Denton Court And Entrance Court

Denton Court is a house built between 1792 and 1810 for Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, with later 19th-century extensions for the Willats family. It is constructed of red brick with a plain tiled roof. The house comprises two irregularly planned parallel ranges.

The entrance front has two storeys and an attic, set on a plinth. The two left bays project, with two string courses, the lower raised above the heads of the ground-floor windows. A dogtooth cornice runs along the roof, with a shaped gable to the right. Stacks are arranged from left to right, and there are four gabled dormers. Pyramidal roofs cover the projecting bays on the right return, the end left, and a partly detached tower block at the end left. A single-storey and attic wing projects to the left, featuring a turret, end stack, and gabled half-dormer. Two sashes are present on each floor to the left, three to the right, and a double-panelled door is centrally located to the left, set within a large half-timbered porch. The porch has a three-bay arcaded pentice across the ground floor to the right. A panelled door and sash window are incorporated into the projecting wing to the left.

A front courtyard is enclosed by a low brick wall with ball finial entrances to the left and to the main carriage drive. The garden facade, reflecting the late 18th century, features two storeys on a rendered plinth with three complex-shaped gables with finials, shaped end gables, and moulded stacks ranged to the left and right. False oval windows are incorporated within the gables, with regular fenestration of seven 12-pane sashes on the first floor and six on the ground floor, along with a central double half-glazed door. Canted balustraded pavilions are positioned to the left and right.

Inside, the 18th-century wing showcases a modillion eaves cornice, ceiling roses, and a fine deep frieze in the major rooms. The 19th-century additions centre around a large two-storey hall, panelled in a Jacobethan style, complete with a large staircase featuring a moulded rail and turned balusters, extending as a gallery around three sides of the hall.

The garden wing was either rebuilt or remodelled from a 16th-century house belonging to the Boys family, commissioned by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, a poet, bibliographer, printer, Member of Parliament for Maidstone, claimant to the Duchy of Chandos, and a noted Kentish eccentric.