Publication Review

These publications contain text from printed histories from 1631 onwards, giving available information in a handy form. Thus we know of the large estates and history of the families that owned them: the various manors on these estates, the majority of which can still be traced even if now only a humble farmstead. Details are also given of the churches and special monuments therein, but nothing about the ordinary people nor how they lived and worked, nor the land uses, crops grown and other ordinary things that are of interest to us nowadays. Some information is given on the lost parish of Maplescombe, now mainly in Kingsdown parish, and the ruins of its church, and also of the lost parish of Lullingstane which was joined with the parish of Lullingstone in 1412, when only two families were living in Lullingstane and the church had decayed. No trace of Lullingstane church now remains.

Bernard Barber
Adapted from the review in J. Kent History for March, 1994 p.19