West Range At Sissinghurst Castle

CRANBROOK BIDDENDEN ROAD TQ 83 NW (north side) Sissinghurst 4/26 West Range at Sissinghurst Castle 9.6.52 (formerly listed as part of Sissinghurst Castle) GV I

Stable range, now house and 2 flats. Circa 1490, restored and altered C1930-40, for Sir Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West. Red brick with rubbed red brick mouldings. Plat band to right of centre and a gabled projections. Plain tiled roofs, hipped with deep gablet to left, gabled with tumbled parapet to right. end stack to right, tall ridge stack off-centre to right and circa 1930 stack with projecting buttressed chimney breast to front towards left-hand end. Return tumble-parapetted gabled projections to left and right of centre, with single 3-centred arched windows with simple Perpendicular-style brick tracery in recessed surrounds under brick drip-moulds on first and attic floors. Very wide 3-centred arched recesses on ground floor with boarded doors in recess. Two storeys and attics in centre and to right with 4 gabled dormers. Irregular fenestration of 14 windows on the first floor, including the 2 arched and traceried windows in the gabled projections and a third, without recess or drip- mould, 5 windows from the left. Five windows on the ground floor. Wooden case- ments with diamond lattice glazing in rubbed brick surrounds. Boarded doors in recesses below gabled projections, as well as to right of centre, and towards right-hand end with flat hood. Central archway between projections, with 3- centred arched surround and stone mouldings. Drip-mould and crests in the spandrels. To the rear, the arch is flanked by buttresses topped by moulded octagonal brick chimneys with a parapetted gable in between at roof level. Moulded octagonal pinnacle to gable with round panel below over brick mullioned window with drip-mould. Similar irregular fenestration as east front, and boarded doors to left and right ends and to right of centre. This was the entrance range of a house earlier than that later built to the east by Sir Richard Baker who inherited in 1558. The coat of arms over the inner arch- way, dated 1548, was brought from Carnock in Stirlingshire. See N Nicholson, Sissinghurst Castle, National Trust, 1983.

Listing NGR: TQ8077038394