Square (The)

Build_03

On the site now occupied by The Square was a block of six cottages and beyond them a building known as Brights.

In 1872 Brights consisted of three cottages but may well have been a single house at an earlier date. In 1781 Brights was the property of James Farrant the parish clerk. In 1781 Brights was mortgaged to Robert Burgess, James Farrant’s son-in-law who had married his daughter Sarah.

Brights was ultimately sold by the Farrant family to Thomas Baily in 1868 and formed part of the property bought by Samuel Morley in 1870. The other three cottages had been given by Sarah Harbroe (nee Farrant) by her Will to her sister Mary Saint (nee Farrant) who had them pulled down in 1841 and replaced by four cottages. By her Will Mary Saint gave these four cottages to her daughter for life and after her death to her grandson Allan May.

From the 1872 Drainage Report and Map, you can see seven cottages on this site and at that time thee of the cottages were owned by Samuel Morley and four were ‘Mrs May’s Houses’.  The Map numbers them 24 to 30.  They are described as in bad condition.  At the front the floor is below the level of the roadway and new extra drains were necessary because of this.  There were not gutters or stack pipes, except gutter to an outbuilding and discharging into a water butt.  A small piece of bad guttering in front of no. 29, two common privies to Mr Mays and two to Mr Morley’s cottages – none connected.  There were two wells in the back gardens.   The drainage report gives the occupants:  Mr Morley’s three cottages, nos. 28, 29 and 30 are occupied by Mr English, Mr Pankhurst, and Mr Cherriman.  The Rev May’s cottages are occupied by Mr Brooker, Mr Kingswood, Mr Croucher and Mr Goldsmith.

In 1889 Allan May sold his four cottages to Samuel Hope Morley who then pulled down Brights and the cottages and built the The Square (which includes Southdown House) to the designs of Sir Ernest George and Peto, architects (who had also designed Forge Square and South View). This firm had previously been employed by Samuel Morley’s son Charles in 1878 to design the cottages in Morley Lane Chislehurst, now known as Morley Cottages and Samuel had also employed the same firm to design 1-7 Forge Square and South View. Herbert Baker who was employed in Sir Ernest George’s office from 1882 to 1890 and who was involved in carrying out this work, later became Sir Herbert Baker and went on to design the government buildings in Pretoria and with Sir Edwin Lutyens, the main government buildings in New Delhi .   The Square itself is of alms house appearance, with tiled roofs and tall fancy brick chimneys and of a neo-Tudor style.  The western end of The Square was a butcher’s shop, the eastern end a reading room and later the post office.  (see further notes below)

Douglas Pankhurst, in his memories, gives additional detail about these cottages: the following is taken from his notes.

The output of the brickyard provided bricks for the reconstruction work in the village itself, with which Samuel Morley amused himself in the eighties and nineties.  [n.b. Samuel Morley died in 1886: editor].   After Devey’s death in 1886, he used Ernest George as his village architect [DJP must mean Samuel Hope Morley: editor].   In the middle of the village street, facing the wall of the park, he pulled down a row of old clap-board cottages built right to the road and built a row of nine cottages round three sides of a rectangular patch of grass [The Square: editor].  At the west end was the butcher’s shop and at the other a reading room.  The ground floors of the cottages were in red malm facings [a chalk and clay mix?]  and the internal walls in commons.  All these bricks came from the Leigh brickfield and the late George Bowra was employed as a carter boy in carting them, before he became a bricklayer’s apprentice to his uncle.

The reading room cottage had an imposing brick bay with stone dressings on two floors, facing the grass square but the remainder of the first-floor construction was a mixture of very stiff and formal half-timbering, either exposed and pargelled or covered in oak shingling.  The first floors of the rear and side elevations were tile hung, except on the reading room cottage, where the roof came down salt-box  fashion to the first-floor level.  The long leg of the square was tile roofed, the two wings thatched.

The builders of these cottages were Longley’s of Crawley.  Whilst they were being built, the workmen lodged in the village and, since cricket was the summer sport of the village, they formed their own cricket team.  George Edwards of Penshurst, who would now be a hundred and twelve if he were alive, worked as a bricklayer about the same time on Seal Chart church on the ragstone ridge north east of Sevenoaks, staying there all the week and walking home on Saturday afternoons.  As he walked through the village one Saturday, he found Longley’s playing the village and short of one man, a vacancy he was entreated to fill.  So, having already worked half a day and walked eight miles, he played throughout the match and then resumed his walk the further two and a half miles to Penshurst.

Joyce Field (updated 13.6.23)

 

The_Square

The Post Office (now Southdown House) 1920s. Postcard published by J Salmon, Sevenoaks from an original watercolour by A.R. Quinton
The Post Office (now Southdown House) 1920s. Postcard published by J Salmon, Sevenoaks from an original watercolour by A.R. Quinton

 

*The source for Ernest George & Peto and Sir Herbert Baker comes from Lawrence Biddle’s Book “Leigh in Kent 1550-1900”.   This detail probably came from a book written in 1896, the beginning paragraph of which suggested that Ernest George saw value in the build being “carefully and constantly supervised.  According to another source, it could have been that Herbert Baker had overseen the build as part of his training before setting up on his own.  Or perhaps alongside setting up on his own, as he was setting up in the first few years.

The website https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture also is a source for the architects, Ernest George & Peto.  The above black and white picture is shown on the website and comes from “The Revival of English Domestic Architecture IV.  The Work of Mr Ernest George” The Studio 8 (1896) with additional comments that say “Cottages and Shops at Leigh, Kent before 1896.  Designed by Harold Ainsworth Peto (1854-1933) and Sir Ernest George 1839-1922).  “In a row of Cottages, Village Shops, &c., Leigh Kent we find a typical group of simple dwellings, welded into a harmonious whole, by no sham facade but by the arrangement of the larger buildings at each end.  In this group the unity of each house is preserved, and yet its individuality is not insisted upon unduly.  The recurrent gable imparts a sense of restfulness, without any monotonous feeling of repetition.  The sketch does not explain whether the penultimate house at each side is slightly larger than its neighbour; the one to the left undoubtedly is”.  The website does not given any further information on Forge Square or South View, although designed by Ernest George & Peto.