History - Chillington House

Home of Maidstone Museum

Chillington Manor in medieval times was annexed to the College of All Saints, but the core of the present house is a typical example of Elizabethan domestic architecture built by the Maidstone MP and lawyer Nicholas Barham between 1561 and 1577.

After a succession of later owners, the house was split into two properties.  The major part was then bought by William Charles, a physician who also ran a felting and blanket-cleaning business in the hall and galleries of the house.  His son Thomas continued a medical consultancy but in middle age retired and gathered a collection of antiquarian objects.  Dying a bachelor in 1855 he bequeathed his collection to the town, which then purchased his house and opened a museum to the public in January 1858.  Further contributions to the collection were made by local gentlemen. – notably Julius Brenchley, an archetypal Victorian explorer of the Americas, Australia and the Far East, who give his ethnological collection.

The east wing, which had been in use as a coal and straw store, was purchased in 1868 and rebuilt in matching style to house the expanding collection, and the west wing was purchased in 1870 with the help of £400 donated by Brenchley.  In 1874 a wing of Court Lodge, East Farleigh, then being demolished, was dismantled and re-erected as an extension to the museum.  Samuel Bentliff, a local leather merchant, gave money for the Bentliff Gallery extensions to the east in 1889-90 and further additions were made in 1897/9 and 1924.  Today the museum and art gallery houses a high quality and wide ranging collection which is well worth a visit.