Dene Park

The Dene Park estate was advertised for sale in The Times of 13 July 1878 as being for sale. The house was described as having fifteen bedrooms and set in {{convert|682|acre|ha}} of land. There was stabling for five horses which included accommodation for a groom. A six bedroom shooting house was included in the sale, as was a farm and several cottages.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=(advertisement) |date=13 July 1878 |issue=29306 |page=19 |column=C }} The house was extensively altered in the next five years.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=Great buildings given new live |date=29 May 1991 |issue=64031 |page=33 |column=A-G }}

Built in 1883 Dene Park was designed by the architect F.T.W Miller,Taken from the 1885 sales particulars, Dene Park was designed primarily as a sporting estate and occupied 620 acres in total. Built of red brick with bath stone dressings, the gardens were designed by the landscape gardener Edward Milner of which much of his original design work still remains. To the right of the property the iconic round smokery remains hinting at the property's sporting heritage.

Owned by Sir John Hollams until his death in on May 3, 1910,{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=Obituary |date=4 May 1910 |issue=39263 |page=13 |column=C }} it was then inherited by his second eldest son Frederick Willams Hollams (b. 1848) who lived there for the next thirty one years.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zunKieS8gDwC&q=%22John%20Hollams%22|title=Clifford Chance: Its Origins and Development|author=Judy Slinn|year=1993|isbn=9780906782989|publisher=Granta Editions|pages=37–38}} Also residing in the home were Frederick's wife, Mary Owen Hollams, daughter of the architect Sir Charles Lanyon, and their daughter, the artist Frances Mabel Hollams.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eCFCAQAAMAAJ&dq=Frances+Mabel+Hollams+Dene+Park&pg=RA1-PA314|title=Births, Marriages, & Deaths|work=The Law Times|date=July 25, 1903|page=314}} In 1917, Frederick Williams Hollams was appointed High Sheriff of Kent.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=The New Sherrifs |date=14 March 1917 |issue=41426 |page=9 |column=C }} He died on 21 November 1941 aged 93.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=Obituaries |date=25 November 1941 |issue=49092 |page=7 |column=E }}

The contents of Dene Park were sold by auction on 20 January 1942.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=Sales By Auction |date=30 December 1941 |issue=49120 |page=8 |column=F }} During the Second World War Dene Park became the training school for the 44th (Home Counties) Division and 53rd Division. Jack Rose, a Hurricane pilot flying Hurricanes from West Malling Airfield worked with the instructors to make training as realistic as possible; the school's instructors would carry out exercises on Shipbourne Green with aircraft flying in fours would carry out low-level navigation exercises culminating on an attack on the Battle School troops. Camera Guns were used and the resulting films passed to instructors and troops to estimate what casualties would have been suffered and how to improve tactics.

In 1955 the house became the Thomas Delarue School, a specialist co-educational boarding school founded by the National Spastics Society to serve children with cerebral palsy.{{cite journal|title=Recent Advances in Cerebral Palsy|author=Ronald Stanley Illingworth|publisher=J. & A. Churchill|year=1958|page=202}} In 1963 the school moved to a purpose built site near Tonbridge.{{cite journal|title=Further Education Centre at Dene Park , near Tonbridge , Kent|journal=The Medical Officer|volume=111|page=98|year=1964}}

The house was converted into nine flats in 1991, with the woods now managed by the Forestry Commission, and the original coach house is now occupied by Greensands Ridge gin distillery. The house retains many features from the time of its construction, including the original chapel ceilings, the terrace, and a fireplace dated 1591 and reputedly brought from Haddon Hall, Derbyshire.{{efn|The fireplace is inscribed with the name Godfridus Ffoljambe as well as the 1591 date. John Newman attributes it to “one of the Ffoljambe seats in Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire."{{cite book|first=John|last=Newman|author-link=John Newman (architectural historian)|title=Kent: West and The Weald|series=Pevsner Architectural Guides|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven, US and London|year=2012|isbn=978-0-300-18509-6|pages=281–282}}}} John Newman, in Kent: West and The Weald, his 2012 revised volume in the Pevsner Buildings of England series, describes Dene Park as a "substantial mansion in a Waterhousian Tudor Gothic" style.

• F.M Hollams
• Henry Cooper
• Ernie Burrington
• George Wills

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Category:Country houses in Kent

Category:Hadlow

Category:Victorian architecture in England

Category:Gothic architecture in England