Chiddingstone Castle

The first significant building on the site was a timber-framed dwelling, lived in from the early 16th century by Richard Streatfeild, an iron master and wool merchant. Little of it survives: in 1679 Henry Streatfeild (1639–1719) had the house rebuilt in red brick in the Restoration style. It was known as High Street House, or High Street Mansion, because it fronted the village high street.

In the early 19th century Henry Streatfeild (1757–1829), son of Henry Streatfeild (1706–1762) and Lady Anne Sidney, commissioned William Atkinson to rebuild the house in the Gothic style. Atkinson's design was left unfinished, and in 1835 his patron's son, another Henry Streatfeild (1784–1852), brought in the architect Henry Kendal to carry the work further. The house was renamed Chiddingstone Castle, and the remodelling of its grounds in the same century produced the diversion by which the road still runs through the village.

The Streatfeilds kept ownership until 1938, when they sold to Lord Astor, but the family had not lived in the castle since 1900.

During the Second World War the castle housed members of the Canadian Forces, and it then served as Long Dene School until 1954. In 1955 it was bought by Denys Eyre Bower (1905–1977), a former bank clerk from Crich in Derbyshire who had taken over the Cavendish Hood antiques business in Baker Street, London, in 1943; the redevelopment of Baker Street led him to Chiddingstone, where he intended to show his collections to the public.

In 1957 Bower was convicted of the attempted murder of his mistress, whom he shot, and of attempted suicide, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1962 after the solicitor Ruth Eldridge succeeded in demonstrating a miscarriage of justice. He returned to the castle and, helped by Eldridge and her sister Mary, went on opening it to visitors until his death in 1977.

Bower left the castle and his collection to the nation, and the Denys Eyre Bower Bequest was formed on his death in 1977. The trust has held the castle and its 35 acres of grounds since then, opening both to the public and providing a venue for weddings; its trustees include descendants of the Streatfeilds. The castle has been a Grade II* listed building since 1975, the grounds are on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens and contain further listed buildings including an orangery, and the museum is accredited.

Bower's Stuart and Jacobite holdings — he belonged to the Royal Stuart Society — run to portraits of members of the House of Stuart, swords, royal manuscripts and objects carrying concealed Jacobite symbols, with an extensive library of antique books on the subject. His Japanese lacquer is reckoned one of the most important collections in private hands, shown alongside swords, armour and haniwa figures, and, being a Buddhist himself, he built a Buddhist collection from which thangkas and images of the Buddha are displayed. The Egyptian collection covers the whole span of the civilisation, from ushabti figures and amulets to food and drink vessels; pieces from it were lent to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 2013.