Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 02/11/2018

TQ 3672
779-/31/10050

PERRY HILL

Livesey Memorial Hall

II

Recreation Hall, built in 1911 by SY Shoubridge, Engineer to the South Suburban Gas Company, for the Company’s employees.

MATERIALS: London stock brick (made by the Gas Company) on concrete foundations with Burmantoft terracotta dressings. Red-tiled hipped roof with gablets to the ends, containing occuli, and finials. The building retains its original small-paned, clear-glazed windows.

PLAN: single-storey 'E' plan on a north/south alignment, with a central projecting porch to the west. The western central projection has been partly obscured by an extension, erected as an ‘all-gas’ kitchen, and in place by 1936.

EXTERIOR: the single-storey building is of ten bays, the two central bays being defined by a pediment with an oculus, above the entrance porch. The square, double-arched porch is reached by a short flight of steps. The entrance doors are of hardwood with six panels hung folding in two leaves, with a semi-circular fanlight above, set within a red-brick round-headed surround. A terracotta balustrade runs between the porch’s comer piers, which are topped with pierced urn-like finials in Jacobean style. A large faience panel between the arches and balustrade depicts a beige banner framed by stems of acanthus and pomegranate on a green ground. Raised letters in oxblood announce the 'LIVESEY MEMORIAL HALL.' The pedimented end bays project slightly, each one containing a Venetian window. Doric pilasters divide the other bays, each of which has a rectangular window set in a round-headed terracotta surround. The rear elevation has a similar arrangement of pilasters and windows, though partly concealed by the later single-storey flat-roofed extension.

INTERIOR: the large hall has a raised stage at the south end with a basket-arched proscenium arch, embellished with pendentives and framed by piers with clasping pilasters. The coved ceiling has mouldings creating compartments; there is a classical cornice and pilasters divide the walls into bays. The billiard room and reading room to the right now form an open bar area. Some panelling survives.

Listing NGR: TQ3655172102

History

The Livesey Memorial Hall was built in the north-west corner of the South Suburban Gas Company’s principal site at Bell Green, which in 1911 employed 380 men. Much of the building work was carried out by the Gas Company itself. Sir George Thomas Livesey (1834-1908, knighted in 1902), whom the hall commemorates, was a director of the company for 30 years; an engineer, industrialist and philanthropist described as ‘the outstanding gas industry engineer of his generation’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), he initiated many technical improvements in the design of gas holders. Livesey was the builder of the Greenwich Gas Works (1883) and was a pioneer of co-partnership (profit-sharing) within the industry. Minutes recording the decision to commemorate Livesey through the erection of a recreation room for the employees note the suitability of the memorial, ‘Bearing in mind the very great interest which was always taken by Sir George in all matters affecting the well-being of the employees’. The hall, described as comprising ‘a library, an extensive billiard room, spacious concert hall and well equipped stage and dressing rooms’, became the focus of the gaswork’s recreational facilities; a bowling green and tennis courts were also provided in the same part of the site, for the use of the employees. The bowling green survives to the north of the hall, enclosed to the west by the hall’s listed boundary wall (LE 1253121); a pavilion, not shown on the 1936 map though  possibly moved from another location, also survives. The listed war memorial (LE 1253111), erected to the west of the hall in 1920, commemorates those employees of the South Suburban Gas Company who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27082527

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings