Holland House, Kingsgate
Holland House, Kingsgate, in Kent, is a Georgian country house built between 1762 and 1768 as his retirement home by the politician Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland (1705–1774), of Holland House in Kensington. It is a Grade II listed building.
The house is situated in a dip between two clifftops. It overlooks the sea at Kingsgate Bay, to the beach of which it had access through a stone arched gate originally named Bartholomew Gate (or Bart'lem Gate). The gate was later renamed King's Gate, as it was reputedly where King Charles II landed in 1683, during a storm, while on his way to Dover. On the change of its name by the King's command, the following Latin distich was composed by a Mr. Toddy of Josse, then proprietor of the land on which the gate stood; it was inscribed on a stone tablet on the gate's land-side:
Olim Porta fui Patroni Bartholomaei,
Nunc Regis Jussu Regia porta vocor.
Hic exscenderunt Car. II. R.
Et Ja. dux Ebor, 30 Junii, 1683.
Translated:
I once by St. Bartholomew was claim'd,
But now, so bids the King, am Kingsgate nam'd.
King Charles II. and James, Duke of York, landed here,
June 30, 1683.