The Hoppers of Ickham, Kent
Although the Hopper family eventually went on to populate the East Kent coastal towns and villages, the earliest reliable records of my Hopper ancestors go back to the tiny hamlet of Ickham (about 5 miles west of Canterbury) and the death of Richard Hopper there on 26 November 1614. Queen Elizabeth I had died some 11 years earlier, being succeeded by James I (son of Elizabeth’s sister, Mary Queen of Scots).
There is some reliable evidence to indicate that the Hopper name was rooted in Ickham as far back as the year 1200. Read Herlewin le Hoppere – our 13th Century ancestor? for more on this.
The earliest written record of Ickham dates from the year 781 when, according to Villare Cantiarum, Ickham was given by King Offa to Christchurch Priory. Â The names derives from the Saxon word yeok – a measure of arable land – added to ham, a dwelling or enclosure. The parish takes in the hamlets of Seaton and Bramling as well as Lee Priory and Appletun. The ruined chapel of Well, between Bekesbourne and Littlebourne, is also part of Ickham.
In 1800 Edward Hasted, in his guide ˜The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (Vol 9) ‘described Ickham as follows:
The village of Ickham, in which is the church and court-lodge, stands in a low flat country, very wet and unpleasant, the road through it being but little frequented. Further northward is the borough and hamlet of Seaton, beyond which is a level of marsh-land, containing about one hundred acres within this parish, which is here bounded by the Lesser Stour and the Wingham river. The soil throughout it is in general fertile, especially those two large extensive fields between the village and the Canterbury road, called Ickham and Treasury fields. A fair is held in the village on Whit-Monday, for pedlary and toys.”
Once the centre of East Kent’s hop growing business, farms around the village now specialise in market gardening, cereals and feed crops. Recently, new apple orchards have been planted in the area.
Richard Hopper was probably born around 1560 and married Jane Austin in 1581; they went on to have a family of five children. It appears that most of the family lived their whole lives without leaving the tiny hamlet in which they were born.
However, the eldest son, Stephen (born 1582) married an Isobel Hoult in 1609 and settled in the coastal village of St Margaret’s at Cliffe, just a stone’s throw from Dover. The couple had four children before Isobel sadly passed away in 1623. Stephen remarried two years later, to Jane Hasselbye, and they had a further four children.
The Hopper line remained in St Margaret’s for the next two generations, until another Stephen (this one a grandson of Stephen and Jane’s through their son William) married Margaret Wood in 1690. That same year Stephen was appointed a Freeman of Dover by ‘order of common council’ and his sons (of which there would eventually be six) were made freemen by birth. The family settled in Dover…
[to be continued…]
