Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/146

108 with carving on the sides. It has been accurately engraved for the Oxford Architectural Society. Beside the remarkable font, there is a good screen, Dec., with some Perp.—The size of this church was reduced under a faculty, A.D. 1700, when the steeple and chancel were pulled down. (Hasted.) The part afterwards used as a chancel was the south aisle, where the communion table stood, separated from the nave by a screen; which derangement has been corrected only within a few years.—"Here is a market yielding forty shillings, less by five pence, and a wood of forty hogs—Ibi est mercatus de xl solidis, v denariis minus, silva xl porcorum." (D.B.) The mention of a market, especially of such value, proves that Newenden was a place of considerable importance in the reign of K. William I. The "wood of forty hogs" also appears an evidence that the manor must in those days have extended beyond the present small parish of Newenden, which is now almost entirely cleared land, and, from the nature of the soil, was perhaps less covered with wood in A.D. 1086, than the contiguous districts. Beside Newenden no other spot is named within the hundred of Selbrittenden, which now includes the adjoining, much larger, parish of Sandhurst, whereof about a tenth part, if not more, consists of woodland. A priory was founded at Losenham, then and at present the principal estate in the parish, A.D. 1241, by Sir Thomas Alcher, or Fitz-Aucher (this is Dugdale's version of the name, differing from Camden's, as given below), for Carmelite Friars (Hasted), their first establishment in England. (Lambarde.) The site was in what is now orchard, eastward from Losenham House. Portions of walls remained above ground about A.D. 1800, and in forming drains in 1843 or 1844, the foundations were cut through, and found to be three feet in thickness.

Newenden is supposed by Camden to be the successor of the Romano-British city of Andredesceaster, which, at or about A.D. 490, was razed by Ælla, the founder of the South Saxon kingdom, so completely, that he did not leave a single inhabitant alive. Henry of Huntingdon (Savile's Her. Angl. Script, post Bed. Frankfort, 1601, 312) describes this as a very strong city, "urbem munitissimam;" that the Britons had collected there as thick as bees, "quasi apes;" and that the defence was well conducted, as likewise most obstinate. Finally however the citizens, subdued by hunger, could resist no longer, when men, women, and children were slaughtered by the Saxons in revenge