The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2024 - Issue 35

biterestaurant Scott Goss I nside The Beacon’s traditional and elegant Hearth Restaurant, you’ll be captivated by its arts and crafts interior with a stunning stained- glass window and a cosy fireplace. This so- phisticated country house on Tea Garden Lane in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, has beautiful gardens and spectacular views across Happy Valley. It uses locally sourced and produced ingredients meticulously plat- ed for a perfect culinary experience. It’s the ultimate picturesque of whimsical, rustic romance, bursting with character and charm. Initially a public bathhouse, Sir Walter Harris had Rock Cottage demolished and rebuilt into a private house he named Rusthall Beacon to the designs of Colonel Sir Robert Edis in the 1890s. The British ar- chitect was renowned for his work on private homes, public buildings and churches, including Sandring- ham House in Norfolk for the Prince of Wales, the parish hall and parsonage for St Philip’s Church on Buckingham Palace Road in London and the British pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chi- cago. In 1910, Harris sold the house and grounds to Colo- nel Sydney Sladen, who laid 23 acres of pleasure gardens on top of the original 1708 cold bath house grounds. Sladen’s legendary ornamental gardens hosted many civic events where he stocked the lakes with Loch Leven trout and built an aviary. He also in- stalled the giant Burmese bell his father brought back from his time in the Diplomatic Service, suspended by Burmese teak cross beams believed to have come from a Buddhist temple. After the Colonel’s and his wife’s deaths in 1921 and 1936, the property went into disrepair. It eventually became a hostel for refugees, a hotel, and a pub for the local community. Nine months before the out- break of the Second World War, it housed Jewish girls from the Kindertransport rescue effort, fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-controlled territories. During the war, Sir Walter Harris’ Tea Rooms and Pleasure Gardens accommodated Basque and Jewish refugees. In 1991, The Rusthall Beacon was sold and renamed The Beacon Hotel, a three-bedroom accommodation. It was sold again in 2014 and rebranded The Beacon Kitchen, featuring six luxuriously elegant bedrooms in the main house and a seventh cabin summerhouse perched below it. Each room is individually designed to reflect the building’s character, combining vintage yet stylish décor with modern furnishing to create unique and sophisticated bedrooms for the perfect stay. The Hearth Restaurant is headed by I’ll Be Mother Executive Chef Scott Goss and run by the restaurant and hospitality group founded by husband and wife Pete and Viv Cornwell in 2013. Growing up in Kent, known as the Garden of England for its abundance of orchards and hop gardens, Scott was surrounded by considerable ingredients. “Mum was a fruit picker on the farms, so I’ve got great memories of running through the orchards in and around Gillingham,” he told Great British Chefs online. Head Chef Profile