A large seventeenth century classical Baroque carved limestone fireplace removed from Cobtree Manor in the 1950s was sold for £12,600 against a £600 estimate to an architectural salvage dealer bidding on the internet at Canterbury Auctions on 18 February. The lot also included a white marble surround and register grate.
 
Cobtree Manor was visited by Charles Dickens who was skating nearby, fell through the ice, and called on the owner, Mr William Spong. The two men struck up a friendship, and in 1836 Dickens based Mr Wardle of The Pickwick Papers on Spong, while Cobtree Manor became the Manor Farm of Dingley Dell - a convivial house where members of the Pickwick Society spent happy hours playing cards and eating fine food in front of a blazing fire in the old dining-room.
 
Its famous quiet seclusion has been replaced by the constant roar of the M20, which passes just a few hundred yards from its venerable old walls, and in 1968 an entire wing was pulled down owing to an infestation of dry rot. Although most of what was pulled down was a late-Victorian extension, about half the Elizabethan original went in the process.
 
In 1964 the owner, Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake, died. Sir Garrard, twelve times mayor of Maidstone, had turned part of the Cobtree estate into what was once the largest private zoo in Europe. Sir Garrard left the estate in a charitable trust for the "benefit of the people of Maidstone", stipulating that Maidstone Borough Council, which would be responsible for the maintenance of Cobtree, allow his widow Lady Edna to continue living in the house.
When Lady Edna died in 1992 and her godson, David Wigg, moved out Maidstone Council left the house empty.
 
The fireplace was given to the vendor. It had been stored in a garden and a damp basement, which was the cause of some deterioration of the carvings.
 
Cobtree is now the location of the Kent Life open air museum of buildings