The New Murrey and Blue blog

I love to poke around other people’s houses. Well, wealthy people’s houses. You know, those properties that cost £ millions and (preferably) have a history a mile long. So nothing modern, please. Perhaps I should explain that breaking and entering isn’t my modus operandi, rather do I stick to scouring glossy magazines like Country Life and, above all, the internet. That is how I came upon this 2022 article Five bedroom Kent farmhouse with its own LAKE said to be built for a Prince goesfor sale for £1.9m | Daily Mail Online. The site provides a lot of photographs.

The article begins with the (to me) irresistible hook: “….A house fit for the Black Prince! Five bedroom Kent farmhouse with two oast houses and its own LAKE said to have been built so son of King Edward III could cross goes on the market….”

What I saw in the main article soon convinced me that Ratling Court, near Aylesham in Kent is a thing of joy that in 2022 sold for under £2 million. Well, when it comes to such properties I think that’s not too bad. Well, not for me personally. I couldn’t afford to pop out right now and sign on such a dotted line.

Ratling Court is increasing in value at a rate of knots too. According to this site Property valuation – Ratling Court, Ratling Road, Aylesham, Canterbury, Dover, CT3 3HN (themovemarket.com) “…Since it last sold in April 2022 for £1,875,000, its value has increased by £487,000….”

But all that’s by the by, because it’s the history of Ratling Court that really catches my attention. Its manmade lake is said to have been created so that the “Black Prince” (Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Edward III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Black_Prince) was able “to cross”. Now, I don’t know exactly why he needed to cross a lake, but I suppose it depends on when in his unexpectedly brief life such a thing might have become necessary. In the years leading up to his death he was a very sick man, often bedridden and reduced to travelling in a litter, so I suppose gliding smoothly around in an elegantly royal pleasure craft would be very welcome.

But the lake itself doesn’t seem to be very big (not today anyway, maybe it was larger back then), and if he could get from the house to the water, especially if he was being conveyed in a litter, then surely he’d simply continue around it? So maybe the truth was that he just had a penchant for floating regally around while his minstrels played?

And what of the oast houses and other outbuildings that come with Ratling Court? Well, they are very well preserved.

Among the previous owners are the Earls Cowper (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cowper,_1st_Earl_Cowper). You can read more about them and the history of Ratling Court at this site https://www.nonington.org.uk/the-manor-of-wingham/retlyng-now-ratling-court-near-aylesham/.

In particular you can read that at around noon on 11 December 1741, when  the 2^nd Lord Cowper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clavering-Cowper,_2nd_Earl_Cowper) was out hunting, there was a strange fireball in the sunny sky, accompanied by two loud explosions that shook everything. At first it was thought the event was an earthquake or thunderstorm, but if it was the latter there wasn’t a thundercloud in sight. It was “….almost certainly ball lightning, an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon and observers of it frequently refer to luminous, usually spherical objects, which vary in size from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. It is usually associated with thunderstorms but the phenomenon often lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many historical reports refer to the ball exploding, often with fatal consequences to persons and livestock, and leaving behind the lingering odour of sulphur….”

So if Ratling Court comes on the market again, and you become the lucky new owner, be sure to keep your eye on the sky, because you never know what could be up there. And pay attention earthward too, because on a moonlit night you might see the Black Prince’s elegant vessel on the lake.

OK, OK, time to come clean. I admit that the prince’s gorgeous pleasure craft is my over-active imagination, as is his possible penchant for drifting around on the Ratling Court lake. But it should be fact! Right? 😇 And his connection to the lake is a local legend, so that part at least has a soupçon of fact attached to it.