Thomas Pemberton Leigh, 1st Baron Kingsdown
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Thomas Pemberton Leigh, Baron Kingsdown (11 February 1793-1867), the eldest son of Thomas Pemberton, a chancery barrister, was born in London.
He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1816, and at once acquired a lucrative equity practice. He sat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Rye (1831-1832) and for Ripon (1835-1843). He was made a king's counsel in 1829. Of a retiring disposition, he seldom took part in parliamentary debates, although in 1838 in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard he took a considerable part in upholding the privileges of parliament.
In 1841, Pemberton accepted the post of attorney-general for the Duchy of Cornwall. In 1842 a relative, Sir Robert H. Leigh, left him a life interest in his Wigan estates, amounting to some 15,000 a year; he then assumed the additional surname of Leigh. Having accepted the chancellorship of the Duchy of Cornwall and a privy councillorship, he became a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, and for nearly twenty years devoted his energies and talents to the work of that body.
His judgments, more particularly in prize cases, of which he took especial charge, are remarkable not only for legal precision and accuracy, but for their form and expression. In 1858, on the formation of Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby's administration, he was offered the Great Seal, but declined; in the same year, however, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kingsdown. He died at his seat, Torry Hill, near Sittingbourne, Kent, on the 7th of October 1867. Lord Kingsdown never married, and his title became extinct. Torry Hill stayed in the family, later known as the Leigh-Pembertons. Torry Hill was rebuilt to a Georgian design in the 1960s and only a Victorian gate-house remains on the estate. It is now a home to a new Lord Kingsdown, a life peer who is also a lawyer, country gentleman and former governor of the Bank of England.
Kingsdown Church was funded by Lord Kingsdown. A small booklet from the Redundant Churches Fund tells us that the population in 1865 was only 96 so a benefactor was essential. Baron Kingsdown (Thomas Pemberton Leigh, 1793-1867) supported the building of a new church on the site of the tumbledown mediaeval church that stood where today’s nave stands. The church is a rare example of the work of Edward Welby Pugin, a noted ecclesiastical architect in Britain and (mainly) Ireland and son (and inheritor - in many senses - of the mantle) of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the principal architect and designer (especially of the interior and details) at the Palace of Westminster (with Sir Charles Barry) and of the Crystal Palace, built for the 1851 Great Exhibition. The latter also built Grange House for himself at Ramsgate (from which he was able to spy wrecks on the Goodwin Sands: he even set out to the rescue, several times earning himself significant salvage income to supplement his earnings as an architect and designer of buildings and objects). The church is normally locked but a key can be obtained by arrangement. It and a few outlying buildings are now stranded on the north side of the M2 motorway, reachable only over a footbridge from the village of Kingsdown or by a much more rural circuitous road.
See Recollections of Life at the Bar and in Parliament, by Lord Kingsdown (privately printed for friends, 1868); The Times (8th of October 1867).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
