Estates & Property

The Company received bequests from its members from the earliest times and it also purchased property as a corporate body during its long history.  Besides the site of Goldsmiths’ Hall in Foster Lane in the City of London, the Company owned property around the Hall, to the north of the Hall where the Barbican is now situated, and to the north of Fleet Street.  Some estates outside the City were also owned by the Goldsmiths’ Company – in (London)Derry in Northern Ireland from the early 17th century to 1728; the Acton estate in west London from the later 17th century until 2000; and the Hamsell estate near Groombridge, Sussex, from 1856 until 1937.

Content

The early minutes and the two-volume register of deeds contain much information on the estates and property owned by the Goldsmiths’ Company in trust for the payment of certain bequests stipulated by members in their wills.  The minute books and committee books contain much of the narrative of the Company’s property ownership.  Other series include lease books and volumes of contracts for leases; assignments and alienations exist in the 17th century; a 1651 Committee of Survey; and estate maps of 1692 by John Ward.  Three volumes of renters’ accounts from 1694-1729 are succeeded by annual Lady Day and Michaelmas rentals until 1851 when they, in turn, were subsumed by the general ledgers covering all accounting matters.

Fourteen volumes of Philip Hardwick’s drawings of the present Hall, opened in 1835, were given by him to the Company and there is also much of his correspondence on estate matters, including Acton, in the collection of archive papers.

The Irish estate papers comprise, amongst leases and miscellaneous papers (1609-1927), the grant (1613) of land to the Irish Society by James I and an account of the Company’s lands in Ulster (1609-19) compiled by the Clerk, Henry Carter.

The Hamsell estate papers were transferred to the Guildhall Library after the Second World War.

How can I find information in these records?

Most property records relate to physical structures which have leases and agreements and are usually dated.  Within the volumes of minutes it is necessary to search the individual indices, where they exist, by name (lessee/ occupant) and location (street). The archive papers are listed on AIM25 and can be consulted in the library.

The type of information to be found would relate to applications for the lease, purchase or sale of property; payment of half-yearly rents; disputes between lessees and tenants and other related matters.

For specific properties some may relate to bequests from members and may be found under the relevant charity in W.S.Prideaux’s The Charities under the management of the Goldsmiths’ Company…(London, Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1899).