A home that has played host to Henry VIII – and the RAF

GREAT ESTATES Shurland Hall is steeped in history – but it’s only thanks to the owners and a conservation group that it’s still standing, discovers Arabella Youens

It is thanks to the efforts of a small conservation group that Grade II*listed Shurland Hall, on the Isle of Sheppey in north-east Kent, is standing today at all. The Spitalfields Trust was established in 1977 to save early 18th-century Huguenot weavers’ houses under threat of demolition from the expansion of the City of London; now it has a reputation for saving buildings at risk.

In 2006, the trust acquired Shur- land Hall in a state of near-collapse. It was a scheduled ancient monument, a nationally important site, protected from unauthorised change. Using a grant from English Heritage and a loan from the Architectural Heritage Fund, as well as its own funds, the trust set about restoring it.

Dating back to the 16th century, Shurland Hall is a fraction of the house it once was. What remains is the original gate house and part of the service wing of an important – and vast – medieval hall that stood on the edge of the village of Eastchurch. The area is steeped in history: in 893, a Danish prince built his fort on the site, and King Canute lived there in 1017. After the Norman conquest, the de Shurland family took over, and when Margaret de Shurland married Sir William Cheyne in the 12th century, they became the Lords of Shurland.

As a strategic point in the mouth of the Thames Estuary, in the 1500s Sir Thomas Cheyne, a prominent courtier who played host to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, built a walled manor house to guard the entrance to the rivers Thames and Swale from foreign naval invasions. Fast-forward to the beginning of the 20th century, and the strategic role that Shurland and the Isle of Sheppey had in defending our shores began to wane. For a brief time, and thanks to its flat topography, it was the cradle of aviation in Britain. In 1909, the Short brothers built the country’s first aircraft factory on Sheppey and, at an airstrip in Eastchurch, aviation pioneer John William Dunne took off in his flying wing. Winston Churchill learned to fly there in 1913.

Unsurprisingly, Shurland was commandeered by the fledging Royal Na- val Air Service (one of the forerunners to the RAF) in the First World War, and again by RAF gunnery staff during the Second World War. Today, the brass plaques in the hall’s kitchen are the remains of telephones used to connect to the guns.

From 1946, the house lay abandoned. It was roofless, unsafe and in a perilous state of decay when the Spitalfields Trust bought the property. It took five years to meticulously repair, re-roof and restore the interior; part of those works included inserting an 18th-century staircase taken from a demolished house in Hatton Garden.

“It might have been watertight but there was only one plug and one tap in the entire house when we bought Shurland in 2011,” says owner Daniel O’donoghue, who, after a career in advertising, now runs a boutique champagne house with his wife, Suzanne.

The couple, who were based in Norwich at the time, were captivated by the sense of history when they first spotted the house but, as a tentative first step, decided to rent it for six months before buying. “We camped out in the house to see if we could cope,” remembers O’donoghue. “I’m a history nut, and there aren’t many places you can live which are so steeped in history with the sea and the capital so close.”

The Spitalfields Trust was about three quarters of the way through the renovation work when the O’donoghues took over and organised the interior layout into four reception rooms, five bedrooms and three bathrooms. The couple completed the task of coaxing the house back to life, using materials sympathetic to the building’s historic nature, buying up pieces of antique furniture as they went along. It wasn’t the first time the pair had tackled a challenging building: they had previously renovated a 13th-century castle in Cambridgeshire.

“I’m fascinated by history and historic buildings. Tudor ones that were taken on by the Georgians are particu- larly attractive with their raised doorways and sash windows that let in lots of light,” says O’donoghue.

While working on the seven-acre garden, the couple frequently come across historic remains. Recently, half a china tea cup with the East India Company logo was unearthed. “After doing some research, I’ve discovered that one of the previous owners of Shurland, Sir Philip Herbert, was a founder of the East India Company.”

The Isle of Sheppey is like “stepping back in time to the Fifties”, says O’donoghue. “Once modern warfare arrived, it lost its strategic importance and reverted to agricultural farmland. But the bonus is that it’s a very close-knit community, typical of an island culture. It’s also incredibly sociable – our social life doubled or even trebled in size when we moved here.”

Another attraction was the weather: “It has its own microclimate which is quite like the Mediterranean. Rosemary and lavender thrive in the garden and the summers are sunny and warm,” says O’donoghue.

Next to the house stands a large barn of nearly 4,000 sq ft, which the couple fully restored and now has a kitchen, bar and lavatory. They hosted their daughter’s wedding reception there in July after she was married in the local church. O’donoghue has a hunch that the barn, part Tudor, part early 20th century, was used as an aircraft hangar during the First World War.

He imagines the next incumbents of Shurland Hall might use this space for their own business needs or as an artist’s studio. “It’s time for us to find somewhere a bit smaller. It’s a perfect place for someone who enjoys an active lifestyle, with the beaches within two miles, and those who appreciate watching the wildlife on the undulating grasslands and marshes.”

Sheerness has the somewhat dubious claim to being the only place in the UK that has a colony of scorpions. It has never fazed O’donoghue: “It just goes to show how good the weather is here.”

‘There was only one plug and one tap in the entire house when we bought Shurland’