Sir Harry Vane's Fountain

By Sir Edward Harrison.

From the Plough Inn at Ivy Hatch in the parish of Ightham a way known as the Coach Road runs a little west of north to Seven Wents, where it joins the Maidstone-Sevenoaks main road under the south end of Oldbury Hill. On the west side of this way, 350 yards from the inn, stands a small house called the Pump House, a name that is much older than the existing dwelling. Half a furlong north of the Pump House, on the same side of the way, the grass verge widens into a triangular recess, some twenty-five yards long and one-third as deep, backed by a bank. The writer and other local residents remember a bricked archway in the bank giving access to a wayside spring, which had been hollowed out to form a dipping well. This spring occurs at the outcrop of the Sandgate Beds. Before main water was available the occupiers of neighbouring dwellings drew their water from the well, but the site has been used for many years as a dump for road material, and the archway is now obscured by soil and vegetation.

Evidence has recently come to light that the spring served a wider purpose than that of a water supply for the immediate locality. Among the estate maps of John Bowra is one made in 1765 of “Merryman’s Farm . . . belonging to John Children, Esqr.” which “shows the site of the Pump House and traces the course of a conduit which runs from it across the farm.”[fn1] The pipe is marked as running from the spring (D on the map) in a south-easterly direction across four fields—The Moors, Doll Field, Windmill Field and Old Mead—and thence beyond the limits of the farm. A branch pipe ran from the spring in a curving southerly course to a pump house (A). Between D and A, a little west of the line of the branch pipe, were two wells, C and B.

Points marked on the line of the main pipe are as follows:

E. “Where waste plug takes out.”

F and G (Posts). “Where pipes come.”

H. “The Cistern.”

I. “The Air pipe.”

K. “here the pipe goes a Cross”—that is, across land outside the bounds of Merryman’s Farm.

Between F and G is a point marked “for the use of Ivy Hatch street.”

[fn]1|Arch. Cant., LIII, 139.[/fn]

[fg]jpg|Sketch reduced from John Bowra’s map showing course of pipe line (for explanation see text).|Image[/fg]

[pg10]So much for John Bowra’s map. The information it gives is supplemented by a lease of the farm granted in 1778 by George Children to “Thomas Streaton of Ivy Hatch in Ightham, Blacksmith.” The lessor excepted and reserved from the letting a “piece of ground containing in breadth [blank] feet of assize . . .” through the four named fields “in which . . . is a pipe or pipes laid for the conveyance of certain springs or wells of water on Ightham Common to the seat of the Rt. Hon. William, Lord Viscount Vane, called Fair Lawn.”

This passage establishes the use of the pipe. The distance from the source of supply to the mansion house at Fair Lawn is 1 1/10 miles in a direct line and half as long again by the nearest practicable route, which had to avoid the crest of the Ivy Hatch ridge above the level of the spring. Inspection of the ground suggests that the course of the pipe was kept as high as possible in order to shorten the route.

A chance find enables a date for the making of these waterworks to be named with some confidence. After the death, in 1901, of Colonel D. W. G. James, Lord of the Manor of Ightham, numerous ancient books and loose papers were removed from the Court Lodge by a local dealer—at one shilling a barrow-load, it is said! Among them was a fragment of a draft or copy of a deed dated 1646 containing the following passage:

“All that triangular piece . . . of Waste land called Ivy Hatch Plane being parcel of the Common of Ightham, containing . . . eight acres, wherein the Fountain, wells and springs of waters are late found and made by the said Sr Henry Vane. . . .”

This triangular piece of land includes the sites of the Pump House and spring.

Sir Harry Vane bought several hundred acres of Ightham Common in 1633[fn2] and between that year and 1646 he had “found and made” his “Fountain.” Whether these expressions cover the laying of the pipe to Fair Lawn is uncertain, but the inference that all the works were done soon after Vane added Ightham Common to his estate, and while the pride of ownership was still strong, is reasonable.

The relation of a pump house to the works is obscure. Its site was behind the modern dwelling-house, a few feet above the level of the spring and off the line of the main conduit. The marking of “the Cistern” on John Bowra’s map may give the key. The spring would fail or its flow be greatly reduced in dry weather, and a storage cistern filled by pumping from a well at the pump house might be needed to ensure an adequate supply of water to Fair Lawn in all seasons.

In conclusion it may be noted that the field called The Moors adjoins Rose Wood,[fn3] Doll Field is also known as Dowles,[fn4] and [pg11]of Windmill Field, now a sand pit, the foundations of a vanished windmill, “a large levelled circular place a few feet below the surface,” are believed to have been found when the ground was dug for sand. The forge of Thomas Streaton, Blacksmith, built on a piece of manor waste that was inclosed in 1739,[fn5] may still be seen in “Ivy Hatch street.” By the inclosure the hamlet lost an actual or potential village green—nearly half an acre in extent.

[fn]2|Arch. Cant., LIII, 18.[/fn]

[fn]3|Arch. Cant., XLV, 162, and XLIX, 76, 79.[/fn]

[fn]4|Arch. Cant., XLIX, 71.[/fn]

[fn]5|Arch. Cant., XLVIII, 211.[/fn]