Wallenburg in his 1930’s book ,‘Place names of Kent’ gives a derivation from the O.E: oet oesa waelum, translating as: ‘at the god’s deep pools’. He writes of "pools at Easole which were very likely regarded as holy in pre-Christian times" although there is, as yet, no evidence of such pools. Both Wallenburg and the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names give an alternative meaning derived from the Old English walu, meaning variously: a weal, mark of a blow, a ridge of earth or stone, or a bank. (waelum, walum is the dative of this word) The site of Eswalt is on a spur of land with Beachams (Bedeshams )Wood behind it, the Doomesday Book mentions woods behind the manor, which has earth works possibly dating from Saxon times.

in the 1930’s, Dr. Hardman, an eminent local antiquarian, expressed the opinion that the name derived from Oestwalum or Eswalum: oest or es = east and walum, weald, walt, wald = wood or wooded area, meaning the east wood. Nearby areas of the parish such as Holt Street: holt=wood; Acholt: ac=oak + holt; and Oxenden, modern Oxney: ox= cattle + den = clearing, all have names indicating they were heavily wooded at this time.

In the early 820’s Beornwulf, King of Mercia (overlord of the Kingdom of Kent) settled a dispute between Cwoenthrith (or Selethryth), daughter of Cenwulf, late King of Mercia and Abbess of Minster Abbey on the Isle of Thanet and Wulfred, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over ownership of various manors and estates including the manor and estate of Eswalt (Easole). The land had previously been granted to the Archbishops of Canterbury by Earl Aldberht and his sister but later claimed by the Abbess of Minster. The dispute was resolved with Wulfred being allowed to keep Eswalt as part of the settlement.

Adehold holds of the bishop Eswalt. It was taxed at three sulungs *. The arable land is...... In demesne there is one plough (carucate) and six villeins, two borderers having three ploughs (carucates). There are two serfs and a small woodland to provide fencing (ad clausuram). In the time of

King Edward the Confessor it was worth nine pounds, now fifteen. Alnod Cilt held it of King Edward.

Ralf de Curbespine holds Essewelle of the Bishop. It is assessed at 3 sulungs. There is land for [-]. On the demesne are 3 ploughs and 1 villein with 7 bordars have half a plough. There is 1 serf. It is worth £6. Molleve held it of King Edward.

In Eastry Hundred………….Aethelwold held EASOLE from the Bishop. It answers for 3 sulungs *. Land for... In lordship 1 plough. 6 villagers with 2 smallholders have 3 ploughs. 2 slaves; a little wood for fencing. Value before 1066 £9; now £15. Young Alnoth held it from King Edward. Ralph of Courbepine holds EASOLE from the bishop. It answers for 3 sulungs. Land for... In lordship 3 ploughs. 1 villager with 7 smallholders have ½ plough. 1 slave. Value £6. Molleva held it from King Edward.

* a sulung was between 160 to 200 acres in extent.

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Stephen, King of England to the Archbishop of the Kentish people, Justices, Sheriffs, Barons and to all his ministers and faithful, French and English, of Kent greetings.

Know that I have conceded and confirmed in perpetual alms to God and to the Church of St. Albans and the monks serving God therein those donations which Hugo de Albineo made to them in alms for the salvation of his soul of the manor of Estwala. Wherefore I will and firmly decree the aforesaid church and monks may hold this manor well and in peace and freely and quietly and honourably in wood and plain and meadows and pastures and waters and ponds and ways and paths and in all places and with all other things and liberties and quittances and free customs which to the same appertain with which the aforesaid Hugo or any ancestor of his at anytime better or more freely held and just as himself gave and conceded it to them in alms and just as King Henry conceded it to them and confirmed it by his charter. By these witnesses: Matilda, Queen; and Robert de Vere and William de Ipra and Adam de Belun.

At Westminster.

This small square of parchment with its pendent fragment of a blood red seal is a fit memento of very far off times. It has two points which make it particularly interesting to men of Kent. Firstly, it relates to Kentish land and has remained amongst the title deeds of a Kentish estate for nearly 800 years. Secondly, it was witnessed by a very great Kentish baron, Robert de Ver, whose name as witness comes next to that of Stephen’s Queen, a fitting position for a very loyal servant. Moreover, the charter itself is addressed to the great men of Kent and to no others. By this charter Stephen King of England informs those men of Kent whom it most concerned that he confirms a grant made by Nigel de Albineo-a friend of King Henry I- to the Abbey of St. Alban. This grant conveyed to the Abbey the manor of Eswala which is in the fact, although the charter says nothing of this, in the parish of Nonnington. On the back of the charter it is written ESTWELLA.

In Domesday Book it is written ESWALT and in the Domesday Monachorum (which is an excellent authority) we find the two-word form EAST WEALD. There have been many other forms of the name and it is very unfortunate that A Foremost Authority on Kentish Place Names has confused it with a quite different place. Hasted refers to "ESOLE usually called ISILL-STREET" and it now appears as EASOLE STREET on the map. The manor house of Stephen’s time has long since gone, and two or three successive houses have been built on or near its old site but the manor continued until recent times. It belonged to St. Alban’s until the Dissolution and then it passed through various hands. The old charter passed also from one owner to another and is at St. Alban’s Court to-day. We know, because it tells us so, that this charter was sealed at Westminster but it is not dated and

Stephen is often at Westminster so that we must look further to discover the day on which it was issued. Our only assistance in this search is derived from the names of the witnesses and these are only four in number, namely Queen Matilda and Robert de Ver, William de Ipres and Adam de Belun. It is a curious business, this dating of old charters which seldom thought it worth while to date themselves. In this case it proceeds somewhat as follows-

This charter of King Stephen, therefore it is of some date during his reign, that is 1135 to 1154.

But Queen Matilda is a witness and she died in 1152, so the date is between 1135-1152.

The presence of Robert de Ver still further narrows the period for he is succeeded in his Kentish estates by Gilbert de Gand not later than 1147 and we do not in fact meet with Robert’s name on charters after 1142.Adam de Belum suggests an early date for he only appears in 1141 and in an undated which is probably of the same year. We have thus a strong suggestion of a date of 1141-1142. This was a period of anarchy. Stephen was actually a prisoner from February to November 1141. Is the date of the charter before or after this imprisonment? Clearly it is after, for William de Ipres was one of those who rescued him having come over from France with Stephen’s Queen for that purpose. Although he became a great man in England and in Kent (he founded Boxley Abbey) he was new to this country in 1141. Now we know that the date of our charter must have been soon after Stephen’s release on the 1st of November, 1141. Thereafter he went off to the Eastern counties. Before that he was at Canterbury where his second coronation took place, purging him of the disgrace of captivity and renewing his kingly authority. This also accords well with the period of the Westminster Council just as a favour done to the Abbey of St. Alban would be fitting enough in a King bound to pass thereby on his journey northward and likely to need hospitality.

Is it too much to suggest that some messenger from St. Alban’s, perhaps the Abbot in person, was at Westminster when the Council met and there prayed the King for this charter ?. Thus we can date this very Kentish charter with high probability and, although it bears no date upon it, can say that it was granted on the seventh day of December in the year 1141. It would be given, no doubt, to the Abbot or one of his officers and he in turn would send it down into Kent. It was no empty formality. It was not intended as a mere compliment. In those days Sheriffs, good and bad alike, were very wont to ask for the authority by which a man (or an Abbey) held its lands and there was need to be ready and convincing with the reply. Otherwise cattle might be driven off, goods impounded and the whole estate seized to the use of whatever Sovereign or noble might be in the ascendant.

Our last clue is not in the name of the witnesses, but in their fewness. Why was the King of England so ill attended?. Because at the time the great men of the realm where either against him or were unwilling to show their hands.

Margaret daughter of William of Nonington holds 50 acres from the land of Alfred and she and Adam Herlewyne hold 25 acres. From these 75 acres they provide 1 boon-worker, 2 carts and perform as much as pertains to ½ Shireman together with customs of ploughing and reaping. They also hold 3 acres 3 roods of inland for which they owe no service.

Hamo at Mede holds 75 acres for which he provides 1 boon-worker and 2 carts and performs as much as pertains to ½ Shireman with customs of ploughing and reaping. He also holds 3 acres 3 roods of inland for which he owes no service. From the tenements of Burnvale, Thomas of Bonnington holds 45 acres, Gilbert son of Thomas and Peter son of Alan hold 5 acres, the heirs of Robert Shameles hold 5 acres; the heirs of Thomas of Ackholt hold 18 acres; John Storm holds 1 ½ acres; Thomas {? The] Chaplain holds 11 acres; William of Nonington 47 acres; Geoffrey of Word {Word =Worth?} holds 3 ½ acres Stephen Goldsmith holds 1 ½ acres; John of Messeberghe (Marshborough ?) and Thomas of Chillenden holds 12 acres; and Emma Shameles holds 4 ½ acres.

And there remains 2 acres for which they all answer. For these 157 ½ acres the provide 2 boon-workers and 2 carters undertake 1 averagium and make 1 seam of malt.

This hamlet (Eswelle or later Esole) contains 307 ½ acres of gavel-land, and 7 ½ acres of inland. The gavel-land provides 4 boon-workers, 6 carters, 1 averagium and 1 seam of malt. And the hamlet contains 1 Shireland.

Akholte 116 acres +

South Nonynton 97 acres +.(later Bedeshams or Beachams ?, later White House Farm).

Old pytte ‘somewhere between North Nonynton Farm and road.

North Nonynton 355 acres +

Kethampton 237 acres of the manor of Ratling +.

1615. Mannor of Essole alias St. Albones Courte, 30 acres land, 8 acres mead, 60 acres pasture, 6 acres wood in Nonnyngton held of the Kings Majesty as of his castle of Dover by knights service... half fee worth £6-6-9d.

Col. Francis Hammond ,born late 1580’s, was a commander of foot in the first Scottish expedition of 1640 under the Earl of Northumberland. He also fought in the ‘German War’ , the Thirty Years War 1618-1648, where he was reputed to have fought 14 single combats, his picture and that of his brother Robert, below, are on display in the Beaney Institute in Canterbury.

Col. Robert Hammond, born late 1580’s, commanded a body of foot raised in favour of Charles I in the Kentish Insurrection of 1648, he later fled to Ireland where he fought on and was finally shot on Cromwells instructions.

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St. Alban’s Court antiently called, at first Eswalt, and afterwards, Esole, is a manor situated in the valley, north-eastward from the Church, in the borough of its own name, which with another estate near it called Bedesham, (all that remains of the name of which is a grove behind St. Alban’s house, called Beauchamp Wood, in which are many foundations of buildings, being now esteemed as part of the manor of St. Alban’s Court) was in the time of the Conqueror, part of the possessions of Odo, Bishop of Baieux, and they are accordingly both thus entered in the record of Domesday).

On the bishop of Baieux’s disgrace, in the year 1084, it came, with the rest of his estates, into the hands of the Crown, whence the manor of Esole, alias St. Alban’s, seems to have been granted to William de Albineto, or Albini, surnamed Pincerna, who had followed the Conqueror from Normandy hither, whose son, of the same name, Earl of Albermarle, gave it, by the name of the manor of Eswelle, to the Abbot of St. Alban’s, in Hertfordshire; which gift was confirmed by King Stephen; and from thence it gained the name of St. Alban’s. And anno 7 King Edward I. (1279) the Abbot of St. Alban’s claimed and was allowed, before the justices itinerant, free warren and other liberties, within the manor. After which it continued in the possession of the abbey until the 30th year (1539) of King Henry VIII. when the Abbot and convent, with the King’s consent, sold it, with its lands, appurtenances, and tithes belonging to it, as well of corn, grain, hay, and otherwise, then in the occupation of John Hammond, to Sir Christopher Hales, Master of the Rolls. Which alienation having been made in consequence of the license by the King’s word only, was confirmed by act of the next year, specially for that purpose. On whose death in the 33rd year of that reign (1542) his three daughters became his coheirs, of whom Elizabeth, then married to John Stocker, and Margaret, then unmarried, joined in the sale of their shares in it, to Alexander Culpeper, who had married Mary, the other daughter, and he quickly afterwards alienated the whole of it to his eldest brother Sir Thomas Culpeper, of Bedgbury, who in the 2nd and 3rd of Philip and Mary (1555-6), sold it to Thomas Hammond, gent (sold for two thousand marks, a mark was worth two- thirds of a pound or 13/8d ). Who at that time resided here, being the direct descendent of John Hamon, or Hammond, who was resident here in King Henry the VIII th’s. Time, as tenant of the Abbot and convent of St. Alban’s, who died in 1525, and was buried in this church, as were his several descendants afterwards, in whom it continued down to William Hammond, esq., of St. Alban’s who married Charlotte, eldest daughter of Dr. William Egerton, Prebendary of Canterbury, by whom he left William, of whom hereafter; Anthony, Rector of Ivychurch, and Vicar of Limne Lympe), and three daughters, Anna-Maria; Charlotte, married to Thomas Watkinson Payler, esq., of Ilden (near Bridge), and Catherine. William Hammond, esq., the eldest son, married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Osmund Beauvoir, D. D. by whom he has issue two sons and five daughters, viz. William Osmund, Maximilian Dudley Diggs; Elizabeth Mary, Mary Elizabeth, Charlotte, Julia Jemima, and Jemima Julia. He bears for his arms, Argent, on a chevron, sable, between three ogreffe, each charged with a martlet of the feld, three escallop-shells, or, all within the bordure engrailed, vert; which arms were granted by Barker, Garter, to Thomas Hamon, gent., of Nonington, ano 1548, and confirmed by Cooke, Clarencieux, and they were certified to the College of Arms by William Hammond, esq., last mentioned, his descendent, in 1779, and he is the present owner of this manor and seat at which he resides. A court baron is held for this manor, which extends over some part of the Borough of Wingmere, in Eleham (elham), and over a few acres of land in Barham.

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Although a manor house has been recorded on the estate since Norman times or earlier no evidence was found of such occupation on the site.

Recent renovation work by the present owner has allowed extensive archaeological investigation by the Dover Archaeological Group which produced evidence of a previous late-medieval house on the site, probably a Wealden type hall house, rebuilt in brick in the 1550’s with various modifications and extensions. The bricks were almost certainly made nearby in the adjacent Beachams brick field as transport over any distance was prohibitively expensive. In 1663 William Hammond of St. Alban’s Court leased land to James Nash, yeoman, the lease specifically excluding ‘the liber to make and burn bricks in the ffield called Beechams’. St. Alban’s Court house was then still the 1550’s brick built house, the lease is contemporary to the addition of the facade to its north-eastern front in the 1660’s and indicates that bricks were needed at the time. The brick field appears to have been sited some two hundred yards or so to the south of the old mansion at the western edge of Beechams Wood where there is a noticeable depression in the ground, until recently much deeper, fragments of brick, many blackened, are to be found in the mole hills on the slope beside it. Everything required is there or nearby: clay and fuel from Beechams Wood, to make the bricks and adjoining roads and tracks and roads to move the finished bricks. The 1871 census lists Mr. Maxted as a builder and brick-maker with premises in Esole Street employing 16 men and boys. Locally made bricks would appear to have used, at least in part, for the construction of the new St. Alban’s Court mansion, giving much needed work to local people in a time of agricultural depression and high unemployment.

A new mansion was designed in the 1870’s for William Oxenden Hammond by the well know Victorian architect George Devey, who also designed nine or so other buildings to house estate workers. After the demolition of its facade the existing house apparently continued in use as servants accommodation and laundry. In more recent times it accommodated the principle and others on the staff of Nonington College.

Excavations during the building of the new house revealed ancient bones which were reburied under a stone pyramid near by. These bones are now known to have come from a Saxon burial ground presently being investigated and are believed to be the remains of Eswalt’s early Saxon owners and their followers.). The original discovery gave rise to a local tale that the bones came from the burial ground of a convent which stood in the nearby ‘Ruins’ obviously arising from the fact that the estate had belonged to a convent in the past. Students at the College in the 1970’s claimed to have seen the ghost of a nun, sometimes headless, in the multi-storey hostel accommodation adjacent to the burial ground.

He remembers the building of the present mansion house of St. Albans Court by William Oxenden Hammond and did some of the smiths work there. Adcock of Dover was the builder. When the foundations were got out some bones were dug up and these were reburied and a pyramid of stones erected over them (which is still there).

W. O. Hammond was a notable figure of very upright carriage (portraits of him and some of his ancestors are presently on show at the Beaney Institute in Canterbury). He was a bachelor, and the story went in the village that he had been crossed in love. He was fond of horses and kept a carriage horse and three hunters. These horses were all shot when they became old and buried in ‘the Ruins’ (the local name for the area between Beachams Lane and St Albans Court). A stone tablet in the new stable yard over the archway bore the words (as near as he can remember):

"My horse, my love, my horse"

[ This is a quotation from Shakespeare, first part of Henry IV, Act II, Scene 3, and actually runs:

"What is it that carries me?".

Lady Percy " What is it carries you away?"

Hotspur, " Why, my horse, my love, my horse".]

The 1997 during a watching brief at St. Alban’s Court the Thanet Trust for Archaeology discoverd possible Late Bronze Age hut circles and enclosure during the construction of an access road which is now the main entrance to the property. They found a hut circle settlement, enclosure, ditch and hearth all dating from 1000 BC-701 BC, a pottery vessel sherd and flint pot boilers (flints heated in the fire until extremely hot and then dropped into a vessel of liquid to heat it, the pottery could not survive direct flame) were also dated to this period.

TR25 SE162. Nat. grid ref. no:TR26225268. Possible Late Bronze Age hut circles and enclosure found during watching brief at St. Alban’s Court, Nonington. Hut circle settlement, enclosure, ditch and hearth all 1000 BC-701 BC, also found and of the same period; pottery vessel and flint pot boiler.

SSMR No:TR25 SE169. Nat. grid ref. no:TR262526.

In October 1875 during preparations to plant trees W. O. Hammond, the estates owner, discovered fifteen skeletons near St. Alban’s Court house. The graves were at a shallow depth and of east to west alignment. A number of finds were recovered, including a blade of about 8’’ in length and a 3’’ in diameter riveted bronze ring around the fore-arm of one of the skeletons. Unfortunately, the location of these grave goods is now unknown. The skeletons were later reburied under a stone pyramid to the North East of where they were discovered with the following inscribed on the western face of the pyramid:-