The Ingress Estate was a manor in the hamlet of
Greenhithe. In 1363, the manor was endowed upon the Priory Abbess in
Dartford, Kent, by
Edward III (1307–1377).
The priory of Dartford was the only house of Dominican nuns in England. The sisterhood was placed under the care of the
Friars Preachers of King's Langley,
Hertfordshire, and a community of sisters commenced religious observance at Dartford in 1356 under the friars already there. The original intention of the founder, Edward II, was to establish a convent of forty nuns, which with the sixty friars of King's Langley would make up the hundred religious he contemplated when he founded the friary of King's Langley, but it is doubtful whether this number was ever reached. During the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the estate was confiscated and sold, with the proceeds used to finance the wars of King
Henry VIII. According to legend, the Abbess of Dartford, Jane Fane, put a curse on Henry VIII and all of his male descendants as a punishment for confiscating the estate. This curse was supposedly passed onto all future owners of the estate, such that pipes would burst in the property at random intervals. Henry VIII kept the site and rebuilt it to use it as a country retreat whilst visiting the coast. In 1540, Sir Richard Long was paid £8 per day to be keeper of the site. In 1548, the King, in consideration of the compulsory surrender of certain lands in
Surrey, granted the priory and manor of Dartford
Construction, development and occupants In 1831, a wealthy solicitor named
James Harmer purchased the land, and in 1833 built his
Elizabethan-style mansion, which he called Ingress Abbey, on the banks of the
Thames. He provided his architect, Charles Moreing, with £120,000 for the construction of follies, grottoes, and hermit's caves. Some of the stone from the
Old London Bridge was used in building Ingress Abbey. Harmer served as a model for Jaggers, the
Charles Dickens character from
Great Expectations, and in the mid-1800s he also owned the
Weekly Dispatch to which the poet
Eliza Cook was a longterm contributor, living and writing some of her works at Ingress Abbey. In the 1880s, the
Shah of Persia sailed up the Thames and noted that "the only thing worth mentioning at Greenhithe was a mansion standing amid trees on a green carpet extending down to the water's edge". During the First World War, Ingress Abbey was used as an army hospital. By 1922 both house and grounds had been purchased by the
Thames Nautical Training College whose training ship was moored in the River Thames. By 1998 the site had been sold for redevelopment into modern housing, with the first phase completed in 2001.
Crest Nicholson spent £6 million restoring the abbey,
follies and grounds as part of the redevelopment scheme. This included a nautical themed piazza inspired by the estate's past nautical training and linked to the Abbey by a tree-lined boulevard. and then by
Irène Major in 2012 and converted back to a family home. In May 2016, the Abbey became an official honorary consulate of the Republic of
Lithuania.
Follies There are a number of follies on the Ingress estate, including: The Cave of the Seven Heads abuts and is under the
Fastrack bus road that runs through a tunnel, under the gatehouse which still stands, at the location of the original main gate to the estate, between the Ingress estate and Greenhithe railway station. The Georgian Garden Bridge is a late 18th or early 19th flint and brick garden bridge on the eastern edge of the Ingress Estate. The Georgian Wall Tunnel, the entrance to which is bricked up for safety reasons, is set in the chalk cliffs overlooking the Ingress Estate. The Grange and adjacent tunnel is on the heritage path a couple of hundred yards south of Ingress Abbey. It is a large folly arch in the shape of a gatehouse with attached storage chambers and a dog-legged flint lined tunnel with five rectangular chambers carved out of the chalk. Also adjacent is a flint four-centred arch about 8 feet in height with a splayed chamber cut out of the hillside. The Grotto comprises a number of small flint lined caves set in a semi-circle. Originally these were next to the driveway to the Abbey just down from the gatehouse at the original main gate to the estate. They can now be accessed on the other side of the Fastrack bus road from the Cave of the Seven Heads. There are supposedly a number of tunnels leading from Ingress Abbey. One certainly exists, situated between the Ingress Abbey Coach House and Ingress Abbey. The Lovers Arch is a flint-lined alcove south-east of Ingress Abbey which now houses a bench. The Monkswell comprises a short tunnel with leading to a semicircular vaulted roofed chamber with well shaft. The Prioress Tomb is to the left of the path leading to the Grange near the gate to the car park behind Ingress Abbey.
Events and filming It is theorized that Ingress Abbey may have been one of the inspirations for Carfax,
Count Dracula's fictional home in England in
Bram Stoker's 1897 novel,
Dracula. Ingress Abbey has been used as one of the filming location for a number of television and motion picture productions including: • "The Kidnapped Prime Minister", an episode of the
ITV television drama ''
Agatha Christie's Poirot''. • "He Who Dares: Downing Street Siege", feature film == References ==