DARTFORD DISTRICT
STATELY HOMES, CASTLES & TOWERS
Various Stately homes, Country houses, Castles and Towers still exist around our county of Kent and in among the history, some are rumoured to be haunted. These include Sir Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin among others. there is also a few lesser known treasures which have their own surprises in store. check out what we found so far in the Dartford District
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It should not be assumed that these sites are all publicly accessible and may be on private property. Please check first and get permission, if necessary....Do not trespass!
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​CLICK ON PICTURE FOR THE BUSINESS WEBSITE
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​If we have missed any out or you hear of any reports of Paranormal Activity at any of the ruins or the castles that aren't reported here, please get in touch Thankyou
LULLINGSTONE CASTLE - DARTFORD DA4
A historic manor house, set in an estate in the village of Lullingstone and the civil parish of Eynsford in the English county of Kent.
Mentioned in the Domesday Book, the present house. A brick built, Tudor Mansion with an outer gatehouse built in 1497, originally with a moat and an inner gatehouse, built by Sir John Peche, who became Sheriff of Kent in 1495, is believed to be one of the first in England entirely of brick. What survives of the house is largely of the Queen Anne era. It was called Lullingstone House, but Thomas Dyke came from Horam Manor and when he married into the family there was no way he was going to go from a manor to a house. So he elevated it to a castle
Henry VIII and Queen Anne were said to have been regular visitors to the Manor House, as Sir John Achieved fame as Henry VII's Champion Jouster. His jousting tournament colours, were russet, gold and an off-white, so the whole house is in those colours.
Lullingstone Castle is one of the oldest family estates and has been inhabited by members of the Hart Dyke family for twenty generations including current owner Guy Hart Dyke but over the years its 10,000 acres of prime Kent parkland have been whittled to 142.
The surrounding 120-acre park was previously a fenced deer park, with the castle serving as a hunting lodge. The grounds are located on the River Darent and hidden within it are Queen Anne's bathhouse and an ice-house dating from the 18th century. Most of the grounds of the former estate now constitute Lullingstone Country Park.
HAUNTINGS
The ghost known by the name of Lavender Lady, is known to the Hart family as one of their own and she lived in what they call Brown Passage now. She had a lover in one of the staff, a groom. The staff in those days lived in the attic and she used to go up the stairs to see him. Its said the family found out about it and banned her from doing it, so she committed suicide. although she hasn't appeared to the owners Guy and Sarah, Lots of people have seen her. One chap came out of the kitchen and spotted her and got the shock of his life. She was sobbing and crying and he asked her if she was alright before rushing back to get a friend. But when they came back she was gone. Their Daughter Anya, used to hear the rustle of her dress and they used to hear an unhappy sort of sound travelling down the stairs and then fading out.
There have also been sightings of a little girl in a Velvet dress who runs across Queen Annes Bedroom and an old Tenant would report seeing a young girl sitting down in the room, they now call the coal hole, where the servants used to sit to feed the fire.
LULLINGSTONE ROMAN VILLA - LULLINGSTONE LANE, EYNSFORD, KENT, DA4
Set in the attractive surroundings of the Darent Valley in Kent, the villa was said to have begun in around 82 AD. It was situated in an area near to several other villas, and was close to Watling Street, a Roman road by which travellers could move to and from Londinium to Durobrivae, Durovernum Cantiacorum, and the major Roman port of Rutupiæ (i.e., London, Rochester, Canterbury, and Richborough, respectively)
Some evidence found on site suggests that about A. D. 150, the villa was considerably enlarged and a heated bath block with hypocaust (an ancient Roman heating system) was added and it may have been used as the country retreat of the governors of the Roman province of Britannia. Two sculpted marble busts found in the cellar may be those of Pertinax and his father-in-law, Publius Helvius Successus, so they may have stayed here at one point. Pertinax became emperor 1 January 193AD after the assassination of Commodus. He in turn was assassinated 87 days later by the Praetorian Guard who resented, along with much of the population, the austerity he imposed
In the 3rd century, a larger furnace for the hypocaust as well as an expanded bath block were added, as were a temple-mausoleum and a large granary.
The original pagan shrine room was dedicated to local water deities, and a wall painting depicting three water nymphs dating from this period can still be seen in a niche in the room. Just after the 3rd century, this niche had been covered over, as the whole room had been redecorated with white plaster painted with red bands and two busts of male figures had been placed in the room. Some scholars have theorised that at this point the inhabitants focused their worship on household deities and ancestor spirits, largely abandoning the worship of the water deities.
In the 4th Century the ruins of a Roman temple-mausoleum on the site of the villa were incorporated into a Christian chapel (Lullingstone Chapel) that was extant at the time of the Norman Conquest, one of the earliest known chapels in the country. The dining room, or triclinium, was situated in the centre of the main building, and was highly decorated with a pair of large mosaics on the floor One depicts the abduction of the princess Europa by the god Jupiter who is disguised as a bull, whilst the other depicts Bellerophon slaying the Chimaera, whilst surrounded by four sea creatures. Surrounding these mosaics were smaller images depicting hearts, crosses and swastikas.
During the 4th Century, the room above the pagan shrine was apparently converted to Christian use, with painted plaster on the walls, including a row of figures of standing worshippers, (orans), and a characteristic Christian Chi-rho symbol. Some of the paintings are now on display in the British Museum.
Sometime early in the 5th century a fire destroyed the building, and it was abandoned and forgotten
The first discovery of the site was made in 1750, when workers fencing a deer park dug post holes through a mosaic floor, but no systematic excavations were done until the 20th century.
In 1939, a blown-down tree revealed scattered mosaic fragments. The villa was excavated in the period 1949–61 by archaeologists, and the ruins themselves were preserved under a specially-designed cover in the 1960's, when the villa was taken over by English Heritage, who opened the ruins to the public.
The building began to leak late in the 20th century and required a major 1.8 million pounds renovation and re-display project in 2006-08 to make it safe to display fragile objects from the site in it.
One room of the building had been used as both a pagan shrine, and, later, as a Christian chapel, one of the earliest in Britain.
The evidence of the Christian house-church is a unique discovery for Roman Britain and the wall paintings are of international importance. Not only do they provide some of the earliest evidence for Christianity in Britain, they are almost unique – the closest parallels comes from a house-church in Dura Europus, Syria.
Perhaps almost as remarkable as the discovery of the house-church is the possibility that pagan worship may have continued in the cult room below. What is not clear is whether this represented the family hedging their bets, trumpeting their apparent acceptance of Christianity, while trying to keep the old gods happy, or whether it represents some members of the family clinging to old beliefs in the face of the adoption of Christianity by others.
A Romano-Celtic temple-mausoleum complex was constructed around 300 AD to hold the bodies of two young people, those of a male and a female, in lead coffins. Although the young woman's coffin was robbed in antiquity, the other remained in situ and undisturbed, and is now on display at the site.
There is still ongoing research happening about the site but it is still open to visitors between Feb and September (check opening before attending, as not fully open 7 days, some weeks)
HAUNTINGS
There have been reports of a chilling cold spot & of some possible manifestations but nothing as yet recorded but it had been undisturbed until around 60 yrs, and longer before that, so who knows what spirits or residual energies still linger in the area, who knows what has been stirred up from all the excavating...maybe even Publius Helvius Pertinax still passes through or the restless spirits of the bodies found at the Temple-Mausoleum, still linger in the area.