Buckhurst Park, Sussex

Buckhurst Park is an English country house and landscaped park near Withyham, East Sussex. It is the seat of William Sackville, 11th Earl De La Warr. The house is a Grade II listed building.[1] The park, landscaped by Humphry Repton, is Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. There are formal gardens which were laid out by Edwin Lutyens and planted by Gertrude Jekyll.[2]

The manor of Buckhurst came to the Sackville family in the 12th century by marriage of Sir Jordan Sackville with Ela de Dene, heiress of Buckhurst. A well-built dwelling house and garden were mentioned in 1274, and the deer park in the time of Edward I.[3]

The house, formerly called 'Stonelands, was built in 1603 by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, taking the site of a hunting box or keeper's lodge within the park at Buckhurst Place, the grand partly moated courtyard house that had been abandoned by the Sackvilles for Knole House in Kent.[4] It has been much remodelled since, notably in Elizabethan taste for Arabella, Duchess of Dorset and her second husband, Lord Whitworth, who occupied the house, improving both it and the grounds. They incorporated into the grounds part of the park which had belonged to Buckhurst Place, then in ruins, and renamed Stoneland, Buckhurst Park.[5] The park was landscaped in 1830–35 by Humphry Repton, whose landscape plans for the park were embodied in one of his famous "Red Books",[6] and the remodelling of the house was carried out to designs by his son, John Adey Repton.[7]

For a time in the early 20th century the estate was let to Robert Henry Benson (1850–1929), senior partner of Robert Benson & Co., Ltd, merchant bankers, a collector of paintings and a Trustee of the National Gallery from 1912.[8] Finding the house and grounds very much as Repton had left them, in 1902 he called upon Lutyens to add an extensive wing,[9] since demolished, but the sunk 'basin' opposite the former "New Room' survives, and surrounding gardens by Jekyll adjoining it are carefully recreated from her planting plans, rediscovered in a drawer at Buckhurst;[10] Lutyens' favoured 'Brunswick' fig also survived the demolition.[11] According to Lutyens's biographer Christopher Hussey, who based his account on what Lutyens told him, Lutyens believed that he owed his appointment for the planning of New Delhi to a chance meeting at a country-house party at Buckhurst during Benson's tenure.[12]

In the park is the "Hundred Acre Wood", disafforested from Ashdown Forest in 1678, when Stoneland was in the possession of the Earl of Dorset, and made famous by A. A. Milne, who lived in the immediate neighborhood, at Cotchford Farm, Hartfield was situated just north of Ashdown Forest.

The house is open to the public.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Historic England. "Buckhurst Park (1285477)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  2. ↑ Historic England. "Buckhurst Park (1000230)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  3. ↑ Reginald Windsor Sackville- West, 7th Earl De la Warr, Historical Notices of the parish of Withyham in the county of Sussex... 1857:3, 5, 9.
  4. ↑ Part of its materials were employed to build College for the Poor, at East Grinstead (Mark Antony Lower, A Compendious History of Sussex 1870:265, adding "the solitary survivor of so much magnificence is the gateway tower").
  5. ↑ S. Farrant, "The Development of Landscape Parks and Gardens in Eastern Sussex c. 1700 to 1820: A Guide and Gazetteer", Garden History, 1989.
  6. ↑ Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 3rd ed. 1995, s.v. "Repton, Humphry" gives client as George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr.
  7. ↑ Architectural Publication Society, The Dictionary of Architecture 1887, s.v. "Repton, John Adey".
  8. ↑ Lady Lever Art Gallery: Dealers and collectors: RH Benson.
  9. ↑ A. Avray Tipping, English Gardens, 1925:63; Jehanne Wake, Kleinwort, Benson: The History of Two Families in Banking 1997:266.
  10. ↑ Paula Dietz, Of Gardens: Selected Essays 2011:249.
  11. ↑ Christopher Lloyd, Gardener Cook 2001:40.
  12. ↑ Jane Ridley, Edwin Lutyens: his life, his wife, his work, 2003:211.
  13. ↑ Buckhurst Estate website.

Coordinates: 51°05′42″N 0°08′30″E / 51.0950°N 0.1418°E