I have been researching people’s family history for nigh on 20 years now and as well as it being a job I absolutely love, it has given me the chance to work for, and if I’m lucky meet, some really delightful people along the way. Creating a “research holiday” is a growing facet of my work, one where clients visiting the UK can—after the “groundwork” is in place—actually visit the parishes that their ancestors lived in and, with some luck, perhaps walk in their footsteps. I’ve happily taken on the role of taxi and tour guide, as visitors to this country are often rather wary of our tight country lanes and our habit of driving on the left.
Thus, last summer, as I once again found myself exploring Sissinghurst gardens with a guest (a place, that you CAN’T visit too often I hasten to add,) prior to a stroll around Biddenden, Cranbrook and Wadhurst, I realized just how often my American clients wanted to see those particular areas. Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, have all visited and I have taken them to just about every nook and cranny that the County can offer, but Americans are again and again drawn to the villages of south-west Kent. I think of them as the “Dens”: Biddenden, Benenden, Tenterden, Rolvenden, Frittenden…, the list goes on (anciently the “denes,” or clearings in the great oak forest of the Weald, used by swineherds to fatten their hogs with acorns). They form a pretty circle around the larger town of Cranbrook, whose parish church is known as the cathedral of the Weald and understandably so given its impressive size in comparison to the modest proportions of Cranbrook itself. It was largely paid for by the prosperous weaving industry that flourished there and I wonder if therein lies a clue to at least part of the migration.
In the early 14th century, skilled Flemish weavers were encouraged to come to England to ply their trade rather than have the English wool sent to Europe as had been the custom. They settled in Cranbrook and surrounding “Dens” and the hugely successful broadloom and weaving industry that Cranbrook became known for was born. Perhaps the later influx of Huguenots to the area bringing their strong Protestantism with them as well as their own weaving skills created an ideal climate for independent thinking and faith and also created great wealth for some of its inhabitants. This, coupled with the thriving Tudor iron industry centred just to the west along the Sussex frontier, gave the Kentish Weald an entrepreneurial hub, unusual in what was a largely agrarian, landowner/tenant society and, no doubt helped to swell the population of those ancient clearings-cum-villages that now found themselves becoming an engine of the English woollen trade.
There has been much written about Cranbrook being a centre for independent worship and indeed many of the families I have researched left to pursue the Puritan beliefs that made the Church of England such an uncomfortable fit for them. Bethersden, a village midway between Cranbrook and Ashford, became particularly notorious as a hotbed of Puritanism, but the religious belief was certainly not the only spur that drove people to leave. I have no one answer as yet as to why these villages had such a strong migratory habit except perhaps once one member of a family took the first step it was easier for others to follow. The Barnes and Stedman families, for example, trickled away from Tenterden and the surrounding villages over a span of nearly 200 years.
This in some small way is what I want to find out from the various stories that my clients can tell and hopefully, connections will be made between them that increases everyone’s knowledge. The years after Elizabeth 1sts death did see quite a shift in religious emphasis. The later Stuarts were far more tolerant of Catholicism which had been brought down in England by Henry 8th‘s urgent pursuit of a legitimate son, in fact it is said that Charles 2nd converted to Catholicism on his death bed, but before the restoration of the monarchy things swung the other way with Cromwell and his Puritan beliefs, so it is easy to see that in the space of 50 years people of every religious persuasion and economic situation might have reason to think a boat trip advisable.
One of the great joys of family history research is being able to place a “person of interest” directly into the thick of English history as its tides ebbed and flowed. Who they were, when and where they lived, what they did and why, from the cramped tenements of London to the postcard villages of the Weald…these are the enduring sources of fascination for my clients and for me a source of satisfaction as I try to aid them on their journey of discovery.
Now I will let my clients tell their stories.
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