Addington
To the north of Ofham and close to the M20 lays Addington one of the few places within the UK to have been continuously inhabited for around 5000 years; obviously what appealed to ancient man is still acceptable today! Its name is recorded in ancient charters and the Domesday Book as Eddingtune. The name being derived from the name of its Anglo Saxon owner Adda , Edda or Aedda with “tun” which means in Old English enclosed settlement.
Addington lies within the lower Medway Valley, an area that is rich in prehistoric remains with a number of sarsen stones that are known collectively as The Medway Megaliths. They were assembled at some time between 2500 – 1700 BC and formed ancient burial tombs known as long barrows. The people responsible for building them were Neolithic farmers who had given up hunting and gathering and had started to settle down and produce their own food, this was a major leap in the evolution of man!
This collection of Megaliths is the only group in Eastern England, the most famous in the country being Stonehenge. It consists of Kits Coty, House, Little Kits Coty, Upper White Horse Stone, and Coffin Stone; in and around Addington are Coldrum Stones, Addington Long Barrow and the Chestnuts Long Barrow. Long Barrows were places of communal burial and worship unfortunately Addington Long Barrow had the misfortune of being badly damaged by the construction of a road which runs through its middle. It is very large being 60 metres long and around 14 metres in width and must have taken a large amount of man power to build.
Soon after William the Conqueror invaded he divided the country up amongst his nobles, with his half brother Odo receiving the lions share. Odo became the Earl of Kent and was given Addington along with a host of other properties around the country. William didn’t trust anyone possibly because he judged them against his own standards. In an effort to prevent anybody trying to take the throne that he had just snatched from its rightful incumbent, he gave away large amounts of territory but it was widely dispersed across the country.
By the time that William had organised his glorified tax census better known as the Domesday Book Addington was recorded as having two mills. It was rented by Ralf(son of Turald) from Bishop Odo. He had five carucates which was a measurement of land that a yoke of eight oxen were capable of ploughing during the course of one year. There were eight villeins and nine borderers who had one caracute between them; villeins were superior to borderers or serfs. Ralf paid the grand sum of two and a half sulings for what was probably once his property. The village must have been fairly large because it had its own church with ten servants, two mills taxed at eleven shillings and two pence and meadow land and pannage ( an area of woodland set aside for pigs to feed on acorns) for ten hogs. During the time of Edward the Confessor the village was worth eight pounds but after the invasion property values fell sharply and it was worth a mere six pounds.
copyright© Wendy Stevenson 2011
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