Hall Place is a stately home in the
London Borough of Bexley
The London Borough of Bexley () is a London boroughs, London borough in south-east London, forming part of Outer London. It has a population of 248,287. The main settlements are Sidcup, Erith, Bexleyheath, Crayford, Welling and Old Bexley. The ...
in south-east London, built in 1537 for Sir John Champneys, a wealthy merchant and former Lord Mayor of London. The house was extended in 1649 by Sir Robert Austen, a merchant from
Tenterden
Tenterden is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. It stands on the edge of the remnant forest the Weald, overlooking the valley of the River Rother. It was a member of the Cinque Ports Confederation. Its riverside today is not ...
in Kent. The house is a
Grade I listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
and Scheduled Ancient Monument, and surrounded by a 65-hectare award-winning garden. It is situated on the A223, Bourne Road, south of
Watling Street
Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main R ...
(A207) and north of the
Black Prince
Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince (15 June 1330 – 8 June 1376), was the eldest son of King Edward III of England, and the heir apparent to the English throne. He died before his father and so his son, Richard II, suc ...
interchange of the
A2 dual carriageway and two lesser roads.
History
16th and 17th century
Building started on Hall Place in 1537 for wealthy merchant Sir
John Champneys,
Lord Mayor of the City of London
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...
. Building materials included stone recycled from a nearby former
monastery
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...
,
Lesnes Abbey
Lesnes Abbey is a former abbey, now ruined, in Abbey Wood, in the London Borough of Bexley, southeast London, England. It is a scheduled monument, and the abbey's ruins are listed at Grade II by Historic England. The adjacent Lesnes Abbey W ...
. Sir John's house consisted of a splendid central Great Hall crossed at one end by a service wing and at the other by high status family accommodation including a parlour and great chamber. The outer walls are a distinctive checkerboard pattern made of flint and rubble, a beautiful example of the masonry style popular in the late 15th and 16th century.
In 1649, the house was sold to another wealthy
City
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
merchant, Sir
Robert Austen (1587–1666), who added a second wing built of red bricks, doubling the size of the house. Little attempt was made to harmonise the two halves, which were built in highly contrasting architectural styles. Austen was created 1st
Baronet
A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...
, of Hall Place in Bexley, on 10 July 1660 and briefly held the office of
High Sheriff of Kent
The high sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown (prior to 1974 the office previously known as sheriff)."Sheriffs appointed for a county or Greater London shall be known as high sheriffs, and any reference in any enactment or instrum ...
.
18th and 19th century
![Western Face of Hall Place](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Western_Face_of_Hall_Place.jpg)
The house remained in the Austen family until the mid 18th century when
Robert Austen died and the estate was purchased by a distant relative Sir
Francis Dashwood
Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer, PC, FRS (December 1708 – 11 December 1781) was an English politician and rake, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1762–1763) and founder of the Hellfire Club.
Life and career
Early life
Dashwood wa ...
.
Sir Francis Dashwood
Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer, PC, FRS (December 1708 – 11 December 1781) was an English politician and rake, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1762–1763) and founder of the Hellfire Club.
Life and career
Early life
Dashwood was ...
was a politician and
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is ...
from 1762 to 1763, but he was also a known rake and founder of the secret and immoral ''
Hellfire Club
Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high-society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century. The name most commonly refers to Francis Dashwood's Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe. Such clubs, ...
''. Hall Place was one of a number of properties owned and managed by the Dashwood family, whose principal home was
West Wycombe Park
West Wycombe Park is a country house built between 1740 and 1800 near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th-century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Barone ...
in Buckinghamshire. From 1795 Hall Place was leased as a ''school for young gentlemen.''
It was Maitland Dashwood, grandson of Sir Francis, who made the next set of significant changes to the fabric of Hall Place beginning in the 1870s. Maitland and his architect
Robert William Edis
Colonel Sir Robert William Edis (13 June 1839 – 23 June 1927) was a British architect.
Biography
Edis was born in Huntingdon to Emma and Robert Edis. His sister was the preacher Isabella Reaney, his brother was Arthur Wellesley Edis, a gynae ...
added the lodge, linked the house to the water mains and altered the interior by adding much of the fine wood panelling and parquet flooring. These improvements were made to prepare the house for lease.
The 19th and early 20th century saw a series of short-term leases to the aristocratic and the fashionable. The tenants during this period reflected a new glamorous pre-war elite and included
Baron Emile D’Erlanger and his American wife Matilda, a former Gaiety girl.
The last tenant of Hall Place was Lady Limerick who lived here alone from 1917 – 1943, she added a number of mock-Tudor features including beams and fireplaces. Lady Limerick and the house appeared in a 1922 edition of County Life Magazine.
Second World War
In January 1944 the
U.S Army's Signal Corps 6811th Signal Service Detachment arrived at Hall Place to operate an intercept station, code named Santa Fe. This
Y Station was set up in a new spirit of co-operation between British and American intelligence services.
The Signal Corps were to participate in the
Enigma
Enigma may refer to:
*Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling
Biology
*ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain
Computing and technology
* Enigma (company), a New York-based data-technology startup
* Enigma machine, a family ...
code breaking operation,
Ultra
adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...
. ''The Santa Fe Y station'' intercepted encoded Morse signals mostly from the German Air Force and the
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
. Radio aerial wires were strung over the rooftops and the Tudor Kitchen and Great Hall were converted into ‘set rooms’ with banks of Hallicrafters radio receivers lined up on wood-plank tables. The Great Parlour became the soldier's dormitory.
Post-war Hall Place was used as an annex to the local technical school for girls. From 1968 to 1995 the building was used as the headquarters of Bexley's Libraries and Museums service.
Hall Place and gardens today
![Hall Place topiary](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Hall_Place_topiary.jpg)
Today Hall Place is restored to its original Tudor and later 17th-century designs. The property is managed by the charity Bexley Heritage Trust.
In June 2005 Bexley Heritage Trust received a £2 million grant from the
Heritage Lottery Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom.
History
The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
to develop and improve the site for the benefit of visitors. This grant enabled the construction of the Riverside Cafe alongside the River Cray, a new visitor centre and an education suite. A 17th-century stable block was also converted into an art gallery, which displays works by local artists. The house itself is used as an exhibition space.
Gardens
![Ornamental Garden at Hall Place](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Ornamental_Garden_at_Hall_Place.jpg)
The Hall Place estate includes 65 hectares of landscaped gardens and grounds, a topiary lawn, herb garden, tropical garden and long herbaceous cottage garden-styled borders.
The gardens at Hall Place were first opened to the public in 1952 by the
Duchess of Kent
Duchess of Kent is the principal courtesy title used by the wife of the Duke of Kent. There have been four titles referring to Kent since the 18th century. The current duchess is Katharine, the wife of Prince Edward. He inherited the dukedom ...
. The famous
topiary
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...
at Hall Place, the
Queen's Beasts
The Queen's Beasts are ten heraldic statues representing the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II, depicted as the Royal supporters of England. They stood in front of the temporary western annexe to Westminster Abbey for the Queen's coronation in 1 ...
, were planted in 1953 in celebration of the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. She was queen ...
.
The former walled gardens include a tropical butterfly house and owl sanctuary. Specimen trees in the grounds include an Indian Bean Tree (''
Catalpa bignonioides
''Catalpa bignonioides'' is a species of '' Catalpa'' that is native to the southeastern United States in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Common names include southern catalpa, cigartree, and Indian-bean-tree (or Indian bea ...
''), a Redwood (''
Sequoia sempervirens
''Sequoia sempervirens'' ()''Sunset Western Garden Book,'' 1995:606–607 is the sole living species of the genus '' Sequoia'' in the cypress family Cupressaceae (formerly treated in Taxodiaceae). Common names include coast redwood, coastal ...
''), and a Black Poplar (''
Populus nigra
''Populus nigra'', the black poplar, is a species of cottonwood poplar, the type species of section ''Aigeiros'' of the genus ''Populus'', native to Europe, southwest and central Asia, and northwest Africa.Flora Europaea''Populus nigra''/ref>
...
'') - planted to commemorate the
Queen's Diamond Jubilee
The year 2012 marked the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II being the 60th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952. The only diamond jubilee celebration for any of Elizabeth's predecessors was in 1897, for the 60th an ...
in 2012 by the local Mayor and the Deputy Lieutenant Of Bexley.
The site has achieved a
Green Flag Award
The Green Flag Award is an international accreditation given to publicly accessible parks and open spaces, managed under licence from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a UK Government department, by Keep Britain Tidy, ...
for excellence in a public park or garden for 20 consecutive years 1996 - 2016, in recognition of the high standard of maintenance and cultivation at the site.
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
External links
Hall Place websiteDanson House websiteOld St Marys F.C.Welling WebsiteBook review: "The House of Broken Fortunes: Hall Place in the Twentieth Century"Hall Place and The Queen's Beasts
{{Museums of London history
Houses in the London Borough of Bexley
Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Bexley
Grade I listed houses in London
Grade I listed museum buildings
Historic house museums in London
Art museums and galleries in London
Museums in the London Borough of Bexley
Local museums in London
History of the London Borough of Bexley
Country houses in London
Grade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Bexley
Y service