After returning to his native Hampshire, Arthur Herbert Savory, who had been tenant farmer at Aldington Manor from 1873 to 1902, wrote Grain and Chaff from an English Manor about his time spent farming there. Savory had very little to say about his family in the book. There was the occasional mention of “my wife” or “my daughter”, but no mention at all of his son, Christopher, who died in 1899, aged 13. Instead, Savory concentrated on his employees and other village characters. Generally speaking, he did not give the actual name of any of the characters he described but, by looking carefully at census returns and parish registers, it has been possible to deduce in most cases who he was describing.
