Sissinghurst, an Unfinished History
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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
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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
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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