Sissinghurst Castle

Whenever I try to surprise someone for a birthday or some other celebration, I nearly always seem to blow it. The power of knowledge is just too much. I mean, seriously, who can resist hinting that you know something they don't?? Ok so I've exposed a flawed side to my mind... but it's an endearing flaw really, no? Anyway, this weekend I actually did it! For Mothers Day, after months of complaints from my mum that my sister never comes home from university, we managed to organise for her to come home for a weekend of quality family fun without my mum suspecting a thing until she arrived! I'm still feeling pretty proud about it...

Anyway, one of the ways we spent our highly anticipated weekend was by going to Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. Sissinghurst is the ruin of an Elizabethan manor house and in its time has been the site of a prison for French seamen during the Seven Years War, a poor house and a working farm. It was also, however, home to author, poet and avid gardener, Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson during the 1930s after she failed to inherit her family home of Knole as she was a woman. It was Vita and Harold who created the famous garden at Sissinghurst, which is spectacular in its scope and colour.

The original Hogarth Press

Vita Sackville-West had success as a writer and poet, her best known novels being The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931), but she is probably better known for a number of affairs she had with women, most famously Virginia Woolf. You therefore wouldn't be surprised to know that Sackville-West was published a number of times by the Woolfs' Hogarth Press. In fact the original Hogarth Press currently resides at Sissinghurst itself.

If you suffer from house envy, be prepared. Ask any friend of mine what three things I would want for my home if money were no object and they would all say, probably with a yawn: a lake, a library and a spice rack. Now I don't know whether there's a spice rack hanging around (I bet there is!) but they have a herb garden, a large lake... acres of beautiful countryside surrounding their stunning gardens and, naturally, a personal library, which is open visitors. House envy doesn't even cover it. Rows and rows of books extend right from one end of the room to the other, covering an entire wall. *sighs* amazing.

Sissinghurst Castle

Biddenden Road

near Cranbrook

TN17 2AB