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Archaeologia Cantiana -  Vol. 1  1858  page 162

Observations on the supposed site of Ancient Roman Maidstone.
 By Rev Beale Poste

meantime it may be observed that there is a similar case in another of the minor manors of Maidstone, that of the "Manor of East Lane," which takes its name from the street in which it happens to be situated. The fact of this Manor of Wyke not being in the Borough of Wyke is so far material, as it does not interfere with the location which has been here otherwise assigned to the Roman "station" and "vicus," or first settlement,
at Maidstone; and here therefore is a point much connected with our subject. As to what is known of it: it was, then, a manorial estate in Maidstone parish, held under the archbishops as a portion of the principal manor which they possessed in the place. A somewhat high and strongly-built wall still remaining in Union Street, in the lower part of it, and near where it makes its junction with Week Street, is believed to have been the garden-wall of the manor-house. It is just above the hardware-shop of Mr. Gilbert, and another house occupied also as a shop at the corner of the street. The Mansion House itself, the property of John C. Stephens, Esq., still stands in .Week Street, but is divided into two or three dwelling-houses, and its ancient character has been entirely removed by modern frontages. The Fishers, a family well known in Maidstone, held the estate at least for a hundred years, and it is not accurately known how much longer. Their name appears in the manor survey of 1511, before referred to, as then holding it; where the lands of William Fisher are charged with the manorial rent of 46s. and 2d., as under the division of Wyke Street, and not as in the borough of Wyke—which is the entry affording the proof to which allusion has before been made. It so happens that among the manuscripts of the British Museum, No. 2192-4 of the Harleian Collection, an ancient rental is preserved, not dated, but apparently of about the time of Elizabeth, bearing the title of  A Survey

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