A tower of mysteries

Intriguingly, Gundulf also built St Leonard’s Tower, in West Malling, Kent – just a couple of miles from my home. Although little is known about the tower’s history, it’s considered by Historic England as one of the best examples of an early Norman keep.

The tower takes its name from a chapel dedicated to St Leonard that once stood nearby and is thought to have been part of a castle built by Gundulf between 1077 and 1108. He also founded St Mary’s Abbey, about half a mile away, in the centre of West Malling, now occupied by Anglican Benedictine nuns who offer hospitality to those seeking a retreat from the pressures of the world.

The tower dominates the road into West Malling so I can understand why it was built to defend Gundulf’s land and the abbey from  Saxons.

Although the general consensus is that the tower was built by Gundulf, there’s still a second school of thought that maybe it was built by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror. But as St Leonard’s was the administrative centre of Gundulf’s estates, surely only he would have had the time or motivation to build such a keep during this period?

At the far end of the lake the stream is channelled under another lane and through the grounds of St Mary’s Abbey, to emerge in the town in a beautiful cascade.

Artist JMW Turner (1775–1851) captured the scene in a watercolour, now held by Tate Britain, titled West Malling: St Leonard’s Tower c.1791–2. The pencil, pen, and grey-brown ink and wash watercolour is stamped in brown ink with a Turner Bequest monogram. It’s also inscribed in pencil ‘Not to be folded | on centre by Edwin Fagg Feb 1938’ top right (Fagg was a British Museum staff member). The watercolour was accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856.

Further studies of the tower from the late 18th century include one by antiquarian Francis Grose who noted in 1783 that the tower was called the Old Jail, recording a local tradition that the abbey had used the basement as a dungeon and the upper storeys as a prison for lesser offences.

In 1915, the owner of the tower, H. J. Wood, discussed selling it to the Commissioners of Works, proposing a price of approximately £1,500, but the negotiations broke down. By the 1930s, local magistrates expressed concern that the tower might fall onto the grounds of a neighbouring private asylum, the Kent Sanatorium, endangering the patients. As an alternative to demolition, the tower was taken into the guardianship in 1937. It’s now managed by English Heritage and was listed as Grade I on the National Heritage List for England in 1993.