Just as I ran out of England on our last walk, standing on white cliffs looking out at the Channel and France, I'm running out of time here in my favorite place. I've been here a month and it seems like a lifetime. I am sitting by the window that overlooks the old moat, now a (swampy) duck pond. I had to close the window a bit because a bat kept flying too close and I didn't want him coming into the room. I don't want to think about going home.
"Kent Teashop Walks" by Jean Patefield - walk #5 - Ightham Mote and Oldbury Hill Fort. 5 miles of woodlands, an ancient trackway leading to a medieval house..... but the last mile or so is on roads, BLAH.
Oldbury Hill Fort is a 2000 year old settlement consisting of earthwork ramparts. The top of the ramparts would have had pointed logs to form a defensive palisade . Nothing is left today except a heavily wooded hilltop but this - along with Bigbury Hill from Day XX - was once a significant Iron Age hill fort on a major trading route. The track I walked on today was once a main road. It served as a commercial center, but in times of trouble became a refuge for the neighboring farmers and their livestock.
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| The Track Between Ramparts |
Another highlight of history and romance... Ightham Mote.
The word "monument" consists of two ideas: commemoration and survival. Its up to us to be the custodians of history and the guardians of the survival of these wonderful monuments to time and life. An old building is as integral to history as documentation, they also tell a story.
Ightham Mote is one of the best preserved, and certainly one of the most beautiful, moated manor houses in England. The house dates back to the 14th century. The name is a guess, Ightham may refer to an early settler of the region, named Ehta or Ohta. Mote may refer to the moat which surrounds the manor, or it may equally well be a derivative of 'moot', a gathering place.The first known owner of Ightham Mote is Isolde Inge (1330-1360), who may be responsible for building the oldest surviving part of the house. It was the next owner, Sir Thomas Cawne (d. 1374) who created the house we see today. He's followed by Sir Richard Clement (d. 1538). Clement was Sheriff of Kent and a courtier at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. A later owner was Sir William Selby, who also served as Sheriff of Kent.
The last owner of the manor was Charles Robinson. When he died in 1985 he donated the house and estate to the National Trust.
My neck hurts from looking at everything around me, it's all so magnificent. Why can't we insist on beautiful craftsmanship like this today? Let's start simply with solid wood doors and ornamental hardware. Our world would be beautiful and maybe people wouldn't be so discontented. William Morris said "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. Beauty is, I contend, no mere accident to human life."
I decree we adopt his philosophy.
Make it so.
I have a thing for leaded windows.
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| Peephole in the front Door. Who Is It? |
Ightham is built along the same defensive house design as Hever: a moat, a square building with a gate, a bridge, an inner courtyard and the door to the living quarters.
As I wrote earlier, Ightham Mote was lived in until 1985. I can really imagine it. What a great house! I dont think I'd ever leave.
In one room some people etched their signatures into the panes of glass.
The chapel has a wonderful painted 16th century barrel-vaulted ceiling. Here there are Tudor symbols everywhere, including red roses, the Beaufort portcullis, and the castle representing Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Further symbols are a quiver of arrows (also for Catherine of Aragon), the fleur-de-lys of France, and the roses of Lancaster and York.
Well, the Victorians are sneaky... they built a fake priest hole, a closet floor trap door into a cellar space. I thought it was real.
16th century Europe was under the spiritual leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope in Rome. Even kings had to look to the Pope for guidance. It was around this time that protests against the Catholic Church and its influence led to the forming of the Protestant movement . In this atmosphere of religious tension, it was ruled High Treason for a Catholic priest to even enter England and anyone found worshipping or aiding and abetting a priest would be punished by death. To this end ‘priest hunters’ were tasked to collect information and locate any such priests and their harborers. Hiding places or ‘priest’s holes’ were built in houses in case there was a raid. Priest holes were built in fireplaces, attics and staircases and were largely constructed between the 1550s and the Catholic-led Gunpowder Plot in 1605.
The priest hole was usually tiny, with no room to stand up or move around. During a raid the priest would have to stay as still and silent as possible, for days at a time if necessary. Food and drink would be scarce and sanitation non-existent. Sometimes a priest would die in a priest hole from starvation or from lack of oxygen.
Meanwhile the priest-hunters would be measuring the footprint of the house from the outside and the inside to see if they tallied; they would count the windows outside and again from the inside; they would tap on the walls to see if they were hollow and they would tear up floorboards to search underneath.
There was one man who became the master of constructing priest holes, St Nicholas Owen. He was a devout carpenter who traveled throughout England and, without charge, made hiding places where priests might shelter from the fury of heretical searchers. Owen's hidden compartments were undetectable.
Today, England contains around about a hundred houses which have a secret hiding place, kind of like our Underground Railroad. Many of these are of a simpler design - a hole in the floor leading to a space below, usually within a wall. The hide entrance is covered by a hatch which would have been hidden with reeds and rushes typically used to cover floors during this period. Unlike the simple (and predictable design) of the older hides, Nicholas Owen’s constructions are recognized because of the ingenuity of their construction.
Owen was eventually caught. He knew enough to bring down the entire network of covert Catholics in England and was a valuable prize.
Here's a picture of one of the priest holes at Harvington Hall, a moated medieval Elizabethan manor house in Worcestershire. Harvington has 7 hiding places thought to have been built by Nicholas Owen, as well as a hidden chapel. The fake beam swings out to reveal a recess. It would have been dark, cold and frightening.
Owen died under torture in 1606. It is known that he suffered for some years from a hernia. The kind of torments devised by the torturers of the period often caused a rupture in the stomach wall of victims, which would increase the agony. This happened in Owen’s case and led to a prolonged and miserable death. Throughout his ordeal he gave nothing away to his interrogators. He was canonized in 1970.
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