Qualla: Chilham Castle

Chilham Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daywalker, CC BY-SA 2.0. The keep at Chilham has been inhabited continuously since 1174, which makes it one of the oldest dwellings in Great Britain. Most castles of that age are ruins, or museum pieces, or carefully reconstructed shells. Chilham's polygonal stone keep is still a house - people have actually been living inside it for 850 years, a continuous chain of domestic life running from the high medieval period to the present. In June 1320 King Edward II passed through on his way to France and was hosted here by Bartholomew de Badlesmere. In 1616 Sir Dudley Digges built a complete Jacobean manor house in sight of the old keep on a hexagonal plan, and the two buildings have been keeping each other company ever since. In 2021 the whole estate went up for sale at £15 million.

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Image: Daywalker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Chilham Castle: Anglo-Saxon Foundations

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Penny Mayes, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Norman keep is the visible part of a much longer history. Archaeological excavations carried out in the 1920s suggested that the polygonal Norman tower stands on the foundations of a much older Anglo-Saxon fortification, possibly dating from the seventh century. Henry II is t...

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Image: Penny Mayes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Chilham Castle: Digges and the Hexagonal House

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Cardy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sir Dudley Digges completed the Jacobean manor house in 1616. Its plan is unusual - hexagonal, with five angled ranges and the sixth side left open onto the lawns and terraces. It has battlemented parapets, clustered faceted brick chimneys, and corner towers with squared ogee cap...

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Image: Jonathan Cardy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chilham Castle: The Wildmans and the West Indies

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. Chilham was bought by James Wildman in 1794 and inherited in 1816 by his son James Beckford Wildman, whose name carried the legacy of his uncle the slave-owning Jamaica planter William Beckford. The Wildman family's wealth came from sugar estates in the West Indies worked by ensl...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Chilham Castle: Painters and a Mining Magnate

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the early 1920s the South African-born diamond and mining magnate Sir Edmund Davis and his wife Mary - herself a painter - commissioned Herbert Baker, then at the height of his career, to remodel Chilham for them. Their plans, like Brandon's, are preserved at the V&A. The Davi...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Chilham Castle: Moll Flanders, Poirot, and a £15 Million Listing

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Chilham has put in a long second career as a film location. In 1965 the castle appeared in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, with Kim Novak in the lead and supporting performances from Leo McKern and Angela Lansbury. In 1985 it played Makepeace's family home in the episode...

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Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 3.0