Eastry Court

Eastry Court is a house, situated on the site of a former Archiepiscopal palace, dating to the 14th century or earlier, with significant alterations in the 16th and early 18th centuries, commissioned by Isaac Bargrave. The building is constructed of flint and rubble, with timber framing, rendered and clad sections, and red brick extensions, and has plain tiled roofs.

The main facade is a ten-bay design from the early 18th century, fronting onto an aisled or semi-aisled hall, with remaining elements of a chapel and domestic wings to the rear. The building has two storeys, set on a plinth, with a sunk-panelled parapet to a hipped roof, and stacks located to the left and rear right. It features ten glazing bar sash windows on the first floor, with the window in the fifth bay from the right having a segmental frame, and nine on the ground floor, all with gauged heads, flying cornices, and sunk panels below the first-floor windows. The front door, located in the fifth bay from the right, is of six raised and fielded panels within an enriched bolection moulded frame, incorporating a rectangular fanlight, fluted Ionic pilasters, and a cornice.

The rear wings comprise a timber-framed range to the rear left, originally jettied and plastered, and to the rear right, a ground-floor section of the chapel with the lower half of the east window remaining.

The interior of the 18th-century range displays raised and fielded panelling with dado rails and moulded cornices, elliptical arches to passageways, and a single-flight stair with a swept panelled dado/baluster integrated into the wall. A parallel range to the front appears to be the remains of a semi-aisled hall, exhibiting surviving large arcade posts and a possible raised cruck on the first floor, all of large scantling. The property includes large inglenook fireplaces, constructed in English Bond and partly blocked. Stone chamfered window surrounds are present in the rear wings. The roofs are of the clasped purlin type, and have been altered in parts, with a brick chamfered, four-centred arched fireplace in the attic. Cellars contain coursed chalk blocks beneath what appear to be medieval foundations, potentially relating to a pre-Conquest Kentish Royal palace that formerly occupied the site. The interior history is complex and partly obscured by 19th and 20th-century partitions, which were in the process of restoration at the time of survey.