The Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the Postcode Neighbourhood Trust, a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. The Trust has been awarded…
Author: Nick Rushby
An update
Detailed design work As a result of the recent funding awards from the Department of Digital culture Media and Sport, and the Postcode Neighbourhood Trust, we have been able to instruct Purcell Architects to start work on the next stage of the design…
Help for heritage as Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust receives lifeline from the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund
More help for heritage in need with £14 million investment in England’s historic sites The Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust is among 162 organisations receiving lifeline grant from the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund Culture across the…
Otford Palace needs your help
The covid-19 pandemic came at an unfortunate time for the Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust. Both the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England put their funding programmes on hold until the end of 2020 and the programme for solicit…
Heritage collaborates for the future
After lengthy discussions, the Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust and the Otford Heritage Centre have reached agreement on a programme of close collaboration which, it is intended, will lead to a merger of the two organisations in due course. In…
The Story of Becket’s Well and The Story of the Papal Bulls
Two more videos have been added to the Archbishop’s Palace collection – The Story of Becket’s Well, and The Story of the Papal Bulls. You can find them under the Background tab of the Palace Website.
Interactive interior
Except for the Trustees and those who carried out the recent repairs works, relatively few people alive today have seen the interior of the North-West Tower. Part of the overall project is to establish a Museum in the Tower and to this end, the Trust…
Field of the Cloth of Gold – posponed
With great regret, we have postponed our re-enactment of the visit of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to Otford in 1520. In the current situation it would have been irresponsible to hold the event as planned. We’ll be looking for another date…
A delivery partner for the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme
It has been agreed that the Trust will become the delivery partner for the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme project 2D: Otford’s Hidden Palace. The conservation of the Archbishop’s Palace is one piece in the jigsaw of initiatives to…
The lease
The Trust and Sevenoaks District Council are delighted to announce that the 99-year lease of the Archbishop’s Palace site and buildings was completed on 19th September. This means that the Trust can now start to make progress with many aspects of the…
The Tudor Door
Observant walkers in Station Road Otford will have noticed a Tudor door being used as a garden gate, just past the end of the garden at Colets, the imposing house to the East of the Pond. Its original location is uncertain: various suggestions are that…
Thomas Becket returns to Otford
850 years after his murder in Canterbury, Becket is coming back to Otford – a place where it is said he particularly enjoyed staying while he was Archbishop (1162-1170) in spite of the taste of the water and the songs of its nightingales. Local legends…
Council for British Archaeology
A group of about twenty visitors from the Council for British Archaeology South East visited Otford on Sunday 9th June 2019. They spend the morning at the dig on the Roman Villa on Castle Field and, after lunch, were given a talk and tour of Otford’s…
Surveying Palace Field
One of the actions in the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership plan for the Archbishops’ Palace, is a botanical survey of Palace Field. This, together with the archaeological survey, will enable us to understand the field before any conservation work…
Darent Valley Mayors at the Palace
On 11th May, as part of a journey along the Darent Valley, the Mayors of Sevenoaks and Dartford, together with councillors from Sevenoaks District Council, visited the Archbishop’s Palace and the Otford Heritage Centre. The Trust’s vision…
Making artefacts more accessible
Museums have traditionally displayed historical artefacts in glass display cases which limit visitors’ opportunity to examine them in detail. Technology can provide a solution to this problem. On 7th May 2019 Nick Rushby (APCT), Cliff Ward…
Laura Shield joints the Board of Trustees
Laura Shield teaches at St Michael’s School, Otford, where she is head of History and Religious Education. In her history degree she specialised in the Tudors and so she brings an important skill set to the Board. She will be writing a monthly…
Purcell Architects
The search for an architect to work with the Trust in realising its vision for the future of the Archbishops’ Palace started in November 2018. We were looking for a firm with significant experience of heritage buildings, who could offer a wide…
Handing over the royalties of Otford Palace
Sevenoaks District Council will be bidding a royal farewell to the Archbishop’s Palace in Otford as it hands over the reins to newly crowned leaseholders, the Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust. The Tudor Palace, dating back to 1515 and once…
Holly Cooper
The Trust is very pleased to announce that Holly Cooper will be working with us over the coming months, helping with the architectural aspects of the project.
Andrew Goymer joins APCT Board of Trustees
We are delighted to welcome Andrew Goymer, a long-time resident of Otford, to the Board of Trustees. He joins at a particularly crucial time, as we await the delivery to SDC of the Options Appraisal from Thomas Ford, and then the Council’s decision…