From an article written about Step Cottage.

Step Cottage, The Street, Finglesham.

Step Cottage stands prominently on The Street, higher than any of the immediately adjacent houses, partly because of the platform on which the cottage and its substantial length of stepped garden is built.

From the back of the cottage the tiered roof certainly shows three distinct phases of building. The earliest part of the cottage, fronting The Street and marked by the first of two pitched roofs, consists of two rooms, one on the ground floor and one on an upper floor, with no evidence of a staircase between them. It could be that the communication between the floors was by a set of external steps, such as characterize the ‘step cottages' of Cornwall.

The back of the cottage was extended, probably in Victorian times, the extension being marked by a second lower pitched roof parallel to the first; the ground-floor room was enlarged by knocking down the internal wall and an internal staircase was provided leading to the first floor, where two rooms were created, one larger than the other. This was followed by a 1970s flat-roofed addition providing a modern kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor.

The present owner was told that the front of the cottage was built in the 1740s, followed by the Victorian extension and the 1970s addition. However, with good reason, he thinks that the front was built in the nineteenth century to replace a building that had been demolished, and that the building concerned may have been the "Red Lion Inn." We know from a conveyance dated 1926 (which I quote later) that ‘the land or garden ground' attached to Step Cottage formerly belonged to the "Red Lion Inn" and ‘contained thirteen perches of land more or less' (roughly one eighth of an acre).

When Step Cottage was Martha's Cottage.

Martha Mary Ann Mount was born and baptised in Deal in 1836. With her husband John Ferrier/Farrier, an agricultural labourer, she purchased a cottage and garden in The Street Finglesham in 1884 for £65. The Ferriers were already living in this cottage, which they purchased from one of the Nethersole family, who lived in West Street House (now Finglesham Grange) and owned about seventy acres of land and barns, outhouses and cottages in Finglesham.

John and Martha Ferrier with their youngest son Charles, aged nineteen, are recorded in the 1891 census as living in The Street; Martha is fifty-four and her husband is sixty-one. By 1901 she was widowed and still living in The Street and by 1911 aged seventy-five, calling herself an old age pensioner, she records that she has had nine children born alive and that eight of them are still living. After her death the Probate Court order granting administration of her estate, now worth £165, to her eldest son James Goodban Ferrier, shows that her address was Step Cottage. The photograph below of the lady in the doorway of Step Cottage is likely to be Martha.

Martha died in the Eastry Union Infirmary on 5th January 1927 at the age of 91. She had not left a will and sadly there was a dispute among her four surviving children about the distribution of her estate. Each of her eldest sons, James and John, thought that he was entitled to money that he claimed to have lent her over the years. Indeed John had attempted to pre-empt matters just before Martha's death by instructing the solicitors Emmerson & Co of Sandwich to draw up for his mother's signature a conveyance of the cottage to him for £100. Amazingly this conveyance engrossed on vellum has survived, as has its original draft. The draft reveals that John had no intention of paying his mother £100. As originally drafted the text read:-

Whereas the Vendor is indebted to the Purchaser in the sum of £100 and upwards … Now this deed witnesseth that in consideration of the said indebtedness and of the natural love and affection which she hath and beareth towards her son the Purchaser … '

In the final document this part of the text is heavily amended and the reference to indebtedness – as well as to love and affection – is erased.

In the event Martha did not sign the conveyance. When just before Christmas 1926 Emmerson's clerk went to Eastry Infirmary to obtain her signature, the Master and the doctor were ‘of the decided opinion that she was not in a fit state' to sign it. With her death three weeks later James now took the initiative, instructing Emmersons to apply in his name for the grant of administration of her estate; this was granted on 31st January and the sale of Step Cottage to a Mr Stone for £205 followed later that year. Then not much happened for four years. The money remained in Emmerson's client account on James's behalf as administrator; there were occasional conferences and occasional exchanges of correspondence between Emmersons and the solicitors now representing John, his brother Charles and his sister Ann, Walmesley and Barnes of Broadstairs, enquiries as to what progress there was and towards the end discussions as to what settlement John, Charles and Ann would accept, with a figure of £5 each being mooted.

Then on 16th March 1931 James approved the accounts for the estate and acknowledged receipt of the balance of £175/17/5d. The accounts do not include any payments to his siblings and he would seem to have retained the money himself.

But that was not the end of the matter. Later that year John started legal proceedings against James. The matter did not come to court; in December 1931 John agreed to settle for £12.

Mary Taylor's husband's family rented Step Cottage for a short time in 1947 when they moved to Finglesham from Fife in Scotland to work in Betteshanger Colliery, before moving further along The Street to Fairview. Derek Hares lived in Step Cottage for a time before moving to 2 Finglesham Farm Cottages. The present owner, Steve Williams, bought Step Cottage in April 2010.

Christine Grainge