Kemnal Road, Chislehurst

Westerland (formerly South Laund)

South Laund was built in 1876. It was renamed Westerland in 1930. The flats that were built on the site when the house was demolished in 1957 were also called Westerland. These were in turn redeveloped in 2003, and the new apartment block was named Worsley Grange after the name of the first owner of the house. 

Worsley Grange
Worsley Grange

The original house stood in some two acres of grounds and had a lodge and separate stables. Leonard Parrington describes the house in his account of living there for a year in 1897: ‘…a large three storey house…tiled roof, hanging tiles on upper storeys, gables, dormers, bay windows and tall chimneys.’ The property is variously called South Lawn, South Land, and South Laund in different documents.

Henry Wilson Worsley was the first occupant. He had purchased the land from Earl Sydney in 1876, and agreed to build a ‘dwellinghouse’ for not less than £3,000. It was completed by 1878, when Worsley and his family moved into the house. Worsley was a 31 year old barrister. His wife Henrietta was 27. By the time of the 1881 census they had three children living with them: James (8), Francis Edward (6), both born in Middlesex, and Mary (2) born in Chislehurst.

The Worsley family had left by 1887, when Mr P F Stowe took up residence. He and his wife were away at the time of the 1891 census, and a visitor, Frances James (64) from Newport in Wales is described as the ‘lady in charge’. Their four young children were at home, Alice (7) born in South Africa, Gordon (6) born in Sydenham, and Dorothy (4) and Audrey (1), born in Chislehurst. Perhaps the parents were back in South Africa, since they do not feature anywhere in the English census. 

By 1894 Thomas Outhwaite Hutton was in residence. Thomas was born in the City of London in 1825, and had been a Wholesale Stationer (for 30 years, it says with some pride in the census entry of 1901). He had previously lived at Beckenham, and just prior to moving to Kemnal Road had given away his daughter to be married at the Church of the Annunciation. His wife Clara was born in 1833 in Clapham Road, London. They had one son living with them in 1901, Ernest, then aged 27, who was a medical student. Thomas was a subscriber to the original edition of The History of Chislehurst, along with many of his neighbours. He died in May 1902 and is buried in St Nicholas churchyard with a daughter, Mary, who had died in 1890. Leonard Parrington, a grandson of Thomas Hutton, stayed at South Laund for a year in 1897 and wrote an account of it.

Harry Webb had bought the house by 1910. Harry was an oil and seed merchant from London, born in 1842. His wife Eliza was ten years his junior. They had at least five children, of whom the youngest, Muriel, would have been 20 when they moved here. They had lived at Eastcombe House, Greenwich, prior to moving to Kemnal Road. Their loyal chauffeur, John Dominey, who lived in the Lodge (see below) throughout their residence here, was also with them throughout their time at Greenwich.

After Harry Webb died, in November 1911, Eliza remained in the house until in 1927 she sold it to John Edwin Duder. John Duder paid £6,000 for the house and grounds in 1927. He was 51 at the time, and a Lloyds Broker. He was born in Brazil, and his family were clearly wealthy, since he was described in the 1901 census as ‘living off his own means’ when he was 25. Prior to moving to Kemnal Road he had lived at Oakwood Avenue, Beckenham, in a house called Westerland. He obviously liked the name so much that he renamed his new house Westerland. John Duder remained at Westerland until his death in 1944 at the age of 68. During his stay here he must have been involved to some extent in local matters, and was a trustee of the Amenity Strip. On his death, his widow retained the house, but it was arranged into 8 flats, and she moved to Berkhamsted. It was from there that in 1957 she sold the house and grounds to Wellington Development Ltd for £6,750. They immediately demolished the house, and built the block of 12 flats that bore the name Westerland until they in turn were demolished, and the much larger Worsley Grange was built on the site in 2003.

There were two buildings in the grounds:

The Lodge and Coach House
Westerland Lodge and The Coach House

Westerland Lodge

There is no census entry for the lodge in 1881, though the property had been built by then. In 1891 Alfed Bylett was living here. He was a coachman aged 30 from Surrey. His wife Clara (29) was from London, and their two children were Edwin (4) born in West Wickham, and Arthur (1) born in Chislehurst.

In 1901 William Poynter (37) was the head of household, a coachman from Keston. His wife, Edith (33) was from Staffordshire, and Edith (8) their daughter was born in Warwickshire. John Dominey, mentioned above, was the Webb’s chauffeur, and he had moved here when the Webbs moved to the house. He was born in Somerset in 1855, and was a groom when he was 16. He married Emma, from Northants, in Camberwell in 1875. He remained with Mrs Webb until she sold the house in 1927, when he was 68. Emma died in 1917, and John appears to have remarried. He lived to be 80 but died in March 1940. He is buried in St Nicholas churchyard with Emma, but also with Mary Ann Dominey, his second wife, who had died two months before him. The Duders brought in their own chauffeur, Harold Alfred Beal, who moved into the Lodge in 1928 and was still here in 1955.

In 1957, after purchasing the whole of the grounds of Westerland, Wellington Developments sold off the lodge and the stables to Anthony Jackson, an architect living at the time in Bickley. The price was £3,700, which seems high given that Wellington paid only £6,750 for the whole site. Jackson and his wife Elizabeth lived at Westerland Lodge while they developed the stables into a house and divided the grounds between the lodge and the stables. They sold the Lodge and its garden to Alfred and Katherine Harley in July 1965. The Harleys sold the property to Edwin and Yvonne Bell in 1970, who in turn sold it to Eric and Grace Ventham in 1976. They moved away in 1995, since when there have been two further families living here.

Westerland stables (now the Coach House)

Originally a working stables and later a garage, the building was developed into a residence by Anthony Jackson following his purchase of the building in 1957. The land to the south of the stables was a field belonging originally to Mr Webster of Woodlands. In 1963, when the building was being developed, Mr Jackson bought a strip of this land for £2,100 to provide a garden for the newly developed house. The land was owned by this time by The Church Missionary Society. The new gardens contained the remains of glasshouses and farm-buildings which were originally built on the field. After completimg the development of the building, Mr and Mrs Jackson sold Westerland Lodge, and moved into the Coach House in 1965. They lived there until 1988 when they sold the house and gardens to the present owners.

Domestic servants at South Laund

There were four servants in 1881: Emma Goodhew (20) a cook from Canterbury; Elizabeth Lawrence (28) a parlour-maid from St Peters Thanet, Kent; Elizabeth Nairn (21) a housemaid from Scotland, and a temporary servant, Louisa Ann Cornwell (32) who was from Devon, and the wife of a cabman. There were seven servants in 1891: Margaret Davies (30) a nurse from South Wales; Elizabeth Nichols (24) a nurse also from South Wales; Walter Munster (31) the butler who was from Norwich; his wife Lydia (35) a cook from Hillingdon; Lydia Houlister (29) a housemaid from Addington; Charlotte Sparrow (19) a housemaid from South Kensington; and Sophie Wright (18) a kitchen-maid from Sydenham. In 1901 there were six servants: a cook, Eliza Barden (30) from Rochester; two parlour-maids, Mary Bachy from Paddington, and Lizzy Homer ( 19) from Warwickshire; two housemaids, Fanny Revillions (29) from Dunton Green, Middlesex, and Emma Holliday (21) from Histon Cambridgeshire; and a kitchenmaid, Florence Harwood from Surrey. The Webb’s had five servants in 1911: Alice Hanscombe (28), from Bromley was the cook, Caroline Hayman (34) from Folkestone was parlour-maid, Annie Vallance (41) from Rochester, Kent, was housemaid , Hilda Brown (20) from Chislehurst was kitchen-maid, and Phyllis Emmett (24) from Lavender Hill, London was described as ‘Useful Maid’, the first time this job description has been seen in Kemnal Road!

Read an account of living at Southlaund in 1897

error: Sorry - Content is protected!