The sixth section of the seventh of Ann, chap. 20, (the Act referred to), provides that the “Registrar or Master shall keep an Alphabetical Kalendar of all the Parishes, Extra-parochial Places and Townships within the said County, with reference to the number of every Memorial that concerns the Donor’s Manors, Lands, Tenements, or Hereditaments in every such Parish, &c.” But here, as at other Offices, where important historical documents are kept, no Index Locorum is known. To be able to turn to any particular parish, and at once find the deeds belonging to that parish, would be much too easy a process, whatever the framers of this Act may have thought of its convenience.
[87a] We are told by this Act, that previous to the second marriage of this lady to Joshua Smith Simmons Smith, two other sons had died; one Henry Frederick, leaving a widow and child; the other Frederick, unmarried; and to his sixth share of the half of the lessee’s interest the mother became entitled. Mrs. Smith left her husband all her interest in the Paddington Estate, and he assigned it to Elizabeth Hughes, widow. Besides the purchase of the sixth share above referred to, we find by a subsequent Act, fifth Geo. IV. cap. 35, that Lady Morshead and her son assigned “all their moiety and beneficial estate and interest in the said lease,” to Thomas Thistlethwayte; and we have already seen, in a previous note, that this gentleman died possessed of seven-eighths of the lessees’ interest in the Paddington Estate.
[87b] We learn by a subsequent Act, the sixth of Geo. IV. cap. 45, that the receipts by the sale of brick-earth, gravel, and sand, up to that time, 1825, amounted to £10,256 12s. 3d.
[87c] This was the last Act of Parliament relative to this estate with which Bishop Porteus had anything to do, as he died on the thirteenth of May, 1809, having occupied the See of London from November the fourth, 1787. Vide p. 94 and 255 of the Life of this Bishop—by Mr. Hodgson.
[90] I have been informed that this Water Company asked one thousand pounds per annum for the site of one of their reservoirs for a lease of ninety-nine years, to contain all the covenants of building leases, and this after the site for All Saints Church had been taken out of it.
[91] These articles of agreement contained a clause to exempt the buildings, houses, &c. on this land, from “the operations or regulations contained or to be contained in any Act or Acts of Parliament respecting buildings;” and they were not to be subject “to the control, management, or interference” of any surveyor, or any other person, claiming to exercise authority under such Acts. This was asking a little too much even of a Parliament in which Grattan and Old Sarum were represented; and the articles were saved from the disgrace of receiving Parliamentary sanction, so far as this clause was concerned. Yet such influence did this clause in the agreement, though unsanctioned by the Legislature, have on the District Surveyor, that in his return to the House of Commons, in 1843, he states that “eighty one acres in this district, the property of the Grand Junction Canal Company, and eighty-eight and a-half acres, the property of the Great Western Railway Company, are exempt from the operation of the Building Act, except as to all houses erected on the latter property.
By an entry on the Vestry Minute Book, I find the Grand Junction Canal Company, leased eight acres of their land to the Water Works Company at a pepper corn rent.
[96] The exact yearly rent paid by the Great Western Railway Company to the Bishop and his lessees, is £2366 2s. 1d. Vide Parliamentary Paper, No. 664. 1850.
[103a] I have stated 1829, for in 1729 the Turnpike-rate was standing at the junction of the old Roman roads; that is, at the end of Park-lane.
[103b] “Return of the number of District Surveyors appointed under the Metropolitan Building Act, and amount of their fees.” By this return I find that the fees received by the District Surveyor of Paddington, for five years, 1838 to 1842 inclusive, amounted to £4,261! Parliamentary Paper, 1843.