Client
Kidbrooke Park, on the edge of Ashdown Forest, was built in about 1734 for William Nevill, Lord Abergavenny; its original architect has not been recorded. A view made in about 1740 by George Lambert (Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.396) shows the house in its Wealden setting. In 1803, Lord Abergavenny's grandson sold the house for £15,375 (PRO 30/9/10/40) to Charles Abbot (1757-1829), Speaker of the House of Commons from 1802 to 1817 and created 1st Baron Colchester in 1817. Kidbrooke was Abbot's country retreat for the rest of his life where 'he amused himself with planting and gardening, with drilling volunteers and discharging the duties of a magistrate' (DNB).

Between 1803 and 1805 Abbot's journal records that he employed Humphry Repton for the design of various landscape improvements while Samuel Wyatt designed a bridge and alterations (PRO 30/9/33) and repairs were made to the house and offices, largely by James Sanderson, a local builder from East Grinstead (PRO 30/9/10/8). There are also among the Colchester papers at the Public Records Office, designs for a library in the (now demolished) south wing at Kidbrooke signed 'Sanderson' and dated 1813 (PRO 10/26). This may be James Sanderson (1790-1835), the son of the local builder of the same name.

Charles Abbot's Journal
Abbot's journal relating to 1814-15 (PRO 30/9/10/8) records the following about Dance and his tradesmen at Kidbrooke:
(p.417) '14th Decr Mr Dance came to Dinner. 15th and 16th He took measurements & made sketches. 17th He went away to Ld Ashburnham - took his drawings & appointed to be here again the 9th Jan[uar]y.'

(p.425) 'Summary of Journal for 1814... Kidbrooke. House & Grounds. No new works except a w[ater] closet at the NW end of the South wing under the back stairs and making an easier staircase from the dining room to the So. wing & shutting up half the bull's eye door. Mr Dance came at Xmas to plan alterations of garden room & book room into a larger library & some improvements of the general appearance of the house, by raising the parapet - putting new chimney pots to the stacks and a stone colonnade or balcony to the West front.'

(p.432) 'Monday 9th to Sat.14th [January, 1815] Mr Dance here giving directions to Blackstone & Sanderson and to his carpenter, [James] Carter & his Clerk of the Works Pi - [illegible, Pink? Picton?] whom he send for on Tuesday & and who arrived here on Wed[nes]d[a]y. Carter went to London on Sat[urda]y 14 & Mr Dance to Ashburnham.'

(pp.436-7) 'Wed[nesda]y 15th [February] Carter from Mr Dance - the girders are in - and the binding joist & partitions will be all in their place within a month - there is one Master Mason & one laborer - also 4 carpenters.... All will be ready for the Plaisterers in a month from this time. Dance very unwell.'

(p.443) 'Saturday 4th [March] Called at Dance's.'

(p.449) 'Wed[nesda]y [March] Carter (from Mr Dance) going tomorrow to Kidbrooke - will send sashes &c next week to Kidbrooke. [Francis] Bernasconi goes tomorrow with Carter to settle about battening and plaistering.'

(p.454) '22 March Rode to [Robert] Spiller's [mason] in Guildford Street [London] to see the library chimney piece.

(p.457) 'Monday 10 April Carter with pattern chimney pots for Kidbrooke.'

(p.458) 'Wednesday 11th April ... went to see my new library chimneypiece.'

(p.460) 'Monday 17th [April] Dance about pediment & with the drawings - he is to make an elevation for the So. Front - upon the supposition of removing the So. Wing.'

(p.463) 'Wednesday 26th [April] Carter about Kidbrooke - pediment &c'

(p.474v] Under 'Summary of 1815 ... House & Grounds. Made my two rooms on the west side of the house into one library with a colonnade front to the West under Dance's directions. Began 14 Jan[uar]y ended in December. It required taking down an immense stack of chimnies which divided the two rooms & supported that side of the roof. Dance at Kidbrooke, 17 April. 13 May. Sent his drawings. Brought all my London library except a few duplicates...'

(p.478) 'Saturday 13th [May] Dance & Carter came down to settle the library bookcases & the pediment &c with Blackstone.'

(p.481) 'Wed[nesda]y 24th [May] Carter & Bernasconi'.

(p.483v) [29 May] 'Carter came about library plans at Kidbr[ooke].'

(p.500) 'Friday 30 June Carter & Christmas the painter'

(p.503v) '6th July At Kidbrooke met Carter and settled about scaffold poles - Plaisterer &c.'

(p.508) 'Between 17 July & 25 Sept[embe]r. Kidbrooke alterations &c.
July 29 Mr Dance came & went away 30th Septr 14 [1815]----------do------------15th'

Kidbrooke before Dance
The house, as Dance saw it (on his visits of 14-17 December 1814 and 9-14 January, 17 April, 13 May, 29-30 July and 14-15 September 1815, which were combined with site visits to Ashburnham Park 20 miles away as the crow flies and probably a day's journey) was recorded in Neale's Seats (1821) with a view showing the front (east) elevation of Kidbrooke as a five-bay pedimented house linked to lower six-bay wings by a narrow bay with a door and above it, a console (such as those on Inigo Jones's facade for St Paul's Cathedral). The wings, of which the southern one was one room deep and the northern much deeper so as to accommodate the kitchen and other offices, were aligned with the main front in the centre of which was a porch approached by steps. A pair of watercolours made by James Lambert in 1783 (British Museum, Addn 5676) show the same view of the front as Neal's engraving and a view from the southwest with the shallow family wing and bow-front on the south side and the two-storey, five-bay back elevation with a simple door in the centre.

Kidbrooke after Dance
As Abbot's journal shows, Dance was employed to throw the two rooms on the garden (west) side into one involving the partial dismantling of the chimneystack that was supported by the wall between the rooms. As Christopher Whittick (email, 11 May 2002) noted, Dance sketched in this chimneystack on the elevation catalogued above and 'it was probably built as a central viewing-platform with the balustrade formed by the caps, and is now present on three sides only, the west side having been taken down as described by Abbot's summary of 1815.' Dance designed new bookshelves, chimney-piece and plasterwork, lengthened the windows to the floor, and designed the unremarkable Tuscan colonnade or loggia that fronts these windows. Above the first floor windows, there is a pediment with the Colchester arms for which Coade's received payment in June 1818 (PRO 30/9/61). Dance also suggested the removal of the south wing and made an elevation for it that is not at the Soane Museum nor with the Colchester papers at the Public Record Office. In the event, this south wing was removed some time between 1826, when James Bourne made two charming watercolours showing Kidbrooke in its bosky Repton landscape and with the south wing intact (Sussex Archaeological Society, Margary MSS), and 1874, when the house was sold.

Unexecuted design
On the evidence of the drawing catalogued above (identified as a design for Kidbrooke by Kalman), Dance also made an unexecuted design for alterations to the entrance (east) front. In it, he proposed the removal of the central porch and the embellishment to the window above it, and the replacement of two minor doors between the house and wings by pedimented arched entrances 20 feet high and wider than the original 7 feet 6 inch link bays. Faint pencil revisions substitute parapets for the pediments over the new twin entrances. The main front was to be remodelled by an arcaded loggia with 'S' railings, and by a parapet above it and another parapet to the roof. Faint pencil lines indicate pilasters between the windows of the upper storey as well as alterations to the roof that, together with a rough detail, suggest a proposed mansard roof. Though the railings imply otherwise, the arcaded loggia may have been an enclosed one, rather in the manner of the south end of Soane's first floor drawing room at 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, which had been constructed as an open loggia and was then altered in 1834 to form a gallery.

It might be considered that Dance's elevation is an alternative design for the back front. However, on the evidence of orientation suggested by cast shadows, the alignment of the wings, a faint pencil indication of a console and because it does seem to be a design for an entrance front, it is assumed that he was indeed proposing alterations to the principal (east) front. In any case, his designs for remodelling the east and south fronts and for re-roofing were not accepted by Abbot.

Later history
In 1874, the 3rd Lord Colchester sold Kidbrooke Park to H. R. Freshfield who employed Frederick Pepys Cockerell (1833-78) to make various alterations and additions including a tower entrance, a new staircase and new offices. The Kekewitch family had the house between 1909 and 1916, Sir James Horlick had it from 1916 and in 1921 his widow sold it to Olaf Hambro. during his ownership, the long room facing west that Dance had made into a library became a Neo-Adam drawing room. In 1938, the Alliance Insurance Company bought the house and since 1945 it has been a Rudolf Steiner School known as Michael Hall.

LITERATURE. J. P. Neale, Views of seats, vol.IV, 1821; A. Oswald, 'Kidbrooke Park', Country Life, LXXIX, 1936, pp.404-9; Stroud p.238; J. H. Farrant et al., Sussex depicted, views and descriptions 1600-1800, Sussex Record Society, LXXV, 2001, p.232 (G. Lambert's view of c.1740 reproduced and note).

OTHER SOURCES. Colchester papers, specifically those of Charles Abbot later Lord Colchester, Public Record Office, Kew; notes by Eric C. Byford and R. Morrice for Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Kidbrooke Park study day, 10 July 1999; information from Mr Eric C. Byford, Grania Oi, Kidbrooke Park, Julyl 1999 (Mr Byford's research papers are in the East Sussex Record Office, ACC 8310); information from Christopher Whittick, East Sussex Record Office, Lewes.

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