STATELY HOMES, CASTLES & TOWERS

No Website - Private Residence
**PARANORMAL ACTIVITY**
In the 1930s, resident Mr G Varley claimed he not only heard ghostly footsteps and felt inexplicable blasts of cold air but had once been so terrified by a spectral form that he threw a poker at it. He remained in the house for only six months.
Dean Manor was owned by Mr Barry Richards, who in 1936 invited Harry Price, the famous researcher in the Ghost Club, to broadcast on the BBC radio from Dene Manor. During the broadcast, fluctuations in temperature were recorded on Price's equipment. During the remainder of the night that Price spent in the house with BBC technicians and others, mysterious footsteps were heard, and visual phenomena were experienced.
From 11.45 pm until midnight, listeners were to hear the recorded phenomena and possibly even some live ghostly goings-on.
The results were inconclusive, and listeners responded with mixed feelings. No ghosts were seen, and all sounds could be attributed to natural causes.
In 1971, the owners of Dean Manor, Mr & Mrs Bagshawe, preferred to keep quiet about the fact that their home was once the subject of a BBC-broadcast ghost hunt. Yet the repercussions of those events kept returning to haunt them. They disclaimed there was a ghost there, stating they had never seen one. When members of the Ghost Club tried to visit the house for themselves and set up a new investigation, the owners refused to let them in, saying they did not want the publicity.
The two tragedies mentioned above were reported to be the cause of the two figures from the past who have been in the building and its grounds.
Yet the ghostly tales surrounding Dene Manor refuse to die, and a book called ''Kent Tales of Mystery & Murder'', by W H "Johnnie" Johnson takes a fresh look at Harry Price's investigation. 
**HISTORY**
A manor was created at Dene, in the east of the parish, but by the time surviving manorial records began, it had become part of Meopham.
The Dene Manor is situated on Dean Lane in Meopham.
Athelstane, then the King of England, gave the perpetual inheritance of Meopham to Duke Eadulf, who, in 940, with the King's consent, gave Meopham to Christ Church, in Canterbury, in the presence of archbishop Wlselm, free from all secular service and royal tribute, excepting the trimodal necessity of repelling invasions and the repairs of castles and highways. 
With each King, the ownership of Meopham would go back and forth from Kings to Christ Church.
At the restoration of King Charles II. and the re-establishment of both church and state, the deans and chapters resumed their former possessions, from which time the scite, court-lodge, demesnes, wood, &c. above mentioned have continued from time to time in lease from the dean and chapter of Canterbury.
Dean Court was a manor within Meopham, formerly part of the possessions of the great and opulent family of Alan de Twitham, a Kentish gentleman who was with King Richard I at the siege of Acon in Palestine. The King may have granted him the Manor thanks to his loyalty during the war.
His descendant, Bertram de Twitham, held this estate until he died in 1330. Then Alanus de Twitham died in possession of it in 1352, as did his son, Theobald, until 1371. He died without a male son, leaving Maud, his only daughter, heir to his large possessions in this county, all of which she carried into her marriage to Simon Septvans of Chequer in Ash, Sandwich, a younger branch of the Milton Septvans, near Canterbury.
Under King Henry V. came the name of Harsleet, hereditary to all the descendants of the Septvans family.
Dean-court continued in the descendants of Thomas Septvans, alias Harsleet as above mentioned, till the reign of King Charles I in 1600, when Thomas Harsleet sold it to Francis Twysden, fifth son of Sir William Twysden, a Baronet of East Peckham in Kent. He died unmarried in 1675, and by his will, it passed to his nephew, Sir William Twysden, another baronet. of East Peckham, who died in 1697 and was succeeded by his second but eldest surviving son and heir, Sir Thomas Twysden, another baronet who sold Dean-court to Samuel Atwood, a clerk, who gave it by his will, in 1735, to Elizabeth Hodsoll. She again gave it by her will to her niece, who married to Richard Gee, esquire of Orpington, who died in 1791 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard Gee, Esquire who took the name of Carew and became the next owner of the estate.
The estate's land was sold over the 19th Century, leaving only the manor house and garden. Today, it remains a Private Dwelling with no public access. 
The West end of Dene Manor is a service wing of an early C15 timber-framed building. The walls are partly flinted with ragstone quoins; otherwise, they are brick. The roof is hipped-tiled.
A  brick chimney stack was built in the 16th Century on the site of a screen passage, and further alteration continued through the 18th Century to the 1930s, including Casement windows with irregular spacing and another alteration of the refacing of the eastern part. 
It was given a Grade II listing in Nov 1966. 
Dean Manor certainly seems to have had its share of tragedy with reports of a servant girl was said to have been found hanged in the granary after her mistress accused her of theft and a young French woman, Mille Pinard, who went mad with grief after following her lover from France to find he already had a wife (I have been unable to find newspaper reports, dating back to 1750 to confirm these and the french woman story, sound very similar to the report on another haunting in another district).
The house last sold in 2001.