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Rights, ‘Riot’ and Ritual: The Knole Park Access Dispute, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1883–5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

David Killingray
David Killingray
Affiliation:
Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths' College, University of London, London, UK.
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Extract

On two cool mid-summer nights in 1884 the small west Kent market town of Sevenoaks was disturbed by what one of the County newspapers, echoing the Chief Constable's words, called ‘riotous and tumultuous proceedings’. During the evening of Thursday 18th June a large crowd of townspeople broke down obstacles blocking the entrance to Knole Park and ceremoniously and noisily dumped them in front of the main door of Lord Sackville's large Tudor mansion. On the next night an even larger crowd, reported as numbering 1,500 or more, also invaded the park and besieged the house. A dispute over rights to use a bridle way across the Park which had dragged on for many months united many of the people of Sevenoaks and neighbouring villages against what was seen as the obstructive, illegal and high-handed behaviour of a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat. Attempts by the Local Board to find a resolution to the dispute had been rebuffed by Sackville and in the end the people of Sevenoaks took the law into their own hands.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 63 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

* An earlier version of this paper was read to the Victorian and Edwardian seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, in February 1993. I am grateful for comments and ideas provided on that occasion and in particular the advice of Dr. Peter Mandler of London Guildhall University.

1. Kent Messenger, 28th June 1884, p. 5.

2. A similar and prominent case more than one-hundred years earlier, is that of Richmond Park in Surrey: see Thompson, E.P., Customs in Common (London 1991), pp. 111–14Google Scholar; Morris, J.N., ‘A disappearing crowd? Collective action in late nineteenth century Croydon’, Southern History, 11 (1989), 90–113.Google Scholar

3. Thompson, E.P., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’. Past and Present, 50 (1971), 76–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see further Thompson, , ‘The moral economy reviewed’, in Customs in Common, pp. 259–351Google Scholar’. Riot and popular disturbances are discussed by Stevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1870, (London 1979), pp. 5–11.Google Scholar

4. ‘It is generally accepted that the owners of large territories have some public responsibilities, and that an absolute selfish enjoyment of the parks or their moors to the entire exclusion of their less fortunate neighbours is to be condemned.’ Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser (hereafter Sevenoaks Chronicle), 28th March 1884, p. 4, in a leader linking Bryce's attempt to legislate for the protection of access to Scottish mountains to the dispute over the Knole bridle path.

5. Sackville-West, Vita, Pepita (London, 1937; 1961 edn)., pp. 205–7.Google ScholarSevenoaks Chronicle, 18th February 1910, p. 8.

6. Sackville-West, Vita, Knole and the Sackvilles, (London 1922), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

7. The condition of the workers employed in building the tunnel through the Downs is given a page in Capital by that assiduous collator of industrial evils, Karl Marx; see vol. 1. Penguin ed. (Harmondsworth 1990), p. 818.

8. E.g. when the Clerks of the Justices petitioned in April 1874 for the Sevenoaks fair to be abolished, their plea was accompanied by the consent of Baron Sackville-West, ‘Lord of the Manor of Sevenoaks’. Public Record Office, Kew. H045/36927.

9. MacMaster, Neil, ‘The Battle for Mousehold Heath 1857–1884: –Popular politics– and the Victorian Public Park’, Past and Present, 127 (05 1990), 117–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Quoted by Course, E., ‘The evolution of the railway network of south-eastern England’. (PhD thesis, University of London, 1958), p. 202.Google Scholar

11. Fun, 12th Sept. 1868. On the increase of day visitors to Sevenoaks following the opening of the Darent valley railway line see Sevenoaks Express, 1st September 1863, p. 2 (reference provided by Kate Milman); also Sevenoaks Chronicle, 18th May 1883, p. 5.

12. Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (CKS). Sackville Ms. U269 E.19 Knole Visitor's Book. I owe this reference to Dr. Peter Mandler.

13. World, 4th November 1874, p. 8.

14. Wiliams, William H., The Commons, Open Spaces and Footpath Preservation Society, 1865–1965. (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Thornton, Neil P., ‘The Taming of London's Commons’, (PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1988)Google Scholar. A copy is in the Guildhall Library, London.

15. The Times, 4th July 1876, p. 10b.

16. Mortimer Sackville-West, 1820–88; younger son of the 5th Earl de la Ware; captain Grenadier Guards; married his second wife in 1873, created Lord Sackville, 1876. White, Geoffrey H., The Complete Peerage … (London, 1949), vol. XIGoogle Scholar; Phillips, Charles J., History of the Sackville Family, 2 vols. (London, 1927).Google Scholar For the Chancery dispute see vol. 2, ch. XXI. Bateman, John, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland. (London, 4th ed., 1884)Google Scholar, records the Sackville property in Kent as 1,960 acres with an annual value of £3,450. Phillips, in his family history (vol. 2, pp. 320–2), records that in 1873 Sackville came into 8,400 acres with an annual rental of £11,918. Sackville took his seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative.

17. Brady, John H., The Visitor's Guide to Knole House … (Sevenoaks, 1839).Google Scholar The popularisation of aristocratic homes was well established by the mid-nineteenth century; see Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, (London 1963), pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

18. ‘Cid’, Guide to Sevenoaks and the Neighbourhood (Sevenoaks, 1864), p. 42.Google Scholar

19. Kelly's Directory for Kent, 1878, p. 1629, states that ‘the house was formerly open to the public on certain days, but is now entirely closed’.

20. Sackville-West, , Pepita, p. 158.Google Scholar

21. Phillips, , History of the Sackville Family, 2, 318–19.Google Scholar

22. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 9th November 1883, p. 5. Sackville had recently refused to lend a portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson to the town of Lichfield for the centenary commemoration of the death of the great lexicographer.

23 . By R. V. East Mark (1848), 11 Q.B. 877, 882, it was held that 50 years uninterrupted public use of a private road on an inclosure established a public right of way. See Hunter, Robert, The Preservation of Open Spaces and of Footpaths. A practical treatise on the law of the subject, (2nd. ed., London, 1902), p. 324.Google Scholar Sir Robert Hunter was for some time honorary solicitor to the CPS. See also Lefevre, Shaw, Commons, Forests and Footpaths (2nd. ed., London 1910).Google Scholar

24. Maidstone and Kentish Journal, 19th June 1884, p. 3.

25. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 21st March 1884, p. 3.

26. Sevenoaks Library D38, Knole; and CKS. Sackville Ms. U269 E456, ‘Knole Park Dispute, 1884’. The protest meeting was reported in the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 20th June 1884, p. 6; Sevenoaks Courier, 24th June 1884, p. 1; Sevenoaks Express, 24th June 1884, pp. 1 & 2; Kent Messenger, 28th June 1884, p. 5; Kentish Gazette, 24th June 1884, p. 6; Sussex Express and Kent Mail, 21st June 1884, p. 6; Kent and Sussex Courier, 20th June 1884, p. 8; The Echo, 19th June 1884, p. 7; Daily Telegraph, 19th June 1884, p. 5.

27. German was born near Preston in 1820, where his family had flax mills, and died in Sevenoaks, October 1901. See obituaries in the Preston Guardian, 2nd November 1901, p. 8, and Sevenoaks Chronicle, 1st November 1901, p. 5. See also Hardwick, Charles, History of the Borough of Preston and its Environs, in the County of Lancaster, (Preston, 1857) p. 491Google Scholar; Hewitson, Arthur, A History of Preston (Preston 1883), pp. 140–7, 311Google Scholar; Morgan, Henry N. B., ‘Social and Political Leadership in Preston 1820–60’, (M.Litt. thesis, Lancaster University, 1980), pp. 188–9, 241, 262, 272–3, 322–4Google Scholar; Dunlop, John, The Pleasant Town of Sevenoaks, (Sevenoaks, 1964), p. 171Google Scholar; and Sevenoaks Library Local History Collection, B667, German.

28. Kent and Sussex Courier, 20th June 1888, p. 8.

29. The Farmers’ Alliance, founded in 1879 as ‘an association which should represent the tenant farmer's interests from a tenant farmer's standpoint’, was avowedly political and active in the 1880s. Albert Bath farmed Colgate's Farm, at Halstead. On the Alliance see McQuiston, Julian R., ‘Tenant Rights: Farmer against landlord in Victorian England, 1847–1883’, Agricultural History, XLVII, 2 (1973), 110ff.Google Scholar

30. South Eastern Gazette, 23rd June 1884, p. 6.

31. See the illustrations in Penny Pictorial News, 28th June 1884, p. 5.

32. For patriotism as an oppositional weapon see Cunningham, H., ‘The language of patriotism 1750–1914’, History Workshop, 12 (1981), 8–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Evening News, 9th July 1884, p. 1, and Sevenoaks Chronicle, 18th July 1884, p. 8.

34. PRO. H045/9645/A36132. Ruxton to Under Sec. of State, Home Department, 30th June 1884. Captain John Henry Ruxton, 1818–97, was a landowner and JP from Brenchley. He became Chief Constable when the County Constabulary was formed in 1857 and remained in post until 1894.

35. Ibid. Ruxton to Under Secretary of State, Home Department, 30th June 1884.

36. PRO. H045/9645/A36132. Ruxton to Under-Secretary of State, Home Department, 30th June 1884.

37. See South Eastern Gazette, 23rd June 1884, p. 6; The Echo, 20th June 1884, p. 3; Penny Pictorial News, 28th June 1884, p. 7. Two water colours, painted by a daughter or niece of the Rector of Sevenoaks (the Tory Tractarian Thomas Samuel Curteis), depict the crowd demonstrating in the Park. The scrap book containing the paintings, along with a large scale map of the town, were deposited in Sevenoaks Library in 1978 by the author, and both have been misplaced! See Dunlop, , Pleasant Town of Sevenoaks, p. 177.Google Scholar

38. See Bushaway, B., By Rite: Custom, ceremony and community in England 1700–1880 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; also Charlesworth, Andrew, ‘An agenda for historical studies of rural protest in Britain 1750–1850’, Rural History, 2, 2 (1991), 236–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who says that ‘the whole issue of men dressing up as women in English riots is a major historical lacuna’. See further Howkins, Alun and Merricks, Linda, ‘“We be Black as Hell”: ritual, disguise and rebellion’, Rural History, 4, 1 (1993), 41–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. For example, Thomas Shewen, an ironmonger, was a founder member of the United Town and Trade Improvement Society, established in December 1863; Sevenoaks Express, 23rd December 1863, p. 2. Recent discussion of the ‘face in the crowd’ must start with Rude, George, The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; see also Holton, R.J., ‘The crowd in history: Some problems of theory and method’, Social History, 3, 2 (1978), 219–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. See Conley, Carolyn A., The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (Oxford, 1991), pp. 38–40.Google Scholar

41. South Eastern Gazette, 23rd June 1884, p. 3.

42. In 1884 the Kent County Constabulary numbered c.330 men; there were 14 boroughs in the County with their own police forces.

43. See Conley, , The Unwritten Law, pp. 35–7.Google Scholar

44. Before the Local Government Act, 1888, established the county councils, Kent had the semblance of central county government, with a committee system, established by the General Sessions Act, 1814; this gave thejustices power to levy rates and regulate County expenditure. See Moylan, P. A., The Form and Reform of County Government Kent 1889–1914, (Leicester, 1976), ch. 2.Google Scholar

45. CKS. Q/GB. 139. General Sessions Papers. Report of the Chief Constable, 26th June 1884. Maidstone and Kentish Journal, 26th June 1884, p. 3.

46. PRO. H045/9465/A36132.

47. Tunbridge Wells Advertiser, 27th June 1884, p. 6.

48. CKS. U269 E456. Sackville Ms. ‘Knole Park Dispute, 1884’. German to Sackville, private, 29th June 1884, German to Meynall & Pemberton, 3rd July 1884.

49. The correspondence, in part, is printed in the Evening News, 8th August 1884, p. 1, and the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 15th August 1884, p. 8.

50. CKS. Q/GB. 139. General Sessions Papers, 26th June 1884.

51. PRO. H045/9465/A36132. Sackville to Harcourt, dd. Knole, 29th June 1884. CKS. U269 E456. Sackville Ms. ‘Knole Park Dispute 1884’. Meynell and Pemberton, Whitehall Place WC1, to Harcourt, 27th June 1884, and reply Lusington to Sackville, 1 st July 1884. Sackville wrote to the Home Office through two solicitors, from London on 27th June and from Tunbridge Wells on 29th June; both letters are different, the latter being printed in the Evening News, 9th July 1884, p. 1. On the margin of the draft of the London solicitors' letter is the instruction: ‘do not send newspaper reports as they put a wrong complexion upon the behaviour of the crowd at the house-the 90 policemen seem enough to corroborate the letter’.

52. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 3rd July 1885, p. 5. PRO. RG11/907. Census Enumerator's Returns, Sevenoaks, 1881. Hetherington, Keith, ‘Some prominent Kent brewers: Part 2’, Bygone Kent, 7, 9 (1986), 529–31.Google Scholar Thomas Durrant became manager of the Holmesdale Brewery and nearly 40 years later served as chairman of the Sevenoaks UDC.

53. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 5th June 1885, p. 8. The Local Board rejected this suggestion.

54. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 22nd August 1884, p. 5.

55. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 21st November 1884, p. 5.

56. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 30th January 1885, p. 5.

57. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 7th November 1884, p. 5.

58. The Times, 30th June 1885, p. 3e.

59. I have been unable to locate any papers relating to the case at King's Bench in PRO. Chancery Lane, London. J54. See report in Sevenoaks Chronicle, 3rd July 1885, p. 5.

60. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 10th July 1885, p. 8.

61. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 10th July 1885, p. 8.

62. Phillips, , History of the Sackville Family, 2, 321.Google Scholar

63. Sevenoaks Chronicle, 20th June 1884, p. 5.

64. Kentish Gazette, 24th June 1884, p. 6; Echo, 19th June 1884, p. 7.

65. Thompson, , ‘Moral Economy’, p. 78.Google Scholar In light of Thompson's ‘Moral Economy Reviewed’, especially p. 338 and note 2, is it right to place an access dispute in the context of the ‘moral economy’? I think so, in that access to Knole park was not merely for personal leisure. To many people it clearly represented an economic asset: a short route for tradesmen; an attraction to visitors and day-trippers and thus a commercial benefit to the town; and, for many who had chosen to live in Sevenoaks the park was a quantifiable consideration in that market choice.