Scotney Castle
Scotney Castle is a grand country house with formal gardens in Sussex. It stands south-east of Lamberhurst in the valley of the River Bewl, and today it belongs to the National Trust.
The gardens, which are a celebrated example of the Picturesque style, are open to the public. The central feature is the ruins of a mediæval, moated manor house, Scotney Old Castle, which is on an island on a small lake. The lake is surrounded by sloping, wooded gardens with fine collections of rhododendrons, azaleas and kalmia for spring colour, summer wisteria and roses, and spectacular autumn colour.
At the top of the garden stands a house which was built to replace the Old Castle between 1835 and 1843. This is known as Scotney New Castle, or simply Scotney Castle, and was designed by Anthony Salvin. It is an early, and unusually restrained, example of Tudor Revival architectural style in 19th century Britain. Following the death of the resident, Elizabeth Hussey, in 2006, this house was opened to the public for the first time on June 6, 2007.[1]
History
The earliest record from 1137 gives the owner of the estate as Lambert de Scoteni. Roger Ashburnham is credited with building the castle c.1378-80.
Construction of the castle began as a roughly rectangular fortified house with towers in each corner. The original plan may never have been finished, and by 1558 it is likely only the southern tower remained. In 1580 the south wing was rebuilt in Elizabethan architecture style, and around 1630 the eastern range was rebuilt in three story Inigo Jones style. The Elizabethan wing remained a bailiff's residence until 1905, but the eastern range was partly dismantled on the completion of the new house in 1843, leaving the ruin as a garden feature.
From 1591 to 1598 the owner, Thomas Darrell, a Romanist Recusant, hid a Jesuit priest named Richard Blount in the castle while he administered to Roman Catholics from 1591 to 1598. During the second raid by authorities to arrest the priest he fled over a wall into the moat and escaped.
The Darrell family owned the estate for some 350 years. In 1778 Edward Hussey bought the estate and his grandson, also Edward, built the 'new' Castle to the designs of Anthony Salvin, from sandstone quarried from the slope below. The hollow created was developed into a Quarry Garden and contains a 100 million year old impression of a dinosaur's footprint.
On Christopher Hussey's death in 1970 the estate was left to the National Trust. Several apartments in the castle and on the estate were let out by the Trust, the tenants including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who rented the Belfry flat for a time during the 1970s and 1980s, when it served as a weekend escape for her from Westminster life.[2]
The castle grounds have played host to Shakespeare productions, notably A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the actors appearing from behind the bushes on cue.
Miscellany
Old Scotney Castle was used as the location for the video to the Squeeze song Some Fantastic Place.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Scotney Castle) |
- Location map: 51°5’34"N, -0°24’30"E
- Scotney Castle information at the National Trust
- A comprehensive history of Scotney Castle
- Scotney Castle QuickTime VR
References
- ↑ Mrs. Hussey, a daughter of Member of Parliament Peter Kerr-Smiley and his wife, the former Maud Simpson, was at one time a niece by marriage to Wallis Warfield, later the Duchess of Windsor.
- ↑ Margaret Thatcher's Lamberhurst bolthole, BBC News, 23 February 2011