Hastings Council gave permission on the 3 February 2025 to planning application HS/FA/23/00871 for Gensing Manor, 19 Dane Road, for ‘Alterations and extension to existing building to create 20 apartments, together with associated access, landscaping and car parking.’ An extension in a similar style will be built onto the back.
The Argus has an article on this decision. The northern extension would be four stories high, and there would be nine one-bedroom flats, eight two-bedroom flats, and three three-bedroom flats, and 16 parking spaces.
Below is its current appearance. It is located between where Dane and Charles roads slope down to join Pevensey Road.
This account consists of some notes on the house’s history, and I have omitted many details.
The original planning application is numbered DH/C/6/1/2070 at The Keep, Falmer, and was granted permission on the 7 September 1877. I have not had the opportunity to look at it and so do not know the architect’s name.
As far as I am aware, the first mention of its inhabitants is in the Report of the Working Ladies Guild, to Christmas 1878, on Google Books. The St Leonards on Sea Branch, Hon. Sec. Miss Martin of 7 The Lawn, had among its members Lady Anne Murray, Gensing Manor, St Leonards on Sea.
The next mention is from the Hastings Observer, 8 November 1879:
Fashionable intelligence. MR JOHN BRAY, House Agent, of South Colonnade, Warrior-square Station, and White Rock, has sent us the following additional particulars of Houses he has just let: Mr Charles Murray and Lady Anne Murray have taken Manor House (Mr Eversfield’s new mansion), Charles-road, on lease, and will remove thither shortly.
Presumably the earlier reference meant that they had already stayed there for a shorter period. The reference to Mr Eversfield hints that he had built or designed it, but I don’t believe that the Eversfield Estate ever built anything. Instead they sold plots on 99-year leases to builders, or to wealthy individuals who would hire a builder. That builder had probably sold on the 99-year lease to them or someone else.
There is another reference in the newspaper, on the 29 November 1879:
Mr Charles Murray and Lady Anne Murray have removed from the Queen’s Hotel, Hastings, to Manor House, Pevensey Road. The name of the house will henceforward be “Gensing Manor”.
Charles James Murray (1851-1929) was the Conservative MP for Hastings, 1880-83, and for Coventry, 1895-1906. The Wikipedia article linked to has a portrait. His mother was born Elise Wadsworth, whose brother was a Union General in the American Civil War. Murray married in 1875 Lady Anne Francesca Wilhelmina Finch, daughter of the 6th Earl of Aylesford. He had a house in London, at 27 Berkeley Square.
The Hastings Observer mentioned Gensing Manor on numerous occasions, such as in the 18 December 1880 issue when reporting on 200 attending a dance. We are told that ‘Dancing was kept up with great spirit until an early hour on Thursday morning, to the strains of Coote and Tinney’s and Truman’s bands.’
The 1886 Pike’s Directory gives a Mrs Pulteney at the address. This was Isabella Pulteney, who in the 1891 census was present, a widow, age 53, born St George’s, London. Also in the household (and given as head) was her son Keppel, listed as a student at Christ Church, Oxford, plus four daughters, four relatives, and eight servants, 16 in all. Isabella’s husband John Granville Beaumont Pulteney had died in 1875 in Kenley, Surrey but was of Mount House, St Leonards on Sea. One of the executors was Francis Fearon, son in law to James Burton, founder of St Leonards. Mount House is on the nearby street The Mount, where the family had been living in the 1871 census.
In 1889 there was a planning application for a conservatory, DH/C/6/1/3827.
The Hastings Observer, 17 November 1900, has the following mention:
Hastings Winter Season. John and A. Bray have let for the winter: Mrs Sanger-Davies and family have taken Gensing Manor, Dane Road, as a residence.
She was the widow of the Rev. Joseph Sanger-Davies, who had died on the 20 May 1900 at Cannes. He had been the Vicar of St Mary, Bredin, Canterbury. The house does not seem to have been occupied in the 1901 census.
The Historical Hastings website has an interesting photo from 1905 of Gensing Manor, which shows a wall around tree-filled gardens. The wall is still there but the trees are I think different, understandable after more than a century.
The 1911 census tells us that there were 22 rooms, and that the head had had 8 children:
Harriet Anna Sanger-Davies, head, 57, widow, private means, born Sussex, Ore
Gladys Dorothy Sanger-Davies, daughter, 23, single, born Staffs Handsworth
Enid Eleonora Sanger-Davies, daughter, 21, single, medical student, born Kent, Canterbury
Olwen Warburton H. Sanger-Davies, daughter, 19, single, born Kent, Canterbury
Edith Frazer, servant, 44, widow, cook (domestic), born Sussex, St Leonards
Florence Helen Tapp, servant, 24, single, house parlour maid (domestic), born Sussex, Peasmarsh
Leonora Jane Gill, servant, 17, single, house-maid, born Sussex, Peasmarsh
I was interested to see that daughter Enid was a medical student. I have not traced her career, but in the 1923 Medical Register her entry states that she became MRCS in 1916 and was at Albany Lodge, Albany Road, St Leonards. She was probably living with her mother, who died at 3 Albany Road in 1944.
The Hastings Observer, 7 August 1912, has a detailed account of a wedding at St John’s, Upper St Leonards, on Saturday afternoon. Lieut. Reginald Sumner Ward, RNR, 2nd son of Col. Ward, RA, retired, of Quarry Bank, had married Gladys Dorothy Sanger-Davies of Gensing Manor, daughter of the late Reverend. Her brother, the Rev. Hugh, officiated, as did the Rev. Owen, brother of the groom, and the Rector of the church, the Rev. Canon H.D. Jones. 200 guests were invited to a reception at Gensing Manor where ‘the Red Hungarian Band furnished agreeable music.’ The lengthy list of presents and who they came from included ‘servants at Quarry Bank, cut-glass biscuit jar; servants at Gensing Manor, dachshund knife rests.’ A daughter was born to them at the house in 1913.
When war came, two sons of the house served. From the Hastings Observer, 3 October 1914:
Second-Lieutenant L.H. Sanger-Davies, serving with the 15th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, Tring, and Private F.M. Sanger-Davies, 5th (Cinque Ports) Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, Dover, are sons of Mrs Sanger-Davies, of Gensing Manor, St Leonards.
Tragically, Llewelyn Herbert Sanger-Davies, Durham Light Infantry, was killed on the 2 July 1916. He was the third son, and had attended Marlborough and Cambridge.
The Hastings Observer, 29 November 1919, alerts us to a new inhabitant, and a second Conservative MP who lived at Gensing Manor:
BACK FROM AMERICA. The Borough Member (Mr Laurance Lyon) arrived back from New York on Tuesday morning, and was in the House of Commons the same afternoon.
To-night (Saturday) he will be in Hastings, and has arranged to attend a Conservative Committee meeting in the lower part of St Peter’s ward. It is his intention to spend his week-ends regularly in Hastings till his local residence (Gensing Manor) is ready for occupation…
There is a brief Wikipedia article for Laurance Lyon (1875-1932), who was elected in 1918, and resigned in 1921. Lyon was not there long, as in the 1921 census there was a new household, and a big change in its nature. It is again noted as having 22 rooms. There were only three living there:
Angus Burnett Hay, head, 63, married, born Grahamstown, Union of South Africa, private hotel, own account.
Edith Hay, wife, 55, born Suffolk Ipswich, home duties
Elizabeth Woolnough, visitor, wife’s sister, 53, single, born Suffolk Wickham Market, [occupation] none.
Hay had become, as a bookkeeper, a Freemason at Grahamstown in 1879. In the 2nd Boer War he served as a Captain in the Commander in Chief’s Bodyguard. In World War I he served in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, later the Cameronians, as a draft conducting officer. He married in1915 at Hampstead. In the 1918 electoral register the couple were living at 15 High Street, Battle. Below is an advert for the hotel.
Sadly, Hay died in 1922 and was buried at Felixstowe. The Hastings Observer, 8 July 1922, has an advert stating that with Gensing Manor having been sold as a freehold property, the contents were to be sold on the 25 July by Dawson & Harden, as instructed by Mrs Hay.
The sale had been to the Hastings and St Leonards Ladies’ College, who had already placed an advert in The Spectator, 17 June 1922 about an impending move in September ‘to provide additional accommodation for resident pupils.’
I have not researched the school, and a different school name was involved when, as reported in the Hastings Observer, 8 December 1934, we are told that the Buchanan School at St Paul’s Place was to reopen in January at Gensing Manor. The Principal was Miss K. Buchanan Browne.
Another advert gives us some information, and indicates that pupils were living in the house.
The 30 September 1939 ‘Register’, a list by address of civilians in the UK compiled for rationing purposes, is difficult to interpret but it seems that the building was inhabited by several teachers and other staff plus half a dozen teenage girls. World War II of course meant much uncertainty. In July 1940 the local newspapers had numerous adverts by schools, sometimes stating that they would continue in the area. In the case of the Buchanan School, they stated that the day school would continue as usual, but that the boarders were at Crossways, Lympstone, Devon. Other adverts tell is that In September, however, the day school moved to St Paul’s Place, St Leonards.
A newspaper mention in 1947 indicates that the house was divided into flats, and the 1950’s Kelly’s directory shows lists the householders of the 12 flats. I would have expected to find a planning application for this (and earlier for the change to a school), but this was not traced. There is, though, DH/B/83/669 at The Keep, dated 4 May 1959, which is catalogued as the purchase for £3250 from D R E Ashby under the Housing Act 1957 by the Housing Committee. I could not identify Mr Ashby.
The house of the house then becomes quite tangled, and I have not tried to identify the twists and turns. The Hastings Council website has a number of planning applications. The Hastings Observer, 30 October 1976, had an article with the headline ‘Still hope for Gensing Manor’. It mentioned a planning application by St Mary Magdalen Housing Association to convert it into 14 flats for the elderly with an additional 12 in an extension. This was accepted, then the Council’s housing committee produced a plan to pull it down, and build 32 flats for the elderly. This was rejected by the planning committee. Then the Housing Association pulled out.
I will conclude with the Hastings Independent‘s article on the 12 July 2023 which includes the statement ‘Built in 1880 for the MP of Hastings and his wife, but more recently leased to English language schools, Gensing Manor is up for sale and Hastings Rental Health Housing Co-op (HRH) are planning to buy it…’