For the early history of Kent, articles in the volumes of Archaeologia Cantiana are invaluable. Many are now online at www.kentarchaeology.org.uk
Frans Vera’s Grazing Ecology and Forest History, CABI Publishing 2000, provides a new and fascinating perspective on the early environmental history of the Kentish forest. Oliver Rackham’s Woodlands, HarperCollins 2006, ties Vera’s suggestions into a more traditional English frame. William Anderson, in The Green Man, HarperCollins 1990, is a source of rich speculation on the meaning and significance of that near-universal wood symbol and G. H. Garrad, A Survey of the Agriculture of Kent, Royal Agric. Soc., 1954 provides a detailed account of the Kentish farmer’s response to his environment. Henry Cleere and David Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald, 2nd ed., Merton Priory Press, 1995 speculates fascinatingly on the Weald under Roman occupation and gives a full description of the early modern iron industry.
J. K. Wallenberg’s study of The Place-Names of Kent, Uppsala, 1934 and K. P. Witney’s The Jutish Forest: A Study of the Weald of Kent 450–1380 AD, Athlone Press 1976 are the classic accounts of the early medieval penetration of the Wealden forest around Sissinghurst. K. P. Witney’s edition of The Survey of Archbishop Peacham’s Kentish Manors 1283–85, Kent Arch. Soc., Maidstone 2000, takes that movement up into the high Middle Ages.
For Sissinghurst’s social environment in the 16th century, see Michael Zell’s Industry in the countryside: Wealden society in the sixteenth century, Cambridge 1994 and a volume of essays edited by him, Early Modern Kent 1540–1640, The Boydell Press 2000. Maurice Howard, The Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, Yale 2007 and Malcolm Airs, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A building history, Sutton Publishing 1995, combined with Caroline van Eck, British Architectural Theory 1540–1750, Ashgate 2003 describe the philosophical, political and practical world in which the new Sissinghurst was made. For the use and aesthetics of the park around it, see the essays in Robert Liddiard, editor, The Medieval Park: New Perspectives, Windgather Press, 2007. Descriptions of Sir John Baker’s murderous behaviour can be found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs which is online in a variorum edition at www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/. Early modern histories of the Weald are William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent, London 1570, John Philipott, Villare Cantianum or Kent surveyed and illustrated, 1659 and the great Edward Hasted’s History of the County of Kent, 1790. The three-volume History of the Weald of Kent by Robert Furley, Ashford 1871, although often muddly, is full of fascinating sidelights. Nigel Nicolson’s short Sissinghurst Castle, An Illustrated History, National Trust, 1964 has remained in print for over 40 years. Contemporary accounts of Elizabeth’s progresses were gathered by John Nichols in the late 18th century. Many, including the list of those who came to stay at Sissinghurst in 1573, are now online at www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/nichols/progresses/
Papers of the Mann estate, including many relating to Sissinghurst, are kept in the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone (U24). Quarter Session Records, detailing the Elizabethan park invasions, are there too. Accounts of the plot to destroy the ironworks at Hammer Mill are in the Staffordshire County Record Office. References are all available on www.a2a.org.uk
A printed copy of the sermon by Robert Abbott, vicar of Cranbrook, The holinesse of Chrisian [sic] Churches, or a Sermon preached at the consecration of the chappell of Sr. Iohn Baker: of Sussing-herst in Cranbrooke in Kent, Baronet, London 1638, is in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge. For papers relating to the sequestration of the Baker estates in the Civil War, see SP/19, 20, 23 and 28 in the National Archives in Kew. The probate Inventory of Dame Elizabeth Howard’s possessions at Sissinghurst in 1694 is also there under PROB 5/3715.
Sissinghurst as an eighteenth-century prisoner-of-war camp is described in Francis Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain 1756–1815, Oxford UP 1914 and referred to by Edward Gibbon in his Journal, ed. D. M. Low, Chatto & Windus 1929. The Admiralty files in the National Archives contain the long and fascinating transcript of an ‘Examination of complaints of prisoners at Sissinghurst’ (ADM 105/42) held in 1761 and under ADM 97/114/2 ‘Letters to and from French prisoners held in England 1756–63’, many of them at Sissinghurst.
C. C. R. Pile’s short leaflet on The Parish Farm at Sissinghurst Castle, Cranbrook and Sissinghurst Local History Society, 1952 remains the best account of Sissinghurst Castle Farm as Cranbrook’s ‘Old Cow’. MAF 32/1022/101 in the National Archives contains the 1941 Farm Survey Records for Cranbrook in which Captain Beale’s farm is revealed in all its perfection.
The Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson years at Sissinghurst have been written about more than any other. Vita herself wrote Country Notes, Michael Joseph 1939, and many collections of her Observer articles have been in print since the 1950s. Anne Scott-James’s Sissinghurst: The Making of a Garden was published by Michael Joseph in 1975. Jane Brown’s Vita’s Other World: a gardening biography of V. Sackville-West, Viking 1985 set Sissinghurst in a wider context. Tony Lord, Gardening at Sissinghurst, Frances Lincoln 1995 focused tightly on the garden here, bed by bed. Nigel Nicolson edited Harold Nicolson’s Diaries and Letters, in 3 volumes, Collins 1966–8 and in 1973 published Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), about his parents’ marriage and homosexual infidelities. His own autobiography Long Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997, describes among much else his own deep attachment to Sissinghurst. Two biographies of Harold (James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, 2 vols, Chatto & Windus 1980–81 and Norman Rose, Harold Nicolson, Pimlico 2006) match two of Vita (Michael Stevens, V. Sackville-West, Michael Joseph 1973 and Victoria Glendinning, Vita, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1983). Susan Mary Alsop, wrote about Vita’s mother in Lady Sackville, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1978.
Most of the manuscripts on which these books were based are now to be found in the Lilly Library in Indiana (Harold’s and Vita’s letters – www.indiana.edu/~liblilly) or Balliol College, Oxford (the three million words of Harold’s diaries).