Big houses in town 1 The Grange
‘The Grange’ was a large estate which included The Paddock and all the land Churchill School now stands on, Fir Cottage at the bottom of the School drive, ‘Knipes Cottages’ next to today’s Castle Antiques, and the little row of cottages leading from them down London Road towards today’s Touchline Physiotherapy business. These were ‘Grange Cottages’.
‘The Grange’ itself was the building that now houses The Rendezvous restaurant, and the gardens were all of the land along the north side of the High Street to the border of today’s Croydon Road and all the way down Croydon Road to include today’s Rysted Lane and beyond up to the boundary of today’s Buckham Thorns Road – a sizeable estate!
All this had been inherited by Henry Robert Knipe from his father Edward Samuel Knipe, a wealthy landowner. Henry R. Knipe F.L.S., F.G.S. was by profession a successful Barrister, but was also a philanthropist, writer and palaeontologist who wrote two extraordinary but now largely forgotten books ‘Nebula to Man’ in 1905 and ‘Evolution in the Past’ in 1912. Interestingly, Henry Knipe lived in Tunbridge Wells and there are no records of his ever having lived in Westerham but his cousin the Rev. Thomas Wenham Knipe did live at the Grange, as he appears on the 1891 census. Rev. Thomas Knipe died in 1908.
Around 1912 The Grange was let to Col. Percy Holland, a retired British officer from the Indian army. In 1917 the Grange was again let, this time to John Laird Busk on a 21 year lease. John only lived another three years, dying at the age of fifty, but his wife, Eleanor Joy Busk enjoyed the majority of the lease until her own death in 1936.
It is a curious thing that the Grange estate including the house and gardens was sold ‘from under the feet’ of the Busk family in 1919, two years into their tenancy, but all the dates are true. What has not yet surfaced is who the purchaser was, and whether it was one buyer, or several. Certainly the Grange house and garden were broken up and sold for development in 1936 – 7 following the death of Eleanor Busk. The high-walled garden along the north-side of the High Street was removed, what was to become Croydon Road was widened, the present Co-op building was erected, and for many years the rest of the site – known locally as ‘the sandbanks’ was left undeveloped, and became a playground for local children from around the town until 1961 when Marborough Court was built and the service roads extended parallel to Croydon Road.
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