ARCHIVE OF THE BAKER AND KIRBY FAMILIES OF BATTLE, WITHYHAM AND OF LOWER AND MIDDLE...

KIR

ARCHIVE OF THE BAKER AND KIRBY FAMILIES OF BATTLE, WITHYHAM AND OF LOWER AND MIDDLE HOUSE, MAYFIELD PLACE AND THE VICARAGE, MAYFIELD

1534-1994

Sales and partitions have made the archive extremely fragmentary; it consists mainly of probates, executorship papers and settlements as well as unabstracted early deeds, either subject to covenants to produce or left behind when documents were handed to purchasers or to other branches of the family

But as well as losses which have administrative explanations, the archive has suffered greatly from both custodial negligence and scholarly use. Manorial records borrowed from the Rev John Baker by William Courthope in 1841 and returned to his solicitor no longer survive and the circumstances of the deposit of AMS 5442, 5831 and A 4888 show Messrs Sprott of Mayfield to have been unworthy successors to the redoubtable 18th-century family lawyer Richard Dungate, whose practice passed to them. Hardly any of the family documents quoted by Miss Bell Irving (see below) are still present in the archive and several of them (AMS 6086) were retrieved from the cellar of her former home in 1988

For microfilm of William Courthope's antiquarian papers at the College of Arms, see XA38

BAKER OF WITHYHAM AND MAYFIELD PLACE

KIR/1 John Baker of Battle, c1526-87

KIR/2 Thomas Baker of Battle and Grays Inn, c1570-1638

KIR/3 John Baker of Bungehurst and Mayfield Place, c1590-1668

KIR/4 John Baker of Mayfield Place, 1643-1724

KIR/5 John Baker of Mayfield Place, 1665-1715

KIR/6 The Reverend Peter Baker MA, 1671-1730

KIR/7 Marthanna Baker, c1675-1731

KIR/8 Michael Baker of Lower House, 1716-50

KIR/9 George Baker, 1679-1756

KIR/10 Thomas Baker of London and Lower House, 1728-82

KIR/11 Philadelphia Baker, 1725-c1800

BAKER OF WITHYHAM AND MIDDLE HOUSE, MAYFIELD

KIR/12 John Baker of Groombridge and Gildredge in Withyham, c1570-1638

KIR/13 John Baker of Stoneland in Withyham and Mayfield, 1630-88

KIR/14 Robert Baker of Middle House and London, c1635-1714

KIR/15 Robert Baker of Birchden in Rotherfield, c1667-1721

KIR/16 George Baker of London and Rotherfield, 1676-1750

KIR/17 John Baker of Middle House, c1676-1746

KIR/18 Dorothea Baker, c1680-1750

KIR/19 Samuel Baker of Middle House, 1721-96

KIR/20 Marthanna Baker of Burwash, 1726-1814

KIR/21 Thomas Baker of Middle House, 1763-99

KIR/22 John Baker of Lewes grocer, 1762-1807

KIR/23 Hannah Baker of Middle House, 1755-1841

KIR/24 Isabella Baker, 1789-1850

KIRBY OF MAYFIELD VICARAGE

KIR/25 Early Kirby family, 1632, 1684

KIR/26 John Kirby of Thanet, c1700-1774

KIR/27 The Reverend John Kirby MA, 1744-1811

KIR/28 The Reverend John Kirby MA, 1786-1844

KIR/29 The Reverend Henry Thomas Murdoch Kirby MA, 1818-97

KIR/30 Hannah Jane Kirby, 1829-99

KIR/31 The Reverend John Henry Reginald Kirby MA, 1849-1914

KIR/32 THE INCUMBENCY OF MAYFIELD, 1614-1921

KIR/33 THE MANORS OF MAYFIELD BAKER, BUNGEHURST AND ISENHURST, 1597-1980

KIR/34 FAMILY PORTRAITS, c1700

KIR/35 Henry Richard Kirby BA, 1889-1976

ACC 6420 Further records of the Baker and Kirby families of Mayfield and the Thompson family of Frant and Fareham, Hants

The number which follows the group letters KIR throughout the list is unique to an individual member of the family. These numbers are presented in order in the table of contents (above), are reproduced for convenience in the pedigrees which form appendixes KIR/1 - 3 to this introduction and have been used for the purposes of cross-reference within the body of the list. The purpose of the pedigrees is to link the members of the families whose papers have survived but they are by no means complete; the tolerably good pedigrees compiled in 1840 by William Courthope, Rouge Croix pursuivant, should be consulted if a full descent of either Baker (KIR/28/65) or Kirby (KIR/29/50) is required. The depositor's article 'The Kirby Family of Mayfield', consisting of an extended pedigree of the family, was published in The Sussex Genealogist and Local Historian vol 2 pp 75-79 (1980)

Each section of this list is headed by an introduction containing a brief outline of the individual concerned and cross-references. All statements are attributed but particularly heavy reliance has been placed on E M Bell-Irving, Mayfield, The Story of an Old Wealden Village (1903), Fred Lester, Looking Back (Second Edition, Mayfield, [1953]) and the volumes of the Sussex Record Society. These are respectively cited as Bell-Irving, Lester, and SRS

Because of the predominance of executorship papers, it is frequently the case that most of the documents relating to an individual are to be found among the papers of his or her executor. Where executors were not members of the family (mostly in the case of the later generations of the Middle House family, who increasingly tended to name lawyers as their executors), the papers have been grouped either under the beneficiary or, exceptionally, under the deceased

Three groups of documents demanded different treatment and have been allotted separate sections at the end of the list

As a result of the remarkable continuity of ownership of the advowson and of the Kirby clerical dynasty, the archive contains documents relating to the incumbency of Mayfield, both continuously kept tithe books and others more properly classified as parish records. They have all been grouped together and listed as KIR/32

Title deeds and manorial records of the Manor of Mayfield Baker, the only incorporeal part of the Baker - Kirby patrimony still retained by the depositor, have been listed as KIR/33

Six portraits of members of the Baker family, at present hanging at various locations at the East Sussex Record Office, are listed as KIR/34

In all cases, cross-references to these three classes have been provided from the nominal section of the list, KIR/1-31

<p>See also ACC 7755/64-83 for records relating to the advowson and incumbency of Mayfield, and the incumbency of Wadhurst</p>

English

• <famname>Baker family of Withyham, East Sussex</famname>
• <famname>Baker family of Mayfield, East Sussex</famname>
• <famname>Kirby family of Mayfield, East Sussex</famname>

4 Subfonds

Records are closed for 30 years from the last date of a document

Deposited 8 December 1978 (ACC 2328), and 30 Sep 1994 (ACC 6420)

This extremely diverse archive contains the papers of two very different families, linked by marriage in 1773

The Bakers were ironmasters and John Baker of Duckings in Withyham, whose widow's release of dower in 1556 is the earliest document in the archive, had already acquired an extensive landed estate by the time of his death as well as a lease of Birchden forge in Rotherfield. The Bakers were originally a Battle family and it is possible that they were attracted to Mayfield (where John Baker owned the manors of Bungehurst and Isenhurst) because its topography was so suitable for the water-powered industry. John Baker had two sons, both of whose families were by 1700 established in Mayfield - John, the elder's, descendants at Mayfield Palace and later at Lower House, and those of Robert, who also retained the Withyham estate, at Middle House

The Bakers of Middle House lasted longer. Hannah Baker, who survived her brothers and sisters, died in 1841 and indeed her sister Ruth's two illegitimate sons, the fruit of an unwittingly contracted bigamous marriage, survived almost until the end of the century and have descendants alive today

Upon the death of Michael Baker in 1771 the Lower House estate passed to his two sisters - Philadelphia wife of Thomas Elsley of Jamaica and Ann Ruth, who two years later was married to the rev John Kirby, bringing with her the advowson of Mayfield as part of her fortune

The Kirby family, originally yeoman farmers from the Isle of Thanet, had by 1761 become sufficiently prosperous to enable a son to attend St John's College Cambridge. On the death of the vicar of Mayfield in 1780, Kirby exercised his advowson in his own favour and thus laid the foundation of a clerical dynasty; he was succeeded in the cure by his son, grandson and great-grandson, the depositor's grandfather, who resigned the living (the advowson was retained in the family) in 1912. Ann Ruth's match may perhaps be the result of an established family relationship - her aunt Philadelphia had married a John Salt, and John Kirby's sister Mary was married to the Rev Thomas Salt, rector of Hildersham in Cambridgeshire, possibly John's Cambridge contemporary

By a chancery decree of 1809 the Mayfield Place and Lower House estate, both in possession and reversion, was partitioned between John and Ann Ruth Kirby and her sister Philadelphia, the wife of Henry Godfrey of London grocer. Ann Ruth's guardian, her uncle Thomas Baker, had entailed his residuary estate on his great-nephew Thomas Baker Elsley, Philadelphia's son by her first husband William Elsley, with remainder to the descendants of his two nieces. Thomas Baker Elsley took the surname Baker in accordance with the provisions of his great-uncle's will and died without heirs in 1831, when his estate, including the manor of Mayfield Baker, vested in the Kirby family

The reasons for the inclusion in the archive of the papers of the Lower House family is clear; those of the Bakers of Middle House seem to have passed to the Rev HTM Kirby after the winding up of the estate of the survivor, Hannah Baker, in 1842. Although Kirby was neither executor nor beneficiary, he was apparently closely involved in the administration of the estate and helped her solicitor to draw title by the loan of a pedigree

The Bakers appear to have been capable business men and well advised; they rarely died intestate and at first their estates descended remarkably intact, assisted by the pattern of regular intermarriage between the two branches of the family which has made their papers so hard to disentangle. But the decline of the Wealden iron industry upon which so much of their income depended, the survival of Michael Baker's remarried widow until 1796 and the failure of the Mayfield Place family to produce a surviving male heir all contributed to the ease with which the Bakers' position in Mayfield, as well as their estate, was occupied by John Kirby and his descendants

But the role of squire-vicar was one which the Kirbys found hard to sustain. Although no corroboration has been found in the diocesan records, there is a suggestion that John Kirby's cure may have been ended by a petition of his parishioners a year before his death, intestate, in 1811. His son, who had spent very large sums rebuilding the vicarage, also died intestate and on the verge of bankruptcy in 1844. In 1851 the estate, still a substantial acreage in the centre of the parish, was partitioned between John Kirby's eight surviving children. The Rev HTM Kirby received the manor of Mayfield Baker and the advowson but no land, effectively ending the family's doubly predominant position as spiritual and temporal governor of the town