Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

SUMMARY OF THE HISTORIC INTEREST

A hillside garden with informal planting, woodland and orchard associated with a C19 cottage with later additions, and from 1884 to 1912, the country home of Octavia Hill (1838-1912), housing reformer and co-founder of the National Trust.

Monument Types

• GARDEN (Unknown date)

Full description

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"SUMMARY OF THE HISTORIC INTEREST
A hillside garden with informal planting, woodland and orchard associated with a C19 cottage with later additions, and from 1884 to 1912, the country home of Octavia Hill (1838-1912), housing reformer and co-founder of the National Trust.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

With the coming of the railway in the late 1840’s, access to the Wealden hills became less difficult and by the 1870’s, London families came to lease or buy country homes for holiday use. In 1877 Octavia Hill’s sister Gertrude Lewis took ‘The Warren’, across the common from the Larksfield plot, and so began the long association of the Hill family and their friends with the Kent and Surrey Hills. Octavia Hill (see figure in CD file) came from a family of radical thinkers and reformers in health, housing and education. By the 1870’s she was an established figure in social housing reform, dedicated to improving conditions for the London poor. With the help of her mother and her four sisters, the individual schemes could run independently and they needed to do so when overwork brought on a physical and emotional collapse. Octavia’s companion in a European travel convalescence in 1881 was a Miss Harriot Yorke, a lady of independent means who became a lifelong support and work associate, particularly in the founding of the National Trust and in its early development.
The plot of land that was to become Larksfield was purchased by Harriot Yorke, and the house designed by Octavia’s favourite architect Elijah Hoole, who had worked on model dwellings in the London housing schemes. The Misses Yorke and Hill took possession of ‘the cottage’ in 1884, ‘and called it Larksfield. It was sited on high, lightly wooded ground with a magnificent view over the Kent and Sussex countryside to the south’ (Darley). From the mid 1880’s to her death in 1912, Octavia’s advocacy of the need for open spaces developed strongly, in London via the Kyrle Society and the Commons Preservation Society and in the High Weald, again via the CPS and specifically, the Kent and Sussex Footpaths Committee. One successful acquisition of open space in London, The Lawn (Vauxhall Park) was achieved in 1890, after which ‘Octavia retired to Larksfield exhausted but triumphant “for long years as long as our people need it and wish it flowers will grow and sunlight have leave to penetrate there” ‘ (Moberley Bell).

Little information is available as to quite how much gardening was done by Misses Hill and Yorke at Larksfield. Visitors were expected to help with the wheelbarrowing of stones from the plot (Darley) and Octavia is said to have ‘positively enjoyed struggling with thistles…collecting a little earth to make a grass plot.’ (Moberley Bell) but there is no evidence that garden designers of
the day, such as Gertrude Jekyll, Emmeline Sieveking and Fanny Wilkinson, all known to Octavia and Harriot, had any input into the garden design. Emmeline had been responsible for garden design in Octavia’s housing developments as ‘they were being built’ (Pevsner) but no link has been found to the Kent country cottage. In its early days Larksfield and especially its garden seem to have been a source of rest and recuperation. Octavia’s work in housing for the urban poor and her growing desire to protect unspoilt countryside around London were two strands of the same theme as she worked to raise awareness of the need to protect spaces, landscapes and buildings at risk. Closer to Larksfield, and together with friends and her own family, she raised money for the purchase of parts of the Kent landscape she walked in and valued: Mariners Hill, (less than 1km due east of Larksfield) Toys Hill (3km due east) and Ide Hill (4km to the north east) were all acquired for the National Trust between 1898 and 1912, a total of 68 hectares in all (National Trust). After Octavia’s death, Larksfield remained in the ownership of Harriot Yorke (a committee member and honorary treasurer of the National Trust until 1920) until her own death in 1930.

The service flat and garage on the east boundary of the plot, together with a garden now became a separate property: Larksfield Cottage. Ownership of Larksfield passed to the Harmans from 1930 to 1955 and then on through a number of owners. In 1975 it was given Grade II listing. Two families, the Lloyds, who opened the garden under the National Gardens Scheme, followed by the Dickinsons in 1985, then succeeded, with each developing the garden and from the 1990’s, the house . Substantial and inevitable changes to the garden were made following the Great Storm of 1987; a sale brochure of 1985 shows very tall trees, coniferous and deciduous, which had flourished along the western boundary and overshadowed the house at that time. In the storm these were felled, and the site became open enabling subsequent controlled woodland planting, and the addition of herbaceous beds and borders and more formal box-edged plots. Larksfield Cottage, adjacent to the east boundary of Larksfield, and said to have been the original kitchen garden (pers comm) has had several owners, and many changes to the house have been recorded. Larksfield and Larksfield Cottage remain in private ownership." (1, 2)

<1> Kent County Council, 1996, The historic parks and gardens of Kent (Kent Gardens Compendium) (Unpublished document). SKE12972.

<2> Kent Gardens Trust, 2011, Larksfield, Sevenoaks: The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Sevenoaks District (Unpublished document). SKE30608.

Sources and further reading