Castle and Gardens
The surrounding 120-acre (0.49 km2) park was previously a fenced deer park, with the castle serving as a hunting lodge. The grounds are located on the River Darent and hidden within are Queen Anne's bathhouse and an icehouse dating from the 18th century.
It also contains some of the oldest oak trees in Britain, wildflowers, a medieval church (St Botolph's, with the oldest stained glass window in England) and a walled garden, and used to contain Lullingstone Roman Villa.
The Castle was previously home to the Lullingstone Silk Farm which produced silk for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation gown. In 2011, the Castle was the location for the Comparethemarket.com advert 'Tough decision', featuring meerkats Sergei and Aleksandr.
The walled garden - previously a Herb garden designed by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde - has recently been converted into the World Garden of Plants by the Castle's current heir (and 20th generation of the Hart Dyke's), plant hunter Tom Hart Dyke. That conversion was the subject of the BBC2 series Save Lullingstone Castle. Tom Hart Dyke and the World Garden were again featured in Spring 2007 on the BBC2 series, Return to Lullingstone Castle. The garden and the castle are open to the public from April through to September.
Read more about this topic: Lullingstone Castle
Famous quotes containing the words castle and, castle and/or gardens:
“If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“Have We not made the earth as a cradle
and the mountains as pegs?
And We created you in pairs,
and We appointed your sleep for a rest;
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and We appointed day for a livelihood.
And We have built above you seven strong ones,
and We appointed a blazing lamp
and have sent down out of the rain-clouds water cascading
that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants,
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—Qur’an, “The Tiding” 78:6-16, ed. Arthur J. Arberry (1955)