Lectures

9th January 2019: Members’ Evening

The well attended Members’ Evening of the Wye Historical Society was held on 9th January 2019. Firstly, Graham Bradley spoke on Brook Manor Barn, which houses the Brook Agricultural Museum. Part of Brook Manor Farm, it sits in prime agricultural land under the Downs. The land was given to Christchurch Priory, Canterbury in 875 and it stayed under Church ownership until 1870. It was originally a moated farm and over the centuries there have been three Court Lodge farmhouses behind the barn, as well as an oast house dating from 1815. The barn itself is the oldest surviving structure. The stewards of the Priory recorded building work on the farm in great detail up to 1370; the “wheat barn” they mention is likely to be an earlier structure, with the current barn thought to have been constructed just after this period. It is tiled with a steep roof and is now weather boarded, though before around 1600 it would have been wattle. The barn is aisled with seven frames through the building held together with tie beams, arch braces and shore beams. The crown post roof is pre-1500; both the splayed table scarf joints and the shape of the jowls at the head of the main upright posts date it to the fourteenth century. The windows are probably Victorian and the huge doors at the back are also a later addition, to allow large four-wheeled wagons to enter the building when full of corn. The horse gear present at the front of building was used to operate machinery in the barn such as threshing machines and was in use until 1957.

The second speaker was Keith Adams, Chairman of the Charing Palace Project, a community initiative created to save and restore the endangered buildings in Charing’s former Archbishop’s Palace. Situated next to the church in the centre of Charing, this complex of buildings mostly dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Palace served 57 archbishops and several kings lodged there, including Henry VIII who stayed with an entourage of more than 5,800 en-route to meet Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Acquired by the King in 1545, it remained in the Royal Estate until 1629 and was leased to the Wheler family in 1651. George Wheler, nephew of Lady Joanna Thornhill, was able to buy the site in 1692 and it stayed in the family until the 1950s. In 1952 the site became a scheduled ancient monument; an improvement notice was served on Sir Granville Wheler, whereupon he sold it to the local tenant farmer. Unfortunately, the requested improvements were never made. The Great Hall is now suffering from structural damage; in danger of collapse and in need of urgent restoration, it features on Historic England’s ‘At Risk Register’. The Trust’s objective is to acquire the site and raise money from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore key parts. It would like to create holiday lets in the Archbishop’s apartments and turn The Great Hall into a community space with room for a restaurant, library and village hall.

Ellie Morris