Beresford initiated the pinetum in the 1850s and his successor, his stepson Alexander Beresford Hope, developed Lady Mildred's Drive to enable visitors in carriages to view the trees. In the 1840s Viscount William Beresford developed the estate by creating the village of Kilndown and three lodges, one of which – Keepers Lodge, now known as Park House – became the centre of the Pinetum. The estate later passed to the Stephenson family, who retained it until it was left to a Miss Peach, who sold it in 1789 to John Cartier, Governor of Bengal and High Sheriff of Kent, who improved the plantings and the house.
The current house was built in 1688 for Sir James Hayes, a little apart from the old house. In the 15th century Agnes de Bedgebury, sister and heir of John (died 1424) married John Colepeper, whose Colepeper heirs, financed by mining clay-ironstone on the estate, were resident until at the time of the restoration of Charles II, and who created an ornamental park on the Bedgebury estate.
John de Bedgebury is listed as the earliest resident of Bedgebury, in the time of Edward II. Bedgebury National Pinetum conducts conservation work and is home to some 56 vulnerable or critically endangered species and houses five NCCPG National Plant Collections.īedgebury is first mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter in AD 841, the name deriving from the Old English bycgan, meaning "buy", and the Kentish vecge, meaning "to bend or turn", possibly in reference to a stream. The collection has over 10,000 trees growing across 320 acres (1.3 km2), including rare, endangered and historically important specimens.
It was established as the National Conifer Collection in 1925 and is now recognised as the most complete collection of conifers on one site anywhere in the world. Bedgebury National Pinetum at Bedgebury, Kent, in the United Kingdom, is a recreational and conservational arboretum and, with the National Arboretum at Westonbirt, comprises the UK National Arboreta.
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