IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Kursaal Way, SOUTHEND-ON-SEA, SS1 2YX

A turret for the house on the corner is not an uncommon feature of housing development of this sort of age.

Southchurch Hall, now a museum, stands in a delightful little park almost hidden by the surrounding terraced streets.

Southchurch Hall is a moated medieval manor house surrounded by earthworks. It comprises a late 13th or early 14th century timber framed building with a central hall open to the roof, which is to the left of the photo, and an extension on its west side dating from around 1560 to the right. Throughout the medieval period the Hall and its land was owned by Christ Church, Canterbury. In the early 1920s it was operating as a farm but was under serious threat of destruction from the rapid expansion of Southend. Fortunately, a group of individuals actively sought to preserve the threatened building and its earthworks. The Hall was eventually presented to Southend Borough Council by its then owners, the Dowsett family. It was extensively but sensitively restored in the late 1920s and opened to the public as a branch library in 1931 with the earthworks forming part of a public park. Following local government reorganisation in 1974, when libraries were placed under the control of Essex County Council, the Hall was converted to museum use, which it is used for today. It is also now a non-religious wedding ceremony venue.

This is the rear of the manor house with the chimney on the left being the chimney on the right in Image

Dating back to the late 13th/early 14th century.

The further east you go along York Road, the newer the houses become. The two semis nearest the camera date from around the time of the First World War and those beyond from a bit later. The mixture of semis and bungalows in the same block seems very characteristic of the C20 development of Southend. This shot was taken between Cheltenham Road and Leamington Road.

Southchurch Hall, now a museum open at weekends only, is a mid-C14 manor house surrounded by a moat dug in the late C12. The half-timbered north side (seen here) was rebuilt in the mid-C16. See Image for further details.

Ducks on the large duck pond in the gardens of Southchurch Hall.

This is the obviously-Tudor extension to the hall.

Southchurch Hall Gardens is a small park much of which is occupied by natural and man-made mini-lakes. The most notable feature of the park is Southchurch Hall, a C13 manor house and now a museum.