Boys & Maughan Solicitors celebrated the 250^th anniversary of their main office, Grade II* listed India House in Hawley Street, in 2017. 

The highpoint was the firm’s contribution to Heritage Open Day on 9 September 2017, when the 1767 villa, built by Captain John Gould, a tea planter who made his fortune in Calcutta, was opened to the general public for the first time. The day was a great success, attracting hundreds of visitors.

One of the main attractions was Boys & Maughan’s collection of photographs, taken in about 1900, when Gaiety girl Phyllis Broughton was the owner of India House. Ian Priston, Boys & Maughan’s marketing manager, restored the images and a collage of these pictures is displayed in the firm’s main reception area.

There are a dozen photographs and they provide a fascinating insight into the internal and external features of the building. Phyllis Broughton can be seen proudly posing on the front steps of India House in one of the pictures and many visitors are intrigued by how an actress owned, what architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described in The Buildings of England, as the “best house in Margate.”

Phyllis Harriet Wright Broughton was born in 1862 to a theatrical family and studied dance during her childhood. By 1880, aged 18, she was established in the Gaiety Company and went on to become the “toast of toasts among young London clubmen”. It was said of her that “if there were players of more genius at the Gaiety there was no more lovely woman.” From 1886 she was widely accepted as one of the most beautiful women of her day.

Lloyds Weekly Newspaper reported in 1895, “She has made her mark early in life. In the home circle her bright and happy nature causes her to be the life and soul of the house.”

Phyllis Broughton became engaged to nobleman Lord Dangan, the eldest son of Earl Cowley, who was four years her junior. He then broke off the engagement and she sued him for breach of promise in 1888, four or five months after their engagement was announced. Phyllis obtained damages of £2,500. Actresses were infamous for their targeting of rich men at this time and Phyllis found herself on the wrong end of the press which speculated that she was copying another actress, May Fortescue, who received a large settlement from Earl Cairns in another breach of promise case.

At the height of her fame, a colliery owner named John Hedley fell in love with Miss Broughton and they were engaged. The wealthy son of a Northumberland coalmine owner, his affection for the actress was beyond question. In 1889, a few days before the wedding, however, Broughton jilted Hedley in a curt telegram cancelling the engagement.

John Hedley had built and furnished a large home called Longcroft for his bride in Hayes, Kent. Hedley never married, nor did he live in the Hayes house but he always kept the shuttered premises in perfect repair. Six gardeners were employed tending the 14 acres of land around Longcroft.

On 12 October 1897 Dr Robert Thomson of Elmshurst, Grosvenor Place, Margate, sold India House to Lt. General Coote Synge-Hutchinson (1832–1902). In his twenties, as a major in the Second Dragoon Guards, Coote Synge-Hutchinson was awarded the Indian Mutiny Medal, with Lucknow clasp, for his service with the 2nd Dragoon Guards at the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Perhaps Synge-Hutchinson was drawn to the building’s strong historic associations with the country it is named after.

In November 1897, less than a month after purchasing India House, Lt. General Hutchinson passed it to Phyllis Broughton. The indenture states that the money used for the purchase “was in fact the proper money of Phyllis Broughton.” She had asked Coote Hutchinson to make the purchase as a trustee for her.

Boys & Maughan’s collection of photographs feature Phyllis, General Hutchinson, Haidee, Phyllis’s sister who was born in 1882, and Emily Wright-Broughton. The pictures were sent to the firm by The Reverend Michael Gould of St Leonards on Sea, a descendant of Captain John Gould. Haidee was adopted by the General in 1883. General Coote Synge-Hutchinson married Emily, Phyllis and Haidee’s mother, in 1888. All four had rooms at India House when the photographs were taken.

The General died in 1902. When the 31 March 1901 census was taken he was head of the household and resident with Emily, Haidee and various others in Westminster.

On that evening Phyllis Broughton was the sole occupier of India House. The census describes her occupation as Independent Means and states that she was 35 when she was, in fact, 39.

Aged 55 in January 1917, Phyllis married Dr Robert Thomson, the previous owner of India House and apparently a long term admirer, at the Parish Church of St James, Piccadilly. His residence was Ivy Dene, Sweyn Road, Margate. She gave her address as Swallow Street, Westminster. Robert was a bachelor and Phyllis a spinster.

Despite her betrothal and the passing of close to 30 years, John Hedley continued to send Phyllis Broughton a basket of fruit and flowers cut from the gardens at Longcroft, week after week. His last gift was sent when Phyllis was dying. The two never met again after their engagement was broken but Hedley hugged the romance to the end, not only of Phyllis’s life, but of his own.

Hedley would make occasional visits to Longcroft, though they were never more than to address a few words to the gardeners about the weekly gift of flowers and fruit, or to take a walk through the empty rooms. When his health failed Hedley lay bedridden for 18 months in a room decorated with scores of Phyllis Broughton photographs. Eventually his nephew, Oswald Hedley, himself a wealthy coal owner, persuaded the old man to go to Windermere in the Lake District. Taking the photographs with him, Hedley went there and died in 1936.

John Hedley left £655,129 in his will and the former Gaiety girl was named as the residuary legatee (the person or persons named in a will who receive any residue left in an estate after bequests of specific items are made). Longcroft was donated in memory of Phyllis Broughton as a sanctuary for poor and aged actors and actresses.

The actress left more than £230,000 when she died in 1926. Her jewels sold for £36,000 at Christie's.

Visitors to the Heritage Open Day in 2017, particularly younger ones, were fascinated by Phyllis Broughton’s wealth and fame. It’s tempting to think of her, from the 21^st century perspective, as someone to be admired as a high achiever and modern woman of her era.

If you browse Google you’ll find promotional pictures of Phyllis Broughton dressed as a man amongst other more traditional images. Phyllis was a good male impersonator and the androgynous look suited her. It would probably, however, be wrong to read too deeply into this side of her character and it shouldn’t be overlooked that most of her roles were played for comedy.

The 1890s Gaiety girls were respectable, elegant young ladies, unlike the corseted actresses from London's earlier musical burlesques, and it appears that Phyllis Phyllis Broughton’s values were rather traditional. Text books list her amongst anti-suffrage thespians, for example. The anti-suffragists were a close-knit and well-connected group and their elites were women in Society with a capital S. Phyllis Broughton certainly moved upwards through the social ranks but did not, unlike a number of similarly famous Gaiety girl contemporaries, marry into the upper classes. Perhaps this ceased to be her ambition after the failed match with Lord Dangan.

Phyllis appears to have preferred to make her mark through philanthropy and charitable causes. The Dr Robert Thomson And Phyllis Broughton Scholarship Fund was established when Phyllis Broughton’s will was proved on 1 September 1926 and it exists to this day, for example. The fund attained charitable status in 1965 and is administered by Epsom College, Surrey. After the war Phyllis Broughton also remained a member of the Theatrical Ladies’ Guild and the Rehearsal Club, a charitable institution established in 1892 to provide a quiet retreat for girls who took smaller parts in theatrical productions. 

Precisely how long India House was the main home of Phyllis Broughton is not known but she appears to have left by 1917 and a postcard from the collection of Richard Clements, published in his book Margate In Old Photographs, shows that she was resident in 1910. Another postcard that can be found online suggests that she was resident in London in 1905.

In 1917 India House was occupied by Dr W. C. Esse, former Chief Physician at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. It seems unlikely that Phyllis Broughton was also resident in 1917 in light of her marriage to Robert Thomson that year.

On 29 March 1920 Phyllis Broughton sold India House to Cyril Collingwood Maughan. Cyril went into partnership with Toke Boys in 1902 and Boys & Maughan Solicitors have now been the occupiers of India House for over 100 years.

Boys & Maughan’s document collection begins with a conveyance in 1860. Earlier documents, starting with the purchase of the land on which India House is built, in 1763, were donated to the Kent History Centre in Maidstone in 1986. They can be seen there by appointment amongst many other old papers relating to Margate.

India House was first listed as Grade II on 10 April 1951 and upgraded to Grade II* in July 2008.

The 2008 assessment said of India House:

“The elements of its design, while of high quality, are not unusual for their time; it is the way in which they are deployed that lends the building its unique character: a crenellated Palladian villa on a diminutive scale whose ambition belies its proportions…the fine full-height entrance hall is of a scale befitting a much grander town house, there is an elegant stair, and a good general survival of joinery and decorative features. The house has a considerable historic interest as a status dwelling occupied by a retired nabob, marking the C18 growth of Margate as a fashionable place to live and visit, and may be an example of the genre of the eccentric seaside villa.”

You might like an illustrated PDF booklet detailing the history of India House. If so, you would be welcome to email Ian Priston.