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The Manor House
In this essay, I shall deal with the early history of the houses called Hall Place and Dulwich Court, each of which was at one time or another described as 'the manor house' of Dulwich, and both of which have an important place in Dulwich's history. Some of what follows may initially seem sketchy, and too much concerned with legal documents such as leases rather than with how our predecessors actually lived, but that is because almost all of our knowledge of this early period comes from such documents. However, it forms a necessary prelude to the later history, for which the evidence is more abundant and, we dare say, more interesting.
In 'Dulwich Discovered' (William Darby, 1966), there is a discussion of the relative claims of Hall Place and Dulwich Court to the title of manor house of Dulwich. Its tentative conclusion was that Dulwich Court, the site of which was well known (roughly where the Court Lane entrance to Dulwich Park now stands), was the manor house, and that in Edward Alleyn's time Hall Place was adjacent to or directly opposite it, although the name was later applied to a mansion in Park Hall Road. However, we now know of the existence of a map of the adjoining manor of Levehurst, in West Norwood, dated 1563, the original of which is in the Public Record Office, and on the eastern fringe of which Hall Place is clearly indicated, at the north end of what is now South Croxted Road. The evidence is therefore against a transfer of the name 'Hall Place' between different houses during the next two centuries.
Why, though, were both Hall Place and Dulwich Court referred to at different times as the manor house? The answer may be traced to a lease granted in 1530 by Bermondsey Abbey to John Scott of Camberwell. This lease, for a term of 50 years, was of all the lands comprised in the manor of Dulwich, but specifically excluded the Dulwich woods, the "fynes and amerciamentes of the Lawe Dayes and Courtes" held in the manor, and "a Manor or Tenement called Knowlys". Since later documents refer to "Hall place alias Knowlis", identification is certain, and the obvious conclusion is that the Abbey, wishing to reserve to itself the numerous 'perks' due to it as lord of the manor, needed to retain a house in which to hold its twice-yearly courts at which these were exacted, and that house was Hall Place. However, the Scott family would have required a mansion in Dulwich befitting their station in life, and that would have been Dulwich Court. This is confirmed by a sub-lease by John Scott's son to John and Walter Dove, in 1561, of "the manor house of Dulwich", with 129 acres adjoining, which was assigned to John Levar, a London fishmonger, in 1573, and which Edward Alleyn himself later referred to as relating to Dulwich Court. In that same year of 1573, John Scott's five grandsons, to whom the 1530 lease had passed, assigned it to Levar, who thus came into possession of the whole manor (apart from Hall Place and the Woods), and would have regarded Dulwich Court as his manor house, although strictly speaking it was not.
To back-track a little, one notices that the 1530 lease referred to "a Manor or Tenement called Knowlys", rather than to 'a Manor House.......". This is rather intriguing, implying that Knowlys was a manor within a manor, and some early documents in the Public Record Office, referring to disputes in 1433 and 1449 over "the manor of Knolles, held at the will of the Abbot of Bermondsey", seem to bear this out. Sir Robert Knolles, from whom it took its name, was a Dulwich tenant prior to 1393. The Last Will of Thomas Henley junior, who died in 1544, refers to "my farme called knowls" and other lands within the lordship of Dulwich. It is to the subsequent story of 'Knowlys' or, as it soon became more generally known, 'Hall Place', that we shall now turn.
HALL PLACE
![[Plan of Hall Place Estate, 1811]](https://mydulwichhistory.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/hallplace.png "hallplace")
When Francis Calton (from whom Edward Alleyn later purchased Dulwich manor) leased Hall Place to John Bone, a Camberwell yeoman, in 1597, the farm (for that is what it was) comprised 45 acres, extending north to include lands which are now part of 'Belair'. However, it soon afterwards lost its agricultural character, and became a country residence for London merchants or professional men who did not need to farm it commercially. Such tenants included William Lawton at £8 a year (1619), Nicholas Thurman (1662), Mary Lynn (1738, widow of Capt. Francis Lynn who was killed in a duel*), and Jeremiah Joye at £40 a year (1755).
The 'Messuage or Mansion House' referred to in their leases, with the adjoining garden, out-buildings, and surrounding moat, contained two acres, and a 6-acre pasture lay immediately to the south. South of that were four (later reconstituted as five) more pastures measuring about 21 acres, formerly Lings Coppice, which were included in leases of the premises after 1633. The accompanying plan shows the estate in 1808, with modern roads indicated by dotted lines. The northern tip of the almost triangular field on the west is still visible on large-scale maps as a 'kink' in the rear boundary line of the gardens on the west side of South Croxted Road.
Jeremiah Joye's lease was sold by auction at the New York Coffee House in London in 1767, and when the auctioneer declared that the lease was perpetually renewable the Master of the College, who was present, did not bother to contradict him. William Kay, a wealthy lawyer, who bought it from the successful bidder, spent £2,200 in rebuilding or renovating Hall Place in brick, and making a new road (now Park Hall Road and Alleyn Park) linking the premises to Back Lane (now Gallery Road). By 1773, however, Kay's patience had become exhausted by the College's failure to take action against a Mr Waring, whose carts constantly rendered his new road impassable, and by a prolonged dispute over the terms of a new lease, and he put the property up for auction at Christie's. Despite the auctioneer's 'puff' ("perfectly retired and free from Noise, Dust or the inconvenience of adjoining neighbours. The encircling vicinage genteel, the prospects diversified with distant Hills, rising Woods and Verdant Fields ….."), any chance of the premises being sold was effectively scotched by the Master, who was again present, and this time publicly declared that not only was the College not obliged to renew the lease, but it might increase the rent to allow for the outgoing tenant's improvements. Kay continued as tenant, although his relations with the College did not improve, and in 1788 he was obliged to apologise for certain remarks he had made about the College in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury before a new lease could be granted to him.
Later lessees included Charles Temple, Q.C. (1842) and Frederick Doulton, M.P., who renamed Hall Place 'The Manor House' (1860). In 'Ye Parish of Camberwell' (1875), Blanch gives an eloquent tribute to the old house (although it must be said, regretfully, that there is no evidence for his assertion that Edward Alleyn once lived at the property). Little could he have known that a mere seven years later the house would be no more, demolished for building purposes by Doulton's assignee, a Mr Westwood. Nowadays we would have little sympathy for such destruction, but some good did come of it, for by 1890 the Hall Place estate had been parcelled up into building plots, now comprising Alleyn Road and South Croxted Road.
* Later research revealed that Mr (not Capt.) Francis Lynn died in April 1731 of natural causes, not in a duel.
DULWICH COURT
From 1127 the Priory of St Saviour, Bermondsey, later (from 1399) Bermondsey Abbey, held the manor of Dulwich, and there can be little doubt that the farmhouse known as Dulwich Court and the c.135 acres of land attached to it were treated as the Abbey’s demesne land, on which all the villagers other than free tenants would be required to work for a specified number of days in the year in order to produce food for the Abbey’s refectory.
Indeed, it is not too fanciful to imagine that, as far back as Roman times, if not earlier, on such a fertile site, protected by gentle hills on almost every side and nearly as close to London as one could get without encountering marshy ground, the land would have served a similar purpose, with perhaps a substantial villa on the site of the old farmhouse and adjoining fields providing produce for a succession of prominent owner-occupiers. (One hopes that those living to the east of the Court Lane Gate into the Park dig their gardens with care, for that is where evidence of such very early occupation, if it exists, is likely to be found.)
Occasionally, when the Priory was more in need of funds than of food, it could and would lease out or mortgage the property, and we know of at least one such transaction in 1357, when Thomas Dolsaly (otherwise Dolshill or Dolsley), a London Citizen and Pepperer and sometime lord of the manors of Peckham and Bretynghurst, was granted a lease of the manor of Dulwich for his lifetime (which ended in August 1370).
Similarly, in May 1530 a lease of the whole manor of Dulwich was granted by Bermondsey Abbey – which perhaps, a far as the future of institutions such as itself was concerned, could already see the writing on the wall, and was keen to convert its wealth from land to money – to John Scott of Camberwell, a Baron of the Exchequer, for 50 years from Michaelmas 1531. Scott died in 1532, and the manor lease passed first to his son, also John Scott (died 1558), then to his grandson, also John Scott, who in 1561 granted a sub-lease of only “the manor house of Dulwich” and the 129 acres of “demayne” land on either side of Court Lane that went with it, namely Woodseare (44 acres, in two fields of 30 acres and 14 acres), Dulwiche Courte hill (30 acres), Heythorne feilde (26 acres), Dyckryddens (4 acres), the Hill or Hunger Hill (15 acres), the Six Acres, and Horse crofte (4 acres), to Walter Dove and John Dove, for the remaining 20 years of the head-lease. A conjectural plan of where these fields (and others relevant to Dulwich Park) were is shown above.
By January 1573, when a London Fishmonger called John Levar or Lever acquired not only the unexpired portion of the sub-lease from John Dove and Henry (son of Walter) Dove, but that of the head-lease of the whole manor from the third John Scott’s five sons and heirs, occupation of the manor house and its immediate grounds (garden, orchard, barns, etc.) was divided between Henry Dove (of Peckham) and John Mannynge, Woodseare between Henry Pike and William Nettlingham, and Dulwich Court Hill and Haythorne Field were held by Henry Dove. We are not told who occupied the other fields.
The first mention of Dulwich Court by name was in February 1602, when Francis Calton, by then lord of the manor, mortgaged “Dulwich Corte”, Hall place, and a few other houses in Dulwich. In October 1605 Calton (by then Sir Francis), joined with his mortgagees in selling those properties to Edward Alleyn. “Dulwich Courte” is described as being lately in the occupation of Phillipp Mitchell, now in that of William George, and a list of ‘Anuell Rents’ made for Alleyn at the same time estimated it at 100 acres of land and another 15 acres of woods, worth in all £53 a year. Seven months later, on 8th May 1606, Calton contracted to sell the whole manor to Alleyn, and the “capital messuage or mansion house called Dulwich Court” heads the list of properties within the manor.
It seems that the farm was shortly afterwards temporarily split between different tenants, and indeed Alleyn himself may have lived at Dulwich Court for a time, perhaps while his apartments in the newly-built College were being prepared in 1615/16 – there is an undated letter in the Dulwich archives, from whom we do not know, addressed “To my verye lovinge frende Mr Allin at his houste dullige courte". The “messuage called Dulwich Court” and part of the farm comprising the closes called Haythornefeild (6a.0r.8p., including the adjoining part of Dulwich Court Lane), Six Acres Hill (6a.0r.37p.), the Orchard (1a.3r.9p.) and Horse crofte (6a.0r.38p.), were occupied prior to August 1624 by Katherine Collyns (probably in succession to Henry Collyns), and in that month were leased by Alleyn to John Westwood, Dulwich gentleman, at £23 a year However, this lease must have been surrendered – no rent was paid for Dulwich Court in 1626/27 – and in March 1627 the College leased to William Nicholas a messuage called Dulwich Court, with barns etc. and fifteen parcels comprising Great Woodsires, two closes, a close and lane, the Horse Close, the Orchard and Pightell [a pightle was just a small enclosure] behind the barn, Honger hill, the Long Field, Hamonds Copice (divided), Hathorne feilds, the lane leading to the house, a parcel taken from Hathorne feilds, and Hathorne Shott, 129 acres in all, at £58 1s p.a., £20 of which was remitted in the second year for building work which Nicholas was obliged to carry out. Dulwich Court Farm, apart from the other part of Hamonds Coppice which was let at will to Richard Peare (tenant of a house on the site of the former Harvester pub at the junction of Lordship Lane and Dulwich Common), was whole again.
William Nicholas assigned his lease of Dulwich Court Farm to James Nelham in 1630. Leases of the house and farm – always for 21 years, in accordance with the College Statutes – were granted to Nicholas Hunt (1640), Henry Stonestreet (1660), Michael Webb (1661), his widow Elizabeth (1681), and Captain Edward Le Neve (1694, 1700 and 1717. By 1717 the annual rent had increased to £94, and three years later it rose again, to £100. Few if any of these tenants actually lived at the property – Hunt was described as ‘London gentleman’, Stonestreet as ‘London Clothworker’, Webb as ‘London Mercer’, and Le Neve as ‘gentleman of St Anne’s Westminster’ – and all are likely either to have employed caretaker farmers or to have sublet all or part of the premises. We know from a Terrier of June 1668 that the whole farm was then occupied by Mrs Bethiah Downer (widow of Thomas Downer, a Dulwich yeoman), paying her immediate landlord £84 a year, and she may in turn have had her own sub-tenant or -tenants, and they theirs in their turn. As suggested earlier, Dulwich Court was apparently large enough to contain two households, and both Mrs Webb and Capt. Le Neve granted sub-leases of a 'moiety' (i.e. half) of the whole property to different tenants, one of whom was himself directed to procure one or more under-tenants "fitly qualified for the serving and bearing of offices in the parish of Dulwich". In December 1681 Mrs Webb sub-let the south and south-west half of Dulwich Court, with Great Orchard, fields of 4 acres, 7 acres, 3 acres, and 11 acres, and Heythorn Feild (14 acres) to Grevil Lewis, landlord of ‘The Bell’ Inn, at £37 p.a. (When Lewis died in 1692, his holdings – including his part of the farm, which backed onto ‘The Bell’ – continued to be run by his Executor, who happened to be the then Master of Dulwich College, John Alleyn.) One John Godman is known (from a record of the burial of his daughter Mary) to have been living there in October 1683, possibly as sub-sub-tenant. Le Neve sub-let in 1697 to John Bowden (son of Bethia Downer by a previous marriage), and in the 1720s to John Budder, Robert Budder, and Edward Drewett (whose holding John Budder later took over).
Despite resolving in 1688 "that for the future noe lease shalbee granted by this Colledge of any of their houses or lands in Dullwich to any person or persons whatsoever, except onely to such persons who shall Inhabitt and occupy such howses and lands", the College itself continued this policy of division and sub-letting, and in 1738 it granted leases of Dulwich Court and its lands separately to Thomas Dodd (“the north moiety of Dulwich Court, with lands, viz. the Little Orchard, the Eight Acres (and Straw Yard adjoining), the Fourteen Acres, the Seven Acres, Great Woodsier (20 acres) and Little Woodsier (13 acres)”) and John Budder (“the other moiety and lands, viz. the Great Orchard, the Four Acres, the Seven Acres, Heythorne Field (14 acres), the Three Acres, the Eleven Acres, Hamonds Copice (9 acres) and Honger Hill (11 acres)”), but in 1743 the whole farm was leased to Budder alone. His widow Mary successfully applied for a new lease in 1764, after pointing out that her husband's family had been College tenants (although not only of Dulwich Court Farm) for nearly 150 years, and that she was now a widow with one child, but by 1784 she had died and the College decided that it was time to take stock of what to do with the farm, by now occupied by Nathaniel Randall as Mrs Budder’s sub-tenant. The College Surveyor, John Dugleby, recommended that hundreds of elm trees be planted on the farm, and that bearing in mind its “beautiful situation for building” that it be divided in three (to include, presciently, “a pleasure ground”). Accordingly, at the College Audit Meetings in September 1784 and March 1785 it was resolved to grant new leases to Edward Browne, Thomas Coleman and Thomas Griffith of respectively five fields (later known colloquially as ‘The Five Fields’), six fields of meadow and arable, and four fields (with the farmhouse, barn, stable, etc.), all being part of Dulwich Court Farm, at £45, £80 and £63 a year respectively. All three leases were to run for 21 years from Michaelmas 1785, and were to be conditional on the tenant planting, by the end of that November, a specified number of elm trees (at one shilling cost each) in the hedgerows – 31 on Browne’s land, 135 on Coleman’s, and 80 on Griffith’s.
The three leases were duly granted. Browne’s five fields lay behind his dwelling house (now 105 Dulwich Village) and comprised 7a.1r.27p., 8a.0r.20p., 3a.2r.10p., 5a.1r.6p., 5a.2r.35p., 30a.0r.18p in all, and the enclosed part of Dulwich Court lane (0a.2r.0p.). Griffith’s lease was of the farmhouse, barn, stable, etc., (1a.3r.10p.) and four fields comprising 5a.0r.4p., 17a.1r.29p., 8a.3r.18p., and 8a.2r.27p., 41a.3r.8p. in all. Coleman’s lease has not survived, but we know from another source that the four fields comprised in it, being the remainder of the old farm, comprised 51a.0r.13p. in all. That gives a total acreage for Dulwich Court Farm at the time of its dissolution of 123 acres 1 rood and 39 perches, and when it had included Dickriddings and the whole of Hamonds Coppice the acreage would have been about 139 acres.
Southwark Local Studies Library holds a lease plan, reproduced above, showing what was left of Dulwich Court Farm, renamed simply Court Farm, when a lease of it was granted to William Johnson (Cowkeeper and Farmer, of Kent Street Southwark) in September 1814, when it amounted to 76a.0r.6p., and with annotations when that lease was renewed in 1828 or 1835. In 1824 Johnson was awarded, on arbitration, compensation of £70 17s 6d and a rent reduction of £33 when 7a.1r.0p. was taken out of the farm (on 6 months’ notice, in accordance with the lease) to enable the College to grant a building lease to James Boobyer.
Court Farm was to suffer further depredations because of the growing population and consequent demand for building land. From 1842 it was occupied by Colonel Constable, who had been Johnson’s “caretaker”, having been his ploughman, and who (according to Tom Morris, writing in 1909) took over by exercising ‘squatter’s rights’, which seems highly unlikely when one considers which landlord he would have had to deal with. Colonel (a variant of Cornel) was Constable’s first name, although Tom Morris did not know that, and ascribed Constable’s supposedly quitting the army and taking to farming to a mental breakdown. Constable, he said, “generally wore a broad-brim beaver hat, high shirt-collar, no neckerchief, and a smock frock, and always carried a 'spud' tied to a long handle to pick up the weeds as he passed through the fields”. All but one of his five sons (the other became a Life Guard), “all six-footers”, and his three daughters took an active interest in running the farm. For once Tom Morris appears to have got his facts right, as the 1841 Census shows Court Farm as occupied by Colonel Constable, Farmer (aged 50), his wife Mary (47), his sons James, Joseph, William, Henry and Edward, and his daughters Ellizer (or Eliza), Jain (or Jane) and Fanny, aged from 25 down to 4. All of them had been born locally, and indeed the Constable family as Camberwell residents can be traced back for many generations. Constable eventually handed the farm over to one of his sons – Joseph, according to Tom Morris, but William according to all other sources – and became one of the College's first out-door pensioners (receiving 10 shillings a week), dying in 1877 reputedly aged 96 (but actually 86, if the 1841 Census is right). He is buried in Nunhead Cemetery.
November 1878 saw the last lease of Court Farm granted to William E. Constable, before it was surrendered in order to make way for the Dulwich Park. Writing in 1953, D. V. Allport reported that Court Farm was "only demolished in quite recent years. Many residents in Dulwich will remember the elm-lined hedgerows which bordered the old lane, the deep ruts and the mud of Stygian blackness which formed its surface in winter time ...".
Patrick Darby
(File created 19 September 1998, amended 11 December 2012. These three articles appeared in the Dulwich Society Newsletter in 1980 and 1981.)