Beaver Hall
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File:Beaver Hall The Seat of John Locke Esq. Southgate Middlesex 1804.jpg, London, 1804.[https://www.rct.uk/collection/701802/beaver-hall-southgate Beaver Hall, Southgate. published 1 Jun 1804.] Royal Collection Trust. Retrieved 17 January 2019.]]
File:Beaver Hall and Arnos Grove Southgate Ordnance Survey map 1868-1883.jpg
File:Plan of Arnos Grove from 1918 sale particulars.jpg
File:Remains of Beaver Hall stables, Waterfall Road, before demolition in 1924.jpg
Beaver Hall was a country house in Middlesex, England. It was set in grounds of around {{convert|40|acres}} that stood to the east and south of the current Waterfall Road, then known as Waterfall Lane and Church Hill, near the old centre of Southgate. The grounds stretched as far south as the Pymmes Brook where Arnos Park was later built. Beaver Hall was acquired by John Walker of the Taylor-Walker brewing family in 1870. The house was demolished in 1871 and the grounds merged into the adjacent Arnos Grove estate.
The house
According to Nikolaus Pevsner's The Buildings of England, the house was built in the 1760s, possibly to a design by the architect Sir Robert Taylor{{cite book|author=Pevsner, Nikolaus & Bridget Cherry.|title=The Buildings of England: London 4 North|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rVHqBvtuLyMC&pg=PA29|year=2002|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven & London|isbn=0300096534|page=29}} who also worked on Arnos Grove house. It stood near the corner of the modern Waterfall Road and Chandos Avenue.Dumayne, p. 145.
It was drawn and engraved by John Hassell in 1804 at which time it was the home of the merchant and shipowner John Locke. Subsequently, it was the home of the Schneider family, who moved to England from Switzerland in the eighteenth century. Henry Schneider, industrialist and politician, was born there in 1817 to the merchant John Henry Powell Schneider ({{circa|1768}} – 1861) and his second wife, Elizabeth Moule.[http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/50511 Schneider, Henry William (1817–1887), industrialist and politician.] Oxford Index. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
The house was occupied by the railway contractor Joseph Thornton (1804–1889) and his family from at least 1858.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XkJVAAAAcAAJ&dq=Beaver+Hall+middlesex&pg=PR15|title=The History of Esther an Illustration of Providence. Twelve Lectures, Delivered in the Church of St. Mary at Hill, London, in the Year 1852 &c.|last=Crosthwaite|first=John Clarke.|date=1858|page=xv|publisher=Rivingtons|place=London|language=en}} The 1861 census shows him there with his wife Amelia and six children (one visiting with her husband), a governess, lady's maid, nurse, cook, butler, footman, and four other maids.[https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7XB-KTH Joseph Thornton England and Wales Census, 1861.] Family Search. Retrieved 19 January 2018. {{subscription required}}
Demolition
The house and its grounds were acquired by John Walker of the Taylor-Walker brewing family in 1870.[https://archive.org/details/homecountiesmag11londuoft/page/176 "Some Account of Southgate"] by C. Edgar Thomas in The Home Counties Magazine, Vol. XI, 1909. pp. 167–181 (p. 176). The house was demolished in May 1871Pam, David. (1982) Southgate and Winchmore Hill: A Short History. London: Broomfield Museum. p. 13. and the grounds merged into the adjacent Arnos Grove estate as part of what Alan Dumayne called a "private green belt" policy of the Walkers of acquiring neighbouring estates and demolishing the house in order to prevent local development. The Walkers had done the same with the adjacent Minchington Hall in the 1850s.Dumayne, pp. 125–126.
The stone from the house and many of the fittings were used in the construction of Stone Hall in Church Hill, Winchmore Hill, in 1872.
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- "Two Crystalline Villas of the 1760s" by Richard Garnier, The Georgian Group Journal, Volume VII (1997).
External links
- {{commons category-inline|Beaver Hall}}
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Category:Country houses in London
Category:Demolished buildings and structures in the London Borough of Enfield