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| Goodnestone
Park was built in 1704 by Brook Bridges who had recently purchased
the estate. The date of the house is scratched onto a brick
on the main front. During the early 18th century the house
was surrounded by extensive formal gardens recorded in a view
by William Harris. These disappeared later in the 18th century
when Sir Brook Bridges, the 3rd baronet and great-grandson
of the builder, replaced the gardens with a landscape park
in the fashion of the time. The park and house as altered
by the 3rd baronet were again recorded in a view by Arthur
Devis. |
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| The 3rd
baronet was responsible for two of the most significant pieces
of family history for Goodnestone. He married Fanny Fowler
who was a co-heiress of the ancient Norman barony of FitzWalter
established in 1295 by the grandson of Robert FitzWalter who
had forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. Throughout
the Tudor period the FitzWalters were leading courtiers and
politicians and became the Earls of Sussex. The widow of the
3rd Earl of Sussex, the sister Sir Philip Sydney, founded
Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Sir Brook Bridges and Fanny Fowler's daughter, Elizabeth,
married Edward Austen, brother of the famous author Jane
Austen. Edward and his young wife spent their early married
life in a house on the Goodnestone estate before moving
to nearby Godmersham. Elizabeth was a favourite relative
for Jane Austen (her daughter Fanny later became one of
Jane's favourite correspondents) and Jane was a regular
guest at Goodnestone during their years there. It is significant
that she began writing her first novel, Pride and Prejudice,
immediately after staying at Goodnestone in 1796.
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next period of important alterations to the Goodnestone gardens
came during the 1840s. Sir Brook Bridges 5th Baronet decided
to change the entrance to the house, adding the imposing portico
to what had been the back and to which a new approach drive
swept down from both sides. Within the curve of the drive
he made a series of terraced lawns with central flights of
steps. On the other side where the entrance had been, he again
terraced the lawns between the house and the park which he
divided from the garden with the present wall. |
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| Towards the end
of the 19th century the last of the Bridges family, a sister
of the last baronet, married a member of the Plumptre family
and their son, Henry Plumptre, was eventually able to successfully
claim the ancient FitzWalter barony in 1924, after it had
been in abeyance for 168 years. He was succeeded in 1952
by his nephew, Brook Plumptre who became the 21st Lord FitzWalter,
who married Margaret Deedes, sister of the famous journalist
and politician, Bill Deedes (Lord Deedes of Aldington).
They have five sons and fifteen grandchildren. Lord FitzWalter
died in October 2004, aged 90 and their eldest son, Julian
succeeded to the title.
Between the two world wars Emmy FitzWalter, Brook FitzWalter's
aunt, made significant improvements to the gardens, notably
the woodland garden with its rockwork and pool. But during
World War Two the house at Goodnestone was requisitioned
by the military and when Brook and Margaret FitzWalter moved
into the house in 1955 the gardens were in a derelict state.
Four years later, in 1959, a disastrous fire destroyed the
roof and upper two storeys of the house and the rebuilding
took 18 months.
Work on the gardens did not begin in earnest until the mid-1960s
and the restoration and expansion to their present standard
has primarily been the work of Margaret FitzWalter. In the
process she has created what many visitors regard to be
one of the outstanding country gardens in England. |
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gardens cover roughly fifteen acres. They are maintained by Paul Bagshaw and three part time ladies.
The soil is
typical of the local area, slightly alkaline loam over the
chalk that extends out from the North Downs, with an outcrop
of more acid greensand in the woodland garden which allows
rhododendrons and other ericaceous plants to thrive.
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