Westbury Lodge/La Plata

Originally built as Westbury Lodge, and later known as La Plata, this building was built before 1825 by Richard Tyser a who owned a building and bricklaying company in Brentwood.

Richard Tyser died in 1825. Some time after his death the house was sold to the Dearsleys, a family from Romford with enough money not only to buy the handsom lodge, but to also live as "Landed proprietors" without any employment other than the money that made from property they owned.

The Dearsleys probably sold the lodge in the 1850s, since by the census of 1861 it had been bought by James Biggs. Biggs was from Birmingham and had taken over his father's tobacco manufactury. He moved the business to Commercial Street in London around the same time he moved to Brentwood. The Biggs household consisted of James and his wife Elizabeth, about 7 children, four servants, a governess, a coachman and a gardener. As the family grew so did the house, and the Biggs family extended the lodge to the east. In 1872 and 1875 adverts appeared in the local papers to sell Westbury Lodge, but it appears that the house did not sell because the Biggs remained living there. However, it was around this time that Westbury Road was built next to the lodge - so presumably that part of the estate was sold successully.

In 1904 Westbury Lodge was put up for sale again, James would have been 75 by this point and clearly no longer needed such a large house. In November 1904 there was an auction at the house to sell off furniture, and shortly afterwards a new family moved in. The house had been bought by Horacio Arthur Erith de Pinna and his wife Flora, who renamed the lodge La Plata, meaning The Silver in Portuguese. Horacio died in 1912 and his only child was killed at Gallipoli in 1915, but Flora de Pinna remained living in the house until her death in 1932.

In 1936 the lodge was sold to the Essex Police as a site for a new police station and court house. The old coach house in front of La Plata was pulled down and a large new police station built on its site. Land to the south of La Plata was also redeveloped into a new road called La Plata Grove, where more homes for police officers were built. La Plata was used as police accomodation from 1937 until 2016, when it was bought by private housing developers and turned into flats.