Southchurch Hall Farm And Park, A Branch Library In A Garden

A Memory of Southend-on-Sea.

The Hall was the closest Library to my family-home in Marlborough Rd. I used to spend hours there every week, researching school homework; and collecting Library Books for myself, - and for my Mother and my Aunt, from "lists of author-choices" they gave me!
The Hall has a particular connection for me because my Father went to school at Southchurch Hall School, and one of his particular school friends was a son of the farming Family who were at that time leasing the Farm from the See of Canterbury.
Dad told me he had fond memories of being invited to share meals with that family in the farmhouse kitchen when it was still a private dwelling, before and during the Gt. War.
After the Great War, the Hall, and it's surrounding land that is now the Park, was donated to the Borough Corporation [I think by the Dowsett Family who'd bought the Hall Farm from the Church of England during the post-Gt. War "sell-off"].
The farm lands were sold off for the late-1920's/early-1930's "garden-suburb development" bounded by Arnold Avenue & Victoria Rd. to the West, Ambleside Drive to the North, Lifstan Way to the East, and Shaftesbury Avenue to the South. Most of the houses therein were built by two firms of builders -Thorby's, and John Wilson's.
The Corporation set-aside from the development land, -the area which was developed into Southchurch Park.