Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade II* listed building. Main construction periods 1500 to 1980 Mansion- early to mid C16 with C17 refurbishments.

Monument Types

• HOUSE (Medieval to Modern - 1500 AD to 2050 AD)

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
HADLOW THREE ELM PLACE, GOLDEN GREEN TQ 64 NW 6/95 Hadlow Place 20.10.54
II*
Mansion. Early/mid C16 with later C16 and C17 improvements including a major late C17 refurbishment, thoroughly modernised circa 1970 with new entrance hall and library wing. The older parts are timber-framed on sandstone footings but most is plastered, some early English bond brick, late C17 and C20 Flemish bond brick, the former with occasional burnt headers; brick stacks and chimneyshafts; peg-tile roof.
Plan and Development: The house faces south west onto the garden, and its irregular plan has evolved through successive building phases. The front range has a 3-room plan. Entrance porch left of centre provides direct entry into left end of hall with rear lateral stack. Parlour at left (north west) end with rear lateral stack and former kitchen to right in a crosswing. Kitchen originally projected a short distance forward but circa 1970 was taken back flush with the main front. It also projects back with a rear end stack. At the back of the kitchen crosswing is a range parallel to the front range and projecting both sides of the kitchen. At ground floor level it has unheated service rooms (now used as the C20 kitchen) and has a stair alongside (east) of the stack and the first floor was originally a long and narrow room heated by a fireplace backing onto the kitchen stack. It looks like a small long gallery and has since been subdivided. Behind the hall is the present main entrance hall and staircase and behind the parlour a library with a stack backing onto the entrance hall. Both entrance hall and library were new-built circa 1970.
Much of the evidence of the early house and its development is hidden or has been removed. Nevertheless it seems that the front range is the historic core, possibly early/mid C16 3-room-and-through-passage plan hall house. However most of the exposed carpentry suggests later C16 and early C17 dates. The gallery block is mid C17. The front was faced with brick in the late C17.
House is 2 storeys with attics in the roofspace.
Exterior: Assymmetrical 2:1:3-window front. All the windows have low segmental brick arches. The right end 2-window section was rebuilt circa 1970 in the same style as the rest and contains 16-pane sashes. Other windows are C19 or replacements. The hall (right of the porch) has a large tripartite sash containing a central 20-pane sash. First floor window above and parlour window to left have tripartite sashes with central 12-pane sashes and first floor windows left of porch have 12-pane sashes. First floor porch window a casement with glazing bars. Front porch doorway is surprisingly small and contains a C20 Tudor-style door. Flat band across the front at first floor level. Projecting brick eaves cornice including a frieze of cogged bricks. Roof is hipped both ends and porch roof is hipped. The right (south eastern) side wall shows close-studded framing at first floor level. The gallery wing projects to right with late C16/early C17 brick side wall and hipped roof. The end has a contemporary oak 4-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window with central transom, moulded sill and plastered coved brackets. There is another in the rear wall. The plastered south eastern side of the rear wall also contains 2 C17 or early C18 first floor windows containing rectangular panes of old leaded glass. Near the right end a gabled half dormer is jettied and there are deep overhanging eaves on shaped timber brackets. The rest of the b;ck is the C20 entrance and library. Doorway has double panelled doors in Tudor style behind a flat-roofed Tuscan porch. The library is in the same style as the front with various 12 and 16-pane sashes.
Interior: Although much modernised the structure of the older parts appears to be largely intact although much of the carpentry is hidden by later plaster. Parlour and hall have stone Tudor arch fireplaces with moulded surrounds and carved spandrels including the initials HA. Plainer versions in the chambers above. Parlour is lined with very high quality oak linenfold panelling which includes, on the overmantel, expertly carved panels featuring a coat of arms-, profiles and figures. Hall has chamfered axial beam with bar- scroll stops and moulded joists, probably early/mid C17. Kitchen firepalce is blocked and beams here are chamfered with step stops. One of the chambers above is lined with C17 oak small field panelling. The stair up to the gallery wing has been mended and rearranged but is basically late C17 with splat balusters. Gallery features date from first half of C17. Large stone fireplace with Tudor arch, moulded surround and one of the spandrels is carved with the initials of Henry Vane. Oak doorways either side have moulded surrounds with a kind of urn stops and both contain good ancient doors. Broad moulded oak cornice around the room stepping up over the windows.
Gallery roof structure is plastered over. Kitchen wing roof replaced after a fire. Roof over the front range is late C17, a series of tie-beam trusses with curving collars, evidence of raking struts and has butt purlins. Parlour end truss has a broad straight collar that is moulded on its inside lower edge; its purpose unknown. The kitchen end truss may be earlier since it has clasped side purlins.
Hadlow Place is an impressive small mansion with a great deal of good C16 and C17 craftsmanship. According to the previous list description it was once moated. It was occupied by the important Vane family through the C16 and C17.
Sources: E. Hasted. History of Kent, Vol. 2 (1798) second edition. pp.182-3.
Listing NGR: TQ6239948102 (1)

Description from record TQ 64 NW 17 :
(TQ 62934821) Hadlow Place House (NAT) (2) 6/52 II* Hadlow Place Irregular shaped buildings with seventeenth century brick elevation facing south masking sixteenth century or earlier framed structure. Two storeys with projecting modillioned eaves and gutter. Hipped tiled roof. Projecting two-storey porch in centre with hipped gable. Various wide eighteenth century sash windows in exposed frames with glazing bars, some under flat segmental brick arches. Eighteenth century panelled door. Mullioned and transomed oriel window on first floor facing north. The north elevation has recently been restored with rough cast finish. Modern additions. Interior. Linenfold panelled dining room with carved overmantel and carved stone surround to fireplace. Another room on first floor with seventeenth century panelling and carved stone surround to fireplace. There are considerable historic associations connected with Hadlow Place which originally belonged to the Vane family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was surrounded by moated fortifications. (See Hasted's History of Kent). (3) Hadlow Place. Late 17th century brick south front, of four irregular bays, with a two storeyed porch and a hipped roof. Later additions behind and on the right. Inside, however, the south west room on the ground floor is wholly lined with linenfold panelling, a spendid, if composite, display. 16th century stone fireplace, with a straight-sided arch, and a frieze of six small wood reliefs above, including three very Germanic heads of c. 1530-40. (4) HADLOW THREE ELM LANE GOLDEN GREEN Hadlow Place Mansion. Early/mid C16 with later C16 and C17 improvements including a major late C17 refurbishment, thoroughly modernised circa 1970 with new entrance hall and library wing. [Full architectural reference] LISTED GRADE II*. (5)

<1> English Heritage, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Map). SKE16160.

<2> OS 1:10000 1974 (OS Card Reference). SKE48159.

<3> MHLG 2433/11/A Sept 1949 54 (OS Card Reference). SKE47095.

<4> Bldgs of Eng W Kent & the Weald 1980 313 (J Newman) (OS Card Reference). SKE37868.

<5> DOE(HHR)Dist of Tonbridge and Malling Kent, 19th Feb 1990 81-2 (OS Card Reference). SKE41377.

Sources and further reading