Linton Park, Nr Maidstone, England

The mansion was built in 1730 for Robert Mann. The park was largely created between 1801 and 1819. The front of the house was enlarged and embellished by Thomas Cubitt in 1829 to create a ‘Carlton House Terrace....in the Hills'- (Newman). The house has been lavishly restored and redecorated by the present owners.

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

A house known as Capell's Court was recorded on the site in the late 14th century. It passed to the Baysden and then the Maney families before the estate was plundered during the Civil War. It was owned briefly by Sir Thomas Twysden from 1710 to 1712 and then by Sir George Jocelyn before it became the property of Sir Robert Mann, who built the core of the present house in about 1730. After his death in 1751 and that of his eldest son, Edward Louisa, in 1775, Edward's brother Sir Horace Mann, diplomat and friend of Horace Walpole, made Linton over to his nephew, who later became Sir Horace Mann II. The Mann family began the planting of the estate, but following Sir Horace's death in 1814, it passed through marriage to James Cornwallis, subsequently the fifth Earl Cornwallis who, from 1825, improved the house and grounds. Lady Julia, daughter of the last Earl, inherited in 1852, married Lord Holmesdale, the third Earl Amherst, and carried out further improvements to the gardens. The estate was sold to Olaf Hambro in 1938 and then in 1963 to the Daubeny family who, while retaining the majority of the park, sold the house, stables, and immediate grounds to the Freemasons in 1974. These then became a school for a year before being sold again to an investment company and then to an insurance company. The house lay empty for a period in the early 1980s before being purchased in 1985, with the gardens and the parkland to the north-west, by Linton Park plc. The whole site remains (1997) in mixed corporate and private ownership.