Fawkham Manor Revisited
Fawkham is a quiet place. A winterbourne runs through the little valley after heavy rain, though for most of the year it is dry grassland. The Norman church sits squarely across the valley bottom, but no manor house is to be seen here. St Mary's is alone in Church Meadow and the lanes pass around it to the east and west and south.
Ekwall suggests that the parish, or rather the manor, gained its name from one Fealcna, a Saxon. After the Conquest, the name was passed back to a Norman family, of whom we first hear in the time of Henry I, when the Red Book of the Exchequer shows Robert de Faukeham holding the manor by knight service. Several de Faukeham names appear during the twelfth century, but a clearer picture emerges in 1232, when William, son of Thomas de Falkeham, is named in a charter concerning his lands in Ash. William did eventually receive Thomas' manor of Fawkham, but he himself had died before 1250 and the manor descended to his son William.
In that year, the younger William de Falkeham appears to have sold his Fawkham lands to his brothers Thomas and Robert. By 1253 the Close Rolls find William the younger in France in the service of Henry III. He evidently did well and was in due course appointed a Marshall of the King's Household, which post he held at least until 1272. William's son had died on military manoeuvres in 1255, so Fawkham (which seems to have come back into William's hands in later years) was in due course left to his daughters (or at least his heirs) Rose and Sarah. It was later said that Fawkham was divided, so that Rose had the "old" manor and Sarah a "new" manor. It is unlikely that Rose or her successors lived at her "old" manor and most likely the house was soon abandoned.
The existence of the Fawkham manor house was largely forgotten in later centuries. A clue perhaps remained in two Walter family documents of 1541 and 1590, which referred to the Courte Garden, adjoining the churchyard. In the year 1769 the antiquarian John Thorpe the younger sought for the site of the manor house and decided that some roofless walls just east of the church were all that remained. He remarked that foundations of this ancient seat show it to have been a large pile of building and to have occupied all that piece of ground now the garden belonging to the public house (which then stood just south of the churchyard). A great part of it, the ale house man said, he had at times pulled down for the repairs of his house, &c. as he had some part but a few days before I visited it, which was in June 1769. Thorpe had a drawing made of the walls which he later published in his book Custumale Roffensis and which is reproduced here.
Some remains of the manor house were still standing in the 1830s when the Fawkham tithe map was drawn. The map shows them as a small rectangular wood in the field just east of St Mary's churchyard. Regrettably though, the walls were soon to disappear. In 1847, letters in the Maidstone Journal reported an act of vandalism ... perpetrated at Fawkham whereby the ruins of the ancient manor house ... had been finally pulled down and the flints and stones of which it had been composed were sold ... to mend the Dover Road. It was also said that coins of the Edwards (1272-1377) had been found there. Nothing now remained above ground level, but the large scale Ordnance Survey plans of the 1870s noted the site as Fawkham Castle and local people began to give the name Castle Hill to the lane leading up to Hartley Green.
Around 1950, Mr Frank Proudfoot of Pennis House, a local solicitor and Fawkham's historian, was digging a trench for hedging plants when, in his own words, he noticed traces of flint work and a clutter of twelfth century roofing tiles. His observations sparked off the idea of archaeological exploration to recover the plan of the manor house. In the years 1964 to 1966 the newly formed Archaeological Group of the Fawkham and District Historical Society carried out limited excavations on the site of the little wood depicted on the tithe map, under the direction of Mr Roger Walsh. The project was a success and by 1967 Mr Walsh was able to publish the plan of a mortared flint building some 15 metres long and 8 metres wide, with smaller additional chambers attached on three sides. His plan agreed in its essentials with Thorpe's drawing two centuries earlier. It was unlikely that a house of this quality so close to the church could have been anything other than a manor house.
All was quiet again until recently, when plans were announced to create a new Garden of Remembrance just north of the churchyard. The Fawkham and Ash Archaeological Group obtained permission to excavate an area on the site of the proposed Garden, to ensure that no Fawkham Manor - View from NE in 1769 further traces of medieval activity remained which could be damaged by subsequent interments. To our considerable surprise we encountered a previously unknown flint and mortar building measuring some 13 metres by 8 metres and with walls up to a metre thick. The structure appears to link up with certain isolated portions of masonry shown on Mr Walsh's plans of 30 years ago.
'The Bexleyheath Railway-Realinement at Elham'.
We are still working on the newly discovered building at the time of writing. Its function and its relationship with the manor house, only 6 metres to the south, are not yet clear. Although our excavation strategy is to avoid penetration of stratified layers as far as possible, it is vital that we recover the complete plan of this building. An extension of the churchyard in this direction could damage or destroy it. Indeed four graves, dug since Mr Walsh's excavation, have already been cut through its walls and floor.
'The Bexleyheath Railway-Realinement at Elham'.
Finds from the excavation include pottery, roof tile, animal bone, shell and iron objects, the majority being unstratified. A provisional analysis of the pottery has been made with the help of John Cotter of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. It falls into three main groups. The first is a locally produced shell loaded ware with red exterior, grey core, and a soapy touch; it is roughly equivalent to phases W to Z from Eynsford Castle and therefore may date to about the twelfth century. The second group includes green glazed jugs of London wares, Kingston ware and Scarborough ware; it is of later date, but earlier than circa 1300. The third group is by far the most prolific and is typified by locally produced ware of similar date to the second group. It appears to be similar to the grey, sand tempered wares of phase D from Eynsford Castle. Cooking vessels, jugs and bowls are represented, as is "Dartford Rilled Ware". The distribution of this pottery parallels that from Mr Walsh's excavations of the 1960s.
Fawkham Manor - View from NE in 1769.
Most of the roof tiles are plain, with two peg fixing; many have four shallow ridges down the face, similar to those from Eynsford. Some fragments of hip and ridge tiles are also present. Bones of sheep, pig, cow, horse, dog, hare, chicken and some other bird were found and shells of oysters, cockles, mussels and whelks were found in quantity. The iron material consists primarily of various nails, with a few other items such as knife blades and a clasp. Of particular interest is an iron arrowhead; it is 70mm long and probably of thirteenth century date. The long barbs indicate that its use was for hunting rather than for warfare - perhaps the adjoining manor of Hartley was not the only place where deer might be hunted in those days.
I should like to acknowledge my debt to Mr Frank Proudfoot, whose work inspired my researches into the de Faukeham family, although he may not agree with all the conclusions which I have reached. I should also like to thank Gerald and Gillian Cramp, Richard Jones, Brian Tremain and others for all the hard work which they have put into our archaeological investigation at Fawkham. Dr Cramp has also been kind enough to provide comments on the finds from the site.
Roger Cockett
