Our Blog - August 2025 - England trip - Scotney Castle

Scotney Castle has several parts to the very large estate. There are ruins of a medieval, moated manor house (called Scotney Old Castle), on an island on a small lake. There is a large Tudor Revival Manor House (called Scotney New Castle), as well as a walled garden, the former quarry, and lots and lots of walking paths through the estate. The earliest record from 1137 gives the owner of the estate as Lambert de Scoteni (hence the name).

The Scotney Old Castle was built between 1378 and 1380 with a rectangular fortified house with towers on each side. Part of the castle was dismantled when the new house was completed in 1843, leaving it as just a "feature" in the garden. One round tower and one section of the house are still standing and it seems that there *may* be visits but it didn't seem there was anything available when we were there. One wing of the house is in ruins with only parts of the walls remaining.

Behind the ruined wall is a little garden, and there were some really lovely flowers there.

In 1778, the estate was sold to Edward Hussey and in 1834, a new castle was built by his grandson, Edward Hussey III. He used local sandstone that was quarried between the old castle and the new castle. A little bit of trivia: the National Trust took over the property in 1970 and it seems they rented out flats in the new castle, including one to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who used it as a weekend escape from Westminster. Here we see the front, side, and back of the building.

While the house exterior doesn't have tons of decorative elements, there were a few that I grabbed pictures of.

The interior of the house is presented as it would have been in the 1950's and 1960's. Even at that time, there are lots of interesting decorative elements, like decorated ceilings, carved wooden fireplace mantels, and decorative moldings.

The kitchen and several other rooms were used as sets for the 1979 film "Yanks" starting Richard Gere (although not specifically mentioned in the Wikipedia entry). I thought that maybe we should go watch the movie but it seems it was a flop in the US, so maybe not. The fee paid for filming there was used to do a final upgrade of the kitchen in the 1980's. They didn't change everything though, since you can see the more modern stove on the left and the older stove on the right.

These are paintings done by Henrietta Hussey (wife of Edward Hussey III) during a grand tour of Europe.

There is also a nice walled garden, which has lots of flowers but also aromatic herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees.