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This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
A group shot of some figures I finished in January, 2012. What you see are some Grenadier lizardmen, Minifigs kobolds, Otherworld bugbears, Otherworld minotaur, Minifigs Iron Maiden, Grenadier wight, and Wizards of the Coast dragon.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
When I said on my uploads that getting into Tilmanstone was a bugbear, how then to describe my frustration about St Anthony, as this is a church I see each time we travel up or down the Alkham valley to Folkestone.
St Anthony sits on a bluff overlooking the village and the main road, and so seems impressively tall. But up close, one finds the tower to appear short and squat.
I had driven over from Tilmanstone, I had decided to give Eythorne a miss as I really wanted to make sure I got to Alkham and the next church on the list, Acrise, before the day faded and I would lose the chance for another year.
Parking in the village is problematic, so I leave the car opposite the village hall beside the cricket pitch, which now looks like it would be perfect for a few overs. How different from the late winter, when the Drellingore was in full flood and the pitch was under a good foot of water, and houses down the hill had water bubbling up between the plants in their gardens borders.
And looking at the Drellingore itself, reveals it to be the dried up bed it always was, with just the occasional pool of still wet mud showing where once the torrent flowed.
It is quite a steep climb back to the main road and then along to the old village pub, The Marquess of Granby, now sadly rebranded as a gastropub and called simply "The Marquess".
Up beside the pub, past a pretty row of cottages and into the churchyard. My, I was puffing well, but after stopping to take a shot of the outside of the church, I walk to the porch to find both the outer and inner doors open, and the interior glowing with sunlight refracted by Victorian stained glass.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Picturesquely situated on a quiet bluff high above the main road, the simple flint exterior of Alkham church hides a remarkable surprise. From the south the building looks little different to many others in the region, but inside it immediately presents its trump card - a north aisle/chapel built in the thirteenth century which contains the finest blank wall arcading in any Kent church. This should be compared with the contemporary chancel arcading at Cooling and Woodchurch - in each designed to emphasise the importance of the (recently rebuilt) chancel. Here it served an altogether different purpose, competing with the nearby commandery of the Knights Hospitallers at Swingfield. At the west end of the nave, filling the tower arch, is a rather heavy but fine, wooden nineteenth century screen. The east window contains some fine nineteenth century glass. West tower, nave, chancel, north aisle, south porch
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Alkham
ALKHAM is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Dover.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Anthony the Martyr, is a handsome building, consisting of three isles and two chancels, having a tower steeple, with a low pointed turret on it, in which hang three bells. The north isle is shut out by boarding from the rest of the church, and made no use of at present, to which the school now kept in the chancel might be removed, and have no kind of communication with that part of the church appropriated for divine service, which would prevent that unseemly and indecent resort which it is at present subject to. In the chancel are several memorials for the Slaters, lessees of the parsonage; and on the south side, against the wall, is an antient tomb of Bethersden marble.
The church of Alkham, with the chapel of Mauregge, or Capell as it is now called, belonging to it, was given by Hamon de Crevequer to the abbot and convent of St. Radigund, together with the advowson of it, to hold in free, pure, and perpetual alms. It was appropriated to that abbey about the 43d year of king Henry III. anno 1258, and was afterwards, anno 8 Richard II. valued among the temporalities of the abbey at fourteen pounds. In which state this church and advowson remained till the dissolution of the abbey, which happened in the 27th year of king Henry VIII. when it was suppressed by the act of that year, as being under the clear yearly value of two hundred pounds, and their lands and possessions given to the king, who granted the scite of it, with the whole of its possessions, that year, to archbishop Cranmer, in exchange for other lands, who in the same year exchanged them back again with the king, being enabled so to do by an act then specially passed for that purpose; but in the deed of exchange, among other exceptions, was that of all churches and advowsons of vicarages; by virtue of which, the appropriation of the church of Alkham, together with the advowson of the vicarage, remained part of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, as they do at this time, his grace the archbishop of Canterbury being now entitled to them.
The vicarage of Alkham, with the chapel of Ferne, alias Capell, annexed to it, is valued in the king's books at eleven pounds, and the yearly tenths at Il.2s. per annum. (fn. 4) It is now of the clear yearly certified value of 53l. 9s. 6d. In 1588 here were communicants eighty; in 1640 it was valued at sixty pounds. The vicar of it is inducted into the vicarage of Alkham, with the chapel of Capell le Ferne, alias St.Mary le Merge, annexed to it. There are three acres of glebe land belonging to the vicarage.
The great tithes of Evering ward, in this parish and Swingfield ward, part of the parsonage of Alkham, are held of the archbishop for three lives, at the yearly rent of 1l. 6s. 8d. and the parsonage for twenty-one years, at the yearly rent of twelve pounds.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
I went ice-skating today for the first time in too many years for my
liking. The lack of teeth on the skates threw me off for a bit, but I
adapted quite quickly. My one bugbear was the number of tiny kids
blazing around with no regard for who may or may not be about to run
over them.
Acrylics. April 2
2008
The Last Leaf
--------------------------
I am in Autumn now
With the dread of Winter's chill before me
And the sparkle of a green Spring-time
And golden glow of Summer fading fast.
Twinkling stars of leaves sprinkled my tree,
A countless wealth of vigorous life
Immeasurably numerous, for who
Would count the leaves
When they are many and our years are few?
Juicy with sap, its smooth and supple trunk
Swayed in every passing breeze
Pliant with joy and hope.
Now it has hardened:
Now the knots appear, the crevices and cracks,
The leathery skin of bark is weathered now,
Rough and toughened
By many seasons' growth and life's assaults.
Battered by storms and violence,
Drenched in rain and tears,
Overwhelmed by floods and misery,
Drowned in sorrow, petrified by fears,
Parched by neglect and drought,
Scorched by searing heat and passions,
Nibbled by parasites,
Eaten away by doubts and crawling things,
Hardbitten by bugs and bugbears,
Bored by wormholes, bored by tedium,
Windswept, lifeswept,
Blown by gusts of emotion
And gales of laughter,
Disgusted by injustice and disappointment,
All the huly-burly of the ages
Chiselling its form
Bitter and twisted.
Taller is the trunk
But stooping now
And wider round the girth!
Once a slender sapling
A sprig, a shoot, a seed.
And there, a twig on high,
A bare and brittle branch:
One leaf remains, just one bright shiny leaf,
Still green and glossy
Glinting in the sun.
I can see it fluttering above,
Taunting me and threatening to fall,
Teasing me and murmuring a gibe,
A mocking windsong whispering of death,
Mortality its song, and singing shrill.
So, fearful, every day I note the tree
With its one leaf, aghast lest I should see
It fade a little, crisping into brown,
Drying and withering
Losing verdure, losing life,
Losing its grip.
Just one leaf left
And one day, fall it will.
-----------------------------------------
8.10.2008
Copyright Kate Underwood 2008
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
When I said on my uploads that getting into Tilmanstone was a bugbear, how then to describe my frustration about St Anthony, as this is a church I see each time we travel up or down the Alkham valley to Folkestone.
St Anthony sits on a bluff overlooking the village and the main road, and so seems impressively tall. But up close, one finds the tower to appear short and squat.
I had driven over from Tilmanstone, I had decided to give Eythorne a miss as I really wanted to make sure I got to Alkham and the next church on the list, Acrise, before the day faded and I would lose the chance for another year.
Parking in the village is problematic, so I leave the car opposite the village hall beside the cricket pitch, which now looks like it would be perfect for a few overs. How different from the late winter, when the Drellingore was in full flood and the pitch was under a good foot of water, and houses down the hill had water bubbling up between the plants in their gardens borders.
And looking at the Drellingore itself, reveals it to be the dried up bed it always was, with just the occasional pool of still wet mud showing where once the torrent flowed.
It is quite a steep climb back to the main road and then along to the old village pub, The Marquess of Granby, now sadly rebranded as a gastropub and called simply "The Marquess".
Up beside the pub, past a pretty row of cottages and into the churchyard. My, I was puffing well, but after stopping to take a shot of the outside of the church, I walk to the porch to find both the outer and inner doors open, and the interior glowing with sunlight refracted by Victorian stained glass.
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Picturesquely situated on a quiet bluff high above the main road, the simple flint exterior of Alkham church hides a remarkable surprise. From the south the building looks little different to many others in the region, but inside it immediately presents its trump card - a north aisle/chapel built in the thirteenth century which contains the finest blank wall arcading in any Kent church. This should be compared with the contemporary chancel arcading at Cooling and Woodchurch - in each designed to emphasise the importance of the (recently rebuilt) chancel. Here it served an altogether different purpose, competing with the nearby commandery of the Knights Hospitallers at Swingfield. At the west end of the nave, filling the tower arch, is a rather heavy but fine, wooden nineteenth century screen. The east window contains some fine nineteenth century glass. West tower, nave, chancel, north aisle, south porch
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Alkham
ALKHAM is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Dover.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Anthony the Martyr, is a handsome building, consisting of three isles and two chancels, having a tower steeple, with a low pointed turret on it, in which hang three bells. The north isle is shut out by boarding from the rest of the church, and made no use of at present, to which the school now kept in the chancel might be removed, and have no kind of communication with that part of the church appropriated for divine service, which would prevent that unseemly and indecent resort which it is at present subject to. In the chancel are several memorials for the Slaters, lessees of the parsonage; and on the south side, against the wall, is an antient tomb of Bethersden marble.
The church of Alkham, with the chapel of Mauregge, or Capell as it is now called, belonging to it, was given by Hamon de Crevequer to the abbot and convent of St. Radigund, together with the advowson of it, to hold in free, pure, and perpetual alms. It was appropriated to that abbey about the 43d year of king Henry III. anno 1258, and was afterwards, anno 8 Richard II. valued among the temporalities of the abbey at fourteen pounds. In which state this church and advowson remained till the dissolution of the abbey, which happened in the 27th year of king Henry VIII. when it was suppressed by the act of that year, as being under the clear yearly value of two hundred pounds, and their lands and possessions given to the king, who granted the scite of it, with the whole of its possessions, that year, to archbishop Cranmer, in exchange for other lands, who in the same year exchanged them back again with the king, being enabled so to do by an act then specially passed for that purpose; but in the deed of exchange, among other exceptions, was that of all churches and advowsons of vicarages; by virtue of which, the appropriation of the church of Alkham, together with the advowson of the vicarage, remained part of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, as they do at this time, his grace the archbishop of Canterbury being now entitled to them.
The vicarage of Alkham, with the chapel of Ferne, alias Capell, annexed to it, is valued in the king's books at eleven pounds, and the yearly tenths at Il.2s. per annum. (fn. 4) It is now of the clear yearly certified value of 53l. 9s. 6d. In 1588 here were communicants eighty; in 1640 it was valued at sixty pounds. The vicar of it is inducted into the vicarage of Alkham, with the chapel of Capell le Ferne, alias St.Mary le Merge, annexed to it. There are three acres of glebe land belonging to the vicarage.
The great tithes of Evering ward, in this parish and Swingfield ward, part of the parsonage of Alkham, are held of the archbishop for three lives, at the yearly rent of 1l. 6s. 8d. and the parsonage for twenty-one years, at the yearly rent of twelve pounds.
Beautiful replica from Anson, nicely modelled with great paint and good detailing. Only slightly let down by Ansons usual bugbear, scale. I know the Zeppelin is a big car, but even so, against my other vintage 1/18 models this is just tooo large!
My Discord: ift.tt/2LYLFjX Part 1: youtu.be/ib5I-WmAwzM Having a look on the very trackpack MOD from steam workshop. Also having Easy Mode and Free Market mods enabled for easy testing of cars and parts. Tracks in the mod: 1: Kristiansand Raceway - 4 layouts including night versions 2: Crash Alley 3: Simstox Showdown - Request and model from Stuard Cowi (and mostly the credits) 4: Arendal Triangle - 4 layouts including night versions 5: Dune Race 6: Elevated Eight 7: Konsmo Raceway - 5 variants, see release notes for info 8: Bugbear Island / Bugbear Island Reverse 9: Richwood Oval 10: Emmen Raceway - Two variants, one green layout, one barren layout 11: Michigan Speedway 12: Bristol Motor Speedway 13: Woodhill Raceway 14: Hillside Raceway 15: Valley Of The Damned (....) 16: Rugland Motorbane 17: Greenlake Valley 18: Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium - 3 layouts 19: Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium Derby 20: Pit Race - A track inspired by a track with same name from the legendary game Carmageddon (1997) 21: Ringwood - Track original created by Stuart Cowi, ported and updated by me (The Very End) 22: Eagles Nest - Remember high suspension! 23: Chalk Canyon 2017 24: Hurtfull Five 25: Talledega Superspeedway 26: King's Lynn Raceway 27: Bridge To Nowhere - Two variants, one standard and one performance without vegetation and spectators 28: Red Pike Arena 2017 29: Red Pike Race 2017 30: Lupines Hill (Lydden Hill) - Thanks to original base model for Lydden Hill Stuart Cowi! 31: Nevada Freight Depot - Range of layouts, check them out! 32: Nevada Freight Depot Derby - Two layouts 33: Rock Bottom Derby 34: Rock Bottom Race 35: The Slow, the Fast and the Stupid 36: Pine Hills Raceway - Two layouts 37: Black Sails Valley - 4 layouts including night versions 38: Aremark Motorbane - 4 layouts including night versions 39: Redwood Ring Oval 40: Redwood Ring Rallycross 41: Derby Banked Eight - 5 layouts 42: Orange Speedway (1957 layout) - 6 layouts including night versions
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
This is what must have been the 4th time I have visited St Peter Old Church. The first was on a Good Friday a few years back, and when I approached the church, there was a service on. Another time there was a wedding, and further, on a Heritage Weekend, it failed to open.
So, when visiting the area at the beginning of the month, I mentioned that St Peter had been a bugbear of mine, Tim said its only a couple of miles away, we could try now.
Of course, driving from a different direction, not along the main road, I did not realise how close we were.
So, we would try.
Apart from the dowser in the churchyard, who was scattering, or rather placing, dozens of small pieces of white cloth about, but would move them if I wanted. I said no thanks, and left him to his stick waggling. Or that is what I said to Tim, but of course, I do not know if dowsing is any good, or what he was dowsing for.
Inside the church, several ladies were making busy, preparing the church for the next day's harvest festival, so many of them are in the shots, but it makes for a very welcoming sight indeed.
So very good to finally get inside, and many thanks to Tim for taking me.
--------------------------------------------------
A much restored Norman church, with a tiny twelfth-century window set just above the (later) porch roof. There is a good example of a fifteenth-century low side window in the south-west corner of the chancel. The pews, pulpit and tiles are typical of mid-nineteenth century restorations, yet above is the fine nave roof of the usual crownpost type. It displays nicely pierced spandrels with a quatrefoil and dagger design. In 1846 Lord Camden built a new church on the main road in the village centre. Even so the old church is extremely well maintained and much loved in the neighbourhood. The churchyard contains many good headstones including one to Sir Morton Peto, the famous nineteenth-century engineer.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Pembury+1
The first known record of Pembury, originally Pepingeberia, is to be found in the 'Textus Roffensis' (c1120). It tells of the manors of Pepenbury Magna (Hawkwell) and Pepenbury Parva (Bayhall).
The Advowson was granted by Simon de Wahull to Bayham Abbey c1239. (Advowson is the right in English Law of presenting a nominee to a vacant parish. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish).
Pembury has two churches dedicated to St Peter. The oldest, known as the Old Church, stands outside the modern village in the woods to the north of the A228 bypass. The newer building, known as the Upper Church, stands in the heart of the village on Hastings Road.
The plan of the Old Church and the little Norman window above the South door indicate that the original Church dates from 1147 at least, or even 1100AD. Most of the present Church was built in 1337 by John Colepeper of Bayhall. He also built the chantry chapel of St Mary in the churchyard in 1355 but this was pulled down at the Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries in 1547 and three windows in the body of the Church were inserted with the money gained from the sale of the lead which had covered the chapel.
The most notable feature inside the Church is the roof of the nave. It is said to be one of the best specimens of the tie-beam and kingpost type in the country.
On the north wall near the pulpit there is an interesting brass with an inscription and a figure of an Elizabethan child, Elizabeth Rowe. There are two slabs set into the Sanctuary floor in memory of Dorothy Amherst (1654) and Richard Amherst (1664). The Amherst family owned the manor of Bayhall at this time.
During the nineteenth century a number of alterations were made to the Church, including the raising of the Chancel floor. This meant that the oldest tombstone was completely covered over. The inscription round the edge of the slab, written in Norman French, tells is that it is the resting place of Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper.
Among the other memorial tablets there are several of the Woodgate family, three of whom were vicars of Pembury in the nineteenth century. Under the tower is a memorial to Lord George Spencer-Churchill.
The Organ, which has one manual and a pedal-board, dates back to 1877. It was made by Hill and Son, London, and cost £130. The organ was fully restored to its former glory in 2006. There are four bells which are now fitted with a chiming apparatus so that they can be rung by one person.
www.pemburychurch.net/pembury_old_church.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Pembury is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, has a spire steeple at the west end. It was built by one of the family of Colepeper, patrons of it, and most probably by John Colepeper, esq. in the reign of king Edward III. for on the three buttresses on the south side of the chancel, there remain three shields of coat armour, each carved on an entire stone of about two feet and an half in depth, and the breadth equal with that of the buttress, which shews them to be coeval with that of the building itself. On the first is a rectangular cross; the second is the coat armour of Hardreshull, A chevron between eight martlets, viz. five and three, the above-mentioned John Colepeper having married the coheir of that family; the third is that of Colepeper, a bend engrailed. On a very antient stone on the pavement of the chancel, is an antient inscription in old French, for Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Colepeper, which seems as early as the above mentioned reign. There are several monuments and memorials in it of the family of Amherst and their re latives; an inscription and figure in brass for Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Rowe, esq. of Hawkwell, anno 1607; a tomb for George Bolney, esq. who married a Wybarne; and in the porch are two antient stones with crosses on them.
¶The advowson of the church of Pembury was given with it, by Simon de Wahull, to the abbey of Begham, in Sussex, in pure and perpetual alms, as has been already mentioned.
¶Pope Gregory IX. anno 1239, granted licence to the abbot and convent to hold this church, then of their patronage, and not of greater value than ten marcs, as an appropriation upon the first vacancy of it, reserving, a competent portion for a vicar out of the profits of it. Notwithstanding which, it was not appropriated till the year 1278, when Richard Oliver, the rector, resigned it into the hands of John de Bradfield, bishop of Rochester, who granted his letters mandatory, for the induction of the abbot and convent into the corporal possession of the church, with its appurtenances, according to the tenor of the above-mentioned bull. (fn. 7)
¶The parsonage of the church of Pembury, with the advowson of the vicarage appendant to the manor, continued with the abbey of Begham till the dissolution of it in the 17th year of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered into the king's hands, after which it passed in the same tract of ownership as the manor of Pembury, and appendant to it, till it became the property of William Woodgate, esq. lord of that manor, and the present patron of it.
¶It is a discharged living, of the clear yearly certified value of 46l. 10s. the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 8d.
¶Charles Amherst, esq. of Bayhall, by his will in 1702, gave as an augmentation to this vicarage, the sum of ten pounds to be paid yearly by such persons to whom the manor of Bayhall, with its appurtenances, should come and remain after his death.
¶In 1733 the Rev. George May, vicar, augmented it with the sum of 100l. 17s. 6d. to entitle it to the benefit of queen Anne's bounty.
¶There is an annual pension of forty shillings paid out of the parsonage to the vicar, which was settled on him and his successors, at the time of the appropriation of this church. The tithes of corn and grain of which this parsonage consists are now worth about one hundred and twenty pounds per annum.
¶The vicarage is now worth about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
Journal 9 February 2012
Group bids to put wheels in motion
Call for bikes to be allowed on the Metro
By Michael Brown
PEDAL-powered campaigners have called on Metro bosses to allow cyclists to take their full-sized bikes on to trains.
Exponents of environmentally friendly travel say they want a pilot project run to prove such a move would be safe.
But transport chiefs have rebuffed the claims - at least for the time being – saying more needs to be done first to sole the “very tricky issue”.
The bicycle ban on Metro carriages has for decades been a bugbear with the cycling community and it was a hot topic when members of the Newcastle Cycling Campaign met with bosses back in November.
The group’s Claire Prospert said allowing bikes would show off the region’s eco-credentials: “It is an indicator of a sustainable and fair city to offer a fully-integrated transport system to citizens.
“We want to see a trial outside peak hours, involving a small number of Metro stations.
“Back in November Metro promised to study light rail systems in Britain and abroad. We know that the Metro’s operator, DB Regio, runs light rail systems in Germany that carry bikes.
“We have seen a technical review studying bike-friendly train systems and it resulted in no safety problems being reported or making of claims concerning bicycle carriage.
“We would not want to pre-empt results, but early indication for this to work looks hopeful. It is only through a sustained and open dialogue that solutions can be found for the benefit of Metro and bike users.
“We are here to help and we’d like to see and independent assessment of work.”
A trial of bikes on Metro trains is supported by local councillors, NewcastleGateshead Friends of the Earth and Tyne & Wear Public Transport User Group (TWPTUG) amongst others.
TWPTUG spokesman [sic]Vicky Gilbert said: “We want to see Metro run a small pilot project for ordinary bikes.”
“Cycling is a non-carbon emissions healthy activity that should be encouraged and we are sure that if London underground can do this, sp can Tyne & Wear, Nexus and DB Regio.”
But, while not ruling out allowing full-sized bikes on the network in the future, Huw Lewis, head of communications as at Nexus, which owns and manages the system, said now was not the right time for the pilot project camapaigners want.
“Cyclists are free to travel on Metro with folded bikes, and while there are good erasons why full-sized bikes are not allowed on what is a very busy train system, that’s not the end of the story,” he said.
“We are about to trial new larger and more secure storage at two stations, while bidding in partnership with local councils and the cycling organisation Sustrans for Government funding to pay for a much wider improvement of facilities and infrastructure.
“We are also talking to local firms about new bike-hire opportunities at stations.
“Following the conference held for cycle groups in November, we’re now in the process of bringing together organisations such as the Newcastle Cycling Campaign in a ‘task and finish’ group to examine and report back this year on how we can improve integration between bikes and Metro.
“We expect members will want to look to improving cycle storage at stations, hire facilities, cycling routes feeding into Metro and what information is on offer.
“We are also inviting it to independently examine the safety case that prevents the safety case that prevents us allowing all types of bike on trains.
“I don’t think a limited trial allowing bikes on part of Metro at certain times is a good idea how unless we had a clear idea where it was intended to lead, but it may come out of the work of the group.
“Many cyclists have a strong belief that Metro should allow all bikes, but the last research we did wit passengers showed a clear majority against the idea.”
1. Ripples, 2. Donut pincushion, 3. Ice crochet, 4. Pancetta, 5. Masterpiece, 6. Anzu, 7. Donut, 8. Ichima,
9. Pancetta, 10. Pancetta, 11. Fanchette and the new Pekoe, 12. Bayadère box, 13. Alice, 14. Saint-Valentin, 15. Pouch, 16. 3filles,
17. Sweet inspiration, 18. Edith Flack Ackley dolls, 19. Masterpiece, 20. Pekoe, 21. Taffy, 22. Fanchette, 23. Cloudberry in blue dress, 24. Fanchette the rabbit,
25. Fanchette the rabbit, 26. Cat hat, 27. Masterpiece, 28. Baha, 29. Pancetta, 30. Eclairs, 31. Hana, 32. Baha,
33. Pamplemousse's ice cream kitchen 8, 34. Cat nap, 35. Miss Loveday Lemon, 36. Baha, 37. Pancetta's Christmas, 38. Fanchette, 39. Cache-coeur, 40. Saint-Valentin,
41. Cardie, 42. Fanchette, 43. Chandrakala, 44. What shall I wear today?, 45. Mandarine, 46. A bee in her bonnet, 47. Baby amigurumi, 48. Girl talk,
49. Pancetta, 50. Bonbon, 51. Biscuit's moos, 52. Eulalie says goodbye, 53. The new Gianduja, 54. Chandrakala, 55. Pancetta's Christmas, 56. What shall I wear today?,
57. Praline's cafe, 58. Pamplemousse, 59. Nid d'ange, 60. Boxes, 61. A bee in her bonnet, 62. Sweet decadence, 63. Octavie with Shirley Temple doll, 64. Eglantine,
65. Eulalie and the bugbear, 66. Pancetta, 67. Fanchette the rabbit, 68. Necklace, 69. Mandarine, 70. Eulalie and Mignonnette, 71. Anzu's dress, 72. Ambroisie and Gianduja
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
Sometimes people don't take bugbears seriously. They see how furry they are and how they're related to goblins, and they laugh, and laugh, and laugh...
...And then the Headreavers come.
Chassis n° VF9SA15B96M795021
The Zoute Sale - Bonhams
Estimated : € 950.000 - 1.250.000
Sold for € 920.000
Zoute Grand Prix 2023
Knokke - Zoute
België - Belgium
October 2023
"The Bugatti Veyron has recalibrated that which can be achieved by the motor car." – Autocar.
To say that the Bugatti Veyron caused a sensation when it arrived in 2005 would be a gross understatement; for here was a car that didn't just rewrite the supercar rule book so much as tear it up and start afresh. All the more remarkable was the fact that the Veyron was the dream of one man: Ferdinand Piech, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, which had acquired the Bugatti brand in 1998. Piech's ambition was to create a car that had 1,000 horsepower at its disposal, could exceed 400km/h, and cost €1 million. Turning Piech's dream into a reality would prove to be an immensely difficult undertaking, even for a company with Volkswagen's technological resources, and the result would not see the light of day for another seven years.
Designed by ItalDesign boss Giorgetto Giugiaro, the first concept car – the EB118 – was displayed at the Paris Auto Show in 1998, featuring permanent four-wheel drive and a Volkswagen-designed W18 engine. A handful of variations on the theme were displayed at international motor shows over the course of the next few years before the concept finally crystallised in 2000 in the form of the Veyron EB 16.4. The latter was styled in house at VW by Hartmut Warkuß and featured an engine with 16 cylinders and four turbochargers – hence the '16.4' designation. It was named after Bugatti development engineer and racing driver, Pierre Veyron, who together with co-driver Jean-Pierre Wimille, had won the 1939 Le Mans 24-Hour race for the French manufacturer. But this was far from the end of the development process, and it would take another five years and an extensive shake-up of the project's management and engineering teams before production could begin, by which time an incredible 95% of components had been either changed or redesigned.
Effectively two narrow-angle 4.0-litre V8 engines sharing a common crankcase, the 8.0-litre W16 - just - met Piech's requirements, producing a maximum output of 1,001PS (987bhp) and 922ft/lb of torque, figures that would embarrass a current Formula 1 car. With a kerb weight of 1,888kg the Veyron had a staggering power-to-weight ratio of 523bhp per ton. Tasked with transmitting this formidable force to the ground was a permanent four-wheel-drive, dual-clutch transmission system incorporating a seven-speed paddle-shift semi-automatic gearbox, the latter built by the British company, Ricardo, while to accommodate the Veyron's phenomenal top speed Michelin designed special run-flat PAX tyres. Piech had specified a maximum velocity of 400 km/h and the Veyron did not disappoint, with more than one tester – Top Gear's James May included - exceeding the target by a few miles per hour. At €1,225,000 (£1,065,000) the Veyron base price as also exceeded Piech's target comfortably.
To maintain stability at such high speeds, the Veyron has a few aerodynamic tricks up its sleeve, a hydraulic system lowering the car at around 220 km/h, at which speed the rear wing deploys, increasing downforce. But if the Veyron driver wishes to exceed 343km/h, he or she needs to select Top Speed Mode (from rest) before joining what is a very exclusive club indeed.
Jeremy Clarkson, reviewing the Veyron for The Times: "In a drag race you could let the McLaren (F1) get to 120mph before setting off in the Veyron. And you'd still get to 200mph first. The Bugatti is way, way faster than anything else the roads have seen." Yet despite its breathtaking performance, the Veyron contrived to be surprisingly docile at 'sensible' speeds. "Bugatti says the Veyron is as easy to drive as a Bentley, and they're not exaggerating," declared Autocar. "Immediately you notice how smoothly weighted the steering is, and how calm the ride is."
In a market sector many of whose protagonists can only be described a 'hard core', the Veyron contrived to be a remarkably civilised conveyance. "When you climb aboard the Bugatti Veyron there are no particular physical contortions required of you by the world's fastest car, as there are in so many so-called supercars," observed Autocar describing "the most exquisite car cabin on earth". The latter was found to be more than generously spacious for a two-seat mid-engined car, while in terms of interior equipment there was virtually no limit to what the, necessarily wealthy, Veyron customer could specify. Restricted rearward visibility is a frequent bugbear of mid-engined supercars, a problem the Veyron dealt with by means of a reversing camera.
The SSC Ultimate Aero had taken the Veyron's title of 'World's Fastest Car' in 2007, but the Super Sport would soon put the upstart American manufacturer in its place. Maximum power was increased to 1,200PS (1,184 hp) for the Super Sport, which also came with a revised aerodynamic package. On 4th July 2010 the redoubtable James May achieved a top speed of 417.61km/h at the wheel of a Super Sport, and later that same day Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel set a new mean best mark of 431.072km/h at Volkswagen's test track near Wolfsburg in Germany. This had been achieved by deactivating the Super Sport's electronic limiter, which restricts top speed to 'only' 415km/h, leading some to question the figure's validity. Eventually, the Guinness Book of Records decided that the mark should stand. Production of the Super Sport was limited to 48 units. By the time Veyron production ceased in 2015, Bugatti had made only 450 of these quite extraordinary cars.
This Bugatti Veyron 16.4 was first registered on 14th August 2006 in Germany and has had only one registered owner from new. The car is finished in two-tone Chocolate Metallic/Deep Red Metallic with Grenadine leather interior, and has covered a mere 13,500 kilometres since it left the factory. Moving from Germany to the Netherlands a couple of years ago, there were some minor stone chips low down at the front and some minor traces of oxidation/paint imperfections and to correct those it was decided by the current owner to have the Veyron professionally resprayed by a well-known specialist in the Netherlands in order to keep the car in cosmetically excellent condition. An email printout on file from Bugatti Leusden (Netherlands) records four services: 2008 (km not stated); 2009 at 6,906km; 2011 at 9,335km; and 2013 at 11,106km. The car has not been serviced recently and the tyres (dated 2012 front and 2013 rear) would need to be replaced should the next owner wish to drive the car at speed. Included in the sale is a wireless HP iPaq handheld device that originally came with the car for use with GPS and performance analytics. It can be charged via an in-car port.
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Recto
some time a resident and coho has become conversant with the peculiar customs of the country, especially if he has been a settler might perhaps become a fitting person as a Stipendiary Magistrate, his [succeedaneain] is seldom if ever resorted to , but [Tyro’s] are ordered off in their [uniforms] and of course their sword to cut the Gordian knots of conflicting evidence, and all the niceties of legal distinctions which pursue our men of wisdom in old England – Some rumours have even bee afloat, attributing this scheme to [J. W. Bobbett], who has been so long labouring after political perfectibility, surmising that it is only an experiment on a small scale to ascertain how far the fences of civilised life may be broken down with impunity to admit his more [speedy] and efficacious political machinery – Whilst a sagacious Scotch woman remarked, that the pure things were only set up on high by the rulers as worrie-cows seeing that a late act of [Sessions] had taken awa their Scourges and their power over the [puir] folk.
Military magistrates answer well for a mere penal settlement where order and due subordination can only be preserved by an act of the lush and a prompt application of it, and cohere from the clearest recepity, it is better that two innocent men should suffer, than a guilty one escape – but why continue such a bugbear in a country where the greater proportion of the population are free emigrants, and who have been induced to adopt this country as their own upon the representation of the home government that the institutions they leave behind will be found also in their [own] homes – The only efficient way in which military can be employed is as mounted police – They are and should be called Gendarmes – We have small bodies of these troops stationed in different parts of the country commanded generally by a [subaltern] officer of the regiments on duty in Sydney and it is in this instance, that their services are truly effective, [these] it is supposed out of delicacy to the feelings of the English emigrants are [designated] Mounted Police – but their powers are much the same as the Gendarmes. In a country like New South Wales where the forests are interminable and afford an immense shelter for desperadoes, the Mounted Police are the only body who
Despite stupidly selling off a lot of my Spanish diecast collection some years back thankfully some did survive the cull, mainly Guisval and that included two of their Ford Fiestas found in the early 1990's.
Wisely this most popular of castings has been included in their "reediciones" reissues even if no longer features all over racing style stickers, thankfully may I say! Production remains in Spain though as you can see their traditional bugbear of variable quality remains, just look at that gap between its bonnet and front grille! It still possesses opening front doors and suspension and has proven to be one of the biggest selling castings from this series.
A much longer stay in Spain than usual ensured I could confidently order several reissues directly from Guisval themselves.
Mint and boxed.
Chassis n° VF9SA15B96M795021
The Zoute Sale - Bonhams
Estimated : € 950.000 - 1.250.000
Sold for € 920.000
Zoute Grand Prix 2023
Knokke - Zoute
België - Belgium
October 2023
"The Bugatti Veyron has recalibrated that which can be achieved by the motor car." – Autocar.
To say that the Bugatti Veyron caused a sensation when it arrived in 2005 would be a gross understatement; for here was a car that didn't just rewrite the supercar rule book so much as tear it up and start afresh. All the more remarkable was the fact that the Veyron was the dream of one man: Ferdinand Piech, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, which had acquired the Bugatti brand in 1998. Piech's ambition was to create a car that had 1,000 horsepower at its disposal, could exceed 400km/h, and cost €1 million. Turning Piech's dream into a reality would prove to be an immensely difficult undertaking, even for a company with Volkswagen's technological resources, and the result would not see the light of day for another seven years.
Designed by ItalDesign boss Giorgetto Giugiaro, the first concept car – the EB118 – was displayed at the Paris Auto Show in 1998, featuring permanent four-wheel drive and a Volkswagen-designed W18 engine. A handful of variations on the theme were displayed at international motor shows over the course of the next few years before the concept finally crystallised in 2000 in the form of the Veyron EB 16.4. The latter was styled in house at VW by Hartmut Warkuß and featured an engine with 16 cylinders and four turbochargers – hence the '16.4' designation. It was named after Bugatti development engineer and racing driver, Pierre Veyron, who together with co-driver Jean-Pierre Wimille, had won the 1939 Le Mans 24-Hour race for the French manufacturer. But this was far from the end of the development process, and it would take another five years and an extensive shake-up of the project's management and engineering teams before production could begin, by which time an incredible 95% of components had been either changed or redesigned.
Effectively two narrow-angle 4.0-litre V8 engines sharing a common crankcase, the 8.0-litre W16 - just - met Piech's requirements, producing a maximum output of 1,001PS (987bhp) and 922ft/lb of torque, figures that would embarrass a current Formula 1 car. With a kerb weight of 1,888kg the Veyron had a staggering power-to-weight ratio of 523bhp per ton. Tasked with transmitting this formidable force to the ground was a permanent four-wheel-drive, dual-clutch transmission system incorporating a seven-speed paddle-shift semi-automatic gearbox, the latter built by the British company, Ricardo, while to accommodate the Veyron's phenomenal top speed Michelin designed special run-flat PAX tyres. Piech had specified a maximum velocity of 400 km/h and the Veyron did not disappoint, with more than one tester – Top Gear's James May included - exceeding the target by a few miles per hour. At €1,225,000 (£1,065,000) the Veyron base price as also exceeded Piech's target comfortably.
To maintain stability at such high speeds, the Veyron has a few aerodynamic tricks up its sleeve, a hydraulic system lowering the car at around 220 km/h, at which speed the rear wing deploys, increasing downforce. But if the Veyron driver wishes to exceed 343km/h, he or she needs to select Top Speed Mode (from rest) before joining what is a very exclusive club indeed.
Jeremy Clarkson, reviewing the Veyron for The Times: "In a drag race you could let the McLaren (F1) get to 120mph before setting off in the Veyron. And you'd still get to 200mph first. The Bugatti is way, way faster than anything else the roads have seen." Yet despite its breathtaking performance, the Veyron contrived to be surprisingly docile at 'sensible' speeds. "Bugatti says the Veyron is as easy to drive as a Bentley, and they're not exaggerating," declared Autocar. "Immediately you notice how smoothly weighted the steering is, and how calm the ride is."
In a market sector many of whose protagonists can only be described a 'hard core', the Veyron contrived to be a remarkably civilised conveyance. "When you climb aboard the Bugatti Veyron there are no particular physical contortions required of you by the world's fastest car, as there are in so many so-called supercars," observed Autocar describing "the most exquisite car cabin on earth". The latter was found to be more than generously spacious for a two-seat mid-engined car, while in terms of interior equipment there was virtually no limit to what the, necessarily wealthy, Veyron customer could specify. Restricted rearward visibility is a frequent bugbear of mid-engined supercars, a problem the Veyron dealt with by means of a reversing camera.
The SSC Ultimate Aero had taken the Veyron's title of 'World's Fastest Car' in 2007, but the Super Sport would soon put the upstart American manufacturer in its place. Maximum power was increased to 1,200PS (1,184 hp) for the Super Sport, which also came with a revised aerodynamic package. On 4th July 2010 the redoubtable James May achieved a top speed of 417.61km/h at the wheel of a Super Sport, and later that same day Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel set a new mean best mark of 431.072km/h at Volkswagen's test track near Wolfsburg in Germany. This had been achieved by deactivating the Super Sport's electronic limiter, which restricts top speed to 'only' 415km/h, leading some to question the figure's validity. Eventually, the Guinness Book of Records decided that the mark should stand. Production of the Super Sport was limited to 48 units. By the time Veyron production ceased in 2015, Bugatti had made only 450 of these quite extraordinary cars.
This Bugatti Veyron 16.4 was first registered on 14th August 2006 in Germany and has had only one registered owner from new. The car is finished in two-tone Chocolate Metallic/Deep Red Metallic with Grenadine leather interior, and has covered a mere 13,500 kilometres since it left the factory. Moving from Germany to the Netherlands a couple of years ago, there were some minor stone chips low down at the front and some minor traces of oxidation/paint imperfections and to correct those it was decided by the current owner to have the Veyron professionally resprayed by a well-known specialist in the Netherlands in order to keep the car in cosmetically excellent condition. An email printout on file from Bugatti Leusden (Netherlands) records four services: 2008 (km not stated); 2009 at 6,906km; 2011 at 9,335km; and 2013 at 11,106km. The car has not been serviced recently and the tyres (dated 2012 front and 2013 rear) would need to be replaced should the next owner wish to drive the car at speed. Included in the sale is a wireless HP iPaq handheld device that originally came with the car for use with GPS and performance analytics. It can be charged via an in-car port.
A personal bugbear of mine is when you go abroad and your every step seems to be impeded by guided tour parties, slowly meandering around the narrow lanes and streets at a snails pace. I don't hate them but they do annoy, and sometimes amuse, me. I think it's the sight of a crowd of humans being led along like a flock of docile, passive sheep that really strikes me. The attraction is probably that everything is laid on a plate for you and you don't have make any effort or take any risks. Each to their own I suppose, but it's not for me. That said they do fascinate me, maybe to the point of obsession.
The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku Assassin,as told by Leo to his Nephew Leto Collins (# 7 of 33)- Into the Jurka.
That bird and I saw a lot of weird shit in our days, some of it still keeps me up at night, most of all our very last job together, but some things we ran into weren't weird in a scary way, just in way that defies any sense. I dunno...but the world and it's truth is far more complicated then what we're taught,and you have to separate the things that really are true from the bullshit the Church and the Military feeds the public to hold our culture together. Don't get me wrong, I still love Regentum, even after all these years. I believe in a God, but not the church or the Emperor. What's important to me about Regentum is that it's perhaps the only place in the world where a common, regular person can receive the benefits of their own hard work. Everywhere I've ever been I've only seen masters and servants. The Dwarves are good to one another, perhaps even better then we in Regentum are. But in Rolheim the Dwarves have a very set and rigid way of life. You're stuck in the position you're born into, but no Dwarf suffers or is destitute. Here in Regentum if you're born poor you can do something about it. Other Human nations that aren't our Colonies, forget it. That's why so many foreigners become Pirates. It's better to be a Pirate then the serf of some Sultan in Lu' Hadej, toil the years by on a Brenendale fishing ship, live under constant war in the mess of Alson, or slave away under some Monk in Nijiro.
After I got out of the Army like a lot of guys I was pretty jaded with all the shit talking about conquering the world for light and law and all that sort of talk. Our leaders fight for money and power and cull troops from the ranks of our working poor after getting them hyped up on religion. I mean look, they take these kids, they start at age fifteen, and all these boys are either from farming villages, or some industrial slum. You take a kid like that who hasn't got much of a future and you tell him that he'll be trained to fight for holy order, and that he will be special, that he will individually play a vital role in shaping the future of the empire and he buys it. Like me and yours Pops. We knew it was either the army, the docks, the factories or jail. It's ugly that it takes a large degree of smoke and mirrors to hold Regentum together, but its better then everywhere else out there.
Anyhow after Damu and I took out that Goblin leader Ertu we were in good standing with the Military as skilled mercenaries who were good at eliminating specific targets that were loose ends they needed cleaned up. It took those motherfuckers less then a month before I got a knock at the door from a Army courier with a new bounty contract in one hand, and a sack of gold in the other. I hadn't even yet spent all my money from before.
I was told that the Military needed a new way to send food supplies to all the troops the world over because the cost of doing so was getting too high due to the sheer number of troops we now how have the world over. Traditionally the food either came from local sources, or was shipped in by merchants with government contracts. The Military hired Wizard-Engineers to design a new system of providing troops with enough food in a cheaper way. So they applied the idea of the factory to the slaughter house. Along the road way between Salsburg and Fieldsview a big warehouse was built in which cattle was slaughtered in mass by huge killing machines and the meat cured, salted and prepped for shipping.
Some Druid freaked out about this place and attacked it. Around this time the Army was routing out a large strike force of the Derago Tribe of Hobgoblins. The Deragos' got their asses handed to them and broke up into a bunch of small rag-tag units. The Druid trashed the place pretty good, and the report in my contract didn't mention as to what happened to the Druid or who he was. Troops, Engineers, Craftsman and supply laden Merchants were quickly sent in to get the Meat Factory up and running. All of these sitting ducks alone along the highway caught the eye of a squad of Derago Hobgoblins who in turn decided to take their own stab at the meat factory. We were asked to find the leader of the Squad, a Hobgoblin named Jahghu Khazul and kill him. The Army in the area was still busy chasing down the bulk of the Derago forces, and had them pinned way up north almost to Rolhiem.
This time around we bought our own wagon and horse rather then catching a ride with a caravan. A nice light brown horse I never got the chance to name or get attached to. After the mission I ended up loosing our horse in a dice game on the way back to Scardale to this skinny toothless drunk in a bar in Salsburg. Damu was pissed off about it, and he laughed at me the whole way home.
Most of the trip there was easy, if even a little boring. We had to go this round about way to get there as there was no highway that went directly there and I didn't want to chance getting shook down with Damu in tow. But even playing by the book we got caught up in some shit. Between Nolos and Salsburg we got stopped by a Polly squad. One of them saw us in Nolos when we stopped for supplies and bitched to the others about a Kenku moving around the interior. Even though the eastern end of Regentum is thought of as being more religiously tolerant then out west, its just that out west they think of themselves as superior given that they eastern region was conquered and absorbed into the Empire. Really everyone in the Empire outside of the big coastal cities clings very firmly to our Religion and its accompanying prejudices. I caught a lot of shit over the years for having a Kenku for a friend.
5 of these pricks rode up on us, battle standards held all high, pole arms drawn, you know the whole fucking works. Big fucking fags in their shinny armor demanding to know what me and the Bird were up to. I held out the contract with the army guys in Scardale and was like, "Were here to do your dirty work". Some big prissy bitch, Sir Halton kept scrutinizing me, being like, "How can I keep the company of a Heathen animal?", and how legal or otherwise "To bring such a foul creature into the interior was an affront to the holy sanctity of our beloved empire". Typical Paladin fag shit. Fuck them. The mercenary rabble were here to wipe their ass because they were too important to do it themselves. Damu maybe a local legend here in Scardale, but out in the country or in the eyes of the Church he was scum.
When we got to the Meat factory there was a bunch of workers busting their asses to fix it, a few merchants and rich Gnomes, some solders, and some hired swords keeping an eye on the place. The ruined factory buildings had maze of scaffolding towering up their crumbling walls, and about the area around them was a decent sized encampment. Various tents dotted the place, though one could clearly tell the difference between tents belonging to the workers, the merchants, the troops and the mercenaries. Worker tents were drab though orderly. The tents of the business men were lined with velvet and furs. The Army tents had various standards embroidered to them, and the mercenary tents were both drab and disorderly. Also they were off to the side of everyone else. I saw a big, ugly mother fucker around the Merc tents, both too big and too ugly to be completely human, but not a Half-Orc. I saw he wore the spiked gauntlets common to Gladiators and figured he must of been a half-breed slave who fought his away from to freedom from the fighting pits. Still fighting on behalf of the gold of the rich, but at least the deal was more in his favor. I hope anyway. One of the other mercs there was this guy Ramalti, a big guy with a shaved head and thick curled mustache. I knew him from the army. Once we fought Pirates together off the coast of Fazas. After checking in with the Captain of the place, we set up camp with Ramalti.
Ramalti had a huge pile of furs arranged under a high posted canopy and laid around a fire with a few extra skinned rabbits cooking. We caught up on things for a hour or so, though I could tell he didn't like that I had Damu with me, though he didn't say anything.Ramalti told me his last gig was doing a hit for people who were part of Snake-Worshiping cult and that he was glad to be away from them. Said that they used pit fighting for a front and had a lot of weird orgies. Didn't seem too bad to me but he warned me to stay away if they ever approached us.
Damu was fidgety, which was unnerving given how calm how usually was, something was up. The small talk between Ramalti and I was broken when Damu asked flatly, "Tell us about the Hobgoblins around here, we are here kill to Jahghu Kazul". It was an awkward moment. Ramalti gave Damu a stern look and me a half stern half worried look and was like, "Yea Kazul, yea he's around these ways, or should be. Last we knew anyway. Look let me tell you guys a few things about this job. The moneyed people here have their head up their ass and all they want to know is when this place will up and running again. Don't listen to them. The military guys are here to watch them. They're only gonna tell you half of what you need to know. Something weird is going on out in the fields. Animals have been acting strange. On patrols at night I've seen bolts of color and light off in the distance, and one night while following what was the tracks of two small feet, they abruptly shifted into the paw prints of a 4 legged creature."
I looked over at Ramalti and he handed me a wine skin, "Also have you two heard of an area called the Jurka?", he asked. "No", Damu replied. Damu didn't know much beyond city life, or even beyond life in Scardale. He was always a tad out of his element on missions like this. Though to be honest I never heard of it either. It is a creepy place we found. "The Jurka", Ramalti said, "is an ugly, sunken scar of land sunken and wide, but also consisting of many hills, little rivers, creeks and the occasional murky swamp lake. It is a lonely and windy stretch of land of irregular width, but hundreds of miles in length. Jurka is Goblin for 'the crack'. Most Goblins and Hobgoblins avoid the place, though I've been told that some powerful Hobgoblin Warlords are buried there.The Gobos say the place is cursed as its not naturally occurring. Something deep below the ground they claim cracked the land open centuries ago. It's not on any known maps, nor mentioned in any journals. For a distinct land mass so big that's very strange. Someone must not want it to be known."
Damu laughed, "I don't care about any cracks or secrets any Hairies keep from each other. We're here for Jahghu Kazul, that's all that matters."
Right before dawn we were woken up to screams and commotions. The first thing I saw upon waking were 4 foxes a few feet away from me. I laughed at first, but when I stood up I realized the place was over run with foxes. Foxes and geese. They were every where, howling and running amok. It would have been funny if it weren't so out of place and deliberate seeming. No one knew what to do and it I think because of that it was really freaking a lot of them out.
Quickly then I saw a fox stare it me. It had a bloody muzzle and in its mouth was a blood-stained pointed Gnome hat. I pointed over to Damu and he quickly drew an arrow and shot the fox. As I ran towards the fox its shape contorted and elongated. By the time my sword was swinging directly at it the fox it had become a tall skinny guy with long matted hair down past his ass, a long matted beard, and just a loin cloth on. His eyes seemed distant yet driven by some equally remote purpose. The Wild Man rolled out of the way. I saw that his hands were glowing and all of a sudden vines grew quickly up from the ground, like water being poured from a bottle, that were wrapping up around my legs. He smiled without humor at this and pulled the arrow Damu Shot him with out of his shoulder. Blood squirted out and a chunk of meat flopped over from the wound.
What looked like a large, stocky Goblin but still not a Hobgoblin walked up to the Wild Man just as he was picking up the bloody Gnome hat. The Wild Man looked over at the strange Goblin and spoke, "This will do. The Dwarves and the Gnomes are just as bad as these Regentum people. The Gnomes maybe even more so. They hide behind their money and get Humans to do their dirty work." The Goblin-thing didn't seemed to care too much, but they never had the chance to debate the matter. Ramalti and Damu charged the two. Ramalti carried a large spiked mace that he swung down towards the head of the Goblin. Catching the creatures cap, but not its head, the Goblin leaped up in the air far higher then a Goblin should be able to leap, and landed on top of Ramalti biting him in the neck. The vines wrapped tighter around my legs and I was worried that my legs would shatter under the strain. Damu threw his dagger straight into the gut of the Wild Man with one hand, and slashed across his face with his sword with the other. The Wild Man fell back, holding his guts into his stomach. The slash across his face caused his nose to dangle and his cheek to flop open. I think some teeth were missing or dangling by tiny threads of mouth meat in his beard. The ground around us burst into flame. Damu leaped out of the way, and Ramalti was still struggling with the creature wrapped around his neck and head. Me, I stuck my legs in the fire and burned away the vines. It was painful, but not as painful as my legs being crushed.
Quickly I tried to stand, but I stumbled as I got up. The Wild Man rushed with his hands transformed into large green glowing claws. A claw jabbed towards my head, but I ducked under it, and swooped my sword upwards and into and out of his chest. The fire abruptly stopped. The Goblin creature jumped off of Ramalti and by the time it hit the ground it transformed into some strange mix of Goblin and Wolf. Later on Damu said such creatures were called Barghests. Whatever it was it took off running. Soon all the Foxes and Geese went away.
The Captain and his men surrounded the Wild Man. I was confused at first because they bound his body in shackles, as why exactly they would bound up a corpse, but my confusion quickly turned to anger as the poured a healing potion down the mother fuckers throat. I screamed out at them, "What the fuck are you doing? He's a Witch, leave him dead! I'm not killing him again unless I get paid extra." Which funny enough we did get paid twice for killing that guy. Turns out he was the crazed Druid who attacked the Meat-Factory in the first place. Gharuun the Druid, wanted across eastern Regentum for various acts of terrorism, spreading blasphemy, and other crimes against the Empire. Around the camp I heard that Gharuun was once the Son of a rich industrialist family out of Tardon. He was supposedly once Francis Applemoore, a scion of a blue-blood family who went insane around the time his family fell to controversy. If I recall right, I think actually the Applemoore's owned a factory outside of Tardon that accidentally poisoned a near-by river with mercury, killing hundreds of peasant-folk, and making many more sick.Butt-Boy Sir Halton and his squad of Knights showed up to interrogate Gharuun and bring him to Elaine for execution, but not until after they kissed Gnome ass. The Gnomes and the Human Merchants were grieving over the loss of the Gnome Harov Goldstein and his money (which the Barghest apparently got away with).
It was found out after a day of torture that Gharuun was working with Jahghu Kazul and his forces out of the Jurka because of mutual animosity towards Regentum. The whole "the enemy of my enemy" bit. Gharuun was bothered by industrialization and by it being this far into the interior of the country-side. Admittedly on that part Gharuun was perhaps right, I myself hate to admit that I agreed with a Druid, but while I grew up in the city surrounded by factories and industry, I've always valued the clean greenery of the country side when I've traveled through it.I could see how he ended up a Druid after coming from a family who's factory poisoned the land. I'd hate to our beautiful country side ruined just to make people like Harov Goldstein rich. Jahghu Kazul however could give two shits either way. Gharuun didn't want loot and worked for free. Gharuun was a zealot, violence for his religion was its own reward. Kazul was a raider and aspiring Warlord. He only valued money and brute force.
That night Damu and I rode into the Jurka.
The very southern most portion of the Jurka came to a tapered tip and sloped down at an easy descent. It really did look like a sunken crack in the earth, as if here the world split open and then was over grown over the ensuing years. A creek ran along the bottom of the valley. We decided for the time being not to go directly into the Jurka but to follow along its western edge, at least until dawn. By dawn we saw that the creek had grown considerably in size further up stream, and off the near distance was a waterfall with what looked like an old, abandoned ruined mill next to it.
Damu scouted out the ruin and it was clear. We camped out there for a few hours. Not even bothering to unravel my bed roll, I just laid on top of a concrete slab and rested my head on my bag. In my nap I had a strange dream about a grand mother living in the mill with her grand children and a giant frog that moved into the water fall that ate her kids. I woke up and didn't want to find out if that was true or not, so I shook Damu awake and we got going.
As dawn rose, the whole of the Jurka was blanketed in an early morning foggy-mist and lit in a pale glow. The place has a strange beauty, yet something is noticeably unsettling about it. Everything is a bit off, and nature with in it goes in unusual courses. During that morning ride along the Jurka Damu and I saw aquatic rabbits. I shit you not, we saw water-rabbits, long and skinny, with wide flat feet and light green fur. Maybe they couldn't breathe the water, but we saw rabbits hopping from land and into water, swimming frantically down stream, and back out again.
By late afternoon we caught sight of fresh tracks that looked like the hoof-prints of the giant boars that the Hobgoblins ride heading from the west and northbound into the Jurka directly. We left our horse and wagon there and headed in. As we did we stopped to consider tactics. We both had fought Hobgoblins but they had numbers on us. Plus we we're only after one of them. The Hobgoblin raiders of the northern plains I have a respect for. On their Boar-Mounts they are deadly. They have a unique style of Calvary tactics that is very different from how we, or the Elves, etc. would use typically fight on horse back. They fight almost like a pack of wild animals, and use hit and run tactics with ruthless efficiency. When I was in the army I fought with units charged with taking out Hobgoblins on a few occasions. While we always won, it was only because of superior numbers. For every raider we took they easily took 6 to 8 of our men. You have to use traps and guerrilla tactics on them, as a blow to blow fight always came with heavy losses.
So we decided that we would try to locate them, then set up what ever traps we could near by, and hopefully lure them in. I knew Damu carried all sorts of nastiness is in his bag. He always came equipped for a millions forms of murder. Though I learned a lot from him in those years. When I first met him I still fought like a soldier as I still thought like a soldier after years in the army. On our first two missions he taught me the difference between fighting and killing. He was a killer born and bred, I was a warrior who learned also to be a killer. I still had to do most of the blow to blow work when it was necessary. But he was right. We didn't fight for honor, or duty we did this work just for money, so it doesn't make sense to take a lot of risks when you're a mercenary.
Right before night fall we came upon a hilly area with-in the Jurka that rang out with a low, droning, moaning sound that seemed to wrap around the area with the wind. It all seemed very somber and morbid. The hills about the place each had various oblong obelisks on top. I stopped to check one out. It had markings on it that neither of us could read and was made of a strange purple-black stone. The pillar had holes carved into it which when wind blew through it created the moaning sounds the carried through this mournful place. At the base of this pillar was a regular limestone slab carved out in Gobbely which read, "Kufaza Derago". This place was a series of Hobgoblin burial mounds! Where they got the strange obelisks, I don't know, but they didn't look like they were carved from the hands of any Goblinoid. Whatever their origin I was glad for them for the sounds they made would provide us some cover.
Damu quickly grabbed my side and motioned me to duck down. In the haze of the setting sun I saw the silhouette of a Goose. "That's not a real Bird, that Druid escaped", he whispered to me as he drew his bow. Sure enough two hills over the goose landed by a mound and quickly shifted its form into that Gharuun. He looked in bad shape. Good, it'd be easier to kill him again. Damu snuck in closer, hugging the shadows between hills, but keeping Gharuun with in constant bow shot. I drank two potions, one to move far more swiftly then I could and another that made shadows wrap around me. He motioned to me to get in position to attack after he attacked first. I saw him dip his arrow head into a little jar of something nasty, plus his arrows heads were not only enchanted, but carved in a way that did even more damage when you pulled them out. Gharuun was kneeling before an Obelesk and had started to perform some sort of ritual when Damu fired a shot through his back and out his chest.
Leaping up the hill I was almost knocked over as the air rippled waves of force in all directions from out of Gharuun. I saw his glowing hands touch the wound and seal it. But with the arrow still stuck through him. Hopefully the healing spell he cast on himself didn't take out the poison on the arrow as well. Mother Fucker. It started to rain like mad out of no where, and Damu got knocked over by huge gusts of wind. Gharuun laughed at me as I swung my sword at his head. He ducked, and swung up with a wooden staff that caught me on the chin. I spit blood in his face and swung again. And missed again. For a crazy naked guy he moved like a fucking tiger, I'll give him that. Then I saw that next to the mound a hole was dug. I quickly figured that if this was a burial mound it was a freshly dug grave. Good. I deliberately made a shitty swing towards him again, and made an equally deliberate shitty attempt to dodge the counter blow from his staff. It hit me in the chest, and I acted like it
really knocked me on my ass as I fell towards the hole. Never, ever gloat over somebody in a fight. As I lay there in the pouring rain, Gharuun stood over me grinning with some violent yet distant look in his eyes. I have no idea where his mind really was, nor will I ever find out for in that moment I grabbed him and pulled us both down into the hole, impaling him with my sword as well hit the bottom. I stood up and saw Damu on top of the hole making a cut off his head gesture. Breathing heavy I nodded in agreement, As I tossed the head up to Damu the rain abruptly stopped.
Something picked Damu's eyes in the distance. He paused and pulled out a periscope, "Hobgoblins, about 5 of them on Boars are coming this way, yet two are pulling a cart carrying something covered in blankets. The lead rider looks important. I bet it's Jahghu Kazul. We have maybe 30 minutes before they see us." It wasn't enough time to get too elaborate with traps. The mud from the magic storm was at least helpful. Out of his side bag, Damu pulled out 4 claw traps and buried them in the mud along the hill. I was hoping for enough time to dig pit traps, they work wonders on mounted attackers. Flint, oil flasks, and trip wires would have to do. Damu made a few fire bombs and handed me one. We hunkered down on the edge other side of the hill as we listened to them ride up. I stuck my flint to light my fire bomb as the sounds of boar-snorts grew louder. I heared the distinct metal snap of a claw trap over top the awful wailing of the obelisks and the roar of a boar bred to gigantic proportions. I through the fire bomb, and heard screams in Gobbley. It was on.
Damu ran around the edge of the hill top to the left and I to right. I saw him shoot a quick burst of arrows that caught a boar in the gut and it's rider in the eye. A boar big enough for a Hobgoblin to ride is a boar big enough to bite someone as small as Damu clean in half. Those things are damn near the size of horses- not as tall, but way wider and sturdier.
Another Boar-mounted Hobgoblin charged at me swinging a morning star as his mount aimed its tusks at me. I quickly saw this was really a feint, as a bigger and badder looking Hobgoblin behind him was drawing his bow down on me. I let the first rider charge me, then I quickly dropped down on my back. It lept over me and I stabbed upwards into its belly, disemboweling the beast, but caught an arrow in my leg in return. Two Hobgoblins on foot were pulling the cart the last of the way on foot. The traps took out their mounts. The rider who's mount I killed swung his morning star down at me, and caught me in the gut, though the spikes only poked me a little bit, my armor took most of the blow. The bigger and badder looking Hobgoblin, whom I quickly figured was Jahghu Kazul was still on his mount and was calmly drawing another bow shot. Fuck the nobody with the morning star, I ran straight for Jahghu.
He leaped off his mount and ran out at me with this really nice, sleek battle axe. He caught me in the left shoulder with it and across my abdomen. I kicked him the shin, and as he stumbled Damu caught him in the neck with an arrow. As he Jahghu hesitated from the arrow shot I swiped across the chest, and down again taking of his left leg right below the knee. Morning star guy swung over from behind me and caught me in the right shoulder. Damu threw his dagger right through morning star guy's throat and I finished off Jahghu Kazul as he lay there bleeding. I took the axe and Jahghu Kazul's helmet. The thing was silver with all these fancy ivory horns. He had large key around his kneck tied with thick leather cord. I took that figuring it had to do with the whatever was under the blankets in the carts. Maybe they were leaving an offering to a recently dead Chieftain I thought. Nothing really could have prepared me for what was under there.
The two Hobgoblins pulling the cart up the hill managed to get what was in the cart off of it just before Damu killed them with a rain of arrows. It sat before the hole. We looted the Hobgoblin bodies and dumped them all in the hole with Gharuun, minus the head of Jahghu Kazul. As we started to peel layers of blankets back from what was under the them, we could start to see a glowing green light come from underneath them. I paused, and Damu's feathers stood on end. I started to feel something or someone around us, and I was immediately knocked back ten feet. I felt like I was just hit in the chest with a boulder. I think ribs broke. I could hardly breathe. As I stood up Damu screeched and pulled back the rest of the blankets.
I told you this mission was a weird one. Beneath the blankets was a big round glass jar mounded on a shinny black base, and capped with an ornate black metal lid complete with a key hole, filled with a glowing green, bubbling liquid that inside floated a large misshapen brain.Worst of all it spoke. "Where is Jahghu Kazul?", we heard a low voice speak from all directions. The Kenku practice black arts and Damu was privy to a lot of creepy shit because of what his clan did, but I could tell he was completely dumbfounded by this talking Brain in a Jar. Damu lifted up Jahghu's head and pressed it to the glass of the jar, "He's dead. We killed him." Balls of steel that bird had, even when confronted with something like this. "Where is the key that he wore around his neck?", demanded the Brain in the Jar. The thing had power, whatever the fuck it was. But it had no legs and so broken ribs or not I decided to play my hand heavy figuring that sense I had legs and the Jar did not I could run. I strode over to it with the key in hand, taunting it, "I have it but if you try that shit again I'll break it!". It made a hissing sound and the liquid inside bubbled. "Very well, what do you want?", it responded.
Damu spoke up, "What are you, why do these Hobgoblins have you and why are you here with them to meet the Druid Gharuun?"
"Very well then, I will you tell my story and then in exchange you will help bring my story to an end. I am or at least I was Draaza Kazul, Hobgoblin Shaman of Derago Tribe. I was Jahghu's Uncle. The Derago are in the employment of another race you Humans and you Kenku know nothing of. They are a foul and terrible race that dwell in deep caverns under the mountains west of Rolheim. There they plot the destruction and enslavement of all the world above and practice rites and foul sorcery so black and alien even I am aghast at the cosmic scope of their horror. Needless to say its better that you don't know this race. Many of us regret the pact our ancestors made with them in order to gain an edge over our rival tribe the Kulshychi Hobgoblins who serve the Hidden Lords of the City of Bayport. Secret wars have been waged for generations now between the shadows of Regentum and Rolheim, wars on both your edges, indifferent to the whims of Human and Dwarf. This place we call the Jurka is a casualty of that war."
This certainly I wasn't going to tell the army when we collected our bounty. On a few missions I've stumbled on to schemes and plots on a scale I tend to avoid. I'll save that shit for the military and the good guys. If this wasn't bad enough already, the Jar went on.
"Some where between these uncontested lands, close to Manas as well, there is reputed to be the stronghold of an Elven-Wizard recluse of significant prowless. I led the mission to find this Stronghold so the Derago could raid it secure the Wizards secrets for those we serve. I failed the first time and as punishment those whom the Derago serve did this did me. With in this jar they said my occult powers would be strong enough to find the Elf-Mages location, which in fact was true, but it was obvious they intended it also to be a punishment for my failure. They locked me in this state of chemical undeath. Nothing pleases a proud Hobgoblin more, other then perhaps the din of battle and the cries of fleeing enemies, then then feel of wind across his face as he rides across these vast, rolling ancestral plains on his beloved Boar mount. I did find the location of the stronghold and a great legion of Derago were called together from across the plains, and from under the earth out of the dark subterranean cities of our employers where we our are numbers are bred like cattle by our employers who have tricked us and are becoming our masters. I dread the day when these creatures have enslaved our race entirely for those bred by them will out number our proud and freeborn numbers with in a few generations. Foolishly we gave them our weak and disgraced thinking they would merely eat them, for they live on the brains of other races, but instead from these few they are raising a region of war-fodder. But as our collective force rode out to the tower we were spotted the forces of Regentum and Guidane. They broke our advance and scattered our numbers. While I have no love for Humans or your culture I am grateful that they foiled this raid. I dread to think of what power lurked in the fortress of that Elven-Wizard that those below, who already are the masters of countless volatile magics, would go to great lengths to capture it, and what they would do with it. I was to be brought here to be buried, what is left of me anyway, to be laid to rest, free of this nightmare undeath, in a proper repose fitting of noble born Hobgoblin reunited with his ancestors. The Druid, a traitor to his kind I'm told, I have mixed feelings about that, was to clean any taint of necromancy that may pollute my remains. It's too late for that now, as I assume you killed him as well. My last request is that you take the key you took from my Nephew's body, unseal my Jar-Prison and bury me with-in the mound."
I looked down at Damu, he shrugged in agreement. I didn't want to fight again if I didn't have to. I had only one healing potion on me and I needed it already. As I unsealed the Jar the sound the moaning obelisks grew to a great roar. A great burst of green-light erupted from the inside and I heard a great loud sigh of relief coming from its voice. In my minds I quickly saw a vision of tall thin beings in ornate robes with pasty pale sickly skin and faces of tentacles. I hoped I never saw such creatures again and it wasn't until our very last mission together that we ever saw any. Years later we saw the very dark truth that the Brain in the Jar that was once Draaza Kazul told us that night on the burial mound deep in the Jurka. As I pulled the brain out and carried it to the hole I saw what looked like a wispy and translucent image of a Hobgoblin adorned with all manner of ritual fetishes and symbols emerge out of the Jar. The image nodded to me and as I tossed it in we heard the ghost of Draaza Kazul say ,"Thank you".
Tired and wounded we hoped that we could make it back to the abandoned mill. I drank my healing potions as we walked into the night back the way we came. Once we were away from the sounds of the obelesks we could could hear yelling and galloping hooves in the distance. We weren't out of the mess yet. A few hours into things, perhaps a hour or two before dawn, Damu paused for a second then I heard a thudding sound as he dropped. An arrow was in his hip, and it was too dark out to tell where it was coming from.Worst off all we back on the edge of the Jurka, out on open plains with no cover. I saw two big lumbering bodies rushing towards me. I ran head long towards them and swung wildly. Two huge Bugbear berzerkers, shock troops for the Hobgoblin raiders. The Barghest had returned and it was on top of Damu! The Bugbears were all fur and muscle and armed with huge spiked clubs. Their eyes glowed a feint yellow in the dark, and they seemed consumed with a frenzied blood lust. Even still I thought I could take them, though with berzerkers of any sort you have to be careful because they'll hut themselves just to hurt you more.
I hate that Humans are damn near the only race that can't see in the dark. Thinking of that I kicked dirt in the face of one Bugbear right as the other swung down his club with both hands. It missed and I stepped on the club, leaped up and swung my sword deep into its neck and collar bone. It fell, and rolled over. The other grabbed in both its hands, making me drop my sword and it lifted me up in an effort to bite my head. I head butted it with my spiked helmet and dazed it for a second. I gutted it with a dagger and it swiped my face with its claws, leaving me with a cut from under my left eye and across my cheek to my jaw line. The other Bugbear got up and I grabbed my sword. It ran full force at me with a bone shiv and I held my ground, but ducked out the way as it went pass me and down into the Jurka. Sadly it was only ten feet to the bottom. The other Bugbear went towards the Barghest. Damu was pretty beat up. I saw him limping and holding his stomach in one hand and swinging his sword in the other. The Barghest was in wolf-thing form and its mouth drooled with a mess of feathers and blood.
Damu could do a bit of magic but he hated to do so. Not that he had a problem with magic, but he prided himself on his talents as an assassin so much that he only used such things as a last resort. Like there in that tight spot cornered between the Barghest and the approaching Bugbear. He chanted something to himself and leaped twenty feet away and over the head of the Bugbear, which he slashed wide open as he went by. As the Bugbear's skull split open I charged the Barghest and ran it through. It shriveled and shifted back into its stocky Goblin shape at the end of my blade. Damu came back and looked over the edge into the Jurka and laughed, "Hey Leo look at that!". Down in the Jurka I saw an albino frog the size of a barrel eating the insides of other Bugbear. Shit the dream was real after all! Lord that place was creepy! We made it to our horse and Damu limped into the Wagon. He was in bad shape, but he'd make it, however shitty the ride would be.
When we got back the encampment in sorry shape the Paladins were gloating at the mess we were in but shut the fuck up when we presented the heads of both Jahghu Kazul and Gharuun. I demanded that we get paid twice for in fact killing Gharuun twice, something the Pollies didn't manage to do once. Which we did, and I managed to negotiate a healing for Damu, though they really didn't want to do that. We had Sir Halton sign and dip a wax seal in our work papers saying we had completed the task at hand so we didn't have to travel all that way carrying severed heads. All in all it was a good mission with no complaints.
In regards of burying what remained of Draaza Kazul I think in this case I did the right thing. It felt right, and despite of the circumstances of why I was there in the first place, I did feel like the burial mounds were in their own way a holy and sacred spot. Don't let the Clerics know I said that, but like I said, in spite of how many Hobgoblins I sent to their ancestors over the years, I do respect them. Maybe the plains of the uncontested regions are better off left in the hands of Goblinoids and crazed Druids. Better then in the hands of Gnomes and equally greedy Humans that will poison the untouched land with factories. Though like Draaza Kazul I dread the day when those below have grown their Hobgoblin slave armies to numbers vast enough to lay waste to our nation. The masters of the Derago have a name for themselves, but as I learned from the Dwarves of Rolheim they are called Mind-Flayers by others. I learned from the one time I went to Rolheim that much of our own history that we are taught is heavily watered down by the Church.
We are taught that the earth is base and profane and that's why Bestial races who come from out of the earth rather then on top of it- Orcs, Ogres, Goblinoids, etc.- inherently have a greater predisposition towards evil. That's not completely true I've learned. These races come from wild, untamed places and are more like animals. Certainly an Orc is dumb and vicious and that viciousness easily favors things we would call evil, but it's nature is more like a hungry Wolf then it is Demonic. Also while they all dig burrows, tunnels, or live in ruins or caves, they live off of the land. They don't live underground. However there are things that live underground, deep underground and these things certainly are evil. But they are evil in a way to that is a mirror to us and that is why the Church hides their existence. There are races down below that are intelligent, build cities and have cultures, though horrific nightmare cultures left buried below. While I was in Rolheim I learned that the 1298 war of Stockdon wasn't really led by a Dragon and its forces. The Dragon served the Mind-Flayers. A small number of them in fact. Rolheim has a long history of waring with these Mind-Flayers.
Anyway, I know that a lot of the work Damu and I did was part of a bigger plan for Regentum to clear out dangers from the wild areas so that industry could be moved deeper into the interior. We were the first generation of a legion of hired swords set out to do dirty work with big business and industry moving quickly behind us. They hire young mercenaries now more then ever. I just hope that its all towards a good end. I don't want Regentum to turn into an Empire of billowing smoke stacks and loud grinding factories. If it were up to the rich the whole country would look like the factory slums of Scardale. I see the guys coming in here boasting of their exploits wanting to blow their gold on my beer and the girls I keep around here. I earned and lost fortunes a few times over to taverns and prostitutes that I know now in my fifties that it's better to be standing behind the bar then sitting in front of it. I hear the kids are getting a lot of work clearing out areas out west for the new railroad and that by the time I'm dead it'll connect Elaine with Scardale. But the government really doesn't know whats lurking out there. Some of them do, the Rangers do, but their the dirtiest bunch of crooks you'll ever run into and they'll never tell the Army, the Church and certainly not the Palladins. We have more to worry about then mere Pirates, Bandits and Goblinoid Raiders.
But if the monsters and other horrors out there don't ruin us the Gnomes and big business will.
A reasonably OK camera - now superseded by my lovely Canon EOS 400D (with which this pic was taken).
Bugbears? Easy-to-beat auto focus, and WOULD NOT take photos indoors, on any setting.
Ain't been consigned to the scrap-heap - it'll continue to be used as a "working" camera, carried with me in case I see something of interest...
The Crowning with Thorns is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Executed probably in 1602/1604 or possibly around 1607, it is now located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
The theme of pain and sadism is certainly central to the work. John Gash points to the way the two torturers ram the crown down with the butts of their staffs, "a rhythmic and sadistic hammering." (Actually Gash believes that the torturer on the left is about to bring his stick down on the near, visible side of Christ's head, but this seems physically impossible). Robb mentions that the painting is about "how ... to give pain and feel pain, and how close pain and pleasure sometimes were, how voluptuous suffering could be on a golden afternoon." For Robb, however, the problem with the painting is "that recurrent bugbear of Christian art, the slack and passive figure of Christ, ... sitting out a hair shampoo at the barber's...".
Caravaggio's patron Vincenzo Giustiniani was an intellectual as well as a collector, and late in life he wrote a paper about art, identifying twelve grades of accomplishment. In the highest class he put just two names, Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, as artists capable of combining realism and style in the most accomplished manner. This Crowning with Thorns illustrates what Giustiniani meant: the cruelty of the two torturers is depicted with acutely observed reality as they hammer home the thorns, as is the bored slouch of the official leaning on the rail as he oversees the death of God. While Christ, despite what Robb says, is suffering real pain with patient endurance; all depicted within a classical composition of contrasting and intersecting horizontals and diagonals.
Been doing a little painting. This guy is about halfway finished. Primer was black so you can tell what is left to paint.
Some undiluted P3 brown for the leather. I then lightened that same brown as his fur basecoat. Thinking of adding some brownish red bits to highlight bits of the fur.
Am most pleased how his belt buckle turned out. Mixed up a custom bronze color and then washed it heavily with Citadel Nuln Oil.
Still have fur highlights, shield, weapon, hands, mouth and base to tackle.
The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku assassin, as told by Leo Wayfarer to his Nephew Leto Wayfarer: # 32 (of 33) The killing of the "Dragon-Lady".
When Damu told me that his clan had a job for us up north in the pirate city of Bayport I knew we were up for some dirty work. When they gave us a chest of potions up front I knew we were fucked. I was already in deep with the Kenku and there was no refusing their offers at this point. I remember sitting on my porch drinking in my chair on a gray rainy summer day. Dirty poor kids from the neighborhood were chasing some sorry ass mongrel man up the street with sticks when Damu showed up with the potion chest and a bag of diamonds.
"We have to go up to Bayport to kill some gangster called the Dragon-Lady", he said as her tossed the sack of jewels to me.
Shit always rolls down hill, and it always had a funny way of rolling down on top of me. Somebody somewhere fucked up and it always was up to him and I to clean it up. Oh well, whoever this "Dragon-Lady" was I'm sure she was a cunt anyway.
We caught a ride up to Bayport with a caravan belonging to a semi-shady fat, effeminate Halfling merchant named Kyle Oberton. People around Scardale called him leg-rub Oberton as he liked to pay street urchin boys to rub his inner thigh as he jerked off. Either way it was a quick ride on short notice.
After our third day on the road I pulled Damu aside and asked him details on the job.
"This 'Dragon-Lady' isn't a dragon, but no one knows what she is really. Some say she's part dragon, but some are thinking she's part demon. Either way she's got magic, and she lives in a guarded villa. Not only do we have to kill her, we also have to kill anyone who looks like her, and we have to burn the bodies. The rulers of Bayport won't bother us if we are discreet. This is a clean up effort", Damu told me.
So like usual we were to sneak into a lethal situation not knowing even half of the whole story, and kill people we never met. This job was my second to last job before retiring from mercenary work. I had kept telling myself for years that after a few more successful missions that I wouldn't blow all the money I made on hookers and taverns, and that I'd retire before my luck ran out. I'd did that shit for 10 years after serving in the Regentum army from when I was 15 until I was mostly 21.
..[if !supportEmptyParas]-->At the city gates of Bayport Damu and I quickly split from that fat faggot Halfling. The walls around Bayport are huge, towering solid grey slanted walls that are stained with blood and scarred with wear from repelling marauding hoards over the years. By the gates I saw a skinny bitter old man stabbing a goblin with a spear that was locked inside a gibbet. The sorry little bastard was missing a hand and was all bruised and cut up. Huge half-Ogre guards in flat black spiked armor leaning on massive well-worn swords stood at either sides of the cities gate as a few shabby human solders asked everybody as to what their business in Bayport was. Factories spewed black and yellow smoke in the distance, and the first thing that hit me was the intense, pervasive stench of piss. In Regentum our cities have their ghettos, but Bayport itself is a ghetto.
Skinny and tore up opium addicted human whores openly sucked off Orc marauders, while I saw a Gnome playing a out of tune mandolin on the shoulders of a Bugbear who was in a squad of thugs of mixed goblinoid races. Whores of every age and race sold themselves to the killers and thieves they shared their city with. Pirates looked at us two with eager eyes, hoping maybe to capture us and sell us to a ship. Everywhere I saw cripples and lepers begging in the streets and massive throngs of the worst examples of all races crammed in together around tightly packed and haphazardly build shacks made from scraps and tents. Bayport is a grim and vile place.
I wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, so we skipped getting a room and headed straight for the villa. The villa itself it turned out to be the size of a small castle and loomed far above everything around it, so we could not get into it from an adjacent rooftop, which is Damu's favorite way to get into a place. The villa was guarded by Hobgoblin and human troops, and some of the Hobgoblins rode on giant malformed boars. Damu snuck around the place and said their was no obvious way in or out of the building besides the front door, or through windows not too far from the roof. I didn't want to wait to be clever and con my way in through the front. I just wanted to be back on my porch drinking.
Damu broke out his set of climbing claws and a chunk of charcoal to blacken our weapons so they wouldn't gleam if we had them drawn. As he quickly, silently, and smoothly climbed up the walls of the villa in a zigzag path between shadows and vines, I downed a bunch of potions that the other Kenku gave us. One potion was for quickness, one for strength, and another to float up to the roof. For once I made it up a building quicker then he did, and the little fucker gave me a dirty look. We got into the building by Damu climbing down another wall, opening a window, and quickly killing a guard with his crossbow. I very carefully floated down into the window as its hard to move quietly in armor.
We were standing at the end of a long hallway that that went straight and turned left at the end. We could hear chanting and loud, heavy drumming coming from further with in the building. Damu went up to the turn first, looked for a moment, and then signaled me over. Looking around the corner I could see a bright light coming from the right at the end of another hall, and could clearly hear a loud and powerful female voice chanting,
"Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, Deathless Mother-Father, bornless primordial serpent awaken! Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, upon our hidden obsidian temples awaken! From the blackest pits scribed with blasphemous secrets arise from the bowels of the abyss for you beloved children! Ye y 'ti mn'g thu 'lh ugg'a aeth Yig fl'anglh uuthah, Enter this female vessel so she may guide your hand! IA, IA YIG!!"
Damu went a head again, paused for a few moments longer then before, then again signaled me over. "Leo outside of that door it there are two curved staircases to either side that go down into a large open chamber. In front of that is a balcony. There is a giant snake with arms playing drums while a naked lady who's a snake from the waist down is doing some ritual", he told me in a very matter of fact voice. It seemed absurd, but I peaked around the corner to see a beautiful, lithe, slender, dark haired woman with a 30ft long snake like lower torso in the throws of some occult ecstasy, while flashes of red light and translucent spectral tendrils crawled sensually about her body.
"Leo you go down and get the drummer, I'll get this Dragon-Lady", he said. Damu then hopped up on to the banister of the balcony then with weapons drawn he did a leaping flip towards this Dragon-Lady, and I charged the drummer.
The first thing was her scream. I looked up quickly to see Damu landing, and her clutching her bare chest where he sliced her from her neck, down across her left tit. Enraged the drummer reared up towards a height a few times higher then mine and lunged at me with an incredible speed. Had I not drank those potions I would have been crushed, but I rolled out of the way and leaped on the creatures back. I began ruthlessly hacking away at scales and muscles as hard as armor. It smashed itself against a wall in an effort to knock me free from its back, and in failing to do so knock over a flaming brazier which set a red velvet tapestry with a gold knot work of serpents on it on fire. Pounding my sword away at its neck and back its arms went limp, and at that instant I felt the room grow very cold. I saw Damu dodging blasts of fire and frost, which were shooting out of the hands of the Dragon-Lady.
..[if !supportEmptyParas]-->..[endif]--> The drummer snake shot up and towards its Matron. I leapt off the beast at a good 20 ft in the air, and swung at the waste of the Dragon-Lady. Striking true I cleaved her from hip to the other and fell with her to the floor. For a moment our eyes met and she looked very beautiful. I started to feel sorry for her and then realized she was trying to bewitch me. I stood up quickly and shrugged it off. The drummer snake was lying in a poor of its own blood barely alive, and the Dragon-Lady pathetically was crying and crawling to her severed lower half. Damu put his little talon foot on her head and cut it clean off. I walked over to the drummer snake and brought its misery to an end. We took whatever looked valuable from the room, including this gold and ruby encrusted goblet that I still have. We stacked the bodies together as best we could given their lengths, and set them on fire per our instructions from the Kenku. We left the building the way we came and quickly left that disgusting city. We had to bribe a fisherman to sail us down the coast to the city of Nolos. I'm sure the diamonds we gave him where more money they he had ever seen before.
I never learned what it was all over and that was one job that I don't want to know the reason behind.
The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku Assassin, as told by Leo to his Nephew Leto Wayfarer: 8 of 33- Our first run in with Alzeya.
You know when we had to take Alzeya out it took a long time for things to calm down. For a few years after that I had to look over my shoulder while walking around town. People admitted it in the long run that it had to be done, and everyone liked to forget at the time that it was her daughter who hired us to kill her in the first place. But really what happened to that lady was accidentally our fault anyway.
Alzeya was at the time a wealthy up and coming "business" woman, but her business was using shipping, slaving and real estate as a cover for smuggling, and running whore houses. She was the Witch daughter of a rich Elven pirate and Human concubine. She was born into a bit of coin and was educated, but she was rich amongst the poor around the docks of Scardale where her Father worked out of, so she ended up pretty gaudy, tacky and full of herself. When she turned 16 she married one of her Father's men, a human named Kiko, and with the dowry that her Father gave to Kiko they started a more legitimate shipping business as a front operation for all their pirate contacts. They had a daughter a few years later that they named Seka, and shortly after Seka was born Kiko was killed in a fight at sea.
One day while I was on my way to go waste my money on hookers and liquor like I always did in those days when I just happened at random to head down to the whore houses by the docks. On my way there this guy Povin I knew from around town started waving me down and walked quickly up to me and so I was like, "Listen I don't care what you're into, but another man is not what I'm headed this way for".
Now Povin was a big mother fucker, but I'm glad he had a sense of humor. We laughed and he said, "Hey Leo I'm working for this rich Lady Alzeya who needs some tough guys to go after some prick who ran off with her stuff and get it back, are you and your Kenku partner available?" I should have said no, but I told him that yes we we're free and we had just got done killing some Ogres' hiding out in swamps half way across the country, but the trip cost us so much that we didn't make as much as we thought we would have. He told me to stop by this one Salon in two days to meet Alzeya and work out the deal. At the time I knew who she was and had seen her around town, but never had any dealings with her.
So two days later Damu and I headed over to the Salon, which was right where the north end of the docks area touches the wealthy commercial district rather then the slums to the south. It was in a nicer area, but not too far into the nice part of Scardale that we stood out.
I saw her right away as we walked up to the place. She was barely covered in a thin flimsy blue dress, and she had extremely long blond hair down to her knees that by some manner of sorcery moved and contorted around her seemingly with a mind of it's own. She came up to us quickly, coyly smiling at us both with a come hither and fuck me look in her eyes. When Damu was unfazed by her behavior she was reflexively irked and I could tell both that she was used to using her looks to get her way and that also she never dealt with any Kenku before. Without skipping a beat a beat however she was all over me, and magic or not I probably would have done anything she asked.
She brought us in to the salon and had a team of servants feed us a huge meal of roasted quail and imported wine. One thing I recall that was out of place was that Alzeya drank out of some weird ivory horn rather then a glass. I always figured it was a some Witch thing, I dunno. She made small talk during the meal and acted more silly and drunker then she really was was. Though at nightfall she hit a gong and the place quickly was deserted except for the three of us. As the last servent left, some old Halfling woman, Alzeya's deminor quickly changed. She sat up sternly and pulled forth a map seemingly out of no where,-.
"A man named Milton that worked for me ran off with valuables of mine and some rare slaves. He was a pirate who fancied himself an explorer. He came to me with these tales of some black egg of mystical power in the mountians near Lu'Hadej and wanted me to fund his desire to explore the region and secure the black egg. I did and Milton managed to get the black egg. However shortly after returning to Scardale he took off with the boat I bought him, money, a ship crew and valuable slaves. After awhile most of the men deserted him saying he was getting increasingly sick and loosing his mind. They came back and told me he was hiding in a old fort of the coast in the jungles of Fazas only a few days to the south. I don't care if you have to kill him or not, I mainly want the black egg back, along with with his research journals and strange young girl he has with him. He keeps the egg in a ivory and gold lined case with a golden spiral on top. You will be well rewarded".
As she said that last bit about being rewarded I felt like a mouse caught in the eyes of a cat. Damu spoke up and soon a deal was worked out.
In a few days we found ourselves on a ship filled with cut throats, derlicts and drunken loosers of a variety of races. We slept on deck and passed the time getting drunk in a constant misty rain. I remember this particularly annoying Half-Orc that always trying to play dice with us that I had half the mind to throw over board, but he seemed well liked by the crew.
Even though Fazas isn't that far from Scardale I really hate going any where near there. There is something really creepy about that place, as if the whole jungle is alive, watching and waiting- 'cause it wants to eat you. When the boats dropped us off at the river inlet along the coast I immediately had second thoughts once my boots hit the sand of the beach. According to the map we were given the ruined fort Milton was hiding out in was only less then a mile up stream from the beach. But it was through dense jungle and high cliffs. I saw the boat sailing away in the dawns early light and felt trapped between blue waters and black jungle. Damu like usual was unfazed, but he had to take off his leather armored hoody, and I my plate mail. He always looked so frail and delicate unclothed, yet he was one of the most dangerous people I ever knew.
It was fucking hell hiking up hill with armor strapped to my back while having to hack through vines, fight off endless swarms of insects, climb sheer walls, and while drowning in a wash of sweat from the unbearable heat. It was like we were fighting against a wave of boiling water. Not even the deserts of Lu' Hadej are as unbearable. It took us half the day to close that mile. When we found the ruined fort it it was a low tower, with a wider base built atop the face of a cliff. From what I could see it was covered in rather ornate relieifs of snakes, but it was over grown with vines and bright pink and yellow bulbous flowers and was falling apart. I stopped to look at it for a second and pondered who the hell made it. It clearly wasn't an abandoned Regentum fort, and it was too fancy for pirates. Maybe some old reclusive Wizard built it years ago?Certainly someone with a thing for snakes at least.
The guy Milton had two Bugbears standing guard who I imagined must of been in even worse hell then us with all that fur. We really weren't in the mood for a fight with these guys so we pulled a pretty cheap tactic to get rid of them. I tied a rope to a bolder, while Damu creeped by them and lassoed them from behind with the other end, and I pushed the bolder off the cliff, dragging them to a quick crashing death. Then we armored up and went in.
Surprising all we found inside was the strange looking valuable slave girl we were told to capture and return. She was stoically sitting at a table eating a bowl of stew. The place was dimly but I got a good look at her. She looked like a regular human little girl, except she was hairless, and her skin seemed to always match the color of whatever she was around. I imagine if she didn't have clothes on I may not have seen her right away. Damu squawked in disgust as soon as her saw her, and dropped a smoke bomb right away. A few moments later after choking a bit and letting the smoke clear I heard him say, "Leo I got her". He was behind her with her hands in one hand and a sword to her neck in the other. A funny site it was 'cause she was still taller then him. I tied her up and starting looking for the ivory case and books. Damu was keeping a sharp eye on her, "The Kenku know these things, they're called Skulks. There aren't too many of them. They're all thieves and killers". "Great", I said but thinking to myself I was like, "How not unlike Kenku! No wonder they don't like them!".
I found the books, but not the ivory case. I walked over to the girl and asked with my sword point at her cheek where the guy Milton and the ivory case was. I don't think she understood me completely, but she pointed downward. We found stairs going down and as we went down them we could hear screaming and moaning. The steps opened up to a cave system and we could hear the rushing of water echoing in the distance. I lit a torch and went ahead of Damu who darted off to the side for cover. I saw the guy laying next to the edge of a crevasse that he was puking over into. As I got closer chills ran through me. The air was foul and thick and chunks of flesh were either falling off of his body or the flesh of his body was shifting around in undulating waves of purplish-green. The chunks that fell off seemed to be frozen, but yet left off a brown steam.
Milton rolled over and looked up at me. In the center of his chest was a solid jet back fist sized ball of what looked liked polished stone and he coughed up a glob of blood and teeth. In agonizing gasps he sputtered, "I....I...know...know she sent you....but I ran away to save her". "Th-this...thing", pointing to the black ball in his chest, "t-took me over. I thought I could control it, but it's..it's...killing meeee....". I looked at the poor fucker and ran him through. I turned around to look for Damu and was like, "That was easy enough", and then was immediately knocked back 20 feet in the direction we came. I rolled around to see his corpse shifting into a larger mass of oozing flesh, eyes and rolling spiked tendril limbs. The thing started to sink down into the crevasse and Damu leaped after it. His acrobatics were always amazing.
I ran to the edge of the crevasse and saw him riding the creature by having his sword plunged into it by the hilt with one hand, while he tried to pry the black ball out with the other. The thing had a huge oval mouth that was growing in size in order to be able to swallow him whole. I had no choice I had to jump too, by my jump was more of straight plunge. I fell about 15ft onto it and caught one end of the creatures oval gaping maw mouth with my sword and let my weight cut through the fucking thing. Quickly I hit a wall of the crevasse at full force, but lucky landed on a wide ledge. Damu yelled out "Catch!!", as I heard a loud popping sound and saw the black egg come flying towards me. I caught it, but immediately put it away without looking at it, the thing was colder then ice!! The creature fizzled away and dripped down the rest of the crevasse towards an underground stream.
We found the Ivory case and figured out right enough that the black egg went inside of it. We took the Skulk girl and got out of there ASAP. On the trip back I read the journals that Alzeya was concerned about. I never heard this before, but when the guy Milton was looking for treasure in those mountain ruins around Lu'Hadej that Alzeya spoke off, he spent a lot of time talking to the mountain folk, who are Human, but not like us, nor like the Lu' Hadej people who are all tan and have big noses. I remember in the army when I was stationed in Lu' Hadej, the people there, who are mostly desert nomads and goat herders, these folks were spooked out about the mountain people who they left alone out of local superstition. I never saw one, but I was told they had thick black hair like the Lu' Hadej, but were deathly pale and had very bright pale blue eyes.
Milton's journal had said that these mountain folk claim that in ancient times those mountains where the original Kingdom of the Dwarves. That earthquakes caused them to leave. The mountain people where descended from slaves that the Dwarves had captured from Human countries to the south that the Dwarves were constantly at war with. I never heard this before or sense. I've only ever known Humans and Dwarves to get along, though I know the Lu' Hadej people hate Dwarves. The note books said that Human countries to south were completely wiped out by earthquakes that sank them beneath the waves and that the few survivors became the Lu' Hadej people, or they sailed away to places unknown. The journal also states that the mountains are completely dangerous and overridden with nightmare creatures and bestial races. Whatever treasure may lie in those Dwarven ruins are in what has been the hovels of demonic monstrosities for countless ages now.
Apparently Milton stole the black egg from a creature that lived high on a mountain peak. He described the creature as a tall shaft of flesh with bone-spur protrusions and a oddly rabbit like head. He learned about the creature from a tribe of Skulks, but who call themselves the Nirna. These Nirna are a cursed tribe of ex-slaves who did the most foulest work for the Dwarves. Dwarven Wizards cursed them to have no natural color in order to reinforce that they were only ever to serve their surroundings. The Nirna train their children to kill and to steal and send them off into the world to either return with goods and riches, or not return at all. During their rare contact with outsiders they often sell their young to keep their numbers purposefully low. The have lived in constant guerrilla war with Orcs for centuries and their only consistent ties with another people are with the mountain folk, whom they were once part of.
On the trip home I taught the Skulk girl how to speak Alsonian a bit. I used to see her around for years here and there, and I hear from younger guys she was working as a mercenary in Bayport recently. I know Milton regretted going into those mountains and finding the black egg, and we should have left it in the crevasse. We saw so much crazy shit over the years, and a lot of it was fun, but somethings turned out to be pretty fucked up in the end.
If we didn't bring Alzeya the goddamn black egg back we wouldn't have had to kill her a few years later.
The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku Assassin, as told by Leo to his Nephew Leto Wayfarer: 8 of 33- Our first run in with Alzeya.
You know when we had to take Alzeya out it took a long time for things to calm down. For a few years after that I had to look over my shoulder while walking around town. People admitted it in the long run that it had to be done, and everyone liked to forget at the time that it was her daughter who hired us to kill her in the first place. But really what happened to that lady was accidentally our fault anyway.
Alzeya was at the time a wealthy up and coming "business" woman, but her business was using shipping, slaving and real estate as a cover for smuggling, and running whore houses. She was the Witch daughter of a rich Elven pirate and Human concubine. She was born into a bit of coin and was educated, but she was rich amongst the poor around the docks of Scardale where her Father worked out of, so she ended up pretty gaudy, tacky and full of herself. When she turned 16 she married one of her Father's men, a human named Kiko, and with the dowry that her Father gave to Kiko they started a more legitimate shipping business as a front operation for all their pirate contacts. They had a daughter a few years later that they named Seka, and shortly after Seka was born Kiko was killed in a fight at sea.
One day while I was on my way to go waste my money on hookers and liquor like I always did in those days when I just happened at random to head down to the whore houses by the docks. On my way there this guy Povin I knew from around town started waving me down and walked quickly up to me and so I was like, "Listen I don't care what you're into, but another man is not what I'm headed this way for".
Now Povin was a big mother fucker, but I'm glad he had a sense of humor. We laughed and he said, "Hey Leo I'm working for this rich Lady Alzeya who needs some tough guys to go after some prick who ran off with her stuff and get it back, are you and your Kenku partner available?" I should have said no, but I told him that yes we we're free and we had just got done killing some Ogres' hiding out in swamps half way across the country, but the trip cost us so much that we didn't make as much as we thought we would have. He told me to stop by this one Salon in two days to meet Alzeya and work out the deal. At the time I knew who she was and had seen her around town, but never had any dealings with her.
So two days later Damu and I headed over to the Salon, which was right where the north end of the docks area touches the wealthy commercial district rather then the slums to the south. It was in a nicer area, but not too far into the nice part of Scardale that we stood out.
I saw her right away as we walked up to the place. She was barely covered in a thin flimsy blue dress, and she had extremely long blond hair down to her knees that by some manner of sorcery moved and contorted around her seemingly with a mind of it's own. She came up to us quickly, coyly smiling at us both with a come hither and fuck me look in her eyes. When Damu was unfazed by her behavior she was reflexively irked and I could tell both that she was used to using her looks to get her way and that also she never dealt with any Kenku before. Without skipping a beat a beat however she was all over me, and magic or not I probably would have done anything she asked.
She brought us in to the salon and had a team of servants feed us a huge meal of roasted quail and imported wine. One thing I recall that was out of place was that Alzeya drank out of some weird ivory horn rather then a glass. I always figured it was a some Witch thing, I dunno. She made small talk during the meal and acted more silly and drunker then she really was was. Though at nightfall she hit a gong and the place quickly was deserted except for the three of us. As the last servent left, some old Halfling woman, Alzeya's deminor quickly changed. She sat up sternly and pulled forth a map seemingly out of no where,-.
"A man named Milton that worked for me ran off with valuables of mine and some rare slaves. He was a pirate who fancied himself an explorer. He came to me with these tales of some black egg of mystical power in the mountians near Lu'Hadej and wanted me to fund his desire to explore the region and secure the black egg. I did and Milton managed to get the black egg. However shortly after returning to Scardale he took off with the boat I bought him, money, a ship crew and valuable slaves. After awhile most of the men deserted him saying he was getting increasingly sick and loosing his mind. They came back and told me he was hiding in a old fort of the coast in the jungles of Fazas only a few days to the south. I don't care if you have to kill him or not, I mainly want the black egg back, along with with his research journals and strange young girl he has with him. He keeps the egg in a ivory and gold lined case with a golden spiral on top. You will be well rewarded".
As she said that last bit about being rewarded I felt like a mouse caught in the eyes of a cat. Damu spoke up and soon a deal was worked out.
In a few days we found ourselves on a ship filled with cut throats, derlicts and drunken loosers of a variety of races. We slept on deck and passed the time getting drunk in a constant misty rain. I remember this particularly annoying Half-Orc that always trying to play dice with us that I had half the mind to throw over board, but he seemed well liked by the crew.
Even though Fazas isn't that far from Scardale I really hate going any where near there. There is something really creepy about that place, as if the whole jungle is alive, watching and waiting- 'cause it wants to eat you. When the boats dropped us off at the river inlet along the coast I immediately had second thoughts once my boots hit the sand of the beach. According to the map we were given the ruined fort Milton was hiding out in was only less then a mile up stream from the beach. But it was through dense jungle and high cliffs. I saw the boat sailing away in the dawns early light and felt trapped between blue waters and black jungle. Damu like usual was unfazed, but he had to take off his leather armored hoody, and I my plate mail. He always looked so frail and delicate unclothed, yet he was one of the most dangerous people I ever knew.
It was fucking hell hiking up hill with armor strapped to my back while having to hack through vines, fight off endless swarms of insects, climb sheer walls, and while drowning in a wash of sweat from the unbearable heat. It was like we were fighting against a wave of boiling water. Not even the deserts of Lu' Hadej are as unbearable. It took us half the day to close that mile. When we found the ruined fort it it was a low tower, with a wider base built atop the face of a cliff. From what I could see it was covered in rather ornate relieifs of snakes, but it was over grown with vines and bright pink and yellow bulbous flowers and was falling apart. I stopped to look at it for a second and pondered who the hell made it. It clearly wasn't an abandoned Regentum fort, and it was too fancy for pirates. Maybe some old reclusive Wizard built it years ago?Certainly someone with a thing for snakes at least.
The guy Milton had two Bugbears standing guard who I imagined must of been in even worse hell then us with all that fur. We really weren't in the mood for a fight with these guys so we pulled a pretty cheap tactic to get rid of them. I tied a rope to a bolder, while Damu creeped by them and lassoed them from behind with the other end, and I pushed the bolder off the cliff, dragging them to a quick crashing death. Then we armored up and went in.
Surprising all we found inside was the strange looking valuable slave girl we were told to capture and return. She was stoically sitting at a table eating a bowl of stew. The place was dimly but I got a good look at her. She looked like a regular human little girl, except she was hairless, and her skin seemed to always match the color of whatever she was around. I imagine if she didn't have clothes on I may not have seen her right away. Damu squawked in disgust as soon as her saw her, and dropped a smoke bomb right away. A few moments later after choking a bit and letting the smoke clear I heard him say, "Leo I got her". He was behind her with her hands in one hand and a sword to her neck in the other. A funny site it was 'cause she was still taller then him. I tied her up and starting looking for the ivory case and books. Damu was keeping a sharp eye on her, "The Kenku know these things, they're called Skulks. There aren't too many of them. They're all thieves and killers". "Great", I said but thinking to myself I was like, "How not unlike Kenku! No wonder they don't like them!".
I found the books, but not the ivory case. I walked over to the girl and asked with my sword point at her cheek where the guy Milton and the ivory case was. I don't think she understood me completely, but she pointed downward. We found stairs going down and as we went down them we could hear screaming and moaning. The steps opened up to a cave system and we could hear the rushing of water echoing in the distance. I lit a torch and went ahead of Damu who darted off to the side for cover. I saw the guy laying next to the edge of a crevasse that he was puking over into. As I got closer chills ran through me. The air was foul and thick and chunks of flesh were either falling off of his body or the flesh of his body was shifting around in undulating waves of purplish-green. The chunks that fell off seemed to be frozen, but yet left off a brown steam.
Milton rolled over and looked up at me. In the center of his chest was a solid jet back fist sized ball of what looked liked polished stone and he coughed up a glob of blood and teeth. In agonizing gasps he sputtered, "I....I...know...know she sent you....but I ran away to save her". "Th-this...thing", pointing to the black ball in his chest, "t-took me over. I thought I could control it, but it's..it's...killing meeee....". I looked at the poor fucker and ran him through. I turned around to look for Damu and was like, "That was easy enough", and then was immediately knocked back 20 feet in the direction we came. I rolled around to see his corpse shifting into a larger mass of oozing flesh, eyes and rolling spiked tendril limbs. The thing started to sink down into the crevasse and Damu leaped after it. His acrobatics were always amazing.
I ran to the edge of the crevasse and saw him riding the creature by having his sword plunged into it by the hilt with one hand, while he tried to pry the black ball out with the other. The thing had a huge oval mouth that was growing in size in order to be able to swallow him whole. I had no choice I had to jump too, by my jump was more of straight plunge. I fell about 15ft onto it and caught one end of the creatures oval gaping maw mouth with my sword and let my weight cut through the fucking thing. Quickly I hit a wall of the crevasse at full force, but lucky landed on a wide ledge. Damu yelled out "Catch!!", as I heard a loud popping sound and saw the black egg come flying towards me. I caught it, but immediately put it away without looking at it, the thing was colder then ice!! The creature fizzled away and dripped down the rest of the crevasse towards an underground stream.
We found the Ivory case and figured out right enough that the black egg went inside of it. We took the Skulk girl and got out of there ASAP. On the trip back I read the journals that Alzeya was concerned about. I never heard this before, but when the guy Milton was looking for treasure in those mountain ruins around Lu'Hadej that Alzeya spoke off, he spent a lot of time talking to the mountain folk, who are Human, but not like us, nor like the Lu' Hadej people who are all tan and have big noses. I remember in the army when I was stationed in Lu' Hadej, the people there, who are mostly desert nomads and goat herders, these folks were spooked out about the mountain people who they left alone out of local superstition. I never saw one, but I was told they had thick black hair like the Lu' Hadej, but were deathly pale and had very bright pale blue eyes.
Milton's journal had said that these mountain folk claim that in ancient times those mountains where the original Kingdom of the Dwarves. That earthquakes caused them to leave. The mountain people where descended from slaves that the Dwarves had captured from Human countries to the south that the Dwarves were constantly at war with. I never heard this before or sense. I've only ever known Humans and Dwarves to get along, though I know the Lu' Hadej people hate Dwarves. The note books said that Human countries to south were completely wiped out by earthquakes that sank them beneath the waves and that the few survivors became the Lu' Hadej people, or they sailed away to places unknown. The journal also states that the mountains are completely dangerous and overridden with nightmare creatures and bestial races. Whatever treasure may lie in those Dwarven ruins are in what has been the hovels of demonic monstrosities for countless ages now.
Apparently Milton stole the black egg from a creature that lived high on a mountain peak. He described the creature as a tall shaft of flesh with bone-spur protrusions and a oddly rabbit like head. He learned about the creature from a tribe of Skulks, but who call themselves the Nirna. These Nirna are a cursed tribe of ex-slaves who did the most foulest work for the Dwarves. Dwarven Wizards cursed them to have no natural color in order to reinforce that they were only ever to serve their surroundings. The Nirna train their children to kill and to steal and send them off into the world to either return with goods and riches, or not return at all. During their rare contact with outsiders they often sell their young to keep their numbers purposefully low. The have lived in constant guerrilla war with Orcs for centuries and their only consistent ties with another people are with the mountain folk, whom they were once part of.
On the trip home I taught the Skulk girl how to speak Alsonian a bit. I used to see her around for years here and there, and I hear from younger guys she was working as a mercenary in Bayport recently. I know Milton regretted going into those mountains and finding the black egg, and we should have left it in the crevasse. We saw so much crazy shit over the years, and a lot of it was fun, but somethings turned out to be pretty fucked up in the end.
If we didn't bring Alzeya the goddamn black egg back we wouldn't have had to kill her a few years later.
The tales of Leo Wayfarer and Damu the Kenku Assassin, as told by Leo to his Nephew Leto Wayfarer: 8 of 33- Our first run in with Alzeya.
You know when we had to take Alzeya out it took a long time for things to calm down. For a few years after that I had to look over my shoulder while walking around town. People admitted it in the long run that it had to be done, and everyone liked to forget at the time that it was her daughter who hired us to kill her in the first place. But really what happened to that lady was accidentally our fault anyway.
Alzeya was at the time a wealthy up and coming "business" woman, but her business was using shipping, slaving and real estate as a cover for smuggling, and running whore houses. She was the Witch daughter of a rich Elven pirate and Human concubine. She was born into a bit of coin and was educated, but she was rich amongst the poor around the docks of Scardale where her Father worked out of, so she ended up pretty gaudy, tacky and full of herself. When she turned 16 she married one of her Father's men, a human named Kiko, and with the dowry that her Father gave to Kiko they started a more legitimate shipping business as a front operation for all their pirate contacts. They had a daughter a few years later that they named Seka, and shortly after Seka was born Kiko was killed in a fight at sea.
One day while I was on my way to go waste my money on hookers and liquor like I always did in those days when I just happened at random to head down to the whore houses by the docks. On my way there this guy Povin I knew from around town started waving me down and walked quickly up to me and so I was like, "Listen I don't care what you're into, but another man is not what I'm headed this way for".
Now Povin was a big mother fucker, but I'm glad he had a sense of humor. We laughed and he said, "Hey Leo I'm working for this rich Lady Alzeya who needs some tough guys to go after some prick who ran off with her stuff and get it back, are you and your Kenku partner available?" I should have said no, but I told him that yes we we're free and we had just got done killing some Ogres' hiding out in swamps half way across the country, but the trip cost us so much that we didn't make as much as we thought we would have. He told me to stop by this one Salon in two days to meet Alzeya and work out the deal. At the time I knew who she was and had seen her around town, but never had any dealings with her.
So two days later Damu and I headed over to the Salon, which was right where the north end of the docks area touches the wealthy commercial district rather then the slums to the south. It was in a nicer area, but not too far into the nice part of Scardale that we stood out.
I saw her right away as we walked up to the place. She was barely covered in a thin flimsy blue dress, and she had extremely long blond hair down to her knees that by some manner of sorcery moved and contorted around her seemingly with a mind of it's own. She came up to us quickly, coyly smiling at us both with a come hither and fuck me look in her eyes. When Damu was unfazed by her behavior she was reflexively irked and I could tell both that she was used to using her looks to get her way and that also she never dealt with any Kenku before. Without skipping a beat a beat however she was all over me, and magic or not I probably would have done anything she asked.
She brought us in to the salon and had a team of servants feed us a huge meal of roasted quail and imported wine. One thing I recall that was out of place was that Alzeya drank out of some weird ivory horn rather then a glass. I always figured it was a some Witch thing, I dunno. She made small talk during the meal and acted more silly and drunker then she really was was. Though at nightfall she hit a gong and the place quickly was deserted except for the three of us. As the last servent left, some old Halfling woman, Alzeya's deminor quickly changed. She sat up sternly and pulled forth a map seemingly out of no where,-.
"A man named Milton that worked for me ran off with valuables of mine and some rare slaves. He was a pirate who fancied himself an explorer. He came to me with these tales of some black egg of mystical power in the mountians near Lu'Hadej and wanted me to fund his desire to explore the region and secure the black egg. I did and Milton managed to get the black egg. However shortly after returning to Scardale he took off with the boat I bought him, money, a ship crew and valuable slaves. After awhile most of the men deserted him saying he was getting increasingly sick and loosing his mind. They came back and told me he was hiding in a old fort of the coast in the jungles of Fazas only a few days to the south. I don't care if you have to kill him or not, I mainly want the black egg back, along with with his research journals and strange young girl he has with him. He keeps the egg in a ivory and gold lined case with a golden spiral on top. You will be well rewarded".
As she said that last bit about being rewarded I felt like a mouse caught in the eyes of a cat. Damu spoke up and soon a deal was worked out.
In a few days we found ourselves on a ship filled with cut throats, derlicts and drunken loosers of a variety of races. We slept on deck and passed the time getting drunk in a constant misty rain. I remember this particularly annoying Half-Orc that always trying to play dice with us that I had half the mind to throw over board, but he seemed well liked by the crew.
Even though Fazas isn't that far from Scardale I really hate going any where near there. There is something really creepy about that place, as if the whole jungle is alive, watching and waiting- 'cause it wants to eat you. When the boats dropped us off at the river inlet along the coast I immediately had second thoughts once my boots hit the sand of the beach. According to the map we were given the ruined fort Milton was hiding out in was only less then a mile up stream from the beach. But it was through dense jungle and high cliffs. I saw the boat sailing away in the dawns early light and felt trapped between blue waters and black jungle. Damu like usual was unfazed, but he had to take off his leather armored hoody, and I my plate mail. He always looked so frail and delicate unclothed, yet he was one of the most dangerous people I ever knew.
It was fucking hell hiking up hill with armor strapped to my back while having to hack through vines, fight off endless swarms of insects, climb sheer walls, and while drowning in a wash of sweat from the unbearable heat. It was like we were fighting against a wave of boiling water. Not even the deserts of Lu' Hadej are as unbearable. It took us half the day to close that mile. When we found the ruined fort it it was a low tower, with a wider base built atop the face of a cliff. From what I could see it was covered in rather ornate relieifs of snakes, but it was over grown with vines and bright pink and yellow bulbous flowers and was falling apart. I stopped to look at it for a second and pondered who the hell made it. It clearly wasn't an abandoned Regentum fort, and it was too fancy for pirates. Maybe some old reclusive Wizard built it years ago?Certainly someone with a thing for snakes at least.
The guy Milton had two Bugbears standing guard who I imagined must of been in even worse hell then us with all that fur. We really weren't in the mood for a fight with these guys so we pulled a pretty cheap tactic to get rid of them. I tied a rope to a bolder, while Damu creeped by them and lassoed them from behind with the other end, and I pushed the bolder off the cliff, dragging them to a quick crashing death. Then we armored up and went in.
Surprising all we found inside was the strange looking valuable slave girl we were told to capture and return. She was stoically sitting at a table eating a bowl of stew. The place was dimly but I got a good look at her. She looked like a regular human little girl, except she was hairless, and her skin seemed to always match the color of whatever she was around. I imagine if she didn't have clothes on I may not have seen her right away. Damu squawked in disgust as soon as her saw her, and dropped a smoke bomb right away. A few moments later after choking a bit and letting the smoke clear I heard him say, "Leo I got her". He was behind her with her hands in one hand and a sword to her neck in the other. A funny site it was 'cause she was still taller then him. I tied her up and starting looking for the ivory case and books. Damu was keeping a sharp eye on her, "The Kenku know these things, they're called Skulks. There aren't too many of them. They're all thieves and killers". "Great", I said but thinking to myself I was like, "How not unlike Kenku! No wonder they don't like them!".
I found the books, but not the ivory case. I walked over to the girl and asked with my sword point at her cheek where the guy Milton and the ivory case was. I don't think she understood me completely, but she pointed downward. We found stairs going down and as we went down them we could hear screaming and moaning. The steps opened up to a cave system and we could hear the rushing of water echoing in the distance. I lit a torch and went ahead of Damu who darted off to the side for cover. I saw the guy laying next to the edge of a crevasse that he was puking over into. As I got closer chills ran through me. The air was foul and thick and chunks of flesh were either falling off of his body or the flesh of his body was shifting around in undulating waves of purplish-green. The chunks that fell off seemed to be frozen, but yet left off a brown steam.
Milton rolled over and looked up at me. In the center of his chest was a solid jet back fist sized ball of what looked liked polished stone and he coughed up a glob of blood and teeth. In agonizing gasps he sputtered, "I....I...know...know she sent you....but I ran away to save her". "Th-this...thing", pointing to the black ball in his chest, "t-took me over. I thought I could control it, but it's..it's...killing meeee....". I looked at the poor fucker and ran him through. I turned around to look for Damu and was like, "That was easy enough", and then was immediately knocked back 20 feet in the direction we came. I rolled around to see his corpse shifting into a larger mass of oozing flesh, eyes and rolling spiked tendril limbs. The thing started to sink down into the crevasse and Damu leaped after it. His acrobatics were always amazing.
I ran to the edge of the crevasse and saw him riding the creature by having his sword plunged into it by the hilt with one hand, while he tried to pry the black ball out with the other. The thing had a huge oval mouth that was growing in size in order to be able to swallow him whole. I had no choice I had to jump too, by my jump was more of straight plunge. I fell about 15ft onto it and caught one end of the creatures oval gaping maw mouth with my sword and let my weight cut through the fucking thing. Quickly I hit a wall of the crevasse at full force, but lucky landed on a wide ledge. Damu yelled out "Catch!!", as I heard a loud popping sound and saw the black egg come flying towards me. I caught it, but immediately put it away without looking at it, the thing was colder then ice!! The creature fizzled away and dripped down the rest of the crevasse towards an underground stream.
We found the Ivory case and figured out right enough that the black egg went inside of it. We took the Skulk girl and got out of there ASAP. On the trip back I read the journals that Alzeya was concerned about. I never heard this before, but when the guy Milton was looking for treasure in those mountain ruins around Lu'Hadej that Alzeya spoke off, he spent a lot of time talking to the mountain folk, who are Human, but not like us, nor like the Lu' Hadej people who are all tan and have big noses. I remember in the army when I was stationed in Lu' Hadej, the people there, who are mostly desert nomads and goat herders, these folks were spooked out about the mountain people who they left alone out of local superstition. I never saw one, but I was told they had thick black hair like the Lu' Hadej, but were deathly pale and had very bright pale blue eyes.
Milton's journal had said that these mountain folk claim that in ancient times those mountains where the original Kingdom of the Dwarves. That earthquakes caused them to leave. The mountain people where descended from slaves that the Dwarves had captured from Human countries to the south that the Dwarves were constantly at war with. I never heard this before or sense. I've only ever known Humans and Dwarves to get along, though I know the Lu' Hadej people hate Dwarves. The note books said that Human countries to south were completely wiped out by earthquakes that sank them beneath the waves and that the few survivors became the Lu' Hadej people, or they sailed away to places unknown. The journal also states that the mountains are completely dangerous and overridden with nightmare creatures and bestial races. Whatever treasure may lie in those Dwarven ruins are in what has been the hovels of demonic monstrosities for countless ages now.
Apparently Milton stole the black egg from a creature that lived high on a mountain peak. He described the creature as a tall shaft of flesh with bone-spur protrusions and a oddly rabbit like head. He learned about the creature from a tribe of Skulks, but who call themselves the Nirna. These Nirna are a cursed tribe of ex-slaves who did the most foulest work for the Dwarves. Dwarven Wizards cursed them to have no natural color in order to reinforce that they were only ever to serve their surroundings. The Nirna train their children to kill and to steal and send them off into the world to either return with goods and riches, or not return at all. During their rare contact with outsiders they often sell their young to keep their numbers purposefully low. The have lived in constant guerrilla war with Orcs for centuries and their only consistent ties with another people are with the mountain folk, whom they were once part of.
On the trip home I taught the Skulk girl how to speak Alsonian a bit. I used to see her around for years here and there, and I hear from younger guys she was working as a mercenary in Bayport recently. I know Milton regretted going into those mountains and finding the black egg, and we should have left it in the crevasse. We saw so much crazy shit over the years, and a lot of it was fun, but somethings turned out to be pretty fucked up in the end.
If we didn't bring Alzeya the goddamn black egg back we wouldn't have had to kill her a few years later.
Chronicle 9 February 2012
Metro puts the brake on bikes
‘Time is not right’ for pilot project
By Michael Brown
METRO bosses have rejected calls from cycle campaigners for a pilot project that could pave the way for taking bikes on the Metro.
Network operator Nexus said now is “not the right time” to allow cycles on busy train services and through deep underground stations.
But the firm said they would work with activists to improve life for cyclists with measures which could include a “Boris Bike” type system with bikes for hire at stations.
Folding bikes are allowed on the Metro but the ban on fixed-wheelers has for decades been a big bugbear to the cycling community. It was a hot topic when members of the Newcastle Cycling Campaign met train managers last November.
Claire Prospert, from the campaign, said allowing bikes would show the region’s desire to go green.
She said: “ We want to see a trial outside peak hours, involving a small number of Metro stations. We know that the Metro’s operator DB Regio runs light rail systems in Germany that carry bikes.
The group claims a trial of bikes on Metro trains is supported by local councillors, Friends of the Earth and the Tyne an Wear Public Transport User Group.
But Huw Lewis, head of communications, at Nexus which owns and manages Metro, said the priority right now was to better connect cyclists with stations.
“Cyclists are free to travel on Metro with folded bikes, and while there are good reasons for full-sized bikes are not allowed on what is a very busty train system, with deep underground stations, that’s not the end of the story” he said.
“We are about to trial new larger and more secure storage at two stations, while bidding in partnership with local councils and Sustrans for Government funding to pay for a much wider improvement and infrastructure.
He said the task group, including the Newcastle Cycling Campaign, had been set up.
“I don’t think a limited trial allowing all bikes on part of Metro at certain times of the day is a good idea right now, but it may come out of the work of the group,” Mr Lewis added.
“The last research we did with passengers showed a clear majority against the idea.”
Never been a great lover of the seaside. Pier, esplanade and sands had little appeal to me even as a boy, though I loved the associated coach journey. There remains a jejunery for me in the sight of buckets and spades, racks of postcards, cafés with Formica-topped tables, and the feeling, under the soles of my shoes, of sand carried from the beach onto the pavements of the town.
I never even cared for rock. Consumption was an inconvenient business: if sucked it lasted, but became sticky and one tired of holding it; biting was an imprecise affair, carried a shatter hazard and tended to result in a portion that was either too large or too small. Foods that are annoying to eat remain a bugbear of mine and it is for this reason that I eschew most forms of pasta. If it can't be picked up with a fork you can keep it. As for amusements and slot machines (usually 1d in my day), I found that I had no incentive to patronise them since I did not covet the prizes.
Where scenery is concerned I tend to be a "valley" rather than "hilltop" person, preferring paths, streams, perching birds, broken sunlight and a sense of embowerment to exposure, wind, large bodies of water, the open horizon and birds that dwell between ground and air. The coast is not for me and Cornwall is one of my "unfavouritest" English counties. Also at work is the same misanthropic impulse that makes me loathe weekends and Bank Holidays ...a detestation of ordinary people en fête. Yes, it's my problem and I'll have to deal with it.