In his ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, Kilburne writes of his intention to present ‘the Kent of his own day’, and to depict ‘the county as it was before the Civil War’. Hasted, in his 1797 History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, dismisses Kilburne’s work as being ‘little more than a Directory’. However, ‘Kent was not well served by early topographers, and Kilburne's small survey was extensively quoted on sixteen occasions by Robert Furley and, over the years in Archaeologia Cantiana, as a first source of reference, and not without some praise. The Topographie devoted disproportionate attention to Hawkhurst: 10 pages out of 422, or, in the words of one writer, ‘as much space to it as to twenty other average parishes’ (Archaeologia Cantiana, 5, 1863, 59). Kilburne justified this, however: “In respect I finde not any description of this Parish … it having been the place of my habitation for above twenty eight years last past (God's Providence having also there lent me an inheritance), I thought fit to enlarge my selfe upon this place. (Kilburne, 126)”’. (ODNB)

Built in 1732 by Thomas May (later Knight), Godmersham Park was inherited by Edward Austen (brother of Jane Austen) in 1794. He was a cousin of the Knight family, who had adopted him in the early 1780s; when his adoptive mother died in 1812 he changed his name to Knight. Jane was a regular visitor to Godmersham Park and is said to have used the house as a model for Mansfield Park. The house passed through several more hands before being bought in 1935 by Robert Tritton and his wife Elsie, whose death in 1983 prompted the Christie’s auction mentioned above.