Aspects of Kentish Local History

Stonnar" was a cause of complaint by him and Peter Vanderflate to the Justices of Sandwich. A jury was empanelled to enquire thereof. Crispe during this period was distressed for Ship money on land in Stonar and Heneborg (Little Joy)¹ "but pays before its driven." The Stonar land had been assessed at £6 towards providing an 800 ton ship to cost £6000. These squabbles arose from the owner's claim "that Stonnar is out of ye Liberty of ye Ports."
   Harris in his History of Kent (1719) quotes from a MS. diary of Dr. Robert Plot, dated about 1693, which says "that the Ruins of the Town of Stonar did remain till the Memory of Man and took up many Acres of Ground; but were lately removed to render the Ground fit for Tillage, and so much of them as could not be put to any Use composed that Bank which remains between the Two Houses; whereof that House next the present creek [Stonar House] borders upon the old Town; the other which is more remote, being of a later erection; but both are called Stonar."
   The Rev. John Lewis in 1736 (2) wrote that "the Town stood on a rising Ground......... Some of the Foundations were remaining not many Years ago, and the Traces are still visible among the Corn. At present there is only one Farm-house where Stonore anciently stood, about twenty roods from which, near the Road, on a little rising Ground,  stood the Church, of which there are now no Remains left above Ground." Seymour records

in 1776 that Viscount Dudley and Ward rebuilt the farm-house in (sic) stone.

THE CHURCH

   St. Augustine's Abbey was granted by Canute the estates of the dissolved nunnery of Minster in 1027, and from about 1087 Stonar, as one of the Abbey's possessions, begins to appear in the Charters (A.C., LIV, 48 and 49). We must suppose that the place possessed a church in pre-Conquest times as "S Nicholas at Stanores" appears in the eleventh century document copied into the White Book of St. Augustine of the year 1200. The site is shown on the thirteenth century map reproduced in the Rolls edition of the History.
   In 1242 Abbot Robert freed the church of the small pension of 2s. up to then due to the Abbey.³ In 1280-1 (A.C., LIV, 51) men of Sandwich assaulted the Abbot's officials, burnt his mills and did much damage to his coast defences, and, to aggravate the offences, pursued the men to Stonar church and besieged them in it almost a day.⁴  In
   ¹  cf. William Boys's map in Pt. I, Arch. Cant., LIII, p. 69.
   ²  The History of the Isle of Thanet, 2nd ed., pp. 191 and 201.
   ³  Gordon Ward, M.D., F.S.A. "The Lists of Saxon Churches in the Domesday Monachorum and White Book of St. Augustine," Arch. Cant., XLV (1937), p. 86.
   ⁴  Calendar of Patent Rolls, 9 Ed. I, Vols. 1272-81.