Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Early 19th and 20th century gardens within a park, woodland and agricultural estate. The estate is much older than the house and contains numerous elements from the medieval period and later.

Monument Types

• CASTLE (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• DEER PARK (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• EARTHWORK (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• PARK PALE (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• BOAT HOUSE (BOAT HOUSE, Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• BRICKWORKS (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• COUNTRY HOUSE (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• EARTHWORK (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• FORMAL GARDEN (FORMAL GARDEN, Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• ICEHOUSE (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• IRON WORKING SITE (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• LANDSCAPE PARK (LANDSCAPE PARK, Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• MARL PIT (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• WALLED GARDEN (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• BRIDGE (BRIDGE, Modern - 1901 AD to 2050 AD)
• HA HA (HA HA, Modern - 1901 AD to 2050 AD)
• STATUE (STATUE, Modern - 1901 AD to 2050 AD)
• STATUE (STATUE, Modern - 1901 AD to 2050 AD)

Full description

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[Name TQ 68783540] Scotney Castle[NAT] (1) Early mid C19 and mid C20 picturesque gardens and woodland of 7 1/2ha within park, woodland and agricultural estate of c.300ha. Acquired by the National Trust in 1970.[Full topographical description]LISTED GRADE I Additional references, not consulted.(a)-(i) (2)

In January 2004 English Heritage analysed several trees in the park by dendrochronology. The earliest date was 1752 and the trees were felled in 2003 (12)

A number of modern archaeological and landscape surveys have been carried out at the Scotney Castle estate (13, 14, 15) and have assessed and reviewed the existing evidence. The text below is derived from the 2007 Archaeology South-East report but is complemented by the other surveys:

" By the time the Domesday Survey was compiled in 1086, the Study Area lay within the Manor of Leeds, held by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of the Conqueror, apparently forming part of a sub-manor held by the Count of Eu. By 1171, the family of Eu held a knight’s fee at Courthope in the parish of Lamberhurst. Later references to Sir Peter deScotney, heir of the Eu lands, occupying Courthope have led to its identification with Scotney (Ibid.). The Scotneys retained the estate until 1285, when it was granted to Leeds Priory, subsequently being held by the Grofhursts and the Ashburnhams. This complex succession continued into the 15th century when the manor was acquired by Robert Chichele, brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, before the Darell family took ownership sometime in the late 15th-early 16th centuries.

The main focus of the manor was the Old Castle, essentially a fortified manor house built in the Bewl valley close to its confluence with the Sweetbourne, a tributary stream. Bannister suggests that the Old Castle may have been surrounded by formal gardens, a class of designed landscape increasingly being recognised at medieval sites across the country... A deer park was established to the north-west of the Study Area at Spray Hill, evidenced by documentary references to the granting of Right of Free Warren to John de Grofhurst in 1310 and the physical traces of a significant earthwork boundary running along the north side of Collier’s Wood (outside the Study Area) and interpreted as a park pale. The park is likely to have been at least partially wooded, to provide shelter for the deer, and the woodland outside the park boundary, including the Study Area, will have been intensively managed by coppicing, with oak and hornbeam as the dominant species....



The early Post-Medieval history of the Study Area (i.e. prior to the construction of the mansion in the 1830s) is known in only the most general terms. The alleged deer park occupying the site appears to have gone out of use by this time, as no clear recognisable outline is evident on the detailed 18th-19th century mapping – the Spray Hill park discussed by Bannister was disemparked in 1619-1660, and was enclosed for farmland. Much of the Study Area was occupied by woodland (Collier’s Wood and Park Mead Wood), managed as part of the much larger woodland economy within the estate. Much of the woodland was coppiced for the iron industry. It is also entirely possible that charcoal burning took place within the Study Area, although little archaeological traces would be expected. The edge of the woodland may survive as a low earthwork bank.. immediately north of the walled garden – this occupies the edge of Park Mead Wood as indicated on a modern map superimposed with the details from Clout’s estate map of 1757...

Other industrial activity in the vicinity of the Study Area comprised marl-pitting and brick-making. The large pit in the south-western corner of the Study Area appears to be a marl-pit, or possibly a stone quarry, in origin, while the area of irregular earthworks and breaks-of-slope to the west of the walled garden is probably the site of the brickworks recorded in historical sources as being in use in 1835..

For most of this period, until the 18th century, the estate was owned by the Darells, about whom relatively little is known. Much of the details of the economic and social history of this time, which would cast much light on the landscape development, remain unstudied…

The creation of Scotney Castle

The Study Area was transformed from 1834 onwards by the creation of the mansion and its associated designed landscape, the brainchild of Edward Hussey (the third of that name), whose family had acquired Scotney in 1778. He made the decision to abandon the Old Castle, for a number of reasons largely linked to comfort and expense, and to build a new house on the hillside above. The mansion was designed with a main view to the east and south-east, encompassing the Old Castle, the Picturesque garden designed as part of the new scheme and the wider landscape park beyond. This constituted the pleasure grounds. The Study Area lay away from this axis, to the rear of the house, and, although still including designed elements, comprised the working part of the estate (the Home Farm and
vegetable gardens). This new landscape was created within a pre-existing landscape of medieval origin... The House and service buildings Hussey secured the services of the architect Anthony Salvin to design the new house.., work on which began in 1835, using bricks and sandstone sourced on site. Work continued until 1843, when Hussey was able
to move in... The location conformed to Picturesque principles, set ‘on a platform with rising ground behind, a depth below it’ and set at an angle (‘not parallel’) to the valley overlooked...

The Home Farm buildings (now the Area Office)..appear, on map evidence, to have been constructed between 1843 and 1853.. The timber barn..is said to have been brought from an earlier position near the Old Castle.

The Grounds
The Garden
The garden lies outside the Study Area and will not be dealt with in any detail... It was designed by William Sawrey Gilpin, a principal adherent of the Picturesque style of garden design. The original details of Gilpin’s planned garden are sketchy, as he never seems to have drawn up formal plans.., but the retention of the Old Castle, ‘improved’ with some judicious demolition, was part of the original scheme (he is also said to have chosen the location of the new house by jabbing his umbrella into the ground..).

The Terraces
The house was flanked to the south and east by two terraces..fronted by low sandstone retaining walls. In 1847, the eminent garden designer W.A. Nesfield was commissioned to design formal box parterres for the terraces, the courtyard and the entrances. His plans were never implemented as Hussey thought they were too formal.. The earliest available detailed plans, the Ordnance Survey map of 1873..and Hussey’s own garden survey of 1877.. show the terraces with the simple layouts they have today – grass, gravel and steps.

The West Court
This was the main entrance into the house, and the route by which all visitors
would have arrived. Today, the area.. comprises a gravel drive leading to a parking area, with lawns beyond leading to a grassy bank 1.5m high, and bisected by a ramp 4m wide indicating the site of a former path. The raised area beyond was recently overgrown with trees and exotic shrubs, but the 1877 mapping.. suggests that the southern part was formerly lawn, preserving the views across the park towards Bewl Bridge, with dense vegetation to the north screening the orchard and walled garden from the house. Visual inspection of this area for this project produced no details to
supplement the map evidence, although it was noticeable that the boundary/Holloway.. was not observable as a landscape feature in this area, strongly suggesting it was deliberately infilled.

The Walled Garden
The walled garden.. was built c.1835.., and comprises an octagonal brick wall with entrances in all four main faces (relating to the cardinal points). In area it measures just under one acre (0.4 ha), putting at the lower end of the size spectrum for walled gardens.. and suggesting, on Campbell’s figures, that it should have produced enough produce for 12 people, and employed 2-3 gardeners (although the presence of further growing beds outside the walled enclosure would modify these figures upwards). A vinery was built against the south face of the north wall, heated by a series of vents in the rear wall – the present building.. is assumed to represent this structure, although early map representations are unclear – no structure is shown on the 1843 Lamberhurst Tithe map.., although such maps are notorious for omitting details deemed irrelevant by the surveyor. The 1853 estate map.. show a structure apparently attached to the north side of the wall (and therefore in the shade), while the 1873 OS map.. shows the wall dog-legging to accommodate the glass-house – this is not reflected on Hussey’s garden survey of four years later.., which shows a layout identical with the present day. This anomaly on the OS mapping may represent an early and subsequently modified layout (traces of which may survive in the brickwork) or just a surveyor’s error. The heat was provided from fireplaces situated in the gardeners’ bothies located against the north face of the north wall, in the area known as the slips. The first recorded gardener, George Wells, was employed in 1839 (suggesting he was perhaps not the first on the site) to deal with the developing kitchen garden within the walled enclosure... By 1840, Hussey referred in his diary (31 August) to eating two nectarines, indicating that the vinery was in full production by this time… The internal layout of the enclosure was a simple arrangement of two main paths, crossing the two primary axes of the garden and meeting in the centre around a sunken stone basin. The ends of the paths were aligned on the entrances to the garden, with the exception of the northern path which separated into two branches exiting the garden through two smaller doorways positioned each side of the vinery. A further intra-mural pathway ran round the interior of the enclosure. The pathways are no longer maintained as such, but are visible as subtle earthworks in the grass occupying most of the internal space.
The shape of the walled garden was partially mirrored on the north, west and south sides by the slips (and on the east by a path). The nature of the boundary to the slips is unknown from the map evidence, and may have been a fence or even a wall. There is no surviving physical evidence for either, and a wall is probably less likely – such double walled gardens are less common... The northern slip was occupied by the gardeners’ bothies.., a single storey terrace of brick cottages, and storage sheds, greenhouses and cold frames (including a peach-house, of which only the brick footings survive). Further planting beds existed to the east of the walled garden, in an area of grass. However, the pathways separating the beds are still visible in the grass as breaks-of-slope.., including one in the northern lawn area that is not shown on any historic mapping. All the exterior beds appear to have gone out of use before 1898 (or at least are not marked on the maps..). The area south-east of the walled garden was occupied by an orchard, now the main visitor car park .. – the 19th century mapping shows the slips continuing in this area, together with footpaths and other boundaries – none of these features are now visible. The smaller orchard situated in a rectangular plot attached to the western slip is now used a storage area. No detailed information was located concerning the later use of the walled garden. The maps indicate that the basic structure and hard landscaping remained little changed... The planting beds are shown on air photographs to have been in use up until the late 1960s, and the smaller greenhouse.. was built by Christopher Hussey sometime between 1961 and his death in 1970.

The Maid’s Garden
The Maid’s Garden is the name (derivation unknown) given to a triangular plot of land situated between the main house and the Home Farm (now the Area Office)... The land is currently occupied by two ranges of modern garages/storage sheds set upon a concrete base, with the remainder of the area heavily overgrown, largely with brambles and rhododendron bushes. Several mature deciduous trees are present (including an enormous oak), together with conifers and a number of rhododendron trees. The interior of the area is very irregular, with a number of mounds and hollows suggestive of rubbish dumping – this includes an entire steering column and gearstick from a vehicle protruding from the ground, clearly still attached to further
subsurface remains. No documentary references to the area were found. The 1757 Clout map.. appears to show a field boundary forming the east side of Park Mead as running through the site – this may be the origin of either break-of-slope.. or linear bank.. as located during the field survey. The 1835 estate plan.. and 1843 Tithe map.. show a similar picture, with the house and walled garden inserted into an as-yet
unchanged landscape. The triangular area first appears on the 1853 estate
map.., formed by the insertion of the trackway leading to Clay Pit Cottages and Little Scotney Farm. The first detailed view of the site occurs on the OS map of 1873.., which shows a north-south aligned rectangular building situated where the modern structures now are, and an open square feature probably representing an enclosure to the north, flanked to the west by a line of mature trees. Breaks-of-slope.. identified during the field survey may relate to this feature, particularly as they form, with.., three sides of a square - the fourth side has been destroyed by the insertion of the modern structures. No further details are shown on the 1873 map, but Hussey’s 1877 plan.. is slightly different. It shows the enclosure as being rectangular in nature, with further boundaries and possible garden features to the south-east (none of which were evident on the ground). The thickly drawn boundary shown to the east of the enclosure may relate to break-of-slope.. observed during the field survey. By 1898, the enclosure had disappeared from the mapping.., although the building was still in place. The building was not demolished until sometime between 1961 and 1972.., by which date some of the existing structures had been constructed. No evidence was found during the field survey to suggest what the enclosure and building were, although the name Maid’s Garden may be an indication of some kind of servants quarters and associated allotments (although domestic servants would be expected to have quarters in the main house). The site has clearly been used in recent years for rubbish dumping, as supported by the results of a recent evaluation trench excavated along the eastern side of the area in advance of a new sewage plant.. – nothing significant was found apart from dumped deposits containing material of 19th-20th century date, mainly china and flowerpots.

The woodland
The remainder of the Study Area comprises woodland, some of it of medieval origin. Having removed the active brickmaking industry, Hussey was able to incorporate the remains into his wider Picturesque landscape. The pond (beyond the western edge of the Study Area) was transformed by planting into a dramatic landscape feature.., complete with footpaths. A water filtration system was built to supply water to the house and gardens (remains of which still survive, including deep shafts..). The large
marl pit in the south-western corner of the Study Area.. was planted with various exotic species, now dominated by rhododendrons, and given a suitably Picturesque name, The Wilderness. The woodland was also managed, with sweet chestnut and larch planted for hop poles.

Later History
The later history of the Study Area has seen very little significant change. Subsequent members of the Hussey family managed and nurtured Edward Hussey’s creation but did not alter it... The estate was also fortunate in escaping military use during the Second World War, largely because Elizabeth Hussey made a personal appeal to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt, who personally ordered South-East Command to stay away from the estate (thereby sparing Scotney from the possible fate of houses such as Stanmer, near Brighton, which was so badly damaged by the Canadians that an entire wing had to be demolished) (CKS U1776/C19). The greatest modern changes came in 1970, when Christopher Hussey died and the gardens and estate were granted to the National Trust. The vegetable plots were grassed over from this time, and various modifications were carried out to the Study Area to accommodate visitors, the most significant being the car park on the site of the former orchard. The Home Farm buildings were converted into offices for the National Trust.

A geophysical survey of the three islands in 2008 located anomalies consistent with below-ground remains. These are likely to be a mix of medieval and post medieval structures and/or post medieval garden features. (16)

University College London, 1987, Scotney Castle, Kent: An Archaeological Survey of the Castle and its Environs (Unpublished document). SKE15764.

Nicola Bannister, 2002 ?, Scotney Castle Archaeological and Historical Landscape Survey Volume 1 (Unpublished document). SKE15767.

Archaeology South-East, 2007, Archaeological and Historic Landscape Survey: Scotney Castle, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE15766.

<1> OS 1:10000 1976 (OS Card Reference). SKE48161.

<2> English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of special historic interest,Part 24 Kent(May 1987) (OS Card Reference). SKE41622.

<3> Scotney Castle(guidebook) 1985. (OS Card Reference). SKE49412.

<4> Country Life (31 May 1902) 688-93 (OS Card Reference). SKE39360.

<5> Country Life (3 Jul 1920) 12-19 (OS Card Reference). SKE39358.

<6> Country Life (6 Sept 1956) 470-73 (OS Card Reference). SKE39365.

<7> Country Life (13 Sept 1969) 526-29 (OS Card Reference). SKE39329.

<8> Country Life (16 Oct 1969) 958-63 (OS Card Reference). SKE39332.

<9> Country Life (17 May 1979) 1522-25 (OS Card Reference). SKE39333.

<10> Thomas G S(1979)Gardens of the National Trust. 209 (OS Card Reference). SKE50561.

<11> Wright T(1978)Gardens of Britain 4. 91-95 (OS Card Reference). SKE51412.

<12> English Heritage, 2005, Analysis of trees from six woodlands in Kent (Unpublished document). SKE13588.

<13> University College London, 1987, Scotney Castle, Kent: An Archaeological Survey of the Castle and its Environs (Unpublished document). SKE15764.

<14> Archaeology South-East, 2007, Archaeological and Historic Landscape Survey: Scotney Castle, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE15766.

<15> Nicola Bannister, 2002 ?, Scotney Castle Archaeological and Historical Landscape Survey Volume 1 (Unpublished document). SKE15767.

<16> Archaeology South-East, 2008, An Archaeological Interpretative Survey of The Old Castle, Scotney, Lamberhurst, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE18053.

Sources and further reading

Related records