Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

The first authentic document I find relating to the Notting Barns manor after it was disposed of by the Countess of Richmond is an inquisition, taken at Westminster on the ninth of October, in the seventeenth year of the reign of Henry the eighth, after the death of Robert Roper, or Fenroper, citizen and alderman of London. [34]

From this inquisition we learn that “The manor called Notingbarons, alias Kensington, in the parish of Paddington, was held of the Abbot of Westminster as of his manor of Paddington by fealty and twenty-two shillings rent;” that the manor at this time “consisted of forty acres of land, one hundred and forty acres of meadow, two hundred acres of wood, twenty acres of moor, twenty acres of furze and heath, and forty shillings rent; and that it was valued by the jurors at ten pounds per annum.” This manor, a lease of which had been, in all probability, purchased of the Abbot by the aforesaid Robert, was left by the Alderman to his wife for life, “Remainder to Henry White, gent., and Etheldreda his wife, one of his three daughters and co-heirs.” [35a]

What “arrangement” was made at the time of the Reformation with respect to this manor I cannot precisely tell; but its further history, so far as I have been able to trace it, is not without interest.

Lysons tells us in his account of Paddington, that “a capital messuage called Westbourne-place, with certain lands thereto belonging was granted by Henry the eighth, in 1540, to Robert White;” and he refers to the Augmentation Office, but to no special record there, for his authority. This grant I have not been able to find. But in his account of Kensington, Lysons says Henry White, the son-in-law of the alderman, “in the year 1543 conveyed the manor of Knotting Barns to the King.”

By a deed of exchange recited in Pat 34. Henry 8th. P. 8., M. 13 (15), I find that the King purchased Robert White’s interest in this manor, and that “the said Robert White, esquire, having bargained and sold the manor of Nutting Barnes, with the appurtenances, in the county of Middlesex, and the farm of Nutting Barnes, in the parish of Kensyngton, and the capital messuage with the appurtenances called Westbourne in the parish of Paddington, in the same county, and also the wood and lands called Nutting Wood, Dorkyns-Hernes, and Bulfre Grove, in the parish of Kensington, as also two messuages and tenements in Chelsaye, with all other the possessions of the said Robert White, in the same places and parishes; and in consideration of one hundred and six pounds, five shillings and ten pence” had other lands conveyed to him, by the King, in other places, as fully set forth in the patent above referred to. [35b] It will be observed, that in this document, which is of a later date than the dissolution of the monastery, a portion of this manor is now said to be in the parish of Kensington. It appears that the manor was made up of two farms (over and above the small tenements), one called Notting Barns, and the other Westbourn; and we find from a manuscript document, dated thirty-eighth Henry the eighth, [36a] that the “messuage called Westbourne, with the lands purchased of Robert White,” were demised to one Thomas Dolte, at a rent of one hundred shillings per annum; the same sum on which this Thomas Dolte was charged in the subsidy levied in the sixteenth year of this reign. [36b] This farm appears to have been but half the manor purchased by the Countess of Richmond, and this half remained in the parish of Paddington, while the Notting Barns farm seems to have been considered a part of Kensington, after the Reformation.

From this M.S. in the land revenue office we also learn that Henry the eighth purchased the then existing interest in other lands in this parish, and in the parishes of St. Margaret, Westminster, and Kensyngton, of one John Dunnington. The gross rental of which I find was put down at nine pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence; “from which there was an allowance, for lands inclosed within the king’s park of Hyde, of twenty-eight shillings per annum; leaving the clear yearly value of eight pounds five shillings and fourpence.” The same document shews, too, that a separate rent of forty-one pounds six shillings and eightpence was received for the manor and rectory of Paddington.

Faulkner states that “in 1549 king Edward the sixth, granted this manor or farm of Notting Barns to Sir William Pawlet, earl of Wiltshire,” at a rent of sixty shillings per annum. In 1562, and 1587, it appears to have been in the hands of the lord treasurers of England, the marquis of Winchester and lord Burghley. From lord Burghley it passed to Sir Thomas Cecil who sold it to Sir Walter Cope of Kensington; and in 1601 the queen “granted a pardon to the said Walter Cope, for the sum of six pounds, in consideration that the above alienation had been made without her majesty’s licence.” [36c]

Thus the Notting Barns manor was claimed by the crown and by private individuals; and so this portion of the Lady Margaret’s gift was disposed of.

But with “the messuage called Westbourne, and the lands purchased of Robert White,” we have something more to do.

Thomas Hues, esquire, doctor of medicine, one of queen Mary’s “principal physicians,” purchased of that queen and others, a considerable quantity of land, in this and the adjoining parishes, fully described in Escact, 2. Eliz. part 2. No. 23, which he gave to his wife for her life, “And in remainder to the Wardens and Fellows of Martyn (Merton) college in Oxford, for the purpose of founding within the said college for evermore two apt and meet persons to be Fellows of the Fellowship of the said College. Or else three scholars, or four, as the land will extend unto, at such times as the same shall come to the hands and possession of the said Warden and Fellows of the said college or to their successors for the time being; to have continuance and succession within the said college as fellows or scholars thereof for evermore. There to be found, governed, and used with the revenues of the said lands, and to be brought up and educated in virtue and good learning according to the rules, good order, and diet of the said College, whereby other the Fellows or Scholars of the said House have in time past been well governed, ordered, ruled and brought up.”