By the 18th century the Baker's fortunes had waned, and the house, renamed Sissinghurst Castle, was leased to the government to act as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Seven Years' War.

[8] Nicolson suggested that the de Berhams constructed a moated house in stone, of an appearance similar to that of Ightham Mote, which was later replaced by a brick manor.

[12] The Bakers were cloth producers and in the following century, through marriage and careers at court and in the law, Thomas's successors greatly expanded their wealth and their estates in Kent and Sussex.

[24] Around 1800, the estate was purchased by the Mann family[25] and the majority of Sir Richard's Elizabethan house was demolished; the stone and brick were reused in buildings throughout the locality.

[2][40][g] From 1946 until a few years before her death, Sackville-West wrote a gardening column for The Observer, in which, although she never referred directly to Sissinghurst,[42] she discussed a wide array of horticultural issues.

[48] Following his father into the diplomatic corps, he served as a junior member of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War,[49] and returned to Iran as Counsellor in 1925.

Instead there was nothing but weed, rough grass, a shabby eyesore of a greenhouse in the wrong place, broken fencing, wired chicken runs, squalor and slovenly disorder everywhere.

[67] Despite her love of privacy, Sackville-West came to enjoy greatly her encounters with the visitors, known as "shillingses" on account of the entrance fees they deposited in a bowl at the gate.

Nicolson's diary entry for 2 September 1940 reads: "a tremendous raid in the morning and the whole upper air buzzes and zooms with the noise of aeroplanes.

[76] In 1959 the American CBS network broadcast a four-way discussion from the dining room at the Priest's House, between Nicolson, the journalist Edward R. Murrow, and the diplomats Chip Bohlen and Clare Boothe Luce.

Unwilling to live in four separate structures – the Big Room, the Tower, the Priest's House, and the South Cottage – he built a substantial family home in the half of the entrance range that stood on the side of the gateway opposite from the library.

[97] Although the increased foot traffic has necessitated the replacement of the grass paths with York paving stones, the entry fees generate considerable income which, under the terms of the handover, can only be expended on Sissinghurst.

[98] Major works of reconstruction, such as the restoration of the Tower brickwork, and the cataloguing and conservation of the collection of books in the library, have been made possible by the availability of these funds.

[104] Adam Nicolson, Nigel's son and the resident donor after his father's death, and his wife Sarah Raven, have sought to restore a form of traditional Wealden agriculture to Sissinghurst Farm.

[116] Powys provided most of the architectural input into the conversion of the buildings at Sissinghurst, including the Priest's House and the South Cottage, as well as occasionally advising on elements of the design of the gardens.

[111] Of four storeys, it has recessed staircase turrets to each side, creating what the architectural historian Mark Girouard described as an "extraordinarily slender and elegant" appearance.

[122] Such an arrangement of a three-sided courtyard with a prominent gatehouse set some way in front became popular from Elizabethan times, similar examples being Rushton Hall and the original Lanhydrock.

Of red brick and two storeys, Historic England suggests that the building may originally have been attached to Sir Richard Baker's 1560s house[135] but Newman disagrees.

[62] Anne Scott-James sets out the principles of the design: "a garden of formal structure, of a private and secret nature, truly English in character, and plant[ed] with romantic profusion".

The landscape is designed as a series of "garden rooms", each with a different character of colour or theme, the enclosures being high clipped hedges and pink brick walls.

[144] Edwin Lutyens, long-time gardening partner of Gertrude Jekyll, was a friend to both Sackville-West and Nicolson and a frequent visitor to Long Barn, and gave advice regarding Sissinghurst.

[158] Many of the gardening themes developed at Sissinghurst were conceived during Sackville-West's and Nicolson's time at Long Barn: the prominence of roses,[159] the emphasis on "rectilinear perspectives" through axial paths,[160] and an informal, massed planting approach.

[174] In 2018 Scott Smith announced plans to extend the flowering season at Sissinghurst beyond the autumn period established by Schwerdt and Kreutzberger, into the winter months, allowing for year-round opening of the garden.

[182] The height of the Tower attracts considerable wind which necessitates intensive staking of the plants,[183] particularly the taller specimens such as Sackville-West's much-favoured Rosa moyesii.

[193] Sackville-West recorded her original inspiration in a letter to Nicolson dated 12 December 1939: "I have got what I hope will be a lovely scheme for it: all white flowers, with some clumps of very pale pink".

[196] A more prosaic motivation for the colour scheme was to provide reflected illumination for Sackville-West and Nicolson as they made their way from their bedrooms at the South Cottage to the Priest's House for dinner.

[4] A possibly apocryphal story records a visit by the colour-loving gardener Christopher Lloyd, during which he is supposed to have scattered seeds of brightly coloured nasturtiums across the lawn.

Later, in the 1960s, Pamela Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger decided to propagate the most successful flowering plant varieties in order to offer them for sale and make them more easily available to amateur gardeners.

[255] When she first visited the property, Sackville-West came upon a dark red, double-flowered form of Rosa gallica growing wild and apparently dating from earlier plantings there.

[272][281] In the late 1980s, Pamela Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger found a specimen of Phlox stolonifera with a remarkably rich purple colour in a florist's shop near the Chelsea Flower Show.