KEMP, THOMAS READ
Arms.—Quarterly.
1st and 4th; gu., 3 garbs within a bordure engrailed or. Kempe.
2nd and 3rd; sa., 3 crescents arg., 2 and 1. Read.
[Alliances généalogiques de France. Paris, 1561.]
Thomas Read Kemp (born c. 1781, died 20th December 1844) was the son of Thomas Kemp, Member of Parliament for Lewes, who married Ann Read of Brookland. Mr. Kemp was educated at Cambridge, and in 1811 he represented Lewes in the House of Commons. He sold his castles at Lewes and at Hurstmonceaux and built largely near Brighton, where the district known as Kemp Town was founded by him. He spent all his fortune in this speculation, which, however, in time became of great value.
The family of Kemp or Kempe is one of great antiquity in Kent. John Kempe, Archbishop of Canterbury in the fifteenth century, and his nephew Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, both belonged to it. The immediate ancestor of Mr. T. R. Kemp was Sir Thomas Kempe of Olantigh, near Ashford, an estate which had belonged to the family since the time of Edward I.
