Sackville College and Clinton Lodge
Fri 28 Mar 2025 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM GMT
Chequer Mead Car Park, RH19 3AZ
Description
Enjoy exclusive tours of two completely contrasting historic buildings, each with its own wow factor.
Enjoy a detailed guided tour of Grade I Sackville College, a Jacobean almshouse, founded in 1609 with money left by Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset. His endowment for sheltered accommodation, “a hospital or college”, was for twenty-one poor men and ten poor women, to be under the patronage and government of his heirs. It may have been an imitation of Emanuel College, Westminster which was founded by his aunt, Anne Fiennes, Lady Dacre. Building commenced in 1616 and the property was occupied from 1622. It is built from local sandstone and remains exceptionally well preserved. The original lock is still used on the Chapel door and much furniture from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is preserved inside. The building surrounds a courtyard which contains a well. The internal walls have large mullioned windows and the Great Hall with its Minstrels’ Gallery features the original hammer-beam roof.
Later discover Grade II* Clinton Lodge, a late seventeenth century Caroline house that was enlarged by the Earl of Sheffield for his daughter who married Sir Henry Clinton, one of the three generals at the Battle of Waterloo. The significant eighteenth century façade with two gabled dormers and a porch with fluted Doric columns and pediment is set in a tree-lined lawn, flanked by a water canal of pools and fountains and overlooking extensive parkland leading to an eye-catching column on the distant hill. The garden of formal and romantic planting is divided by hedges into smaller gardens reflecting periods of English garden design including a knot garden, Elizabethan herb garden with camomile paths and turf seats, a potager, wildflower meadow and a pre-Raphaelite allee of white wisteria, clematis and lilies.
Tickets £82 including tea or coffee and cake upon arrival at Sackville College and a two-course lunch with tea or coffee at the Griffin Inn. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in March 2025.
Sackville College image © Paul Farmer
Location
Chequer Mead Car Park, RH19 3AZ