Beauchamps Wood, Nonington, Kent
By Peter Hobbs
“There be of them, that have left a name behind them…”
(Ecclesiasticus XLIV 8)
Alan Everitt, in Continuity and Colonisation: the evolution of Kentish settlementicontends that woodland is one of the dominating characteristics of the community of Kent, and the modern map shows the consequence of a tract of forest eaten away piecemeal by clearance. Oak and chestnut predominate, although a wide variety of other species exist. Woodland, he suggests, survives either as boundary markers or because the land it is on is inhospitable to arable cultivation.ii We intend to focus on the history of one of these woodlands, Beauchamps (Gigs 1 & 2), located in the central part of the parish of Nonington contiguous with the hamlet of Easole, some 550m from Nonington church and presently in the ownership of the writer required, but heavy dews make it possible that there were numbers of dew ponds of which there is little evidence now. There are only two areas designated as ancient woodland: Pinners Wood, some 31 acres (12.5 hectares) in the nineteenth century, now fragmented and about 9 acres (3.5 hectares) in extent; and Rubberies or Three Barrows Wood with Soles Wood, 31 or so acres in the nineteenth century and now about 20 acres (c. 8 hectares) within the parish boundary although larger beyond. There appear to be no differences between the ancient and modern geological woodland areas.iii
In the immediate vicinity of Beauchamps Wood, the volume of potboilers and debitage suggests an extensive human presence in prehistoric times extending to the Iron Age and Roman period. The inhabitants may have lived in the woodland, but arable cultivation and animal husbandry seem more likely and thus extensive tree clearance. Population levels are unknown, but the plague of Constantinople (a forerunner of the Black Death of the mid-1300s) in AD 456 is reputed to have halved the population of Europeiv and this would have impacted the countryside as well as the towns. Less agricultural activity would have an immediate consequence: woodland regenerates remarkably quickly in our countryside, reflected in the coppicing volume. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon and earlier tomb mounds were designed to be seen from a distance, and the parish area is well endowed with these (Three Barrows at Woolage; the scarp of North Nonington, Esolbarrow at St Albans in 1550) and we know from their burial grounds that there were Anglo- Saxon communities in the vicinity of St Albans Court and Horseshoe Clump (recorded in 1839 as Horse Shoe Plantation) in Fredville Park, as well as around Aylesham.
1. Pinners Wood | 9. The Frith |
2. Bonnington Shaw | 10. Tye Wood |
3. Mount Ephraim Shaw | 11. Horseshoe Plantation |
4. Chillenden Wood / Gooseberry Hall Wood | 12. Fredville Park |
5. Esollbarrow | 13. Bromfield Wood |
6. St Albans Court | 14. Rubberies Wood |
7. Beauchamps Wood | 15. Soles Wood |
8. Stewarts Shaw |
The most significant modifications seem to have come about in the eighteenth century when the local gentry set out to create parkland in their estates, notably at St Albans and Fredville, which between them occupy our area of interest, which is the Anglo- Saxon estate called Oeswalum. At St Albans, the late eighteenth- century woodland accountsv demonstrate very active and profitable woodland management with some woods much reduced (Pinners), moved (Beauchamps, Chillenden) or eliminated (Tye, the Frith) as examples.
The two areas of woodland in the parish classified as ‘ancient’ are Rubberies Wood and Pinners Wood. The only woodland identified in Domesday is associated with the manor of Eswalt (later St Albans) and the Abbey Rent Roll of 1378/9vi lists Pinners Wood for coppicing.
The 1629 Estate Map of St Albans includes it, so probable Pinners was the Domesday wood. Pinners Woods are much diminished by later felling, and the cleared land is now arable, suggesting that the wood was there for reasons other than that the land was poor or uncultivateable. Rubberies Wood is also now diminished in area and, in part, is under the Snowdown colliery tip with Bromfield Wood and now seems to have few ancient trees. References in sixteenth- century records suggest extensive agricultural land there, which may also have varied in size over time.
Older woods which are in fifteenth and sixteenth-century sale and lease records but grubbed up in the 1960s are Tye Wood, which was connected to Easole by the Butchers Alley sheerwayvii and the Frith, which formed the Southeastern manorial boundary with Kittington, part of the manor of Wingham. Only one large Holm Oak remains of the Frith and field walking has yielded a very light scatter of worked flint.
Thus, areas of woodland come and go or are relocated. Beauchamps Wood takes its present location and shape only in the nineteenth century. Ruins Field was planted with Sweet Chestnut in the nineteenth century and was taken down in 1940. William Oxenden Hammond planted extensive groves and copses around his new mansion on the ground, which was, it is assumed from the maps we have, at least free of trees from at least 1629. Most remain, but not all, and the changes reflect areas cleared in the twentieth century for more efficient cultivation and occupation. Chillenden Wood was felled in 1750 but reappeared in the nineteenth century as Gooseberry Hall Wood, a coppicing wood in a slightly different position. Copses, plantations, shaws, stands and clumps appear on maps and records and go without apparent reason other than a land purpose or owner change. Names change often over a short period. Hop Ground Carvel, for example, was Stewarts Shaw in 1839, Butchers Shaw in 1859, and Bluebell Wood in the 1950s. Older names are about woodland – Fredville (frith vil), Acholt (oak wood) – and there are numerous shaves and shaws (strips of woodland) as well as carvetts or carvels (thick hedging not quite a shave) – Bonington and Mount Ephraim Shaves, Stewarts Shaw, the High carvel. Some are the relics of cleared woodland, e.g., Pinners Shave; some may represent late seventeenth and early eighteenth- century enclosure boundaries, and others were planted to facilitate game shooting and drawing for foxes. In the family diary in 1810, William Hammond refers to grouse habitat, and there was a pack of hounds at St Albans Court until the early twentieth century.
Of tree species, elm was widespread before the advent of Elm disease and still struggles to return in many hedgerows. Beech stands were quite common in the eighteenth century, and there is extensive Linden (Tilia) planting in Fredville Park, although it has diminished elsewhere. Oak is widespread, the most famous being Fredville Oak, but there are some notable Holm Oaks as well. Chestnut is also widespread and extensively used for fencing and supporting hops from woodland accounts. Most woodland was specifically and (from the St Albans records) profitably worked and coppiced, Pinners Wood from medieval times although not now.
Ash is plentiful, as is sycamore, which is seen as a weed, although the disease is a threat to oak, chestnut, and ash are forcing a reappraisal. Hazel, birch and pine are common, and yew, holly, maple and paulonia grow well.
This is friendly ground for trees.
Therefore, Beauchamps Wood is typical of Nonington woodland, reflecting the pattern over time in this part of Kent. As we shall see, it is distinguished by its name, not by position or content.
Beauchamps Wood is half-moon shaped and now approximately 3.85 acres (1.6 hectares) of deciduous woodland flanking Beauchamps Lane on the northeast side. On either side lie open fields, notably the Ruins Field to the northeast, so-called from the ruins documented there.
Beauchamps Laneviii runs southeastwards through the Anglo- Saxon hamlet of Easole and then as a bridle path and lane as far as the Roman road at Elvington. North Westwards, it drops quickly down to a junction with the Anglo-Saxon road, which ran from Lyminge to Minster and, in earlier times, over and onto Canterbury via Adisham. Initially, Beauchamps Wood also extended to that point, making it 5 acres (2.06 hectares) in area.
The name Beauchamps, we believe, can only have come from the occupation of part of what is now the wood as well as substantial lands to the Northeast by Sir John de Beauchamp (Fig. 2), the younger brother of the Earl of Warwick.
Sir John was the bearer of the Royal Standard at Crecy, with the Black Prince one of the first members of the Order of the Garter, sometime Governor of Dover Castle, Constable of the Tower of London,
Warden of the Cinq Ports and in the mid-1300s, Captain of Calais and Admiral of all the fleets.ix A successful soldier and administrator, his roles would have required an intelligence network across Europe, and the assumption is that his agents warned him of the arrival and fatal consequences of what became known as the Black Death in Southern Europe in 1348 for those living in urban concentrations.
We believe he moved his headquarters to this country retreat, equidistant from the ports of Sandwich, Dover and Canterbury, isolated from urban development but with excellent communications.
He rebuilt an existing manor house and levelled a large area, providing a yard with a flint and gravel surface and sufficient buildings to house his escort and headquarters staff. The Dover Archaeological Group excavated the house, a dovecot denoting his status, perhaps stables and other former buildings, and part of an extensive yard. This archaeological work is still very much in progress.x
The land we are talking about here has a long, well-documented history.xi Before the 800s, it was an estate called Oeswalum. Perhaps no more than 1200 acresxii in size, it was jointly owned by one of Offa’s Thegns and his sister, Abbess of the Royal monastic foundations of Lyminge and Minster. After some well-recorded disputes and court cases, the land re-emerges in Domesday as estates called Esswelle, Eswalt and possibly Soles, all belonging to the Crown. Only Eswalt is recorded with woodland, believed to be what is now called Pinners Wood, and to the Northwest.xiii
The piece of land on which John built was rented from a consortiumxiv of John Colkyn, the Abbot of St Albans, Edmund de Acholt and Ricard de Retlyng, who had secured it after a long and complicated history of land dealings. It was part of Esswelle, the overlordship of which belonged to the de Say family. At the Conquest, all the divided Oeswalum, Soles, Esswelle and Eswalt had been given with hundreds of other estates to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who forfeited them after his second rebellion against his brother. Esswelle was then awarded to the much respected Gilbert Maminot, Bishop of Lisieux,xv who was overfond of hunting and hawking but a close advisor to William himself. After Maminot’s death, it passed eventually by inheritance to the de Say family, and much later, Sir John de Beauchamp’s sister was Maude the Dowager Lady de Say, from whom he directly rented other adjoining parts of Esswelle.
Why then did he choose to rebuild on this spot? He was familiar with the location and its access because he was already renting land here, but the specific reason may be that it was on a headland, the most prominent point for any approach from every direction other than the southeast. His new dovecotxvi signaled his importance, and effectively, the site commanded most of the approaches.
One other part of Oeswalum, Eswalt, the Albini familyxvii was awarded in place of Odo. They then gave it to the Abbey of
St Albans in 1086 as part of a recapitalisation of the near- bankrupt royal foundation brokered by Archbishop Lanfranc. As part of a consortium, the Abbot later added to the original acquisition by securing part of the Knight’s fee of the adjoining estate of Esswelle in 1346. The overlordship of this portion remained, of course, with the de Says, and Sir John became the tenant. He may already have been renting other landxviii from the Abbot’s directly adjoining estate of Eswalt and already held further land to the South and Southwest from his sister. This did not include Soles, which was in different hands and not associated with our story.
However, as one would expect, the local population knew the body of the estate not by its Anglo-Saxon name but as St Albans after the Abbey and the land in the vicinity of what is now the wood, as well as the road that flanked it, acquired the name of Beauchamps for which there is no antecedent in the extensive documentary records other than the reputation and fame of Sir John de Beauchamp. The first documented use of the name for the land we found is in 1484, but we suspect we may find it earlier.
Sir John himself survived the first wave of the Black Death, but he succumbed to the second in 1360xix in Calais and the estate was purchased by another soldier but one of some notoriety as well as accomplishment, Sir John Harlestonxx who seems to have sold it, possibly to provide ready cash after his ransom, to a family of Mercers, the Quadryngsxxi in 1400.
They occupied the house and, very close to it, seem to have built a series of storage buildings for their cloths and silks, the site still offering the same geographical transport advantages with Sandwich, Dover, Canterbury and beyond, which had attracted Sir John de Beauchamp. However, it seems unlikely they would have had much use for Sir John’s extensive yard or much of the building around it. The evidence so far is that these more isolated buildings were probably dismantled,
Their descendants, in turn, disposed of the property around 1500, and
Ward adds his embellishments, but it seems to be mostly an accurate copy compared to much of the original map. An area of land east of Beauchamps Lane is called Beauchamps and leads up to the manor house of St Albans Court. What is drawn contains trees compared with open ground, but it is nothing like the intensity of what are orchards or even an avenue of trees shown elsewhere on the map.
The archaeological evidence within the area of what is now the wood has so far identified a large long disused chalk quarry, possibly as early as Anglo-Saxon, several land boundaries of mound and ditch, the fourteenth-century yard and some associated buildings of Sir John de Beauchamp and then of the Quadryngs, all of which indicate that the land was open and not wooded. In the late 1500s, the house was tenanted by a Hammond employeexxv and an Inventory of 1612xxvi shows few artefacts of value. The listing of cattle and sheep indicates grazing land. However, excavation in the present wood has revealed scatters of sixteenth to eighteenth- century pottery, implying a level of domestic occupation not suggested by the estate map or the written records. None of the excavations so far have provided evidence of ploughing, and the closeness of chalk beds and runs of flinty gravel to the surface explains why.
However, the south end of the present wood contains a visible mound and ditch extending out into the Ruins Field, where it becomes a reverse lynchet. This was a boundary to land belonging to the Abbey, and a 1501 Rent roll shows it as let as third-rate arable.xxvii This proximity to the St Alban’s Court manor house suggests that by 1556, it had been acquired by the Hammonds and has continued to be cultivated until modern times since it was treated as pasture.
In summary, all the available evidence suggests that at least until the mid-1600s, the land on which Beauchamps Wood now stands was open ground, with a scatter of trees and with the large, abandoned chalk quarry to the South eroded to the point of being only a shallow dip. The northwest end of the area may have had a few more trees, but the large flint and gravelled yard still meant few trees and just pasture cover. There was a roadway across it from the buildings in Ruins Field to Beauchamps Lane, but it was a track not worthy of record in 1629. However, archaeological evidence shows that it improved later in the century. The amount of pottery through the ages scattered across the site suggests there may be more buildings to discover.xxviii
The 1790s saw a radical change. In 1790, William Hammond (1752-1821) notes in his family history the money he laid out to expand and ornament his “House and Place about,” now Old St Albans Court. This involved adding bays to the front of the house, installing extensive water and drainage works, greenhouses in his walled garden, and rationalising the parkland around the home.
The volume in which he wrote this and other narratives, as did his successors, was initially used to record aspects of the estate income from as early as 1782 to as late as 1821. This includes some detailed woodland accounts and, of relevance, an entry concerning “the taking down of Beauchamps Wood” with felling commencing on12 October 1798 with a resulting sale income of £301-5s-3d (then equivalent to purchasing 60 cows or c.2000 days of a skilled tradesman; c.£27,000 in 2021).
The woodland referred to seems from Hammond’s account and almost contemporary maps to have been in the North and Northwest of the area. Hammond thriftily wrote his family history on the other side of the pages of accounts. In 1797, Captain William Mudge of the Royal Artillery received a surveyor’s draft map of our area, published in 1801 (Map 4) as the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 1” to the mile maps. From this, it was clear that in 1797, the southeast end of what is now Beauchamps Wood was still clear of trees but that the area identified in the 1629 map as Beauchamps from St Albans Court to Beauchamps Lane and bounded by the old Anglo-Saxon Road to the north is now wooded. Boteler tells Hasted in 1789xxix that Hammond referred to the grove behind his house, which contained ruins. The 1801 map shows extensive woodland across the area, but Hammond’s use of Grove suggests something less intensive.
An estate map of 1814 (Map 5) confirms what most probably occurred in 1798. The outline of the new Beauchamps Wood is delineated and divided from the land to the east by a ditch. The outline is unchanged on the Tithe maps of 1839 and 1859 and the
6-inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map of 1863 (Map 6). This latter is the most interesting because it shows the Anglo-Saxon road proceeding from the bottom of
Beauchamps Lane Eastwards past the site of what will be the yet-to- be-commissioned new St Albans Court, and how this is flanked by a line of trees, reportedly elms.xxx
Archaeological excavationsxxxi in three places confirmed the presence of the low bank and ditch along the eastern side dividing the wood from Ruins Field, which is clearly shown here. The ditch was dug straight through the foundations of a rectangular building, possibly Sir John de Beauchamp’s dovecot, and through his yard, which projected into what is now a field. On Google Earth, the line continued to the junction of Beauchamps Lane and the ancient Anglo-Saxon road. However, the 25-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1896-7 (Map 7) shows the area of Beauchamp’s woodland reduced to its present size by the removal of the woodland at the northwest end and the new line of the wood again marked by a still visible ditch. Although both William Osmund Hammond (1790-1863) and William Oxenden Hammond (1817-1903) refer to various plantings of the area in their Family History, this change is not mentioned.
Nor is the removal of the Southern tip of the wood where William Oxenden Hammond commissioned his architect George Devey to build a pair of cottages in the 1860s in Easole, part of an extensive programme of cottage building on the estate. The evidence within Beauchamps Wood itself is that it was planted for coppicing, and the written records suggest that this was part of the 1798 wider park improvements by William Hammond. This is supported by a detailed survey of the wood done in 2010 showing the older coppicing stools and the planting across the former chalk quarry and Sir John de Beauchamp’s yard.
So, here we have it, not untypical of Kent – an ancient site, an old and famous name, but a modern addition to the landscape.
Footnotes
i Everitt, Alan, 1986, Continuity and colonization: the evolution of Kentish settlement (Leicester University Press), Pts. 1, 2, 3 Woodland. ii The detail of this around Nonington is explored by Jane Andrews in her 1991 University of Kent thesis Land, family and community in Wingham and its environs: an economic and social history of rural society in East Kent from c. 1450- 1640. iii Kent Landscape Information System. iv Sarris, P., 2021, ‘New approaches to the Plague of Justinian’, Past and present, 254, pages 315-366. v A vellum bound notebook headed MSS Family Histories. It was commenced by William Hammond in the 1800s and continued by his successors until the death of William Oxenden Hammond in 1903. It was in the possession of Mrs Peta Binney, the eldest granddaughter of Mrs Selina Hammond, the last of the Hammonds to live in the ancestral home. A transcript was made but the whereabouts of the original is now unknown. vi British Library, MS Harley 602, fol. 24 vi This is probably identified as a sheerway (shireway) in the 1501 Rent Roll of the Abbot of St Albans as transcribed by Dr F. W. Hardman (Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society Library). It would therefore not be part of the King’s Highway. It seems to form a boundary with the Fredville Manor (now Fredville Park) and lead from Easole Manor House to the Esole manorial grazing land and onto the Manor of Elvington (Elinton). Archaeological evidence from recent excavations of land boundaries within the wood and their relationship to Beauchamps Lane suggests that the roadway is early in date. viii Rent Roll of the Abbot of St Albans. Op. cit. ix Yuval Noah Harari, 2007, ‘For a sack-full of Gold Ecus : Calais 1350’, in Y. N. Harari (ed.), Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry 1100-1550 (Boydell Press), p. 109-124; James Bothwell, 2004, Edward III and the English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility, and Political Control in Fourteenth- century England (Boydell Press), p. 97; National Archives, 2017, Trafalgar Ancestors : Glossary https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help/trafalgarancestors/glossary.htm (viewed 25 July 2022 Portrait is 10 in William Bruges’ Garter Book, 1430-40, Stowe MS 594 (London: British Library) x The Dover Archaeological Group was founded by Keith Parfitt in 1972. Work on the Nonington Landscape Project was started in1996. There are numbers of published articles on Old St Albans Court and Anglo-Saxon graves with much more waiting, and an account on the Nonington Village Website: Nonington, a Small Place in East Kent’s History, https://www.nonington.org. uk/ (viewed 25 July 2022). Keith Parfitt is a senior manager at the Canterbury Archaeological Trust.The remnants of the house are in the cartouche at the bottom of Map 5 and were still recognisable in the mid-1900s. The window and door surrounds were of masonry and the archaeological evidence is of a tiled roof and glassed windows. There is of course no archaeological evidence that Sir John himself was ever here, but neither is there any archaeological evidence that the Hammonds spent over five hundred years at St Albans Court or indeed were ever there at all. What we have are records saying this was the case and archaeology which provides physical evidence to support the proposition that ....somebody was there.
xi Peter Hobbs, 2022, ‘Anglo- Saxon Nuns and Nonington’ KAS Newsletter 117, p. 10-15; Peter Hobbs, 2005, ‘Old St Albans Court Nonington’, Archaeologia Cantiana 125, p. 273-77. xii. If it included the Soles tithin, it might be more than 1500 acres, still modest by the standards of the time. xiii Several place names within Esswelle suggest woodland or wetlands which may have not been good agricultural land. xiv Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, with other analogous documents preserved in the Public Records Office, AD 1284-1431. Volume 3: Kent, 1346. H.M.S.O., 1904. xv K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 1999, Domesday People (Boydell Press), p. 212-13; Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy, Thomas Forester (ed.), Bohn, 1854, Vol. 2, p. 121, 402; Vol. 3, p. 62, 287. xvi Clive Webb and Peter Hobbs, 2019, ‘Esole Manor Dovecote, Nonington’, Nonington, a Small Place in East Kent’s History (website), https://www. nonington.org.uk/the-esole- manor-dovecote-nonington- new-discoveries-with-picture- gallery-revised-5-8-19/ (viewed 25 July 2022) xvii Peter Hobbs, 2005, ‘Old St Albans Court Nonington’, Archaeologia Cantiana 125, p. 275. xviii Clive Webb, 2019, ‘Sir John de Beauchamp’, Nonington, a Small Place in East Kent’s History (website), https://www.nonington.org.uk/the-fredville-estate/sir-john-de-beauchamp-2 (viewed 25 July 2022) xix Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem on John deBeauchamp 1360-61, No. 628, p. 493-5 December-March.
xx Clive Webb, ‘Sir John Harleston at Esol and Freydvill’ in Nonington’, Nonington, a Small Place in >East Kent’s History (website), https://www.nonington.org. uk/the-fredville-estate/sir- john-harleston-esol-freydvill/ (viewed 25 July 2022) xxi Clive Webb, 2017, ‘The Quadryng family at Fredeuyl and Esol’, Nonington, a Small Place inEast Kent’s History (website), https://www.nonington. org.uk/the-fredville-estate/ the-quadryng-family-at- fredeuyle-and-beauchamp/ (viewed 25 July 2022)
xxii Peter Hobbs, 2005, ‘Old St Albans Court Nonington’, Archaeologia Cantiana 125, p. 275. xxiii Estate map of St Albans Court Maidstone: Kent History & Library Centre. U442 P30, c. 1650 (Gordon Ward Collection) xxiv Kent Archaeological Society Library, Maidstone xxv “Edward Bridges (my servant)” of Beachams Farm was left 20 shillings in Edward Hammond’s will. xxvi Probate Inventory of Edward Hammond esq. of Nonington. Maidstone: Kent History & Library Centre. PRC 28/9 folios 238-239, 23rd September 1616. “At Brewchamps a yoking tun, ostcloth, tenant saw, mattock, moulestaff, pitchfork. 12 kine, 1 bull, 24 ewes & other sheep, 9 hogges, ducks, geese. 4 chamber pots, saddles, marking iron.” The moulestaffe suggests moles were as prevalent then on site as they are now. The stock would have required water which means a source we have not found. This would have applied equally to earlier site occupants. Although there is evidence of a small pond on the site, it would not have had the capacity for the stock recorded here and current experience suggests it would have dried up before September in the hot and exposed conditions on site. xxvii Rent Roll of the Abbot of St Albans. Op. cit. xxviii The earliest building so far excavated dates back perhaps to c1300 but the earlier land records refer to messuages on the site – but a messuage can be anything from a wooden hut to a palace and have yet to be located. xxix Canterbury Cathedral Archives CCA-U11/433/289. Boteler to Hasted, 7 September 1789. xxx Personal communication by Ian Sayer, the last Head Groundsman at Nonington College whose relatives had been Head Gardeners on the St Alban’s estate in earlier centuries. xxxi The survey was completed in 2013 by Richard Hoskins and he with Mary Hoskins also had carried out a survey of the plant population in 2012. This was combined with a further survey done in 2022 by Lesley Smith which also captured changes after coppicing. There are some indicators of Ancient Woodland but, correctly, insufficient to be significant. xxxii William Oxenden Hammond records that by 1890, he had brought his Park up to about 200 acres including planting trees on the Ruins Field, which work he had commenced in 1863.