Sir Edwin Sandys 1561-1629

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5. Sir Edwin Sandys and Northbourne

The following is an extract is from Professor Theodore K. Rabb's book Jacobean Gentleman Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629 and is reproduced with the permission of Princeton University Press.

'Sandys acquired from the crown in 1611 the "moiety" of the manor of Northbourne, Kent, which became his principal residence. The land had once been owned by the Cranmer family, and was not far away from Sir Edwin's other Kent holdings. The formal grant of the property in March 1614, a month before the new Parliament met, was probably part of the Court's campaign to neutralize influential M.P.s, though it still cost Sandys £850. He may have been at Northbourne as long as five years earlier, but only in 1614 did he began to construct an imposing mansion on the site.

'Since the building was pulled down 1750, one can only guess at its size, but a few relics and a conjectured floor plan suggest that the house had two wings, one approximately eighty feet by sixty feet, the other about fifty feet square linked by a fifty-foot-long colonnade. If the building was on anything like this scale, even a two storey structure would suggest a cost of over £5000, possibly approaching to £10,000, by comparison with some of the better-known houses of the period. And if the floor plan can be trusted, the resultant conversion of an old monastic house created one of the first Italianate villas in England, earlier than the Queen's House that Inigo Jones designed in Greenwich. Inspired by his Italian journey (and perhaps by his friend Wotton), Sandys was making a signal contribution to the great building boom of early Stuart times.

'Like so many participants in that extravagant outburst, however, he undertook a burden of expenditure that he could not discharge. In the absence of information about his finances, we cannot be sure, but it seems likely that the prime cause of Sir Edwin's near impoverishment in his last years was his lavish spending on real estate'.

© 1998 Princeton University Press. (Theodore K. Rabb Jacobean Gentleman. Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629, p.50, Princeton University Press 1998).

Sir Edwin Sandys's expenditure included draining the marshland around Northbourne in 1609-11. He deepened the North Stream where it drained the northern part of the Lydden Valley which was 'much annoyed by abundance of waters'. A channel was made suitable for a boat to pass from the watering place at Northbourne Court to Sandwich and so was able to clear the the stream of weeds._^[1] He also spent £100 on paving stones shipped from Amsterdam in 1621.^[2] In 1622 there must have been substantial refurbishment being undertaken at Northbourne as in the autumn Edwin writes that 'I come up [to London] in the time of receiving my rents, and before I can get them. I leave a multitude of workmen in all parts of my house, without oversight, account, or direction'.^[3]