By the end of the Seven Years' War, Sissinghurst Castle was so badly damaged that its owners never even tried to restore it. The Mann's of Linton bought the property for the value of the land and plundered the house for building materials. In 1794, the Mann Estate rented the property to Cranbrook Poor Relief Trustees, and one hundred poor families farmed the estate while living in flimsy buildings that were tacked onto the ruins; this lasted until until 1855, when the parish shut down the farm. By this time the Mann Estate had been inherited, through the female line, by the 5th Earl of Cornwallis and he put a tenant farmer, George Neve, in charge of managing the farm at Sissinghurst.. The brick Victorian farmhouse to the east of the gatehouse was built for him and the surviving fragments of the castle were used as the farm's outbuildings. Neve managed the farm until 1903, when the Cornwallis Estate sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. Barton Cheeseman.
After Mr. Cheeseman's death in 1926, the property was sold to William Wilmshurst, who died two years later. William's son put the farm on the market, where it remained unsold for two years.
The castle that Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson bought in 1930 was mainly a ruin. The only inhabitable buildings were the gate house, the tower, the south cottage, and the priest's house. My next article will be about the Nicolson's gardening background before they bought Sissinghurst Castle.
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