The Hammonds of St. Alban’s Court-revised 20.5.2013
A land-owner, banker and magistrate whose life spanned the transition from a largely rural economy in the reign of George IV to the Edwardian industrial age. This 1883 portrait hangs in the Beaney Institute, Canterbury.
William Oxenden Hammond was a wealthy man by inheritance and from his partnership in the Canterbury bank, there were some 300 acres or so of agricultural land in hand at St. Alban’s in the 1850′s farmed under the supervision of a farm bailiff, and by 1881 this had increased to 575 acres.
In 1869 he commissioned George Devey, a prominent Victorian architect noted for designing country houses, to build a stable block and a home farm to the south-west of the St. Alban’s Court house and to refurbish the house itself. However, in 1875 William decided that the house had ‘fallen into a decayed state’ and instructed George Devey to design the new house which was built on the hill just to the north-east of the old house between 1875 and 1878. The old house continued in use as servants accommodation and as a laundry and when part of the estate was taken over as a physical education college in the late 1930′s the old house accommodated the principle and other staff members whilst the mansion was used mainly for administration and teaching purposes.
Mr. Maxted, a local builder and brick-maker, is recorded in the 1871 census as having premises in Esole Street where he employed 16 men and boys. Locally made bricks appear to have used in part of the construction of the new St. Alban’s Court mansion, which would have provided much needed work to local people in a time of agricultural depression and high unemployment.
In 1936 Dr. Hardman wrote down the recollections of Richard Jarvis Arnold, born in Nonington circa 1875, a Walmer blacksmith who had served his apprenticeship in the village forge in Church Street. Mr. Arnold recalled life in Nonington during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries including the building of the present St. Albans Court house for William Oxenden Hammond by Adcock of Dover and that when the foundations were got out some bones were dug up which were reburied with a pyramid of stones erected over them (see The Saxon cemetery at St. Alban’s Court, Nonington below).
Mr. Arnold remembered William Oxenden Hammond as a notable figure of very upright carriage and a bachelor, the story in the village said that he had been crossed in love, who was fond of horses and kept a carriage horse and three hunters which were all shot when they became old and were buried nearby in the ‘The Ruins’, (the local name for the area between Beauchamps Lane and St Alban’s Court). This fondness for horses was probably best shown by a stone tablet over the archway in the new stable yard that bore the words (as near as Arnold could remember):
“My horse, my love, my horse”
[ This is a quotation from Shakespeare, first part of Henry IV, Act II, Scene 3, and actually runs:
Lady Percy “ What is it carries you away?”
Hotspur, “ Why, my horse, my love, my horse]”.
William Oxenden Hammond died on 17th May, 1903, and was succeeded by a nephew, Captain Egerton Hammond.
William Oxendens brother, Egerton Douglas, had had two sons, the second, also Egerton, born in 1863, inherited St. Alban’s as William Oxendens closest male heir, as Egertons elder brother, William Whitmore Hammond, born 1848, had died in 1918.
The Captain, who had married Selina (Ina) Barrington in 1895, was to be the last of the Hammond’s to own St. Alban’s Court as he and Ina, his wife, had lost their only son in the Great War. Second Lieutenant Douglas William Hammond, of the 2nd Battalion, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), was killed, aged 18, on 24th May 1915 and is remembered on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.
After the death of Captain Hammond in 1923, survived by his widow and two daughters, Mrs. Hammond lived in Old Court House, which had been built as a dower house around 1910. In the 1920′s and 1930′s the estate was rented out to tenants such as the Slazengers, of sporting equipment fame, and the O’Brians, noted equestrians and breeders of Alsatians (German Shepherds) and foxhounds. Some of the horses and dogs are buried in the woodland at the rear of the house.
Mrs. Hammond and her daughters finally sold the estate by auction in 1938. and St. Alban’s Court house, along with some parkland, and Old Court House were bought by Miss Gladys Wright on behalf of the English Gymnastics Society. During the Second World War part of the new house was used as offices for Eastry Rural District Council.
In 1951 Kent County Council took over and founded Nonington College of Physical Education to train P.E. teachers. After some 35 years as one of the top teacher training colleges N.C.P.E was closed by K.C.C. in 1985 due to financial cut-backs.
Old Court House had been an annexe of the college and in 1986 it became the Promis Recovery Centre, a once renowned private rehabilitation clinic, which went into liquidation in 2008. Old Court House was then left empty and was subsequently badly damaged by fire in late August, 2009.
More pictures of the old St Alban’s Court and the new mansion can be found using these links:-Old St. Alban’s Court and New St. Alban’s Court galleries