LANDLORDISM UP TO DATE.[[1]]
By Canon Barnett.
August, 1912.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
“The position of landlord and tenant is often one of opposing interests.” This remark from the first number of the “Record” of the Hampstead Garden Suburb must commend itself as true to all readers of the daily Press. The “Record,” however, in two most interesting articles, shows that with landlordism up to date it need no longer be true. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, of which Mr. Alfred Lyttelton is president, and Mrs. S. A. Barnett hon. manager, is the landlord of 263 acres—shortly to be increased by another 400 acres, most of which will be worked in conjunction with the Co-Partnership Tenants. To meet the needs of the 25,000 people who will ultimately be housed on this unique estate the whole has been laid out with a view to the comfort of the people, including in the idea of “comfort” not only well-built houses with gardens, but also the opportunities for the interknowledge of various classes which alike enriches the minds of rich and poor. A visit to the estate suggests the multitudinous interests which have been considered. The houses are grouped around a central square, on which stand the church, the chapel, and the institute, and it is so planned that from the cottages at 5s. 6d. a week, as from the mansions with rentals of from £100 to £250 a year, the inhabitants alike enjoy beauty either of gardens, tree-planted streets, public open spaces, or glimpses over the distant country.
The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, as the leading article in the “Record” says, “has done what any other far-seeing and enlightened landlord has done,” with the difference that its pecuniary interest in the financial success of the scheme is limited by a self-obtained Act of Parliament to 5 per cent. In a summary, which it is well to quote, the doings of this up-to-date landlord are gathered together:—
“As a landlord the Trust has laid out and maintains the open spaces, the tennis courts, the wall-less gardens with their brilliant flowers, the restful nooks, the village green, which, with the secluded woods, can be enjoyed in common by rich and poor, simple and learned, young and old, sources of ‘joy in widest commonalty spread’.
“As a landlord the Trust has given the sites for both the Established Church and the Free Church, each standing on the Central Square in equally prominent positions, worthy of the beautiful buildings their respective organizations have erected.
“As a landlord the Trust has given the site for the elementary school, and has spared no pains to obtain a building adapted to the best and most carefully thought-out methods of modern education.