Morgan Restoration acquired the historic buildings at the former Langley Court Estate, Beckenham, Kent from Laing Homes and has fully restored and converted them in an ambitious and award winning regeneration project*. The buildings include the 19th Century chateau style mansion, the dairy, the coach house and a unique timber framed chapel.
The earliest recorded reference to a Langley Estate in Kent is said to be an Anglo Saxon Charter dated 862 in the British Museum. The land originally formed part of a vast portion of Kent, assigned to the Bishop of Baieux by William the Conquerer and was acquired by the Langley family in 1350. The Langley Park of today was purchased by Laing Homes from Glaxo Wellcome and for five centuries formed Langley Farm, within the much larger Langley Estate which covered vast areas of Beckenham, West Wickham, Hayes, Keston, Lewisham and Sydenham.
Much of this larger estate was sold off for redevelopment in the mid 19th Century while Langley Farm was bought by the Bucknall family in 1884 who resided there during the Edwardian era until 1914, when it was used as a prisoner camp for Officers in the Great War. In 1918, Henry Wellcome bought the 105 acre estate for £32,000 and in 1924, the estate was sold to the Wellcome Foundation and was used for a wide range of scientific and medical research throughout the 20th Century
The Grade II listed chapel probably dates from the 18th Century and is considered the most important historic building on the estate. The external walls and roof had to be removed to install weather proofing membranes before recladding and rethatching. Floor insulation was installed to allow for the provision of underfloor heating to avoid the need for radiators. The chateau style mansion has been converted to form one spacious house of 6000 sq ft and six substantial apartments. A new second floor, contained within a mansard style extension was added. The dairy was divided to form galleried mezzanine levels so that each new property benefits from two storeys. The coach house, originally used as a photographic studio by the Wellcome Foundation, has now been converted into a contemporary family home featuring an indoor swimming pool.
