The Postern, Tunbridge Wells

To the rear of the house the garden has been divided into formal compartments by yew and copper beech hedges. This has created several different enclosed areas and considerable interest within a relatively small garden. Immediately behind the house is a lawn edged with shrubs and a very old mulberry tree with rambler roses growing through it.

Beyond, the garden divides into the various hedged sections. These include a croquet lawn and swimming pool area surrounded by modern shrub roses. The hard tennis court and viewing pavilion are well screened by a pergola of hornbeam. Other ornamental ‘secret' gardens include a sunken rose garden and a secluded seating area with interesting planting. Examples include Acer griseum, Sorbus vilmorinli and several Camellia, Euphorbia and Juniperus species.

The rose garden features mostly older roses, including pillars of Felicite et Perpetue, Mme Hardy, Tuscany Superb, Reine des Violettes, and leads down to a gate through which there are good views over the apple orchard. There is an extensive area for fruit and vegetables, including soft fruit cages and greenhouses with melons, gourds, tomatoes and a vine. Outside, nectarines, globe artichokes and sweetcorn mix with the more common vegetables and sweet peas.

Mainly a 1950s garden, the thoughtful design and interesting planting (most plants are labelled) combined with a generous sprinkling of statuary and garden buildings, have given the garden an air of maturity and permanence.

The following text is taken from the Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Tunbridge Wells Borough:

SITE DESCRIPTION

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

The Postern is situated on the eastern outskirts of Tonbridge in the Medway Valley and stands on land that slopes steeply to the south and west with views over the surrounding farmland and orchards. The village of Tudeley is approximately 1.5km to its south-east, Paddock Wood 6km to its east and Royal Tunbridge Wells 7.5 km to its south. The c.1.6ha site is bordered to its south by Postern Lane, to its west by an access track to Postern Heath Farm, and to its east by a road to Postern Park. Its northern boundary abuts commercial orchards.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES

The entrance to The Postern stands on the north side of Postern Lane. A gravelled drive passes between the posts of a 1.5m high five-bar, wooden gate from which point the house can be viewed. The curving drive runs c.60m in a north-easterly direction between 2m high, clipped yew hedges to arrive at a circular, gravelled forecourt on the west, entrance front of the house.

On the north side of the forecourt, a 2m high, curved, brick wall extends a few metres from the house across part of the forecourt, separating it from the stable block.

On maps from 1862 (1st edn OS map) the drive from the south to the west entrance front is shown. However, as the date of 1757 and the initials of John Eldrige are inscribed on the south front of the house, it has been suggested that this was the entrance front of the house in the C18 (Edwards).

PRINCIPAL BUILDING

The Postern (listed grade II*), built in 1757 with some C19 and C20 alterations, is a three-storey, red-brick house, five window bays wide, with sandstone ashlar footings, brick chimney stacks and a peg-tile roof (listed building description). The house is built into the hillside on its east side, resulting in the ground floor on this side being below ground level. It has been extended on two fronts, on the north by a C19, single-storey service block and on the west by a single-storey conservatory built by the present owners c.2000.

Ten metres to the north of the house is a C19 single-storey, red-brick stable block under a tiled roof, converted in 1957 to garages and storage. A few metres to its south-west is a two-storey, C19 coach house in a similar architectural style, converted at the same time to accommodation (inscribed 1957, with the initials J. G. P.) and but recently (2008) refurbished.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS

To the immediate west and south-west of the forecourt is an informal lawn studded with trees, most of which have been planted in the last fifty years (personal communication). About 40m from the house, a stream flows through the lawn, crossed by a hump-backed, Japanese-style, wooden bridge and with its banks planted with moisture-loving plants. The lawn is sheltered and visually enclosed on its east by the yew hedge along the drive and on its west side by a 2m high beech hedge enclosing it from the track to Postern Heath Farm. A late C20 heather garden occupies the north-east corner. The stream in the garden, identified on the Tithe Map as Hammer Dyke, is a tributary of the Medway and by 1862 the land around it was shown planted with mature trees, many of which (sweet chestnuts, beech, horse chestnuts and Scotch fir) were felled from 1950 (personal communication). A footbridge across the stream is first shown on the 1908 OS map, but the present bridge was designed by Pasley in 1952.

The south front of the house opens onto a York-stone paved terrace (c.25m x20m) that runs along its full width and from which there are fine views south across the lawn to surrounding fields. In similar fashion to the lawn on the west front, this is bounded on its west side by the yew hedge along the drive and by mature beeches on its south side. From the east side of the lawn, the land rises steeply as a grass bank and marks the boundary of a small arboretum some 40m south-east of the house. A flight of steps, decorated with statuary imported from Italy by Anthony Pasley, ascends from the east side of the terrace to the east, garden front.

The main ornamental gardens are laid out on the higher land on the east front of the house, some half a storey above the level of the west, entrance front. They are divided into a number of compartments and decorated with further pieces of imported Italian statuary. The east front opens onto a narrow, random-paved, stone terrace that runs along its length. There are views east up a wide, steep, grass slope to a garden pavilion 70m east of the house. The single-storey, timber garden pavilion was designed in a classical style with a pediment to the designs of Mr Phillimore's architect cousin (Claude Phillimore, a passionate Palladian) in the 1950s (Hellyer). Its open, west-facing front is decorated with trellis ‘columns', while its east-facing front is closed with a door and windows overlooking a tennis court.

As the slope levels out it is flanked by 2m high, yew-hedged compartments (c.80m x 40m) with mixed borders below. Each compartment contains two garden rooms. That on the grass path's north side comprises a sunken parterre garden and a sunken rose garden, both partly enclosed by wisteria-covered pergolas. The hedged compartment on the path's south side contains a second parterre garden and a camellia garden. The camellia garden was laid out in 1952 as a children's garden and retains its 1950s wooden summerhouse and white wrought iron seat and gates, made in the local area (personal communication).

A 45m long gravel path lined by pleached limes runs along the rear of the garden pavilion. It was designed to screen a wire-enclosed tennis court some 75m further east of the house (Pasley). Adjoining the south side of the tennis court, and separated from it by a beech hedge, is a swimming pool and wooden pool house enclosed by a wooden fence, at the foot of which roses are planted. In an area of rough grass on the pool's south side some fruit trees survive froma C19 orchard that formerly occupied the site of the present ornamental gardens (1st edn OS map). A 65m long path lined by a beech hedge runs westwards from the pool to the arboretum which contains mature conifer and beech trees.

KITCHEN GARDEN

The kitchen garden (c.100m x 20m) lies some ten metres north-east of the house and forms a further compartment along the whole length of the north side of the ornamental gardens. It is enclosed by brick walls on its north and east sides and by hedges on its south and west sides and is laid out with perimeter gravel paths and cross paths to form three sections. The two easternmost sections are laid to grass and are separated by one gravel cross path, lined with climbing roses and apple trees, that forms a continuation northwards of the pleached lime walk screening the tennis court. The path terminates at a wrought iron gate in the north wall of the garden from where there are views north over the orchards outside the site boundary. The gate replaced a former claire-voie in the fence in the 1950s when Mr Phillimore purchased the commercial orchards. The westernmost section of the kitchen garden, nearest the house, is still maintained as a productive garden; a C21-century greenhouse has been erected on the site of a former, now demolished C19 glasshouse, the foundations and tiling of which still survive.

There is little evidence of a kitchen garden at The Postern before the mid-C20, although maps show that much of the present ornamental gardens were used as orchards from the mid-C19 (1st edn OS map). A 1946 aerial photograph shows the site of the present kitchen garden laid out in its current form, although enclosed by a fence at that date. The present walls and hedging were introduced in the 1950s (personal communication) and all three sections were in use as a productive kitchen garden until 1997 (aerial photograph).

REFERENCES

Books and articles

W. H. Ireland, History of the County of Kent Vol. 3 (G. Virtue, 1829), p. 355.

C. W. Chalklin, Seventeenth-Century Kent (Longmans: 1965).

John Newman, The Buildings of England. West Sussex and the Weald (1969).

Arthur Hellyer, ‘Fine Design with Good Plants', Country Life vol. CLXIX (14 May 1981), p. 1306-08.

C. W. Chalklin (ed), Georgian Tonbridge (Tonbridge Historical Society, 1994).

Anthony du Gard Pasley, ‘Set and Matched', Country Life (24 April 1997), pp.58-60.

Michael Zell (ed), Early Modern Kent 1540-1640 (Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 87-88.

James Edwards, Capel Explored (Capel History Society, 2007).

Maps

J. Andrews, W. Dury and W. Herbert, A Topographical Map of the County of Kent ...1769.

Tithe map and apportionment 1842-44

OS maps 1st edn 6" OS map 1862

2nd edn 6" OS map 1897

3rd edn 6" OS map 1907

4th edn 6" OS map 1929

OS maps 1st edn 25" OS map 1867 Sheet 50/9 & 50/12

2nd edn 25" OS map 1897 Sheet 50/9 & 50/12

3rd edn 25" OS map 1908 Sheets 50/9 & 50/12

Revd edn 25" OS map 1936 Sheets 50/9 & 50/12

Plan from 1913 Sales Particulars (private collection).

Modern Mastermap 1:10,000. 2007.

Map showing listed buildings within The Postern boundaries.

Illustrations

Aerial photographs 1947, 1972.

RAF2 colour photographs (a) pleached trees, rose borders and ornamental urn (b) rear of house with trees and shrubs. July 1982

Photograph of the house in Edwards, p. 73.

Colour photos of pergola and tennis court in Pasley (1997).

Aerial photographs 1997, 2003.

Archival items

English Heritage listed building entries: undated.

Kent Compendium entry with map 1996.

Research by Janet Mayfield

Description writtenby Barbara Simms

Edited by Virginia Hinze

May 2009