[2] The house is reached along Provender Lane, Norton, a village in the Swale district of Kent.

[3] The house was built in 1342 for Lucas of Vienne, the Chief Archer to Edward, the Black Prince.

Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet inherited it from Dorothea Hugessen, Lady Banks, who had married naturalist Sir Joseph Banks but died childless, and the estate was farmed by William Knatchbull-Hugessen in the 1860s.

One of Constance's daughters, Sylvia, a Finnish-born heiress, married Colonel Herbert McDougall of the British Army in 1906,[8] and bought the house and its land in 1912.

[1] Sylvia's eldest daughter and heiress was Nadine McDougall (1908–2000), who became the second wife of Prince Andrew (or Andrei) of Russia (1897–1981).