Future Events

Click here to book any of our future events online using a credit or debit card. If you have any questions or comments about our events, please contact us.

Eltham Palace and Kevington Hall – 30th October 2019 at 10:15

Location: Eltham Palace, Eltham, London SE9 5QE and then Kevington Hall, Orpington, BR5 4EP

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (includes lunch at Eltham Palace and tea at Kevington Hall. English Heritage and Arts Fund members will receive a £10 discount - follow instructions when booking online.)

Book online. There are currently 4 places available for this event.

Eltham Palace, a rare surviving moated medieval royal palace and deer park, was acquired in 1305 by Edward II, whose successors enclosed another 1,300 acres of park. Edward IV built the great hall by 1480; Henry VIII added gardens beyond the moat. Considerably damaged during the civil war, Eltham was granted by Charles II in 1663 to his financier Sir John Shaw, who built Eltham Lodge and sublet the palace as a farm. The Shaws left Eltham in 1839. Stephen and Virginia Courtauld became Crown tenants in 1933, reversing a century of decline and restoring and extending the garden. Mawson & Partners, then Seely & Paget (architects of the Cortaulds’ Art Deco Eltham Court) created gardens on the terraces surrounding the Palace and the lower dry sections of the moat, including a Japanese-style rockery, cascade and sunken garden around a pond, all within the medieval framework of buildings, remaining walls, two arms of the moat and substantial earthworks beyond this from which St Paul’s Cathedral can be seen to the west. Since 1995 English Heritage have been custodians of Eltham Palace.

Kevington Hall was bought in 1768 by a London merchant, Herman Berens. He immediately engaged Robert Taylor, the Bank of England’s architect, to design a new house. His son Joseph added the full-height bow to the south elevation and built the Doric west portico and stables after 1795. Use by troops and a primary school for some 50 years from 1940 wrought havoc to the garden, but Jonathan Jackson, whose family bought Kevington in 1987, has reinstated the southern main drive and is planting many trees to recall the views and appearance of the landscaped 18th-century park. We are grateful to him for allowing a rare visit to his family’s home.

KGT contact: Andrew Wells (andrewwells@mere-house.co.uk)