Summerhouse Hill view
view from the Downs looking towards the sea, Dungeness nuclear power station is on the horizon.
The “bump” in the landscape is has been known as Brockman’s Mount, Brockman’s Folly, and more recently, Summerhouse Hill.
The estate here passed through several generations of the English Brockman family from the 1500s. Sir William Brockman (1595–1654) was an English military leader, politician, and land owner, and a notable combatant in the English civil war, wherein he fought against Sir Thomas Fairfax's Parliamentary forces. He was knighted in 1632.
I don’t know when the folly, a gazebo or summerhouse it seems, was built, but it is recorded as being burnt to the ground by a prankster on Guy Fawkes night in 1935.
This chalk hill towers an astonishing 148 metres above sea level. The hill was formed naturally and forms part of the North Downs. Like many areas around here the land has passed into the ownership of the Ministry of Defence who use it for army training. Not that I have ever seen any evidence of that.
[An old Ordinance Survey map marks the hill as Summermouse Hill. There is an intriguing theory that this is not a misspelling . In ancient times, so the theory goes, the moment of dawn was likened to the habits of the mouse. It was, perhaps, a means of explaining to illiterate people the great importance of this moment of dawn. The arguments are too involved to go into here, but the conclusion is that Summermouse was the hill from which, or over which the sunrise was observed on the solsticial day, the sun’s rays stealing mouse-like across the then virgin landscape of Kent to signal the advent of an important quarter-day of the year.]
Summerhouse Hill view
view from the Downs looking towards the sea, Dungeness nuclear power station is on the horizon.
The “bump” in the landscape is has been known as Brockman’s Mount, Brockman’s Folly, and more recently, Summerhouse Hill.
The estate here passed through several generations of the English Brockman family from the 1500s. Sir William Brockman (1595–1654) was an English military leader, politician, and land owner, and a notable combatant in the English civil war, wherein he fought against Sir Thomas Fairfax's Parliamentary forces. He was knighted in 1632.
I don’t know when the folly, a gazebo or summerhouse it seems, was built, but it is recorded as being burnt to the ground by a prankster on Guy Fawkes night in 1935.
This chalk hill towers an astonishing 148 metres above sea level. The hill was formed naturally and forms part of the North Downs. Like many areas around here the land has passed into the ownership of the Ministry of Defence who use it for army training. Not that I have ever seen any evidence of that.
[An old Ordinance Survey map marks the hill as Summermouse Hill. There is an intriguing theory that this is not a misspelling . In ancient times, so the theory goes, the moment of dawn was likened to the habits of the mouse. It was, perhaps, a means of explaining to illiterate people the great importance of this moment of dawn. The arguments are too involved to go into here, but the conclusion is that Summermouse was the hill from which, or over which the sunrise was observed on the solsticial day, the sun’s rays stealing mouse-like across the then virgin landscape of Kent to signal the advent of an important quarter-day of the year.]