Great Maytham Hall December 2003 the Country Houses Association announced that it was closing down its residential business and selling the eight Grade I and II listed buildings it owned. The walled garden of Great Maytham Hall provided the inspiration for one of the most famous of all books for children, "The Secret Garden". Its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, lived at Great Maytham Hall from 1898 to 1907, where she found the old walled garden dating from 1721 sadly overgrown and neglected. Aided by a robin, Burnett discovered the door hidden amongst the ivy, and began the restoration of the garden, which she
Frances Hodgson Burnett in the past, she turned to writing as a source of income and began to write "A Lady of Quality". "A Lady of Quality", published in 1896, was to become the first of a series of successful adult historical novels, which was followed in 1899 with "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim"; and in 1901 she had published "The Making of a Marchioness" and "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst." In 1898, when Vivian graduated from Harvard, she divorced Swan Burnett. Officially the cause for the divorce was given to be desertion, but actually Burnett and Swan had orchestrated the