Local History Research Paper – LHM 414
An Exploration of the governance of the village of Leigh during the period 1870 to 1914
Harriet Hall
The theme of this piece of research has been to explore to what extent the village of Leigh in Surrey, was changed by families and individuals who were ‘newly arrived’ in the sense of public achievement and recognition as well as having physically moved to the village during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Particular context is provided by Howkins[1] in his writing on the ‘reshaping of rural England during this period and by Brandon’s writing on the Weald, and Surrey.[2] Primary sources considered in examining the governance of the village, include minutes of the school management committee, of the Vestry meetings, those being the precursors to Parish Councils, as well as records of Land Tax and Poor Rate assessments together with an erratic collection of information provided by those currently living in the village. Reference books on the gentry and The Times online Archive have provided information about the careers of the individuals involved. A brief exploration of the earlier history of Leigh is needed in order to assess the possible later changes, but this is not based on primary sources. Given the limitations of space and the gaps in the sources, this paper can only be an initial assessment providing a partial ‘snapshot’ of this period in the history of a small and apparently unassuming Wealden village.
Leigh or any one of the five different spellings that appear in early documents means a clearing in the woods. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, but may have been part of the manor of Reigate in the eleventh century. Brandon describes the early development of the Weald as being shaped by cattle and swine herding which, he says, grew ‘anciently self-sufficing communities’. He suggests that the geography of the area ‘gave rise to very long and narrow “strip parishes” adapted for ecclesiastical administration’. He goes on: ‘it also explains the archaic territorial characteristic of detached parishes in the Weald as outliers of parishes to the north’. He writes that Leigh was an ‘outlier’ of Banstead, possibly first acquiring a church in the thirteenth century.[3] It would seem that what can have been little more than a settlement then changed in the fifteenth century, from an ‘outlier’ to a ‘grange’ of the powerful Waverley Abbey in Farnham, later becoming part of the Diocese of Southwark.[4] The two large houses in the village Shellwood Manor and Leigh Place appear to have followed the same pattern of having distant landlords. Overlordship in the early days would therefore appear to have been ecclesiastical, Shellwood originally belonging to the Priory of Merton, then having a succession of owners before being bought by the Duke of Norfolk in 1806 – possibly for the shooting since it was tenanted and he rented shooting rights nearby.[5] Local names indicate that iron smelting took place around Leigh.
While the sprawling Leigh may not have been a ‘strip parish’, it possibly was a continuing ‘self-sufficing community’ there being evidence for this among its inhabitants in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Mills and Schürer, describing the occupational details found in the Census Enumerators’ books, say: ‘local studies often show that the village or small town of the Victorian period was far more self-sufficient than the same or similar places today’. They list the recorded occupations that would have made a village self-sustaining and the census records for Leigh in 1871 largely conform to their assessment.[6] Among the total population of approximately 550, there are listed, along with the Vicar and a Police Constable, 2 millers, there being a Mill at Shellwood, 3 blacksmiths 8 carpenters, one of whom was also a builder, 3 grocers, one grocer’s shop, two pubs, 3 dressmakers together with a shoemaker, a butcher and a joiner. The agricultural nature of the parish is shown by the 14 farmers listed: 2 recorded as farming over 300 acres, one as few as 12 with the rest being something over a 100. 106 of the men, including some children, are listed as agricultural labourers. There are 73 women simply listed as ‘wives’ but as Reay writes, ‘the census recorded participation in the formal economy, but notoriously failed to recognize those who worked part-time or whose labour became conveniently subsumed under that of the household head’.[7] There is no indication that any of the men worked in the quarries or brickworks of nearby Betchworth and Brockham. Absentee Lord of the Manor though he may have been, the Duke of Norfolk had paid for the building of a national school in 1845, the 1871 census listing 150 children of school age.[8] Shellwood Manor and Leigh Place are both occupied by farmers and the one house down as belonging to a ‘landowner’ does not list domestic staff.[9]
Though the vicar kept a cook, a nurse and a housemaid, the only substantial establishment was Mynthurst, occupied by a ‘merchant’ and employing a butler, coachman, 2 housemaids, a kitchen maid, a lady’s maid, a page, gardener and keeper.[10] The history of Mynthurst could be said to exemplify ideas expressed by Brandon. He writes eloquently of the contemporary attractions of Surrey saying that ‘to the Victorian businessman’s mind’ it was ‘paradisal, the land of dreams, a great beckoning landscape of verdant charm to which he irresistibly surrendered’. He describes the transport facilities that added to Surrey’s charm for the London-based newly rich and the way in which the villages were ‘discovered’ by such people as the head of the Castle Shipping Line or Brooke Bond Tea.[11] James Freshfield, head of a successful firm of solicitors, was in the vanguard of this movement, building Mynthurst, described by Pevsner as ‘in the Tudor style and very ugly’, in 1856.[12] Freshfield had little time to enjoy his lavish property, dying in 1864. The families who rented the house subsequently would seem likely to fulfill Howkins criteria of people desiring ‘to live in the country and adopt country ways’. [13]
In the contemporary records of the village glimpses of positions of authority occupied by the landed elite appear. In 1806, Leigh Place had been bought and restored by the Dendy family and the Vestry Minutes, the existing records of which start in 1857, show Stephen Dendy as chairman and also as a Churchwarden. Under his chairmanship it was proposed that Mr Freshfield’s house ‘be eased to the rates at ￡250 per annum’. Dendy died in 1861, sadly predeceased by all three of his sons, and the Vicar and the larger farmers are the prominent names until 1870 when Frederic Somes, a ship-owner who was then renting Mynthurst, makes a brief appearance as a Churchwarden, complaining about the accounts, before dying in 1872. His unspecified contributions to the village merited a memorial plaque in the church. Generally, the minutes record the appointments of parish officials, the setting of the poor rate at 2/- in the ￡, the letting of allotments and a discussion as to whether an organ should be purchased to replace the harmonium, deciding that ‘at present it was not desirable’. In 1875, the Vestry Clerk was ‘instructed to write to James Wilson, Esq, conveying the thanks of the meeting and neighbourhood for his munificent gift of a well on the Village Green’. Wilson was the latest tenant at Mynthurst, but the minutes also record the arrival of another example of a leading businessman seeking the leafy glades of Surrey when in 1877, there was a meeting ‘for the purpose of making as assessment on the new mansion erected by Edward Charrington Esq called Burys Court’. This house, too, was rated at ￡250. [14] Burys Court was a classic late Victorian house on one side, but, in honour of his wife Georgiana’s nationality, the other resembled a Swiss Chalet.[15]
Sadly, the minutes end in 1878 though the Vestry meetings would have continued until the formation of a Parish Council in 1894, but a further picture of life in the village is provided by the Christmas letter written in 1871, by the Reverend J. Aston Whitlock to his parishioners, a lengthy document running to15 typed A4 sides. He had recently succeeded his father as vicar and is concerned to make his mark on the parish, enlisting people’s ‘encouragement and co-operation’. Among several revealing exhortations he writes: ‘let me affectionately urge upon you the duty of being in time. Each seat-holder will then find his accustomed place unoccupied; and the Minister and the congregation can then begin the service all together’. He is much given to underlining as when he presses people to attend communion habitually and regularly. He also has much to say about the school, including: ‘our thanks are specially due to the family at Mynthurst, for the noble treat they have given each year, providing a grand feast, and plenty of amusements, with presents to take home’. He notes that a Miss Freshfield contributed to the annual prizes. He reports on the state of the school, the 73 children enrolled – being considerably fewer than those recorded in the census as being of school age. He quotes the Inspectors report as being, on the whole, favourable, though he also sadly notes how many failed their examinations saying that this can be ‘remedied by the parents’ urging them ‘to keep their children at the school more regularly, but softening this by emphasizing his awareness of the difficulties parents face, knowing ‘how tempting it is to withdraw the children as soon as they can earn a trifle; for every penny earned helps to pay the rent’.[16] A vivid confirmation of Reay’s description of the role children played in rural work when he writes of the importance of their earnings to the family incomes.[17]
Whitlock further illustrates the continuous struggle for financial survival by pressing children to contribute to both the Shoe Club and the Sunday School ‘Penny Savings Bank’ and adults to pay into the ‘Clothing Club’. For this, he says, ‘Mrs. Dendy kindly attends the first Monday in the Month at half-past twelve o’clock to receive the money. He is delighted with the support the Church Missionary Society receives and thanks the Duke of Norfolk for his regular gift of ￡2 for the poor.[18] An account book of the Henry Smith Charity covering the later period of 1895 to 1911, confirms this picture of small sums of money sustaining the community. This charity was set up by Henry Smith in the early seventeenth century for the benefit of a number of towns and villages in Surrey being aimed at the poor, hardworking and virtuous. [19] In Leigh an average of 50 people received sums ranging from a few shillings to ￡1 in the course of a year, the sums expended annually going from ￡28-5-0 to ￡44-0-6. Interestingly, those obtaining these grants were frequently from the farms belonging to Mynthurst and Leigh Place.[20] Possibly at the time, Leigh fitted Howkins description of the ‘marginal lands’ of the Sussex Weald, lands ‘which, usually for agricultural reasons, were not taken into larger farming units’. The reasons he cites being ‘poor soil and a complex web of ownership’.[21]
Twenty years after Whitlock’s letter, ownership of the village is powerfully demonstrated by the sale particulars for the Mynthurst estate dated May 1892. The opening paragraphs justify Brandon’s description of how Surrey was viewed by the urban dweller describing with unblushing hyperbole, arriving at Reigate station and walking across the Heath to Mynthurst. It talks of the ‘air being redolent with the perfume of wild flowers borne along the refreshing breeze’, depicting the village centre as ‘fitting complements to the little church, and representative in their perfect harmony of the religious, moral, intellectual, and social life of rustic little Leigh are the parsonage, the school, the post-office, and the “Plough”, all nestling together in mutual respect and dependent prosperity’. The Mynthurst estate comprised over 1000 acres while the house and its surrounding are lyrically depicted. Lot 1 details 9 farms while a further 20 lots vary from land to cottages.[22] The purchaser was Henry Bell, a Scot, a widower and chairman of two Argentinean and one Ecuadorian railway companies, with an interest in the transportation of refrigerated meat. He was clearly a sportsman since he rented further shooting rights in the area and was listed in The Times as having taken a Scottish sporting estate for the summer of 1913.[23]
Though village legend dubs Bell the squire, the minutes of the school management committee which run from 1879, suggest that from having few landed elite concerned with village affairs, Leigh had acquired a number of successful men who, as Brandon writes, sought country houses to fulfill their ‘requirements for, health, recreation and repose’. He points out that the ownership of land ‘conferred social and political prestige’ and that ‘wealthy Victorians wanted to be remembered not only for being a successful person, but also for contributing to charity and for building something for the community’.[24] Thus the school management committee in November 1879 comprised the vicar, Edward Charrington of the recently built Burys Court, James Wilson of Mynthurst, a Mr Stacey, probably a local farmer, and Sir John Watney.[25] The latter, stemming from the coal rather than the brewing Watneys, was, judging by numerous entries in The Times, highly successful in the City being Clerk to the Mercers’ Company and a moving spirit in the development of technical education.[26] He lived in Reigate, but had married a Dendy daughter as had his brother Daniel who owned, but rented out, Leigh Place and was a sufficiently successful estate agent to warrant an obituary in The Times.[27] With the vicar and a farmer as permanent members, both Watneys appear regularly on the committee along with two further Charringtons, Edward having died in 1888, A Freshfield, a Clutton, possibly also from a firm of successful estate agents, and, in 1900, Henry Bell.[28] Horn quotes contemporary disillusion with school management, but this committee were at least concerned with staff salaries, bad inspection reports, the state of the school buildings and appointing a series of headmasters with teaching wives whom, it was hoped, would raise standards.[29]