Ticehurst House Private Clinic

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 4 July 2025 to amend the language in the description

TQ 6830-6930 34/55

TICEHURST WADHURST ROAD Ticehurst House Private Clinic

II

Large L-shaped building. The original portion is the north east wing which was an early C19 house. Three storeys. Five windows. Stuccoed. Cornices above first and second floors. Parapet. Glazing bars intact. Pointed projection of two sides at south end. To the south of this is a probably contemporary portion of two storeys and five windows with a slate roof. The main south portion is mid C19. three storeys. Thirteen windows facing south, six windows facing east. Stuccoed. Ornamental pierced balustrade to roof. The south elevation comprises a centre portion and two projecting wings of unequal width flanked by rusticated quoins. The west wing has a central doorway with engaged Doric columns. The west front has ten windows and a lower centre portion and taller wing to north. Further small L-wing of three windows to north west.

HISTORY: In 1792 Samuel Newington (1739-1811) opened a privately run institution for people with mental conditions for less than twenty patients at Ticehurst in Sussex, only ten miles from the fashionable spa town of Tunbridge Wells (Parry-Jones 1972). Newington appears to have bought a country mansion set in its own landscape and used it to house and treat his patients, although it is also possible that he erected the building himself, without any obvious architectural means of classifying the lunatic patients. In 1812 Charles Newington built the house known as Highlands as his own residence. Situated within the grounds close to the asylum building, it later also seems to have housed some of the wealthier patients. Two of Charles's sons, Charles (1781-1852) and Jesse (1779-1819), having become surgeons, assisted their father at the asylum and took over at his death in 1811. In 1816 they employed men who had been demobilised after the Battle of Waterloo to landscape and ornament over 40 acres (c 16ha) surrounding the asylum and Highlands (MacKenzie 1992). Jesse died in 1819 and Mrs Newington, their mother, in 1831. Charles became the sole proprietor, having produced a brochure for the asylum c 1830. By the late 1820s (brochure, c 1830) Ticehurst was one of the more lavish private asylums, the 40 acres (c 16ha) of grounds being laid out for the use of the patients.

Listing NGR: TQ6820730536