Moat House was acquired as part of the Moat Estate (the acquisition of which came about through the donations of Old Canterburians in the face of a refusal by the Board of Management in the 1940s to finance it). Before Kent College acquired the house it had been rented for convalescence by Virginia Woolf , who complained in one of her letters that "we had our windows prized open. The decay of centuries had sealed them. No human force can now shut them. Thus we sit exposed to wind and wet by day and by night we are invaded by flocks of white moths. The rain falls, and the birds never give over singing, and hot sulphur fumes rise from the valleys, and the red cow in the field roars for her calf...". The house was used as the headmaster's residence until the late 1970s, when it was sold by the school to finance the construction of Wesley House.