CHAPTER IX
The Pitt Estate in Dean Street
This chapter describes an area consisting of
Nos. 36–41 (consec.) on the east side of
Dean Street and Nos. 67–84 (consec.),
together with Meard Street and Richmond
Buildings, on the west side (fig. 51). The rest of
Dean Street and the general history of the street
are discussed in Chapter V (and see fig. 2 on page
28).
The area described in this chapter was first
built up as part of the development of the existing
line of Dean Street in the late 1680's, under the
aegis of Nicholas Barbon, who held a forty-six-year leasehold interest ultimately derived from
the Crown. It was almost entirely rebuilt, under a
longer leasehold interest, in the years 1731–5,
and the earliest surviving houses date from that
period. A ninety-nine-year Crown lease had
been acquired, in 1697, by Thomas Pitt of Old
Sarum, Wiltshire, M.P., Governor of Fort St.
George, Madras (and owner of the Pitt diamond),
as a reversionary interest from 1734. (ref. 1) By c.
1730–1, however, the acquisition of existing
interests allowed the Pitt family to initiate a
general rebuilding.
Before the formation of Dean Street the area
described in this chapter had been part of Cooke's
Croft and Billson's Close or Croft (see page 30
and Plate 8b). In 1677 these, as part of a larger
area of twenty and a half acres, had been acquired on lease by the builder Richard Frith,
for terms expiring in January 1733/4. (ref. 2) Frith
proceeded to lay out the line of Dean Street,
passing through Cooke's Croft and Billson's
Close. These had, however, already been leased
for agricultural use, and Frith's plans for the
development of the street were hindered by these
existing rights. This was the more so since these
rights were acquired by his rival in building
development, Nicholas Barbon. (ref. 3) In 1679 Frith's
rights in Cooke's Croft and Billson's Close had
passed to his former financial backer, William
Pym, (ref. 4) and on 24 March 1682/3 the area which
subsequently formed the Pitt estate was separated
as a distinct property when Pym leased it, as two
plots on either side of the street, to George
Bradbury, esquire, for forty-six years to Lady
Day 1729. The rent was £14 per annum. Bradbury, a lawyer and subsequently a judge of some
note, was acting in trust for Barbon, and covenanted 'to build thereon substantially'. Bradbury
assigned his interest to an Arnold Browne, esquire, (ref. 5) and in the years c. 1686–8 Barbon and
Browne were leasing sites here for building. Two
of their lessees were William Maddox of St.
Anne's, locksmith or blacksmith, and Charles
Shelley of St. Martin in the Fields, goldsmith,
who in turn evidently employed building tradesmen. (ref. 6) This first building-up of the area was
probably complete by 1691. The first occupants
included some people of title. (ref. 7) (fn. a)
Figure 51:
The Pitt estate, plan. Based on the Ordnance Survey, 1869–74
Already by the end of 1686 a mortgage interest
in the property had been acquired by the Thomas
Pitt already mentioned. In November of that
year Browne mortgaged it to secure £4,000, of
which £2,500 was advanced by a George White of
London, merchant, and £1,500 by Pitt, who later
acquired White's interest. On 9 January 1696/7
Pitt obtained from Browne for £1,779 15s. the
assignment of his remaining interest in the
property, terminating in 1729. (ref. 8)
On 5 May 1697 Pitt secured from the Crown,
in payment of a fine of £600, a reversionary lease
of the property for ninety-nine years from the
expiry of the existing Crown lease to trustees for
the Earl of St. Albans at Michaelmas 1734. The
rent to be paid was 13s. 4d. (ref. 9) The ground rents
of the house-sites at that time totalled
£141 2s. 6d. (ref. 10)
Pitt died in April 1726, and by his will (ref. 11) his
leasehold interests in Dean Street should have
passed to five trustees and executors: they included
his son-in-law, Charles Cholmondeley, M.P.,
of Vale Royal, Cheshire, but not the eldest son
Robert Pitt, M.P., of Boconnoc, Cornwall,
who contested the will (ref. 12) until his death in 1727.
His claims were maintained by his eldest son
(and Chatham's brother), Thomas, M.P. for
Okehampton and Old Sarum, in whom the
family's strain of hard rapacity seems to have been
concentrated. (ref. 13) Some compromise was perhaps
effected, and when in c. 1731 the redevelopment
of the estate was taken in hand the leases and
agreements were made by Charles Cholmondeley
and by Thomas Pitt as a consenting party.
After the elder Thomas had acquired the
reversionary Crown lease in 1697 he had been in
possession of the interest originally Bradbury's
until Lady Day 1729, and of his own interest from
Michaelmas 1734. Thus an intervening fiveand-a-half-years interest remained to be acquired.
William Pym's interest to 19 January 1733/4 was
obtained from his son, John, by Cholmondeley and
the younger Thomas Pitt in July 1730 (with the
unexplained exception of three house-sites, Nos.
71–73 Dean Street). (ref. 14) The residue of the subsisting Crown lease, to Michaelmas 1734, had
remained in St. Albans's trustees or their heirs as
late as 1721. (ref. 11) It is not known when it was
acquired, but it was in time for redevelopment to
be initiated early in 1731.
The records of the building leases granted
thenceforward contain no reference to the houses
previously existing on the sites. All the leases
were for terms expiring at Midsummer 1833, a
quarter of a year before the expiry of the head lease
from the Crown.
Details are given in the table on pages 248–55.
From this it may be seen that the earliest transaction of which there is record is the building
agreement concluded on 21 April 1731 with
Thomas Richmond of St. Anne's, carpenter. (ref. 15)
This is known only in reference to a small
marginal site. Richmond was, however, a party
to the granting of some leases to other builders,
by virtue of articles previously concluded with
him, and it may therefore be that the articles of
April 1731 related to the whole or a substantial
part of the development.
As may be seen, the lessees involved at this
time included four carpenters, a mason, and a
bricklayer's widow (doubtless by right of an
agreement concluded with her husband). Not
much is known of these building tradesmen.
The most important were probably Richmond,
and John Meard, also a carpenter although described in the leases as esquire. What is known of
them is mentioned under Richmond Buildings
(page 246) and Meard Street (page 239) respectively. Another carpenter, John Sanger, had been
associated with Richmond in St. James's in 1729
when he was living in St. George's, Hanover
Square. (ref. 16) He built houses in Soho Square and
Carlisle Street in 1735–7 (see page 148), and in
1739–42 lived near the north-east corner of
Dean Street and Carlisle Street. (ref. 17) He was bankrupt by 1744. (ref. 18)
No overall uniformity was given to the
development. The pattern of differing treatment
does not seem to correspond significantly to the
distribution of the lessees' plots. Some features of
some of the houses built by Richmond and
Meard may, however, show their individual
influences (see pages 222, 239).
Until 1736 (or later in Meard Street) some of
the houses were assessed in the ratebooks merely
to 'ten.', possibly indicating that they were let on
short tenancies until a permanent occupant could
be found. Only four of the first occupants named
in the ratebooks are known to have taken an
assignment of the building tradesman's lease, at
Nos. 70 and 75 Dean Street and Nos. 1 and 10
Richmond Buildings. (ref. 19)
The two lateral openings on the west side of
the street, Richmond Buildings and Meard
Street, were made approximately on the site of
two seventeenth-century courts, Cockpit Court
and Dean's Court respectively. Richmond Buildings was an entity, but the construction of Meard
Street on the Pitt estate concerned only the eastern
part of the street now bearing that name. The
western part had been built a little earlier on the
Pulteney estate. A single builder was, however,
lessee for the whole, and the rebuilding of the
entire street is therefore described in this chapter.
The three sites excluded from John Pym's
assignment of 1730 would have come into the
Pitt family's ownership in 1734. It is not known
why the three houses were not rebuilt until 1756.
By then, Thomas Pitt was an expatriate debtor. (ref. 13)
The thirty-nine houses and one stable-yard
built in the 1730's yielded £408 18s. per annum
in ground rents, and the three later houses a
further £42 10s. By 1735 the estate was mortgaged as security for £6,000. (ref. 20) In 1761, shortly
before Thomas Pitt's death, an Order in Chancery required the estate to be sold, and this was
done in June 1765, when it was assigned by representatives of the Pitt family and of their mortgagee,
to Sir Thomas Wilson, knight, of West Wickham,
Kent, for £8,500. (ref. 21)
In 1812 Thomas Coutts, the banker, and
others, representing Wilson's estate, petitioned
the Crown for a new lease. (ref. 22) The Office of
Woods, Forests and Land Revenues seems not to
have made the consequent survey and valuation
until 1821, when it estimated that after repair
the sites would yield £3,090 per annum. (ref. 23) In
1822 a new reversionary lease was offered to the
petitioners at £1,957 per annum, either for
twenty-nine years with a fine of £8,663, or for
fifty years with a fine of £10,445; each lease
would have required £8,860 to be spent on repairs. (ref. 24) These terms were refused. (ref. 23)
Subsequently the Crown authorities decided
to dispose of the freehold. As part of the rearrangement of the intermingled properties of the Crown
and the Sutton estate, Nos. 67–68 Dean Street
and Nos. 1–7 (odd) Meard Street were conveyed
to Sir Richard Sutton in February 1830, in
exchange for property to the west of St. James's
Street. (ref. 25) In December of the same year Nos.
69–74 (consec.) Dean Street and Nos. 2–6 (even)
Meard Street were granted to Peter Thompson
of Frith Street, gentleman, in exchange for a sum
of money and premises required for the West
Strand improvement scheme. (ref. 26)
The remaining twenty-seven sites, estimated
to yield above £2,000 per annum, were sold by
auction in June 1833. (ref. 27) The auctioneers'
valuation of £24,530 (ref. 28) was exceeded, by bids totalling £27,830 from seventeen purchasers. (ref. 29)