Notes on an ancient house in Church Lane, Canterbury

( 108 ) NOTES ON AN ANCIENT HOUSE IN CHURCH LANE, CANTERBURY. BY DOROTHY GABDINEB. I. IN 1937 seven tumble-down cottages in Church Lane, Northgate, were condemned by the Canterbury City Council as unfit for human habitation. They came into the hands of Mr. W. S. Cozens, who had aheady rescued and adapted as a Youth Hostel two fifteenth-century cottages in All Saints' Lane. The tenements were in such a condition there seemed nothing to do but to sweep them away. When demolition began, it became evident that the seven cottages had been intruded, perhaps four centuries ago, as it were into the envelope of a much larger and older structure of ground and upper floor. Little by little features of interest were uncovered ; a fine timbered roof, a carved doorway, wooden window-traceries, slots into which wooden shutters had once fitted. With skill and patience, the work of conservative repair went on for some two years, 1937-1939. To-day the fine old hall stands revealed. II. The impulse of local archaeologists was to identify it with the Chantry House of the Prince's Priests, provided under the Black Prince's deed of 1363. Further investigation has shown this cannot be maintained. The reasons may be shortly stated :— 1. The traditional site of the Priests' house was at the top of Best Lane ( King Street). Somner, httle more than a century after the Dissolution, mentions an ancient stone entrance gate standing there, which bore the arms of the Black Prince ; this was still to be seen in Gostling's time. L«-~**j—m • '* ST. RADIGUND'S GIRLS' CLUB. BACK VIEW—EXTERIOR. NOTES ON AN ANCIENT HOUSE. 109 A modern building on the spot known as " The Black Prince's Chantry " preserves the tradition. 2. At the Dissolution the last survivor of the Prince's Priests, Thomas Payne, spoke of theh house as " sore decayed and like to fall down ". The house in question cannot have been in this condition 400 years ago, nor was it even before the recent restoration—the timbers are sound: the waUs stand firm on theh foundations. 3. A rent of 4d. was paid to St. Augustine's for a parcel of garden included within the priests' garden of the Prince's Chantry.1 It lay to the south of the Lord Abbot's garden, which bordered the western portion of St. Radegund's Street, nearer the old Abbot's Mill. (This rent can be traced from St. Augustine's possession to the King at the Dissolution and thence to the Mayor and Corporation of Canterbury.) 4. Last and most convincing; the Chantry house was in the parish of St. Alphege ; the other is in St. Mary's, Northgate. The parish boundary passes through the middle of Staplegate. III. If then the new discovery, clearly a building of importance, not merely a private dwelling, was not the Prince's Priests' abode, what can it have been ? It is worth while to investigate the ownership of adjoining land. Early in the reign of Edward I, about 1273-77, the Abbey of St. Radegund, or Bradsole, a house of Premonstratensian Canons became possessed of property in a suburb of Canterbury known as Froxpole, the family name of the former owners. It consisted of several small parcels of land and some cottages just north of the city wall. The existing Duck Lane was formerly Froxpole Lane. A fuh account of the property may be found in a Cartulary of the Abbey now in the Bodleian Library, (Rawlinson MS. B.336, ff. 105- 109). The Abbey of Premontre had several other branch houses in the south of England. One of these, Lavendon Abbey in BucMnghamshire, possessed a " cell " in Kent— St. Nicholas, Blakwose—consisting only of five Canons and 1 Register of St. Augustine's, f. 177. 1 1 0 NOTES ON AN ANCIENT HOUSE one Conversus.1 After the Dissolution the Blakwose lands, otherwise Cayne or Canons Court, were incorporated with Saltwood Park.2 About the time when St. Radegund's acquired Froxpole, their Blakwose brethren, no doubt through poverty and distance from the parent house, began to fall into disrepute and took to wandering over the countryside. This scandahzed the Barons of Hythe, who protested to the Abbot of Premontre' and suggested that Blakwose should be attached to St. Radegund's as being better able to give it supervision. The suggestion was adopted. Blakwose as a separate community disappeared, and St. Radegund's took over the Canons' property. It mainly consisted of a watermuT, known as " Kukemelle ", and four acres of land surrounding the Canons' house, given them by Baldwin, Earl of Guisnes. His' son Arnulphus approved of the transfer.3 The Blakwose Canons also owned a piece of land in Canterbury described as Waterlock. It can have been of no great extent and was in later years valued at a rental of 7s. In 1341 the Abbot of St. Radegund's total rent-roll in Canterbury amounted to about 35s.— consisting of the properties at Froxpole and Waterlock.4 Throughout the Middle Ages the name of Waterlock, or Waterlock Lane, was given to the passage now St. Radegund's Street, running along under the north wall of the city towards a waterlock, or approach to the river Stour for carts and animals, just below Abbot's Mill. The name long persisted in the portion now known as Church Lane, in St. Mary's, Northgate parish, where stands the building under discussion. There were waterlocks in other parts of Canterbury where the river could be forded. IV. The Register of St. Augustine's Abbey contains under date 13755 the entry of a payment of 2s. ld. to Thomas Thorndenn, the bailiff, on account of the Abbot of 1 Dugdale, VII, p. 943. a Arch Cant., X, p. 126. 3 Lambeth MSS., Carta 752 f. 133 and Carta 441. 4 C.P.R., 1340-3, p. 251. 6 pp. 137 and 176. ST. RADIGUND'S GIRLS' CLUB. FIRST FLOOR—INTERIOR. IN CHURCH LANE, CANTERBURY. Ill St. Radegund's, from or for his Hospice at Froxpole without Northgate. A similar entry appears in 1434. So far no other reference to this mysterious hospice has been discovered. Have we here a clue to the building so strangely brought to light ? It may be objected that the Hospice was at Froxpole and without the city walls—the City Treasurer's accounts, however, from the fifteenth century, and seventeenth century rentals preserved among the City muniments, tell us that the Abbots of St. Augustine's and of St. Radegund's had gardens side by side running down to the Waterlock.1 Again, in the Dissolution document the Blakwose estate of St. Radegund's called " Waterlok" reappears, rented as before at 7s.; it has now become the property of Archbishop Cranmer ;2 while a rent of 2s. Id., formerly belonging to the Abbey of St. Augustine's, is also scheduled as payment for the " Waterloke ",3 not, as one might anticipate, for Froxpole. Can it be that these adjacent properties, separated only by the city wall (probably at that date in a ruinous state), and in the same ownership, were called rather indiscriminately by one name or the other ? It is difficult to beheve there can have been two hospices, or two buildings of that character, so close together in a somewhat obscure corner of the city, and both on St. Radegund's land; more probably the 2s. ld. was rent for access to, or the use of, certain garden-ground at Froxpole. The Hospice of St. Radegund was built on the Waterlock portion of the estate. V. Why one may ask, whether at Froxpole or Waterlock, should the Abbey of Bradsole requhe a hospice in Canterbury? Possibly the number of pilgrims made it worth while for distant rehgious houses to provide lodgings in the city as a commercial enterprise, or merely for the use of the Canons themselves. The construction of the upper room at the Waterlock house is singularly hke photographs of the 1 City Records—Bundle 27.1, No. 13. 2 L. & P. Hen., VIII, 13, pt. I (1538), p. 570, and Valor Eccl., I, p. 57. 3 lb., p. 58. 112 NOTES ON AN ANCIENT HOUSE. Pilgrims' Chamber in the Chequers Inn in Mercery Lane, destroyed by fire within living memory. Can there have been any additional attraction, such as healing waters, in the adjacent Well or Bath of St. Radegund, recently (most deplorably) filled in, in making a car-park ; this must have formed part of the Froxpole estate, approached from Froxpole Lane. In origin it is supposed to have been Roman. Goatling (Ed. 1777, p. 30) describes it at some length :—" St. Radegund's Bath, a fine spring built over and fitted for cold bathing . . . in altering a very ancient dwelling house near the bath some hollows or pipes were discovered, carried along in the thickness of an old stone wall, which seemed a contrivance for heating the room in former times, and making a sudatory or sweating-room of it." The fact that the original Waterlock building, upon data obtained during the demolition, was divided into tenements in Tudor times, would account for its separate existence having passed so completely into oblivion, evidence of the Abbot's garden alone having survived. In the sixties and seventies of the fourteenth century the Abbot of St. Radegund's was put in charge of extensive repairs at Dover Castle.1 Had he actually some reputation as an architect, and have we, in the Waterlock house, an example of his skill ? 1 History of Dover Castle, pp. 280-1.