In his diary for April 7, 1790, for instance, he records how he sallied forth with Pitt and Grenville, then Speaker of the House of Commons, 'armed with bill-hooks, cutting new walks from one large tree to another through the thickets,' neither of them dreaming how soon the beautiful estate would cease to belong to their host who, a little later, was compelled to part with it. It was {140} sold for £15,000, a very large sum for those days, and, after changing hands more than once, was bought by a Mr. John Ward, who, with little respect for its memories, pulled down the old house to make room for an ornate villa in the Italian style, and cleared away much of the woods that had been the Prime Minister's especial pride. [Sidenote: West Wickham] Though not quite so picturesquely situated as Keston, the neighbouring villages of Farnborough and Downe--the former associated with the name of Sir John Lubbock, who lived for some years at High Elms, the latter with that of Charles Darwin, who long resided at Downe House--have something of its quiet charm. West Wickham, too, though it has unfortunately recently been discovered by the jerry-builder, is still a pretty place, the older cottages and farms clustering about Wickham Court, erected on the site of the original manor-house in the reign of Edward III. by Sir Henry Heydon, but almost entirely rebuilt in the time of Henry VIII. The Heydons were near relations of Anne Boleyn, who is said to have passed some of her happiest days at Wickham Court when her royal suitor was courting her, a tradition confirmed by the true-lovers' knot in which her initials and Henry's are intertwined, engraved on one of the windows in the dining-hall. Very often, probably, the enamoured pair paced to and fro on the smooth bowling-green or on the long grass walk, still known as Anne Boleyn's, between the dense yew hedges, that remain unchanged to this day. Sometimes, too, it is related, the fair Anne would await the coming of her lover in a little Gothic {141} tower, to which a subterranean corridor gave access, and the two may possibly have explored together the secret passages that led beneath the grounds of the mansion to Hayes Common and elsewhere. A new entrance was made to Wickham Court by Sir Charles Farnaby, the ancestor of the present owner, but the rest of the house is much what it was when completed in the sixteenth century, and is a fine example of Tudor domestic architecture. The massive oaken door, with its huge iron bolt, may be the very one that was so often flung open to admit the guests of the Heydons, including Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, to pass through to the banquets held in the great hall. It bears the marks of many a siege, and must have received very rough usage in the troublous times of the Stuarts, when the gloomy dungeon beneath the north-west turret served sometimes as a prison to the enemies, sometimes as a hiding-place to the friends of the owner of the property.