Vita and Harold in their Sissinghurst Garden (AW5)

The red-brick Tudor tower is one of the architectural set-pieces of Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, the home of novelist, poet and gardener Vita Sackville-West and her diplomat husband, Harold Nicolson. The couple purchased the semi-derelict Elizabethan manor house in 1930 and immediately embarked on a major restoration scheme of the house, while designing and planting out the garden in a series of individual “rooms”. It is now one of the most loved, famous and visited in Britain. Vita created her writing-room on the first floor of the Tudor tower, a building which originally served as both gatehouse and viewing platform.