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 Howkins1 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
1
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
2
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,
3
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
4
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 postoffice, 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
5
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
The committee was formalized under government legislation in 1907 with members
being appointed by the County Council, the Parish Council and the Churchwardens, but
6
those sitting on it continued to include Watneys, Charringtons and Bell. From 1902 the
state of the buildings caused concern with the ‘dry earth closets’ being a particular worry.
It is suggested that each week one boy be told to empty the closets and urinals for a
‘modest remuneration’.30 The Surrey Education Committee became involved condemning
the school buildings and proposing that a ‘public elementary school be built for about 200
in accordance with the Education Act of 1902’. This was bitterly opposed, with Bell,
who had promised land for a playground if the school stayed put, writing forcefully in
1905 to Sir John Watney as committee chairman, saying that ‘it would be little less than a
public scandal that buildings like Leigh Schools should be thrown idle because after
serving their generation they did not come up to some fancy standard and that he was
sure that any child who entered these schools entered into better rooms than the ones they
had left at home’.31 In 1910 Major Mostyn agent of the Duke of Norfolk, stated that the
Duke was ‘entirely in favour of voluntary schools and would do all in his power to
maintain the Leigh School as such’ while the rest of the committee felt that the present
school was ‘quite adequate’ and that with 115 children on the books, it was ‘sufficient for
the parish’.32 Their efforts were in vain and in 1913, the Duke of Norfolk demonstrated
social control from a distances by agreeing that the old school building could be used as a
social club for the ‘poorer classes in the parish of Leigh’ as long as it was not used for
political meetings. Bell is recorded in 1911 as having ‘very kindly agreed to pay for
spectacles for some of the children with defective sight’.33
While management of the school was one way of maintaining some social control over
the village, involvement with the church was another. Among the descriptions in The
Times of the many meetings, receptions and dinners attended by Sir John Watney, is
evidence of his connection to the diocese of Southwark and the fact that he had donated
£500 to augment the benefice of Leigh.34 Georgiana Charrington chose to commemorate
her husband by altering the church which was thought to be too small. The Sussex
County Advertiser of May 31st, 1890, describes the lengthening of the nave with the
western arch being rebuilt stone by stone ‘some fifteen feet to the west of its original
position’ and a new belfry being created.35 Bell, who seems to have been a man of wide
interests, also regularly appeared in The Times attending Board meetings connected with
7
South American Railways and having the triumphs of his Aberdeen Angus cattle
recorded. He was created a baronet in the Birthday Honours of 1909.36 While, as the
land assessment of 1912 shows, the Watneys and the many Charringtons, owned between
them the Smithy and the Post Office as well as other land and cottages, Bell’s ownership
in Leigh was prodigious including the 9 farms of the Mynthurst Estate as well as a
number of cottages and sporting rights.37 He is reputed to have added to the community
by building a house for a village nurse, and the Centenary Year Brochure of the Leigh
Cricket Club published in 2000, describes Bell as being ‘well known for his leg breaks’
when playing cricket with his estate workers, as ‘having persuaded the powers that be, to
move the Club to the Recreation Ground where cricket is now played’ and as providing
‘the luxury of a two roomed pavilion and a horse to pull the mower’.38 The Leigh and
District Cottage Garden Society, formed in 1907, sadly has no remaining records, but
there are 3 different Charrington Cups presented at the annual flower show.
While it is difficult to be sure about the late Victorian governance of Leigh it does appear
from the records available, that there were a number of arrivals in the village of people
confirming Howkins’ and Brandon’s descriptions of families, backed by urban-based
wealth, wishing to find elysian repose while contributing to a community. The 1901
census while confirming the earlier self-sufficiency reveals their influence in the greatly
increased number of domestic servants listed, the majority of them from outside the
village.39 The men in particular appear to have wielded control in the management of the
school and probably of that other important village institution, the church. That the
Anglicans remained powerful in the village is illustrated by the fact that the
nonconformist chapel was no more than a tin hut. The new richness of the men involved
in the management of the village is confirmed by the fact that none of them appear in
Burke’s Landed Gentry, but the Charringtons and the Watneys do make Walfords County
Families, a publication dating from the 1860s, the inclusion of families in which,
Howkins writes, ‘testifies to the at least partially open nature of the county ruling class’.40
Since only a partial picture can be obtained, it is difficult to know how far these families
helped the general economy of the village, but it is possible that, as Aslet says, the land
was bought ‘for sport rather than farming’ so that the agriculture may have been
8
sustained as a by-product, the 1901 Leigh census describing more specialized farm
employment and an increase in the number of gamekeepers.41 While a piece of oral
history describing one landowner as requiring his staff to attend church every Sunday
identically dressed in black hoods suggests a level of overt social control, the fact that
that Cricket Club and the Cottage Garden Society, both inaugurated during this period,
survive successfully, bear testimony to at least some benefits derived from this
governance of Leigh. 42
Endnotes
1
Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, A Social History, 1850-1925 (London: HarperCollins
Academic, 1991)
2
Peter Brandon, The Kent and Sussex Weald, (Chichester : Phillimore, 2003) The North Downs
(Chichester: Phillimore, 2005) and A History of Surrey (London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1977 and
1998)
3
Brandon, A History of Surrey, 1998, pp 33-34
4
Brandon, A History of Surrey, 1998, pp 43-46
5
This information on Shellwood Manor is part of an anonymous ‘Chronological history’ the accuracy of
which cannot be vouched for.
6
D.R. Mills and K. Schürer, Employment and Occupations in Dennis Mills and Kevin Schürer, (eds) Local
Communities in the Victorian Census Enumerators’ Books (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press for Local
Population Studies, 1996) pp135-6
7
Barry Reay, Rural Englands (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) p 51
8
Information on the foundation of the National School in Leigh contained in a letter dated March 1952
9
Information taken from the 1871 Census Returns for the village of Leigh, Surrey, accessed online at
Ancestry.co.uk: http://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/census/uk
10
From the 1871 Census Returns.
11
Brandon, A History of Surrey, 1998 p98
12
Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner, Surrey in The Buildings of England Series (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2002) p 342
13
Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p208
14
The Surrey History Centre, Vestry Minutes of Leigh 1845-1878 K69/2/1.2 Specific entries from the
years 1857, 1873, 1875 and 1877
15
Burys Court is now a Prep School and this information is taken from their Website:
http://www.buryscourtschool.co.uk/html/history.htm
16
The Rev J. Aston Whitlock, Christmas Address to the Parishioners of Leigh, 1871 pp 1-8
17
Reay, Rural Englands, p 64
18
Whitlock, Christmas Address to the Parishioners of Leigh, pp10-15
19
Information from: Surrey Life for October (year missing) Dog Smith and from an extract from Henry
Smith’s Will in the Surrey History Centre: Leigh Parish, Smith’s Charity Accounts, copy will 1895-c.1920,
K69/2/1.2
20
Surrey History Centre, Leigh Parish, Smith’s Charity Accounts.
21
Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p 40
22
Messrs Daniel Watney, Auctioneers, Sale Particulars of the Mynthurst Estate, May 1892
23
The Times Digital Archive, The Times of June 20th 1913, p11 Issue 40243; col E
24
Brandon, History of Surrey, 1977 edition, p 94
25
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, Accounts, Leigh 1879 – 1907, P19/6/1-13
9
26
The Times Digital Archive: The Times, various dates between 1900 and 1910 also an obituary published
March 26th 1923 p 14; Issue 43299 col C
27
The Times Digital Archive: The Times, November 20th 1923, p 17, Issue 43503: col F
28
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, various dates.
29
Pamela Horn, Education in Rural England, 1800-1914 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978) p 135
30
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, 1902
31
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, October 1905
32
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, January 1910
33
Surrey History Centre: National School Minutes, 1911 and 1913
34
The Times Digital Archive: The Times, 21st March 1910, p 13, Issue 39225; col D
35
The Sussex County Advertiser: 31st May 1890, Article entitled: Re-opening of Leigh Church near
Reigate.
36
The Times Digital Archive: The Times, various dates from 1900 to 1913
37
The Surrey History Centre: Finance Act 1910, valuation list Leigh 1910 2415/1/3
38
Leigh Cricket Club, Centenary Year Brochure published in 2000
39
Information taken from the 1901 Census Returns for the village of Leigh, Surrey, accessed at
Ancestry.co.uk
40
E. Walford, County Families of the United Kingdom (London: Chatto and Windus, 1905 and 1906) and
Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, pp 54-55
41
Clive Aslet quoted in Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p 208 and the 1901 Census Returns for
the village of Leigh, Surrey
42
Anonymous description recorded by Mrs Caryl Brain.
10