Gentleman's Magazine 1802 - Northborn

By John Mercer

NB: [Anything in [italic] has been added by myself.]

{1802, Part II., pp. 1097, 1098.}

Northborn is situated about three miles from Deal, and four from Sandwich, and was once the ornament of that part of Kent.
    The mansion-house, gardens, and pleasure grounds, containing about thirty acres, were all encompassed with a wall, which is still extant, through which you formerly entered by massy iron gates. The gardens rose gradually into divers terraces, which had been laid out with great art and expense for the cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and were watered by fountains and a beautiful stream or rivulet running through the lower part of the same.
    The house appears to have been a large stately building. It was pulled down in 1750 and the materials sold; the walls are all that now remain of it, forming a very picturesque ruin on the declivity of the vale . . . .

At this place, about the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, Eadbald, King of Kent, had his palace, the remains  of which Leland mentions in his "Itinerary," made in the time of Henry VIII.; and that, not many years before he made his perambulation, a wall was broken down, by which a little cell or chamber was discovered, where were found the fragmentary remains of two children, who had been immured in that gloomy repository for many preceding ages. They were said to have been two of the sisters, or daughters, of Eadbald, and to have been starved to death for some end now unknown. There are remains of a place at the bottom of the garden called the Purgatory, where we are informed this horrible deed was perpetrated, and that this place was used solely for a place of penitence and punishment. It is walled round with exceeding high walls, surrounded with water, to prevent its victims from escaping; but whether we may place this to the credit of truth, faithfully handed down to us by our ancestors to this distance of time, or to the luxuriant imagination of some winter's evening relater of legendary tales, I will not pretend to decide.

Eadbald in 618 gave it to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, in which monastery his father Ethelbert lay, and where he ordered himself to be buried; in the convent's hands it continued at the time of the taking the Survey of Domesday in the fifteenth year of the Conqueror's reign.
    Salamon de Ripple, a monk of this monastery, about 10 King Edward III. made some considerable improvements and additions to this place, and in particular new-built the chapel from the foundation, of the remains of which you herewith have a view.

It continued part of the possessions of the monastery till its final dissolution in 30 King Henry VIII., when it reverted to the Crown, in which it continued but a short time; for the king in his thirty-first year granted it to Archbishop Cranmer in exchange, and it remained part of the possessions of the See of Canterbury till Archbishop Parker, in 3 Queen Elizabeth, reconveyed it to the Crown in exchange; and the queen almost immediately afterwards granted it to Edward Saunders, gentleman, her foster-brother, and where he afterwards resided, having married Anne, daughter and co-heir of Francis, son of Milo Pendrath, of Northborn, by Elizabeth, one of the heirs of Thomas Sewin, and nurse to Queen Elizabeth. On his death, about the middle of that reign, the possession of it again reverted to the Crown, where it remained till King James I., soon after his accession, granted it in fee to Sir Edwin Sandys, on whom he conferred the honour of knighthood for his firm attachment to him at that time. He rebuilt this mansion, and kept his shrievalty at it. He died about 1629, and was buried in a vault he made for himself and posterity in Northborn Church, over which is erected a very grand and noble monument; a description of which, and of several pieces of coin found among the ruins at different times, I will give you in another letter. On Sir Edwin Sandys's death his eldest son, we find, succeeded to this estate. On his death soon afterwards it came to his next brother, Colonel Edwin Sandys, the noted rebel colonel under Oliver Cromwell, [Edwin Sandys died before Oliver Cromwell came to prominence] well known for his sacrilegious depredations and insolent cruelties to the Royalists; he died at Northborn House of the wound he had received in 1651 at the battle of Worcester [He was actually mortally wounded at the Battle of Powick Bridge, near Worcester, in September 1642. As far as I know he did not return to Northbourne]. Upon his decease the estate descended to his grandson, Sir Richard Sandys, who left four daughters, to whom it was entailed by his will. The whole estate about eight years ago was offered for sale in different lots, when the site of the late mansion-house, gardens, and Long Lane farm adjoining were purchased by William Wyborn, in whose possession it still remains . . . .