Sissinghurst Castle- Photo ©
Michael A.Linton,March 17th, 2017
Sissinghurst Castle - Photo ©
Michael A.Linton, March 17th, 2017
Sissinghurst Castle - Photo ©
Michael A.Linton, March 17th, 2017
Sissinghurst Castle- Photo © Michael A.Linton,March 17th, 2017 |
Sissinghurst Castle - Photo © Michael A.Linton, March 17th, 2017 |
Sissinghurst Castle - Photo © Michael A.Linton, March 17th, 2017 |
The site is ancient; "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. Nigel Nicolson, in his 1964 guide, Sissinghurst Castle: An Illustrated History, records the earliest owners as the de Saxinhersts. Stephen de Saxinherst is named in an 1180 charter about the nearby Combwell Priory. At the end of the 13th century the estate had passed, through marriage, to the de Berhams. Nicolson suggested that the de Berhams constructed a moated house in stone, of an appearance similar to that of Ightham Mote, which was later replaced by a brick manor. More recent studies, including those of Nicolson's son, Adam, cast doubt on the existence of an earlier stone manor, suggesting instead that the brick house, or perhaps a timber construction of a slightly earlier date, occupying the corner of the orchard nearest the moat, was the earliest house on the site. Edward I is reputed to have stayed at this house in 1305.
In 1490 the de Berhams sold the manor of Sissinghurst to Thomas Baker of Cranbrook. The Bakers were cloth producers and in the following century, through marriage and careers at court and in the law, Thomas's successors greatly expanded their wealth and their estates in Kent and Sussex. In the 1530s Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, built a new brick gatehouse, the current West Range. In 1554 Sir John's daughter Cecily married Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, creating the earliest connection between the Sackville family and the house. Sir John's son Richard undertook a massive prodigy expansion in the 1560s. The Tower is part of that expansion, and formed the entrance to a very large courtyard house, of which the South Cottage and some walls are the only other remaining fragments. Sir Richard surrounded the mansion with an enclosed 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park and in August 1573 entertained Queen Elizabeth I at Sissinghurst.
After the collapse of the Baker family fortunes following the civil war (1642–1651), the building declined in importance. Horace Walpole visited in 1752: "yesterday, after twenty mishaps, we got to Sissinghurst for dinner. There is a park in ruins and a house in ten times greater ruins." During the Seven Years' War, it became a prisoner-of-war camp. The historian Edward Gibbon, then serving in the Hampshire militia, was stationed there and recorded "the inconceivable dirtiness of the season, the country and the spot". It was during its use as a camp for French prisoners that the name Sissinghurst Castle was adopted; although it was never a castle, there is debate as to the extent to which the house was a fortified manor. In 2018 an important collection of historical graffiti drawn by some of the 3,000 prisoners was uncovered beneath 20th-century plaster. Around 1800, the estate was purchased by the Mann family and the majority of Sir Richard's Elizabethan house was demolished; the stone and brick were reused in buildings throughout the locality. The castle later became a workhouse for the Cranbrook Union, after which it housed farm labourers. In 1928, the castle was put up for sale for a price of £12,000, but attracted no bids for two years.
Photo © Michael A.Linton, March 17th, 2017
The National Trust took over the whole of Sissinghurst – its garden, farm, and buildings – in 1967. Since then, the number of visitors has steadily increased. Anne Scott-James, the author of the first non-Nicolson history of the garden, records 13,200 visitors in 1961, the year of Sackville-West's death, 47,100 in 1967, when the castle passed to the Trust, and 91,584 by 1973. It is now among the Trust's most popular properties, receiving nearly 200,000 visitors in 2017. Although the increased foot traffic has necessitated the replacement of the grass paths with York paving stones, the entry fees generate considerable income which, under the terms of the handover, can only be expended on Sissinghurst. In 2008, Adam Nicolson described the estate as "better funded than it has been since the 16th century". Major works of reconstruction, such as the restoration of the Tower brickwork, and the cataloguing and conservation of the collection of books in the library, have been made possible by the availability of these funds.
The property has an iconic status in LGBTQ culture; Adam Nicolson has noted "rivers of lesbians coming through the gate" each spring. The castle was one of the sites chosen in 2017 as a focus for the celebration of the LGBTQ history of Trust buildings. In the same year, the Trust opened the South Cottage to visitors for the first time. For 2019, the gardens are open to the public daily from 7 March to 31 October.
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