"CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT
The site of the present Angley Park lay within the manor of Angley (sometimes Anglye) which in the C11 was granted by William the Conqueror to the Abbot of Battle who retained it until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536. Henry VIII then gave the manor to Sir Walter Hendley of Coursehorn, Solicitor of the Court of Augmentations in 1537, whose family retained it until his descendant, the clergyman William Hendley, died in 1798 (Hasted). In 1710, the c.52.5ha property comprised ‘messuage, leans, buildings, orchards, gardens’ with fish ponds, stenes and extensive woodlands (Indenture). Hasted described the land ‘about Anglye’ as hop fields and arable with ‘much rich pasture and fatting land’ (it was also the site of a chalybeate spring) and Church commented on ‘ancient trees of which some are said to be survivors from the royal forest of Anderida’.
The 1801 Mudge map records a Hangley House immediately east of Angley Wood and on the site of the present Angley House. In 1804 a new owner, John Langley, a barrister and recorder at Rochester, ‘fitted up [the mansion] in excellent style’ and improved the grounds. He then sold the property to Sir Walter James, Warden of the Mint, who also ‘was at considerable expense in improving the place’ (Dearn) before selling to a William Coleman in 1811. An 1813 engraving depicts a Regency villa in a sheltered Arcadian setting approached by a drive through parkland with well-established coniferous and deciduous trees and with a lake close by.
A Valentine ConnolIy purchased Angley Park in 1814 and constructed a ‘sheet of water by raising a head or bank across the valley’ in Rock Wood in the northernmost part of the estate (1814 Specification). In 1823, following Connolly’s death, the estate was sold to the Rear Admiral the Hon. James William King. An 1825 estate map records the property as comprising some 334ha, of which 4.5ha are occupied by ‘house, buildings, yards, gardens, pleasure ground, shrubbery, walks, fish ponds, orchard and nursery’, all set within parkland and woods with a ‘sheet of water’, and ‘divided by sunk fences’. In 1847 the ‘neat’ villa was described as ‘situated in a beautiful park’ (Bagshaw) and an 1854 conveyance map indicates that King had enlarged it to a mansion and made improvements to the grounds.
Angley Park was sold to the tobacco importer Mr Sackett Tomlin in 1869. He demolished the mansion and built a new one ‘of no special architectural merit’ and laid out a new carriage drive (Igglesden). On his death in 1876, the property passed to his son, Edward Locke Tomlin, who extended the mansion, stable block and kitchen garden, remodelled the gardens ‘in the romantic style of the Victorian garden’ (April 1979 unidentified newspaper cutting) and installed new lodge gates (2nd and 3rd edn OS maps). After Tomlin’s death in 1929, the estate was broken up for sale into 43 lots with the mansion, gardens, park and Burnt Bank Wood being offered as one lot of c.14ha (Sales Particulars).
The new owner, Edwin Brock, demolished the Victorian mansion in 1931 and replaced it with the present, smaller one which in the late 1930s he offered for sale with about 5.5ha ‘of the Pleasure Grounds of a former Country Mansion’ (Sales Particulars). The remainder of the 14ha of land was sold off separately. Several changes of ownership of the mansion followed. In the 1970s a Mr David Snell (an architect) and his wife opened Angley Park gardens under the National Gardens Scheme (April 1979 unidentified newspaper cutting). A Mr Stephen Forsyth added a swimming pool in 1986 and the mansion was extended in the 1990s.
The present owners are currently (2009) seeking planning permission to demolish the mansion and built a ‘new Classical house’ on its footprint (Langer). The land forming part of the designed landscape of the mansion from at least 1825 and which was sold off in the 1920s and 30s is now occupied by the buildings and grounds of Angley Stud, Weald Sports Centre, Angley School and private houses. The property remains in multiple mixed ownership.
SITE DESCRIPTION
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING
Angley Park lies in a valley within the characteristic High Weald landscape with its patchwork of fields and fruit farms and is sheltered by woods to its north and west. The c.30h site is approximately 0.5k north-west of Cranbrook town and is bordered to the west by Angley Wood, to the south by Angley Road (A229), to the north by Goudhurst Road (A262) and to the east by open agricultural land and sports pitches.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES
Angley Park is approached from the north-west side of Angley Road, the drive entering between 1.5m high brick piers (now, 2009, without gates) and running along a narrow, tarmacadum-surfaced, beech-lined avenue (known as Angley Walk). Immediately to the east of the piers is East Lodge, an early C19, single-storey lodge built in a classical style with walls in cream-painted render. Angley Walk runs for 300m in a north-westerly direction to arrive at a gravelled forecourt on the north front of the mansion. This drive from the east is shown on the 1825 estate map and at that time also served the stable block and kitchen garden some 40m south-east of the mansion. Angley Walk’s avenue of beech trees was added in the late C19 (2nd edn OS map).
A second lodge, Whitewell Lodge (listed grade II) stands c.1k north-east of the mansion on Goudhurst Road and marks the entrance to the former main carriage drive to Angley Park (3rd edn OS map). It is now a private path to Angley Lake. Whitewell Lodge is a late C19, two-storeyed, red-brick building constructed in a neo-Georgian style to the designs of the Arts-and-Crafts-Movement architect Mervyn Macartney (1853-1932) and was featured in Adam’s book, Modern Cottage Architecture (1904). It has a central, round- arched gateway on which is hung a pair of 2m high, wrought iron gates and a round gable flanked by wings with a slate tile roof and lattice casement windows (listed building description). This lodge replaced an earlier one shown on the 1854 conveyance map and OS maps until 1897.
A third lodge (West Lodge) survives some 600m south-west of East Lodge on Angley Road. This was built in the late C19 (2nd edn OS map) and marks the entrance to a drive (disused after the land was sold in the 1930s) shown on the 1854 conveyance map. This ran north-westwards for some 300m through woodland along the south-western boundary of the estate before running north-eastwards for a further 300m through parkland to the mansion’s west front.
A fourth drive enters from Angley Cottage (recorded as a lodge on the 1st edn OS map) which stands on Angley Road some 100m north-east from East Lodge. When the new mansion was built in 1869 a new drive was laid out from Angley Cottage to join an existing track that ran for c.1k in a north-westerly direction to Spratsbourne Farm, 600m north-west of the mansion and once part of the wider Angley Estate (1st edn OS map). All four lodges have been in separate, private ownership since the estate was broken up in the 1920s and 30s.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING
The present Angley House is the third house at Angley Park and was built in the 1930s as a red-brick, four-bedroomed, Georgian-style house to replace the large Victorian mansion (1979 unidentified newspaper cutting). It was extended in the 1990s and has since been described as ‘a nondescript piece of architecture with rendered walls and a mix of slate and clay tile roof’ (Langer).
GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS
The ornamental gardens lie to the south and south-west of the mansion and comprise areas of open lawn studded with mature and young trees of mixed species. They are enclosed on the west by the former C19 drive from West Lodge that now denotes the ownership boundary with Angley Stud. The 1854 conveyance map shows the area of lawn south of the mansion containing a large pond but this had been infilled by 1862 (1st edn OS map). The gardens were laid out following the construction of the new mansion in 1869 and when put up for sale in 1929 they included lawns, rose and flower gardens, a rockery and winding walks (Sales Particulars). Of particular note were ‘woodland walks leading to a charming, ornamental lake of nearly half-an-acre surrounded by clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs’. The lake survives in Rock Wood. A boat house is recorded on the east side of the lake on the 3rd edn OS map. In the 1930s the gardens were again described as ‘lovely matured grounds’ (Sales Particulars) and included croquet or tennis lawn and a ‘spring-
fed ornamental pond suitable for swimming’. A description of the gardens when they were open to the public in 1979 indicates that many of the early C20 features survived, including a mature cedar of Lebanon (unidentified newspaper cutting). Also mentioned were ‘a stone Doric temple and stone-paved terraces’.
PARKLAND
The former parkland to the west and north of the mansion and ornamental gardens is now land belonging to Angley Stud. It is mostly divided by post and rail fences into a number of rectangular paddocks, which are maintained as rough grass with many mature trees surviving (some in poor condition, 2009). The 1813 engraving and maps, descriptions and illustrations from 1825 depict a well-timbered parkland including ‘copper beech, cedar and other ornamental and forest trees’ (1929 Sales Particulars).
KITCHEN GARDEN
A former brick-walled kitchen garden, frame yard, stable block and former home farm lie some 40m to the south-east of the mansion and now accommodate residential properties and grounds, with the kitchen garden itself laid mainly to grass. In 1823, following Valentine Connolly’s death, the productivity of the garden is indicated by items listed in the sale of Angley Park effects from the conservatory, greenhouse, garden, ‘men’s chambers over the stables’, coach house, farm yard and pleasure grounds. These included five melon frames and hundreds of plants, flower pots and garden tools. The kitchen garden is first depicted on the 1825 estate map when it was divided into strips but on the 1854 conveyance map it is laid out in quarters with perimeter paths and a central, round tank.
By 1862 a stable block had been built around a courtyard immediately to the north of the kitchen garden; a glasshouse range had been built against the inside of its north wall and a frame yard constructed alongside the exterior of its east wall (1st edn OS map). The kitchen garden and stable yard were sold with the mansion in the 1829 sale but sold again, as a separate lot, in the 1930s." (1)

<1> Barbara Simms, 2009, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Tunbridge Wells Borough: Angley Park (Unpublished document). SKE16057.