Alleyne Gardens at Hartley Vale, was planned and designed by James Frederick Constable, a construction surveyor who had his own Estate Agency and was quite partial to estate development schemes.
“One of my earliest memories, sometime around 1935, I was in the first form at Plymouth College, was accompanying my father on field survey to plan the layout for new housing at Hartley Vale,” says his son Jimmy Constable, after whom Alleyne Gardens is indirectly named. “Alleyn is my middle name, given to me by my father who was educated at Alleyn’s School in Dulwich.”
Edward Alleyn (without the final “e”) was born in 1566 and was a prosperous actor and manager whose Rose and Fortune Theatres rivalled William Shakespeare’s celebrated Globe. Five years before his death, the fifty-three year old theatrical entrepreneur established his college as “Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift”, and later in the same year set up Dulwich College as the “College of God’s Gift”. The current Alleyn’s School, a prosperous, and recently co-educational, public school, is a direct descendant of Edward Alleyn’s original foundation and among their illustrious past pupils are the writers CS Forester and VS Pritchett and among the more recent actors from Alleyn’s School – Julian Glover, Simon Ward and Jude Law.
