OTHER ESTATES.
One of Tottenham's largest
monastic estates was that held by the Augustinian
canonesses of St. Mary, Clerkenwell. Henry of
Scotland (d. 1152) gave Ughtred of London 140 a.
in the 'hanger' (fn. 82) of Tottenham, together with half of
a water-meadow which Ingram, chancellor of
Scotland and bishop of Glasgow, had held, the right
to take 4 tree-trunks a year, and pannage for 10 pigs.
In 1160-3 Henry's son Malcolm IV of Scotland confirmed a grant of the same property to Robert, son of
Swein of Northampton, who between 1165 and
1176 gave it to St. Mary's priory. Robert's gift received confirmation, by 1176, from Henry II and
from Malcolm's successor William the Lion. (fn. 83) The
nuns thereafter retained the estate, as well as that of
Muswell in Hornsey, until the Dissolution. (fn. 84) It was
claimed that they held of the manor of Bruces (fn. 85) but
the prioress withheld fealty from Sir Thomas Heath
in the 1340s (fn. 86) and was frequently a defaulter at
courts later in the century. (fn. 87) The property included
a house in 1345 (fn. 88) and 3 crofts called Oatfields, land
in a field called Great Hanger, and woods and meadow in Snaresmead by 1455-6. (fn. 89) Great Hanger and
Oatfields were leased out on the eve of the Dissolution, (fn. 90) as were 11 a. in Tottenham marsh and
closes in Snaresmead and Thistlefield. (fn. 91) After Sir
William Kingston had bought the reversion of the
lease of Great Hanger and Oatfields, it was granted
to his stepson Edmund Jerningham in 1540. (fn. 92) On
Jerningham's death in 1546 the lands passed to his
step-brother Sir Anthony Kingston, (fn. 93) who surrendered part of Great Hanger (140 a.) to Henry
Jerningham and Oatfields to Edward Pate, (fn. 94) to
whom Jerningham surrendered Great Hanger later
in the same year. (fn. 95) In 1553 Pate conveyed Oatfields
to William Parker, a London draper, (fn. 96) and his 140 a.
in Great Hanger to Augustine Hinde, alderman, (fn. 97) who
was succeeded in 1554 by his infant son Rowland. (fn. 98)
Thereafter the former monastic lands remained
split up; most of them were granted in 1560 to
Michael Lock, a London mercer, (fn. 99) and Oatfields
was conveyed by Parker to Thomas More, another
mercer, in 1561. (fn. 1) Oatfields, Snaresmead, and Thistlefield formed part of the freehold estate of Edward
Barkham in 1619. (fn. 2)
The London Charterhouse possessed an estate
called Bounds and Woodleigh, on the borders of
Tottenham and Edmonton, which originated in lands
held by Thomas, son of John Bonde or le Bounde.
Thomas acquired a house and land in Edmonton
from Alice King in 1337-8 (fn. 3) and conveyed them, with
other lands inherited from his father in both parishes,
to his brother Simon in 1342. They passed in turn to
Gilbert Fox in 1357-8, to William Fordham in
1360-1, to James Walsh and Gilbert Neel and then
to John Ollescamp, a London fuller, in 1364, and
from Ollescamp to John Cambridge, a fishmonger, in
1371. (fn. 4) Cambridge, who also acquired Arnolds and
other lands, (fn. 5) vested the property in William Walworth and others, from whom it passed to the king,
who in 1378 granted it to the Carthusians. (fn. 6) The
prior, a frequent defaulter at the courts of Daubeneys
in the late 14th century, (fn. 7) held c. 126 a. of woods and
20 a. of other lands in 1463; the woods included
Bounds wood and Austredding in Tottenham and
greater and lesser woods called Arnolds (the modern
Arnos Grove) in Edmonton, while the fields lay
entirely in Tottenham. (fn. 8) In 1543, five years after the
priory's suppression, Charterhouse wood was
granted to Sir John, later Lord, Williams and Sir
Edward, later Lord, North. At that date it comprised
60 a. west of Bounds Green, adjoining the Edmonton property of the chapter of St. Paul's at Bowes
Heath. (fn. 9) Sir Edward's son Roger, Lord North, conveyed the woods to Sir Thomas Wroth in 1565. (fn. 10)
The hospital of St. Mary without Bishopsgate had
a small property, worth 26s. 8d. a year in 1412. (fn. 11) At
that time it presumably included the hospital of St.
Loy, recorded in 1409, built or restored by Thomas
Billington and conveyed by him to the London
house. (fn. 12) John Pertrishe was said to hold the 'hospitill
with garden' as a copyhold of Pembrokes in 1455-6 (fn. 13)
and the hospital of St. Loy itself disappeared at
some date after 1484. (fn. 14) St Mary's none the less
retained the site in Tottenham until the Dissolution,
since its former 5-acre pasture called the Spital-house was granted to Sir Ralph Sadler in 1550. (fn. 15)
Lands in the common marsh of Tottenham had also
been held by St. Mary's in 1468-9. (fn. 16)
Kilburn priory had lands in Tottenham by
1455-6, when the prioress, as a free tenant of
Pembrokes, held two parcels amounting to 6 a. at
Wood Green and Woodridings. (fn. 17) In 1514 the nuns
had a close at Woodridings called Dores pightle and
in 1528 they also had a meadow in Wild Marsh. (fn. 18)
Their lands were leased to John Wheeler for 10s. a
year in 1535-6 (fn. 19) and their former closes of Baker's
field and Dores pightle were sold by the Crown to
Henry Audley and John Cordell in 1544. (fn. 20)
The priory of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, was
said to have lands in Tottenham worth 10s. a year in
1291. (fn. 21) Presumably they included the property in
Tottenham and Edmonton which was leased for 31
years to George Henningham for 6s. 8d. a year in
1511. (fn. 22) Lands belonging to the knights of St. John
of Jerusalem in Edmonton and neighbouring
parishes, leased out in 1536, included 3 a. in Tottenham Broadmead. (fn. 23)
After the Reformation 174 a. of wood in Tottenham and Edmonton became separated from the
other lands which had belonged to Holy Trinity.
The woods, which the priory had leased separately
to Nicholas Gray, (fn. 24) were sold in 1543 to John Tawe
and Edward Taylor, (fn. 25) who in 1545 conveyed 164 a.
to John Grimston. (fn. 26) One third was conveyed by
Grimston in 1546 to Nicholas Askew and his wife
Alice, (fn. 27) who in 1551 surrendered 24 a. to John
Eccleston, a London grocer. (fn. 28) By 1553 Eccleston
had been succeeded by his son John, a minor, (fn. 29) presumably the man of that name who occupied a tenement called the Blue House in 1585. (fn. 30)
The family of William Coombe, a free tenant of
Mockings in 1467, probably gave its name to the
estate called Coombes Croft. (fn. 31) William's house on
the south side of Marsh (later Park) Lane was presumably the close of some 4 a. called Coombes
Croft, of which Sir William Lock, alderman of
London, died seised in 1551. Michael Lock, mercer,
did homage for Coombes Croft with other lands in
Tottenham in 1576 (fn. 32) and Thomas Lock of Merton
(Surr.) conveyed them in 1634 to Thomas Wilcocks
and Tobias Massye, who settled them in trust for
the poor. (fn. 33) Thereafter Coombes Croft formed part
of the Tottenham charity estates until its sale to the
urban district council in 1920. Part of Coombes
Croft house, which had been built as a workhouse in
the 18th century, (fn. 34) was opened as a public library in
1925, after the rest had been demolished to make
way for Bromley Road.
The estate of Stone Leas, a name recorded in
1467, (fn. 35) lay south of Coombes Croft and on the same
side of High Road. Stone Leas comprised a house,
courtyard, and 71 a. in 1585, by which date it had
been sold in fee farm to Nicholas Backhouse and was
held by Samuel Backhouse. (fn. 36) By 1599 it was
in the hands of Balthasar Sanchez, who set aside a
plot for his alms-houses and in 1601 provided that
repairs and pensions should be paid for out of the
rest of the estate, which was left to his brother-in-law Christopher Scurrow. (fn. 37) It had passed from
Scurrow to Bridget, widow of John Moyse, a grocer
of London, by 1619, when Bridget surrendered the
½ a. covered by the alms-houses to trustees. (fn. 38) Stone
Leas later passed to the Scales family, being owned
by John Scales in 1826 (fn. 39) and 1840 (fn. 40) and by Edward
Scales in 1845. (fn. 41)
The largest freehold estate in 1619 belonged to
Edward Barkham, alderman of London, who held
174 a. in addition to 65 a. of copyhold land. The
freehold included Crokes farm, (fn. 42) which was presumably named after John Croke, a London alderman who held land in Tottenham late of John
Drayton by 1455-6 and who left property there to
his son and namesake in 1477. (fn. 43) Lionel, son of
William Dalby, sold it with some London property
to Edward Barkham, (fn. 44) whose family thereby became responsible for maintaining Dalby's charity. (fn. 45)
In 1619 the farm-house was a substantial house
opposite the vicarage, with land stretching south
along High Road from White Hart Lane to a point
opposite Marsh Lane, while Crokes grove survived as some 29 a. of woodland north of Chapmans
Green. (fn. 46) Barkham, who was knighted and became
lord mayor of London, was succeeded in 1634 by his
eldest son Sir Edward Barkham, Bt., of Tottenham
and of South Acre (Norf.), (fn. 47) but settled Crokes
farm on a younger son, Robert Barkham of Wainfleet St. Mary (fn. 48) (Lincs.), later also knighted. Sir
Robert, by will proved 1661, ordered that his mansion in Tottenham should be sold for the benefit of
his second son and namesake, (fn. 49) but it may have
been acquired by the testator's brother Sir Edward,
who was assessed on 21 hearths in 1664. (fn. 50) In 1667
Sir Edward left the Tottenham house to his second
son, William, (fn. 51) who later inherited the Norfolk estates and died in 1695, when the title became extinct.
Edward, son of Sir Robert Barkham of Wainfleet
St. Mary, also secured a baronetcy, which passed to
his son Robert and then to his childless grandson
Edward, who was buried at Tottenham in 1711.
Part of Crokes farm presumably comprised the
three tenements near the corner of White Hart Lane
which were left to the parish by Mrs. Jane Barkham
in 1724. (fn. 52) The main property, however, was acquired
by Ephraim Beauchamp (d. 1728), (fn. 53) whose son
Thomas (d. 1724) married Anne, daughter of
William Proctor of Epsom (Surr.) and whose grandson William took the surname Beauchamp-Proctor
on becoming a baronet in 1744. (fn. 54) The house, rebuilt,
was known as White Hall for some years before
1790, when Sir William's son, Sir Thomas Beauchamp-Proctor, sold his estates in Tottenham. (fn. 55) A
Mr. Abrahams from Houndsditch bought the mansion and built a tanyard and offices, which were
removed by his successor Mr. Andrews. White Hall
then passed to Henry Hunt, to William May
Simmonds, and in 1827 to Charles Soames, (fn. 56) the
occupier of some 6 a. in 1843. (fn. 57) In Soames's time an
entrance from High Road replaced the old one from
White Hart Lane; the mansion, a three-storeyed
pedimented building with single-storey wings, was
screened by trees from High Road and faced south
across a lake. (fn. 58) It had given its name to Whitehall
Street by the 1860s, when the lake had gone and
most of the ground had been built over, (fn. 59) and was
still discernible, although much altered, in 1913. (fn. 60)
Demesne land called Downhills, perhaps the le
Downe recorded in 1467, (fn. 61) gave its name to Downhills House, later Mount Pleasant House. The land
lay in the centre of the parish between Lordship
Lane and Philip Lane and had been divided by
1585, when 10 a. were leased out at will; (fn. 62) in 1619
several closes of pasture at Downhills, totalling 65 a.
were leased to three tenants. (fn. 63) The newly built
Downhills House, approached by a drive along the
line of the later Downhills Park Road, was leased out
from 1728, together with Broadwater farm in Lordship Lane. A new three-storeyed mansion, of brick
with a pediment and two low wings, had been built
by 1789, when it was occupied by Rowland Stephenson, a banker, who let the farm to the Phillips
family. (fn. 64) Mount Pleasant, as the house was then
called, was withdrawn from auction when Henry
Hare Townsend broke up the manorial estate in that
year; it was again withdrawn after Stephenson's
death in 1808, when the mansion was offered with
81 a. and the farm-house with 119 a. (fn. 65) Henry Hare
Townsend, who had remained the owner, himself
lived at Mount Pleasant from 1823 until his death in
1826, after which it was leased out by his son the
Revd. Chauncey Townsend, the poet. (fn. 66) The mansion,
separated from most of the farm-lands, was renamed
Downhills, occupied in 1855 by John Lawford (fn. 67) and
sold in 1881 to the British Land Co. It was demolished after its purchase in 1902 by Tottenham
U.D.C., which used the surrounding land as
Downhills recreation ground. (fn. 68) A second Mount
Pleasant had been built to the east by 1865 (fn. 69) and was
offered for sale with its own estate as 135 building
lots, bordering the later Mount Pleasant Road, in
1890. (fn. 70)
Although most of the lands and the medieval
manor-house of Willoughbies were in Edmonton, (fn. 71)
a house called Willoughbies had been built on the
Tottenham side of the boundary by 1619. (fn. 72) After the
sale of the Edmonton portion of the original estate
in 1717 Lucy Beteress, who married John Bowry in
1725, retained the property in Tottenham. It was
heavily encumbered with mortgages and annuities
and in 1735, under an Act of 1731, (fn. 73) trustees sold
the house and a small amount of land to Robert
Turner, whose heirs sold it in 1757 to Daniel
Booth. (fn. 74) He conveyed Willoughby House in 1764 to
Hananel Mendes Da Costa of London, (fn. 75) who sold it
to Stephen Briggs in 1773. (fn. 76) Andrew Jordaine acquired it in 1779, Richard Welch and then William
Wilson in 1792, and Archibald Bryson by 1800.
Bryson's son and namesake inherited it in 1807 and
sold it to William Hyde in 1812. On Hyde's bankruptcy the estate, by that time little more than 11 a.,
was bought in 1821 by a Mr. Smale, (fn. 77) presumably
the Henry Lewis Smale who lived there in 1843. (fn. 78)
The house and grounds, on the west side of
Willoughby Lane, were improved by Smale and survived, with villas on either side, in the 1860s. (fn. 79)