Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

A terraced garden and parkland, with a chain of lakes, developed from the 1830s around a late 17th century mansion

Monument Types

• GARDEN (Post Medieval to Modern - 1830 AD? to 2050 AD)
• PARK (Post Medieval to Modern - 1830 AD? to 2050 AD)

Full description

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From the survey report:

" The site of Bedgebury Park is first mentioned in the Wealden Charter of 814 as Begcgebyra (Cowper) and was probably a wooded area used for pig grazing. It was perhaps part of a larger estate, as later developed by the Begebesi family, who owned it until the late C13 (Huskisson). During the C14 and early C15, John de Bedgebury and his descendants owned what became known as the manor of Bedgebury, the estate passing through marriage to the Colepeper family in 1424. During the Colepepers’s occupancy the family and estate flourished and an iron industry was developed there (Symonson 1596). Elizabeth I visited the seat with its ‘extensive park’ on her progresses through Kent in 1573 (Hasted). In the late C17, the estate was bought by a Sir James Hayes, who in 1688 ‘rebuilt this seat, at a small distance from the antient [sic] mansion’, on higher land.

By the early C18 Bedgebury Park was owned by an Edward Stephenson, passing on his death to his nephew, also Edward. In the 1780s it was owned for a short time by a Miss Peach, who sold to a Sir John Cartier in 1789, who by 1798 had ‘made great improvements to the house and lands adjoining’ (Hasted). These included extending an existing water body to create a chain of lakes (Great Lake, Lady’s Lake, Pine Lake and Marshall’s Lake) on the east and north-east of the property (Mudge). On Cartier’s death, his nephew Francis Law inherited the estate, which he retained until 1834, when it was advertised as a ‘Gentleman’s Residence’ of 931ha (2300 acres), including 486ha (1200 acres) of woodland, having spacious pleasure grounds [and] a lake of twenty acres’ (Batchelor).

In 1836 it was bought by William Carr, Field Marshall Viscount Beresford, and his wife Louisa, who commissioned an Italian architect Alexander Roos to enlarge the mansion (Roos). Alexander, Louisa’s youngest son by her first marriage, inherited in 1854, taking the name of Alexander Beresford Beresford Hope under the terms of Carr’s will. He commissioned further extensions to the mansion and adjoining stable block from architects Richard Cromwell Carpenter and Edward Slater. Beresford Hope died in 1887 leaving his son Philip a ‘beautifully wooded and undulating property’ of 1795ha (4436 acres), with four entrance lodges (Sales Particulars). From 1893-5 the property was leased to a Mr and Mrs H. A. Campbell. In 1899, to offset his financial difficulties, Philip Beresford-Hope sold Bedgebury Park to a Mr Isaac Lewis, a city financier. When Lewis sold the estate twenty years later, the Forestry Commission bought the woodlands (Bedgebury Forest) with Marshall’s Lake, later developing a National Pinetum in the northern part in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

In 1920, the mansion and remaining 81ha of land north of Bedgebury Forest was bought by the Church Education Corporation for development as a girls’ boarding school. From the Second World War, a number of new school buildings were erected in the grounds between the mansion and Home Farm.

Bedgebury School operated successfully until 2006, when the mansion and grounds were sold to the Bell Educational Trust to be used as an international school and language centre. The stables and walled gardens, leased until 2008 to a riding school, are the property of the Bedgebury (School) Foundation. The property remains in multiple corporate ownership." (1)

For documents associated with the earliest history of the park see source 2. (2)

ep architects, 2013, Conservation Statement: Bedgebury Park, Nr. Goudhurst, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE25990.

<1> Barbara Simms, 2009, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Tunbridge Wells Borough:Bedgebury Park (Unpublished document). SKE16072.

<2> Susan Pittman, 2011, Elizabethan and Jacobean Deer Parks in Kent (Monograph). SKE32115.

Sources and further reading