Tongswood Estate
What follows is ‘work in progress’ on the history of the Tongswood Estate. If any reader has any bits of the jigsaw to offer or corrections to make, I would be delight to hear from them. In that way we may gradually build up a complete record.
The first record of Tongswood is in 1273 when it is mentioned in the hundreds rolls of Kent and the land was held by Simon de Tonge. It gets its name from the river system flowing through the estate. The river divides into two, it forks, and it is from the Anglo Saxon word twang or tang, meaning fork, that the name of the estate is thought to be derived.
In 1328 Edward III married Philippa, daughter of the Count of Hainault who held the title of ‘Over Lord of the Netherlands’. This connection to Flanders impressed on him the immense wealth to be gained from the cloth trade.
In 1331 he set about inviting clothiers from Ghent in Flanders to come to England and establish their trade here and teach others the weaving trade. Initially seventy Flemish families were settled in England and John Kemp was appointed by the King to oversee this process.
The Wealden of Kent became a popular destination for the Flemish clothiers– wool was abundant, there was plenty of water and plenty of wood. The clay soil was also an advantage as the clay extracted was highly absorbent and was used to cleanse finished cloth.
Quickly Cranbrook became a centre for the industry although it did spread to the nearby villages of Benenden, Biddenden, Staplehurst, Tenterden and Hawkhurst. In May 1337 the exporting of wool was forbidden, except by licence, and there was a ban on imports. Clothes were only to be made of English cloth. This measure led to a rapid increase in the population of these villages as people sought work. Much of the cloth produced loaded onto boats at Bodiam or Salehurst and transported to London via the port of Rye.
The Dunk family, were Flemish immigrants, settled a short distance east of Hawkhurst in Hixden. The early Dunks made a great deal of money and invested it in property. At some stage they purchased Tongswood, which is recorded as the seat of the family when Simon Dunk died in 1512. It passed through several generations of the Dunk family to Thomas Dunk who died in 1617. A century later it was owned by Sir Thomas Dunk Kt. who died in 1718. Over this period the estate grew to c. 1200 acres.
Sir Thomas Dunk (1657-1718) is the most famous member of the family. He was born clearly into riches but achieved fame through his own merits. He served an apprenticeship in London as an ironmonger and was given the Freedom of the City to set up in business. As a freeman of the City he joined the Guild of Ironmongers who, along with the other City Guilds, had the power to elect the two Sheriffs of London. In 1709 Thomas was elected by his fellow liverymen as one of the two Sheriffs and on the 18th January 1710 knighted by Queen Anne. He died at Tongswood in 1718 and is laid to rest in pride of place in St Laurence Church, Hawkhurst.
Sir Thomas’s heir was Richard Williams who died in 1733 and the estate passed to his daughter Anne Richards but, to inherit, she had to change her name to Dunk. She married the Hon. George Montagu in 1741 who in turn added the name Dunk to his surname.
George Montagu-Dunk was the son of the 1st Earl of Halifax, he was styled Viscount Sunbury until succeeding his father as 2nd Earl of Halifax in 1739. He was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1748 he became President of the Board of Trade. While filling this position he helped to found Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, which was named after him, and he helped foster trade, especially with North America.
In 1767, there are records that a leasehold on the house & estate (still 1200 acres) was sold to Mr Jeremiah Curteis one of the leaders of the notorious gang of smugglers (The Hawkhurst Gang). This still needs to be verified as, according to other accounts, Jeremiah Curteis fled to France after the law caught up with this gang in the late 1740’s!
A leasehold was later sold to William Jenkins who died in 1784. His executors then sold the estate to Mr David Langton.
In 1839 the house was puchased by auction by the Hon Felix Tollemarche whose name appears on the 1841 census. It records him being aged forty and married to a lady called Frances, ten years his junior.
The 1851 census shows that the ownership of Tongswood had passed to George Stevenson. Major George Robert Stevenson, late of the 7th Dragoon Guards, was married to Anna Maria and, by 1851, they had six children. It is assumed that George Stevenson bought the house in the July 1848 auction managed by Messers Farebrother, Clark and Lye.
The 1861 census records show that the house was now lived in by Mr Valentine Elwes (? Cary-Elwes) and his wife Henrietta and their family but by 1868 the estate had been bought by William Cotterill for £8,750.
William Cotterill was a successful tea broker and the son of a Birmingham millionaire who had made his fortune from the ‘America trade’. The 1871 census records the name of his wife (Mary Anne Stapledon) and their children and servants. It states that William’s income was derived from ‘dividends from the railways’ and from landowning. The Cotterills remain on the census records for Tongswood in both 1881 and 1891. William was baptised in 1826 and married in 1852. He extended the house in 1874.
Two of William Cotterill’s descendants have provided me with the following pictures. The first is the earliest photograph of the Tongswood that I have seen. The second is a fascinating picture of the Lake, which, judging from the size of the trees, is taken a while later.
In 1891 Tongswood was sold to Capt. John Julian Newton-Spice who seems to have quickly sold it on in 1892 to Misses Goldsmid.
The’ Misses Goldsmid’ mention in the 1892 sale details are assumed to be Isabel, Flora and Emma, three of the daughters of Sir Julian Goldsmid Bt of Somerhill in Tonbridge because land on Tongswood Drive are still held by the Trustees of the Goldsmid Settled Estates.
In 1849 the 6,500 acre Somerhill estate was bought by Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, Bt. (1778-1859. Sir Isaac was the grandson of Aaron Goldsmid, a Jewish merchant from Amsterdam who settled in this country with his family in 1763. Sir Isaac passed the house to his second son Frederick in 1859 and then it went to Frederick’s elder son (Sir) Julian in 1866. Julian’s brave attempt at providing a male heir (he had 8 daughters) eventually resulted in a virtual doubling of the house’s living accommodation.
The more recent history of Tongswood is very well documented. In May 1903 Charles Eugene Gunther purchased the house and 319 acres through Tuckett & Son (auctioneers, London EC) and subsequently bought up a number of outlying farms. Charles Gunther had made his fortune as chairman of the parent company of OXO.
Charles Gunther set about remodelling the interior of the house and by 1908 had had built a three storey extension to the building, adding on what we now know as the Great Space and all the rooms above. The work was done by Messrs Davis of Hawkhurst, a company still going strong today.
Charles and Leonie had four children: Edith (b. 1887), Charles (b. 1890), Herbert (b. 1894) and Norman (b. 1897), but soon after moving tragedy struck. Firstly, Leonie died of an illness in 1910 and then two of Charles’ three sons were killed in northern France in The Great War. Herbert died at the age of 51 whilst Edith, who married Mr Alexander of Wilsley in Cranbrook, lived to 84.
In 1912, Charles remarried an heiress called Helen Bell, and they went on to have two sons, James (known to the family as Jimmy) and William (known as Billy). Helen was largely credited with the development of the gardens, which by 1927 were considered one of the top 50 gardens in England. The enormous Rockery, designed by James Backhouse, was featured in a 1935 issue of Country Life.
Charles Gunther died of a heart attack at Paper Mill House in 1931 at the age of just 68. In October 1936 at the Queens Hotel, Hawkhurst, Mrs Gunther sold by auction the outlying portions of the Tongswood Estate. In total 670 acres were sold including a Wealden clothworker’s hall, six farms , eight cottages and a number of building sites. The auctioneers were Geering & Colyer, Hawkhurst.
The house was requisition by the Army soon after the outbreak of the Second World War and Mrs Gunther moved to a newly built house called Little Tongs at the junction of Water Lane and the Rye Road. She died in 1963 at the age of 83.
Tongswood and its contents were finally sold in 1945. W. B. Harris bought the House together with c. 260 acres of land including the Walled Nursery, Orchard House (the Baliff’s House) as well as the Model (or Home) Farm. He then moved Saint Ronan’s across to it from its wartime home Bicton Park Devon. The contents were sold by auction ( once again the auctioneers were Geering & Colyer, Hawkhurst) in a sale held in September 1945.
In 1958, W. B. Harris died and the estate was placed in trust for the benefit of Saint Ronan’s School.
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