Daily Express  20.11.50
MARQUIS SELLS UP
LOVELIEST VILLAGE   
Express Staff Reporter
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.For a little over £3,000, the 28 thatched 
cottages of Patrixblourne-
 “ loveliest village in Kent"
  ---have been sold. by the 
  Marqu=is Conyngham. ' 
 And. his 40-room mansion,
built in the reign of Charles IL.
has been pulled down.  
, The 60-year-old Insh marquis
 has done this, hls sub-agent, M1’-
Charles Apps said yesterday
“because the low rents-—-whlch are
still the sarn-e as pre-war-~—do not oav for repalrs."
Rents for the cottages up to
300 years old-average 5s. a week-
Some are 3s. 9d.
  Neatly all the 118 villages once
worked at the mansion - Bifrons
which stands in a 230-acre park.
last week they saw workmen demolish the last stone. 
Said Mr Apps: No one would
 buy 1t. During the war the Forces
 used it, Butnow _no one ‘wants it.
The council conswtered it for a
hostell, but it was unsuitable
“The rates were ternbly high and
 and the only answer was to pull it down.
      No shops 
 The marquis lives at Siane Castle.
  Co. Meath.
 Nineteen cottages were bought by
Mr. Edwin Gardener. a Canterbury
auctioneer, for £2100. Seven were
sold to a Canterbury solicitor, Mr
Wilfred Mowll. coroner for East
Kent..
The village has no snaps, no
public houses, no streets lights
and -one pillar box. ~
The only building not sold is the
12th century church of St. Mary.
The vicar, the Rev. W. H. Gregory,
said: Villagers are really upset
 that the rnodern century has 
caught up wlth them at last.