record them, or maybe a serious drop in business. Or possibly the tanners migrated downriver to Hamptons in the parish of West Peckham – in the Hundred of Hoo – and were recorded there instead? It is hard to believe that tanning did not continue after William Kenham, in company with Brette the tanner, purchased Dyne’s Tanhousemead in 1529 (see above); and hard to believe that Thomas Robynson, Kenham’s successor, did not build Lowyns, in order to be near active tanning premises near Roughway mill. Yet no written records of tanners have been found from this period. We have to wait for the year 1564 for the tanners of Nepicar, Roughway, Winfield and Hale to reappear.
   If the omission of tanners’ fines was because there were none to record, it could have been due to a recession in trade. There is some evidence that the population of Wrotham manor declined during the first third of the sixteenth century.⁵⁵ Plagues and sweats afflicted the country on five occasions between 1499 and 1534, being particularly bad in London from 1530-34. In 1528 tenants sent a delegation to the archbishop at Knole to beg him to ask the king for a refund of the taxation of 1524 on account of their poverty.⁵⁶ They affirmed that ‘many of thaym and specially of thayr neighbours that tarryd at home lackyd both mete and money’. In 1535 there was a disastrous harvest. Tenant numbers declined in Wrotham and presumably consumer demand for leather declined as well. This may be a possible explanation for the disappearance of tanners’ fines from the records. The population began to recover in the 1540s and 50s and the reappearance of tanners’ fines from 1564 coincides with this.

Conclusions

Leather was an essential of daily life. It was strong, flexible, hard-wearing and waterproof. It was so universally in demand that we can assume that wherever there was population, pasture for animals, running water and oak bark there were likely to be tanneries. The Wrotham manor tanneries are probably typical of others in west Kent villages. They were small family-run businesses run alongside agricultural holdings of varying sizes. The smallest recorded was 5 acres, the largest 47. The tanners were of yeoman status, able to generate the capital required to run a business with a minimum 12 month turn-round of money. Fathers handed on to sons and one tannery in the manor was in the same family for 300 years.
   The tanneries were dispersed around the manor, Nepicar Street, Plaxtol Street, Basted and Roughway Street being the sites where tanning took place. The first two were dependent on springs, the last two were sited by the river and tributary streams. Roughway, with at least six tannery sites was the most active tanning area on the manor and may have been able to profit from being near Shipbourne and the Wealden butchers. Roughway and Hale also had butchers who were able to supply hides locally and