HOLLINGBOURNE TO LENHAM
The village of Hollingbourne lies at the foot of the hill, and an old
inn at the corner of the Pilgrims' Road, now called the King's Head, was
formerly known by the name of the Pilgrims' Rest. The history of
Hollingbourne is full of interest. The manor was granted to the church
at Canterbury, "for the support of the monks," by young Athelstan, the
son of Æthelred II., in the year 980, and was retained by the monastery
when Lanfranc divided the lands belonging to Christ Church between the
priory and the see. It is described in Domesday as _Terra Monachorum
Archiepi_, the land of the monk and the Archbishop; in later records as
_Manorium Monachorum et de cibo eorum_, a manor of the monks and for
their food. The Priors of Christ Church held their courts here, and the
convent records tell us that Prior William Sellyng greatly improved the
Priory rooms at Hollingbourne. Their residence probably occupied the
site of the present manor-house. This handsome red-brick building, rich
in gables and mullions, in oak panelling and secret hiding-places, was
built in Queen Elizabeth's reign by the great Kentish family of the
Culpepers, who at that time owned most of the parish. More than one
fragment of the earlier house, encased in the Elizabethan building, has
been brought to light, and a pointed stone archway of the thirteenth
century, and an old fireplace with herring-bone brickwork, have lately
been discovered. Many are the interesting traditions which belong to
this delightful old manor-house. The yews in the garden are said to have
been planted by Queen Elizabeth on one of her royal progresses through
Kent, when she stayed at Leeds Castle, and was the guest of Sir Henry
Wotton at Boughton Malherbe. According to another very old local
tradition, Katherine Howard, whose mother was a Culpeper, spent some
years here as a girl, and the ghost of that unhappy queen is said to
haunt one of the upper chambers of the house. Another room, called the
Needle-Room, was occupied during the Commonwealth by the daughters of
that faithful loyalist, John Lord Culpeper, Frances, Judith, and
Philippa, who employed the weary years of their father's exile in
embroidering a gorgeous altar-cloth and hangings, which they presented
to the parish church on the happy day when the king came back to enjoy
his own again. The tapestries, worked by the same deft fingers, which
once adorned the chambers of the manor-house, are gone, and the hangings
of the reading-desk in the church have been cut up into a frontal, but
the altar-cloth remains absolutely intact, and is one of the finest
pieces of embroidery of the kind in England. Both design and colouring
are of the highest beauty. On a ground of violet velvet, bordered with a
frieze of cherub heads, we see the twelve mystic fruits of the Tree of
Life--the grape, orange, cherry, apple, plum, pear, mulberry, acorn,
peach, medlar, quince, and pomegranate. The richest hues of rose and
green are delicately blended together, and their effect is heightened
by the gold thread in which the shading is worked. The lapse of two
centuries and a half has not dimmed the brightness of their colours,
which are as fresh as if the work had been finished yesterday. A needle
which had been left in a corner of the altar-cloth all those long years
ago was still to be seen sticking in the velvet early in the last
century, but has now disappeared.
[Illustration: HOLLINGBOURNE HOUSE.]
This goodly manor-house was only one of several seats belonging to the
Culpepers in this neighbourhood. They had a mansion at Greenway Court,
which was burnt down in the last century, and another of imposing
dimensions where Grove Court now stands. In the seventeenth century the
Lords Culpeper also owned Leeds Castle, that noble moated house, a mile
to the south, which was once a royal park, and is still one of the
finest places in Kent. But the second Lord Culpeper died without a male
heir in 1688, and this famous house passed by marriage into the Fairfax
family. The Hollingbourne branch of the Culpepers died out in the course
of the last century, and at the present time no member of this
illustrious family is known to exist in England, although persons
bearing this ancient name are still to be found in America. The church
at Hollingbourne contains a whole series of Culpeper monuments. The most
remarkable is the white marble altar-tomb, which bears the recumbent
effigy of Elizabeth Lady Culpeper, who died in 1638, and is described in
the inscription on her monument as _Optima Foemina, Optima Conjux, et
Optima Mater_. This lady was the heiress of the Cheney family, whose
arms, the ox's hide and horns, appear on the shield at the foot of the
tomb, and are repeated in the stained glass of the chapel window.
Tradition says that Sir John Cheney had his helmet struck off, when he
fought by the victor's side on Bosworth Field, and fixed a bull's horns
on his head in its place. Afterwards Henry VII. gave him this crest,
when he made him a Baron and a Knight of the Garter, in reward for his
valour on that hard-fought field. A monument on the north wall of the
chancel records the memory of John Lord Culpeper, who was successively
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, and Privy Councillor
to Charles I. and Charles II. "For equal fidelity to the king and
kingdome," says the epitaph on his tomb, "he was most exemplary." He
followed the last-named king into exile and remained there until the
Restoration, when "with him he returned tryumphant into England on the
29th of May, 1660," only to die six weeks afterwards, "to the
irreparable losse of his family." Another descendant of the Culpepers is
buried under the altar in this church, Dame Grace Gethin, a great
grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Culpeper, and wife of Sir Richard Gethin,
of Gethinge Grott, in Ireland, whose learning and virtues were so
renowned that monuments were erected in her honour both at Bath and in
Westminster Abbey. This youthful prodigy, who died at the age of
twenty-one, is here represented kneeling between two angels, and holding
in her hand the commonplace book which she filled with extracts from her
favourite authors, and which was afterwards published under the title of
"Reliquiæ Gethinianæ." Her piety was as great as her personal charms,
and the inscription on her monument records how, "being adorned with all
the Graces and Perfections of mind and body, crowned them all with
exemplary Patience and Humility, and having the day before her death
most devoutly received the Holy Communion, which she said she would not
have omitted for Ten Thousand Worlds, she was vouchsafed in a miraculous
manner an immediate prospect of her future Blisse, for the space of two
hours, to the astonishment of all about her, and being, like St. Paul,
in an unexpressible Transport of joy, thereby fully evincing her
foresight of the Heavenly Glory, in unconceivable Raptures triumphing
over Death, and continuing sensible to the last, she resigned her pious
soul to God, and victoriously entered into rest, Oct. 11th, anno ætatis
21, D'ni: 1697. Her dear and affectionate Mother, whom God in mercy
supported by seeing her glorious end, erected this monument, she being
her last surviving issue."
Soon after leaving Hollingbourne, the Pilgrims' Way enters the grounds
of Stede Hill, and passes through the beech-woods that spread down the
grassy slopes to the village and church of Harrietsham--Heriard's Home
in Domesday--in the valley below. An altar-tomb, to the memory of Sir
William Stede, who died in 1574, and several other monuments to members
of the same family, may be seen in the south chapel of the church, a
fine building of Early English and Perpendicular work, with a good
rood-screen, standing in an open space at the foot of the Stede Hill
grounds. The rectory of Harrietsham was formerly attached to the
neighbouring Priory of Leeds, but was granted by Henry VI. to Archbishop
Chichele's newly founded College of All Souls, Oxford, which still
retains the patronage of this living. The manor was one of many in this
neighbourhood given to Odo of Bayeux after the battle of Hastings, and
afterwards formed part of the vast estates owned by Juliana de Leyborne,
called the Infanta of Kent, who was married three times, but died
without children, leaving her lands to become crown property.
A mile farther the Pilgrims' Way enters the town of Lenham. This parish
contains both the sources of the river Len--the _Aqua lena_ of the
Romans--which flows through Harrietsham and by Leeds Castle into the
Medway, and that of the Stour, which runs in the opposite direction
towards Canterbury. Lenham has held a charter, and enjoyed the
privileges of a town from mediæval times. The bright little
market-square, full of old houses with massive oak beams, and quaint
corners jutting out in all directions, hardly agrees with Hasted's
description of Lenham as a dull, unfrequented place, where nothing
thrives in the barren soil, and the inhabitants, when asked by
travellers if this is Lenham, invariably reply, "Ah, sir, poor Lenham!"
The picturesqueness of its buildings is undeniable, and its traditions
are of the highest antiquity. The manor of Lenham was granted to the
Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury by Cenulf, king of Mercia, more
than a thousand years ago, and in the twelfth century the church was
appropriated to the Refectory of St. Augustine; that is to say, the
rectorial tithes were made to supply the monks' dinners. Some fragments
of the original Norman church still exist, but the greater part of the
present structure, the arcade of bays, the fine traceried windows of the
aisle, and most of the chancel, belong to the Decorated period, and were
rebuilt after the great fire in 1297, when not only the church, but
the Abbot's barns and farm buildings were burnt to the ground by an
incendiary. So great was the sensation produced by this act of wanton
mischief, that Archbishop Winchelsea himself came to Lenham to see the
ravages wrought by the fire, and fulminated a severe excommunication
against the perpetrators of the wicked deed. The sixteen oak stalls for
the monks, and an arched stone sedilia, of the fourteenth century, which
served the Abbot for his throne when he visited his Lenham estates, are
still to be seen in the chancel. Here, too, is a sepulchral effigy let
into the north wall in a curious sideways position, representing a
priest in his robes, supposed to be that of Thomas de Apulderfelde, who
lived at Lenham in the reign of Edward II., and died in 1327. Both the
western tower and the north chancel, dedicated to St. Edmund, and
containing tombs of successive lords of East Lenham manor, are
Perpendicular in style, and belong to the fourteenth or early part of
the fifteenth century. Fragments of the fourteenth-century paintings,
with which the walls of the whole church were once adorned, may still
be distinguished in places. Among them are the figures of a bishop,
probably St. Augustine, and of St. Michael weighing souls, with devils
trying to turn the balance in their favour, on one side, and on the
other the crowned Virgin throwing her rosary into the scale which holds
the souls of the just. The church was dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin,
and her image formerly occupied the niche in the timbered porch which,
with the old lych-gate, are such fine specimens of fifteenth-century
wood-work. The beautiful Jacobean pulpit was given by Anthony Honywood
in 1622, and is charmingly carved with festoons of grapes and
vine-leaves. The Honywoods also built the almshouses, with carved
bargeboards and door-posts, in the street at Lenham, and an inscription
in the chancel floor records the memory of that long-lived Dame, Mary
Honywood, who before her death in 1620 saw no less than three hundred
and sixty-seven of her descendants!
[Illustration: MARKET-PLACE, LENHAM.]
Close to the church are the great tithe barns, built after the fire in
the fourteenth century by the Abbots of St. Augustine. The largest
measures 157 feet long by 40 feet wide, and, saving the low stone walls,
is built entirely of oak from the forests of the Weald. The enormous
timbers are as sound and strong to-day as they were six hundred years
ago, and for solidity of material and beauty of construction, this
Kentish barn deserves to rank among the grandest architectural works of
the age. The monks are gone, and the proud Abbey itself has long been
laid in ruins, but these buildings give us some idea of the wealth and
resources of the great community who were the lords of Lenham during so
many centuries. They could afford to lend a kindly ear to the prayer of
the poor vicar when he humbly showed the poverty with which he had to
contend, and the load of the burden that he had to bear. The Abbot, we
are glad to learn, granted his request, and agreed to give him a roof
over his head and to allow his two cows to feed with the monks' own
herds in the pastures at Lenham, during the months between the feast of
St. Philip and St. James and Michaelmas.
[Illustration: IN CHARING VILLAGE.]