Hall Place, Bexley, Dartford, England

The gardens at Hall Place have a long history. Parts of the garden walls date back to the Tudor period and have a distinctive black diaper brickwork pattern.  By 1885 the kitchen gardens, on the site of the current nursery, contained ‘A range of Vineries, Hot Houses and Cucumber Houses [...] heated by hot water […] Forcing Pits; Open and other Sheds; Tool House; Melon Ground; Orchard; Asparagus Beds &c.’ The present glasshouses were installed in 1987. 

To the south and west of the house the gardens stretch out on either side of the River Cray. Adjacent to the house on the west side are the formal gardens. The first visual record of the gardens is John Bowra’s map of the estate from 1769. What is now the formal garden was then called Bowling Green Mead, a legacy of its function as a space for outdoor entertainments, such as bowls, from the 16th century onwards.

The current terrace gardens are shown on the Bowra map and a pond existed in place of what is now the sunken garden. Lady Limerick (a private tenant at Hall Place from 1917 to 1943) was responsible for the topiary chess pieces on the lawn. The Queen’s Beasts topiaries which run parallel with the river Cray are modelled on those at Kew and were installed in 1953 for Elizabeth II’s coronation. On the opposite bank of the River Cray are the rock gardens and meadows.  

The Hall Place estate once included a number of additional buildings: a boathouse, pigeon house, dairy, bake-house and mill. The last mill on the estate was demolished in 1929. The Jacobean barn (now a restaurant) with its huge pitched roof was built in the 17th century as a threshing barn. Adjacent to the barn are the stables, which also date from the 17th century.  The first floor was considerably altered in the 19th century.

In the corner of the east lawn next to the road is the lodge. Commissioned by Maitland Dashwood in the 1870s it shows elements of the Jacobean revivalist and Queen Anne styles. The Jacobean barn, stable block and lodge continue to be occupied though their use has changed.

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Sir John Champenois, a wealthy merchant who was Lord Mayor of London in 1534, purchased Hall Place in 1537 and started to build his house between 1537 and 1540. The stone- and flint-built house was altered and enlarged by his son, Justinian, who inherited the property on the death of his father in 1556. Justinian's son, Richard, lived in the house until 1649 when he sold it to Robert Austen, a London merchant from Tenterden in Kent. Robert Austen, knighted in 1660, extended the southern part of the house using brick instead of stone. Hall Place remained in the Austen family until 1772 when the seventh baronet died childless and the estate passed to Sir Francis Dashwood. The Dashwood family owned the estate for the next 150 years, although they seldom lived at Hall Place, and for seventy years the house was let as a private school. From about 1870 the property was let to a series of tenants, the last of whom was the Countess of Limerick who lived at Hall Place from 1917 until her death in 1943. Lady Limerick made many modifications to the house and garden, including planting topiary. The property was bought in 1926 by her son-in-law, the American financier James Cox Brady, who sold it to Bexley Council in 1935. The grounds are now a public open space and the mansion is used to house Bexley Museum and Bexley Local Studies Centre.