Medieval
In 1219, the little settlement of Bidborough was still part of the parish of Leigh, its residents looking to the Church of St Mary of Leigh for their spiritual needs. In that year, however, Leigh gave its blessing to Bidborough becoming a parish in its own right, and the story of that decision survives in a remarkable document still kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The deed concerns the Chapel of Bidborough, and it names the people behind the change. Richard Canutus was parson of the Church of St Mary of Leigh, while John Canutus, a Knight, was the church's patron. By this deed, Richard granted the chapel to Walter, a clerk who was the son of Benedict de Tappenhase. John Canutus gave his consent to the arrangement, and both men set their seals to the document. Notably, neither the Bishop nor the Archdeacon had any part in it — this was a local matter, settled locally.
The deed refers to the 'Capallan de Bitteberge', an early spelling of the chapel's name. The terms were generous but not entirely free: the chapel was to be held in pure and perpetual alms, yet a rent of four shillings sterling was to be paid each year to the mother church at Leigh, falling due at the festival of St Laurence. Walter the clerk, for his part, had to sustain all the burdens of the chapel.
Why did Bidborough want its own parish? The deed records that its parishioners lived a long way from the Leigh church, and that frequent flooding of the Medway made the journey to worship difficult and inconvenient. The river that once troubled medieval churchgoers has been tamed in modern times: reservoirs at Weir Wood and Bough Beech draw on Medway tributaries and have greatly reduced inundations, though the Leigh Barrier has, ironically, made flooding more serious when it does occur.
The connection between the two parishes endured. In July 1999 the Churchwardens announced, in the parish magazine, a proposal for Leigh and Bidborough to share a priest. The two PCCs discussed the idea, and the Archdeacon reported back to the Bishop. A follow-up article by Lawrence Biddle appeared in the August 1999 magazine, which also calculated that unpaid rent of £156.00 — payable each 10 August — amounted to 780 years of those four-shilling payments, a wry reminder of a debt first recorded in 1219.