In 1726, Colen Campbell extensively remodelled and refaced the house but retained the E-shaped plan and a north entrance point. Its entrance was on the north front, through a courtyard formed by projecting wings. Little evidence exists of the detailed layout of the Elizabethan house built in 1544 and incorporated into the present house. Sophia Burrell's water colours of 1783 show open views from the house south-eastwards to the coast at Sea Houses and north to downland windmills which are now obscured by woodland and development. The present house, offices and courtyard stable block (listed grade I) form an east to west range of buildings in the centre of the site. The drive sweeps in a wide arc westwards and then southwards across the lawns to the house. Inside to the south is a single-storey, flint-fronted lodge, shown in existence on the Tithe map of c 1841. Before the road was moved, the entrance to the estate appears to have been further south and associated with the Elizabethan house.Įxcept along the frontage of the estate office, a high flint boundary wall encloses the site along Compton Place Road, with a convex wing of dressed flint wall defining each side of the entrance. The original north to south line of the road can be seen on the estate map of 1739 and also on a plan (of the Hundred and Parish of Eastbourne) dated 1783. This seems to have been established after this road was diverted eastwards in 1782. The site has one main entrance, from Compton Place Road. The house occupies the level valley floor with the land rising gently to the near horizon on its north side but much more steeply and quickly on its south-west side. The c 9.9ha site lies at the east end of a shallow, north-east-facing valley, which is enclosed by the lowest slopes of the South Downs where they drop steeply towards the south-west side of the town from Beachy Head. In 1782, the road which then formed the site's eastern boundary, known as the Way to the Bourne, was diverted eastwards to the course of the present Compton Place Road to unite the detached walled garden with the remainder of the grounds (estate survey dated 1739). A block of flats, Saffrons Court, separates the registered site from Compton Place Road which runs the length of the eastern boundary. To the south, a concrete and pebble-faced wall marks the C20 boundary with the housing development of Saffrons Park, begun on land sold in 1983. To the north and west, its boundaries open immediately onto the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club course and are defined by a flint-walled ha-ha, probably of early C18 origin and possibly part of Bridgeman's work. LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTINGĬompton Place is situated on the western fringe of Eastbourne, just to the south of the Old Town and the A259, and c 1km inland from the coast. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit the The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):Ī garden with elements surviving from the C18 with which Charles Bridgeman and Lancelot Brown are associated and for which Humphry Repton prepared apparently unexecuted proposals in a Red Book, and with additional C19 formal features. The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. The site lies at the east end of a shallow, north-east-facing valley.
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