Awsk ‘er if she’ll come dahn agine
To pussy, daddy, an’ me.
Here are your true sentimentalists.
At the foot of the hill lies Hildenborough, a tiny hamlet with a modern church, until comparatively recent years figuring merely as Hilden, or Hilden Green. The meaning of “Hilden” is obvious here. It is simply descriptive of the situation of the place: in the dene, or valley, beneath River Hill.
Borough, as commonly understood, is a ridiculous misnomer in this place, but it appears to have been brought into use as some way of indicating the existence here of a manor separate from, and independent of, Tonbridge, whose suburban houses now begin to mingle with it.
XXIII
The town of Tonbridge lies in the valley of the Medway, and the river itself runs through what is now the centre of the borough. Originally, however, the town was situated on the north bank only; and all that portion—now an intimate part of the place—over the bridge was in the open country.
There are but two bridges across the Medway nowadays, one large and one other very small; but in the early days of Tonbridge there were no fewer than five, for if you look at the maps you will perceive the Medway spreading out from Yalding into five tributaries, like the fingers of your hand, over the two miles’ breadth of flat country between River Hill and the foothills of Hildenborough and the heights of Somerhill and Quarry Hill, on the way to Tunbridge Wells.
According to some authorities, it was to these bridges that Tonbridge owed its name, but it seems probable that those channels were not bridged, but were merely fords, at the time when the town was baptized; and we must seek for the origin of the name rather in “Ton-burig”—the great Saxon “burh” or artificial mound on which the keep of Tonbridge Castle stood from the earliest times, guarding the passage of the river. Thus the place-name should properly have become “Tonbury,” but the bridges in the meanwhile got themselves built and, becoming the most striking feature of the place, crept illegitimately, at a very early period, into the name of it. In this way we find “Tonebridge” mentioned in 1088, and afterwards meet such variants as “Tunebricgia,” “Tunebregge,” “Tunebrugge,” and “Tonebryge.”
Mediæval Tonbridge was a walled town and moated, both as to town in general and castle in particular. It was, accordingly, in its own special way, as strongly defensible as though situated on some craggy height. You could not come into it save by water, and not then except by favour and permission of those who guarded the gates.