California Regional 'acility : - . .-. . '' . Hastings and Thanet Building Society \ 7 Mercery Lane Canterbury Kent The Board Room The Reception Office^ Foreword In these fast-moving and modern times, when most architecture is tall and angular and with few embellish- ments, it is most interesting to reflect on the past when wages were low and craftsmen had more time to indulge in their skills. In the rebuilding of the premises in Mercery Lane we have, with the assistance of our Architects, Mr. H. Campbell Ashenden, M.C., F.R.I.B.A., F.R.I.C.S., and Mr. John Clark, L.R.I. B. A., provided on the ground floor a modern office for the convenience of our members and business friends, at the same time retaining on the first floor, as far as possible, the old features of the building. In connection with the opening of the Branch, the Society is indebted to the Cathedral and City Archivist, Doctor William Urry,for the following history of Mercery Lane, where our new offices are situated. 22G8013 The New Premises of the Hastings and Thanet Building Society No. 7 Mercery Lane T, HESE PREMISES lie at the very heart of historic Canterbury. There are very few sites, even in the ancient Cathedral cities of England as a whole, where the story of a given piece of ground can be carried back to such a remote date. The ground plan of Canterbury as we know it, within the city walls, has remained unchanged for at least 800 years, and indeed there is some evidence to suggest that it had assumed its present form in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The Buttermarket may indeed be the placea civitatis mentioned in record of a grant made by King Ethelred the Unready in 1003. Mercery Lane, bearing its present title (Merceria), was in existence in the twelfth century. About the year 1150 there was an individual called Berner who was acting as Steward (senescallus, dapifer} to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury. All the greater monasteries maintained such an official, whose duty it was to protect the interests of the monks against aggressors, and generally to deal with layfolk on more equal terms. Berner senescallus acted as a principal witness to conveyances of Cathedral property, and is once mentioned as early as 1144, when the monks came to an agreement with the knight William of Mailing, otherwise of Thanington, in connection with the manor of Patching in Sussex, which was ecclesiastical property. A fellow-witness with Berner was Asketill of Ratling, whose son, Alan of Ratling, enjoyed the distinction, some years later, of excommunica- tion by Archbishop Thomas Becket. It appears (as far as can be deduced from available documents) that Berner the Steward held (about A.D. 1150) certain ground on the western side of Mercery Lane. It seems to have spanned the boundary between Nos. 6 and 7, that is to say, it covered Lefevre's display window (at the end nearest the High Street) and much of No. 7, the new premises of the Hastings and Thanet Building Society. We know several facts about the northern portion of the Berner's holding (No. 6), and it may be worth while mentioning something of its history, since it formed such a close neighbour to what is now No. 7. Berner the Steward had a wife Liveva, and the pair had more than Seven one daughter. Berner was evidently dead by 1155, when another Steward, Bartholomew Senescallus, was in office. Liveva lived a few years more, and at some point of time (before 1167) settled scattered pieces of her property in Canterbury on the nuns of Minster in Sheppey. The occasion for these gifts was the fact that one of her daughters (unnamed) had taken the veil in that religious house. The ground of Berner in Mercery Lane is not mentioned in surviving documents as transferred with the new nun, but we soon find that the Sisters at Minster are in possession of ground substantially representing No. 6, and may well guess that they acquired it at this time and for this reason. About 1180 one Arnold Chich (Chic, Chig, etc.) became tenant to the nuns. Canterbury Cathedral had been steadily acquiring the frontage and when (as we shall see) the other piece of Berner's ground, substantially No. 7, passed into the possession of the monks they now became possessors of the whole of this side of Mercery Lane, apart from No. 6, a fact which seems to have irked them. So in 1187 they came to terms with the nuns over No. 6. The ladies surrendered the ground in vico Mercerie, as the relevant charter puts it, said to be in the occupation of Arnald de Chiche, together with other property of theirs, being ground of Ingenulph the plumber, son of Norman the plumber, represented today by part of the open space at the back of Messrs. Dolcis and W. H. Smith on the line of the old Iron Bar Lane. The nuns acquired an interest, it may be remarked, in ground of Ingenulph through grant by Liveva, widow of Berner, evidently when her daughter took the veil at Minster. Arnold Chich was a leading citizen and a member of a distinguished Canterbury family which gave many Aldermen and Provosts to the medieval city. Arnold was a goldsmith and is with high probability identical with the Arnold aurifaber who in 1204 or 1205 was commissioned to make a golden goblet for King John himself. The fee was two marks, a considerable sum (perhaps 80 or 90 today it is clear that the King supplied the bullion). Next door to the holding of Arnold Chich was that of Reginald the Goldsmith, i.e. substantially No. 7. We know a good deal about the layout of twelfth-century Canterbury, much more so in fact than in the case of any other English city, since there are available some remarkable contemporary surveys. In 1162 there was a devastating fire, when Canterbury, apart from the monastic houses, was more or Eight less flattened. The city was so badly damaged that even the hard- fisted officials of King Henry II remitted some royal dues at this period. As quarrels arose when citizens started to stake out claims in the wilderness of charred timbers, the monks set to work on a survey to establish their own, and their tenants' rights. Unfortunately, since the monks are not (apparently) yet in possession of the sites of Nos. 6 or 7, these do not find a place in the survey, though on the corner of Mercery Lane we may find one Sigar son of Anser, and next door the family of Alfred de Welles, part of whose ground seems to represent the southern (i.e. towards the High Street) flank of No. 7. A list of Cathedral tenants drawn up about 1180 shows a certain Reginald the Goldsmith in occupation of ground in Mercery Lane once connected with Berner the Steward, but now in the hands of the monks. Evidently Berner the Steward, late in his life (or Liveva, his wife, after his death), has ceded the ground to the Cathedral. We know the precise frontage occupied by Reginald, and where it occurred in the lane, since definite measurements are given at a later date, as will be shown below. The northern (furthest from the High Street) boundary coincides almost exactly with the northern limit of the present No. 7. However, Reginald's frontage was narrower, leaving a few feet on the flank towards the High Street in other hands. Reginald took up the property from the monks themselves, so their grant to him must have taken place after its transfer from the family of Berner the Steward into the possession of the Cathedral. The pro- cedure common at this date would be for a grantor to hand over property to a tenant for an initial premium called the gersuma, retaining a smaller, annual, payment. In this case the annual payment (recorded in the Cathedral rent list of circa 1180) is half a mark (i.e. 6s. 8d. perhaps 20 in modern money). In the absence of the charter of grant, the gersuma is not known. Reginald the Goldsmith is more than a mere name. He had several pieces of property in and around Canterbury, some in the region of Old Ruttington Lane and Broad Street. In fact he had a house there, at the point where the lane joins Broad Street. Perhaps he let this out to tenants, or again it is not impossible that he lived there and did business in central Canterbury. There is some suggestion that even in this early period there were business men who did not live over their Nine businesses but commuted (on foot). It is certainly unlikely that a goldsmith's business was sited in Broad Street. In this age goldsmiths were becoming bankers, as well as acting as craftsman. In twelfth- century Canterbury, as much as in twentieth-century Canterbury, you expect to find banks around Mercery Lane rather than in Broad Street. Reginald must have been a man of some wealth. In 1179 he took up a stretch of 40 acres on the left of the Littlebourne Road, somewhere near the junction with Stodmarsh Road. The ground was to be held of St. Augustine's Abbey, and consent of King Henry II himself was secured for the conveyance, under terms of a special charter issued at Westminster, probably at the end of August 1179. The King had come to Canterbury on 23rd August, so perhaps consent to the arrangement had been secured on this occasion. It was indeed a famous occasion. King Louis VII of France had been childless for thirty years. At last a Dauphin was born, but years later the boy was lost while hunting, suffered exposure in the forest, and fell sick unto death. His father in desperation crossed to England in order to pray at the tomb of Blessed Thomas, whose record of cures of the sick was famous all over Europe, indeed even into the realms of the infidels. Henry II, hearing that his great rival had entered his kingdom, rode post-haste to Canterbury to meet him. It was now that Louis made his famous grant of 100 muis of French wine (a very large amount) to the monks, and gave his celebrated ruby called the Regale., which remained affixed to Becket's shrine until 1538, when Henry VIII seized the shrine, jewels and all. We can be very sure that the occupants of Mercery Lane watched both kings as they rode off together to Dover (26th August, 1179). The boy recovered and grew up to become the French King Philip Augustus who captured the great Norman frontier fortress of Chateau Gaillard from King John, resulting in the loss of Normandy away from the English Crown. In the year 1198 there was another disastrous fire at Canterbury and most, or all, of the city was again laid waste. Once more the monks decided to make a survey. This time it was carried out in very great detail, and even measurements of the different holdings were supplied. The surveyors worked across Canterbury street by street and house by house, and as a result we have a word-picture without parallel of a medieval English city. When they came to Mercery Lane the surveyors started at the Ten Buttermarket end and worked towards the High Street. They first noticed a small slaughteryard, centering on the depression in the frontage between Lefevre's window and Messrs. Walker and Harris' premises. Next in the schedule comes James of the Gate. He was a great man in Canterbury in the days of King John and Richard I, serving as Alderman of Northgate Ward, probably as Head of the Guild (perhaps we may say that today he would be Chairman of the Chamber of Trade), and as the first Mayor of Canterbury (in 1215). Before James became Mayor there were two Provosts who acted in effect as joint Mayors. The year 1215 saw the Magna Carta crisis and as the crisis died down (it had been particularly acute at Canterbury) things returned to normal, the office of Mayor disappeared, and the Provosts returned, until the Mayoralty re-emerged in 1448. James did not live in Mercery Lane, but at his stone house in Palace Street, opposite the Palace gates, whence he took his name. The actual occupant of the ground in the lane (a section of Lefevre's windows, roughly opposite the junction between Nos. 15 and 16), was a certain Hugh the Gold- smith. We know one thing about him, namely that he was not a good business man. About 1190 he married a girl named Regina de Crevecoeur, member of the Norman family who were lords of Blean manor. When he married they paid off his debts as a dowry for his bride. He died many years later, deep in debt again. Regina or her family once more paid off the debts, and at the same time financed her son, Thomas f. Hugh, for his journey to Jerusalem. Perhaps he was setting out on the Fifth Crusade (1217). A mercer named Suan succeeded Hugh as tenant. Next along the lane comes Robert, son of Richard, a wealthy citizen who was a benefactor both to the Cathedral and to St. Augustine's Abbey. After Robert comes Arnold Buche, co-tenant with a certain John, and another man, also called John. Next is Arnold Chic (more or less at No. 6) whom we have met above. He enjoys a frontage of 15 ft., as does his neighbour, Reginald the Goldsmith, strongly suggesting that an ancient holding of 30 ft. frontage has been cut into two. The present frontage of No. 7 is 21 \ ft. and the remainder, unaccounted for by Reginald's ground, is occupied according to the survey of 1 198 or soon after by 'the daughter of Alfred of Welles'. As shown above, the family had interests here in 1166. It is unlikely that she lived here Her family were probably manorial lords (at Well at Ickham) and no doubt a citizen-tenant actually dwelt Eleven i ur ^? IonnrnKtiAi^r uinu t \A -odfb mil mnw. vttinani &n. f \_ v A ' x \Ttr IcwtTiSti fw *'1 *Mr *1 & m tmttifmtnr 4htin4ttu ^ tti Ttftttnotiit! k I Site (approx.) of No. 7 Mercery Lane, c. 1205. Grant by Thomas, son his shop in Mercery Lane, previously held by his father, Reginald. The Monks and is now being returned to them. On this site and on adjoining Merceria (middle of the Secc vcevw cm? ri wtim . m mipttnU wrM