Old Kennards

Photo circa 1910

The copyhold property of the manor of Leigh Hollanden to the east of the village included part of Kennards farm. Sir William Sydney was granted by Edward VI as well as the Penshurst |Estate, part of the Parish of |Leigh and this included what was then known as Parsonage Farm. It remained in the ownership of the \Sydney family until Mary Sydney left it to Anne Lady Yonge , who sold it in 1770 to Richard Alnutt, a city merchant living at South Park in Penshurst . It was farmed by the Waites family from 1747 - 1808 who also farmed Little Barnetts, Home Farm, Great Hollanden and Tyhurst. Nathaniel May bought Parsonage farm from Richard Allnutt in about 1819.He also bought the advowson of Leigh from the Rev. John Southan’s executor and continued as vicar of Leigh until his death in 1830.

Parsonage Farm included Old Kennards and the land on which Kennards Cottage, Upper Kennards, and The Forstall now stand and stretched out on the south-east of the Hildenborough Road to a boundary roughly where the by-pass now runs. Nathaniel’s son, Thomas, married Emily Saint who lived at The Woods and, having inherited the advowson, appointed himself vicar, a position he held for 46 years. In the 1839 census the tenant was William Field, but the property remained in the May Family Trust until it was sold to Samuel Hope Morley in 1915. From 1936 -56 it was lived in by Sir Arthur Page QC, Chief Justice of Burma and Dick Wood remembers that Lady Page held a lunch party at Old Kennards for all the helpers in Festival of Britain week. During World War 2 a German plane came down in a haystack between Old Kennards and The Old Vicarage. Everyone tried to get the pilot’s body out, but they only managed to get half of it which was buried in the churchyard and later repatriated.

Old Kennards is famous for the Yew tree house and Monica Gray, an evacuee during the war remembered playing in it while she lived at Oak Cottage in Leigh.