Foots Cray Place, Sidcup, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest: 

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Foots Cray Place was built in about 1754 for Bourchier Cleeve, a pewterer and financier who had bought the estate two years earlier. The design, attributed to Isaac Ware, was based on Palladio's Villa Rotunda. The new mansion replaced the medieval manor house, Pyke Place, which stood adjacent to All Saints' church at the southern end of the site, and which was demolished in the late 18th century. Nicholas Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer acquired Foots Cray Place in 1822, and also purchased the adjoining estate, North Cray Place, eleven years later. Between 1822 and 1832 Vansittart employed William Sawrey Gilpin (1762-1843) to make improvements to the joint estate. His alterations are recorded on the 1840 Tithe map.

The North Cray Place estate covered an area to the east of the River Cray, the surviving parkland now (1997) known as Foots Cray Meadows. Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) was involved in the development of North Cray Place, receiving £1300 from the then owner, Mr Coventry, a Sub-Governor of the South Sea Company, in 1771.

North Cray Place stood next to the parish church on the eastern boundary of the present registered site. It was rebuilt in the early 19th century and, after being damaged in the Second World War, was demolished in 1962, the site built over and the surviving parkland (Foots Cray Meadows) reunited with Foots Cray Place.

The early 19th century property of Foots Cray and North Cray was subdivided later in the century and in the late 1890s Foots Cray Place and most of its original land was let to Simon Waring, who purchased it in 1912 and lived there until the early 1930s. In 1903 Waring called in Thomas H Mawson (1861-1933) who, according to his plan published in 1927 (Mawson), elaborated on the design of Sawrey Gilpin. Waring carried out Mawson's proposals in stages but it would appear that the design was never fully implemented. Waring died at the beginning of 1940, by which time the Royal Naval Training Establishment, HMS Worcester, occupied the house.

In 1946 the house was bought by Kent Education Committee for use as a museum, but three years later it was damaged by fire and pulled down. A major part of the site is now (1997) a public open space managed by the London Borough of Bexley.