Forge Square

Forge Square was one of Samuel Morley’s projects to rebuild cottages in the village. The houses at Forge Square would replace seven cottages which stood on the site at the time. In 1878 Samuel’s son, Charles, who lived at Coopers in Hawkwood Lane, Chislehurst, employed Ernest George and Peto as architects to design the new houses. These would consist of 1-7 Forge Square and South View. 1-7 Forge Square would be to house Hall Place employees and South View would be used as a convalescent home for employees of I & R Morley.

FORGE SQUARE: The five cottages and two flats along the north and west sides of the square were designed and built by Sir Ernest George and Peto in about 1885/86. They are an L-shaped two-storey range of buildings in Tudor style. The left wing is of coursed freestone and has a double overhung end gable, and is half timbered with plaster filling. The right wing faces the road and has 2 wide gables across a full width, half-timbered and with plaster filling front. Here there is a brick ground floor and a round angle below shingled gable. There are irregular, many mullioned casements, some flat, some bays. There are Tudor-style arches to doorways, some of stone, some of carved wood. There is a tall, ornamental chimney of brick and stone.

Nos 1-5 are two storey; No. 6 is a downstairs, one-bedroomed flat; No. 7 is an upstairs flat reached by an external, covered, wood staircase. It has a fairly high pitched, gable ended tiled roof. There are ornamental projecting wood-shingled gables, with pierced bargeboards and a 5-light oriel on the inner return of the projecting left range.

No 1 Forge Square was used as the police house in the village at least from the 1920s until about 1952, when the new police house was built in The Green Lane.

SOUTH VIEW: On the east side, South View was built in the early 1890s. Again, Ernest George and Peto were the architects: the house is also in Tudor style, with tall chimneys and an irregular form. It has a high pitched tiled roof with tall red brick chimneys. There are decorative half timbered walls with roughcast filling. There is a red brick plinth which rises to the ground floor cills. To the road, it is narrow and of 1 storey and attic, 1 window under wide overhanging gable with carved beams. There is a similar and taller gable, with double overhang, on the right return. There are carved bargeboards and visible beam ends to the overhangs. There are 4 and 5 light wood mullioned windows, some in square bays. On left return, there are first floor oriel bays and a recessed entrance.

In what is now part of the garden of South View, leading out of the village, there used to be three cottages and a garden against the churchyard wall. On the death of Richard Brook in 1665 these passed to his three daughters; they were then sold to William Saxby of Ramhurst. In 1765 he created a trust for the poor of Leigh and transferred the cottages to the trustees. The print on page 134 of Lawrence Biddle’s book shows these cottages with the east end of the church in the background. By the middle of the 19th century they were in poor condition and were pulled down and replaced by three attached cottages. In August 1913 Samuel Hope Morley gave the charity trustees two cottages on the south side of the Green in exchange for these and then pulled them down to create a garden to enhance the approach to the village - which now forms part of the garden at South View.

When originally built, Forge Square and South View were all thatched; however, the thatch was subsequently replaced by tiles after 1920.

Over time, the houses of Forge Square have been sold by the Hall Place Estate into private hands. South View passed into private hands in 1954.