Scotney Castle, Kent: 14th Century Moated Castle
Scotney Castle is a 14th century moated castle located in a beautiful wooded estate in Kent.
Credit: National Trust
Now owned by the National Trust, the castle is complete with a moat, along with a charming country house and a romantic garden, all surrounded by a stunning woodland estate.
Visitors can relax in the gorgeous gardens, with the fairytale castle behind, or stroll out in the 770 acres of parkland and woodland.
Really a fortified manor house, Scotney Castle was built in 1378 by Roger Ashburnham.
It was strategically sited where the road from Rye and Hastings crossed the valley of the Bewel.
The remnants of Ashburnham’s house include the massive round tower rising from the lake-like moat and a ruined gatehouse.
Originally with a circular tower at each of its four corners, the castle was built in response to the threat of French invasion.
If you look carefully, you can see still see the foundation stones for the original castle at each corner of the castle island.
An Elizabethan brick range adjoining the tower is all that survives of the 16th-century additions, and jagged walls with gaping windows mark a substantial 17th-century wing.
In 1836, Edward Hussey – the creator of the gardens we see today – consulted W.S. Gilpin, the noted landscape designer, in an effort to take advantage of the scenic potential of the site.
He knew the castle was too cold and damp for habitation so he had the walls of the castle selectively demolished, leaving the present fairytale ruin.
With over 10 000 objects, the collection at Scotney Castle is the largest National Trust collection in the South East.
There is the large library of the Hussey family, assembled since the seventeenth century, but principally by Edward Hussey III (1807-94) and his grandson, the architectural historian Christopher Hussey (1899-1970).
Includes a large stock of Victorian books, Christopher Hussey's working collection of books on art, architecture and art history, and a small collection of early guidebooks and similar material assembled by him.
The collection of furniture, ceramics and decorative objects is displayed as it was left by Betty Hussey in 2006.
Castle decline
Much of the original medieval castle was demolished in the 17th century and a grand three-storey east range was built. Today only the walls of this section remain.
Around 1720, George Darell made further alterations, capping the Ashburnham Tower with its now characteristic conical tiled roof and glazed cupola.
This Ashburnham tower is all that now remains of the original medieval castle.
Family squabbles, lawsuits and debt led to another change of ownership in the 1778 when Edward Hussey I bought the castle from the Darells.
Between 1783 and 1792, Hussey pieced the rest of the old Darell estate back together.
Hussey's death in 1816 and, a year later, that of his son, Edward Hussey II, meant the old castle lay vacant for some years.
The young Edward Hussey III was largely brought up by his widowed mother away from Scotney in St Leonards but, fascinated by architecture and landscape gardening when he came of age and inherited, he decided to move back to Scotney in 1835 and build a new house here.
Scotney Castle Gardens
The Scotney Castle estate has a long and varied history and the ancient parkland and Wealden woodlands surrounding the house and garden are criss-crossed by waymarked routes, offering fantastic views of the castle, garden and house.
Grade I listed, the parkland is full of magnificent veteran trees including what is believed to be the oldest hornbeam tree in the country, showing its association with a formal dwelling for over 1,000 years.
The woodlands are characteristic of the Wealden landscape and cover 300 acres of the estate; they boast connections with wood-pasture, charcoal production, iron working and the once-lucrative hop industry.
Scotney is the only National Trust property to have a working hop farm and the tenant farmer at Little Scotney Farm still grows, picks and dries hops which are then used by a local brewery to make craft beers, some of which you can buy in the Scotney shop.
The native-breed Sussex cattle have been a proud feature of the landscape since Victorian times.
The castle today
From a military perspective, its low-lying marshy location seems a strange place to build a castle and, as a family home, the damp environment undoubtedly created health issues but, surrounded by its moat and old roses and wisteria climbing its aged walls, its romantic credentials can’t be argued with.
With acres of parkland on one side and cascading rhododendron-filled gardens on the other, its setting today is just perfect.
Estate staff lived in the old castle until 1905, but today its only inhabitants are a colony of bats on the top floor.
The castle's interior is particularly fragile and cannot cope with large numbers of visitors all year round.
For this reason, the building is only open to the public between April and October when visitors can visit the ground and first floors of the building.
The rooms are used as exhibition spaces but you can still look through one of the first floor windows on the first floor to enjoy the view.
Someone who recently visited the castle said: “Visited today and was lovely - have been to the grounds before but today was the first time in the house itself.
”The house itself and the grounds are beautiful and well worth a visit. It's a National Trust property so if you are a member the admission is ‘free’.
”The guides are all very friendly and informative. There is also a cafe/tea room so you can get something to eat and drink - but it can get busy.”
Set in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Scotney Castle is located outside the village of Lamberhurst in the Weald of Kent, just off the A21.
If you’d like to visit, the address is: Lamberhurst, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, TN3 8JN.
If you enjoyed this blog post, please follow Exploring GB on Facebook for daily travel content and inspiration.
Don’t forget to check out our latest blog posts below!
Thank you for visiting Exploring GB.
