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Stonnar" was a cause of complaint by him and
Peter Vanderflate to the Justices of Sandwich. A jury was empanelled to
enquire thereof. Crispe during this period was distressed for Ship money
on land in Stonar and Heneborg (Little Joy)1
"but pays before its driven." The Stonar land had been
assessed at £6 towards providing an 800 ton ship to cost £6000. These
squabbles arose from the owner's claim "that Stonnar is out of ye
Liberty of ye Ports."
Harris in his History of Kent (1719) quotes from a
MS. diary of Dr. Robert Plot, dated about 1693, which says "that
the Ruins of the Town of Stonar did remain till the Memory of Man and
took up many Acres of Ground; but were lately removed to render the
Ground fit for Tillage, and so much of them as could not be put to any
Use composed that Bank which remains between the Two Houses; whereof
that House next the present creek [Stonar House] borders upon the old
Town; the other which is more remote, being of a later erection; but
both are called Stonar."
The Rev. John Lewis in 1736 (2) wrote that "the Town
stood on a rising Ground......... Some of the Foundations were remaining
not many Years ago, and the Traces are still visible among the Corn. At
present there is only one Farm-house where Stonore anciently
stood, about twenty roods from which, near the Road, on a little rising
Ground, stood the Church, of which there are now no Remains left |
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above Ground." Seymour records in 1776 that
Viscount Dudley and Ward rebuilt the farm-house in (sic) stone.
THE CHURCH
St. Augustine's Abbey was granted by Canute the estates of
the dissolved nunnery of Minster in 1027, and from about 1087 Stonar, as
one of the Abbey's possessions, begins to appear in the Charters (A.C.,
LIV, 48 and 49). We must suppose that the place possessed a church in
pre-Conquest times as "S Nicholas at Stanores" appears in the
eleventh century document copied into the White Book of St. Augustine
of the year 1200. The site is shown on the thirteenth century map
reproduced in the Rolls edition of the History.
In 1242 Abbot Robert freed the church of the small pension
of 2s. up to then due to the Abbey.3 In
1280-1 (A.C., LIV, 51) men of Sandwich assaulted the Abbot's
officials, burnt his mills and did much damage to his coast defences,
and, to aggravate the offences, pursued the men to Stonar church and
besieged them in it almost a day.4
In
1 cf. William Boys's map in
Pt. I, Arch. Cant., LIII, p. 69.
2 The History of the Isle of Tanet,
2nd ed., pp. 191 and 201.
3 Gordon Ward, M.D., F.S.A. "The
Lists of Saxon Churches in the Domesday Monachorum and White Book of St.
Augustine," Arch. Cant., XLV (1937), p. 86.
4 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 9 Ed.
I, Vols. 1272-81. |