Victorian
Few villages of Leigh's size can claim so many connections with the world of professional art. Over roughly a century, painters of national reputation worked here, some settling in the parish, others passing through and leaving a record of what they saw. Their pictures — of horses, cottages, the church and the forge — remain among the most vivid glimpses we have of Leigh as it once was.
The most celebrated of these artists was John Frederick Herring Sr, who was born in 1795 and died in 1865. He made his name as an animal painter, and his reputation was such that he was ranked alongside Sir Edwin Landseer. Horses were his speciality: he was particularly known for painting portraits of them, and his subjects also took in hunting, racing and shooting scenes. In 1836 he adopted the 'Sr' at the end of his name, distinguishing himself from his growing family of artistic offspring. His son John Frederick Herring Jr became a painter in his own right, as did two other sons, Charles and Benjamin, and both of Herring's daughters married into the profession too — a remarkable household by any standard.
Herring's link with Leigh began in 1853, when he came to live at Meopham Bank, a spot on the borders between Leigh and Hildenborough. He remained there for the rest of his life. The move seems to have influenced his work, for after settling in the area he turned out more rural scenes than before. One of his pictures shows a barn at Meopham Bank itself, while another, A Horse Fair on Southborough Common, captures a scene just across the parish boundary. A third, Coaching Scene Outside The Philpots Inn, Meopham, records a local hostelry; a pub in the area called the Toby Philpott is recorded nearby, though the precise connection between the two names is a matter for further research.
Herring even finds a place in the story of Leigh's gunpowder industry. A study of the Lost Powder Mills of Leigh refers to him, and records that the artist heard the explosion at the Powder Mill works — a reminder that the noise of that dangerous trade reached the ears of the village's most famous resident. More recently, Herring's name surfaced in an unexpected place: J K Rowling's drama Lethal White, in which he is mentioned.
A very different kind of artist is represented by Alfred Robert Quinton, who lived from 1853 to 1934. Quinton was an English watercolourist whose great subject was the British village and its surrounding landscape. His work reached an enormous audience through reproduction: his paintings were issued as postcards, and more than 2,000 of them were published between 1904 and his death. For many people, Quinton's postcards were the image of the English countryside, and Leigh was among the places he painted. Several of these postcards survive in the local history archive, small paper windows onto the village as it appeared in the early twentieth century.
Charles Stephen Meacham led a more travelled life. Born in Lichfield in 1860, he spent almost twenty years in South Africa, where he played a part in founding the South African Society of Artists. He did not return to the United Kingdom until 1927, and when he did, he listed his proposed residence as Hildenborough, Kent — once again on Leigh's doorstep. His links with the area went back further than that, however: he had exhibited in Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells as early as 1922, and in July 1926 he attended the funeral of the Rev. Weston. Meacham died at Godstone in 1940. The local history archive owns one of his works — a painting of Leigh Church — which keeps his name alive in the village he settled near.
Women artists feature in Leigh's story too. Edith Louisa Minnie Heath lived at the Woods in Leigh, and in October 1887 she married William Egerton Hine. Marriage brought her into an artistic family, since her father-in-law Henry George Hine was a well-known artist and illustrator. Edith herself was described as an artist and sculptress in the census returns, and her most valuable contribution to local history is a pastel painting of Forge Row. Because the picture shows the row of cottages still standing after her marriage in October 1887, it provides evidence about when the buildings came down — though here the sources disagree, since Lawrence Biddle's book dates the demolition to 1885. The painting also tells us something else: South View was not built until 1890, so Edith's picture helps to fix the sequence of changes at that part of the village. Her pastel can be seen today in the Genner Room, and anyone interested in Leigh's streetscape should make a point of viewing it.
Finally there is Lawrence Duncan, who lived from 1836 to 1913 and came by his talent honestly: he was the son of Edward Duncan, a landscape and marine painter. The 1861 census described Lawrence as an artist and figure painter. His arrival in the parish had an unexpected consequence for local medicine, for his sister Berthia married Charles Foster Gregory Junior in 1862 — and Gregory was Leigh's first doctor, the Gregory family living at The Limes, now known as Chilling House. Duncan himself rented Park House on a 21-year lease from 29 September 1864, a property listed in the Hall Place sales particulars, and he also lived at Upper Park Cottage between 1864 and 1871. He married Blanche Ellen Jane Porter, and the couple had two sons, Claud and Leslie Gordon Duncan. His lasting gift to the village is a picture of Leigh Church dating from about 1868, which was engraved by W Thomas and so circulated more widely than a single painting could have done.
Taken together, these five artists — Herring, Quinton, Meacham, Hine and Duncan — left Leigh a pictorial archive spanning most of the nineteenth century and beyond. Their work records the church, the forge, the fair, the inn and the powder mill, and it is a debt the village archive is glad to acknowledge.