Great Maytham Hall, Cranbrook, England

Great Maytham is one of the few houses and gardens in Kent designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and as such is of great importance in this survey. The only other Lutyens house of importance in the County is The Salutation at Sandwich. Thankfully, most of the essentials of the Lutyens garden have survived, despite the general unawareness of their origins.

Great Maytham is one of Lutyens' country houses in his neo-Georgian manner, built in 1909-1910 for H J Tennant, the brother of Margot Asquith. He incorporated part of a much earlier 18th-century manor house into the older stables and outbuildings. A fine clock tower is at the entrance gate house, and before the 1987 storm a formal avenue of limes lined the gravel drive up to the house. Only one lime tree was standing by the summer of 1988 and the owners were undecided as to any replacements. To the front of the house is an area of some two hectares of informal woodland recently cleared of scrub and brambles.

Lutyens also created a series of formal gardens to the south-west. Here, sloping ground necessitated a giant terrace with characteristic bold and curved flight of steps leading from pergola to a pool garden, with ragstone paths, fine wrought iron gates, brick and tile gazebos and more steps. These areas have been recently improved with more intensive planting of the herbaceous borders, and the current management is keen to improve other areas of planting within the gardens.

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

An early 20th-century formal garden designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, incorporating built elements of an early 18th-century garden and set within a largely 19th-century park, part of which has 18th-century origins.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Great Maytham lies adjacent to the east side of the main Ashford to Hastings Road (A28), on the south side of the village of Rolvenden. The 44 hectare registered site, which comprises 3 hectares of formal and ornamental gardens set within 41 hectares of parkland and woodland, occupies level ground in the centre which rises in gentle undulations to the north-east and falls away to the south-west and south-east. The boundaries to the east and west, largely enclosed by hedges and internal tree fringes, are formed by the A28 and a minor lane, Maytham Road. To the south the boundary follows the course of a park boundary bank lined largely with coppiced hornbeam; on its south side is a public footpath. Beyond the site to the west, south, and east is a gently undulating landscape of small fields, hedgerows, and woodland while to the north the site is bounded by the housing and church of Rolvenden village.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Country Life, 32 (30 November 1912), pp 746-53

L Weaver, Houses and Gardens by E L Lutyens (1913), pp 247-56

J Newman, The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (1969), p 479

J Brown, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon (1982), pp 170, 179

Great Maytham Hall, guidebook, (Country Houses Association 1982)

Maps

W Mudge, Map of Kent, 1" to 1 mile, 1801

C Greenwood, Map of the County of Kent from an actual survey made in the years 1819 and 1820, about 1" to 1 mile, 1821

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1870-2, published 1877; 2nd edition published 1899; 3rd edition published 1909

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1870; 2nd edition published 1898; 3rd edition published 1908
 

Description written: October 1997

Amended: January 1999

Edited: November 2003