History of Bridge Subject: History of Bridge Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:21:45 +0100 From: "David Millyard" To: "Maurice M Raraty" Dear Maurice I started this last week but didn't get very far. Seeing you again prompted me again, but still not to great effect! Thank you for showing me your draft. Sorry to be so long replying. Also forgive me if I seem to chunter on in a "stream of consciousness" kind of way. First, there's the point about the use of the Roman road. I don't think the Anglo-Saxons (Jutes or whatever) were much into roads. Unlike the Romans, an occupying force whose armies went on foot or horseback along engineered roads, the AS invaders came up the rivers. Hence the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries along the Nailbourne valley (Howletts, Aerodrome Road Bekesbourne, etc as David Gilmour told us in his Hist Soc talk). I guess that the Roman roads became overgrown. The country over the Barham downs may also have been densely Wooded at that time and unattractive for regular living. There developed isolated communities along the valleys - the pattern in this part of Kent where, as you say, there are typically no ?nuclear villages with a sring of farms on either side of a village street, as there are in, say, the Midlands. Land ownership (or ?tribal boundaries) determined the parish boundaries. At some time between the 7th and llth centuries churches were built, probably attached to the principal settlement in the land-owning or tribal area. One of the most interesting things about Bridge is the name itself and the fact that it became the name of the Hundred, presumably during the Anglo-Saxon period although a place of this name does not appear in domesday. All the other villages do appear, though with the common name "boume" variously spelled. This must imply that the river was the most significant geographical feature and that the bridge was a rare and significant structure. As Hasted says it was also the name of the Deanery, the grouping of ecclesiastical parishes, only later divided into West Bridge and East Bridge (still surviving) - but that may follow the Hundred designation. As to the river: I'm fairly sure that it always ran through Bridge. Hasted, at the end of the 18th century, thinks of it as the Lesser Stour, (2nd ed. vol IX p. 328, re Bishopsbourne: "...from the bourn or stream which rises in it, being the head of the river, called the Lesser Stour..." and on p.329 he refers to the Nailbourn. Ths Andrews and Duly map of 1769 shows "Stourhead" in Bishopsbourne and annotates the stream above Bishopsbourne: "under the earth and only appears at flood". The idea that it's the Nailboume above the Well springs is, I think, no earlier than the mid 20th century. (I also think it would have been daft for the owner of Bourne Park. 7 in the mid 19C, to have constructed a great lake, if it was going to dry up every year). And there's Schellink's comment in the 16C about trout at Bridge place etc etc. If one thinks of the surviving old (medieval) buildings of Bridge, apart from the church: aren't they all pubs(inns) and the forge? You mention the village centre farm. Is Great Pett fannhouse old or of medieval origin as well? Why are the fanns and the ‘bottom’ called Pett? David