Augustus Leney (1846-1915)

Augustus was the driving force behind the expansion of Frederick Leney and Sons, whose brewery, the Phoenix Brewery, was off Bow Road, Wateringbury, near where Leney Road is now. It was the larger and longer lasting (to 1981) of the two breweries formerly in the village.

………………………..

Augustus (or Gus) was born in Wrotham, Kent in 1846, the second son of Frederick Leney. He joined the family firm in 1873 and, in 1881 when his father died, Gus made Orpines, which stood where Meadow View Court is today, his home for the 34 years until his death. He became the driving force in the company’s expansion. In 1896 he turned the business into a limited liability company, with publicly listed preference shares. At this time the business controlled a network of 154 pubs and hotels, mainly in Kent. He continued as the company’s Chairman until his death.

Outside brewing and farming he was a churchwarden and a Kent County Councillor, but his main passion was hunting, becoming Master of the Mid-Kent Stag Hounds. He was satirised by Siegfried Sassoon, who lived in nearby Matfield, in his semi-autobiographical book Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man.

He died in 1915, aged 69, at home in Orpines, following a horse riding accident on a hunt at Boughton Montchelsea, a few days earlier.