Worcester Court

By David Rymill

We are most grateful to David Rymill for his permission to use an extract from an article that first appeared in the December 2019 edition of Worcester Park Life.

… This month I’d like to show you two photographs that I acquired a few years ago of one of the largest of Worcester Park’s vanished Victorian houses, which stood at the top of The Avenue on the site now occupied by Worcester Gardens.

Front Entrance to Worcester Court
Image courtesy of David Rymill © 2019

This location is one of the most interesting historically in Worcester Park, as Worcester House had been built close by as the residence of the Earl of Worcester as Keeper of the Great Park in about 1610, and it was also the site of Worcester Park Farm, where the Pre-Raphaelite artists Holman Hunt and Millais spent some months in 1851.

Worcester Farm site
Extract from the 1867 OS 6 inch to 1 mile map

In or around 1873 the farmhouse was replaced by a new and substantial house, known initially (and confusingly) as Worcester House, but for most of its existence as Worcester Court, or sometimes just The Court (not to be confused with the present Worcester Court in Salisbury Road).  It was originally the home of Alexander Hector, who had spent much of his career developing both commercial and diplomatic links in Baghdad.

In 1835, having already served in an expedition on the Niger, he joined the Government’s Euphrates Expedition, led by General Francis Rawdon Chesney, which had been sent out to survey the Euphrates and Tigris rivers with a view to finding a more rapid overland route from the Mediterranean to India.  His official role was to act as store-keeper and purser, but he was also active in arranging the transport of vessels, and on one occasion had to rescue the expedition’s diving-bell from muddy water using bamboo feelers.

Towards the end of the expedition, Mr Hector took charge of the postal line through Arabia.  He settled in Baghdad, but in his attempts to establish trading ventures was often frustrated by the somnolence of the British Residency: in March 1843 he complained that, whilst the consul, Colonel Taylor was away, “I have had occasion to apply several times to the Consulate… and was told that my letters would be forwarded to the Colonel as soon as any pressing business occurred.”

His wife Annie French was a notable Victorian novelist.  She was born in Ireland in 1825, and her family came to England in 1844, living first in Liverpool and then in London.  She published two novels in the 1850s, prior to her marriage, and several more between 1865 and 1873, still using her maiden name.  After Mr Hector’s death in 1875 she wrote over forty more novels, borrowing his forename and calling herself “Mrs Alexander”.  Her books mainly concerned young girls presented with choices between money, family and love.

Mrs Alexander (Annie Hector (née French))
by W. & D. Downey, published by Cassell & Company, Ltd
carbon print, published 1892 NPG Ax16006

Alexander Hector was one of the leading investors in the Landed Estates Company and the associated Worcester Park Building Company, which were developing The Avenue and the adjacent area.  In 1866 he entered into an agreement to buy several portions of the estate, including nearly 14 acres of land consisting of the route of Delta Road and land to either side; he completed this purchase in December 1870, by which time he already seems to have been the owner of the rest of the land adjoining Delta Road, including the Worcester Court site.

Worcester Court
Extract from the 1894 OS 25 inch to 1 mile map

Delta Road, which forms the base of a triangle between The Avenue and Salisbury Road, may have been named after the triangular Greek letter delta, but it is also possible that, in the sinuous routes of those two roads, Mr Hector saw a reminder of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which effectively form the Euphrates delta.  Alexander Hector died in 1875, and Worcester Court was let to a succession of tenants, but the Hector family continued to own property in the Delta Road area until well into the 20th century, and the photographs reproduced here appear to have belonged to Mr and Mrs Hector’s daughter.

Worcester Court from the Garden
Image courtesy of David Rymill © 2019

In the 1930s several plans were drawn up for the development of this site, beginning in 1935 with a scheme for a film studio for B and B Productions.  In this plan, the mansion would have been retained and linked to a much larger building behind it, containing a double-height studio, orchestration theatre and carpenters’ shop surrounded by cutting rooms, other technical facilities, and male and female crowd dressing rooms.  Later that year plans were submitted for two three-storey blocks of flats (40 in total) on the site, with two tennis courts and a squash court; this was followed in 1937 by a scheme for a four-storey complex of 74 flats.

Worcester Court.
Extract from the 1933 OS 25 inch to 1 mile map

None of these schemes was carried out, leaving the way clear for the arrival, 80 years ago this year, of Blakesley School, a private school which had been operating as Blakesley House School in a house of that name in Merton: when those premises were requisitioned in the summer of 1939 the proprietors, the Dudley family, quickly had to find premises elsewhere. …

David has also identified a number of the occupiers of building on the site

The Lodge to Worcester Court

• 1881: The Lodge: Luff, gardener
• c1890: shown but not named c1890: (SHC 70/34)
• 1891: The Court Lodge: Milford
• 1901: The Court Lodge: William Milford, gardener
• 1956: 80: Raymond Child
• 1971: 80: R P M Child

Worcester Court

• 1867: site owned by A Hector (Surrey History Centre 6017 bundle 8)
• 1881: Temporarily called Claverton House : William Evill, stock manufacturer and county magistrate with wife, 7 daughters, son and 6 servants (Claverton House Laundry: Samuel Rolstone, coachman, with wife and daughter, laundresses)
• c1890: Temporarily called The Court (SHC 70/34)
• 1891: Temporarily called The Court: William Kaye, retired bank manager (The Court Stables: Raven; cottage at The Court: Cole)
• 1901: Temporarily called The Court: Julia R Kaye, own means (The Court Stable: Henry Martin, coachman domestic)
• 1903: Worcester Court: Mrs Kaye
• c1910: The Court: no occupier named (owners: Alexander Hector’s trustees: Miss I Hector, Ditchingham House, Norfolk) (SHC 2415/2/9)
• 1911: Variously called The Court and Worcester Court:  Reverend Alfred and Mary Frances Armitage (nee Thompson) (Census) On 21 July 1915 their son Alfred Cecil Armitage, aged 19, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Battalion The Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment) was accidentally killed. (Information from elsewhere on this website) 
• 1921 (ER): The Court: Alfred, Mary Francis and Arthur Frank Armitage
• 1934: owner: R Lewis (SHC 6122/58)
• 1947:  Worcester Court: Eric C Dudley, Winifred Dudley and Alice M Hawke
• 1956: Blakesley School: E G Dudley, principal