Qualla: Lullingstone Castle

Lullingstone Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Twenty generations. That is the unbroken stretch of one family at Lullingstone, the Hart Dykes, who have lived here since 1543. The current owner, Tom Hart Dyke, is a plant hunter who once spent nine months kidnapped by guerrillas in the jungle on the Colombia-Panama border. He came home, took over the family estate, and converted the walled herb garden into a World Garden where he grows specimens from every country he can reach. The castle keeps adding chapters in much the way it has done for half a millennium: one generation at a time, in red brick, beside the River Darent.

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Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lullingstone Castle: The Manor in the Domesday Book

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agadant, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lullingstone is in the Domesday Book of 1086, which is to say it was already old when the Normans counted it. In 1279 the manor was bought by Gregory de Rokesley, who served eight terms as Lord Mayor of London and was reckoned the richest man of his generation in the City. The Ro...

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Image: Agadant | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lullingstone Castle: Henry VIII Came Hunting

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henry VIII visited Lullingstone with Anne Boleyn. They came to hunt: the 120-acre park around the castle was a fenced deer park, and the house functioned partly as a hunting lodge. In 1543 the estate passed by marriage to Sir Percyvall Hart, chief steward and knight harbinger to ...

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Image: Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lullingstone Castle: Silk for a Royal Wedding

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Trimming, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the early twentieth century Zoe Dyke created the Lullingstone Silk Farm on the estate, raising silkworms whose threads were spun into silk of exceptional quality. Queen Mary visited and was sufficiently impressed that the farm was commissioned to produce silk for the coronatio...

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Image: Peter Trimming | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lullingstone Castle: The World Garden

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tom Hart Dyke is the twentieth Hart Dyke to own Lullingstone. In 2000, on a plant-hunting expedition in the Darien Gap looking for rare orchids, he was kidnapped along with a friend by guerrillas and held captive for nine months. He spent that time, by his own account, sketching ...

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Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lullingstone Castle: What You See on the Approach

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0. The drive in passes through the gates of the Tudor gatehouse and reveals the house in red brick across a lawn. To the side stands St Botolph's Church, of Norman foundation or older, with much later restoration, its small churchyard punctuated by ancient yews. The 120-acre estate ...

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Image: Marathon | CC BY-SA 2.0