Chiddingstone Village near Edenbridge in Kent belongs to the National Trust. It is a single street of properties, consisting of a row of picturesque Tudor houses and an inn, the Castle Inn, collectively bought by the National Trust in 1939 in order to preserve them. There is a village stores cum gift shop in one of the houses and a cafe in a building behind the shop – neither is run by the National Trust. When we visited in September there was a lot of scaffolding in place for the renovation work being carried out on some of the houses and The Castle Inn was closed, although apparently the National Trust is in the process of finding new tenants to run it. Luckily we had stopped to eat in the Little Brown Jug pub in nearby Chiddingstone Causeway and I’ve done a separate short review of that. I didn’t take any photos of the houses in the street as it was impossible to get a good picture but while in the Castle I took a photograph of a model of the houses in the street and church that was on display in one of the upstairs rooms (see below).
Opposite the row of houses is the village church, St Mary the Virgin, and adjacent to the Castle Inn is the pedestrian access to Chiddingstone Castle’s grounds, its parkland, woods and lake. When Chiddingstone Castle was rebuilt in the 1830’s the road was relocated and now skirts around the end of the church. Anyone can enter via the pedestrian gate at the end of the High Street as payment is only required on entry to the castle building itself or for parking, when £3 is requested by putting cash in an honesty box.
