History of the Bowling Green Lawn

This lawn is named after Bowling Green House -– a large Elizabethan building that stood here until the early 19th century. The path here is where the drive was located that ran up to the original house from the road. Bowling Green House was home to Bowles’s 18th century ancestors, the Garnaults. - It is possible that the house took its name from a bowling green that existed here in the days when the Royal Palace of Elsinge stood nearby - in the grounds of what is now Forty Hall. The palace was demolished in the mid-17th century. Recently, excavations and surveys were carried out to pinpoint the exact position of Bowling Green House on the lawn, but they only revealed bits of debris and bricks – nothing to give a real sense of the fine building that once stood here.

In 1799, on the day Anne Garnault married the print seller and publisher Henry Carrington Bowles, she planted a swamp cypress at the eastern end of the lawn. It grew to be 80 feet tall, before it blew down in the great storm of 1987.