Noel Kinnell was Emsworth’s biggest benefactor, and served a lifetime on the town’s council which provided the municipal buildings still active today, the fire station and mu- seum. Owner of the town brewery, in South Street, he was founding president in 1921 of the Slipper Sailing Club, now the ESSC occupying the former Town Mill. He bequeathed funds to build the sea wall Promenade.

Little is known about him, and his only memorial is the plaque in the Promenade wall opposite the ESSC. It reads: This tablet records the gratitude of the inhabitants of Emsworth to Noel E W Kinnell, Esq, JP, CC, of Seafield. Emsworth for his public spirit- ed generosity in defraying the whole of the

expense ofthe erection ofthis seawall & promenade after the purchase of the Mill Pond in 1925 by the Warblington  Urban  District Council of which he was for 25 years a member & for 6 years chairman.

In the 1890s he served on the new Warblington UDC (es- tablished 1895 and named after the parish covering Emsworth). In 1900 the UDC built the North Street municipal offices, with the Post Office following in 1905. The Kinnell and Hartley brewery owned several public houses a list of which can be found HERE. Kinnell lived in Seafield, the mansion on the west side of the Millpond with land stretching down to the Seafield’s shore.

Seafield House at the top of Warblington Road was originally a farmhouse. The prop-erty was rebuilt in the early 19th century in “Mughal” style, with bow walls and windows, wooden lattice and green copper-roofed veranda, and conservatory. The owner was Indian army officer Colonel James A’hmuty. Its coach house, formerly linked to the big house by a gravel drive, is now the Envisage dental surgery.The former house frontage and its walled garden is marked by the  high  brick  garden  wall stretching to Lane End (the wall and gate, like the House and Lodge, listed Grade II).

An Emsworth Sailing Club  history records that, “In 1924 he paid for the sea wall, which up till then was a gravel path with rocks on each side, to be constructed in concrete with a tarmac footpath, much as it is today. He also deposited £800 in a local bank to be used in maintenance of the sea wall.”  He died at Seafield in 1927, his death certificate recording cause of death as “broncho-pneumonia, gastritis {and} chronic alcoholism”. A word of mouth anecdote is that the hardest part of his butler’s job was getting him up the cellar stairs after a hard evening’s tastings. The house was occupied by the Townsend family before the  last war.    Requisitioned by the Navy during the war, it was occupied by Wrens.

The Townsends sold the house and surrounding land in the 1970s to a local developer who built a dozen houses around what became Kinnell Close. Threatened with demolition, despite being “listed”, Seafield was bought by (the late) Charles and Betty Smyth , the latter dying last October (2018) aged 101.

The former garden was until post- war  years  the  venue  for  the  annual  fete, today the Emsworth Horticultural Show.

Bob Smyth 2019