The Diary of Ada Clara Lee

The Brann Family at Wittersham

Richard Brand (c1645-??) married 1668 to Joan Roaffe

Richard Branne (c1670-??) married 1697 to Alice Baker

John Brann (1707-??) married 1733 to Elizabeth Carley

Richard Brann (1734-1774) married 1756 to Mary Baker

Richard Brann (1761-1831) married 1781 to Mary Cover

Curteis Brann (1792-1878) married 1814 to Jane Ramsden

George Brann (1824-1887) married 1843 to Frances Crossingham

Jane Brann (1848-1937) married 1866 to William Henry Williams

The Isle of Oxney and the Rother Estuary

The Isle of Oxney lies on the borders of Kent and Sussex. Oxney comprises the hamlets of Stone and Ebony, and Wittersham - a village of less than a thousand people. This area of high ground about 6 miles by 3 miles - 3,602 acres of land and 23 of water - was once an island, surrounded by the delta of the river Rother. The marshes are still frequently flooded in winter even though the Isle, which rises some two hundred feet above them, is now separated from the sea by the Romney Marsh. And although the Rother has been channeled and contained, still the only way onto Oxney is over bridges, where once ferry boats plied the waters.

The earliest surviving description is by John Leland, writing nearly five hundred years ago that: "Oxoney Isle is compassed about with salt water, except where it is divided by the fresh water from the continent. Take the ferry over from Kent, and on the far bank in Oxeney is a village. Yet part of Oxney is in Kent, and part in Sussex. Some say that it is, or has been all in Sussex; some call it foresworn of Kent, because that when the inhabitants of it were of Sussex, they revolted, to have the privileges of Kent." In the early nineteenth century, William Cobbett describes a rural ride from Tenterden to Appledore around the north side of Oxney on which the fog was so "thick and white along some of the low land that I should have taken it for water, if little hills and trees had not risen up through it here and there". No wonder the isle of Oxney was a haunt for smugglers.

In times past, ferries crossed the river Rother at Maytham, Smallhythe, and Stone connecting Oxney with Rolvenden, Tenterden, and Appledore to the north. The ebb and flow of the tide was then much greater than would now be possible, and excavations have uncovered sand and sea shells some 40 ft below the present surface of the marshes. Not for nothing does the Celtic origin of the name Rother signify "red water" (although until about 1575, the river was known as the Lymme or Lymene, from the old British word for elm tree).

The Elizabethan poet, Michael Drayton, wrote vividly in his epic Polyolbion, how the river Rother, having embraced the Isle of Oxney as his lover, is wooed by a jealous Romney Marsh, and Oxney is forced to defend her honor:

Of Rother's happy match, when Romney Marsh heard tell,
She thinketh with herself, how she a way might find,
To put the homely Isle quite out of Rother's mind.

Appearing to the Flood, most bravely like a Queen,
Clad all from head to foot, in gaudy summer's green.
Her mantle richly wrought, with sundry flowers and weeds;
Her moistful temples bound, with wreaths of quivering reeds.
Which loosely flowing down, upon her lusty thighs,
Most strongly seem to tempt the River's amorous eyes.

Of these her amorous toys, when Oxney came to know,
Suspecting lest in time her rival she might grow,
The allurements of the Marsh, the jealous Isle do move,
That to a constant course, she thus persuades her Love:

Though rich her attire, so curious be and rare,
From her there yet proceeds unwholesome putrid air,
Where my complexion more suits with the higher ground,
Upon the lusty Weald, where strength still doth abound.

Historically, the main channel of the Rother flowed to the north of the Isle of Oxney, past Smallhythe and Reading Street, on to Appledore and then Rye, where it reached the sea. The river was an vital transport artery into the Weald of Kent, where the few roads that existed were an impassable sea of mud for much of the year. Sea-going ships were able to navigate up to Smallhythe, and small vessels could pass as far as twenty miles upstream to the bridge at Bodiam. A petition sent to the Privy Council in 1635 explained the benefits that navigation on the Rother provided:

It hath aunciently beene a navigable river for boates and barques of good burden and is soe for small boates at the least twentie miles from the Sea and Haven of Rie up into the Countrie, there beinge High waies and manie wharfes and landinge places and unladinge for all kinds of goods and commodities as at Appledore, Oxney, Redinge, Smalled, Pymminge, Newenden, Bodyham, and other places to the great ease and benefitt of the Townes of Rye, Tenterden, Appledore and the countrie adjoyninge unto ye said river, who by this means have manie commodities at farre more easie rates & prices then they can have by land carriage.

Efforts to control flooding and drain the levels began as early as the thirteenth century, with the construction of the Knelle Damme sea wall across Wittersham Level. This succeeded in restricting flooding from the sea, but ultimately led to the Rother's Appledore Channel becoming silted up - "swerved up" as Hasted calls it - and unnavigable, sometime around 1600. After much debate, the Craven Channel was cut through Wittersham Level from Maytham Ferry to Blackwall between 1680 and 1684. The new channel diverted the Rother to flow south of the Isle of Oxney, and shortened its course by five miles.

The soil of the Isle of Oxney is mixed loam, on a subsoil of crowstone (sandstone), and the surrounding Levels have the rich silt of reclaimed marshes. Over 600 acres of the high ground on Oxney were wooded. An old directory that lists "farmers, graziers, and hopgrowers" captures the chief agricultural activities of the area. The main arable crops were hops, wheat, oats, and beans. The later decades of the C19th saw a shift from wheat-farming towards the cultivation of hops, fruit, and livestock, which were less affected by the falling prices caused by Free Trade and were in greater demand to feed the growing population of London.

The marshy fields of the Wittersham Levels have long been renowned as fertile pasture for sheep and cattle. Writing in the 1720s, Daniel Defoe described the country roundabout as: "a rich fertile soil, full of feeding grounds, and where an infinite number of large sheep are fed every year, and sent up to London market; these Romney Marsh sheep are counted rather larger than the Leicester and Lincoln sheep. Besides the vast quantity of sheep, an abundance of large bullocks are fed in this part of the country; especially those they call stall'd oxen, that is, house fed and kept within the farmers sheds or yards all the later season, where they are fed for the winter market. These oxen are generally the largest beef in England."

In time-honored practice, sheep were grazed in summer on the marshes, and wintered on the higher ground of the Isle of Oxney, together with the cattle, away from the possibility of flooding. In fact the name Oxney itself may derive from "oxen-ey", or island on which oxen were pastured.

The History of Wittersham

In 892, the Danes, lead by Hasting, used the creeks of the Rother estuary to invade nearby Appledore, and used the Isle of Oxney as a vantage point to watch the troops of King Alfred the Great camped at Newenden, before they were finally defeated by him.

The land on the Isle of Oxney was mainly covered by three ancient manors: Wittersham, Palstre (to the west), and Owley (to the north).

The earliest mention of the manor of Wittersham is in 1032, when it was given by Eadsige, chaplain to the Danish King Canute, to the Bretheren of Christchurch, Canterbury as "foster-land", for the food and sustenance of the monks.

In 1395, Henry IV gave the manor of Wyghtresham to the Fellows of All Saints College, Maidstone, who held it until the supression of the monasteries. In 1546, it was let to Sir Thomas Wyatt for a yearly rent of fourteen pounds - until he led an unusuccessful rebellion against the catholic Queen Mary and was executed for treason on Tower Hill.

In 1086, the Domesday Book did not mention Wittersham, but assigned the manor of Palstre to Odo, bishop of Bayeaux; it being one of only 4 places in the Weald with a church:

In Oxenai hundred, Osbern Paisforiere holds Palestrei, from the Bishop. It is taxed at three yokes. Arable land for two ploughs. In demesne, nine smallholders have half a plough. There is a church, 2 servants, 10 acres of meadow, 5 fisheries at twelve pence, woodland for the pannage of 10 hogs. In the time of Edward the Confessor, it was worth forty shillings, now sixty shillings. Edwy the priest held it for king Edward.

In C18th, both the manors of Palstre and Owley came into the ownership of the Knight family of Godmersham, Kent, and later of William Levett of Bodiam. At the turn of C20th - by which time holding the manor had ceased to be equivalent with ownership of most land and property - the Body family held Wittersham, Colonel Heyworth held Palstre and Mrs Samuel Rutley owned Owley.

Over the years, several residents left bequests to care for the poor of Wittersham. In 1463, Thomas Bewfrere left five acres, known as Ruffins Land, to be applied to the church when needed. In 1578 Thomas Beredg left a yearly sum of 3 shillings to be given every Good Friday to the poor, under the thorn tree in the churchyard. And in 1597, John Truelove left 20 shillings with his tenement and garden to provide an annuity for the Poor Man's Box.

In 1824, Jere Greenland of Beckingham bequeathed £700 for the care of the deserving poor. The money was to be invested in government stock and the dividends used to pay for the purchase of bread, to be distributed in the six winter months to 20 poor housekeepers of the parish who regularly attended church. He left an additional £100 to pay for administrative expenses and auditing of the bequest, including a dinner for the trustees on his birthday.

According to Hasted, a small fair was held at Wittersham every May 1, on the feast day of St Philip and St James, for "toys and pedlary", on the old village Green which used to be next to the church. The fair continued to be held until the early twentieth century, by which time May 12 appears to have been the preferred day.

In 1834 a famous cricket match was held at Wittersham, in which Ned Wenman and Richard Mills, two Benenden men, took on a complete Isle of Oxney team of eleven men. Wenman and Mills were no novices, both being Kent county players, and the match drew two thousand spectators. There was heavy betting in favor of the Benenden pair, who in fact did win by 66 runs. Most of the Oxney team, which included three members of the Neve family, were bowled out by Wenman.

A contemporary eyewitness reported: "these two scientific players secured to themselves an honour that will not easily be surpassed in this manly exercise." Both players are commemorated on the current Benenden village sign. In a centenary re-enactment of the game in 1936, two professional cricketers, Bill Ashdown of Kent and Bert Wensley of Sussex, again beat the Oxney XI.

The first railway through Kent, in the early 1840s, was the South Eastern Railway from London to Dover, whose nearest station was 13 miles distant, at Headcorn, west of Ashford. The first line into the area was the South Eastern's branch line from Ashford to Hastings, built in 1851. This passed through Appledore and Rye, following the line of the Royal Military Canal along the edge of Romney Marsh.

Several attempts were made to build a railway through Tenterden, but it was not until 1900 that the Rother Valley Light Railway (later known as the Kent & East Sussex Railway) opened. This line ran from Robertsbridge to Tenterden (later extended to Headcorn), with a station at Wittersham Road. This station was a simple platform stop located two miles outside the village.

Four trains ran each morning and afternoon, and a connection at Robertsbridge to the South Eastern & Chatham Railway enabled a traveler to reach London's Cannon Street station in about two hours. This railway operated passenger services until 1954, specials for hop-pickers until 1958, and was eventually closed in 1961. The section from Tenterden to Bodiam was restored and re-opened in 1974 for excursions, which can now be taken during the summer months.

During WWII, the railway sidings at Wittersham Road housed a pair of 9.2" rail-mounted guns, which were set up in 1940 as part of the anti-invasion defences.

The guns, which could hurl a 315lb shell for 26,000 yards, were not used offensively against enemy shipping in the Channel, but would have been able to fire an air-burst of heavy shrapnel upon an invading army landing on Romney Marsh. Each gun had its own "fighting train" of ammunition wagons, workshops, living quarters, and food wagons.

There was also a Mooring-Out Station for airships at Moat Farm in Moon's Green, which was used by the Capel le Ferne Airship Station at Folkestone.

The Buildings of Wittersham

The parish church of St John the Baptist dates from the 13th century, and is built in the Early English to Perpendicular styles. The nave has "free seatings" for 750 people. The buttressed tower, constructed towards the end of the 15th century, is one of the finest in Kent. It contains five bells: three cast by Joseph Carter of Whitechapel in 1609, one by John Wilmar in 1629, and the most recent by Thomas Mears & Son in 1808. The bells would have been brought from London by sea to Rye, and then carried up the old northerly channel of the river Rother to the Reading Street Wharf, where an ox-cart would have been waiting to drag them up the hill.

The living of Wittersham was in the direct gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and considered very desirable; in the C19th it was worth £730 per year, including 17 acres of glebe land and a rectory. The parish registers date back to 1551, although there was also said to be an earlier book that was "very old and illegible".

The earliest recorded rector was Thomas de Shenefield in 1232. Edward Tenison, later Bishop of Ossory, was rector from 1697-98. He was followed by Theophilus Dorrington (1698-1715), theologian and translator of Puffendorf's "Divine Feudal Law". In 1708, Dorrington wrote to Queen Anne's secretary of state, Charles Delafaye, to complain of the "rising price of wheat in markets towards the river and selling off of stores of corn".

The most famous rector was Dr Bielby Porteus, who held the living from 1762-65. However he probably never resided in the parish, since he was at the same time chaplain to Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth; he was later chaplain to the King, before succeeding Robert Lowth as Bishop of London in 1787.

The longest-serving rector was William Cornwallis, who was at Wittersham for fifty years from 1778 to 1827. (His daughter, Caroline Frances Cornwallis, born in 1786 at Wittersham, became a prolific and widely-read authoress on philosophy, theology and law, and lived many years in Italy.) Julius Deedes was the rector from 1828 to 1846, and was succeeded for the next ten years by Edward Nares - who rebuilt the chancel. Newton Smart held the living from 1856 to 1872, and Samuel Hadden Parkes was the rector from 1872 to 1906. Algernon Howell Smith took over in 1906 and was the incumbent until 1926.

A Wesleyan Methodist chapel was erected in Wittersham in 1808. On the day of the religious census of 1851 (Sunday, 30 March), 500 people attended the evening service at St Johns and 40 people worshipped at the Chapel.

The Free School was founded in 1820 by the Rev William Cornwallis and his wife, in memory of their grandson. It provided education of poor boys of the parish, who were entitled to five years of free instruction. Cornwallis endowed the school with 18 acres and 13 perches of marshland at Smallhythe (confusingly known as the Sixteen Acres), which by 1882 was producing an annual income of £70 for the school. The school's master for its first 50 years - as long-lived as its founder - was Jeremiah Poile. In 1868, he was succeeded by Samuel Calvert.

The school-master was required to be qualified according to the rules of the National Society, and to be a "sound" member of the Church of England, not given to immoral conduct or seditious practices. The school-day ran from 9am until 12am and from 2pm until 5pm in summer, and commenced with an "orderly repeating of the Lord's Prayer".

Boys were required to be arrive with their hands and face washed, and hair combed. They were instructed in religious duties, reading, writing, the English language, and the first four rules of arithmetic. For every dozen marks won by a pupil, he was paid two pence and the master received four pence - payment by results!

In November 1874, a National School was incorporated with the Free School. It opened that year in new buildings of blue stone with red-brick facings in the Gothic style, erected at a cost of £1800. The new school could hold 173 pupils, although the average attendance was much less - around 150 in 1880 and 124 by 1900. Running the larger school was something of a family affair. In 1880, when the schoolmaster was William Day, his wife Mary was the schoolmistress, their daughter Margaret was a monitor, and the assistant mistress, Emma Reeder, boarded with them. In 1900, the schoolmaster was Arthur Mason, his wife was schoolmistress and his daughter was assistant mistress.

There was also a Men's Institute & Reading Room, described as a "literary Institution for the working class and shopkeepers", whose 40 members could enjoy a good supply of London and provincial newspapers.

The other local meeting places were, of course, inns. From at least the early nineteenth century, the village pub was the Ewe and Lamb, which was located at the top of Wittersham Street. It was joined in the 1870s by the Swan Inn, located at the top of Back Street or - as it is now known - Swan Street. The Swan still operates today. Adjoining the churchyard in Wittersham Street, there was also the Queen's Head, which appears to have operated as a beerhouse from about 1880-1925.

Nearby was Neve's Shop, for many years the only store in the village. It was always run by an ancient local family, by the name of Neve: Sarah from 1787, David from 1807, Thomas from 1848, and Benjamin after 1897. In the store's early days, David Neve would make a two-day journey on horse-back to London twice a year to buy stock, which would then arrive by waggon several weeks later. It is still a shop today, although the Neve family finally sold out in 1947.

For many years Wittersham had two windmills, although today only one remains.

The Old Post Mill stood near the center of the village, opposite the Ewe and Lamb Inn. The earliest record of it is around 1736, and it operated for nearly 200 years before being demolished in 1922. Robert Parton, the miller from 1816-54, raised the structure on brick columns in 1817 to better catch the prevailing winds. In 1870, Thomas Collard, who operated both this and Stocks Mill, added a fantail to improve control.

Stocks Mill stands about a mile north east of Wittersham, and is named for the village stocks that once stood nearby. The white, weather-boarded mill is built on a single-story tarred-brick roundhouse, and is the largest post mill in Kent. The huge, oak main post bears the initials RV and the date 1781. This is most likely either the date that the mill was originally built or else moved from another location, by Thomas Venus. It operated for 120 years until 1900, when the demand for locally-milled flour declined - in 1908, the owner, Norman Forbes-Robertson, could not get a miller to use it even rent-free. It was later purchased by Kent County Council, has since been further restored, and is now a open to the public.

In 1884 a reservoir was constructed, at the expense of Rev. Edward Sladen of Wittersham Court, to supply the village with pure water. This was enlarged in 1912 and provided with a larger pumping engine.

Of the houses in the village, Wittersham House was remodeled by the noted architect Edwin Lutyens between 1906-09. The large Georgian house had been the Rectory, but had become a burden on the incumbents and was in some state of disrepair. In 1906, there was a newly-appointed rector, Algernon Howell Smith, who had not yet moved in. When Alfred Lyttelton, MP, who had been in search of a country home, made an offer to buy the house, the Rev. Smith was glad to accept.

Apart from its condition, the square red-brick house was also rather plain. Lutyens made subtle additions: a low-pitched roof with pantiles, round windows, and garden features such as an outdoor parlor, summer house, and pergola. Country Life noted how "new interest can be given to a place, once of no charm, by simple additions devised with taste and judgment." Lutyens also designed the War Memorial in Wittersham Church to the twenty-one men of the parish who were killed in WWI, and one of his grandest country houses is nearby at Great Maytham, Rolvenden.

Palstre Court is a rambling 16th century farmhouse on a hill overlooking the Rother levels - its name originates from the Latin word "paluster" meaning marshy. Though now faced in brick and tile, it is in fact constructed of ancient oak timbers. Nearby, within a moated enclosure now covered by fruit trees, once stood the even more ancient house of the manor of Palstre. There was a tradition that treasure lay buried round about Palstre Court, but excavations have yet failed to find any.

The house north of the church that is now called Wittersham Court was, for centuries, known as Wittersham College, as it stands on the site of the ancient manor-house of Wittersham that was given to the College of All Saints at Maidstone in the reign of Richard II.

Smallhythe Place is a half-timbered house at north-west edge of the Isle of Oxney. Formerly known as Port House, it was built around 1480 as a customs house to serve a thriving shipyard. In the Middle Ages, Smallhythe was a shipbuilding center for the Cinque Port of Tenterden. Oak timber and iron from the Weald was transported to Smallhythe for building warships. As early as 1342, four ships from Smallhythe formed part of a fleet which accompanied Edward III on an expedition to Brittany.

In 1420, Henry V's 1000 ton ship Jesus was built there, and in 1537, Henry VIII visited the dockyard to oversee the construction of his warship The Grand Masters. In 1822, the wreck of a ship was found in the Rother near Maytham Wharf; it was a 64 foot vessel with two short decks, of the "cog" type, favored in northern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Smallhythe was later owned by Ellen Terry, the actress, and was given to the National Trust in 1939 by her daughter. The house is now open to the public, and houses a theatrical museum containing many of the lavish costumes created for Terry by her partner Henry Irving, her make-up box, and a theatrical library including Terry's annotated copy of Shakespeare.

The Population of the Rother Valley

In the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the population of England grew rapidly, nearly doubling from 16 million in 1801 to 27 million by 1841. The population of Wittersham grew along the same lines. In 1801 it had been 496. Over the next thirty years – one generation – it doubled: rising to 754 in 1811, 911 in 1821, reaching 919 ten years later, and peaking at 998 in 1841.

For example, while Richard Brann had had a family of six children in Wittersham between 1780 and 1799, his son Curteis had a family of ten in the years between 1816 and 1835. To many this population growth confirmed the doom-laden theories of the economist Thomas Malthus - that population was destined to grow at an exponential rate, while food supply was limited to increasing at an arithmetic rate.

However the rural population did not starve from lack for food, so much as lack of work. The enclosure movement, which had eliminated most common lands by this time, resulted in agricultural workers losing ties to their own smallholdings and becoming day-wage laborers. The mechanization of agriculture - particularly the introduction of the threshing machine - eliminated much of that laboring work. Threshing had constituted as much as a quarter of the manual work on farms, and was concentrated in the sparse winter months of November to January.

In 1826, a Parliamentary Select Committee on Emigration recorded that, in the Weald, a third of all workers were paupers, drawing upon parish relief to supplement their low wages for part of the year. Parishes such as Rolvenden, Biddenden, and Hawkhurst each had over 60 men totally without work. William Cobbett, who, in his rides about the country observed this poverty at first hand, wrote "never will these people lie down and starve quietly"; and they did not.

The reaction of the displaced workers came in the Swing Riots of 1830, when they smashed threshing machines, burnt hay-ricks and farm buildings, and (unsuccessfully) demanded higher wages. The riots started in Kent and swept across southern England. In November of that year, there were disturbances all across the Weald, including at Benenden, Northiam, Newenden, Bodiam, Salehurst, and Battle.

At Hawkhurst, upwards of 200 men "reached Conghurst fram and proceeded to an oast house in which a threshing machine was deposited. The machine was taken out and destroyed by means of saws, hatchets, and axes". At Goudhurst, a mob of 300 workers seeking increases in their wages of 2 shillings/day were dispersed by a troop of 25 dragoons. At Rolvenden, farmers acceded to their workers' demands; there being no troops or military present to support the established civil order.

The Duke of Wellington, then prime minister, boasted that he had "induced the magistrates to put themselves on horseback ... to attack these mobs, disperse them, and take and put in confinement those who could not escape". Nearly 2,000 men were brought to trial across southern England; 644 were imprisoned and 252 sentenced to death (of whom 19 were actually executed). 481 were transported to Sydney and Tasmania, including 29 men of Kent - but there is no mention of the Brann families in the records of these disturbances.

The supression of the Swing Riots did nothing to address the fundamental social problems. The Elizabethan Poor Law placed responsibility for caring for the poor upon individual parishes, which now had to bear the ever-increasing costs of these new poor. For example, the number of cases of parish relief in Rolvenden rose from 30 in 1798 to 220 by 1813 (out of a populaton of 1,130). Each of those families received between 3 and 5 shillings a week. By 1833 in Tenterden, the annual burden of paying for the welfare of the poor had reached £1 and 4 shillings per ratepayer.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 provided relief by enabling groups of parishes to form a union, and build a workhouse where all their poor were forced to live and work in order to obtain relief. The Tenterden Poor Law Union, established at the end of 1835, covered the eleven parishes of Appledore, Biddenden, High Halden, Kenardington, Newenden, Ebony, Rolvenden, Stone, Tenterden, Wittersham, and Woodchurch. The Poor Law Commissioners, acting through their secretary, Edwin Chadwick, further empowered parishes to raise money to pay for assisted passages for poor families to emigrate to British colonies.

In the years 1838-40, emigration to Australia rose significantly, partly from these parish-assisted passages (even though the vast majority of emigrants paid their own way). In those three years, there were over 80,000 assisted emigrants to Australia, mainly to New South Wales. Many Weald parishes funded the emigration of their paupers: Beckley received £400 from the Poor Law Commissioners in 1838 to pay for emigration, and Peasmarsh received £200. The parish of Battle agreed that it "would be desirable to pay the expense of emigration of ten Paupers of the Parish to the Swan River" [Perth].

Many ships departed for Botany Bay during 1838 and 1839, carrying upwards of 250 emigrants apiece. A number of vessels were filled largely with families from the Kent/Sussex borders, notably: Cornwall, Maitland, Westminster, Roxburgh Castle, Woodbridge, and Palmyra.

Four Brann families left for Australia, including George Brann’s own brother, David, and three of his cousins: Lucy Brann and husband John Palmer; Mary Brann and husband John Bull; and Edward Blanch and his family. The Palmers and the Blanches sailed on assisted passages. David Brann and his wife Alice Hunt fitted the ideal emigrant profile: a young, childless couple. They were aged 22 and 19 respectively, when they emigrated on the sailing ship Cornwall, which left Gravesend in May 1839 carrying 387 emigrants, and reached Sydney that September; after which he "headed up country".

After the 1840s, the population of Wittersham stabilized for the next fifty years: there were 907 residents in 1851, 877 ten years after that, 949 residents in 1871, 886 ten years later, and still 803 residents in 1891. Then, in the last few years of the century, the population dropped significantly - by 1901 it had fallen to 658. The population then stabilized around that lower level: there were 694 residents in 1911 and again 640 in 1921.

The experience of Wittersham was reflected all around the country. Between 1870 and 1910, 3 million acres of land were taken out of cultivation, as farmers gave up trying to compete against cheap imported produce from America and the Colonies. By 1911 only 8 million of the country's population of 45 million earned their living from the land; that amounted to 8%, compared with 22% in 1851. This collapse in the demand for agricultural labor spurred the decline of the rural population. Again the decline was due to migration, but this time within England - to the rapidly growing towns and cities.

For example, the Brann family moved to nearby towns like Ashford, Hastings and, of course, London. The 1881 census lists over 50 Branns, forming a number of complete families, but by 1901 there remained only one family with children, some unmarried men and widows left behind.

In 1888, the Illustrated London News ran a feature entitled "A Deserted Village - Wittersham, Kent". While praising its picturesque location as worthy of the artist's pencil, the article lamented the village "with its still increasing number of empty houses, wears a sleepy and decayed look."

Famous Residents of Wittersham

Hasted had described Wittersham as a "parish which partakes of the gross unhealthy air of the adjoining marshes, a lonely unfrequented place". But by the early twentieth century - at the same time its native population was drifting away to the towns in large numbers - Wittersham became a desirable country retreat for a much smaller number of famous people.

Alfred Lyttelton, MP (1857-1913), Secretary for Colonial Affairs in the Balfour administration of 1903-5, moved into Wittersham House. Lyttelton had also been a cricketer, playing for Cambridge University and Middlesex, and even as wicket-keeper for England between 1880 and 1884. He purchased the old Rectory at Wittersham in 1906, and once Lutyens had finished renovating it, found he loved both the house and the village life.

Many famous people visited him there, and he enjoyed playing golf and shooting partridges with his neighbors. He read lessons in St John's and contributed to its restoration. So it was fitting that when Lyttelton died, after just five years at Wittersham, he was buried in the south chancel. His grave bears the inscription: "In memory of Alfred Lyttelton, athlete, lawyer, statesman. A man greatly beloved."

Violet Markham (1872-1959), Liberal politician and women's activist, bought a house at Moons Green. Markham, the daughter of a wealthy mine-owner, bought the old oasthouse in 1912, and added a library and several other rooms. After standing unsuccessfully for Parliament at Mansfield in 1918, she served on numerous public bodies, and was Deputy Chairman of the Assistance Board through the 1930s. She died at Moons Green in February 1959.

Arthur Symons (1865-1945), Welsh-born Symbolist poet set up home at Island Cottage, in Swan Street (Back Street). Symons was also a critic and translator of many French Symbolist poets, editor of the "Henry Irving Shakespeare", and friend of Aubrey Beardsley. He bought the C12th Island Cottage in 1906, shortly before suffering a long nervous breakdown, and lived quietly there nearly forty years more. He died there in January 1945 and is buried in Wittersham churchyard.

Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema (c1865-1940), daughter of the painter Laurence Alma-Tadema, lived at Fairhaven. She was a writer and poet, and was a good friend of Paderewski, the Polish pianist. She was also a good friend of her theatrical idol, Ellen Terry, and once cast her horoscope.

Ellen Terry (1848-1928), the famous Victorian actress, lived at Smallhythe Place from 1900 to her death there in 1928. Over a 23-year theatrical partnership with Henry Irving, Terry played many signature Shakespearean roles including Portia in the Merchant of Venice, Lady Macbeth, and Queen Katherine in Henry VIII. She first saw the house at Smallhythe some years before, while in the company of Irving, and it became one of six country cottages she owned. In the years of her retirement, it was her favorite retreat; she wrote that "the long low-lying marshlands give me rest." Terry laid out a rose-garden at Smallhythe to her own design, and entertained many visitors there, including the playwright J M Barrie.

Terry was buried in Smallhythe Church on 24 July 1928; a day on which the roads for miles around were jammed with cars, the verges were packed with trippers and photographers, the lawn outside Smallhythe covered with wreaths received from all over the country, and the men from the nearby fields left their work and came with their tools to form a guard of honor outside Smallhythe church: "haymakers with their rakes and pitchforks, shepherds with their crooks and sheepdogs".

Norman Forbes-Robertson (1858-1936), was a distinguished Shakespearean actor who bought and restored the Stocks Mill and its half-timbered mill-house around 1900. Though less well-known than his brother Johnston, who had once sought to marry Ellen Terry, he was to become a good friend of hers at Wittersham.

He had been a member of Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre and had, at that time, acted and toured America with Terry. He used the ground floor of the mill as a garden shed, converted the first floor into a room for his son, and allowed owls to live in the upper levels even though they regularly stole apples from the store-room.

Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell (1886-1952), was a close neighbor of Forbes-Robertson, living in a converted oast-house, nearby The Stocks in the 1920s. Writing under many pseudonyms, including Marjorie Bowen and Joseph Shearing, she described herself as "a woman who earned her living by writing fiction - with occasional essays in that kind of history deplored by historians". She wrote 150 books, and lived in Wittersham with her second husband Arthur Long.

Robert Hichens (1864-1950), the Edwardian novelist also lived at Wittersham House for some years after 1920. Hichens succeeded George Bernard Shaw as music critic of the "London World", before concentrating on writing novels. He made his name with The Green Carnation, a satire of Oscar Wilde, his Garden of Allah sold 800,000 copies, and his courtroom drama, The Paradine Case, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1947 with Gregory Peck in the leading role.

William Jowitt, MP (1885-1957) lived at Budd's Farm from 1920 to 1935. A lawyer, then Liberal and later Labour politician, Jowitt was Attorney-General in Ramsay MacDonald's 1929 government, Solicitor-General in Winston Churchill's wartime government, and Lord Chancellor in Clement Atlee's post-war Labour government. He carefully restored the old tudor farmhouse and was renowned locally for splendid garden parties. He also loaned his new motor mower and gave a lunchtime speech at the two-against-eleven centenary cricket match in 1936.

The Branns at Wittersham

The name Brann derives from the Celtic/Gaelic word bran, meaning either black, raven, crow, or dark river. The surname can be seen as one of the many that describe people as "dark". While the spelling of Brann is most common, the name is also found as Bran, Branne, and Brand. It occurs widely on the borders of Kent and Sussex, across southern England, and also in Brittany. Our Brann family originated in a group of parishes in the Weald, bordering the banks of the river Rother, before finally settling a few miles downstream in Wittersham.

The first recorded Brann in the family is Richard, who married Joan Roaffe on 30 April 1668 in Burwash, Sussex. They had at least three children, including another Richard, who was born in around 1670, probably in Salehurst. The younger Richard married Alice Baker at Bodiam, Sussex on 3 May 1697. They had eight children between 1698 and 1717, all baptized in Salehurst, including a son, John.

John Brann was baptized on 12 December 1707 at Salehurst. On 2 April 1733, he married Elizabeth Carley in Salehurst, and they had one son, Richard, who was baptized on 24 February 1733 at Etchingham, Sussex.

Richard Brann married Mary Baker at Etchingham on 22 April 1756. They had seven children between 1757 and 1768, all baptized at St Lawrence's Church in Hawkhurst. Their third and fourth children were twins, Mary and Richard, baptized on 20 December 1761.

Richard and Mary Brann

The younger Richard Brann married Mary Cover, daughter of Richard Cover and Ann Christmas of Northiam, Sussex. The marriage took place on 16 February 1781 at St John the Baptist, Wittersham, starting the hundred-year association between the Brann family and Wittersham. In the register, Richard is recorded as being resident in the parish of [High] Halden at the time of his marriage. Neither he nor Mary was able to sign their name.

Richard and Mary had eight children between the years of 1780 and 1799, when Mary died. Although their first son, Richard Cover (1780), was born in Wittersham, their next three children, William and Mary (1783), and Thomas (1784), were born in Lydd on Romney Marsh. It was not until William (1787), John (1789), Curteis (1792), and David (1795) were born that the Branns settled for good in Wittersham.

Richard Brann died some years after his wife Mary, on 21 February 1831 in Wittersham, aged 78.

Richard Cover, their first son, was born before their marriage and was consequently listed as "base born" in the parish register; he raised a small family on Romney Marsh. The first William died in childhood; the second William raised his own small family in Rolvenden. Thomas raised a large family in Wittersham and lived to the ripe old age of 93. John moved across Kent to the village of Great Chart; his only daughter Mary emigrated to Australia on the barque Roxburgh Castle in 1839. David was a cordwainer (shoemaker) in Back Street, Wittersham, whose only son died in infancy.

The large number of Branns who lived in Wittersham throughout the nineteenth century descended primarily from the large families of two sons of Richard Brann: Thomas, who had 15 children, and Curteis, who raised a family of 10.

Curteis and Jane Brann

Curteis, fifth son of Richard and Mary Brann, was baptized on 9 December 1792 at Wittersham.

He married Jane Ramsden, the daughter of John Ramsden and Elizabeth Wratten of Tenterden, on 21 May 1814 at St Mildred's church in Tenterden. The marriage was by banns, with the consent of their parents. Jane was recorded as a "spinster and minor" (she had just turned 17), and the ceremony was witnessed by her sister Mary Ramsden, and Curteis' brother David Brann (who alone was able to sign his name).

Over the next twenty years, Curteis and Jane had ten children: Curteis (1816), David (1817), John Ramsden (1820), Thomas (1821), George (baptised 22 Feb 1824), Mary Ann (1826), Stephen (1828), William (1829), Jane (1831), and Elizabeth (1835).

Curteis started working as an agricultural laborer, but by 1861 had raised himself to be a farm bailiff employing two laborers. The family had lived at Moons Green up to that point, and subsequently lived at the 87-acre Dobell Farm. In the last years of their lives, Curteis and Jane lived with their daughter Mary Ann and her husband, James Velvick, in Peening Quarter. After Curteis died, Jane lived with their other daughter Jane and her husband, William Larkins, at Bates Farm.

Curteis died on 20 October 1878, aged 86, and Jane died on 21 February 1883, aged 88. Both are buried in Wittersham churchyard. The local doctor, John Jenkin Terry, certified the causes of their deaths as simply "age and debility". Curteis' gravestone bears the following inscription
(the first part being from Mathew 24:12):

Watch therefore, for ye know not
What hour your lord doth come.

Lord, let us not repine,
But drop the tear we must,
since thou hast called us to resign
Our parent to the dust.

Of Curteis' children, Stephen and Thomas died in infancy; the others all survived into adulthood. Apart from David, who emigrated to Australia on the sailing ship Cornwall in 1839, they all raised families of their own in Wittersham. Curteis married Mary Eldridge in 1835 and lived at Moons Green until he died in 1860. John married Elizabeth Morphett in 1844 and lived at 54 Back Road, before moving to Blackheath in the 1870s and starting a dairy/milk-delivery business. Mary Ann married James Velvick in 1846 and lived at Penyon Quarter. William married Katherine Jenner in 1848 and lived at 60 Back Road for many years, and Jane married William Larkins of Bates Farm in 1856. Elizabeth married Henry Frances of Beckley in 1856, and lived in Penyon Quarter until she died young in the 1870s.

George and Frances Brann

Curteis' son George married Frances Crossingham on 28 February 1843 at the parish church in Oare, Hastings. The Crossinghams were a local Sussex family living in Battle, but they already had links to Wittersham: Frances' brother, Levi, had been laboring at Peening Quarter two years earlier. Frances was was illiterate at the time of their marriage (which maybe why her 1885 portrait shows her proudly holding a book!).

They had eight children between 1846 and 1862, all born in Wittersham. The family had various homes in Wittersham: successively at Stocks Farm (c1841), Poplar Farm (c1851), Owley House (c1861), the High Street (c1871), and later at Lorden House in Peening Quarter (c1878-87).

George started work in the 1840s as an agricultural laborer, just like his father, working wherever he could. Over time, he became a farm bailiff, managing farms for some of Wittersham's principal landowners, such as Samuel Rutley (Owley Farm) and Col. Lawrence Heyworth (Yew Tree Farm, 1882).

He was also a general dealer, and then a farmer in his own right - initially of just 32 acres, but by the 1880s he was farming 100 acres and employing 4 men and a boy. Although having been clearly successful, he remained a tenant-farmer; no-one in the Brann family actually owned land in Wittersham until the early twentieth century.

However, as an occupier of a house and land in the Street and at Glines, George was qualified to vote in the general election of 1874.

The Second Reform Act of 1867, promoted by Benjamin Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons in Lord Derby's Tory administration, extended the franchise to occupiers in rural counties who paid £12 per year or more in rates. The act was passed in response to the unrest caused by the Chartist movement, and increased the proportion of the population who could vote from 5% to 13%. George was probably the first member of the Brann family ever to be able to vote; yet Lord Derby still described the increase in the franchise as a "leap in the dark". The 1874 election was also the first British election with a secret ballot.

By 1884 George was also listed in Pike's Directory as a carrier, travelling from Wittersham to Rye on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Unfortunately, on Wednesday 29 June 1887 he suffered a fall - possibly from his horse during one of these trips. This caused - according to an examination by the local doctor Garside Terry - contusion of the spine and paralysis. This diagnosis probably means that he broke his back. It led to his death five days later on 3 July at home on Peening Quarter Farm, probably from pneumonia or some other infection brought on by the paralysis he suffered.

He was only 63. He was buried on 7 July in Wittersham churchyard, and his grave is inscribed with a verse from the John Wesley hymn "O Thou that hangest on the tree":

Canst thou reject our dying prayer,
Or cast us out who came to thee?
Our sins, Ah! wherefore didst thou bear?
Jesus, remember Calvary!

His death notice in the Kentish Express & Ashford News of 16 July 1887 recorded that he was "deeply lamented by his widow and nine children, and much respected by all who knew him".

After his death, Frances moved to Wittersham Street, where for some years she looked after the children of two of her own widowed children, Alfred and Anna. In old age, she went to live with her son John, and his wife Elizabeth, at Clayne Farm in Chalk, Kent, where she died in 1905, aged 80. She was reunited with George in Wittersham churchyard.

The Children of George and Frances Brann

By 1900, the children of only one of George and Frances Brann's eight sons and daughters remained in Wittersham. Of the children who left, those that stayed with farming, moved away to the north of the county, to marshy land near the Thames estuary that is in many ways similar to the Wittersham Levels. The rest left behind the land that had supported the family for generations, and found jobs and lives in larger towns - Hastings, Ashford, or London.

Their daughter, Jane, was born on 5 November 1848. On 30 July 1866 she married William Williams at St John's. Williams had moved to the area the previous year, after being appointed staff sergeant for the 5th Battalion of the Kent Rifle Volunteers at Benenden. According to family tradition, while he was courting Jane, William regularly walked the 10 miles from Benenden to Wittersham to visit her (and then walked home again). That would have been nothing for William, who had regularly marched 20 miles a day with the army in the intense heat of Indian Mutiny campaign.

Jane and William lived at the Manor House in Benenden until 1875, where he was also a Sergeant-Drill Instructor at the Gibbons School. They had three children between 1867 and 1872, all born at Benenden. After William's appointment to the War Office, the family left the Wittersham area and moved to the newly-developing London suburb of Lewisham, where the children all grew up.

In retirement, William and Jane returned to Kent, living for some years at Willesborough, near Ashford. Jane died there in 1937 at the age of 88.

Jane' sister Ellen married Edwin Packham, miller and later farmer, in 1870 at St John's. Jane and William witnessed the marriage, just as Ellen and Edwin had witnessed theirs, four years earlier. They had six daughters and one son in Wittersham between 1871-86. The family lived in Back Street for many years, before moving to Owley Farm sometime around 1900. Edwin farmed at Owley for twenty years, and retired to Ashford around 1920. Ellen died in 1935 at the age of 89.

George and Frances' eldest son, Jesse, married Betsy Stedman at the Presbyterian Chapel in Tenterden. He left farming behind and became a grocer and iron-monger at Hughenden Road, Hastings. In 1901, the two eldest of the couple's 6 children were assisting him in the shop.

Next son John, who started working as a shepherd at Owley Farm, moved to Chalk, near Gravesend, where he worked as a farm bailiff for Samuel Rutley, son of the owner of Owley. He married his cousin, Elizabeth Brann, who died in 1895, leaving them no children. John stayed in Chalk, farming at Dundale and later Clayne Farms, where his 150-cow dairy farm was described as a model of its kind. When he died in 1917, his obiturary called him "the best type of English farmer ... not only an expert in his profession, but admired for his splendid personality."

Mary Ann Brann became the second wife of Alfred Packham, brother of sister Ellen's husband Edwin. They lived in Ashford, Kent, where he was a pork butcher. They had one daughter together, but were both dead by 1900.

Fanny Brann married Alfred Jerrold, a schoolteacher; they had one son Leonard, and later moved to Sittingbourne, Kent.

Alfred Brann was the only child, apart from Ellen, to stay in Wittersham. He was a fruiterer or fruit merchant, who lived in Wittersham Street. He married his cousin, Mary Ann Velvick, and they had one daughter, Bertha. Mary Ann died in 1879, after which Alfred and Bertha lived with his mother, Frances, until he remarried in 1897 to a widow, Catherine Dengate Harper. In 1901, Bertha was working as a chambermaid in a hotel in Hastings.

Anna Brann married her father's farm bailiff, Joseph Hawkins, at the Northfleet Congregationalist Chapel, near his birthplace of Chalk, Kent. They had one son, also Joseph, but the elder Joseph either died or left shortly after. For a while, her son stayed with grandmother Frances in Wittersham, while Anna worked as a housekeeper at Icklesham, Sussex, 15 miles away. By 1901, both mother and son were living in Camberwell.

The youngest Brann child, William, worked initially on farms at Wychling, near Sittingbourne. He married his cousin, Minnie Velvick, sister of Alfred's wife Mary Ann, and they had two children. Their eldest son, Percy, was killed in France in 1917 - by which time his parents were living in Reading, where William died in 1942.

The Branns at Owley

The moated manor of Owley (originally Oveley) was owned by a family of that name until the reign of Richard II (around 1400), when it passed to the Odiarnes, a well-known Kentish family. Their coat of arms - sable, a chevron between three covered cups - used to be painted on the chancel window of Wittersham church, and on the floor of the north aisle is a brass of a cloaked man with the inscription "Pray for the soul of Stevyn Audyan which decessed ye xxiii day of Aprill in the yer of our Lord God a thousand cccc xxiii on whose soul Jhu have mcy Ame".

The Odiarnes held the manor until the time of Henry VIII. When Thomas Odyarne of Acton died in 1538, he left the manor of Owley to his two sons, Thomas and John, who later sold it to John Maney (Mayney, Mayne) of Biddenden Place - another ancient local family.

A century later, in the reign of Charles I, his descendent, Sir John Maney, Baronet, of Linton, near Maidstone, sold the manor to Sir Peter Ricaut, the father of his wife Mary. Ricaut (or Rycaut) was a Dutch financier who came to London around 1620. He lent money to Charles I, who knighted him in 1641. But in consequence of his support of the King, during the Commonwealth he was fined by Parliament, financially ruined, and forced to sell his estates in Kent to a Mr Menell of London. After this, Owley passed through various short-term owners.

Early in the C18th, the manor came into the ownership of Thomas Brodnax May of Godmersham Park, Kent. May changed his name to Knight after inheriting estates from the Knight family in 1738 and, on his death in 1781, Owley passed to his son Thomas. The younger Thomas Knight died childless in 1794, and Owley passed to his widow Catherine, later of White Friars, Canterbury. Mrs Knight was lady of the manor in 1799, when Hasted wrote. When she died in 1812, her husband's estates passed to his adopted son, Edward Austen Knight, brother of novelist Jane Austen.

Some time later, Edward Knight appears to have sold Owley to William Levett of Bodiam. When he died in 1842, Levett owned both the manors of Palstre (where he lived) and Owley. He left Paltre to his elder daughter Sabina and Owley to his younger daughter Emily. His Will devised to Emily "my freeholds, messuages, buildings, farm lands, containing altogether, by estimation, one hundred and seventy-two acres, more or less, situate lying and being in the Parish of Wittersham aforesaid, commonly called or known by the name of Owley Farm, with the apportionments thereto belonging".

Emily Levett married Samuel Rutley in the following year. Mrs Samuel Rutley continued to own the property until her death in 1900, although her family ceased living in the house at Owley and moved to Wrotham, near Sevenoaks, some time around 1857.

Owley House has a Georgian facade, built upon a much older, wooden framed farmhouse. The house was described as a brick and tile cottage, with three living rooms, kitchen, wash-house, larder, six bedrooms, and an attic. Also on the farm were: a pair of brick and tile cottages, each with four rooms, outside scullery, and garden; a brick and slated stable for four horses; a thatched and part-tiled barn; and two round oast houses. The medieval moat, which was still visible as late as 1923, is now a Scheduled Monument.

The Brann connection with Owley starts by 1861, by which time George Brann was the farm bailiff there, managing the farm for the Rutley family. Several of his younger children would have been born there, and all of them would have spent the greater part of their childhood at Owley, including Jane, Ellen and John.

Ten years later, when George was farming on his own account elsewhere in Wittersham, his son John remained at Owley, working as a shepherd and lodging with Charles Hartley, the new tenant farmer. When John left Owley, he went to work for Samuel Rutley Jnr, tenant of West Court Farm at Chalk, near Gravesend, where the Rutley family was now living (1881). Also farming at Owley around that time - 1865-73 - was John Collyer; his family emigrated to Canada in 1882.

In 1881, Richard Fuggle was the tenant at Owley, and Henry Brann, George's cousin, was laboring for him there. Ten years later, Fuggle had moved to the High Street, and Gibbs Cooper was farming at Owley.

By 1901, Ellen Brann (George's daughter) was back at Owley with her husband, Edwin Packham, and their family. By 1910, Owley was owned by James William Brann of Blackheath, who purchased the farm after the death of Mrs Rutley. James was the son of George Brann's brother, John Ramsden Brann, and inheritor of his dairy business, which appears to have prospered as he also purchased Acton Farm. At that time, Owley was thus very much a family affair: the owner, James Brann, was cousin of his tenant's wife, Ellen Packham (nee Brann). The property was valued at £2450, and its annual rent amounted to £130.

By 1914 all the Packham children had grown up there and married, but Edwin and Ellen were to stay at Owley until about 1920. My grandfather spent 18 months with them, from early 1916 to the summer 1917. He had just turned sixteen at the time, and had grown up in suburban South London. He later recalled:

"I developed TB and my parents' doctor advised that I be sent away into the country, preferably onto a farm to get into the fresh air as much as possible.

My father's uncle owned a farm at Wittersham, and they agreed to have me for a time to see if my health improved.

I arrived on the farm at Haymaking, and straight away did what I could to help. In fact, after about 2 weeks, I took over the two horses for feeding and stabling and, by the time the autumn arrived, I had become entirely responsible for everything to do with the horses - in fact, I did the ploughing in the hop garden with the two horses in line."

With his health fully restored, my grandfather went off to fight in WWI and afterwards returned to London. But in 1921 his health broke down once more and he was advised to go back to the country; he chose to return to the area, taking a job at Rye. His family lived in Rye for ten more years, where my father was born. The family stayed connected with Wittersham, and my father remembers visiting two elderly aunts and an uncle - possibly Alfred and Kitty Brann - in the 1920s when he was very young.

Sources:

The Domesday Book: Kent, 1086, John Morris (ed.), Chichester, 1983 (Phillimore)
Will of Thomas Knight: 11 Novt 1794, proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (National Archives, Kew)
Will of William Levett: 4 Oct 1842, proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (National Archives, Kew)
Pigot's Directory of Kent: 1826 & 1840, ArchiveCD Books, Cinderford
Illustrated Guide to the London and Dover Railway: 1846, Digital Library of Historical Directories
Bagshaw's History, Gazeteer & Directory of Kent: 1847, Digital Library of Historical Directories
Return of Owners of Land, Kent: 1873, ArchiveCD Books, Cinderford
Kelly's Directory of Kent: 1873, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, UT
Kelly's Directory of Kent: 1859, 1878, 1895, 1930, Local History Reprints, London
Kelly's Directory of Kent: 1882, 1903 & 1913, Digital Library of Historical Directories
Pike's Weald of Kent and Romney Marsh Directory: 1884-5, Digital Library of Historical Directories
Kent: Eastern Division Poll Book, 1863 & 1874, Public Record Office
Religious Worship in Kent: the census of 1851, ed. Margaret Roake, Maidstone, 1999 (Kent Archaeological Soc.)
Monumental Inscriptions in the Churchyard, Wittersham, Leland L Duncan, 1923 (Kent Archaeological Soc.)
Wittersham Land Tax Assessments, 1910, Public Record Office (IR58/31263)
Wittersham Free School, 1871-1904 (esp. Indenture of 12 Feb 1820), Public Record Office (ED49/3530)
Kentish Express & Ashford News, 16 July 1887

A Topographie of Survey of the County of Kent, Richard Kilburne, London, 1659
History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Edward Hasted, London, 1799 (Local History Reprints, London)
A New and Complete History of the County of Kent, William Ireland, London, 1830 (Local History Reprints, London)
A History of the Weald of Kent, Robert Furley, London, 1874
Old Tenterden, J Ellis Mace, Tenterden, 1902
A Saunter Through Kent with Pen and Pencil, vol. XIV, Charles Igglesden, Ashford, 1923 (Kentish Express)
Some Notes on Wittersham and its Church, W E Watson (rector), Wittersham, 1931
Further Light on East Sussex Emigration, Michael J Burchall, East Sussex FHS Historian, vol.2 (1977)
The Isle of Oxney, Ivan Green, Bygone Kent, vol.1 (1980)
An Unusual Cricket Match, William Smith, Bygone Kent, vol.3, no.6 (1982)
Kent's Mobile Railway Guns in 1940, David Collyer, Bygone Kent, vol.3, no.12 (1982)
Neve's Shop and the Interesting Coterie at Wittersham, Fred Shepherd, Bygone Kent, vol.15, no.10 (1994)
Tenterden: the first thousand years, Hugh Roberts, York, 1995
Ellen Terry in Kent, Carson Ritchie, Bygone Kent, vol.18, no.10 (1997)

The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, Carbondale, IL, 1964
Polyolbion: song 18, Michael Drayton, 1613 (The Complete Works of Michael Drayton, ed. Richard Hooper, London, 1876)
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Daniel Defoe, 1726
Rural Rides, William Cobbett, London, 1830
The Illustrated London News, 21 Dec 1844 and 7 July 1888 (collection of San Francisco Public Library)
Houses and Gardens by E L Lutyens, Lawrence Weaver, London, 1913 (Country Life)
Alfred Lyttelton: an account of his life, Edith Lyttelton, London, 1917
Ellen Terry's Memoirs, Ellen Terry with Edith Craig and Christopher St Johns, New York, 1932
Watermills & Windmills: a historical survey of their rise, decline & fall as portrayed by those of Kent W C Finch, London, 1933

Seventeenth-Century Kent: a social and economic history, Christopher W Chalklin, London, 1965
The Village Labourer: 1760-1832, JL & Barbara Hammond, London, 1911
Captain Swing: a social history of the great English agricultural uprising of 1830, Eric Hobsbawm & George Rudé, NY, 1968
Life in Kent at the Turn of the Century, Michael Winstanley, Folkestone, 1978
The Workhouse: Tenterden, Peter Higginbotham, 2003 (www.workhouses.org.uk)
Kent Machine Breakers: the story of the 1830 riots, Jill Chambers, Letchworth, 2006
Immigration into Eastern Australia, 1788-1851 by Robert Madgwick, London, 1937
A History of Britain, Simon Schama, London, 2002
Britannia's Children: emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600, Eric Richards, London, 2004
Sons of Toil, David Hey, Ancestors magazine, July 2004
The Kent & East Sussex Railway: the line that refused to die, Matthew Beddall, Canterbury, 2000 (Solo Publications)
The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 1963
A Dictionary of English Surnames, Percy H Reaney, London, 1991 (3rd ed.)
English Heritage: National Monuments Record Center (www.pastscape.org)
Archaeology Data Service: Defence of Britain Archive (ads.ahds.ac.uk)

Acknowledgements:

Hazel Gott, 2nd cousin and co-descendant of Jane Brann, for tracking me down and for sharing her research.
Delia John, 4th cousin and descendant of Jane Brann's sister Ellen, for the photographs of George and Frances Brann.
Paul Allen, 5th cousin and descendant of Curteis Brann, for publishing and sharing his research on the early Brann generations.
Dorothy Chapman, 4th cousin by marriage and descendant of Curteis Brann, for her tree of the descendants of Richard Brann.
Peter Blanche, cousin many times removed, for sharing research on early Branns from William Good's A Forest of Blanches
James Bridge, descendant of Edwin Packham's mother and his American cousin Greg Bridge, for photo of Owley House

Illustrations:

Wittersham village sign (own photo)
View of Wittersham showing the Old Post Mill (drawing: C Hentschell, Illustrated London News, 1888)
The Rother at Blackwall Bridge (postcard, c1912)
A Cricket Match at Wittersham, c1845 (print of painting attributed to Charles Deane; bought at "Neve's Shop", Wittersham)
Hop Picking in Kent (postcard: G A Cooper, Photographer, Maidstone, c1910)
A Train on the Kent & East Sussex Railway (postcard: The Kent & East Sussex Railway, Tenterden, c1920)
A Railway Gun at Wittersham Road in 1940 (from Bygone Kent, vol.3, no.12; collection of the Imperial War Museum)
St John the Baptist, Wittersham (postcard, date unknown)
The Queen's Head, Church & Schoolhouse, Wittersham (postcard, c1925)
The "Ewe & Lamb" and War Memorial (postcard: Shoesmith & Etheridge Ltd, Hastings, c1951)
Neve's Shop, Wittersham, c1900 (from Bygone Kent, vol.15, no.10)
The Old Post Mill, Wittersham (postcard: Wittersham Mill, c1910)
Wittersham House (the old rectory) (from Houses and Gardens... by Lawrence Weaver)
Smallhythe Place (postcard: no publisher listed)
A rural pauper contemplates action ("The home of the rick-burner", Punch)
Emigrants on their way to the place of embarkation (Illustrated London News, 21 Dec 1844)
Looking down Wittersham Street towards Ham Green (postcard: Norman #7, date unknown)
Alfred Lyttelton (photo: Elliott & Fry, from Alfred Lyttelton... by Edith Lyttelton)
Ellen Terry as Beatrice (postcard: Rapid Photo Co, London, #2147, photo: Window & Grove, c1900)
Rother Valley (Ordnance Survey, 1811, 1" Sheet of Hastings, reprint by David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1970)
High Street, Wittersham (drawing: C Hentschell, Illustrated London News, 1888)
Wittersham Church with Brann Graves (own photo)
The Poplars, Wittersham (postcard: H Boorman & Co, Grocers, Drapers, Etc, Wittersham, c1920)
George Brann, c1885 (family photo: Delia John)
Frances Brann, c1885 (family photo: Delia John)
Jane Brann, c1910 (family photo)
Owley House, c1905 (family photo: sent by Edwin Packham to cousin Andrew Bridge in America)
Haymaking (postcard: Harvesting in Sussex (Falmer), c1912)

Roger Williams