Ivy Cottage
Warren Road, Hayes
Locally listed
Built about 1891
Ivy Cottage is an attractive building situated on the north side of Warren Road. It is within the Hayes and Keston Commons Conservation Area and faces an open area of Hayes Common, used in the 19th century for cricket.
Early Cottages
It stands on the site of three cottages built about 1851 for Miss Wilhelmina Traill of Hayes Place and known as Cricket Ground Cottages. The cottages were occupied by the families of Thomas Pearce, a florist, Alfred Smith, a policeman and William Carton an agricultural labourer. A total of 27 people lived there in 1871 including 14 children under ten years old. Miss Traill had leased the land from the Howard family and when the banker Everard Hambro moved to Hayes Place in the 1880s he bought the cottages, the surrounding land and the Star Brewery site for £8,500 with the existing tenancies. By 1890 all the existing families had left.
Conversion to one house
Everard Hambro decided to redesign the cottages into one superior house as a home for his sisters-in-law Clara and Octavia Stuart. The changes included raising and remodelling the roof, adding a central staircase and the construction of a lobby that became the main entrance. The architect is unclear. It may be Ernest Newton whom he used to make alterations to the George Inn in 1904 but there is no evidence in his records. It was probably the firm of Williams, West and Slade whom he often used after his architect George Devey’s death in 1886.
In 1910 the house consisted of a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, scullery and lobby and was described as: detached, substantially built of red brick stock and tile. Of good design. First floor; four bedrooms, one dressing room, bath and WC. Fitted with gas, hot water. Two greenhouses are in the garden with a smaller boiler. A very saleable property.
Ivy Cottage was one of the properties that Everard Hambro later gave to his son Harold.
The Stuart Sisters
Clara Stuart was remembered by Elinor Harrold as ‘a tall angular lady with a very loud voice, she rode a large bicycle with an outsize basket on the handlebars, the basket was always overflowing with various articles. She was a pillar of the church and ran the Sunday School and most of the other organisations of the church.‘
She died in 1918 but her younger sister Octavia continued to live at Ivy Cottage with a resident cook and parlourmaid. Her sight failed and she became deaf but the obituary on her death, at the age of 80, in March 1940 referred to her courage and cheerfulness. She maintained a close interest in the affairs of the village, especially the Parish Church. Towards the end of her life she was helped by her niece Marjory Gray Buchanan.
World War II
The empty house was made available for use as a canteen for servicemen and women stationed in the area during the Second World War. Plans for the United Services canteen, as it became known, and for which Hayes Kent Village Association was largely responsible, were well under way by November 1940. Requests had been made for volunteers and essential equipment. It opened in December 1940 with dining, reading and writing rooms available for soldiers. Money for ‘little extras’ was raised through dances at the Village Hall. Fortunately, although it was affected by incendiary bombs in the raids on 25 March 1943 it incurred no major damage during the war.
It closed in January 1945 and the Mayor and Mayoress of Bromley, Councillor and Mrs Arthur Collins, attended the farewell party held for the Ivy Cottage Canteen at the Village Hall. During the four years it had reportedly served 91,467 hot meals, 173,407 hot drinks, 75,400 cake and 81,925 cigarettes.
After the war
Ivy Cottage reverted to a private house after the war. In 1953 planning permission was eventually given for the building of four architect designed bungalows and two houses on some of its land. The house was put on the market in 1955:
For sale with vacant possession, 5 principal bedrooms, 3 reception rooms, room for double garage, entrance hall & cloakroom, bathroom & separate WC to be auctioned at the Royal Bell Hotel Bromley.
There have been a number of alterations to the property in the last fifty years including a side and rear extension. In 2010 planning was approved for a replacement double garage. It remains an interesting historic property.
