Groombridge Place

Groombrige Place is one of a moat surrounded mansion from the 17th century in the village of Groombridge, located a few kilometers south west of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England.

Description

Building

Groombridge Place is built on two floors and red brick. Its hipped roof is adorned with several dormers.

Garden and parks

The park was first created in 1674 under Philip Packer. His friend, the garden theorist John Evelyn, advised him on this project. The garden is nestled in a gently sloping south-facing slope and is surrounded on three sides by a dry stone wall from the 15th century. The romantic backdrop to this is the medieval moat that surrounds the house. The gardens include, among other things, the Garden of the White Roses with over 20 varieties of the Oriental Garden and the drunken garden with a collection of cut into funny shapes bushes. It is one of the few gardens from the 17th century, which has survived the later landscape park movement. Outside the wall there is also a fruit and wine garden and a garden with several water features.

History

The ancestors of the owners were closely connected with the history of England: they were involved in the signing of the Magna Carta and in the Battle of Agincourt, and even at the beheading of King Charles I.

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, Treasurer of England, bought Groombridge 1604 and built the first houses in the village. Groombridge 1618 was sold to John Packer, to pay the gambling debts of the third Earl of Dorset can. The house in its present form was built in 1662 on the foundations of previous house of Philip Packer.

Filming

• Pride and Prejudice: In the film adaptation of the 2005 novel written by Jane Austen Groombridge Place served as Longbourn House the Bennet family.
• The Draughtsman's Contract: The film by Peter Greenaway 's 1982 play in the gardens of Groombridge Place.