Swan hall, available for charities to fund raise, free of charge.

Any registered charity can apply to use our historic head office for a fund raising event free of charge. Past events have included,cheese and wine evening,fun auctions,musical concert and wine tastings.
Below is a short history of the builing.
Tudor Estates are proud to be the owners and latest custodians of Swan Hall, the oldest privately owned property in Southend on sea, Essex. Dating from 1407 Swan Hall was originally built as a merchants house and over the years has been used as the medieval market hall, the Swan Inn public house and since the 19th century a bakery.
The building was damaged by a fire in 1998 and has been painstakingly restored using the original methods and materials. It was decided that as a part of the restoration the building would be returned as near as possible, to the way it looked during the medieval period. Using traditional techniques the timber frame was rebuilt incorporating as much of the original timbers as possible. Where there was fire damaged or rotten wood, new green oak timbers have been used to replace them.

The property was first recorded on 8th March 1574 as "a shop in the market place with land" owned by Richard Welkes who had bought it from John Cocar. By the 2nd August 1619 it had been inherited by John Welkes, and was then described as: “The Swan” with an orchard. The list of publicans in Prittlewell states Mr Littlebury held the Swan in 1702, with an orchard at the side, later 3 cottages were built in the orchard which became our original offices. By 1841 it was a bakery owned by Samuel Tabor and William Rankin, they also acquired the windmill that stood at the back in Roots Hall Avenue. Today fully restored Swan Hall is a piece of living history and Tudor Estates are keen for it to be seen by the wider community we would like to hear from any local charity, groups or schools, interested in visiting.