In the last Sussex Society, we took a look at many of the historic country houses that have sadly disappeared from Sussex's landscape. Once the grand showcases of Sussex's wealth and power standing proudly on fine estates, all are now lost to fire, neglect, greed – or a whim.

This month, we take a look at the histories some more lost country houses that have been compiled by Matthew Beckett, a “frustrated architect” with a love of buildings, who was driven to record all of England's vanished grand houses on a website as a memorial.

“My interest is purely a hobby,” he says. “I can indulge my love of buildings through this research. My interest was sparked about eight years ago after seeing the ruined shell of Guys Cliffe House in Warwickshire. The website began as an outlet for my research so I could share the list and images of the houses, plus detailed histories. It has proved surprisingly popular, receiving about 12,000 visitors a month.”

Mr Beckett describes Sussex's lost houses as “a fascinating cross-section of properties, ranging from the aristocratic to the innovative”.

Lady Holt

Among them is Lady Holt at Harting, once the home of the Carylls, a wealthy and prominent Sussex family whose riches came from the iron industry. Thought to have been built in 1689 by Lord Caryll, it was passed down through generations of the family until it achieved infamy when the notorious Hawkhurst band of smugglers committed one of two murders there in 1747. The murders were so brutal they shocked public sensibilities and changed the public image of smugglers.

Wanted for stealing a cargo of tea and spirits from a ship, they had brought their booty ashore and set off for the New Forest. En route, gang member John Diamond was seen by a man he knew called Daniel Chater. Chater was later recruited as a witness by the authorities, but both Chater and his minder, an ageing customs official called William Galley, were grabbed by the gang. The two men were tortured and whipped mercilessly on the long journey to Harris’s Wells in Lady Holt's grounds, where the gang planned to kill both men. They ultimately decided to bury Galley alive in a turf store at the Red Lion Inn at Rake, West Sussex. Chater was taken back to Harris's Well, where they threw him down it, followed by rocks and timber that they continued to throw down with him until there was silence.

The ruthless gang was caught and tried at Chichester Assizes and sentenced to hang. They were all executed on The Broyle, except one, who died in prison before the sentence could be carried out.

In 1766-7, the Caryll family sold Lady Holt to the Duke of Richmond, and by 1770, it had been completely demolished. Lady Holt Park is now a Forestry Commission estate.

Beedingwood House

Beedingwood House at Colgate, near Horsham, was a mansion built for an Irish bacon merchant in 1876.

It was a fabulous example of Victorian architectural exuberance with its flora and fauna stonework columns, a corner turret, circular rooms with conical roof and high-level bulls-eye windows.

Sadly, its exuberant exterior did not reflect the family life within it, which was tainted by tragedy. In 1894 it was bought by the Rev Edward Harvey, who would later become Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, a JP, and the chairman of Sussex County Cricket Club. He lived there with his wife Constance and 20 servants, but the year they moved in their nine-year-old daughter died. In 1908, their son drowned at Eton, and three months later Constance herself died.

Rev Harvey remarried, and he and his second wife had a son, but during the First World War Rev Harvey's two remaining older sons from his first marriage were both killed in action.

Rev Harvey died in 1938, and in 1944 or 1945, the house and the nearby Roffey House were bought by the National Council for the Rehabilitation of Industrial Workers and turned into rehabilitation centres. Closed in 1983, Beedingwood House was sold again in 1994 and ravaged by fire in 2007. It was demolished the same day for safety reasons, and today the modern Roffey Park Institute stands close to the original site.

Hill's Place

Hill's Place at Horsham was originally a timber-framed house that had a new range added later with a frontage of five bays and three storeys with polygonal bay windows, tall chimneys and Dutch gables. It was owned at different times by Horsham MP John Middleton in the early 1600s, the 2nd Marquess of Hertford in 1807, and the 11th Duke of Norfolk, who bought it for £91,475, in 1811. He let out the land for agriculture, but in 1819 his heir began to break the estate apart and allowed the 17th century house to be pulled down. Only the range survived, until it too was demolished in 1925.

The site is now occupied by housing.

Wych Cross Place

The history of the original Wych Cross Place at Forest Row remains a mystery, as do the circumstances of its demolition. From the late 19th century, it was owned by Douglas W Freshfield, a mountaineer, author and lawyer whose family firm Freshfields is now Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the second largest law firm in the world.

Freshfield lived at Wych Cross Place with his wife and five children. When their son tragically died at the age of 14, in 1891, they gifted a building to Forest Row to be used as a parochial hall and institute, but the day after the boy's funeral Freshfield Hall burned down.

It was rebuilt on the same site and the new building is still standing today.

In 1999, the 24-year-old son of the Emir of Sharjah died there of a heroin overdose. Today, the house and estate are privately owned.

Searles

Searles, in Fletching was a Victorian Gothic mansion built around 1865 and was the first house in Sussex to have electric light. It was the seat of a High Sheriff of Sussex, Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, a baronet of Eastbourne. The house was damaged during the Second World War when it was used as a Canadian officers' mess and it was left neglected afterwards. It was demolished in 1949, the Grade II listed North Lodge and the South Lodge the only surviving remnants of this grand mansion.

Wadhurst Estate

Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing, the Swedish businessman and one of the wealthiest people in the world, bought the Wadhurst Estate at Wadhurst in 1976 and built an ultra-modern one-storey building on the site of the original Wadhurst Hall. The hall was demolished in 1948 after becoming dilapidated during the Second World War when it was occupied by Canadian soldiers and then used as a prisoner-of-war camp. Some parts of the hall were left standing after the demolition and Rausing preserved them as a feature of the gardens.

Knepp Castle

Knepp Castle, near Shipley, is interesting because two previous structures have been lost from the same site. The ruined tower that "stands on a mound like a broken tooth" is all that remains of a once-important castle dating back to the early 1200s. It was owned by William de Braose, lord of the Rape of Bramber, and once one of King John's most trusted barons. William fell out of favour when England's barons began rising up against the monarch in protest at the cost of his military campaigns in France. King John imprisoned William's wife and heir, who starved to death, and forced William into exile in France. In 1215 he ordered the destruction of Knepp Castle.

The architect John Nash, famous for the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and Buckingham Palace, designed its namesake nearby. It was built in the late 19th century by Sir Charles Merrick Burrell who was the Conservative MP for New Shoreham for 56 years and later Baronet Raymond of Valentine House. Sadly it was destroyed by an enormous fire in 1904, and the Knepp Castle that exists today is its replacement.