BURBAGE, Cuthbert
1565-1636
London theatre owner including the Globe Theatre
In 1629 Cuthbert Burbage bought from Robert Wade of Grays Inn for £1472 ‘ the site of the manor of Baston, a capital messuage called Baston Farm with appurtenances and 180 acres of land, meadow, pasture and several parcels of woodland containing 86 acres and other premises …..lying in the parishes of Hayes, Bromley and West Wickham.’ He therefore became one of the major landowners in Hayes. He and his wife Elizabeth died at Baston in 1636 but they were buried in the crypt of St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, the church used by Burbage’s Company of Players.
The property remained in his family until the middle of the 18th century.
BURBAGE, Elizabeth
d 1671
Generous benefactor to Hayes Church
Elizabeth Burbage was the daughter of Cuthbert Burbage and inherited his Hayes properties on his death.
She married (1) Amyas Maxey 1620 by whom she had two children, a daughter Elizabeth and son James Burbage
(2) George Bingley 1630 – 1652, auditor of the imprests. He had a house in Bromley which Elizabeth sold in 1662. She preferred to live at Baston and in the 1664 Hearth tax her home was rated for 7 hearths. The land was leased to the Delver family but she paid the quit rents of 20/- to the Manor of Orpington for Baston Heath. She provided Hayes church with a large wainscot pulpit with a rich damask cushion and cloth covering and gave a pair of Communion flagons. The Vestry was in disrepair and unused and so was the passage to it so at her own expense Mrs Bingley provided a pew against the passage for her family, friends etc. and enjoyed it until she died in 1671. The inventory made after her death suggests that the house was divided and shared with her son James. The contents of her two chambers, parlour and kitchen were valued at £29. Her parlour had a fireplace and was furnished with several wall hangings and pictures, a couch and six chairs. Boxes and a trunk in her chamber contained books and musical instruments worth £2, the same value given to her feather bed, bolster, pillows, curtain and valence. In her will she left £5 to be distributed to the poor of Hayes.
Her son James Burbage Maxey inherited the Baston lands and it was his wife Elizabeth, who later married Colonel Evan Lloyd, who had a new house built on the site of Baston Manor.
LLOYD, Elizabeth née Burley
Died 1693
Encouraged the education of poor Hayes children
Elizabeth Burley married James Burbage Maxey who inherited Baston Manor on his mother’s death. He died in 1677. She had a new house and coach house built joining the original Baston house. By 1682 her estate consisted of ‘two messuages, three barns, three stables, three gardens, three orchards, 120 acres of land, 40 acres of meadow, 50 acres of pasture, and 90 acres of woods plus the appurtenances in Bromley, Hayes and West Wickham.’ She married Colonel Evan Lloyd who supported her in a number of local legal disputes. One concerned her right to sit in a particular pew in the Church. Originally the family had sat in one built by the vestry for her mother-in-law Elizabeth Bingley. In 1685 the parishioners decided to repair the vestry and this meant reopening the passage way to it. Mrs Lloyd moved into another pew but this was disputed by John Clerke, a farmer. She appears to have won this case at the Church Court but she was not so successful in her attempts to dispute the rights of the Lennard family over part of Baston Heath which she claimed had not been sold to them. On her death, she left £3 a year from some of her Hayes lands to the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor of the parish of Hayes for ‘putting to school poor children to learn to read’ and any money left over was to be used ‘in putting to apprentice one or more of the said poor children’. Her husband Evan Lloyd remained at Baston Manor until his death in 1714.