Tunstall

A sunny day had brought out the traffic as we trundled down through Moor Street. At Hartlip Hill and turned right and, passing through the village and under the M2 viaduct, we climbed towards Stockbury. We paused briefly at Cowstead, the vantage point for our favourite view of the Medway. The sight of Halstow Creek reminded me of Lower Halstow Church and its stolen brass chandelier. I wondered whether it had been recovered.

We pushed on for Stockbury. Jackdaws were hopping about on the battlements of the tower as we approached the church. From here, it is said one can see the twin mediaeval towers of Reculver Church beyond Herne Bay. Not that Kemsley and I could see them. So we concluded that we had to be up where the jackdaws were! We tried the church door but, as expected, it was closed; the building seemed safe against intruders. The church has not however always been so secure. The church guide notes that lot of restoration work was carried out in the middle of the 19th century after a fire and much havoc caused through theft and vandalism. Clearly nothing’s changed in over hundred years!

We dropped down into the Stockbury Valley and I then took the road, via Deans Bottom, to Bredgar. We cycled on past the pond in the centre of the village and crossed over the M2. Between Bredgar and Tunstall, at Grove End Farm, we came across a somewhat neglected thatched barn next to an eight bay cart shed. As Mr R.W. Brunskill notes in his book "Traditional Farm buildings of Britain", hardly a single traditional farm building type can nowadays satisfactorily serve its original purpose. As regards barns, he states that the barn designed for hand flail threshing has been obsolete for nearly 200 years; the barn for machine threshing, whether designed for power by wind, water or horses, has been obsolete for nearly 100 years; the barn providing for threshing by steam or oil engines has been obsolete for practically 50 years. Mr Brunskill notes that all across the country, farm buildings are being abandoned, allowed to fall into ruin or demolished because they are obsolete in terms of present day farming methods. Old Kentish barns (generally wooden framed and thatch roofed) would appear to be no exception to this trend.

We pushed on for Tunstall, the edge of which brought us to a row of thatched cottages and the village school with its flint walls, diamond paned windows and peg tiled roof. Its date of 1846 reminded us of a school much nearer home built in the same year but now, alas gone. Just before the church we came to Tunstall House, a delightful red brick mid 17th century building. A buttressed wall surrounds both the house and an adjacent yard which contains a pond, a barn with dovecote above, a small stone horse mount of three steps dated 1821 and a building containing a coach house, stables and grooms quarters. It would appear that both the horses and the groom’s family entered the latter building through the same external door, the living room leading directly off the stables. What is fascinating about this arrangement is that it resembles that of a certain type of mediaeval farmhouse called a long house, which contained a single entrance used by both man and beast. From the living room a primitive wooden staircase led to what we  assumed were bedrooms above the stables.

We walked down to Tunstall church, the door to which has twin openings cut into it at eye level. They are closed internally by means of wooden shutters and appear to have been intended as a means of ascertaining who was on the outside of the door. They may have been constructed at a time (Napoleonic Wars?) when an invasion from the Continent was feared. Inside the church we noticed four hatchments - coats of arms on a diamond shaped frame - hanging in the South aisle. These would have been hung tor some months in front of the house of the dead person to whom the arms related and then brought into the church. Also in the South aisle was what has been described as “a dignified and pompous effigy” of Sir Edward Hales who died in 1654. Somewhat unusual for a date as late as this the dead man is portrayed reclining ponderously in full armour.

Upon leaving the church we retraced our tracks out of the village and then on to Oad Street via Hearts Delight. In the Street can be found the Plough and Harrow, Vinson Farmhouse (an “Historic Building of Kent") and the Wesleyan Chapel. The latter is a simple, attractive building of 1858 we leaned our bikes against a side wall and, standing on the crossbars, peered in through a window. We counted 40 seats in the chapel. It would be natural to assume that very few were sat upon these days. But this is not so. For I remember reading not so long ago about a Family Church and Sunday School party at which 25 people sat down to a “scrumptious tea” at the chapel followed by games. But today the building was empty and the old harmonium sat quietly in the corner; which was probably just as well for I do not know what the Oad Street Methodists would have thought of two strange faces looking down on them!