We know nothing more of Ashford, which, as I have said, till
late in the Middle Age consisted of a church and two mills and a dene
for the pannage of hogs in the Weald. It is not one of the many
owners of the Manor who is remembered to-day in Ashford as its
benefactor, but the Lord of the Manor of Ripton during the Wars of the
Roses, Sir John Fogge, who was Treasurer of the Royal Household and a
Privy Councillor. In the fourteenth century the church had passed to
Leeds Abbey, and with the abbey the church of Ashford remained until
the suppression, when it passed to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.
It was not, however, the Abbey of Leeds that rebuilt it as we see it, a
poor example it must be confessed in spite of the nobility of the
tower, of the latest style of English Gothic architecture, the
Perpendicular. It was Sir John Fogge, who for this and other reasons,
is the father of the town. He lies in a great tomb in the chancel. As
for the Smyths, who lie in the south transept, Thomas, and Alicia his
wife held the manor of Ashford in the sixteenth century. Alicia was the
daughter of Sir Andrew Judde to whom the manor of Ashford had been
mortgaged in the time of Henry VII.
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