however, the main interest lies in the facts on which the action was brought.
   The site of the manorial buildings of Scotgrove is in an area of coppice woodland in a northern extremity of Ash which has long been known as Chapel Wood.¹ The site is rectangular in shape and embanked, with an outer ditch. The eastern boundary lies along the Ash road, where modern development precludes full investigation; the other three boundaries can still largely be made out. Another road or track, now represented by a footpath, passed through the site itself, running northwards from the hamlet of West Yoke into Hartley parish. To the east of this track and about eighty feet southwards from the earthwork is the site of a medieval tile-kiln.
   At some time in the first half of the thirteenth century the lands of Scotgrove came into the possession of Mabel de Torpel and were held by her in gavelkind. The manor of Scotgrove began its life when she granted, or purported to grant, to William de Faukeham an estate in frank fee, to be held by the service of a fourth part of a knight’s fee and at a yearly rent of 27 shillings. As Mabel held her manor of Ash by no more than a fourth part of a knight’s fee, this was for her a not unprofitable transaction. That there was doubt at the time as to the legality of her action is suggested by the fact that a confirmation of the grant was subsequently obtained

from King Henry III; he, it so happened, was a good friend of the de Faukeham family. This royal blessing was not, however, to prevent the effect of Mabel’s grant from becoming, in the following century, the principal issue in the case of Gatewyk v. Gatewyk.²
   The de Faukehams, first lords of Scotgrove, were descended from one Godfrey the Steward, otherwise Godfrey of Thamington, who at the tine of Domesday and of the Domesday Monachorum was a feudal tenant of the Archbishop of Canterbury.³  The family was established in Fawkham by the reign of Henry I and were almost certainly responsible for the replacement of the Saxon church there by its Norman successor, which yet remains. Probably then, and in any case by the thirteenth century, their manor house stood a stone’s throw to the east of the church. Scotgrove lay cheek by jowl with the lands of the manor of Fawkham and as the de Faukehams were a relatively numerous family, it may well be that a house was built at Scotgrove for one of their number.
   The first recorded William de Faukeham, who would have been Mabel’s grantee, died in or before the year 1250 and was succeeded by his son of the same name. The younger William was a man of some distinction. He