The Dumb Borsholder of Chart

Post date: Jan 19, 2012 1:33:14 PM

The Dumb Borsholder of Chart is a wooden instrument with iron rings and spike (a mace?) now hanging in Wateringbury Church. The first written reference to it is quoted by Rev Henry Stevens' article for the second volume of Archaeologia Cantiana (1859) (see attached file). Henry Stevens was vicar of Wateringbury (1840 to 1877) and like his successor, Greville Livett, (vicar 1895-22) a keen archaeologist/historian. They were both active in Kent Archaeological Society (KAS) which was founded at a meeting held at nearby Mereworth Castle in 1857. Neither Stevens, nor Edward Greensted writing in 1780, nor Edward Hasted writing in 1798 claim that the object is Anglo-Saxon although the office of petty constable or 'borsholder' does come from Anglo-Saxon times and there may have been a borsholder for Chart then. Chart was a possibly a thriving sub-division of Wateringbury, near Pizien Well, which nearly disappeared in late-medeival times. One theory is that a 'dumb borsholder' was then introduced to perform the functions at the hundred court held at Twyford Bridge, Yalding previously performed by a real person as by custom Chart was first up at the Court.

Prior to its return to Wateringbury it had been exhibited at a museum at the deanery of Rochester.

The Parish magazine of October 1891 records:

Our celebrated Dumb Borsholder has been lent for a week to the Committee of the International Folk Lore Congress, for Exhibition at the Conversazione in London, on Monday, Oct. 5th. We are sure that it will be by no means the least interesting of the various specimens of Folk Lore.

Stevens quotes (spellings modernised) the Court Rolls of the manor of Chart from 20th May 1657 as follows:

Item-they present that within this manor there is a custom, which is that the tenants belonging to this manor have a staff which is the borsholder, and that any man living within this liberty , which are only twelve houses, may with the same staff search within this precinct, and that this borsholder every year is carried to Yalding, to the Hundred Court, and there is called the first of all the borsholders, and there does his service as a borsholder and that whosoever of the twelve carry him there, eleven houses pay a penny a piece to him that carried it, and that every one of the twelve take their turn for carrying it.

A letter in a newspaper in 1893 (see The Dumb Borsholder ) also recounts the author's speculations about Chart.

Several Chart manor court records survive from the 16th and 17th centuries and these are available under the topic Manors (e.g. Chart Manor Court 1591)

See also snippet about Wateringbury 's borsholder.