History

T.G Baynes - 125 years and counting

Legacy. What is a legacy? Legacy is ultimately the mark someone or something leaves on the world. So Robert Walpole has the legacy of being Britain’s first Prime Minister, Emmeline Pankhurst leaves the legacy of suffrage for woman and Thomas Godfrey Baynes’ legacy is (whilst admittedly not as grandiose) T.G Baynes we are certain that is something that T.G Baynes was thinking about as it celebrated it’s quasquicentennial, for it’s 125 year’s of providing, loyal legal advice

It’s truly amazing when you think back to what the country must have been like when Thomas Godfrey Baynes first opened the doors of T.G Baynes in 1895. Queen Victoria was still on the throne, William Ewart Gladstone was Britain’s Prime Minister, it was five years until the Labour Party was founded.

T.G Baynes has survived through so much history. Two World Wars, two major pandemics and countless social, economic and political reforms. T.G Baynes has continued through six British Monarchs and thirty one Prime Ministers. It is true to say that the world Thomas Godfrey Baynes looked out upon from his first office was one vastly different from our own.        

Thomas Godfrey Baynes was born in 1865 in Gravesend where he grew up and met his future wife, Gertrude Louise Lawrence. The two would eventually marry and move to Bexley. Thomas trained to be a solicitor and for a time worked as a clerk to the local authority but Thomas wanted more, he wanted his own law firm. And so with the century drawing to a close, Thomas believed his opportunity was now and with the opening of his first law office in Dartford High Street on the 5th of March 1895 T.G Baynes was born.

Thomas saw this firm as his crowning achievement, his legacy if you will. So he was even more delighted when soon after the formation of this new firm his wife Gertrude gave birth to four children, three sons and one daughter. These were; Norman Thomas Baynes, Percy Douglas Baynes, Reginald Fredrick Baynes and Beryl Baynes. Thomas saw the births as a chance to carry on his legacy with his sons, so Thomas made sure that his three son’s went into law just like him. And when they came of age he made them all partners in his law firm, creating T.G Baynes and Sons.

Throughout the rest of his life Thomas continued working with the firm and also as a clerk to Bexley council, it is also notable that Thomas sat on the committee which was charged with the formation of Danson Park. Thomas died in 1942, leaving the world with T.G Baynes as his proud legacy.

That legacy continues to this day with the current staff celebrating their one-hundred and twenty-five year anniversary with a party held at Hall Place.

When Thomas Godfrey Baynes set up this law firm, he did so with the intention of creating something his sons could continue on and grow without him and so they did, but suspect none of them could imagine that T.G Baynes would continue to this day, holding it’s place as one of the oldest law firms in the Dartford and Bexley areas.

All this is extremely far from the firm’s beginning as a tiny law firm located in Dartford High Street with a staff of five. So thank you Thomas Godfrey Baynes for creating this loyal legal firm which has stood the test of time for the last one-hundred and twenty-five glorious years.

Here to another one-hundred and twenty-five!