This Parish is situated in the chalk hill eastward from Ash and
northward from Wrotham.
There are no records concerning Ridley in Saxon Times. No
doubt some Jutish or Saxon thane carved out his manor of Ridley and, in
course of time built a church near his dwelling. A hamlet grew up around
that church to house his immediate relatives and such others as worked
upon his manorial lands.
The Manor of Ridley covered the whole of the ecclesiastical
parish and lay entirely within its bounds. It was a completely self
contained unit of secular and ecclesiastical control and therefore
differed from those numerous parishes that are made up of several manors
or parts of manors.
The earliest reference we have to Ridley is in the Domesday
Book from which it seems that a Saxon named Siward owned it in about
1050 A.D. whilst Adam, son of Hubert was in possession at the time of
Domesday (about 1066) when it was called Redlege and that he was a
tenant of the Bishop of Bayeux who was a half brother to the Conqueror,
and also the "wicked uncle" of the period. There were 6
"villeins" on the Manor and 5 "borders" (names which
can be interpreted as tied-tenants and labourers) whilst, in addition to
those 11 people there were 5 slaves. Domesday Book also tells us that
Richard de Tonbridge, (another half brother of the Conqueror) held one
"dena silva" (a wood) and half an acre of meadow, whilst the 5
slaves belonged to Richard.
The next reference is in 1198, when Gilo de Badlesmere
makes over to the Prior of St Gregory’s in Canterbury an annual
payment of two "seams" of oats from Riddelee, so that the
Prior may pray for the souls of his parents and ancestors and also
celebrate every anniversary of the death of Gilo’s father.
The overlordship of Ridley manor seems to have passed from
the Badlesmere family to that of the de Leybourne in about 1210, and
Roger de Leybourne then made a grant of Ridley to Bartholomew de Watten
to hold it of the Manor of Leybourne.
In 1253 Bartholomew de Watten, of that great family whose
seat at a later date was Addington Park, owned Retleghe, and had to pay
one "fee" for knighting the son of King Henry III.
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In 1348 an assessment was made upon
all the land holders who held of the sovereign on the occasion of the
knighting of the Black Prince, and then appears the name of the
Augustine Waley who has to pay 40 shillings for his holding of one
knight’s Fee in Redlighe, which had belonged to Bartholomew de
Watten. This Augustine Waley was descended from Henry Wallis (or de
Galeis) a leading merchant in the City of London and Lord Mayor
several times during the reign of the great Edward 1st. Augustine died
in 1349, the year of the Black Death, possessing the manor of Ridley,
for which he had obtained charter of "free warren" the year
before his death.
The Black Death 1348-49 caused the greatest upheaval that
Britain has ever experienced in its long history, and here we may
pause to speculate upon what Ridley looked like during the 300 years
following the Conquest. It has been indicated that a series of nobles
possessed the overlordship, whilst lesser feudal lords held the manor
under them, the latest of these being Augustine Wallis, who probably
himself died of the Plague. They would not have resided regularly at
Ridley, but there would have been a Lord’s Manor House there,
probably where Ridley Court now stands, and their retainers and
labourers would have lived in lath and plaster dwellings clustered,
for mutual protection, round the Church. Thence they proceeded to
their daily toil in the tillage of the soil of their lord during such
days of the week as they were pledged to spend in his service, whilst
they would have eaten and drunk in the hall of the Ridley Court of
those times. They would have had their own small plots from which to
produce the necessities of clothing etc., whilst their women folk
would have spent their days labouring in the field and weaving
lindsey-wolsey.
When the Black Death came, all would have altered. The
large establishments of the nobles were broken up, acute labour
shortage ensued, people in their ignorance of hygiene believed that
supernatural powers were cursing their hearths, and would have burnt
down their crazy dwellings whilst the distraught survivors would have
made a clean start in undefiled ground. We know this happened at
Horsmonden, East Peckham and many other places, so it may well have
been that the people of Ridley, 600 years |