Retirement homes of Greenwich industrialists - Redleaf, Wotton, Squerries, and more

 

Everyone out there must be getting very fed up with my constant articles about either the gas industry or something triggered by my work on George Livesey.  Hopefully that will be finished soon - I must get it done.  I am afraid the idea for this article came to me when I was looking at the details of Livesey’s retirement home in Surrey. 

It occurred to me that other industrialists from Greenwich and South London retired to big homes in Kent or the Surrey hills in old age.   It would take me years to go through all the various people who had factories or worked in Greenwich industry to see what they did in retirement but there are a few I know about anyway.  There were all sorts of reason why they moved –nevertheless I thought looking at a few of them might be quite interesting.

The two earliest I can think of were from the 17^th century - the very famous Sir John Evelyn and the rather less famous Nicholas Crispe.  Deptford and Greenwich were not part of London then although neither were they really part of rural Kent. . It was a semi rural area with fields and open land but also a lot of industry, most of it focussed on the busy riverside – and, of course, the Creek.

 I am not sure if we can count Evelyn as an industrialist although he certainly had a close interest in industry in the Deptford area and of course had property at Sayes Court...  I also don’t know how much time he actually spent in Deptford. He had a house in London where he lived when as he was there but he also had an estate down in Surrey - at Wotten.  For many years he effectively managed this property for the relations who owned it and eventually he inherited it himself. He did enormous amount of work there and a great deal of his life was spent there while his more famous Deptford mansion was rented out.  https://wottonhouse.co.uk/

Nicholas Crispe was around at the same time as Evelyn and they knew each other - although I suspect that Evelyn tried to avoid Crispe.  Crispe was very different to Evelyn. His background was probably not aristocratic and he had made a lot of money in some not very ethical initiatives, in particular slavery transports and sales.  The main London area site he developed was south of Hammersmith – the riverside area called Crabtree. His interest in Deptford was the copperas works on the Creek. He was wealthy enough to build the huge mansion which we now know as Squerryes Court at Westerham.  I understand it  is still much as it was when he built it in 1680 - and it’s very well worth visiting - although the emphasis  is now mainly on the associated winery project.   https://www.squerryes.co.uk/

So here we have a clear contrast between a man retiring to a hereditary country estate and a wealthy entrepreneur who has bought himself a country retreat. It’s also worth pointing out that we look on Evelyn as an interesting and good man, and Crispe as a dodgy individual involved in some unsavoury industries - but – well - some have it easier than others.  Both, however, retired to what we would now describe as ‘on the A25’ - the main road to the south of Greater London.

Some retirees moved less far out to areas we would describe as ‘London suburbs’ but which in the 19^th century were independent towns or villages. Coles Child had had a coal merchants business in the Waterloo area and then, working with Morden College in the 1830s and 1840s, set up a new coal transhipment wharf in East Greenwich on the site which is now Riverside Gardens.  He later moved to Bromley and bought the Bishops Palace -which of course is now the Bromley Civic Centre – (do I understand that Bromley Council has sold it to developers??).  However, I am not sure if this was a move out to the countryside for Coles Child –Bromley is not so far away.  There was also a sub-text - -Coles  Child was an enthusiastic hobby hop grower and apparently one of  his reasons for moving to Bromley was that he could grow hops there and then the  fast trains to London meant that he could get to the Hop Exchange quickly and win the annual prize for the first hops of the season.. I’m not sure if that qualifies as retirement activity or not! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromley_Palace

There are endless complications around members of the Wells family of shipbuilders with retirement properties slightly to the south of Bromley in the Widmore and Bickley areas.  Generations of Wells family members had houses where they lived when they were not building ships in the Deptford area.  John Wells built Bickley Hall in 1780 and later Redleaf near Penshurst (more on that property later). A younger John Wells faced with problems at the shipyard in Deptford is said to have left Bickley Hall with nothing but a Bible and a gun - which may have been dramatic if he had done it in the 17^th century   but this was in the 19^th century  and things  were – well, different .

 Interestingly the Bickley Park estate was eventually sold to a Mr. Dent who was an East India merchant and banker whose family had a close involvement in triggering the Opium Wars in China.  Dent money backed the Blakely Ordnance works on the Greenwich Peninsula.

Another retreat in today’s London suburbs was built by Henry Bessemer, of the steel industry and the converter.  His mid-19^th century estate was vast and luxurious estate. It-was at Denmark Hill which can hardly be called the deepest countryside.  The estate eventually covered 40 acres and included a farm, an observatory and much else. , https://www.dulwichsociety.com/the-journal/summer-2020/lost-houses-of-dulwich-bessemer-house-and-the-grange-denmark-hill

There were of course other industrialists in Greenwich who came from their family’s countryside home and made money at whatever it was they were doing and then just went back there.  A good example of this is the Robinson family whose flour mills at Deptford Bridge were active into the 20^th century but who basically came from the Crawley area.

There is one family who I am not sure if they count as Kentish or not. This is the Deptford chemist Frank Hills and his numerous brothers – who were mostly born in West Ham at their father’s chemical works. However the family seems originally to have been Kentish.  I mentioned above that William Wells built Redleaf and it was to Redleaf that Frank Hills retired and where he eventually died. He was outstandingly wealthy. Redleaf is some way down in mid- Kent –the house  stood on the hill above Penshurst Place and looks down on the that great Tudor house.  The Redleaf that William Wells built is long gone although there are houses on the site which still reference the name. The old gateway is still there and you pass it on the main road leaving Penshurst going north.  The name has resonated with Frank Hills descendants. -  I used to visit his great grandson, Patrick, whose family were still living in the Penshurst area and Patrick’s son has named his business after Redleaf. .

And so we come to George Livesey who got me thinking about these Greenwich industrialists who retired to new homes in Kent and Surrey - and I’m aware that I’ve only taken a tiny, tiny sample. I am pretty sure Livesey had no Kentish antecedents - I don’t know the origins his family but would guess Lancashire where Livesey is a very common name.  On retirement George had moved to a developer built house on an estate on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. His enormous house, ’the Lawn’, is still there. However he later moved to another recently built mansion near the village of Buckland just outside Reigate. His younger brother Frank had moved to that area earlier and had died there in 1899; I’m not sure of the exact date that Livesey bought the house – Shagbrook -  but it’s possible that it was around the same time as Frank’s death. The house is now let into flats – and it is huge -it had 17 bedrooms!   What did George Livesey want with 17 bedrooms?  As far as I’m aware he and his wife was a quiet and fairly unostentatious couple with three elderly servants who had been with them for many years.  In fact, there was also “- five reception rooms .. Lodge with magnificent gun room, etc .... extensive stabling and cottages”.

George of course was the leading gas engineer and politician of the late 19^th century and I am sure his home will have had all the latest gas fuelled appliances and domestic gadgets.    It’s therefore sad to learn that the new owner of Shagbrook after George’s death installed electricity and boasted about how he had modernised the place.  

There is a moral there for all retirees.