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James Master's house, Yotes Court, Kent

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James Master built Yotes Court in 1659, pulling down the previous mansion on the site, which had been the property of his step-father Sir Thomas Walsingham. In 1828 the property was described in some detail: “It consists of two stories surmounted by a high roof, with dormer windows, and is built of brick, with stone quoins and dressings: a small Corinthian porch opens to a Hall fifty-eight feet long by nineteen feet wide; having on the right, a Dining-Room, and on the left of the entrance, a Drawing-room. The whole of the grounds comprise about one thousand acres, of which the house, garden, and shrubberies, immediately adjoining, occupy six acres; the water in the park, from whence all the ponds in the neighbourhood are fed, extends over five or six acres, and there are about three hundred acres of cover. From the principal entrance to Yotes Court, in the Mereworth Road to Forge Gate, is a beautiful drive of nearly a mile.” An 1889 Order of the Land Commissioners schedules the Yotes Court estate, then owned by Viscount Torrington, and describes it comrpising nine hundred and forty acres, which the schedule broke into thirteen blocks, with land in both the parishes of Mereworth and West Peckham. However, no information is available on the size of the estate at the time of the construction of Yotes Court.

Sources

Text

‘The expense-book of James Master, pt. II, A.D. 1655-57, Mrs. Max Dalison transcribed, Canon Scott Robertson, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 16 (London, 1886)
‘Expense-book of James Master, pt. III, A.D. 1658-1663, Mrs. Max Dalison transcribed, Canon Scott Robertson, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 17 (London, XXXX), pp. 321-352
‘Expense-book of James Master, Esq. Pt. IV’, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 18 (London, XXXX)
'Scheduling of Yotes Court Estate' (XXXX, 1889)
‘The life of James Master', Archaeologica Cantiana, vol. 18 (London, XXXX), pp.157-168
J.P. Neale, Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, vol. 4 (London, 1828), p. unnumbered

Images

'Yotes Court' in J.P. Neale, Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, vol. 4 (London, 1828), p. unnumbered