Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

A large block consisting kitchens, a bakehouse, scullery, possible dairy, a garden pavilion over an ice house accompanied by cellars and external basements. The block was connected to the main house via a basement level passage.

Monument Types

• BAKEHOUSE (Post Medieval - 1793 AD to 1900 AD (throughout))
• ICEHOUSE (Post Medieval - 1793 AD to 1900 AD (throughout))
• KITCHEN (Post Medieval - 1793 AD to 1900 AD (throughout))
• PAVILION (Post Medieval - 1793 AD to 1900 AD (throughout))

Full description

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Kitchen block to north-east of Mote House, Maidstone, a mansion house built between 1793 and 1811 near to the site of a much older medieval moated house - the seat of the Lords Romney.

The main rectangular portion of the kitchen block sat well below ground level with an extensive, revetted basement area under its north and west elevations and a smaller, grass sloped depression to the east at an angle with the main house. The block was sub-divided internally by three 'massive' walls.

The kitchen, to the west was the largest compartment open to the roof. The other two compartments contained the scullery and bakehouse which were storeyed. All three compartments were situated around 'complicated chimneys', rising to a single stack at the junction of the two dividing walls.

The bakehouse, at the time of the survey, still contained two original small bread ovens - albeit without their cast iron doors which are photographed in the source.

A semi-circular-headed doorway in the east wall of the basement-level kitchen passage, led, by a flight of steps down to a sub-basement under the kitchen. This cellar was situated under the kitchen and vaulted in red brick with loose ragstone walls.

An L shaped, external basement extended around the north and west sides of the kitchen block. A vaulted cellar opening off the kitchen basement under the service yard extends northwards.

The smaller east wing of the kitchen contained two distinct and much smaller spaces - to the west a small space thought to be a dairy and the east a square, temple fronted garden pavilion on top of an ice-house.(1)

Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2006, Mote Park, Maidstone: An Historic Building Survey of the House and its Outbuildings (Unpublished document). SKE15998.

Sources and further reading

Related records