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ABOUT fifty feet from the River Darent, and just to the
north of Eynsford Castle, stands a small, picturesque, red-tiled,
timber-framed cottage known as Little Mote or Sibell’s, the comparatively
modern representative of an ancient mansion that formerly existed on the
spot. The only remains of the old house which have survived to our day
consist of some old timbers and a chimney-stack of stone and brick on the
south side of the cottage, containing two fire-places of carved stonework on
the ground and upper floor-levels respectively. Each fire-place has a
moulded four-centred Tudor arch with moulded jambs, and the work apparently
dates either from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Time has
dealt more hardly with the upper one, which is badly chipped and knocked
about, but the moulding is of a more delicate section than that of the lower fire-place (as
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can be seen by comparing the two sections, which are
drawn to the same scale), and the spandrils are hollowed out to form a
trefoil design with small cusps. Its bad condition is no doubt owing to the
softness of the clunch or chalk of which it is built, a material admirably
adapted for carving, but not for withstanding rough usage.
Greater interest, however, attaches to the fire-place on the
ground floor, by reason of its more perfect state and the heraldic carvings
of its spandrils. It is difficult to say of what kind of stone it is
constructed, as it has been so obscured by coats of dirty brown paint, but
it appears to be some kind of limestone, probably from a local quarry. The
coat of arms carved in the spandrils is that of the Sybill
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