Kirstead Hall

The house was begun by Sir John Godsalve, a Steward of Henry VIII incorporating elements of an earlier structure. His chalk portrait was in the 2017 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

An ancestress of Kirstead Hall was Mary Christian, the sister of mutineer Fletcher Christian, made famous by the mutiny on HMS Bounty. Christian and disaffected crewmen seized control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship’s open launch.

The current owner’s family owned the Palgrave Murphy shipping company.

Family albums from 1914 document battle sites, a photos of General French, King Manuel 11 of Portugal’s signature, and the funeral service sheets of Field Marshal Alexander, Lord Wilson and Major General Dudley Johnson V.C.

Toc H was founded under the aegis of the owner’s great uncle Edward van Cutsem, Town Major of Poperingue during World War 1. He was present at the signing of the German surrender in 1945 and also when Himmler committed suicide.

The current owner’s father was sole survivor when his tank took a direct hit. “We had reached  Pagan, city of a thousand temples,  there was a violent explosion. I was lying on the ground surrounded by the debris of a shattered tank with which were intermingled various parts of human bodies. There was a single hand and a leg quite close…..”