Evelyn Sharp on the need for private development in a growing London
What has made London the kind of city that it is? A city of infinite variety, a jumble of different periods, a mosaic of historic street patterns, a resolutely unplanned city which yet contains in its squares and terraces — what remains of them — some magnificent town planning. A city still of occasional grandeur and of frequent, unexpected charm; of fine vistas, splendid parks, odd corners, narrow alleys, recognisable villages, gracious housing. It has been savagely mauled, especially in recent years; first by public authorities, the railways driving through to the centre regardless what they destroyed, local Councils putting up high rise flats both socially and aesthetically disastrous; then by the speculators and developers, intent on profit and totally insensitive to the quality of the city they were plundering. But still something of the quality survives; and it is Simon Jenkins's purpose in writing this book to ask what chance there is of saving what remains and even of reviving the traditions which have produced the best of London in the past. So he begins by asking how it all came about.
Briefly his answer is that it was unco-ordinated private development, over some three hundred and fifty years of ebb and flow, which has Made London what it now is — or was before the recent ravages; particularly the parts which to us are most attractive. -It grew out of millions of decisions by private individuals, drawing the city along with them ... bending it to their whim or their advantage, demolishing a house, building a terrace, patching up a shop, depositing a market as they went. Although money was the prime motive of those controlling the land, they in turn had to respond to the demands of tenants and purchasers . . . True, many Londoners were treated harshly in a manner we would not tolerate. But the amalgam of these millions of decisions produced a very remarkable city and one that has never' been equalled by any benevolent dictator or any corporate bureaucracy." The author is emphasising this — and over half the book is devoted to the story of the private initiatives which went to the making tof London — because today private development has become, as he says, so profoundly suspect that hardly a voice is raised in protest at its. being run out of town. The future of London lies now at the mercy of municipal control, municipal development and, increasingly, municipal ownership of
'Landlords to London: The Story of a Capital and its Growth Simon Jenkins (Constable £4.50). land. The prospect is depressing; and before we drift finally into this grey twilight let us stop to remember how London was made and think before it is too late, whether we cannot compromise between the need foi public enterprise and the vitality of private. The first half of the book describes the growth of the metropolis; from the time of the first Elizabeth when, following the break-up of the monastic holdings in and around the mediaeval city, the population doubled and the great families saw the chance — despite the Queen's stringent prohibitions — of building fine houses on the open fields outside the walls, down to our own century when private enterprise began to lose heart and government had increasingly to take a hand to grapple with the problems of public health and housing. Mr Jenkins is plainly fascinated by this history, but he has not space to tell us more than a fraction of what he so evidently knows; the result is tantalising despite delightful illustrations. His canvas is crowded with names familiar to every Londoner — the great developers and speculators of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries who were proud to leave their signatures on their work. Grosvenor who married the hapless infant heiress to Ebury Manor and founded one of the greatest London estates in Belgravia and Pimlico; Bedford (Russell) who, mercifully forced by the Privy Council to employ 'nig() Jones (is this an idea for modern authorities?) created Covent Garden piazza, and then had the bright notion of letting it as a market; Southampton who started Bloomsbury; Jermyn, friend of Charles II, described as an "outrageous, scheming courtier with not an ounce of scruple but immense style," who produced St. James' Square for noblemen's houses, living there himself, and developed right across to Lower Regent Street; Leicester, Arlington, Clarendon, Berkely and many others. All this was the activity of wealthy men, building for their own satisfaction, developing their own land, living on it themselves with their friends. Hence the enduring quality of most of what they did.
After the Great Fire of London there turned up the first of the self-made, entrepreneur speculators, Dr Nicholas Barbon, little of whose work survives — from which perhaps we may take comfort today. He does come alive. He persuaded, bullied and cheated people into selling him their land where he judged that re-development would be profitable; he flouted the law; many of his buildings fell down within a few years; and in the end he died in poverty and debt leaving almost no trace. "His character," says Simon Jenkins "was of a type which has blighted the reputation of London's property developers ever since." Fascinatingly, his father was Praise-God Barebones, one of Cromwell's godly followers and MP for London. Somehow it does not seem surprising.
The book takes the story on through the eighteenth century and the superb Georgian period when the land-owners built squares and terraces for the solid middle classes, making a good profit for themselves and giving complete satisfaction to their clients — as well as to future generations. The years before the Napoleonic wars were the -golden age" of London building when, we are told, London planning was firmly in the hands of able and imaginative men. Imagine a Surveyor-General who was also architect of Somerset House! For by this time government had abandoned the futile efforts to restrict the growth of the metropolis and was instead trying to regulate the quality of what was built. And so on through the nineteenth century and "the end of innocence." There is no space here to follow it: and indeed it is compressed to the point where it is not easy to follow. But through it all there is a clear theme running; the dominance in London's history of private enterprise and private initiatives, the small part played until our own century by government or public effort.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century public intervention became inevitable. During all the growth of London almost nothing was done for the poor. We are left to wonder how and where they lived as they were swept out of the way by developers and speculators, drIven out in thousands by the railways. The Victorian conscience began to stir; but far more potent was the threat posed to Victorian security by the crowded, insanitary conditions of the multiplying poor. Private development became increasingly out of favour and with the rising interest in social welfare 'the hope of the future was seen in public building. "This fall from grace [of the private developed" says the author, "can be traced back directly to the moment when . . . land-owners first began to lose interest in their traditional role as providers of middle class housing"; when the link between developer and user, landlord and tenant, started to break, until finally the alienation became total.
Coming to the future, Simon Jenkins sees as one of the most hopeful signs the rising volume of protest at the destruction of what is still lovely in London — or indeed of what is merely familiar — and its replacement by dull or even brutal building, not only by speculators out for a killing, but even by government itself. There is, he says, a growing public awareness of the need to protect what remains of the character of London; and following the success of many protests the authorities are now becoming firmly pledged to conservation. So far, so good. But conservation is not what made London — indeed it is the reverse. The vital question is whether it is possible to combine an almost blanket municipal control with the variety, the liveliness, the grace, the quality which, with all that they did wrong, the speculators and developers of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries managed to achieve. Simon Jenkins is pleading that private citizens should be allowed in the future, as in the past, to risk their capital in meeting London's needs and renewing its fabric — that there should be some form of economic freedom in the use of land and property. This was exercised responsibly in the past, he says, when developer and resident shared the same environment. cannot believe that it is beyond our wit to see that they do so again." Neither can I provided we have the will. And this book, which should be read by everyone who loves London, should do much to foster the will.
Baroness Sharp was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government from 1955 to 1966.
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