Olantigh
Garden features include a wide variety of trees with woodland walks; rockerys, shrubbery, herbaceous borders and extensive lawns.
Eventually, and after much obstruction on his part, he obtained Parliamentary permission to appoint trustees that would sell the 600 acres (240 ha) estate and pay his debts.
[13][14][15][16] Following the Stuart Restoration Lady Thornhill joined her brother in Whitehall Palace and became a Woman of the Bedchamber to Catherine of Braganza[14][17][18] Olantigh was purchased in 1720 by Jacob Sawbridge, a director of the South Sea Company though his position was subsequently reduced by its crash.
[10] After the 1828 death of her brother, his wife's fortune included Charborough House and Ellerton Abbey estates, as well as sugar plantations in Barbados and Jamaica.
[22] Sawbridge then appended his wife's family name of Erle-Drax to his own[21] though commonly referred to by the much shorter nickname The Mad Major,[10] or less kindly as The Wicked Squire.
At Charborough he constructed a 3 miles (4.8 km) long wall,[21] while in Kent additions included picture galleries and Venetian towers, one of which is extant on the stable block.
[23][10] Galleries were laden with Italian Renaissance paintings, and other works, from artists including Ruisdael, Lorain, Bugiardini, Fidanza, Aspertini, Raphael, Bertucci and Melone.
[10][24] Landscape works included widening a canalised branch taken off the river to form an ornamental lake with island, and to the east of Olantigh Road extensive parkland and a 3 hectares (7.4 acres) circular walled kitchen garden.
[21] He purchased the Hubert Fountain[10] In December 1903, Olantigh was owned by The Mad Major's nephew, Wanley Elias Sawbridge Erle-Drax, vicar of Almer, Dorset, when fire gutted the Georgian mansion.
A fire engine was summoned by bicycle and Ashford's horse drawn steam pumper responded, drawing water from the ornamental lake, but much of the house was devastated; the roof collapsed.
[31][32] It had originally been displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1862, one of a pair at the entrance to the Royal Horticultural Society's 22 acres (8.9 hectares) gardens at South Kensington.
[10][34][35] Tragically Harper committed suicide, three weeks after donating the fountain, placing his head on a railway track by Ashford Warren ahead of an express train.
The arrangement devised by a former lecturer at the nearby South Eastern Agricultural College fed water from a weir on the River Stour to a turbine that powered chain pumps and blowers.
[7] ...A drive leads off Olantigh Road through mid C19 rendered brick gate piers surmounted by urns at a lodge located c. 200m to the south-east of the house.
A second drive branches off Olantigh Road at a point c. 380m further to the south; this runs north to the stable block which stands immediately to the south-west of the house.
At the western end of the terrace is an elaborate underground room, with an ornamental front of possibly C18 date, which may have been an undercroft or the cellar of a garden building.
It is laid out with streams, pools, and bridges, a group of yews which stood on the island in the mid C19 lake having been retained as a feature.Author Russell Hoban may have repurposed Olantigh as "The Aulders" in his 1980, post apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker.
