Ightham
Set at the foot of the North Downs, surrounded by the orchards, cob nut plantations and hop gardens that define Kent as the “Garden of England”; Ightham is indeed picture perfect!
As you would expect of a sleepy Kentish village Ightham has all of the period charm; the tile hung cottages as well as a number of medieval half timbered buildings framing the village square; which is itself a place that was once and still is a precious centre of community, a place to gather and gossip. Nothing seems to have changed very much over the passing years just the length of the ladies skirts when you compare them with turn of the century photographs!
The village once supported a large agricultural community. Few still remain as custodians of the landscape and many have long since departed. Those who once toiled the land have been replaced by commuters who work in the city and look forward to their return each evening and the views of the carefully tended countryside coloured first by snowdrops, then daffodils, apple blossom and bluebells to be followed later by the Autumnal extravaganza.
I may have painted a picture of rural isolation but that is something that Ightham is not; the nearest railway station is at Borough Green and four miles to the east is Sevenoaks which has the quickest service to London. Tunbridge Wells, Gatwick and even the continent via the ports are not too far away.
The historic buildings are genuine but the sleepiness is deceptive, there are definitely undercurrents here and some of the previous residents have certainly known more than they should and possibly behaved as they shouldn’t! One of the previous inhabitants was Sir Charles Sedly, you may not have heard of him but he was well known to the public of the day. He was a dramatist and wit, whom Pepy’s described as “the lewdest fellow of his age” for his wont of discarding his clothing when drunk and running naked down Fleet Street. I’m sure that many of Fleet Street’s 20th century editors have seen much worse!
The person who knew too much was Dorothy Selby an ancestor of Charles. She was a member of a diehard Catholic family and her cousin was Lord Monteagle who was warned by letter not to go into Parliament on the 5th November. Dorothy hadn’t penned the letter that alerted the authorities; she merely embroidered a picture which depicted the plot. The whole conspiracy theory involving Dorothy was the misinterpretation of her memorial! But there are other skeletons in the village closet or rather Ightham Mote’s!
“A skeleton in the closet” originated as an allusion to an irreproachable person or family having a guilty secret that they did not want revealed. The term closet, a domestic item, was used to highlight the ever present risk of discovery. Most things start with an element of truth and unfortunately it was the concealed remains of unwanted infants found walled up in houses that gave rise to the old adage. In the case of Ightham Mote the walled up remains were found by workmen. The bricks concealed a door behind which, was the skeleton of a woman sitting upon a chair. Legend has it that she was a serving girl murdered by Sir Thomas Browne for having an affair with his priest. The priest apparently committed suicide, which is highly unlikely as it wasn’t unusual for the clergy to have affairs; it was however quite normal for the female to be severely punished as purported here.
Ightham was not mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086 but it may well have existed long before that date as the name is thought to be Jutish (one of the Anglo Saxon tribes who invaded England when the Romans left our shores). The village name was originally “Ehtaham”, Ehta being a Jutish personal name and ham was Anglo Saxon for settlement. Even the county name Kent is a Jutish version of the Roman name “Cantiaci/Cantii. The Jutes were originally employed as mercenaries by the Celts who were left unprotected by the Romans.
Kent was one of the very earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; founded around AD 450 and it was made up of a mixture of Germanic Jutes and Celtic Britons who had by that time inter married. Even though the Jutes had previously been hired as mercenaries they were in essence farmers; which explains why there were relatively few large towns by the time of the Norman conquest and even to this day we are seldom out of sight of a manor or village that has evolved from a Jutish farm!
Ightham is particularly famous for a manor house of the same name which can be found in a sunken valley on the west side of the parish. It seems apt that such a magical seemingly untouched home can be found hidden away in a sheltered wooden cleft. The house dates from around 1330 and has been the setting for many of life’s dramas mentioned earlier!
We are lucky that neither the inhabitants of the village or what is now known as the best and most complete moated medieval hall house in the country were particularly wealthy. If they had been both the village and the manor house would most definitely have been remodelled over the centuries, losing for later generations what we can see and appreciate today. The house, garden and its namesake village are a patchwork of different building styles from various periods in time, which were affected by the whims and the ever changing financial fortunes of the inhabitants. The significance of which has not been lost for the residents and visitors alike!
copyright© Wendy Stevenson 2011
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