MRP: Hardres Court

Hardres Court

Location and character

Hasted describes the parish of Upper Hardres as isolated, with a poor soil, iwith Hardres Court located on high ground away from any other inhabitation:

The parish is a very lonely and unfrequented place, situated on high ground among the hills, having large tracts of woodland on each side of it. The Stonestreet way runs along the valley, near the western boundary of it; the soil of it is very poor, consisting mostly of either chalk, or a hungry red earth, covered with sharp slint stones. Hardres-court stands on high ground, a most retired and sorlorn situation, and for some years past an almost deserted habitation; near it is the church and parsonage. There is no village, but at some distance further, near Stelling and the Minnis, there is a hamlet of cottages called Bossingham.

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Family background

Dorothy K. Gardiner noted that:

"The name of Sir Richard Hardres (a son of Sir Thomas Hardres of Hardres Court and Eleanor, daughte of Henry Thoresby, Master in Chancery) is outstanding in the history of the Great Rebellion on Kent; in 1643 it appears in the list of the Committee of Kent, although Sir Richard afterwards “stood for the King” and besieged Dover Castle at the head of 2000 Royalists.

For seven centuries there were Hardres at Hardres Court. To one of Sir Richard’s ancestors, Sir Thomas Hardres, King Henry VIII gave his dagger, the handle encrusted with jasper; he gave also the gates of Boulogne, taken when the town was captured in 1544 and they stood at Hardres Court, built into a wall at the garden entrance, until broken up in the nineteenth century for the weight of iron nails and studs. Now the family has come to an end, and the last Hardres sleeps with the first in the old church on the high downs close to their home.

Sir Richard Hardres married Ann, daughter of Sir Peter Godfrey, who also figures in these pages"

(SOURCE)

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Correspondence

"HONORED COSIN,

I am much indebted to you for lettinge your man bringe ouer the hawke unto mee, whome we got to call her loose but were like not to see her againe that night, for the hawke is not in case to flie, neither will shee be in his keepinge, wherefore if it please you to leave her with mee fowre or five days my man shall make her comming, and then I will give you as much money for her as any man, soe with my service remembred unto yourselfe and your vertuous mother I rest

Your assured lovinge kinsman
To command
RI: HARDRES"

(Letter from Sir Richard harderes to Richard Oxinden (of Barham), Hardres Court, October 3rd, 1622)

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