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Smallhythe Place: Romans, royal ships, and a rural retreat
Smallhythe Place, a National Trust property in Kent, is home to a picturesque timber-framed house with enigmatic origins, while the surrounding landscape preserves unique traces of a medieval shipbuilding centre that served several kings. Over the last three years, a team of more than 100 archaeologists have excavated 21 trenches (and a series of boreholes) to help bring the site’s story to light once more. Nathalie Cohen highlights some of the project’s key discoveries.
Today, Smallhythe Place is best known as the former home of the Victorian actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edith ‘Edy’ Craig. Ellen acquired ‘The Farm’ and the neighbouring Elfwick and Forstal Fields in 1899, before buying the nearby Priests’ House and Yew Tree Cottage in 1914. The Priests’ House was Edy’s home, where she lived in a lifelong trio with her partners, the painter Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood and writer Christabel Marshall (also known as ‘Christopher St John’). Edy was an influential costume designer, producer, director, and suffragette, and Smallhythe at this time was a radical, creative space, visited by Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Radclyffe Hall.
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