Sissinghurst, an Unfinished History

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by Adam Nicolson


  Bramston was far from contrite, swaggering around the prison that morning saying ‘If he had killed more it would not have given him any uneasiness.’ In the general shouting and commotion after the shootings, another Frenchman, Claude Hallet, was wounded by a militiaman with a bayonet, and the artist shows that outrage too.

  Nicholas Cooper thinks the picture may have been painted by a Frenchman, or perhaps by an opportunist Englishman as a form of visual journalism. Certainly the architectural details are made to look a little more French than they appear in other pictures made by Englishmen at the same time. The lanterns on posts are eighteenth-century security lighting; the little building by the moat with steps up to it is the ‘necessary house’ or privy; and the wheeled carts attached to the barns in the bottom left of the picture are for the night soil.

  NOTE ON SOURCES

  For the early history of Kent, articles in the volumes of Archaeologia Cantiana are invaluable. Many are now online at www.kentarchaeology.org.uk

  Frans Vera’s Grazing Ecology and Forest History, CABI Publishing 2000, provides a new and fascinating perspective on the early environmental history of the Kentish forest. Oliver Rackham’s Woodlands, HarperCollins 2006, ties Vera’s suggestions into a more traditional English frame. William Anderson, in The Green Man, HarperCollins 1990, is a source of rich speculation on the meaning and significance of that near-universal wood symbol and G. H. Garrad, A Survey of the Agriculture of Kent, Royal Agric. Soc., 1954 provides a detailed account of the Kentish farmer’s response to his environment. Henry Cleere and David Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald, 2nd ed., Merton Priory Press, 1995 speculates fascinatingly on the Weald under Roman occupation and gives a full description of the early modern iron industry.

  J. K. Wallenberg’s study of The Place-Names of Kent, Uppsala, 1934 and K. P. Witney’s The Jutish Forest: A Study of the Weald of Kent 450–1380 AD, Athlone Press 1976 are the classic accounts of the early medieval penetration of the Wealden forest around Sissinghurst. K. P. Witney’s edition of The Survey of Archbishop Peacham’s Kentish Manors 1283–85, Kent Arch. Soc., Maidstone 2000, takes that movement up into the high Middle Ages.

  For Sissinghurst’s social environment in the 16th century, see Michael Zell’s Industry in the countryside: Wealden society in the sixteenth century, Cambridge 1994 and a volume of essays edited by him, Early Modern Kent 1540–1640, The Boydell Press 2000. Maurice Howard, The Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, Yale 2007 and Malcolm Airs, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A building history, Sutton Publishing 1995, combined with Caroline van Eck, British Architectural Theory 1540–1750, Ashgate 2003 describe the philosophical, political and practical world in which the new Sissinghurst was made. For the use and aesthetics of the park around it, see the essays in Robert Liddiard, editor, The Medieval Park: New Perspectives, Windgather Press, 2007. Descriptions of Sir John Baker’s murderous behaviour can be found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs which is online in a variorum edition at www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/. Early modern histories of the Weald are William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent, London 1570, John Philipott, Villare Cantianum or Kent surveyed and illustrated, 1659 and the great Edward Hasted’s History of the County of Kent, 1790. The three-volume History of the Weald of Kent by Robert Furley, Ashford 1871, although often muddly, is full of fascinating sidelights. Nigel Nicolson’s short Sissinghurst Castle, An Illustrated History, National Trust, 1964 has remained in print for over 40 years. Contemporary accounts of Elizabeth’s progresses were gathered by John Nichols in the late 18th century. Many, including the list of those who came to stay at Sissinghurst in 1573, are now online at www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/nichols/progresses/

  Papers of the Mann estate, including many relating to Sissinghurst, are kept in the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone (U24). Quarter Session Records, detailing the Elizabethan park invasions, are there too. Accounts of the plot to destroy the ironworks at Hammer Mill are in the Staffordshire County Record Office. References are all available on www.a2a.org.uk

  A printed copy of the sermon by Robert Abbott, vicar of Cranbrook, The holinesse of Chrisian [sic] Churches, or a Sermon preached at the consecration of the chappell of Sr. Iohn Baker: of Sussing-herst in Cranbrooke in Kent, Baronet, London 1638, is in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge. For papers relating to the sequestration of the Baker estates in the Civil War, see SP/19, 20, 23 and 28 in the National Archives in Kew. The probate Inventory of Dame Elizabeth Howard’s possessions at Sissinghurst in 1694 is also there under PROB 5/3715.

  Sissinghurst as an eighteenth-century prisoner-of-war camp is described in Francis Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain 1756–1815, Oxford UP 1914 and referred to by Edward Gibbon in his Journal, ed. D. M. Low, Chatto & Windus 1929. The Admiralty files in the National Archives contain the long and fascinating transcript of an ‘Examination of complaints of prisoners at Sissinghurst’ (ADM 105/42) held in 1761 and under ADM 97/114/2 ‘Letters to and from French prisoners held in England 1756–63’, many of them at Sissinghurst.

  C. C. R. Pile’s short leaflet on The Parish Farm at Sissinghurst Castle, Cranbrook and Sissinghurst Local History Society, 1952 remains the best account of Sissinghurst Castle Farm as Cranbrook’s ‘Old Cow’. MAF 32/1022/101 in the National Archives contains the 1941 Farm Survey Records for Cranbrook in which Captain Beale’s farm is revealed in all its perfection.

  The Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson years at Sissinghurst have been written about more than any other. Vita herself wrote Country Notes, Michael Joseph 1939, and many collections of her Observer articles have been in print since the 1950s. Anne Scott-James’s Sissinghurst: The Making of a Garden was published by Michael Joseph in 1975. Jane Brown’s Vita’s Other World: a gardening biography of V. Sackville-West, Viking 1985 set Sissinghurst in a wider context. Tony Lord, Gardening at Sissinghurst, Frances Lincoln 1995 focused tightly on the garden here, bed by bed. Nigel Nicolson edited Harold Nicolson’s Diaries and Letters, in 3 volumes, Collins 1966–8 and in 1973 published Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), about his parents’ marriage and homosexual infidelities. His own autobiography Long Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997, describes among much else his own deep attachment to Sissinghurst. Two biographies of Harold (James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, 2 vols, Chatto & Windus 1980–81 and Norman Rose, Harold Nicolson, Pimlico 2006) match two of Vita (Michael Stevens, V. Sackville-West, Michael Joseph 1973 and Victoria Glendinning, Vita, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1983). Susan Mary Alsop, wrote about Vita’s mother in Lady Sackville, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1978.

  Most of the manuscripts on which these books were based are now to be found in the Lilly Library in Indiana (Harold’s and Vita’s letters – www.indiana.edu/~liblilly) or Balliol College, Oxford (the three million words of Harold’s diaries).

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Page

  1 View of Weald from the Tower (National Trust/Penny Tweedie)

  2 1950s: Guernseys on the Plain

  3 Flowering polyanthus amongst Kentish cobnuts

  4 One of the maps included in a large-scale 1903 sale of the Cornwallis estate

  5 James Stearns transporting faggots (Mary Stearns)

  6 Plaque by Reynolds Stone to VSW under the Tower

  7 2006: Chestnut coppice, oaks and young beeches in Birches Wood (Peter Dear)

  8 September 2007: Remains of the bank which once carried Sissinghurst’s Park pale along the Biddenden road

  9 Sir John Baker (c.1488–1558). A print of a painting which has now disappeared, last heard of in Norwich in 1820

  10 1760s: Francis Grose, the back of medieval Sissinghurst

  11 1760: Sissinghurst ‘Castle’ – so named for the first time, in an engraving by James Peak of a drawing made by one of the Militia officers

  12 1820s: The entrance gateway as it appeared when Sissinghurst was rented by Cranbrook parish as the parish farm. Pen and wash drawing by T. D. W. Dearn

  13 1828: The Tower and a thatched South
Cottage beyond it (P. Andre)

  14 1917: Vita with her parents, Ben and Nigel

  15 1934: Harold and Vita in her work room in the Tower

  16 1932: Sissinghurst from the north-east

  17 1940s: Cattle show on the Plain

  18 Oxen at Sissinghurst c.1900

  19 1930: Harold in front of Sissinghurst on the day he first saw it

  20 2008: Sissinghust (National Trust/Penny Tweedie)

  21 2009: Adam Nicolson planting trees

  22 Amy Covey with Sissinghurst produce (National Trust/Penny Tweedie)

  INTEGRATED IMAGES

  Page

  29 27 July 1986: Tom, Adam and Nigel Nicolson

  55 1940s: The Stearns family at Bettenham (Mary Stearns)

  87–90 April 2008: 14th-century roof bosses in Cranbrook church

  92 April 2008: Oak sack hoist, trusses and rafters of the Elizabethan barn

  98 Map by Peter Wilkinson of the early Weald around Sissinghurst, drawing on a map of droves in K. P. Witney, The Jutish Forest: A Study of the Weald of Kent 450–1380 AD, Athlone Press 1976 and place-name research in J. K. Wallenberg, The Place-Names of Kent, Uppsala, 1934

  191 Guess-plan of Elizabethan Sissinghurst by Peter Wilkinson on the basis of a drawing by Peter Rumley, laid over a plan of the 20th-century garden

  199 Map by Peter Wilkinson showing the relationship of park and mansion at Sissinghurst in the 1570s, on the basis of investigations and a plan by Nicola Bannister

  244 Sheep at Bettenham (Mary Stearns)

  269 1932: Harold, Nigel, Vita and Ben under the Tower

  275 Plan of Sissinghurst, 1930s–90s, drawn by Peter Wilkinson

  283 October 1959: Letter from Vita to Harold

  292–3 The Farm at Sissinghurst: map by Peter Wilkinson on the basis of a drawing by Peter Dear, integrating the new ideas for the farm landscape

  INDEX

  A N indicates Adam Nicolson.

  Entries in italics indicate photographs or illustrations.

  Abbott, Robert 211

  Abery, Claire 116–17, 119, 162

  Acts and Monuments (Foxe) 181–2, 183, 185

  Addcock, Alice 151

  Addcock, Simon 151

  Admiralty 219, 221, 228–9, 230, 232

  Æthelmod 122, 131, 137, 138

  Æthelwulf 122, 123, 131, 137–8

  agriculture: change in mid-20th century (the ‘locust years’) 27, 38; early Weald 122–37; eighteenth century 199, 233; fifteenth century 171; industrialised, modern 27, 33, 61, 308–9, 310, 312, 313, 326–7; medieval 137–48; 19th century 233–8; organic 60, 68, 112, 158, 167, 194, 302, 306–13; sixteenth century 172–5, 197; twentieth century 27, 38, 239–40, 242–8 see also Sissinghurst Castle Farm

  Allin, Edmund 183–5

  Allin, Katherine 184–5

  Amherst, Earl 101

  Amiel, Barbara 109–10

  Angley 128, 131, 136

  Anglo-Saxon age 131, 134, 135, 136, 139

  Archaeologia Cantiana 101

  Ashford market 243, 245

  Askew, Anne 182

  aurochsen (wild cows) 80

  Ayleswade 133

  Bachelard, Gaston 162

  Baker family 153, 175–218, 231, 259

  Baker, Anne 216

  Baker, Catherine (daughter of Sir John Baker) 216

  Baker, Catherine (wife of Sir Henry Baker) 210

  Baker, Cecily see Sackville, Cecily

  Baker, Chrysogna 202

  Baker, Elizabeth (daughter of Sir John Baker) 181, 187, 216, 217

  Baker, Sir Henry 210

  Baker, John (son of Sir John Baker) 215

  Baker, Sir John (son of Sir Richard Baker) 201, 202, 213, 215

  Baker, Sir John (Bloody Baker) 175–81, 182–3, 184–7) 190, 193, 218, 238

  Baker, Mary (daughter of Sir John Baker) 181, 187

  Baker, Mary (daughter of Sir Richard Baker) 217

  Baker, Mary (wife of Richard Baker) 202, 212

  Baker, Richard (son of Thomas Baker) 175

  Baker, Sir Richard (son of Sir John Baker) 178, 187–200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 208, 218, 225

  Baker, Thomas 175

  Bannister, Nicola 197–8

  Bassuck, William 226–7

  Battle, Sussex 138

  BBC 280, 303

  Beale, Captain A. O. R. 14, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 68, 144, 240, 242, 243, 243, 244–6, 248, 250, 259, 278

  Beale, Donald 240

  Beale, Dorothy 240

  Beale, John 246

  Bedgbury 172, 203

  Benenden 4, 132

  Bentley, Richard 218

  Beowulf 130–1, 136

  Berger, John 37–8, 328

  de Berham, Elisia 150–1, 152, 153

  de Berham, Richard 150

  de Berham family 90, 148–9, 150, 132–3, 154, 177, 178, 179, 184, 190

  Berry, Wendell 327

  Berryingden 133

  Bethersden 146

  Bettenham farm 3, 5, 10, 18, 45, 49, 51, 55, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 75, 101–2, 106–7, 124, 127, 132, 133–4, 135, 144, 146, 199, 237, 240, 242, 243–4, 245, 246, 270, 278, 313, 314

  Beult, River 4, 5, 81

  Bexley 145–6

  Biddenden 4, 126, 135, 201, 243

  Bikenorre, John de 149

  birds: ancient 82; crow 123; cuckoos 114; house martins 8; jackdaw 123, 125; kestrel 33, 34; kingfisher 7–8; nightingale 10–11, 304, 321, 323; pigeon 34, 144, 270; swallow 8; willow-warblers 304

  Blackberry Lane 100, 126

  blackthorn 82, 84

  Bletchenden 141

  Bloomsbury Group 24, 255, 256, 273

  Bodiam Castle, Sussex 267

  Boles, Jack 52

  Boleyn, Anne 176

  Book of Hours 152, 153

  Boorde, Andrew 202–3

  Boys, Captain Edward 213

  Bradbrege, Joan 185

  Branden 127, 133

  Brissenden Farm 49, 106–7, 127, 135, 141, 245, 278, 313, 313–16

  Bromfield, William de 149

  Brown, Capability 217–18

  Brown, Jane 273, 284

  Browning, Helen 112, 113, 114, 116

  Bubhurst 133, 141

  Buckhurst 128, 131–2, 135

  Burghley, Lord 132, 204, 205, 206

  Bushel, Sally 65, 103–4, 107, 111, 112, 156, 253

  Butler, Sam 296–7

  Butz, Earl 309

  cadaca hrygc 122–3, 124, 138

  Caesar, Julius 6

  Camden farm 127

  Campaign to Protect Rural England 165

  Cannadine, David 40

  Canterbury 97, 99, 122, 138, 141, 146, 149, 150, 151, 180, 254

  Canterbury Cathedral 76, 122

  Cardarker Ridge 123, 124, 125, 128, 130

  Carew, Sir Francis 207

  Carluccio, Antonio 164

  Catholicism 177, 182, 200, 202, 210, 211, 212–13

  Celtic jewellery 101–2, 124

  Charing 138, 146, 150, 197

  Chart Hills 126, 127, 135, 150

  Cheeseman, Barton 239

  Chelsea Flower Show 156

  Chilham, Nicholas de 149

  Chittenden 132

  Civil War, English 213–15, 233

  Clare, John 147

  de Clare, Gilbert 149

  Clifford, Linda 58

  Clinton, Lord Admiral, Edward 204

  cloth-making 174, 175, 182, 197, 201

  Cobbett, William 233

  Codrington, Ursula 45

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 318–19

  Combewell 140

  Comenden 127

  Compton Wynyates 178, 179

  Conran, Priscilla 164

  Connolly, Cyril 265

  Coombes, Ginny 156, 166, 298, 300

  Copden (formerly Copton) 127, 133, 140, 141, 146, 177

  Copper, Jack 12, 15–16, 29, 44, 45, 49, 52, 58, 245, 276, 277, 278

  Cornwallis, earls of 234–5, 237, 239 see also Mann, Edward and Mann, Sir Horatio

  Couert, R
obert 151

  Covey, Amy 290–1, 295

  Cranbrook 87, 131, 133, 136, 140, 144–5, 153, 171, 172, 174, 182, 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 197, 198, 200, 201, 208, 210, 211, 212, 219, 221, 233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 243, 323, 324, 326; church and parish 87–90, 101, 149, 151, 152–3, 193; cloth-making in 174, 175, 197, 201; poor-relief scheme 233–5; Swing Riots, avoids trouble during 234; wooden bosses 87–91, 87, 88, 89, 90, 100, 152–3

  Cranbrook Common 138, 141, 198

  Cranbrook Museum 96–7

  Cranbrook School 97

  Creyse, Alice 151

  Cromwell, Thomas 176, 177

  Culpeper family 172, 203, 208

  Culpeper, Sir Alexander 203, 208

  Dalton, Hugh 41

  Dark Ages 98, 122–37, 139, 246, 313

  Darwin, Charles 81

  Datta, Alexis 117–18, 119, 156

  Dear, Peter 116, 167–8, 291, 295

  Domesday Book 139

  Don, Montagu 164

  Dudley, Robert 205

  Duffy, Eamon 152

  Edward I, King 149–50

  Edward VI, King 177

  Edward VII, King 262

  Edward, Prince of Wales 149

  Elizabeth I, Queen 15, 16, 74, 183, 188, 203–8

  Escombre, Paul 226

  Esher, Viscount 42

  Exhurst 132

  Fairley, Jo 164

  Farm Survey Record, 1941 56–8

  farming see agriculture

  Farris, Gordon 36

  Faversham 126

  Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh 166

  Fifield, Peter 285

  First World War 238, 242

  Flishinghurst 128

  Food Group, The 301

  Fowler, John 42

  Foxe, John 181–2

  Fraser, Simon 119–20

  Friezley 128, 133

  Frittenden 75, 78, 79, 126, 127, 133, 183, 185, 198, 199

  Frittenden brickworks 75, 78, 79, 234, 237

  Frittenden school 291, 294

  Furley, J. M. 82

  Galton, Sir Francis 81

 

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