Ford Palace

Archbishop John Morton (1486–1500) rebuilt the palace, adding a five-storey tower of brick, and Thomas Cranmer was visited there by King Henry VIII in 1544.

In 1573 Archbishop Matthew Parker proposed to demolish it, but it survived to be surveyed in 1647 by commissioners acting on the instructions of the Long Parliament, which had acquired it from the Church of England.

[7][8][9] Finds from the Anglo-Saxon period include a claw beaker and a drinking cup retrieved from a sand pit also to the south of the stream, between the site of Ford Palace and that of the cremation burials.

[10][11][12] Antiquarians such as the 18th-century clergyman John Duncombe believed that King Æthelberht of Kent moved his royal court from Canterbury to Reculver – about 2.6 miles (4.2 km) north-east of Ford – in about 597, and built a palace on the site of the Roman ruins there.

[24][Fn 3] However, part of the main structure that stood until 1964 "embodied a string-course scroll moulding which suggested a late-Decorated date of around 1300",[10] and there may have been an earlier, moated site adjacent to the palace's southern side.

"[34] Morton instigated a great deal of building-work during his clerical career, to the extent that he obtained a royal commission to press-gang stonemasons, bricklayers and other construction workers into his service.

[48] Parker's plan was to retain sufficient buildings for the keeper of the park at Ford, which was part of the palace estate and extended to about 166 acres (67 ha), and only to maintain the manor as necessary for occasional visits by the archbishop.

[48] The estate was leased to the keeper as a farm, but, seeking Queen Elizabeth I's authority for a major change to the buildings, Parker wrote to the then Lord High Treasurer, William Cecil, in March 1573, describing Ford Palace as "an old, decayed, wasteful, unwholesome, and desolate house".

[51][48] Hasted and Hook believed that Archbishop John Whitgift (1583 – 1604) hunted frequently in Ford Park, but Gough demurred, stating that the belief is not supported by any evidence.

[23][41][48] Archbishop George Abbot (1611 – 1633), who accidentally shot and killed a park-keeper at Bramshill Park in 1621,[52] was forced to withdraw from his archiepiscopal duties by King Charles I in 1627 and retired temporarily to Ford.

[4] In 2011 four circular holes 20 inches (51 cm) in diameter were drilled in connection with proposed construction work slightly to the east of the palace site, but nothing of archaeological interest was found.

[35] A barn to the north-east of the farmhouse incorporates much of a Tudor stable block that was originally about 182 feet (55.5 m) long; the structure of its roof features crown posts and tie beams.