there can be little, if any, doubt, that the Domesday church occupied the site of the existing parish church of Warehorne.
331. Tonbridge.—The chancel of the church still retains some small roundheaded windows, indicating it to be of Norm. date; but, with the exception of the northern piers and arches of the nave, which are perhaps E.E., or early Dec., the remainder of the building, which is not modern, is Perp., the east window being a very large one in that style. This window contains a few pieces of coloured glass.
About A.D. 1191 Roger de Clare granted the church of Tonbridge "cum capella, with a chapel." (Reg. Roff.) That chapel might probably be Capel, which however was originally an offset from Tudely, not Tonbridge; nevertheless in a document of A.D. 1347 the church of Tonbridge is mentioned with the chapels of Schybourne (Shipbourne) and Capel. (Reg. Roif. 128). Again there are two allusions to the same connection of the chapels of Schibourne and St. Thomas the Martyr; one (Reg. Roff. 126) without date, except the seventh year of Edward, King of England and "Duke of Aquitane," probably K, Edward II; the other (Ib. 666) is specially stated to be of the seventh year of K. Edward II (1314). The latter chapel, of St. Thomas, must have been Capel (which see) and this may probably be the "capella juxta Tunbregge, the chapel near Tonbridge," of (Val. Eccl.) which is coupled with that of Shipbourne.—A priory was founded here by Rich. de Clare about the end of the reign of K. Henry I (Monast. VI, 393): and dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. (Reg. Roff.) A.D. 1351 it was totally destroyed by fire. (Monast. ut sup.) The last vestiges of the priory were removed in forming a station of the South-Eastern Railway, when a coffin slab with a cross upon it, and a few other trifling relics were discovered.
Of the castle the grand entrance is still standing, containing some good work of the thirteenth century, and forming a fine object in the view from several places on the southern side of the town. So late as temp. K. Edward VI the domains of the castle comprised parks at the Posterne and Cage (the former eastward, a little south, of the town, the latter north); also the forests and chases of North Frith, South Erith, and Whitcliffe alias Wincliff wood. At South Erith is stated to have been "a great park." (Hasted, II, 330, 350, fol.) The names of "Forest Farm" and "Jeffrey's in the Forest" are still attached to farms on
