The Grosvenor Estate
Before the Grosvenors (1066-1662)
Mary Davies and Sir Thomas Grosvenor (1662-1700)
Three brothers and a lunatic (1700-55)
Ruined by gambling - the Earl (1755-1808)
The wealthiest family in Europe - the Marquess (1808-69)
Horse racing and missionary work - the First Duke (1869-89)
A mixture of Henry VIII and Lorenzo the Magnificent - the Second Duke (1889-1953)
Before the Grosvenors (1066-1662)
The history of the area which later became the Grosvenor Estate goes back to the time of the Norman Conquest. It was called the Manor of Eia in the Domesday book, then Eye, then Ebury. This Manor seems to have covered all the land between the Roman road (which is now Oxford Street), the Thames in the South, the Westbourne river on the West, and the Tyburn river (also known as the Eye Brook) on the east.
Geoffrey de Mandeville was granted the Manor of Eia by William the Conqueror as a reward for his services. He gave it to the Abbey of Westminster, which continued to own it until 1536 when Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and dissolved the monasteries – and seized their property for the Crown.
Henry turned the area of Hyde into a royal park - Hyde Park. What was left was known as the Hundred Acres. James I sold the land to Sir Lionel Cranfield, an important Government official, but kept back some land which later formed part of the grounds of Buckingham Palace. He also included some additional land at Millbank. By 1626 Cranfield had fallen from favour and was being impeached for corruption.
Cranfield sold the land to Hugh Audley. He was born in 1577 and died in 1662 at the age of 85. He began his career as a law student from a humble background, but he became a successful businessman who acquired land and manors up and down the country. The manor of Ebury was probably among the least valuable of his properties, since it was little more than marshland, frequently flooded by the Thames. A few shepherds and farmers worked the land by day and thieves and cut throats worked the lanes by night.
Mary Davies and Sir Thomas Grosvenor (1662-1700)
In 1662 Hugh Audley left the land to his great nephews. The Hundred Acres went to Alexander Davies. The Millbank land went to his brother Thomas Davies. But Thomas sold this back to Alexander who thereby came to own the whole estate.
The estate was open land. Alexander Davies began some house building on Market Meadows (the land at Millbank) including the construction of Grosvenor House. But in 1665 he died at the young age of 29. He left his estate to his six months old daughter, Mary, but the estate was saddled with considerable debts. Alexander had not yet paid his brother for the Millbank land and he had borrowed to finance its development. His widow quickly married a Mr Tregonwell, who came to the rescue, paid the debts and paid for the completion of Grosvenor House.
An Act of Parliament was passed to allow the trustees to sell off some of the property. One of the pieces sold was the future site of Buckingham Palace and part of Green Park. Mrs Tregonwell was entitled to a life interest in one third of the estate, by right of “dower”, and the Act allocated the west part of the Mayfair area for her benefit.
But the sales did not recoup all that was owing, so in 1672 the family entered into an agreement to marry the young Mary Davies to Lord Berkeley’s his son, Charles, when she reached the age of 12. Part of the deal was that Lord Berkeley had to settle some land for the benefit of the couple, and pay £5,000 still owing to Mr Tregonwell. The marriage never took place. It seems that Lord Berkeley spent too much money on is own new house, Berkeley House in Piccadilly, and could not afford to provide the promised land.
But shortly after Mary’s 12th birthday, the family found a new suitor, Sir Thomas Grosvenor. Although they could claim descent from the First Earl of Chester, one of the knights of William the Conqueror’s knights, the Grosvenors were minor nobility. Another story is that they were descended from one of William the Conqueror's nephews, whose nick-name was 'the Great Hunter' or, in French, 'Gros Veneur' - Grosvenor. The baronetcy had been conferred as recently as 1622 on Sir Richard Grovenor. The family seat was at Eaton Hall near Chester.
The couple were married on 10th October 1677. Part of the deal was that the Grosvenors had to repay to Lord Berkeley the £5,000 he had originally provided. The Grosvenor family settled their estates in Cheshire and North Wales on the couple’s heirs. When Mary became 21 in 1694 she also settled her own lands on the same basis.
Three brothers and a lunatic (1700-55)
Sir Thomas Grosvenor died in 1700. His elder son, Richard, succeeded him as Baronet. Administration of the estate became complicated. Mrs Tregonwell already had a life interest in part of the estate. Mary Davies, now Dame Mary Grosvenor, now also had a life interest in the estate. She was tricked by her chaplain into a bogus marriage in Paris with his brother, Edward Fenwick, who then tried to gain control of her money. The family resisted, the marriage was annulled, Mary was declared insane, and her estate was administered by the Court of Chancery. (In legal documents, Mary Davies was referred to simply as “the lunatic”.) In time the complications were unravelled. Mrs Tregonwell died in 1717 and her land reverted to Mary Grosvenor. When Mary herself died in 1730, Richard Grosvenor regained sole control of the estate.
In the years following the accession of George I, there was a burst of building activity in the area around Westminster. There as a particular property boom in about 1720. Richard Grosvenor joined other landowners in opening up Mayfair for development.
Richard died in 1732 and his brother, Thomas, succeeded him but died a few months later. The youngest brother, Robert, then became Baronet in 1733. Robert had been involved in the development from the very start. It appears that he had represented his brother, Richard, in London, while Richard continued to live at Eaton. He had also taken leases of parts of the estate himself and granted sub-leases to speculative builders. So he took a close interest in the development of the estate in London.
Ruined by gambling - the Earl (1755-1808)
Robert Grosvenor died in 1755 and was succeeded by his son, Richard. By this time the income of the London estates has grown enormously. He was clearly a man of influence, perhaps because of his money. William Pitt the Elder obtained a peerage for him. He was made Baron Grosvenor in 1761, then further advancement to Viscount Belgrave, and finally to Earl Grosvenor in 1784. But his private life was disastrous. There was a scandal when he began a court action against the Duke of Cumberland, George III’s brother, for adultery. He nearly lost all his money gambling on horses. In 1785 his estates were put in the hands of five trustees with a view to selling some land to pay debts. Fortunately, the original leases to tenants in Mayfair were beginning to run out. Substantial premiums were obtained from renewing then. This provided cash over the next few years which helped to pay the debts. None of the London estates had to be sold.
The wealthiest family in Europe - the Marquess (1808-69)
In 1808 the First Earl Grosvenor was succeeded by his son, Robert, who was 35. The estate was still subject to the trust set up in 1785 to pay his father’s debts. But these were all paid off by 1808 and the trust was dissolved, leaving the Second Earl in full control. The Second Earl bought Gloucester House in Upper Grosvenor Street, the former home of George III’s brother, the Duke of Gloucester. It was renamed Grosvenor House and from 1808 became the family’s new London home. The old Grosvenor House at Millbank was pulled down in 1809.
Income of the estate began to increase dramatically. The original Mayfair leases granted for 99 years in the 1720s were beginning to expire. Leases were renewed at greatly increased rents and with the payment of premiums. This enabled Robert to embark on land purchases around the country.
In 1831 the Second Earl was advanced to the rank of Marquess of Westminster. In 1845, his son, Richard, who was 50, succeeded him as Second Marquess of Westminster. The will was so complicated that it took the family solicitor two hours to read out after the funeral. The London estate was put in trust, for the Second Marquess for life, then to his successor for life, and finally to his successor unencumbered. So the scope of action of the Second Marquess was relatively curtailed. But that caused him little problem. His passion was for family life in simple surroundings. His main concerns were directing family prayers, and teaching Latin verse and Shakespeare to his many children. He left direction of the estate’s affairs pretty much to his professional advisers.
In 1865 the Grosvenors were described as “the wealthiest family in Europe – perhaps the wealthiest uncrowned house on earth.”
Horse racing and missionary work - the First Duke (1869-89)
In 1869 the Second Marquess died and his son, Hugh Lupus, became Third Marquess at the age of 45. He married the youngest daughter of the Second Duke of Sutherland. (His father had married the youngest daughter of the First Duke of Sutherland, so there was almost a family tradition.) He was a lavish spender. (Although the London properties were in trust, much of the rest of the family estate came to him directly). He revived the Grosvenors’ racing stables and won the Derby four times. He rebuilt Eaton Hall, the family’s Cheshire home. He was well respected. It was said of him: “He could pass from a racecourse to take the chair a missionary meeting without incurring the censure of the strictest” – quite an achievement in the moralistic Victorian era. Gladstone admired him and recommended him for a dukedom – the top of the aristocratic tree - in 1874 (despite the fact that Lupus had opposed Gladstone’s Reform Bill and an Irish Home Rule Bill). Grosvenor was the only Duke created in Victoria’s reign (apart from royal family members being given suitable titles).
A mixture of Henry VIII and Lorenzo the Magnificent - the Second Duke (1889-1953)
The trusts created by in the First Marquess were able to be broken when Victor Alexander, the Duke’s first son, reached the age of 21 in 1874. The London estate was again settled in trust, this time for the Duke for life, then Victor Alexander, and then his eldest son. But Victor Alexander died in 1884 and it was his son, Hugh Richard Arthur, who became the Second Duke of Westminster when his grandfather died in 1889.
He promptly left for South Africa, where he served as an officer in the Boer War until 1901. The Second Duke returned with the ambition to diversify his family’s property interests into a worldwide empire. He made substantial purchases of land in South Africa and Rhodesia which he funded by sales of English property. But he took a detailed interest in his London estate. He often overruled advisers who wanted to pull-down old buildings to build new. During the First World War, he served in the armed forces and was awarded the DSO.
He appears to have enjoyed life: he was once described as being a mixture of Henry VIII and Lorenzo the Magnificent, for his combination of personal charm, extravagance, ruthlessness and womanising. But he doesn't sound particularly charming. He tested his employees severely with his wild mood swings and unreasonable demands. For example, one night at the Hotel Lotti in Paris the Duke had an urge for a peach. The hotel management, catering to the Duke's every whim, sent the waiter to find a peach. Although it was late at night and all the shops were closed, the waiter was told he would be instantly dismissed in the event he failed to find the Duke a peach. Desperate to avoid losing his job, the waiter threw a rock through the window of a closed grocery store, grabbed the peach, and ran back to the hotel with the Duke's fruit. (The waiter was George Orwell who later wrote "Animal Farm" and "1984.")
To try to minimise future death duties, the Second Duke created a family settlement. No longer would the Duke be the ruler of the enterprise. The estates were placed in the hands of professional trustees for the benefit of the family for the future. But when he died Pimlico still had to be sold off to cover the death duties.
The title of Third Duke of Westminster passed to an elderly relative, who survived until 1963. His cousin, Colonel Gerald Hugh Grosvenor, became Fourth Duke. In 1967, his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert George Grosvenor succeeded as Fifth Duke. The Third Duke had no interest in the estate so his death did not attract substantial duties. In view of the settlement, the Fourth Duke’s death also had little effect. The Second Duke’s settlement proved to be extremely far-sighted.