Preston Hall, Aylesford

Preston Hall is a manorial home in Aylesford, Kent, England, dating back at least to 1102. Owned by the Culpepper family for over 400 years and latterly used as a hospital, part of the estate became the Royal British Legion Village in the 1920s. Some of the remaining land is now given over to housing and the Heart of Kent Hospice.Owners and occupiersThe Culpepper familyFrom c1300 to 1734 the estate was owned by the Culpepper family, eventually passing to Alicia Culpepper in 1723. Alicia married four times but outlasted all of her husbands and died in 1734. Her only son, Sir Thomas Taylor (by her second husband, also Sir Thomas Taylor) had died in 1720 at age twenty seven. Her last husband, Dr John Milner, was much younger than her and having no living children herself, she had passed the Hall to him and his successors, only keeping a life interest. Because her last husband died before her, when she died the Hall passed to her husband’s brother, Dr Charles Milner.The Milner FamilyDr Charles Milner lived at Preston Hall until his death in 1771, when the Hall and the estate passed to his great nephew Charles Cottom who, on succeeding to the estate, changed his surname to Milner and was living at Preston Hall in 1815 (Another source states that on Dr Charles Milner's death the estate passed to his nephew, the Rev. Joseph Butler, who on succeeding to the estate changed his name to Milner.)Edward BettsIn 1848 the Hall was bought by Edward Ladd Betts a very successful railway contractor, who demolished the old house and had it rebuilt in the present Jacobean style. Betts commissioned John Thomas as his architect. Betts’ partner, Samuel Morton Peto, had commissioned Thomas to supervise the rebuilding of the sumptuous Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk, also in the Jacobean style. The new Preston Hall has not been universally appreciated: it is reported that the new house, “… could hardly be drearier. The materials … seem to have been coloured artificially a greyish-yellow, are repellent in the extreme.”