Sissinghurst is a small village in the county of
KentKent , originally Cantia, is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent...
in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Originally called
Mylkehouse, Sissinghurst changed its name in the 1850s, possibly to avoid association with the smuggling and cockfighting activities of the Hawkhurst Gang.
The nearest railway station is at
StaplehurstStaplehurst railway station serves Staplehurst in Kent, England. The station, and all trains serving it, is operated by Southeastern. Staplehurst is south east of London Charing Cross on the South Eastern Main Line.-Staplehurst Rail Crash:...
.
Sissinghurst is situated with
CranbrookCranbrook is a long-designated market town in Kent in South East England. It is the smallest town in Kent. Located on the Maidstone to Hastings road, it is five miles north of Hawkhurst...
to the south,
GoudhurstGoudhurst is a village in Kent on the Weald, about south of Maidstone.It stands on a crossroads, where there is a large village pond. It is also in the Cranbrook catchment area.-Origin of name:...
to the west,
TenterdenTenterden is a small town in the Ashford District of Kent, England. It stands on the edge of the Weald, overlooking the valley of the River Rother....
to the east and Staplehurst to the north.
Sissinghurst is a small village in the county of
KentKent , originally Cantia, is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent...
in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Originally called
Mylkehouse, Sissinghurst changed its name in the 1850s, possibly to avoid association with the smuggling and cockfighting activities of the Hawkhurst Gang.
The nearest railway station is at
StaplehurstStaplehurst railway station serves Staplehurst in Kent, England. The station, and all trains serving it, is operated by Southeastern. Staplehurst is south east of London Charing Cross on the South Eastern Main Line.-Staplehurst Rail Crash:...
.
Geography
Sissinghurst is situated with
CranbrookCranbrook is a long-designated market town in Kent in South East England. It is the smallest town in Kent. Located on the Maidstone to Hastings road, it is five miles north of Hawkhurst...
to the south,
GoudhurstGoudhurst is a village in Kent on the Weald, about south of Maidstone.It stands on a crossroads, where there is a large village pond. It is also in the Cranbrook catchment area.-Origin of name:...
to the west,
TenterdenTenterden is a small town in the Ashford District of Kent, England. It stands on the edge of the Weald, overlooking the valley of the River Rother....
to the east and Staplehurst to the north. It sits just back from the
A229The A229 is a major road running north-south through Kent.The road begins in the Medway town of Rochester at the foot of Star Hill forming a junction with the A2 road. It then climbs up through the built-up area of Chatham, passing Troy Town and Rochester Airport before descending the slope of the...
which goes from Rochester to
HawkhurstHawkhurst is a village and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. The parish lies to the south-east of Tunbridge Wells....
.
History
Sissinghurst's history is similar to that of nearby
CranbrookCranbrook is a long-designated market town in Kent in South East England. It is the smallest town in Kent. Located on the Maidstone to Hastings road, it is five miles north of Hawkhurst...
. Iron Age working tools have been found and the village was for centuries a meeting and resting place for people travelling towards the south coast.
Sissinghurst Castle Gardens
Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by
Vita Sackville-WestVictoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and poet. Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems...
, poet and gardening writer, and her husband
Harold NicolsonFor the former American Central Intelligence Agency officer and spy for Russia, see Harold Nicholson.Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician...
, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the
Bloomsbury groupThe Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half of the...
who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of
The ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In about the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a left-liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-History:The...
, which incidentally – for she never touted it – made her own garden famous. Sissinghurst's
gardenA garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form is known as a residential garden. Western gardens are almost universally...
is one of the best-loved in the whole of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, drawing visitors from all over the world. The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, divided by high clipped
hedgeA hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced shrubs and tree species, planted and trained in such a way as to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area. Hedges used to separate a road from adjoining fields or one field from another, and of sufficient age to incorporate larger trees, are...
s and pink brick walls.
The Church
Sissinghurst's religious activities are served by its Anglican church, Trinity Church (built in 1838), with the Rev Allan Norris who is also Rector of Frittenden.
People
People of note who have lived in Sissinghurst include:
- Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop is a British satirist, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. He has appeared on many radio and television programmes, most notably as a team captain on the BBC current affairs quiz Have I Got News for You.-Early life:Hislop was born in Mumbles, Swansea in...
. The editor of Private EyePrivate Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, currently edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic of public figures deemed incompetent, inefficient or corrupt, and has become a self-styled "thorn in the side" of...
and team captain on the popular satirical current affairs quiz Have I Got News for YouHave I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been running since 1990...
.
- Vita Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and poet. Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems...
, The Hon Lady Nicolson, English poet, novelist and gardener.
- Sir Harold Nicolson, British diplomat, author and politician.
- Peter Vibart, Fictional character in Jeffery Farnol's book The Broad Highway. Much of the novel is set in Sissinghurst.
External links