A Day Spent at Scotney Castle in Kent

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This year has been a busy one, and I was recently looking through some pictures that I had taken late in August on a day visit to Scotney Castle in Kent, England. Scotney Castle includes a newer castle that was built to be a stately home. It's a modest size with beautiful views over the countryside and over older medieval castle ruins by the lake below the hill. Tours are arranged in time slots to the newer castle, but visitors can then rome the gardens and the ruins of the older castle in their own time.

We toured the new castle (home) first. The house was left as it was when its last occupant passed away, and the house greatly reflected her personality and love of cats. Her cats (their descendants) currently live in the home. Her room on the upper level boasted excellent and beautiful views over the romantic medieval ruins and countryside.

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The library

I loved the colour of the Queen Anne's Lace flowery wallpaper that was within one of the bedrooms at the back (pictured below). One of the staff who was in one of the rooms told us that the beautiful fireplace in one of the rooms was probably removed from the medieval castle and relocated to the new castle.  

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Books in a bedroom and the beautiful wallpaper

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The view of the medieval castle

After our visit to the new castle was complete, we visited the gardens. We admired the sundial and a cement cat decoration added to the fountain near the castle. (This was no doubt a tribute to the owner's love of cats.)

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Sundial

I particularly loved the gardens and the lakeside views of the romantic ruins. The flowers were in bloom in the quarry area in the upper gardens.

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A little further along the garden walk were beautiful beds of lavender, and these will filled with busy bees. I spent a little bit of time here snapping photographs of the lavender and the bees.

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We followed the trail down to the lake where we discovered a thatched hut that was used for storing ice. From here, we followed the lake around to admire the views of the medieval castle ruins and its reflection in the waters.

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On the other side of the lake, we saw the boathouse and several ducks competing for our attention. The lakeside was peaceful, and we were lucky with the weather on the day as we had sunshine but there were small showers just before we went to explore the castle and gardens.

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Our last stop was to explore the medieval castle ruins, which could partially be entered to see the rooms on the ground floor and some of the rooms on the floors above. 

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Before we started our journey on the exploration of the castles and the grounds, we had grabbed a little bit of lunch at the cafe. Unfortunately, the cafe was having some issues with food and could only serve cold sandwiches and tea. I opted for cream tea with scones. 

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That concludes my trip to Scotney Castle. I hope that you enjoyed the photographs.

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