Talk:Borden, Kent

message: Very sweeping statements here! In particular:
* surely "village" is better than "community"?
* the impression in the village itself (ie the original village) is that it is very compact: OK there are outlying settlements such as Hearts Delight, but that applies to most villages
* Sittingbourne, to which it is almost joined, hardly gets a mention
* have all the orchards been "scrubbed" (shouldn't that be "grubbed up" anyway?): in many parts of Kent they have been replaced with easier to manage lower trees; and the land must be used for something, surely?
* and is it really true that "most people commute"? 
Peter Shearan 16:20, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: According to the current text the source of the parish name...
:is more likely to stem from Sir Francis de Bourdon...who descended from the de Bourdons of Bayeux, in Normandy, France. Francis de Bourdon became Lord of the existing castle and surrounding lands previously Lorded over by the Saxon Ethelwolf of Kent, who perished at Hastings, by William the Conqueror as a gift to his vassal after the great Norman victory in 1066 and at which time became known as Bourdon
This is based on Cook 1905's work "Robergia:A story of Old England", cited in the sources. While Cook provides extracts of various wills for the Borden family, those wills date to the 14th century and later and are confined to an appendix at the back of the main work. He presents no supporting evidence for Francis de Bourdon, his wife Robergia, etc.  As far as I can tell, while many use this work to show that the Borden family came to England from Bayeux, Normandy, during the Norman Conquest no evidence is presented by Cook to support this, nor has anyone else that I can tell.
The main text of Cook 1905 simply a work of fiction. I do not believe he ever intended for it to be anything other than this.  It is worth pointing out that neither the Domesday Book of 1088, nor its ecclesiastical equivalent, the Domesday Monachorum, mention the parish of Borden, or anyone using that surname or variations thereof.
If the Borden family did in fact descend from one of William the Conquerors supporters, you'd expect to see something about either them, or their supposed place of residence in one or another of the two Domesday records.
As to the actual source of the Parish name, the terminal ending of the name "-den" suggests that the name arose from the use of the area as a foraging ground for pigs, known either as dens, hursts or lays, depending on local dialectical preferences.  That usage is well documented, and there are literally hundreds of place names in Kent ending in "-den", and an equal number ending in "-hursts.  KentArchaeology.com has a nice map showing the distribution these names.  They are heaving concentrated in the Kentian Weald, but there are others throughout Kent, including some in the the parish of Borden.  Whatever the meaning of "Bor", the ending in "-den", seems near conclusive evidence that the name of the parish represents the presence of a denn in that area at an early date.  There are a few records for the presence people bearing the surname "de Bordon" there in the 13th century (Weld, 1899). This has probably been the spring board from which people have taken to the idea that the Borden family had a Norman connection.  More likely the name simply reflects usage of french during the Norman period in England, and its significance is only that the persons bearing the name "de Borden" (or variants there of) came from the parish of Borden.
TwelveGreat (talk) 13:38, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Name Meaning

message: The text currently reads
→Borden also had a bell foundry and small ironmongers.
Were the ironmongers simply short, or were there a small number of them, or does "small ironmongers" mean something else---ie did they only make small iron objects?.  I'd correct this but I don't know what the intent of the statement.TwelveGreat (talk) 22:15, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iron Foundry