Hollingbourne Hill - were but sub-manors under the control of Christ Church, Canterbury. The Kent Archives Office possesses three bundles of deeds concerning the manor of Elnothington during the eighteenth century.6 They do not contain a great deal of relevant information but there are some significant pointers. For instance, Mr Colepeper's recovery of the manor dated 28th November, 9 George II,7 lists the property as containing 40 acres of land, 20 acres of meadow, 20 acres of pasture, 20 acres of wood, four messuages and four gardens - a considerable reduction from the days when there were three sulungs. An indenture of 1751s gives the only clue to extent when it mentions Eyhorne Green in the southern part of Hollingbourne as being part of Elnothington. I have found no map of Elnothington so have had to deduce its area from the boundaries of the sub-manors of Hollingbourne shown in surviving maps. John Watts' 1718 map of the manor of Murston with its tenements of Snagbrook and Claypits9 is especially valuable as it delineates almost the whole of Hollingbourne south and south-west of the Pilgrims' Way. Many of the properties are listed as 'the Lands held by Lease of the Dean and Chapter' and include the large Snarkhurst Wood, which now lies north of the present railway line between Hollingbourne Station and the parish's western boundary. Bordering this wood on the north-east side was a wedge of land, which belonged to the Fishmongers' Company and which stretched from Hollingbourne Church to the Pilgrim's Way just west of Allington Farm. It then continued north of the farm up the trackway, which led to Hucking Church. The Fishmongers' Company's lands were in reality those of the manor of Pen Court and had been settled on the Company by Marc "K.A.O., U 285 T 10. 7 Ibid., U285 T 10, no. 7. »Ibid., U 285 T 10, no. 20. 9 The property of Dudley Wright, Hollingbourne. 154 THE MANOR AND CHURCH OF ELNOTHINGTON Quested of London in order to build, in 1642, almshouses (still existing) in Harrietsham. Another map,10 part of the 1815 'Particulars and Conditions of Sale of a very valuable freehold and leasehold estate' deals with three lots - the leasehold manor of Hollingbourne (395 acres), the manor of Greenway Court (602 acres) and Hollingbourne Hill (167 acres). It covers the property east of the main street (Eyhorne Street and Upper Street) through Hollingbourne to the top of Hollingbourne Hill and spreads over on its west side. Hollingbourne Manor is shown as bordering the Pilgrims' Way on the south side westwards from the King's Head public house and finishing with a field called Virtridge (or Vitridge) which, at its north-eastern corner, touched Allington Farm. On Watts' map of 1718 (already quoted) an area at the top of the hill above Allington Farm is shown as a messuage called Pottsash alias Pittsash and contained Brian Duppa's Potts Ash Farm. Iron slag is found here in plenty and a small region known as Slag Marsh hints that the Lenham beds were exploited for that commodity. The remains of pits may still be seen and one of them is marked on the Watts map. The Duppa property attached to the Hollingbourne Hill sub-manor was essentially an upland one." Ripple, the only other sub-manor, is shown on another map at the Kent Archives Office.12 This is dated 1746 and displays Howe Court in the neighbouring parish of Thurnham. Howe Court property made a wedge into the western side of Hollingbourne parish almost as far as Sir Thomas Roberts' house at Ripple and Ripple moated site. This evidence suggests that Elnothington Manor occupied an area roughly enclosed by the North Downs on the north, by the track from Allington Farm to the ironstone workings and Hucking to the east and by the Chrismill-Ripple-Whitehall road (with the Coldharbour Lane extension) on the west side. On the south side, it probably went almost as far as the Dean and Chapter's Snarkhurst Wood and had an outlier at Eyhorne Green. It would have contained the ancient hamlet of Broad Street with its several timber-framed houses. The medieval churches east of the Medway Gap and north of the A20 road as far as Charing seem to be in a loose pattern, which has little reference to the alignments of Alfred Watkins' 'old straight track'.13 The Pilgrims' Way and the settlements along it in this section 10 The property of V.J. Newbury, Hollingbourne. 11 1797 map of Boades Farm and Potsash by W. and E. Peckham. In the possession of V.J. Newbury, Hollingbourne. 22 K.A.O., U 1258 P 4. 13 Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track, 1925, passim. 155 A. GROVE came into being mainly because of the band of Gault Clay lying at the foot of the chalk North Downs. The juxtaposition results in southflowing streams and ponds the water for which issues from the base of the chalk. The large pond by Upper Street, Hollingbourne, and the Hollingbourne Stream issuing from it are good examples. Close to the streams and lying just below the Pilgrims' Way and north of the late Ivan Margary's supposed Roman vicinal road14 there were at least eight churches- Boxley, Detling, Thurnham, Aldington (now a ruin), Hollingbourne, Harrietsham, Lenham and Charing. The normal distance between them is something between about a mile and two miles with two exceptions, the stretches between Aldington and Hollingbourne and between Lenham and Charing. So one might reasonably expect churches near Allington Farm and Broad Street and in the Manor of Shelve even though the latter had no church mentioned in Domesday Book unless Royton Chapel near Lenham Forstal is excepted.15 The thirteenth-century ruined chapel of Burleigh also helps to fill the gap at the Charing end and is near enough to the Pilgrims' Way to be considered. I am going to suggest that Elnothington Church may be found at Broad Street, which is approximately half-way between Aldington ruined church (annexed to Thurnham to form Thurnham-cum- Aldington parish in the time of Archbishop Warham16) and Hollingbourne Church. A clue to the discovery of its foundations (if not robbed) may be found in the eighteen-acre Church Field, which lies one field away from the north side of Broad street and just west of the metalled road which runs to Hucking. No mention of Elnothington Church is made in Archdeacon Harpsfield's Visitation in 1557 so doubtless by then it was derelict. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Bernard Thomas for his help with K.A.O. material and also the owners of maps not in official custody, more especially Viney Newbury. 141.D. Margary, Roman Ways in the Weald, London 1965, 212. 15 Gordon Ward, 'The List of Saxon Churches in the Domesday Monachorum', Arch. Cant., xiv (1933), 87. 16 J. Cave-Browne, 'The Vicars of Thurnham-cum-Aldington', Arch. Cant, xviii (1889), 246-7. 156