Seat Of Civilisation

Saltwood Castle, Kent, part II The home of Jane Clark In the second of two articles, Clive Aslet looks at the revival of this great medieval castle as a country seat in the 1880s and its most recent history as the home of the Clark family

In its medieval prime, Saltwood Castle, set above the Cinque Port of Hythe in Kent, formed a magnificent spectacle, as impressive from ships in the English Channel as from land. Here were the power and splendour of the See of Canterbury incarnate. By the 19th century, however, most of the castle buildings had fallen in; earthquakes had struck in 1580, 1692 and 1755 (and occasionally still happen). Only the gatehouse survived, having been turned into what was probably an uncomfortable dwelling.

When Turner sketched Saltwood in about 1795, he showed the old wooden barn that stood next to it; other Picturesque artists included rustic figures, farm carts and cattle. By that point, it was owned by William Deedes, who had acquired it through an exchange of land in 1794; a couple of years later, he built Sandling Park, inland from Saltwood, for his own occupation. By the 1880s, the castle had ‘become unfit even for the purposes of a farm-house’.

Those words come from Frederick Beeston’s Archaeological Description of Saltwood, published in 1885. Beeston had just completed a restoration of the castle for the William Deedes of the day, which turned the gatehouse into a ‘suitable residence for a country gentleman’.

Battlements and machicolation were returned to the mighty circular towers, the base of the original latrine tower became a water closet and a vaulted hall led to what is depicted as ‘Mr Deedes’ Room’: now a continuation of the hall, it was at the bottom of the original 12th-century gatehouse, square in plan, with massively thick walls.