Sir Charles Farnaby (assumed the additional name Radcliffe in 1784), 3rd Baronet (c1740-98), was MP for East Grinstead in 1765-68, for Kent in 1769-74, and for Hythe in 1774-98. From c1760 he rebuilt the house at Kippington, which had been in the possession of the Farnaby family from at least the middle of the seventeenth century. Nothing survives of the original Jacobean house, but there are some seventeenth-century stables behind the house.

The architect for Farnaby's 1760s house is unknown, but the surviving drawings show that Robert Adam made designs for chimneypieces and tables. Adam's marble chimneypiece in the hall was executed, but it is not known if his other designs were executed or not.

The Farnaby title became extinct on the death of the 5th Baronet in 1859, and extensive alterations were made to the house from 1874. Since 1952 Kippington has been used as a care home, and since 1991 it has been at the centre of a seventeen-hectare conservation area.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert & James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 20, 70; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, pp. 50, 65; N. Pevsner, and J. Newman, The buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald, 1976, p. 517; M. M. Drummond, 'Farnaby (afterwards Farnaby Radcliffe), Sir Charles, 3rd Bt (c1740-98), of Kippington, nr. Sevenoaks, Kent', The history of Parliament online

Frances Sands, 2012