Icy English Lake - Personalised Plaque

During a winter walk in the infrequent snow of South East England, a 40-acre man-made lake was mostly frozen on the surface. Of course, it wasn’t safe enough for ice skating(a rare experience Queen Victoria enjoyed) but it was still a romantic sight to behold. LOCATION: Eastwell Lake is part of Eastwell Park, a large parkland and country estate in Eastwell about two miles south of the civil parish of Challock. Eastwell is a hamlet and civil parish approximately three miles north of Ashford; part of the county of Kent, the Garden of England, in the United Kingdom. FACTS: In the 1840s the 10th Earl of Winchilsea built Eastwell Lake by damning a stream of the River Stour. In 1848 the new lake was commemorated with a launch of a model gun brig ship to the attendance of many locals and featured in newspapers. Queen Victoria was a frequent visitor of Eastwell Manor. A photograph exists of her skating on the lake, with Princess Beatrice and John Brown. During the Second World War, the British Army took over Eastwell Park to train the troops. They secretly developed the Churchill Crocodile flame-thrower tanks with a range of 100 yards and capable of 80 one-second bursts. After the war concluded, the vehicles were decommissioned and it was rumoured a number of them were sunk underneath Eastwell Lake.