Faversham Oyster Fishery

The origin of the company and fraternity of free-fishermen and dredgermen of Faversham is reckoned to have existed ‘time out of mind’, which is a legal term used to denote a time before legal memory. The statute of Westminster in 1275 fixed it at 1189.

We should always bear in mind that for centuries the history of the neighbouring fisheries of Whitstable, Milton and Seasalter were inextricably intertwined with that of Faversham. During the Saxon period the fisheries seem to have been uncontrolled.

At the conquest (1066), Faversham, Whitstable and Milton were all fisheries that were then royal manors, known as demesne manors. Perhaps the crown controlled the fisheries, perhaps not. We have no way of knowing.

There can be little doubt that it was King Stephen who founded the company. It may have been based on a company in use when Faversham was a royal manor, but we have no way of knowing that. On 29 November 1526 Commissary John Woodhall, Deputy General and Commissary of the Lord Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Sysley, reported at Faversham that he had inspected and read all the privileges, grants and donations to the abbot of Faversham by King Stephen and confirmations by his successors and verified that these parts as well by land as by water and by sea ‘are fully exempt from all manner of jurisdiction and power of the admiral of England’. This meant that the abbot had the right to hold his own admiralty court, which was confirmed at the admiralty on 6 December. On the dissolution of Faversham Abbey, the two fisheries of Milton and Faversham fell separately into the hands of the Crown.

It would seem that by at least the end of the sixteenth century, the oystermen of Faversham were in a fraternity or company.

The fishery continued in the hands of the Crown until it was granted with the manor to Sir Edward Hales with money from Sir Dudley Digges in 1630.

The boundaries of the fishery were so clearly established that its findings were used as late as 1788 for a proposed act of parliament by ‘The Company of Free Fishermen and Dredgermen of the Manor and Hundred of Faversham’ which was said to have existed ‘time out of mind’.

On 1 December 1641, the sons of Sir Dudley Digges sold the manor and hundred to Sir George Sondes of Lees Court for £3,129 13s 4d. The deed mentions ‘his rents of three and twenty shillings and four pence yearly going or payable for fishing in the sea within the liberty of the Admiralty’

On 1 December 1731, The Friendly Society of Dredgers belonging to the town of Faversham was set up.

In 1788 the company of the free fishermen and dredgers of Faversham placed a bill before Parliament hoping to secure the oyster fishery at Faversham by an Act of Parliament, for it codified the boundaries and rules. The fishery was organised under the authority of the manorial steward and through the two annual courts, the admiralty court and the water court. There were regulations concerning apprenticeship and admission as freeman. A procedure was laid down for protecting the oyster fishery from poaching; being ‘greatly annoyed and prejudiced by strangers.’

In 1721 the lord of the manor had claimed the oyster grounds as his own grounds, but the fishermen had defeated him through a bill in the exchequer.

In October 1884 it was reported ‘The affairs of the company have been at a very low ebb for a long time, the state of its finances preclude the possibility of enterprise on its part.’ Whilst the Faversham company continued to trade many of the grounds were leased out.

The fishery was subject to crises and scandals of the sort known only too well today. For instance, it was reported in the Daily Mail on 6 February 1903 that,

‘there was a very great drop in the number of oysters sent into London yesterday from the various fisheries… some of the London shops are still selling oysters; others acknowledge that the trade is practically nil… a prominent oyster grower yesterday expressed the fear that the trade was permanently crippled, if not killed.’

The reason for this scare, as reported in the same column, was that Kaiser Wilhelm, ‘having repeatedly suffered ill-effects from eating English oysters’, had banned them in Imperial kitchens. In future ‘Dutch and Danish oysters will replace the British product’. There were certainly serious problems of pollution from untreated sewage in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The Fishmongers’ Company inspected different parts of the layings of the Faversham Oyster Company between January 1903 and June 1909. At the beginning of 1903 one in ten oysters contained coli-like microbes and by the end of the year samples from different parts of he grounds were found to be sewage polluted. After 1903 oysters dredged would have had to be sold to merchants or the Whitstable companies for relaying on their unpolluted grounds or in purification tanks.

The decline started in 1921 when the mysterious ‘oyster mortality’, which was causing such alarm at neighbouring Whitstable, killed about half the oyster stock on the Faversham grounds.