Dene Park is a Victorian mansion house and estate in the parish of Hadlow,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, United Kingdom. It served as the site of the Thomas Delarue School between 1955 and 1965.

History

The Dene Park estate was advertised for sale in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' of 13 July 1878 as being for sale. The house was described as having fifteen bedrooms and set in of land. There was stabling for five horses which included accommodation for a groom. A six bedroom shooting house was included in the sale, as was a farm and several cottages. The house was extensively altered in the next five years. Built in 1883 Dene Park was designed by the architect F.T.W Miller, Dene Park was designed primarily as a sporting estate and occupied 620 acres in total. Built of red brick with bath stone dressings, the gardens were designed by the landscape gardener

Edward Milner Edward Milner (20 January 1819 – 26 March 1884) was an English landscape architect. Early life and career Edward Milner was born in Darley, Derbyshire, the eldest child of Henry Milner and Mary née Scales. Henry Milner was employed at C ...

of which much of his original design work still remains. To the right of the property the iconic round

smokery A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke. The finished product might be stored in the building, sometimes for a year or more.

remains hinting at the property's sporting heritage. Owned by Sir John Hollams until his death in on May 3, 1910, it was then inherited by his second eldest son Frederick Willams Hollams (b. 1848) who lived there for the next thirty one years. Also residing in the home were Frederick's wife, Mary Owen Hollams, daughter of the architect

Sir Charles Lanyon Sir Charles Lanyon DL, JP (6 January 1813 – 31 May 1889) was an English architect of the 19th century. His work is most closely associated with Belfast, Northern Ireland. Biography Lanyon was born in Eastbourne, Sussex (now East Sussex) in ...

, and their daughter, the artist Frances Mabel Hollams. In 1917, Frederick Williams Hollams was appointed

High Sheriff of Kent The high sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown (prior to 1974 the office previously known as sheriff)."Sheriffs appointed for a county or Greater London shall be known as high sheriffs, and any reference in any enactment or instrum ...

. He died on 21 November 1941 aged 93. The contents of Dene Park were sold by

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

on 20 January 1942. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Dene Park became the training school for the

44th (Home Counties) Division The Home Counties Division was an infantry division of the Territorial Force, part of the British Army, that was raised in 1908. As the name suggests, the division recruited in the Home Counties, particularly Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex. ...

and 53rd Division. Jack Rose, a

Hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

pilot flying Hurricanes from West Malling Airfield worked with the instructors to make training as realistic as possible; the school's instructors would carry out exercises on

Shipbourne Shipbourne ( ) is a village and civil parish situated between the towns of Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in the English county of Kent. In 2020 it was named as the most expensive village in Kent. It is located i ...

Green with aircraft flying in fours would carry out low-level navigation exercises culminating on an attack on the Battle School troops. Camera Guns were used and the resulting films passed to instructors and troops to estimate what casualties would have been suffered and how to improve tactics. In 1955 the house became the Thomas Delarue School, a specialist co-educational boarding school founded by the

National Spastics Society Scope (previously known as the National Spastics Society) is a disability charity in England and Wales that campaigns to change negative attitudes about disability, provides direct services, and educates the public. The organisation was found ...

to serve children with

cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sensa ...

. In 1963 the school moved to a purpose built site near Tonbridge. The house was converted into nine flats in 1991, with the woods now managed by the

Forestry Commission The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. The Forestry Commission was previously also respon ...

, and the original coach house is now occupied by Greensands Ridge gin distillery. The house retains many features from the time of its construction, including the original chapel ceilings, the terrace, and a fireplace dated 1591 and reputedly brought from

Haddon Hall Haddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye near Bakewell, Derbyshire, a former seat of the Dukes of Rutland. It is the home of Lord Edward Manners (brother of the incumbent Duke) and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

. John Newman, in ''Kent: West and The Weald'', his 2012 revised volume in the Pevsner Buildings of England series, describes Dene Park as a "substantial mansion in a Waterhousian Tudor Gothic" style.

Notable residents

* F.M Hollams *

Henry Cooper Sir Henry Cooper (3 May 19341 May 2011) was a British heavyweight boxer, best remembered internationally for a 1963 fight in which he knocked down a young Cassius Clay before the fight was stopped because of a cut eye from Clay's punches. Coo ...

Ernie Burrington Ernest Burrington (13 December 1926 – 23 March 2018) was a British newspaper editor, who resided at Dene Park in Kent. Burrington began his journalistic career in 1941, at the ''Oldham Chronicle''. He served in the Army from 1944 to 1947, befor ...

* George Wills

Notes

References

{{Hadlow Country houses in Kent Hadlow Victorian architecture in England Gothic architecture in England