POST DISSOLUTION
Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530’s the big granges, through which the monks had managed their agriculture, were split up and their various parts leased. A number of smallish farms were created, including Gins. From now on we can trace who leased Gins thanks to an almost complete list of tenants provided by the Estate Archivist.
In 1538 there is the first written reference: “a tenement called Gynnes with coast and marsh, then held with the Park of Througham” (Bartlett page 127). Througham is the original name for the park from which today’s Park Farm takes its name. A tenement is just a piece of land owned by someone, not necessarily with a house on it. In 1542 Gins together with three other holdings, St. Leonard’s, Warren and Beck, were leased to a man called Thomas Pace. The lease stipulated that he was to hold this land for 20 years and each year to pay £66 cash and send forty capons to Titchfield where the Lord of the Manor then lived. Pace was a significant figure who became the largest landholder in the area. There is no suggestion that he lived at Gins. His residence was probably in Southampton. He was the only leaseholder in all the Beaulieu leases issued at that time who was described as a “gentleman”. But it became quite common for the tenants of Gins, St. Leonard’s and Park Farm to be given this description. Gentlemen were few and far between on the Beaulieu estate so this part of it had a certain distinction. For a time this was the smart place to live.
The term “landed gentry” had just begun to be used of the untitled members of the landowning upper class. The landed gentry were made up of four separate groups: baronets, knights, esquires and gentlemen. Generally, men of high birth or rank, good social standing and wealth, who did not need to work for a living, were considered gentlemen. The population of England doubled between 1540 and 1640, driving up the price of food. This was a major opportunity for those who held land and many gentlemen and yeomen farmers became prosperous. By the late 16th century the gentry emerged as the class most closely involved in politics, the military and the law and it provided the bulk of members of parliament. We were fascinated to discover how closely the tenants of Gins fitted that template.
For 53 years, from 1570 to 1623, it was held by members of the Kempe family. This was a distinguished and enormous family with branches all over England and the colonies. It was the Kent branch that settled in Hampshire. The rental details are a little unclear but Edward Kempe may have leased Gins as early as 1570. He certainly leased it in 1578. The farm was then about 123 acres in extent and the rent was £9. For comparison, the rent of St. Leonard’s was £48. Gins was always one of the smallest farms in the area but valuable fishing and fowling rights went with the farm.
Edward Kempe quickly became a prominent figure. In 1574 he was what was known as a “Petie Capitaine” of the coastal defence forces between Beaulieu Haven and Calshot. Bear in mind that this was a period of considerable tension. The Spanish Armada was not very far away.
Now, when was there first a house on this site? 
Edward Kempe tabletIf you go to Beaulieu Abbey church, walk up to the altar and turn right you will see on the wall a brass tablet recording the death of this Edward Kempe in 1605. He was almost certainly the first person to be buried in what was previously the monks’ refectory but had become Beaulieu’s parish church. Widnell quotes a 1648 manuscript in the British Museum about the Abbey which describes this tablet and says “Here lieth the body of Edward Kempe....his coat (i.e. coat of arms) appears in the window at Gynnes, his late house” (Widnell page 42). So proof, proof that there was a house at Gins and Edward Kempe lived in it. And that house must have been built some time before his death in 1605.
Norden 1595But we can do better. On the map of Hampshire by the cartographer John Norden, dated 1595, the name Gynnes is prominent, together with a circle with a dot in the middle. That was Nordern’s symbol for a house. So we now know that there was a house by 1595 at the latest. 
Saxton 1575But on an earlier map, that by Christopher Saxton, dated 1575, there is no reference to Gynnes and no house in the relevant part. So we seem to have a 20 year bracket for the first house. When Edward Kemp’s son Thomas was married in 1580 he was described as being “of Gins Farm” (Bartlett page 284), which must mean there was a house by then. So in all probability Edward had the house built between 1575 and 1580.
When Gins was listed by Historic England it was described as “Farmhouse, once house. Circa 1700, altered C18 and early C19, possibly on site of earlier building.” Sadly, it is impossible now to recover the evidence for these descriptions. But if Historic England are right about the date of 1700 for the present house then it might have indeed been built on the site of an earlier one, namely Edward Kempe’s house of the 1570’s. But are they right?
Ginns FarmhouseTake another look at the house. It is clear when you inspect it from the outside that the left hand side is a later addition, possibly erected for farming rather than domestic purposes. It may be that the oldest part of the present house is essentially Edward Kempe’s house. We have looked hard for evidence. There are some tantalising inscriptions on the lintel above the magnificent fireplace in the dining room but they do not seem to be dates. And we tried to date the beams with reference book in hand but no luck. Of course it is possible that Kempe’s house is now completely buried beneath the present house but some of what we see now may be as early as the sixteenth century. There can be little doubt that the white stones you see in the walls of the house are monastic in origin and so will almost certainly have come from St. Leonard’s.
Barn and FarmhouseThis barn in which we are meeting was attributed to the eighteenth century by Historic England. This is confirmed by early maps we have seen. In the middle between the two doors would have been a threshing floor, the draught through the barn being used for the winnowing of corn.
Let’s just finish the story of the Kempes. Edward’s son, Thomas, inherited Gins from his father. Earlier, in 1580, he had married a woman called Mary Oglander, from the prominent Oglander family on the Isle of Wight. Mary’s father, Sir William Oglander, took a lease of Beaulieu Abbey in 1590 because his wife had been frightened by the sight of the Spanish Armada appearing off the coast of the Island.
Thomas Kempe became one of the leading men of the region. From at least 1605 he was bailiff to the Lord of the Manor. He was also the keeper of the mill at Beaulieu bridge for eight years from 1616 though he employed someone else to run it. He was a gentleman after all. A lease document dated 1616 laid on Thomas Kempe the obligation to, I quote, “notify the presence of pirates”. As Bartlett points out in a rare flash of humour, it looks from the list of weapons found in Kempe’s inventory (Bartlett pages 215/216) that he was ready not only to report the arrival of pirates but to promote their departure. He had three fowling pieces, a coliver (light musket), a petronella (large pistol), a halberd (an axe mounted on a spear), a billhook, a rapier and three daggers. Quite an armoury. But then when you think about it Ginns in those days was very remote and exposed. If there was trouble you were on your own. And there were constant rumours of invasions from the continent and no doubt plenty of undesirables trying their luck up the Beaulieu River, much as now.
Thomas Kempe died in 1623. He may have been a ‘gentleman’ and Gins farm small but the inventory on his death showed that he had been no slouch of a farmer. He left between 80 and 120 cattle, many grazing on neighbouring farms, where he also grew additional hay. Then there were oxen, 30 sheep, over 20 pigs, a few horses and other livestock. His will shows that he left sums of money to the poor of Beaulieu and to several servants. He was undoubtedly well off. After his death his wife gave to the Earl of Southampton £2000, a very sizeable sum, from the money Thomas had left her. Thomas’s farms went to his son, John Kempe, who became M.P. for Lymington. He supported the Parliament side in the English civil war and is said to have carried the demands of the Parliamentarians to King Charles when he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. 
John Kempe bust in Boldre ChurchJohn Kempe died at Boldre in 1652 and there is a bust of him in Boldre church. We are not sure whether he ever lived at Gins as an adult but he must have done as a child. He apparently had a house at Boldre and also at Buckler’s Hard.
So ends the association of the Kempes with Gins. Why did they choose to live here? It was after all an isolated place. Living conditions cannot have been easy. The farm was not large. It is interesting that both Edward and Thomas were given roles to protect this part of the coast. One wonders if the Earl of Southampton or even the Crown wanted this area secured in difficult times and talked the Kempes into living here. Or perhaps the Kempes liked the things the location provided, especially the sport. We know that Thomas Kempe had fishing rights from Needs Ore to Beaulieu Mill. We know they were well equipped for shooting game. And there is another thing. Practically adjoining Gins was the Park of Througham. Many well known English parks began life as deer parks and this was no exception. After the dissolution the tenant of Park was obliged to keep 200 fallow deer. The availability of deer for hunting may have been an additional attraction for the Kempes and the other gentry of the area.
Things now change. Gins comes to be occupied by working farmers rather than gentry. It could be, as the Estate Archivist suggested to us, that on the death of the 4th Earl of Southampton in 1667 the new absentee owners of the estate, the Montagus, decided to maximise income from the farms by leasing them increasingly to proper working farmers. Also by the eighteenth century the ambitions of the gentry were growing. They wanted to own land not lease it. The land around Gins was not really suitable for the grand country house.