MRP: Hardres Court
Hardres Court
Location and character
In 1800 Hardres Court was as a deserted building located on high ground away from any other inhabitation. The parish of Upper Hardres in which it stood was isolated, with a poor soil. Large areas of woodland remained. Just sixty years later, in1861, the remains of Hardres Court were gone, and the landscape had been transformed through more intensive farming. The oak woods had been replaced by cornfields and hopgardens.
The parish is a very lonely and unfrequented place, situated on high ground among the hills, having large tracts of woodland on each side of it. The Stonestreet way runs along the valley, near the western boundary of it; the soil of it is very poor, consisting mostly of either chalk, or a hungry red earth, covered with sharp slint stones. Hardres-court stands on high ground, a most retired and forlorn situation, and for some years past an almost deserted habitation; near it is the church and parsonage. There is no village, but at some distance further, near Stelling and the Minnis, there is a hamlet of cottages called Bossingham.[1]
Cornfields and hop-gardens, unrelieved by a single tree, occupy the place of ancient woods of oak and other timber, once the most remarkable in their growth, and celebrated for their beauty in East Kent. The ancient manor-house with its quaint gardens and plantations, have given place to a farm-house with its homely accomplishments.[2]
Family background
Dorothy K. Gardiner noted that:
"The name of Sir Richard Hardres (a son of Sir Thomas Hardres of Hardres Court and Eleanor, daughter of Henry Thoresby, Master in Chancery) is outstanding in the history of the Great Rebellion on Kent; in 1643 it appears in the list of the Committee of Kent, although Sir Richard afterwards “stood for the King” and besieged Dover Castle at the head of 2000 Royalists.
For seven centuries there were Hardres at Hardres Court. To one of Sir Richard’s ancestors, Sir Thomas Hardres, King Henry VIII gave his dagger, the handle encrusted with jasper; he gave also the gates of Boulogne, taken when the town was captured in 1544 and they stood at Hardres Court, built into a wall at the garden entrance, until broken up in the nineteenth century for the weight of iron nails and studs. Now the family has come to an end, and the last Hardres sleeps with the first in the old church on the high downs close to their home.
Sir Richard Hardres married Ann, daughter of Sir Peter Godfrey, who also figures in these pages"[3]
Richard Hardres was knighted in XXXX and raised to baronet in 1642. Brothers-in-law of Sir Richard Hardres included Peter Thoresby, D.D., prebendary of Canterbury, and Sir Thomas Thoresby, King's serjeant-at-law[4]
Correspondence
"HONORED COSIN,
I am much indebted to you for lettinge your man bringe ouer the hawke unto mee, whome we got to call her loose but were like not to see her againe that night, for the hawke is not in case to flie, neither will shee be in his keepinge, wherefore if it please you to leave her with mee fowre or five days my man shall make her comming, and then I will give you as much money for her as any man, soe with my service remembred unto yourselfe and your vertuous mother I rest
Your assured lovinge kinsman
To command
RI: HARDRES"[5]
- ↑ Edward Hasted, 'Parishes: Upper Hardres', The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: vol 9 (1800), pp. 304-309. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63568 Date accessed: 26 September 2011
- ↑ Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. 4 (London, 1861), p. 43
- ↑ Gardiner, Dorothy, The Oxinden letters 1607-1642. Being the correspondence of Henry Oxinden of Barham and his circle (London, 1933), p. ??
- ↑ Edward Hasted, 'Parishes: Upper Hardres', The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: vol 9 (1800), pp. 304-309. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63568 Date accessed: 26 September 2011
- ↑ BL, MS. XXXXXX, Letter from Sir Richard Hardres to Richard Oxinden (of Barham), Hardres Court, October 3rd, 1622
