Sissinghurst Castle Garden

History

The Sissinghurst estate had a working Tudor mansion by the 1560s, most of which was later demolished after use as a prison for French sailors during the Seven Years' War and then as a parish workhouse. By the time Sackville-West and Nicolson acquired the ruins in 1930, only fragments survived, including the tall Elizabethan tower where Sackville-West wrote much of her later work. Following Sackville-West's death in 1962, her son Nigel Nicolson donated the estate to the National Trust in 1967 through the National Land Fund in lieu of death duties.

Architecture

The surviving Elizabethan tower, thought to date from around the 1560s, is the most complete remnant of the original courtyard house and now holds Sackville-West's writing room. The rest of the garden buildings are a mix of restored Tudor brick ranges and later twentieth-century additions built to frame the garden rooms.

Worth knowing

Vita Sackville-West's close friendship and affair with Virginia Woolf inspired Woolf's novel Orlando, and Woolf was a visitor to Sissinghurst during the years the garden was being made. Harold Nicolson, a diplomat and diarist, designed much of the garden's formal structure while Sackville-West chose the planting.

Gardens & grounds

The garden is arranged as a series of enclosed 'garden rooms' reached by axial walks, with the White Garden regarded as one of the most influential single-colour plantings ever made, and the rose collection considered among the finest assemblages of old garden roses in the world.