Parish vestries were the predecessors of parish councils but had much more authority over parish affairs and finances. Nonington Parish Council held its inaugural meeting on 4th December, 1894.At a Nonington Vestry meeting in early 1863 Mr William Oxenden Hammond of St. Alban’s Court in the parish of Nonington requested: “to divert a certain footpath […]
Category: Eswalt or St Albans Court
Bee boles and bee keeping at Old St. Alban’s Court in Nonington by Peter Hobbs, the present owner.
Bee boles, the recesses in stone or brick walls used to house the skeps of coiled straw or wicker in which most bee keepers kept their bees before the arrival of moveable frame hives in 1862, are not particularly numerous in Kent. The Kent Archaeological Society has over time assiduously published all the major information […]
Eswalt, later St. Alban’s Court: before the Domesday Survey of 1086
Eswalt and the neighbouring manor of Essewelle had once been part of of the manor of Oesewalum, also Oeswalum and Oseuualun, which had belonged to Christ Church Cathedral Priory in Canterbury and then came into the possession of the Crown, probably during the latter part of the 10th century. The Domesday Survey of 1086 records that during the reign […]
A PULHAM GARDEN REDISCOVERED IN NONINGTON, KENT by Peter Hobbs.
An edited version of this article by Peter Hobbs, the present owner of Old St. Alban’s Court, was previously published in Archaeologia Cantiana Vol: 138-pages 291-299. Since 1519, the Hammond family had lived at what appears to have always been known locally as St Albans, substantially adding to and changing the original fourteenth century hall […]