Everard Hambro bought Hayes Place in 1880 and moved there with his wife and two sons Charles Eric and Harold.   Three more children, Angus, Ronald and Violet were born in Hayes.
He played a very important part in the life and development of the village. He owned much of the village and developed a prize winning herd of Guernsey cows at the farm.  Not only did he improve his house and the grounds but built four lodges and a house for his butler in Hayes Bottom (now Bourne Way). He ensured that some of the run down cottages were adapted or replaced with more architecturally appealing ones. Three cottages nearest the George were replaced with four superior ‘Model Cottages’ ( 21-27 Hayes Street), designed by George Devey. Four small dwellings were converted into two cottages (17-19 Hayes Street), Bank Cottages were built (2 and 4 West Common Road), Poplar Row was replaced by St Mary Cottages (12-30 Baston Road), three cottages facing the Common were converted into one house for two of his sisters-in-law, Octavia and Clara Stuart, Grove House was extended and given to his son Harold in 1909, Glebe House was built originally for his son Eric who, however, preferred to live at Pickhurst Mead.

Two Victorian beer houses, the Sun Inn and the Alma Arms close to the school were replaced by the New Inn which was built away from the village but close to the railway station which opened in 1882.  A small home for crippled children with a matron was set up. Land was given to provide for an extension to the village school that was used for cookery lessons & also to provide allotments on 1½ acres near the railway station.

With the setting up of the Hayes Parish Council in 1894 he became Chairman.  He supported the Hayes Common Conservators and provided the services of his lawyers without charge in a dispute between the Parish Council and the Bromley Rural District Council regarding the right to take gravel from the Common. It was he and not the Rural Sanitary Authority who arranged and paid for the disposal of all the closets and village rubbish at no expense to the rates until at least the end of the century. He was president of the Hayes Village Industrial Association and vice- president of the village cricket and football clubs.

Everard Hambro gave three new bells to the Parish Church and paid for the recasting of the existing bells. Other gifts to the church  were the heating apparatus and two lighting installations, first gas and subsequently electricity. After the death of his wife Gertrude Mary in 1905 he paid for a large memorial screen to ‘All those who are lying at rest within this Sacred Ground’ to be erected at the eastern end of the existing churchyard. He also provided land to extend the churchyard.

When he died in 1925 he was buried close to the memorial in the churchyard in a grave alongside that of his first wife.  The rector at the time, Canon H P Thompson, commented ‘there are not a few, who remember with gratitude, thought-out and long continued acts of personal kindness.  To me, there will ever remain, the remembrance of that fine handsome figure, the old world courtesy, the kindly smile, the humility of the man who just liked best to find relief from the pressure of affairs, among the scenes and people of Hayes.’

Further information:

• The Hambros 1779 to 1979 : Bo Bramsen and Kathleen Wain, London 1979
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography