In a Kentish valley, Penshurst Place preserves, almost intact, one of the finest medieval great halls in England. Given by Edward VI to the Sidney family, it saw the birth of Philip Sidney, poet, soldier and courtier, in whom the Elizabethan age recognised the very embodiment of the perfect gentleman.
A great hall of the Middle Ages
The heart of Penshurst is its Baron's Hall, a great hall built around 1341, roofed with chestnut and lit by high windows, with its open central hearth. It is one of the purest examples of the English medieval hall, left almost unchanged. Around it the house grew over the centuries. In 1552 the young king Edward VI gave Penshurst to Sir William Sidney, making the house the cradle of a family destined to shine under Elizabeth.
Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan ideal
It was here that, in 1554, Philip Sidney was born — the most admired gentleman of his time. A poet (author of Astrophil and Stella and the Arcadia), a theorist of poetry (Defence of Poesie), a diplomat and a soldier, he united all the talents the Renaissance dreamed of seeing in a single man. His heroic death in battle, in the Low Countries in 1586 — wounded and dying, he is said to have given his water-bottle to a soldier worse off than himself — made him a legend, mourned by all England. His sister, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, was herself one of the great women of letters of the age. Penshurst thus became the symbol of a cultivated and generous aristocratic culture, celebrated by the poet Ben Jonson in his famous poem To Penshurst.
What to see
- The fourteenth-century Baron's Hall, with its chestnut roof and central hearth.
- The apartments and furniture of the Sidney family.
- The Italian-style walled gardens, among the oldest in England.
- The memory of Philip Sidney, the poet-knight born within these walls.
Did you know?
Ben Jonson devoted to Penshurst, around 1616, one of the first great English poems celebrating a country house (To Penshurst). In it he praised not splendour but the hospitality and harmony of the place, where the master fed his guests and his tenants. The poem founded a whole genre — the 'country-house poem' — and fixed Penshurst in English letters as the model of the ideal house.
Practical information
Penshurst Place lies near Tonbridge, in Kent, south-east of London. It is a private house, still lived in by the descendants of the Sidneys, open to the public with its gardens. Opening hours, prices and days are liable to change with the seasons; it is best to check them against the official sources before visiting.
Quiz
- Which poet-knight, the ideal of the Elizabethan gentleman, was born at Penshurst?
- Philip Sidney
- Christopher Marlowe
- Edmund Spenser
- What can be admired at the heart of Penshurst?
- The Baron's Hall, a medieval great hall
- A Renaissance dome
- A Norman keep
- Which poet celebrated Penshurst in a famous poem around 1616?
- Ben Jonson
- John Donne
- William Shakespeare