Sayes Court
Sayes Court was a manor house and garden in Deptford, in the London Borough of Lewisham on the Thames Path and in the former parish of St Nicholas.
Sayes Court once attracted throngs to visit its celebrated garden[1][2] created by the seventeenth century diarist John Evelyn.
Now completely buried beneath Convoys Wharf and Sayes Court Park,[3] the area shows little sign of its former glory, despite having been a key factor in the creation of the National Trust.
Lyon noted that all traces had by then long since been buried in their ruins, but from the remains of some ancient foundations which had been discovered, the site was probably on the brow of Broomfield, near the Mast Dock and adjacent to Sayes Court.
[6] The Manor house, Sayes Court, along with about 60 acres (240,000 m2) of land, was assigned by Parliament to the Browne family, who had occupied it for several generations by then.
[6][10] It was owned by Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, and in 1530 when he fell from Henry VIII's favour, it was given to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and his wife, Mary, the French Queen.
With the Restoration of the monarchy, Sayes Court reverted once more to the Crown, but, having taken up residence in his wife's family home in 1651, Evelyn managed with difficulty to obtain a 99-year lease of the property from Charles II in 1663.
[6][12][13] He rebuilt and enlarged the house and, inspired by French and Italian ideas, turned the surrounding orchard and pasture into one of the most influential gardens of his day.
[16] Adjacent to the house on the west was a walled garden "of choice flowers, and simples", that is, medicinal herbs, laid out in formal beds surrounding a large fountain.
The main features included: a long terrace walk overlooking an elaborate box parterre; a large rectangular area ("the grove") planted with many different species of trees, inset with walks and recesses; large kitchen gardens; a great orchard of three hundred fruit trees; avenues and hedges of ash, elm, and holly; and a long walk or promenade from a banquet house set against the south wall of the garden down to an ornamental lake with an island, fruit bushes and summer house at the north end.
[17] However, much worse damage was done to the house and grounds when William III lent Sayes Court to Tsar Peter of Russia for three months in 1698.
In the centre of the ground was a bandstand; and in the north-west corner there was a large neoclassical building, formerly the Dockyard's Admiralty Model house,[28] which was intended to serve as a museum and library,[29] under the management of the Goldsmiths' Company.
[30] In 1884 W. J. Evelyn approached Octavia Hill with the suggestion that the garden should become publicly owned and offering the hall which could be used as a museum, but there was as yet no organisation with the necessary legal powers for holding the property for permanent preservation.
Unfortunately, the Trust took ten years to reach the point where it could be properly constituted, by which time the opportunity to take ownership of Sayes Court had passed.
[35] During World War II, on 16 August 1944, the Victorian Terrace existing along the Grove Street side of Sayes Court was destroyed by a V-1 flying bomb.
The excavation identified the plan of Sayes Court, as modified in the course of its history, with ground floor walls surviving up to a metre high in places.
[48] On 31 March 2014 the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, approved plans to build up to 3,500 new homes on the Convoys Wharf site that has been derelict for 14 years.
