Diaries and papers of John Pinyon of Sandhurst in Kent and Northiam

The documents listed here are copies of material at the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, and relate to the Pinyon family of Sandhurst in Kent and Northiam. The diaries of John Pinyon (CKS U2082/F5-41) were formerly held at ESRO as AMS 5595. They were re-united with the remainder of the archive in 2004, when an opportunity was taken to acquire copies of other material relating to East Sussex in the Pinyon archive.

Centre for Kentish Studies U2082

Copies of documents deposited by Miss Pinyon, Finch Hill, Langham Road, Robertsbridge, 29 March and 18 April 1968 (ACC 884, 904).

The diaries were deposited at East Sussex Record Office by John Pinyon's grand-daughter, who in June 1977 gave the remaining family and business papers and deeds, covering 1792-1912, to the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, where they are listed as U2082.

In May 2004, in the course of preparing this list for inclusion in the Access to Archives website, it was decided to re-unite the diaries with John Pinyon's other papers at the Centre for Kentish Studies, and to retain copies at Lewes of these and other documents, now at Maidstone, which relate to East Sussex.

The diaries will be listed as CKS U2082/ F5-41.

John Pinyon (1811-1859) was born at Sandhurst in Kent on 13 September 1811, the son of Aaron Pinyon of Boxhurst (1791-1860), a wheelwright, and his wife Sarah. His father, who was one of the sons of John Pinyon, tenant farmer of Padghams Farm in Dallington and Warbleton, became steward of the Brickwall estate in October 1835 and the appointment brought John increasingly into contact with the Frewen family and the Sussex parishes of Northiam, Beckley and Brede.

On 25 March 1841 John Pinyon moved to Morley Farm in Northiam (see AMS 5595/15 below and FRE 8118) and married Ellis Hanson on 23 December 1844. In 1851 the couple and their three children were enumerated at Morley, John Pinyon described as a farmer of 188 acres and 12 acres of marshland, employing seven labourers and three boys (PRO HO 107/1634 f543). On 26 November 1851 he left Northiam for The Oaks House at Sandhurst, and on 20 May 1852 moved to Ashbourne Mills in Tenterden; by 1854 the couple had five children. Ellis Pinyon died on 5 March 1858, and John was buried at Sandhurst on 9 June 1859.

When the diary begins John Pinyon was still occasionally attending school, but was also engaged in agricultural work. He had already begun measuring land, and was a sufficiently competent draughtsman to paint name-boards on farmers' carts. At this period of his life John was a regular attender at Sandhurst Baptist Chapel, and sometimes records the number (but not the names) of those baptised. By 1833 he was a regular teacher at the Sunday-school, which opened, possibly in a new building, on 13 November 1836. He was politically active, in March 1829 recording 'went round green with Mr Burgess with a petition to dissolve parliament'; on 18 November 1830 he travelled to Cranbrook to be sworn in as a special constable.

But music-making, referred to as 'musicing', was clearly his first love. On 6 March 1831 he records that he 'carried my flute for the first time'; on 12 April a clarinet was delivered from London and on 25 July he practiced with a bugle in Sandhole. On 15 October 1837 he 'carried my clarinet to church for the first time'. He and some friends spent the morning of 25 January 1838 moving the barber's shop from the green, and the afternoon 'fitting it up for a music room'. On 23 March 1838 he 'brought home a set of flutes' and later the same year went 'musicing at the Fancy Fair' at Bodiam Castle; the diary lists the names and instruments of the 11-piece wind and brass ensemble.

As his age increased, John undertook more surveying work, in 1830 mapping his father's holding at Hugletts Plantation (AMS 5595/4/2) and in March 1831 travelling to Ashburnham to measure his uncle James Pinyon's farm [at Frankwell]; in June 1832 he measured the new wharf at Newenden.

It was his father's appointment as steward to the Frewen family's Brickwall Estate in October 1835 which was to have the greatest effect on John Pinyon's life. He was brought into contact with a higher echelon of society than he had previously experienced, and in Thomas Frewen's shrieval year in 1839 he, his father Aaron and brother Thomas Pinyon all served as sheriff's javelin men, visiting the assizes at Lewes and travelling to Brighton with the judges' entourage. The new situation may well have influenced the family's religious observance: John's attendance at Chapel faltered in the Autumn of 1836 and he began to attend Church regularly in the Spring of 1837.

In 1837 John Pinyon added areas of newly-purchased estate to a map of the Brickwall estate of 1779 (AMS 5881) and in April 1838 he was sent to Cold Overton, the Frewens's estate in Leicestershire, to survey the course of a new road to Leicester. Back in Sussex, an increasing amount of time was spent writing accounts and surveying land roads and measuring hops.