Dene Park

Last updated
Dene Park
Dene park.jpg
Dene Park, Hadlow, Kent
Dene Park
General information
StatusPrivate residences
Location Hadlow, Kent
CountryUnited Kingdom
Coordinates TQ 597 503
Completed1883
Design and construction
Architect(s)F. T. W. Miller
Known forFormer use by the Thomas Delarue School (1955–63)

Dene Park is a Victorian mansion house and estate in the parish of Hadlow, Kent, United Kingdom [1] . It served as the site of the Thomas Delarue School between 1955 and 1965.

Contents


History

The Dene Park estate was advertised for sale in The Times of 13 July 1878 as being for sale. The house was described as having fifteen bedrooms and set in 682 acres (276 ha) of land. There was stabling for five horses which included accommodation for a groom. A six bedroom shooting house was included in the sale, as was a farm and several cottages. [2] The house was extensively altered in the next five years. [3]

Built in 1883 Dene Park was designed by the architect F.T.W Miller, [4] Dene Park was designed primarily as a sporting estate and occupied 620 acres in total. Built of red brick with bath stone dressings, the gardens were designed by the landscape gardener Edward Milner of which much of his original design work still remains. To the right of the property the iconic round smokery remains hinting at the property's sporting heritage.

Owned by Sir John Hollams until his death in on May 3, 1910, [5] it was then inherited by his second eldest son Frederick Willams Hollams (b. 1848) who lived there for the next thirty one years. [6] Also residing in the home were Frederick's wife, Mary Owen Hollams, daughter of the architect Sir Charles Lanyon, and their daughter, the artist Frances Mabel Hollams. [6] [7] In 1917, Frederick Williams Hollams was appointed High Sheriff of Kent. [8] He died on 21 November 1941 aged 93. [9]

The contents of Dene Park were sold by auction on 20 January 1942. [10] During the Second World War Dene Park became the training school for the 44th (Home Counties) Division and 53rd Division. Jack Rose, a Hurricane pilot flying Hurricanes from West Malling Airfield worked with the instructors to make training as realistic as possible; the school's instructors would carry out exercises on Shipbourne Green with aircraft flying in fours would carry out low-level navigation exercises culminating on an attack on the Battle School troops. Camera Guns were used and the resulting films passed to instructors and troops to estimate what casualties would have been suffered and how to improve tactics.

In 1955 the house became the Thomas Delarue School, a specialist co-educational boarding school founded by the National Spastics Society to serve children with cerebral palsy. [11] In 1963 the school moved to a purpose built site near Tonbridge. [12]

The house was converted into nine flats in 1991, [3] with the woods now managed by the Forestry Commission, and the original coach house is now occupied by Greensands Ridge gin distillery. The house retains many features from the time of its construction, including the original chapel ceilings, the terrace, and a fireplace dated 1591 and reputedly brought from Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. [lower-alpha 1] John Newman, in Kent: West and The Weald, his 2012 revised volume in the Pevsner Buildings of England series, describes Dene Park as a "substantial mansion in a Waterhousian Tudor Gothic" style. [13]

Notable residents

Notes

  1. The fireplace is inscribed with the name Godfridus Ffoljambe as well as the 1591 date. John Newman attributes it to “one of the Ffoljambe seats in Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire." [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tonbridge</span> Market town in Kent, England

Tonbridge is a market town in Kent, England, on the River Medway, 4 miles (6 km) north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, 12 miles (19 km) south west of Maidstone and 29 miles (47 km) south east of London. In the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling, it had an estimated population of 41,293 in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scope (charity)</span> UK disability charity

Scope is a disability charity in England and Wales that campaigns to change negative attitudes about disability, provides direct services, and educates the public. The organisation was founded in 1952 by a group of parents and social workers who wanted to ensure that their disabled children had the right to a decent education. Originally focused on cerebral palsy, Scope now embraces all conditions and impairment. Scope subscribes to the social model of disability rather than the medical model of disability – that a person is disabled by the barriers placed in front of them by society, not because of their condition or impairment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ightham Mote</span> House in Ightham, Kent

Ightham Mote, Ightham, Kent is a medieval moated manor house. The architectural writer John Newman describes it as "the most complete small medieval manor house in the county". Ightham Mote and its gardens are owned by the National Trust and are open to the public. The house is a Grade I listed building, and parts of it are a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Frederick Bodley</span>

George Frederick Bodley was an English Gothic Revival architect. He was a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and worked in partnership with Thomas Garner for much of his career. He was one of the founders of Watts & Co.

John Oldrid Scott was a British architect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cranbrook, Kent</span> Human settlement in England

Cranbrook is a town in the civil parish of Cranbrook and Sissinghurst, in the Weald of Kent in South East England. It lies roughly half-way between Maidstone and Hastings, about 38 miles (61 km) southeast of central London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shipbourne</span> Human settlement in England

Shipbourne is a village and civil parish situated between the towns of Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in the English county of Kent. In 2020 it was named as the most expensive village in Kent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ewan Christian</span> British architect (1814–95)

Ewan Christian (1814–1895) was a British architect. He is most frequently noted for the restorations of Southwell Minster and Carlisle Cathedral, and the design of the National Portrait Gallery. He was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1851 to 1895. Christian was elected A RIBA in 1840, FRIBA in 1850, RIBA President 1884–1886 and was awarded the Royal Gold Medal in 1887.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catton Hall</span> Building in Derbyshire, England

Catton Hall is a country house near the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire, within the civil parish of Catton. It gives its postal address as Walton-on-Trent although there was a village of Catton at one time. It is a Grade II* listed building.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Smith of Warwick</span>

Francis Smith of Warwick (1672–1738) was an English master-builder and architect, much involved in the construction of country houses in the Midland counties of England. Smith of Warwick may refer also to his brothers, or his son.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geddes Hyslop</span> British architect

Charles Geddes Clarkson Hyslop was a 20th-century British architect, trained at the British School in Rome. Linked with the Bloomsbury set, his work, mostly in the classical style, was fashionable amongst the British upper classes and intelligentsia in the years immediately surrounding World War II. He is remembered today as a restorer of country houses and a designer of knowledgeable pastiches.

Joseph Clarke was a British Gothic Revival architect who practised in London, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Somerhill House</span> Grade I listed country house in UK

Somerhill House is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion situated near Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom. It was built for The 4th Earl of Clanricarde in 1611–13. The estate was sequestrated by Parliament in 1645, and restored to its rightful owner in 1660. The building had become derelict by the mid-eighteenth century but was later restored. Somerhill was painted by Turner in 1811. It was bought by a member of the Goldsmid family in 1849 and greatly extended between 1879 and 1897, making it the second largest house in Kent, after Knole House, Sevenoaks.

The Hayesbrook School is a non-selective boys secondary school with academy status in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom. It has specialisms in Sports and Mathematics.

Thomas Delarue was a co-educational special secondary boarding school in Tonbridge, Kent, England that was established in 1955 and closed in 1989. It was run by The Spastics Society and catered for pupils with cerebral palsy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hiram Haycock</span>

John Hiram Haycock (1759-1830) was an architect who built many notable buildings in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. He was the son of William Haycock (1725-1802), a carpenter and joiner of Shrewsbury. He was apprenticed to his father and became a freeman of the Shrewsbury Carpenters’ and Bricklayers’ Company in 1796. From about 1814 he worked in partnership with his son Edward Haycock, Sr., and became the Shropshire county surveyor in 1824.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Newman (architectural historian)</span> English architectural historian

John Arthur Newman is an English architectural historian. He is the author of several of the Pevsner Architectural Guides and is the advisory editor to the series.

Sir John Hollams was an English solicitor. For more than 60 years he was a partner in one of London's most significant law firms and was involved in several high profile cases, including Bank of England v Vagliano Bros (1891), British South Africa Co v Companhia de Moçambique (1893), and the trial of Leander Starr Jameson and his compatriots for their actions in the Jameson Raid in 1895-1896. A President of the Law Society of England and Wales, he served on the Judicator Commission which was instrumental in drafting the Judicature Act of 1873 and Judicator Act of 1875; laws that substantially restructured the legal system in Britain. He was knighted in 1902.

References

  1. Trust, Woodland. "Dene Park". Woodland Trust. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  2. "(advertisement)". The Times. No. 29306. London. 13 July 1878. col C, p. 19.
  3. 1 2 "Great buildings given new live". The Times. No. 64031. London. 29 May 1991. col A-G, p. 33.
  4. Taken from the 1885 sales particulars,
  5. "Obituary". The Times. No. 39263. London. 4 May 1910. col C, p. 13.
  6. 1 2 Judy Slinn (1993). Clifford Chance: Its Origins and Development. Granta Editions. p. 37-38. ISBN   9780906782989.
  7. Births, Marriages, & Deaths. The Law Times . July 25, 1903. p. 314.
  8. "The New Sherrifs". The Times. No. 41426. London. 14 March 1917. col C, p. 9.
  9. "Obituaries". The Times. No. 49092. London. 25 November 1941. col E, p. 7.
  10. "Sales By Auction". The Times. No. 49120. London. 30 December 1941. col F, p. 8.
  11. Ronald Stanley Illingworth (1958). "Recent Advances in Cerebral Palsy". J. & A. Churchill: 202.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. "Further Education Centre at Dene Park , near Tonbridge , Kent". The Medical Officer. 111: 98. 1964.
  13. 1 2 Newman, John (2012). Kent: West and The Weald. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. pp. 281–282. ISBN   978-0-300-18509-6.