Leigh Village Halls – Historic Background
Hall and the forecourt walls in front of the halls are all Grade II listed. (Note these buildings form a group together with Nos. 1 & 2 Fleur de Lis Cottages and the Fleur de Lis public house). There is a disused burial ground behind the complex and two yew trees to the rear of the Village Hall have preservation orders.
The origins of these buildings are linked to the Hall Place Estate. Thomas Farmer Baily (1823-1876) came into his inheritance at aged 21, in 1845 and was then able to undertake improvements which included the construction in 1846 of a Baronial Hall for reasons of entertainment and establishing status. The Baily family’s fortune had been founded on its ironmongery and blacksmithing businesses, which enabled them to move into property investments. As the family wealth increased, Thomas Baily Sr (1746-1838), grandfather to Thomas Farmer Baily, purchased land outside of London which included land around Tonbridge. His son, Farmer Baily (1899-1828) purchased Hall Place in 1820 Thomas Farmer Baily undertook improvements to Hall Place and also in the village. He employed the architect George Devey (1820-1886) who had already undertaken work in Penshurst for the Reverend G R Bossier, Sir Henry Hardinge (at South Park) and for the Penshurst Estate at Leicester Square. He specialised in new buildings based on heritage designs. Thus, many of the older looking buildings in Penshurst and Leigh are in fact Victorian. In Leigh, Devey worked on Park House and the south chancel of St Mary’s Church. It is possible that he had a hand in designing the Baronial Hall with Elizabethan style design features such as mosaic like brick construction and leaded windows.
Samuel Morley (1809-1886) purchased Hall Place Estate in 1870. His family fortune came from the textile industry, and he was also a parliamentarian, philanthropist, abolitionist and in terms of religious belief, a non-conformist. He demolished Hall Place and used George Devey as his architect in building the house we know today. In doing so, he also used the materials, principally the windows and roof, in the building of the congregational chapel he had built on land occupied by a wheelwright. This work was carried out by Penshurst builder, Hope-Constable who had previously worked on the Hall in Penshurst Place. Two bays from the original hall were not used in the Chapel but saved for the schoolroom. The Chapel was built between November 1871 and May/June 1872. The schoolroom and Baptistry were built by another local builder, Everest, between September 1872 and October 1873. The Chapel was designed as stand-alone with the schoolroom and Baptistry joined together behind and with a burial ground behind that to the south-east.
Institute Cottage, built in the 1870s, was also constructed from material that could have been taken from the old Hall Place. Initially built for, but never used by, the Minister, it was possibly used for a time as a reading room, taking over from Oak Cottage on the Green.
Samuel Morley also installed the drainage system in 1872 and the village waterworks supply in 1873 to 1874 (which lasted until taken over by the authorities in 1936).
Samuel Morley was a Congregationalist, one of the earliest non-conformist beliefs which felt that the Church of England still resembled the Roman Catholic Church in its rites and services. Congregationalists were Calvinists (non-Catholic) with 15th Century roots in Puritanism traced back to Robert Browne. Leigh Chapel however also welcomed Baptists with origins in the 17th Century under John Smyth and Methodists founded by Wesley in the 18th Century. Also included were Open Brethren (akin to Plymouth Brethren).
After Samuel Morley’s death in 1886, however, support for the chapel diminished and by 1908 the main complex changed into an Institute and Library, for use by the village, and the corrugated iron chapel was erected by his son, Samuel Hope Morley. Known as ‘The Tin Tabernacle’ it was destroyed by fire in 1984. From 1908, the buildings became known collectively as the Village Hall, Institute and Library. Today we know them as The Village Halls and Legion.
The Village Halls have continued in community use to the present day. During the First World War they functioned as a Red Cross Hospital and in the Second World War the Large Hall was used as a schoolroom by the Roman Catholic School, Vincent Square, Westminster which had been evacuated. From 1945-1983 the British Legion Hall was leased directly to the Royal British Legion, Leigh Kent Club (where the baptism font is still under the flooring). In 1952, the freehold was conveyed to the Morley Charitable Trust which in 1983 transferred it to the Village Halls Management Committee with the Parish Council as Custodian Trustee in a bid to maintain the complex as a village amenity in times to come.
Andy Bodle/Joyce Field (Parish Magazine Dec. 2024)
Sources:
Leigh & District Historical Society website
Historic England’s National Heritage List for England
A Walk Around Leigh Village, by Joyce Field, July 2022
Leigh in Kent, 1550 to 1900, by Lawrence Biddle, 1991