Continuing our search for autumn colour we went to Scotney Castle, near Lamberhurst in West Kent.  The site is owned by the National Trust and actually contains the ruins of a medieval, moated manor house and the Tudor-style country house built to replace the castle as a residence in the 19th century.  The site is also famous for its beautifully landscaped gardens, laid out by William Gilpin at the same time as the country house was built and using the old castle as a picturesque focal point. 

 We arrived on a cold, cloudy morning, but with a forecast for sunny intervals I was hopeful of some nice pictures of the castle reflected in the moat.  We got a timed ticket for the tour of the house and had an early lunch in the café before heading out into the gardens.  The landscaped gardens with their mixture of native and ornamental trees looked beautiful and there was some lovely colour, particularly from the beeches and a beautiful scarlet Japanese Maple.  Like Box Hill, however, the distant views were spoilt a little by the number of trees that had already lost their leaves. 

After enjoying the distant view of Goudhurst from the terrace in front of the house we had a brief look at the quarry garden built in the area where the Kentish Ragstone was quarried for the building of the house.  Unfortunately we couldn’t go in because the garden was closed for safety reasons.  Then it was downhill to the old castle and, as promised by the Met Office the sun came out.  With very little breeze the moat reflected the buildings beautifully and presented me with lots of opportunities for pictures. 

After a nice gentle stroll around the gardens it was time for our guided tour around the house, and very interesting it was too.  Some of the grander rooms had panelling and fireplaces taken from the old castle, which we heard was deliberately partially dismantled in the 19th century to make it a more picturesque ruin!  The remainder of the house was a more typical country house, with the rooms remaining much as they would have looked between 1930 and 1970.  There was also an interesting short talk by one of the restoration team who had been working to save the wallpaper from the attention of silverfish and other pests.  The house had been papered roughly every 10 years, each time directly over the previous paper, so the 10 or more layers present an interesting history of the development of wallpaper design. 

After the tour we found the sky had clouded over again so, rather than go back into the garden, we decided to head home after a visit to the café for a hot drink.  A very enjoyable day and a place we’d recommend to anyone. 

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