Cobham Hall, Rochester, England

Cobham Hall is a very important place in this survey on two counts. First, the large Jacobean House, and second, a park and grounds laid out by Humphry Repton and recorded in a Red Book. This was rediscovered in 1984 through the Cobham Hall Heritage Trust and has been temporarily loaned for reference and copying. Copies are now with a considerable amount of archive material in the Bursars Office.

The park is notable for its large and varied collection of trees, as well as the remains of Repton's work, although much of the latter is in need of restoration and maintenance.

‘Cobham Hall is a splendid mansion, splendid in scale and set in a Repton landscape of splendid maturity'. This is praise indeed from John Newman (see references).

The main and earliest part of the house was begun by William Brooke (7th Lord Cobham) about 1580 and building was a slow process. In 1591 he gained a licence to import 200 tons of Caen stone (see porch of north wing) but work stopped for 60 years due to the 11th Lord Cobham being implicated in the plot to put Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne.

The 6th Duke of Lennox and Richard inherited the house in 1661 and he built the centre block in the 1660s. Peter Mills (designer of Thorpe Hall) and Sir William Chambers (Kew pagoda) were involved in these extensions. Inigo Jones has often been credited with the design of this west facade but there is no record of this.

The Blighs (Earls of Darnley) came to Cobham in the 18th century, making further additions to the house and landscaping the park. James Wyatt carried out much of the interior work of the enlarged house, and in 1783 built a magnificent mausoleum (Grade I listed building) a quarter of a mile south-east of the house. This is now in a wooded area of the park still owned by the Darnley family. For various reasons it was never used. It is now sadly in a poor state of repair.

In the 16th century a record of the old gardens was made by Holinshed who in his Chronicle notes that William Brooke, (Lord Cobham), made ‘a rare garden there, in which no variety of strange flowers and trees do want, which Europe or from other strange Countries, whereby it is not inferior to the garden of Serimamis (sic)'.

A reference to the grounds in the 18th century reads, ‘except for the walled kitchen garden and the north terrace, the deer park completely surrounds the mansion exposing it to cattle on every side'.

Four lime avenues were planted in the l7th to l8th century. The main, and only remaining, runs south-west almost to Cobham village.

In 1790 the 4th Earl of Darnley commissioned Humphry Repton to re-design the gardens and landscape the park. During the summer of that year he produced one of his famous Red Books on Cobham Hall. Among the many improvements he effected here over 25 years can be noted:

• The pushing back of the park from the north terrace walls (he preserved the earlier feature and the old kitchen garden bringing it to the house by a bridge) and enveloping the whole of the premises in plantations, shrubberies or gardens (having at first noted the bleakness of the place).

• He abolished the carriage approaches to the front, converting this into a flower-garden ‘enriched with marble statues and a fountain'.

• He formed the front terrace garden, a trellis garden to the south-east, and Lady Darnley's garden at the east end of the north terrace as ‘an irregular modern flower garden'.

• On the north, east and south sides sunken walls (ha-has), low fences, balustrading or steps provided a ‘nice graduation from the wilder scenery of the park to the more finished and dressed appearance of the gardens'. After 1800 he was joined by his son John Repton who also did some structural work in the house and built the ‘Elizabethan' entrance lodge half a mile to the north of the A2 (now derelict).

Looking back on his work after 25 years, Repton was to feel a justifiable pride in the transformation, observing ‘The house is no longer a huge pile standing naked on a vast grazing ground ... Its walls are enriched with roses and jasmines, its apartments are perfumed with odours from flowers surrounding it on every side ... all around is neatness, elegance and comfort'.

At some point during the 19th century, a lodge was created in the cottage ornée style to the south of the house at the end of the present Lodge Lane.

His achievements were commemorated by a stone seat bearing his name which Lord Darnley had placed in a grove to the north side of the house.

The Darnleys remained in occupation, making more additions and modifications to the house and gardens. After World War 2, problems of upkeep and continuity forced the sale of the house and part of the park first to the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works. The site was later sold to the present owners, the Westwood Education Trust, as an independent public school for girls.

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The manor of Cobham was granted to William de Cobham in 1208, his elder son being created Baron Cobham in 1313. After 1408, the manor descended, through marriage, to the Brooke family, the tenth Lord Cobham, William Brooke, making Cobham Hall his principal residence, building wings to the house in 1584 and laying out a garden. Following involvement in a plot against James I, his son Henry forfeited the estate to the Crown and in 1612 the king granted the manor of Cobham with Cobham Hall, the gardens, park, and estate to Ludovic Stuart, second Duke of Lennox and later Duke of Richmond. The fourth Duke enlarged the estate in 1636-8 and then from 1660 until his death in 1672, the sixth Duke resumed the rebuilding of the house and the development of the park and gardens, the formal avenues probably being planted at this time. He died heavily in debt and Cobham descended, through a complex pattern of inheritance and purchase, to John Bligh, subsequently created Earl of Darnley. On inheriting Cobham in 1747, the third Earl Darnley began altering and refurbishing the house, work which was continued from the 1780s for the fourth Earl by the architect, James Wyatt. The fourth Earl also employed Humphry Repton in 1790, and later his two sons, to remodel the grounds and the exterior of the house, Repton producing a Red Book for Cobham in 1790. The sixth Earl carried out a programme of planting in the park and gardens in the 1850s and 60s and the eighth Earl, Ivo Bligh, who succeeded in 1900, commissioned new schemes for the south terrace and west courtyard from the designer William Goldring (1854-1919). Cobham Hall was let in the 1920s and in 1925, outlying estate land and the picture collection were sold and the eastern Deer Park laid out as a golf course. The ninth Earl died in 1955 and in 1959 the Land Fund purchased the Hall and some of the surrounding land, including the gardens and pleasure grounds. Following extensive repairs, these were sold in 1963 to the Westwood Educational Trust who established the present school. Adjacent parkland was sold for agricultural use but subsequent division and sale leaves Cobham Hall today (1997) in the hands of more than a dozen private and commercial owners and three charitable trusts.