The New Murrey and Blue blog

Here is another fine old house for sale, although way out of my price bracket. I’ve learned of it courtesy of Country Life magazine. Hunton Court, formerly Court Lodge, is tucked away near Maidstone in Kent and you can read about it here. There is a link to the estate agent’s details of the property, with numerous fine photographs.

The house, once known as Court Lodge, has had a turbulent history: first built in the 13th century and part of an estate that had belonged to Canterbury’s Christ Church Priory, it was handed to Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry VIII’s High Sheriff for Kent, after the Dissolution of Monasteries.

Wyatt was a man of many talents: a diplomat, adventurer, poet, and the man credited with writing the first sonnet in English. He was also a canny political operator, navigating turbulent atmosphere of the Tudor court and managing to keep his head, even though he’d been accused first of adultery with Anne Boleyn. He was lucky that it only earned him imprisonment in the Tower.  

The once-named Court Lodge was “got at” in the 19^th century and became Hunton Court, and now more resembles the Georgian period than its medieval roots. Which is a great shame. To be fair though, according to Hasted the house was “ruinated” by the late 18^th century.

You can read more here (from where I have taken the above illustration of the ruins).

And about Sir Thomas here.