The property was developed into a fortified compound with six towers at irregular intervals along the curtain wall and domestic buildings in the interior, including one of the first long galleries built in England.

After nearly 50 years of occupation by a community of Carmelite friars and nuns, it returned to being a private residence in 1999 and is currently the home of Sir Robert Worcester, the founder of the MORI polling company.

It is a grade I listed building and is used as a wedding venue, though there is no public access other than occasional tours involving trips from Maidstone town centre on the Kentish Lady river boat.

It took the form of a moated mound (possibly a motte and bailey) built on a site adjoining a bend in the River Medway about one mile (1.6 km) north of Maidstone.

[3] The present castle was built between 1279 and 1299 by Stephen de Pencester, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, who was granted a licence to crenellate the existing manor house by Edward I.

The building's development was continued in the early 13th century by Sir Henry de Cobham, incorporating the remains of the old manor house into the new castle.

He undertook major alterations, dividing the courtyard into two unequal parts by constructing a two-storeyed building which contained what may have been one of the first long galleries in England.

[1] Henry was said to have been so concerned for his personal safety while staying in the castle's north-east tower that he had the single entry, a spiral staircase, blocked off by a dry stone wall each night that he was there.

Sir Thomas was executed, the Wyatts were deprived of the rest of their extensive estate, and the surviving members of the family emigrated to America.

An early 17th-century lessee named John Best pulled down the battlements and added a half-timbered gabled second storey to the east and west wings as a replacement for the fire-damaged areas of the castle.

[11] The top of the Long Gallery was destroyed in another fire in the early 19th century and the rest of the castle was nearly demolished a few decades later by Charles Marsham, 5th Earl of Romney.

He was dissuaded by opposition from local residents, notably the Rector of the nearby Church of St. Lawrence, but by this time the castle was totally ruined.

[8] The Penchester wing was abandoned and used as a quarry for building materials, while the ground-floor remnants of the Long Gallery were converted into a pair of farmhouses.

[10] In 1895, a retired London barrister named Dudley C. Falke rented the castle from Lord Romney and began the lengthy task of restoration.

[12]Conway decided to purchase the castle's freehold from Lord Romney at a cost of £4,800 and spent the next 30 years restoring it with the assistance of the architects W. D. Caroe and Philip Tilden.

Corbens, a local building firm, was hired to carry out the work and provided traditional craftsmen to undertake the restoration in an architecturally and historically sympathetic style.

After the war, Lord Conway set about clearing the exterior of the castle from the ramshackle collection of rural buildings that had accumulated over the centuries just outside the walls.

[12] There was a certain amount of historical irony in this, as the Wyatts of Allington Castle had obtained Aylesford Priory and dispossessed its occupants during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries; now the tables were turned.

Just to its north, adjoining the west curtain wall, is the Penchester Lodgings, one of two surviving ranges of early buildings, which may incorporate remains of the earlier manor house.