Book Review: Sissinghurst – an Unfinished History

If you are a history buff, this book will engross you from start to finish.  Adam Nicolson’s extensive research reveals that a Sissinghurst dwelling was recorded on the site in AD 843. The Kentish inhabitants’ lives of hard work, industry and hardship over the centuries are brought to life by descriptions of everyday life. The expansion of a smaller house into a Manor House in the sixteenth century by a local lad made good, to the sad demise of the dwelling and its appalling conditions during the housing of the French prisoners in the 18th century is vividly told.

Sissinghurst Castle has been Adam Nicolson’s beloved home since boyhood, with custodianship being handed to the National Trust in 1967 by Nigel Nicolson, Adam’s father.  Apart from describing the making of the garden by his grandparents, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West from the 1930-60s, the author writes at length on the Kentish Weald landscape, describing changes over the centuries and more importantly, of the decline of the castle’s farmland from the late 1960s onwards.  He describes at length, the wheat, barley and hop crops, the cattle and various other farming produce, activities and incomes that kept the tenant-farmer with a thriving business, during the years of his boyhood.  The book describes his determination to bring about a change – by bringing back farming to the estate and of the difficulties he had in persuading the National Trust and the Sissinghurst Staff to think about the possibility of a working farm once again.  The story ends on a high note: a head gardener is appointed to create an organic vegetable garden on the newly chosen south-facing, sloping site, with the aim to supply the restaurant with field-to-table produce. From these first beginnings, the ‘go-ahead’ for a productive, working farm once again was beginning to emerge.

Anna L.

If you read a book that would be of interest to our members, please think about writing a review and sending it to garden@cabahs.com and it could become a post like this.