Longcroft
1830s
Demolished by October 1939
To the north of Pickhurst Green a house, later called Longcroft, was developed on the site of a former public house the Fox & Hounds. It was described as a ‘cottage abode’ when auctioned in July 1838 and consisted of ‘ four best bedrooms, two servants’ bedrooms, a dining room, drawing room with folding doors to another small parlour, light kitchen, dairy and wash house’. It included a four stall stable, two coach houses, a pony stable, newly built small granary, waggon and cart lodges and just over four acres of freehold land. It had a ‘cow house, rick yard and a piggery’, which was useful for the new owner John Stratton, a pork butcher.
John Stratton let the property to William Hare who in 1857 donated one guinea (£1.05) to the Hayes Charity School and from 1859 until his death in 1865 gave an annual donation of 10 shillings (50p).
John Robinson Peill, a gentleman farmer, bought and redeveloped the property creating a fine gentleman’s residence where he lived with his wife Ellen until her death in 1879. He leased more land and by 1881 farmed 110 acres and employed 11 farm workers, a boy, three gardeners and four resident servants.
He died in 1889 and the property was put up for sale.
Mrs Emma Linwood looked after the house and its 19 acres until it was sold in 1891. The house was regarded as a ‘beautiful residence with 11 bedchambers, well fitted bathroom, … dining room, drawing room, billiard room, study and conservatory 20ft by 25ft with a picturesque waterfall’. There were the usual servants’ rooms, kitchen and pantries and two cottages. The Pleasure Grounds had a walk that extended for nearly a mile.
John Thomas Hedley, the unmarried son of a Northumberland coalmine owner Oswald Hedley, bought the property. He was 37 years old and planned to marry Phyllis Broughton, an attractive Gaiety Girl and live at Longcroft. She rejected him and he remained a bachelor for the rest of his life, living in the family home in The Avenue, Beckenham until he moved to Ambleside. In 1913 the property was valued at £7000.
Although Longcroft was empty it was well maintained by five or six gardeners who, it was said, provided flowers and produce for Miss Broughton. James Clacey who lived in the Lodge had been John Peill’s head gardener and continued in that role and was succeeded by his son Arthur. The coachman, Arthur Richard Attenborough lived in the other cottage. Arthur Attenborough’s wife, Elizabeth, died in 1925 and five years later he was still at Longcroft when he died at the age of 67. In 1938 the local newspaper reported that Arthur Clacey was leaving Hayes where his family had been for over sixty years.
Over time the house acquired an air of mystery. Popular superstition was that the house was haunted although opinions differed on the exact nature of the ghost.
John Hedley died in 1937 and very soon interest was expressed in Longcroft and its 14 acres of land. E F Bates of Shirley proposed a plan for a housing development for the whole estate. Nothing came of it and the house was put up for sale by Baxter, Payne & Lepper in May 1938.
By September it was sold and the majority of the house was demolished by October 1939 when the local ARP units used the site for training, ‘the plot on which it stood is just an ugly ruin as might be left after a bombing raid – haphazard pile of bricks and rubble, twisted metal’, ideal to make a training exercise as realistic as possible. The ruins provided the Gadsden based No.3 Stretcher Party and Light Rescue Sections with practical training in the recovery of realistic mock casualties from building debris.
A few new houses were built along the roadside but in January 1947 the rest of the site was acquired by Kent County Council and later Pickhurst School was built.
