the north-west angle were cut away. The lead roof of Penchester was stripped off and an attic storey was added all over the building. The battlements of the long gallery (of which I afterwards found fragments) were likewise removed and a new tile roof was put on there. A new storey was also added to the kitchen building, and the gate-house and its towers were crowned with tiled roofs. The remains of Solomon’s Tower were also roofed in a rough and ready fashion. The interior was probably little if at all changed, the panelled rooms certainly being respected. I believe that at this time Wyatt’s porch, probably damaged above by fire, received its new roof, whilst a new roof was likewise given to the building whose ground floor was the thirteenth-century kitchen. Its upper part was much cut about and patched, so that I have not yet been able to interpret it. There are the remains of a large cross-formed arrow-shoot at the top on the west side, not wholly cut away when the wall was shaped down to form a gable end. At this time too the battlements of the east tower were filled in and the whole raised and roofed over so as to give

an extra room on the top. The filled in arrow-shoots and battlements can still be traced in it.
   The house thus prepared was leased to John Best (born 1573) sometime early in the seventeenth century. He was living there in 1619 with a son aged 21 years, and he was still living there at the time of the Heralds’ Visitation of Kent in 1663-8, upwards of 90 years of age. He can hardly have been alive still in 1672, when some work must have been done at Allington, for a Kent newspaper of 1890, of which I have a cutting, records that "in one apartment on the right hand side near the gateway is—or rather was till recently—the date 1672 over the fire-place," doubtless carved on an overmantel. I suppose this to have been done by the next occupant, whose name is unknown to me. He no doubt was the master of the unfortunate young domestic servant at Allington Castle, who, in 1678, was sentenced to death for murdering her new-born infant by throwing it out of one of the upper windows.