Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

A formal compartmentalised garden laid out in two phases in the early and mid C20 with terraces, a formal rose garden and a rhododendron dell, set in an extensive planting of mature trees. The earlier house was demolished and replaced with a timber-framed building in 2003 and water features added to the gardens.

Monument Types

• GARDEN (Modern - 1901 AD to 2050 AD)

Full description

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From the 2011 survey:

"SUMMARY OF HISTORIC INTEREST

A formal compartmentalised garden laid out in two phases in the early and mid C20 with terraces, a formal rose garden and a rhododendron dell, set in an extensive planting of mature trees. The earlier house was demolished and replaced with a timber-framed building in 2003 and water features added to the gardens.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The woodland on which Ringfield came to be built belonged in 18C to the Hart Dyke family (Warlow, Smithers) who c.1835 erected the first house, known as The Firs, the first recorded tenant of which was John Cray. Over the next 70 years the property changed hands at frequent intervals (ibid.).
The tithe map (Kent History and Library Centre) and apportionment of 1844 (Kent Archaeological Society) show a house of modest proportions with a garden of 0.1 hectare immediately to the west of Main Road and surrounded by meadows, the whole extending to just under 2 hectares. Although the first three editions of the 25” OS, published 1860-1909, show little change, by 1932 the fourth edition OS shows that the house had been considerably enlarged. In 1912 the property was bought by Charles Hunter, a retired solicitor, and it was he and his wife who created the garden which was to be described in ‘The Queen’ (July 1926). At the same time, they enlarged the house. Hunter built a series of walls and terraces to the west of the house, apparently with no professional aid from landscape gardeners but solely with the help of a retired railway worker, H. Lockyer. In addition, a tennis lawn was laid out surrounded by a wall containing summer houses, a rose garden was created and hedges planted forming the structure which is still visible today. Hunter renamed the house Ringfield which was the name of his wife’s previous home in Quebec.

In 1927, the ownership passed to Thomas Wilding and ten years later to the Misses Goddard. In 1944, it was bought by Prof. David Smithers, a cancer specialist and eminent radiotherapist, who lived there for the next 50 years and who was responsible for ‘rescuing, reconstructing and enlarging’ the garden with the help of his gardener, R. Norgate (Rix). Three fields were added in the 1940s allowing the planting of 150 trees of 50 different varieties, both deciduous and conifer. The rhododendron dell was preserved and the rose garden reordered. ‘The new layout, extending the garden to seven acres, was based on a curved peripheral path, originally defined through the open fields using large balls of string’ (ibid.).
David Smithers particularly delighted in his roses and took great pleasure in showing these to visitors, many from overseas, when entertaining them to tea accompanied by croquet on the lawn, ‘providing them with a quintessential memory of England’. (Henk, obit.)

The present owners acquired Ringfield in 2000 and, while making some major changes, have preserved the essential features of the garden. The existing house was demolished and replaced on the same site in 2003 with an ‘Elizabethan’ style timber framed building. To the south-west of the house a small lake has been created in existing lawn while, nearer the house, a swimming pool has been constructed in a former vegetable garden. A further water feature, in the form of a tiered canal, has been installed near the formal rose garden first created by Mr Hunter. In making these changes, the formal framework and planting of the garden has not been disturbed but rather extended to include further areas such as the vegetable garden. The site remains in private ownership."(2)

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

<2> Kent Gardens Trust, 2011, Ringfield, Sevenoaks: The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Sevenoaks District (Unpublished document). SKE30612.

Sources and further reading