Wednesday's papers contained the announcement that the Duke of Bedford's
Covent Garden estate had been bought by Mr. H. Itallaby-Deeley, M.P. for the Harrow division. There are twenty-six streets on the estate, which covers nineteen acres, lying between the Strand and Long Acre on the south and north, and Aldwych and St. Martin's Lane on the east and west, and includes the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden, the Drury Lane, Aldwych, and Strand Theatres, Covent Garden Market, the Tavistock, Bedford, and Waldorf Hotels, Bow Street Police Court, the National Sporting Club, two banks, and several well-known printing offices. The price of what is perhaps the largest private purchase of real estate which has ever taken place in the country has not been disclosed, but is stated to have amounted to nearly three millions. Mr. Mallaby-Deeley has declared that he has bought the estate purely as a private investment, and that it will not be turned into a company, but will he carried on just as before. He added that he had carefully studied Mr. Lloyd George's proposals, and had no fear of the effect of proposed legislation—short of downright confiscation —on either rural or urban land.
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