Talk:Manor of Cobham, Kent

Reversion of major edit by SilkTork
I have reverted the major edit by SilkTork. We were in the middle of a major discussion elsewhere on the way forward for articles dealing with manorial descents and were making good progress. This major edit and deletion of a huge part of the article was performed unilaterally by one of the two people involved in that discussion, without consultation, before that discussion had been resolved. Just because you are an admin does not mean you get to win every editorial dispute.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 12:44, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

As always, tidying up after Lobsterthermidor is trying and tedious. —S MALL JIM   14:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Your revert has been undone, and you have been blocked for 48 hours for disruptive editing. This article needs further work, including consideration of the notability of the manor. Cobham Hall is notable, and has a notability distinct from the school now occupying the building: Cobham Hall School. The village of Cobham, Kent has notability. And the local church, St Mary Magdalene Church, Cobham, has notability (but no article yet). The various families that were given the manor of Cobham (the Cobham family (Barons Cobham), the Stewart family (Dukes of Lennox), and the Bligh family (Earls of Darnley)) have notability. What is less clear is the amount of useful information on the manor itself, and how best to write about it. There are sources, such as in Black's Guide to Kent, and a couple of useful PDFs by the local archaeological society, so I am intending to do more research and make a decision as to if the article should remain as a stand alone, or be redirected to either Cobham Hall or Cobham, Kent with the additional information on the manor itself. Thoughts on that would be very welcome from anyone. SilkTork (talk) 20:23, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've done a quick copyedit of the article without checking any references. I've left a few html comments. It's evident that a decision needs to be made regarding what belongs in this article rather than in one of the others on the related topics. To echo SilkTork's comments above, considering that we have articles on the village/parish (which includes details of the church and its contents), the hall itself, and the major families that held the manor, I'm not yet convinced there is any need for this page as a separate entity. Is there more available information about the manor itself? —S MALL  JIM   00:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There is some. I keep intending to dig up the sources to finish tidying this, and also create an article on the church which has a reputation for its brasses, but I'm not finding much time for Wikipedia at the moment. SilkTork (talk) 01:54, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've seen Arnold's paper "Cobham and its Manors etc." pub. by Kent Archaeology in 1905. It's listed (inadequately) under Further reading. At only 115 years old it's pretty good. However there are five refs to Hasted's History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent from 1778, which can't be taken as reliable. Moreover four of those refs are simply to "Hasted", so goodness knows which volume/page these refer to. Presumably some at least are to the section on Cobham: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol3/pp404-442.
 * Agree about the tidying up. He appears to misread sources quite often so what he writes cannot be relied upon. And tracking down information in order to preserve his intent is really difficult! I'm trying to established when this manor was first created, or at least first mentioned. I have "The manor of Cobham was granted to William de Cobham in 1208" - not sure how reliable that source is. There isn't much on William de Cobham from around that date. I also have "The family of Oobham, which took its name from the village, first comes into notice in the twelfth century, when one Serlo de Cobham was possessed of property in the parish. His son Henry purchased the manor of Cobham, with the marshes of Bulham and Swanpool, from William de Quatremere, in 10 John (1208)" - but that, at least, ties in with other research I have done. The "William" of William de Quatremer appears to have been transposed to Henry de Cobham by the writer of that Historic England piece. This source clarifies matters: "William de Quatremere, to use the later spelling, was granted the manor (of Shorne - which included Cobham) as a tenant-in-chief of the king ... After the younger William de Quatremere inherited the manor (of Shorne) in 1202, he subinfeudated (rented) it to a tenant, Henry de Cobham". It appears that Cobham was originally part of the manor of Cobham, but was sold to a Henry de Cobham in 1208, and that's when it's story as an independent manor starts. But the Henry de Cobham of 1208 is a different Henry de Cobham to Henry de Cobham, 1st Baron Cobham, as his dates are 1260 – 1339. According to our article the father of that Henry was John de Cobham, but that Henry did have an uncle called Henry de Cobham, but he died in circa 1316, so he can't be the Henry who bought the manor in 2018. This is worse than trying to unravel tangled Christmas lights" SilkTork (talk) 15:17, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Shorne is an area neighbouring Cobham. SilkTork (talk) 15:23, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Every year when I stuff them quickly back in their box I think "I'll regret this next Christmas". Perhaps Agricolae can help - Kent is the wrong side of the country for me. —S MALL  JIM   15:29, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The more I look into this the more I'm thinking that there isn't enough significant independent difference between the manor of Cobham and the parish of Cobham. The parish has the longer history - it existed before and after the manor, but otherwise pretty much everything interesting that could be said about the manor of Cobham in a general encyclopaedia entry (the manor house, the church, the notable people who were granted the manor) could be said in the article on the parish. I suggest we check to see if there is any useful information worth saving from here, and then redirect the title to Cobham, Kent where a brief history of the manor could be created as a section in that article. This title, unlike some others that Lobster created, is worth keeping as the manor of Cobham does exist. I also suggest we start looking at all other manor articles Lobster created, and all Descent of the manor insertions he did into existing articles with a view to seeing just how worthwhile they are to keep. If, after we look at another three, they are all the same as this, Manor of Knightshayes and Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire, it might be a more productive use of our time to simply revert Lobsterthermidor's edits as unreliable and non-notable original research without spending any more time on looking into if the material is worth saving. SilkTork (talk) 16:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Lt has always had a very specific intention for his "Manor of ..." and "Estate of ..." articles. He set it out in 2013 in WikiProject UK Geography, now at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography/How_to_write_about_settlements/Archive_3. Although ploughing through his two main walls of text there is not much fun, I did find doing so worthwhile as a refresher; there are some valuable comments from others too. All of these articles exist because it was expedient at the time to accept that he was going to continue adding descents anyway and to have them tucked away in peripheral articles was better than overloading the articles on villages, manor houses etc. with the minutiae. How such decisions come back to bite us! I'm still unsure whether these Lt-created descents as a whole satisfy our conditions for stand-alone articles. —S MALL  JIM   22:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that these descents as written by Lt are appropriate anywhere on Wikipedia. The descents we currently have are more focused, clearer, easier to read and follow, and contained within family articles. Manors are not families. Manors are areas of land which are sometimes granted to families, or are bought by families, and may be traded, expanded, contracted by those families. Our focus on manors should always be on the land, not the families. Lt has a theory that a manor should be viewed in the same way as a modern family company or business, such as Cadbury's Chocolate. I'm not sure how many others hold this theory, but when I looked at our article on Manor and found "In modern terms, the manor could be thought of as the "business" which the lord establishes on the fief", which in some way supports Lt's viewpoint. I then did a history search and found that, of course, it was Lt who inserted that, back in 2011, without any source to back it up: . The land in a manor forms a complex economic unit, same as a country or government forms an economic unit; but that does not appear to me to be easily comparable to the economic unit of a company, nor to the economic unit of a household. Within the manor there are households making products or providing services, and those household units themselves are more easily comparable to modern companies than the manor itself, which is more easily compared to a country. Are you aware of reliable sources which compare manors to businesses? If so, we should cite Lt's sentence about manors being comparable to businesses; if not we should remove it, and warn Lt not to continue that line of thinking on Wikipedia. SilkTork (talk) 10:06, 7 January 2021 (UTC)