"For centuries the manor and Court Lodge of Longfield continued to be regarded as part of the estate of the Archdeaconry of Rochester. For example in March 1331 Archdeacon William de la Dene issued a mandate to the Dean of Malling from Longfield. Then in February 1348 the Register of Hamo de Hethe, Bishop of Rochester, records that a legal case was adjourned in order to be held at Longfield, where Archdeacon de la Dene was to give evidence before Edmund de Berham, a diocesan official.

The Court Lodge seems to have been used by the Archdeacons as a house of retirement and this explains why Archdeacon Plume, who was appointed to the Archdeaconry in 1679 and who has probably been Longfield’s best known inhabitant, lived in the house. Further particulars of him will be given later in these notes.

Dr Maurice Griffith, who became Archdeacon of Rochester in 1533 and was afterwards Bishop of Rochester seems to have been the first Archdeacon to let out the manor of Longfield, which he did for a term of eighty years. Before the term was ended, a concurrent lease was granted for a further sixty years. Afterwards it continued to be leased out from time to time, but Archdeacon Thomas Spratt, who succeeded to the office in 1704, allowed the lease to expire."

"In 1847 Archdeacon Walker King was the principal landowner, although he himself lived at Stone, some 3½ miles away, where he held the living. The Rector of Longfield, the Reverend James King, younger brother of the Archdeacon, was living at the Court Lodge with his son and daughters in 1851 and 1861 and he may have lived there since 1831. The lands of the Archdeacon’s manor of Longfield were still farmed by William Benstead of Hartley, but the Rector was in possession of 30 acres of glebe and 30 acres of marsh land, and a farm in the Hundred of Hoo. This farm had been purchased when the living was augmented by the Governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty."

"Sad to say, Longfield Court Lodge has gone. After the death of the Reverend James King in 1864, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners sold the house with 28 acres of land to private owners. Charles Laurie, a solicitor, owned it in 1871 and George Roots, a brick-maker, was there by 1881. Ten years later a retired timber merchant, John J Hickmott, had bought the property and his descendants continued there until 1953, when it was sold to Dr P Read. In the summer of 1961 the Rector, the Reverend Reginald Bavington, wrote: ‘From my study window I look across the road to a large board nailed to a horse chestnut tree close to a fine pair of wrought iron gates, a dilapidated drive and a broken down fence. The large red four lettered word reads SOLD and that adds up to the close of a chapter. For Longfield Court, that ancient historical ecclesiastical house is empty and doomed.’

And so it was."