Eastwell Manor (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Estwell

In the civil parish of Eastwell.
In the historic county of Kent.
Modern Authority of Kent.
1974 county of Kent.
Medieval County of Kent.

OS Map Grid Reference: TR017477
Latitude 51.19152° Longitude 0.88477°

Eastwell Manor has been described as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are masonry ruins/remnants remains.

This is a Grade 2 listed building protected by law*.

Description

Eastwell Manor and Courtyard Gateways 1843 by William Burn, rebuilt 1926 - 8 by B.C. Deacon. Flint, dressed stone and plain tile roof. An 'E' plan, with extended wings, including remains of C18 house by Joseph Bonomi. ... The remains of the earlier house now form attached walled gardens left. and right. Subsidiary features: in the courtyards to the rear of the house are 2 C16 gateways (formerly separately listed), a round headed stone archway with flanking columns and cartouche over, and, to north, a 4 centred brick arched gateway, castellated, flanked by buttresses and castellated walls. Interior: the house contains many earlier features brough in from elsewhere in C20, including an oriel window in the kitchen court, panelling from Markyate, Hertfordshire, and a C17 staircase, provenance unknown. (Listed building report)

Sir Moyle Finch ... resided at Eastwell-place, which he made very great additions to, and in 1589, obtained the queen's licence to inclose his grounds here, not exceeding one thousand acres, and to turn the highways that might be annoyed by it, and to embattle his house of Estwell. (Hasted)

A Royal licence to crenellate was granted in 1589 June 5 (Click on the date for details of this licence.).

Comments

The last known licence to crenellate granted to Sir Moile Finche to crenellate his mansion house at Eastwell in 5 June 1589. The current Eastwell manor in a mainly C19 house and the house has had several periods of rebuilding since 1589 but it is clear from the surviving remains the late C16 house had only decorative crenellations and was not seriously defensible. However, a definition of a fortified manor house is a house granted a licence to crenellate - regardless of the form of the house - so this was a fortified manor house.

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1299575
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 503809; 503810.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) TR 04 NW 177.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Tudorplace.com (Biography of Moyle Finch)
  Eastwell Manor
Books
- Hasted, Edward, 1798 (2edn), The history and topographical survey of the county of Kent Vol. 7 p. 398-412 online transcription
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- Neal, S.R. (ed), 2004, Calendar of patent rolls 31 Elizabeth I (1587-1588) (Kew: List & Index Society 300) p. 55 No. 297

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

Data >	PastScape	County HER		Listing	I. O. E.
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio