Eastwell Park

Eastwell Park lies in Kent beside Ashford, a sweeping estate of parkland, lake and farmland that once belonged to the Earls of Winchilsea for more than three hundred years. The land records mention a manor here as early as the 1080s, and later owners included the Barons Poynings and the Earls of Northumberland. Sir Thomas Moyle acquired the estate in 1537 and built a new house between 1540 and 1550. The bricklayer Richard Plantagenet, thought to be an illegitimate son of Richard III, worked on the estate. Catherine Moyle married Sir Thomas Finch, whose descendants became the Earls of Winchilsea, Nottingham and Aylesford. The house changed hands through the 17th and 18th centuries, with alterations by William Winde for the 3rd Earl and painted ceilings by Sir James Thornhill for the 4th and 5th Earls. The park once stretched to about two thousand acres of fine Kentish land, laid out by the early Winchilseas and stocked with deer. In 1790 the diarist John Byng called it a noble park with lofty hills and fine views inland and to the sea. Between 1793 and 1799 a new classical mansion was built by Joseph Bonomi for George Finch-Hatton and his wife Lady Elizabeth Murray. Jane Austen visited the house in 1805. The 10th Earl added a Victorian Tudor wing in 1843 and built Eastwell Lake in the 1840s, where a model gun brig was launched in 1848. From 1874 to 1893 the estate served as a royal residence for Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and his family. Queen Victoria often visited and was photographed skating on the lake. Their daughter, Queen Marie of Romania, was born at Eastwell Park in 1875 and recalled the great grey house, the deer, the Highland cattle, the cedar tree and the conservatories filled with tree-ferns. The manor was later rebuilt as a country house hotel, while the towers remain Grade II listed.