From the report:

" From the C14 the Brenchley area flourished with trades associated with cloth making but from the C16 to the C18 it was also an important centre for iron working and much of the area’s ancient woodland was felled to provide fuel for furnaces and clearings for hammer ponds (Hasted). The wealth generated from these industries was used to construct many ‘mostly old-fashioned timbered buildings’. At Crittenden House, although the origins and names of the early owners are unrecorded, the core of the house is timber framed and is characteristic of a Wealden farmstead of the early C17 (listed building description).
The earliest evidence of the layout of Crittenden House and grounds is the 1862 OS map which shows a house and farm buildings with two large ponds. To the north of the house an orchard and an oast house are shown extending into farmland and woodland, although the extent of the Crittenden land holding is not known (Tompsett). By 1897 the house had been enlarged, a third pond had been dug in former woodland to its east and the orchard had been further extended (2nd edn OS map). The house was again enlarged in the early C20 but no changes appear to have been made to the grounds (4th edn OS map). In the 1920s farmland to the west of the house was sold off (Clark) and by 1934 Crittenden House and its remaining land had become the premises of Kent Hop, Fruit & Stock Farms Ltd (Kelly).
In 1946 the farmland to the west of the house was bought by Mr Ben Tompsett, a fruit farmer from Yalding, to extend his apple and pear orchards. In 1955 he also bought Crittenden House from the then owner, a Mrs Spikernell, who offered it for sale as ‘a genuine period residence of outstanding charm and character’ (Clark). At the time, however, Tompsett described the house as ‘barely visible behind a hedge and through a mass of bushes’ and with c.1.6ha of ‘wilderness’. During the subsequent four years he restored the farmhouse and outbuildings and, with the help of the landscape gardener, F. G. T. Manners, laid out a garden. He also stocked the ponds with Golden Carp, Golden Orfe and Silver Rudd to ‘give colour and bright movement’ (Tompsett). Tompsett also sought advice from the notable plant collector Captain Collingwood Ingram of The Grange (Benenden) and the Royal Horticultural
Society adviser, Mr Tuffin, on the planting of ‘a beautiful wild garden’ and obtained ‘many fine specimens … from old gardens and nurseries [and] kind friends’.
The garden was opened to the public under the National Gardens Scheme from 1959 until Tompsett’s death in 2000 during which time he transplanted many mature trees, established a rhododendron collection, experimented with the effects of night lighting on foliage and textural plants and brought back new specimens from plant hunting expeditions in South Africa, Chile, China and the Soviet Union (Telegraph). His achievements and the Crittenden garden were celebrated in a number of articles and photographs (Huxley, Whitsey, Mitchell). Wright described it as an ‘informal plantsman’s garden dominated by shrubs, exotic trees and some perennials, yet with strong design qualities’.
During the late C20 Oast House and Crittenden Farm Bungalow (west of the house) were sold and a separate access track was built to serve the two properties and also late C20 Walnut Tree Farm constructed on adjoining land north of the house. They remain in separate, private ownership."(1)

<1> Barbara Simms, 2009, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Tunbridge Wells Borough:Crittenden (Unpublished document). SKE16078.