Buildings of the service courtyard adjoining south of Groombridge Place including the walls of the Herb Garden

The service courtyard adjoining Groombridge Place to the south comprises various service buildings enclosing two sides of the court, with a small walled herb garden forming the third side. Built circa 1660, contemporary with the main house, the structures have undergone some later modernisations. They are constructed in brick, mostly laid in English bond though not regular in pattern, set on sandstone footings in places. Brick stacks and chimneyshafts rise throughout, and the roofs are covered in peg tiles.

The plan consists of three ranges facing into the courtyard with their rear walls extending down to the moat. The east range was originally built as stables and includes a carriageway running through from the east bridge across the moat. The long south range is predominantly occupied by a coach house, though at its western end stands a pair of small one-room cottages situated within the walled herb garden on the western side of the courtyard. The first cottage has a rear lateral stack, while the second has a gable-end stack.

In the early twentieth century, when horse-drawn carriages gave way to motor cars, most of the stables were converted to a billiard room with a southern gable-end stack inserted. The coach houses were similarly converted to garages.

Externally, five windows in the south-east corner of the courtyard (three in the east range and two in the south range) date from the early twentieth century and are mullion-and-transom windows with diamond panes of leaded glass. The full-height carriageway contains studded double doors of uncertain date, flanked by original stable doorways with round-headed brick arches, now blocked. The lower stable to the left is now a service room; the billiard room occupies the right (south) side. The south wing features a row of six full-height double doorways, the right-hand four probably dating from the nineteenth century with pigeon holes set into the eaves above. The left-hand pair are twentieth-century garage doors, broken forward from the main front. To their left is a doorway containing a fielded six-panel door with overlight, presumably leading to the former tack room, and a loading hatch for the former hayloft rises from the eaves. An attractive octagonal lantern rises from the ridge of the coach house roof, featuring moulded timber mullions and small panes of leaded glass including a top tier of Y-tracery panes, with an ogee roof and weathervane.

To the right (west) of the coach house stands the low pair of cottages with a nearly symmetrical two-window front of eighteenth or nineteenth-century casements. Hipped dormers contain diamond panes of leaded glass. Paired doorways hold plain plank doors and the roof is gable-ended. An herb garden in front is enclosed by a tall brick wall. The courtyard doorway has a stone lintel with a timber dovecote above, supported on carved oak acanthus-leaf consoles. The garden walls are pierced by cross-shaped openings that resemble gun ports.

The interior retains plain carpentry detail where exposed.

The service courtyard forms part of a superlative group of listed buildings in the vicinity of Groombridge Place.