Mereworth Castle

Mereworth Castle stands in the Kent countryside as a Grade I listed Palladian country house. It occupies the site of a fortified manor house first licensed to crenellate in 1332. The present building was constructed in the 1720s by John Fane, 7th Earl of Westmorland, to designs by Colen Campbell. Campbell’s plan closely copied Palladio’s Villa Rotunda near Venice. The interior shows plasterwork by Giovanni Bagutti and frescoes by Francesco Sleter. The house sits in a landscaped park with a valley and several Grade I listed pavilions and lodges. The house passed through the Fane family and later the Barons Oranmore and Browne. In the 1950s it belonged to artist Michael Lambert Tree and his wife Lady Anne Cavendish. The Wateringbury Stream runs through the grounds, once powering a fulling mill at the eastern edge. The estate was bought in 1976 by Mahdi Al-Tajir, former UAE ambassador and owner of Highland Spring water. Though rarely open, guided tours are occasionally offered. Inside, visitors find rooms arranged around a central hall in strict Palladian symmetry. The plaster ceilings carry Bagutti’s modelled ornament and Sleter’s painted scenes. Outside, the parkland follows an 18th-century landscape design with gentle slopes and scattered pavilions. The stream crosses meadows where the old mill once stood. Views extend across the valley to the surrounding Kentish hills.