Ground Rent
Although the amounts of ground rent payable under
individual leases differed widely, a general consistency
can be discerned in the sums required under the various
building agreements. The rent demanded for each piece
of ground was either expressed as a rate per foot frontage
on the principal front of the land (and occasionally on
more than one front when the plot lay between two streets)
or as a lump sum, which can sometimes be reduced to an
equivalent rate per foot frontage.
In early agreements covering sites in Grosvenor Street
and Brook Street the ground rents were usually 6s. per
foot on the Grosvenor Street frontages and 5s. on Brook
Street, the plots being generally 150 or 200 feet in depth. (ref. 144)
For substantially larger pieces of ground on the north
side of Brook Street, with back land extending as far as
Oxford Street, however, the rate was increased. In an
agreement for the area bounded by Brook Street on the
south, Davies Street on the east, Gilbert Street on the
west and Oxford Street on the north the ground rent
charged was 9s. per foot, assessed on the Brook Street
frontage, but the agreement was not carried out and when
a new one was made with another developer this rate was
reduced to 8s. per foot. (ref. 145) The latter rate was also paid
for the remaining frontage of Brook Street as far west as
Duke Street, with an equally extensive 'hinterland'. (ref. 146)
On the south side of the eastern part of Mount Street,
where the southern boundary of the estate or the location
of the parish burial ground prevented any great depth of
site, sixty to seventy feet being the average, rents of only
2s. to 2s. 6d. per foot frontage were asked. (ref. 147) Even on the
north side, however, the figure was at most 3s., although
the building plots (if not the house sites as eventually
built) extended back for some 150 feet. (ref. 148) Mount Street
was probably never originally intended to be more than
a minor street, and the building of the parish workhouse
on the south side in 1725–6 was in keeping with its lowly
status. (ref. 149)
The ground rents for Grosvenor Square were not
significantly different from those for Brook Street or
Grosvenor Street. The first builder to take an extensive
frontage to the square (the whole of the east side) was
John Simmons, carpenter, in November 1724, and for
350 feet with a depth of 260 feet he agreed to pay £112
per annum, equivalent to slightly over 6s. per foot
frontage. (ref. 150) For the same number of feet on the west side
the undertaker's rent was £150, but his plot had greater
depth and abutted at the rear on Park Street. (ref. 151) On the
north side the rents ranged from approximately 8s. to
10s. per foot, but, as at the western end of Brook Street,
the plots extended northwards for about 600 feet. (ref. 152)
Most of the south side was let by Sir Richard Grosvenor
to his brother Robert at only 2s. per foot frontage, but in
the agreements which he made with builders Robert
Grosvenor charged the equivalent of 10s. per foot frontage
for sites which reached as far as the north side of Mount
Street. (ref. 153)
To the west of Grosvenor Square the ground rents
were more variable and, in view of the large areas often
involved, were generally more favourable to builders than
in the eastern part of the estate. For the extensive rectangle
of ground between Upper Brook Street, North Row, Park
Street and North Audley Street, for instance, Thomas
Barlow and Robert Andrews were jointly charged only
£150 per annum (apparently calculated as 5s. per foot
frontage on either the Park Street or North Audley Street
fronts, or 2s. 6d. on both). (ref. 94) Apart from the section of
South Audley Street lying to the south of South Street,
where the rents were equivalent to between 6s. and
9s. per foot frontage (and where houses of a high quality
were built), (ref. 154) 5s. per foot for one frontage alone appears
to have been the maximum amount charged here until
the 1750's. It was not until June 1765 that a ground rent
of a substantially different order was required when John
Phillips, carpenter, had to pay £320 per annum for the
last undeveloped piece of ground, the area bounded by
Oxford Street, Park Lane, North Row and Park Street.
This sum is equivalent to between 13s. and 14s. per foot
if assessed on the long east-west frontage to Oxford
Street, or to exactly £2 per foot on Park Street. (ref. 155)
The precise ground rent charged was no doubt often
arrived at after negotiation with the builder or developer
interested in a piece of ground. As early as 1721 Major
Joseph Watts, who was one of the promoters and first
directors of the Chelsea Waterworks Company, (ref. 156) had
entered into an agreement to build on the whole site now
occupied by Grosvenor House, and the rent charged had
been 4s. per foot on the Park Street frontage (400 feet). (ref. 157)
No building was then taking place so far westward and
some five years later Watts appears to have wanted to
reduce his commitment. Robert Andrews explained the
situation to Sir Richard Grosvenor in 1726: 'Major Watts
was this morning with Mr. Barlow and Me', wrote
Andrews, 'about taking as much of the Ground He
formerly held as would be sufficient for the building
three houses upon. Mr. Barlow offered it for 10s. per ft.
by Gros. Street front the whole depth into Mount Street
but the Major woud have it for 6 and intends to write to
You, to shew how reasonable it is for a person that has
been so serviceable to the Family as he has been by projecting the Waterworks to have such a favour allowed
him, of which I thought it proper to give You this
informacion not doubting but You will easily make him
sensible his Merrit is not so great in regard to his Services
done the Family as he imagines.' (ref. 158) The rent now
demanded by Barlow was in fact higher than the rate
which he had been charging to the east of Grosvenor
Square, and apparently no accommodation was possible
for Watts did not develop any of the site. Andrews' letter
also suggests that a somewhat more optimistic view of
the ground rents obtainable in the western part of the
estate was taken at this date than proved realistic in the
event.
In 1734 Edward Shepherd, the architect and builder,
who had already built several houses on the estate, made
an offer of only 18d. per foot frontage for a very large
plot between Park Lane and Park Street with a depth of
about 600 feet from Oxford Street, the rent to be calculated on the north front alone. Andrews assessed the plot
as worth 2s. per foot frontage on both the Park Lane and
Park Street fronts: the difference was between £33 2s. 6d.
as offered by Shepherd and £125 as computed by
Andrews, who noted that 'there is no foundation to
agree'. (ref. 159) Sir Robert Grosvenor duly turned down
Shepherd's offer, but it was not until 1765 that the last
part of this ground was eventually taken, the total ground
rent received from it then amounting, however, to
over £500.
Some parts of the estate were let to undertakers on
particularly favourable terms in return for services
rendered. The agreement with Major Watts in 1721
referred to above was no doubt the result of his role in
promoting the Chelsea Waterworks Company which
supplied the new houses with water. Another plot at the
western edge of the estate was taken by Francis Bailley,
carpenter, who was then building in Conduit Mead, in
return for the assignment of some of his land there to Sir
Richard Grosvenor to enable Brook Street to be carried
through from Hanover Square to the Grosvenor estate.
Bailley's rent was 5s. per foot frontage, 'being a cheaper
price than the other ground thereabouts was . . . designed
to be let for', (ref. 160) but he, like Watts, did not eventually
build there. For similar reasons the triangular area now
bounded by Brook Street, Davies Street and South
Molton Lane was also made available at a very low rent
to two developers who had interests in Conduit Mead:
parts of this site to the north of Davies Mews were not
built over for many years. (ref. 135) We have already seen that
in the very first agreement, made with the estate surveyor
Thomas Barlow, for the extensive area to the south of
Grosvenor Street and east of Davies Street, a ground rent
of only 2s. per foot frontage on the Grosvenor Street front
alone was required. No doubt this was partly in return for
Barlow's services in laying out the estate and seeking
builders to work there, but he was, of course, paid a fee
for these activities, and another consideration in Sir
Richard Grosvenor's mind may have been a desire to let
Barlow have a piece of land on terms that would enable
him to raise sufficient capital to develop it quickly and
profitably, and thereby attract other builders to the
estate. In 1730 the promoters of the Grosvenor Chapel
were granted land adjacent to its site, on both sides of
South Audley Street, at a rent of only 1s. per foot frontage
in consideration of their 'hazard and expense' in building
the chapel. (ref. 161) They were also allowed a five-year peppercorn term instead of the usual period of between two and
three years.
The scale of ground rents on the Grosvenor estate was
a good deal lower than that in nearby developments for
which comparable evidence is available. In Albemarle
Ground (the area of Albemarle Street, Stafford Street,
Dover Street and Grafton Street) in the late seventeenth
century rents ranged from approximately 5s. to 13s. 9d.
per foot frontage for building plots varying from sixty-five to one hundred feet in depth, and the leases ran for
only some fifty or fifty-one years. (ref. 162) On the Burlington
estate (Cork Street, Clifford Street and Savile Row area),
where building took place contemporaneously with the
Grosvenor estate, the ground rents appear to have been
calculated initially on the basis of 1s. per foot frontage
for every ten feet of depth and varied between 7s. and
16s. per foot frontage for sixty-one- or sixty-two-year
terms. (ref. 163) The calculation of the ground rent obtained
from the development of Conduit Mead is complicated
by the fact that some ground there was assigned to
builders rather than leased to them. The total rent
received for the twenty-seven or so acres was £1,076, or
about £40 per acre. A report of 1742 estimated, however,
that only two-thirds of the acreage had been let for rent,
and if assessed on this proportion alone the figure was
£60 per acre. (ref. 164) This compares with the final sum of £31
per acre secured in ground rents on the Grosvenor estate
in Mayfair by its initial development, (fn. a) and in Conduit
Mead the leases were for less than fifty years.
All of these areas were much smaller than the Grosvenor
estate, and in The Hundred Acres, where house building
was being pushed some way beyond the existing urban
limits, it was probably necessary to keep the ground rents
at a low level in order to attract builders, particularly to
the land near Hyde Park, where the rents were at first
lower, in fact, than was desired or originally anticipated.
In the event, however, several undertakers were able to
obtain a handsome surplus in improved ground rents over
the rent which they paid to the Grosvenors.
A remarkable example of the rise in value of such leasehold property occurred in the large area to the south of
Grosvenor Street and east of Davies Street let to Thomas
Barlow, the estate surveyor, in 1721 on a ninety-nineyear lease at £67 per annum. This was the largest piece of
the Grosvenors' Mayfair lands to be let under a single
lease and covered about six acres, now embracing, in
terms of present streets and buildings, Nos. 55–81
(consec.) Grosvenor Street, Nos. 2–26 (even) Davies
Street, Grosvenor Hill, Bourdon Street and Place,
Broadbent Street, Jones Street and Nos. 25–31 (consec.)
Berkeley Square. In this estate within an estate Barlow
sub-let the land in building plots for at most eighty years
(with one exception) and often for sixty or less, and from
it he obtained some £280 per annum in improved ground
rents over the £67 he had to pay, and £160 in rack rents.
When Barlow's property was sold at auction in 1745 for
the benefit of his descendants this very large plot fetched
some £7,000. In 1792, however, when the whole area was
again put up for auction, several of the sub-leases had
already expired and others were shortly due to do so,
giving purchasers the prospect of a considerable return
in rack rents for the remaining twenty-eight years of
the original Grosvenor lease, besides the possibility of
renewals on favourable terms, and the sum realised
amounted to over £58,000. (ref. 165)
Within the general framework of the ground rents laid
down in agreements, the rents at which individual building plots were let varied widely and often bore no relation
to the size or importance of the site. Sometimes the total
ground rent required under an agreement was secured by
leases of only a small part of the ground, and the remainder
would be let (often in one lease) at a token rent, usually
3s. 4d. per annum. (ref. 166) Some huge pieces of land embracing
two or three acres were let for such nominal sums, particularly between Oxford Street and the backs of house
plots in Grosvenor Square and Brook Street. Even the
rents of adjoining house sites could vary widely. To take
one instance, No. 5 Grosvenor Square, with a forty-fivefoot frontage, was leased to John Simmons, its builder,
in May 1728 for £22 10s. per annum while No. 4, with
a seventy-foot frontage, was leased to him in September
of the same year for 4s. per annum, both for ninety-nine-year terms. (ref. 167) No doubt such variations were often made
for the builder's convenience, to enable him to make
a quick sale, possibly at an enhanced price, of a house
at a low ground rent, or, as in Simmons's case, to enable
him to create an improved ground rent which he could
sell to raise money for his building operations.