Barham House

The Barham family included important Sussex ironmasters in the 16th and 17th centuries, so the site probably has links with them.

There is an un-named house with a small garden, including trees, corresponding to the site of Barham House, shown on the Ordnance Survey 1st edition map (18l3). No ponds are marked.

By 1874 (the Ordnance Survey 6"map) a substantial area to the east of the house has been organized into gardens, parkland and woodland. The immediate surroundings of the house are furnished with trees, mainly conifers. A drive, linking two entrances on the nearby road, passes through the middle. Also near to the house there is an orchard and probably a vegetable garden. Farther from the house are substantial areas of parkland including occasional trees. Some distance from the house is a mixed wood, Cinder Wood (perhaps indicating a link with iron founding), through which a stream passes. There are many strips and small patches of woodland and a shelter belt of trees around the whole estate.

Almost due east of the house is a large lake and south of that a string of two elongated ponds fed by the stream that passes through Cinder Wood. Johnson (l998) notes that there are the remains of a Victorian pinetum. Abbs (l999) cites (Sales particulars, 1871) ‘an extensive conservatory, paved with Minton tiles, two vineries separated by a handsome domed centre, together 67 feet long; gardens and pleasure grounds, terrace, shrubbery walks, ornamental lakes and boathouse; kitchen garden, orchards and handsomely timbered park'.

Abbs (l999) notes, apparently from the 1911 map, or sale particulars: ‘Punch and Judy house, Lister diesel pump and reservoir, Gothic pavilion on island now gone, cambered wooden bridge, property now divided'.

The general form of the estate was similar in the l930s (Ordnance Survey 25"map, 1931, and Ordnance Survey 6"map, 1932). The ornamental area by the house has increased, an orchard has disappeared. Much of the shelter belt of trees has disappeared.

There is a full estate agent's description (Winkworth and others, 1953). The whole Barham Estate of 185 acres (74 hectares) was being sold including farm, pasture, arable and woodland, as well as the house and ornamental grounds which occupied 12 acres (4.8 hectares). According to the particulars, the house, brick and half-timbered, was built in 1914 on the site of a much older and larger building. It had a winter garden leading into a range of glasshouses. Outside was a terrace, and close by a bathing pool enclosed by a hedge.

The pleasure grounds included ‘wide spreading and shady lawns ornamented by a variety of choice flowering and specimen trees including azaleas and rhododendrons'. There was ‘a lake of about half an acre (0.2 hectares) with island having a thatched summer house, reached by a rustic bridge; a wilderness walk leading through a picturesque glen to a chain of two lakes fed by springs and a pump house'. There was a kitchen and fruit garden occupying two acres (0.8 hectares) and a Georgian garden building, brick-built, rendered and slated, measuring 44 feet (13.4 metres) by 20 feet (6.1 metres), arranged as three rooms.

A recent map (Ordnance Survey 6", 1980) suggests appreciable changes in land use, though the pools and Cinder Wood are still there.

Type

Garden

Purpose

Ornamental

Principal Building

Domestic / Residential

Survival

Part: standing remains

Hectares

4.8

Civil Parish

East Hoathly with