North End Garden Additions - Pool and Tennis Court

Following the structural updates to the Castle walls themselves, Sir Paul Latham added lavish recreational facilities to the Castle estate. The restored walls and courtyards, reminiscent of the estate's former glory, attracted well-established and affluent overnight guests and visitors. Landscape changes were needed to meet the needs of the leisured classes, and to complement the quality of the estate.

Notable changes included the installation of a large outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court at the north end of the Elizabethan Garden, accessible through the glazed Loggia.

At the north end of the present-day Shakespeare Garden, the same pedestal that holds the garden's stone Cherub Sculpture once held a finely carved life-sized bronze figure of a naked male youth overlooking the pool. The sculpture was carved by artist and activist Lady Elizabeth Kennet.

Other notable sculptures by Lady Kennet include a bronze statue of her first husband, Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and of Captain Edward Smith, the captain of the Titanic. Having Kennet contribute to the aesthetic of Herstmonceux was a major honour given her other works.

The statue was removed by the Admiralty in the mid-1950s or 1960s and replaced with our cherubic friend.

Visitors of all ages who visited the estate had access to the garden grounds. Eventually, for safety reasons, the pool was filled in and became a garden.

"The grounds are beautiful and contain a swimming pool and several courts which same of them used while I tried to acquire a tan. We were showed around the castle. It is perfect! - rooms and rooms for lounging, studies a ballroom, a library..."

The sunken pool is now the site of the "Shakespeare Gardens" found in the North End of the castle grounds. The garden area still shows visible signs of the pool's border, which frames the garden landscape quite nicely.

The refreshing pool may be gone, but these gardens allow visitors to explore different trees, shrubs, and flowers that are mentioned in the writings of one of England's most renowned, poet and playwright - William Shakespeare.