Rowling House

GOODNESTONE ROWLING TR 25 SE 3/76 Rowling House 11.10.63 GV II House. C16, clad C18 and extended mid C19. Timber framed and clad with painted brick and extended with buff brick. Slate roofs. Two storeys and attic on plinth with boxed eaves to hipped roof with 2 flat roofed dormers and stack to centre right. Five glazing bar sashes on first floor and 4 on ground floor with gauged heads. Central door of 6 raised and fielded panels. Extended to left by 2 separately roofed 2 storey blocks, that immediately adjacent with dogtooth cornice and gable, that at end left hipped, with stacks to left and rear left and with 1 glazing bar sash on each floor of each block. Projecting 2 storey hipped bay on right return. Exterior being in part repaired at time of survey. Interior: exposed frame with stop moulded joists in main hall, with inglenook fireplaces. Sunk panelling in Dining room, and moulded C18 wooden fire surrounds. Open well with dogleg late C18 stair and newel stair. Clasped purlin roof. The house was anciently a manor house, then belonged to the Bridges family of Goodnestone Park, and let to Edward Austen (later Edward Knight of Godmersham Park), Sir Brook Bridges' son-in-law and Jane Austen's brother. The house and locality feature prominently in Jane Austen's correspondence, 1791-7, and her works. A later tenant was George Dering (c.1800), a link which may explain the Dering windows and Pluckley-style architecture of the early C19 Goodnestone estate style of buildings. (See Hasted, IX, 1800, p.241 + p.244; see also Igglesden, 19, p.36).

Listing NGR: TR2713754887