| Description | The papers and correspondence in this box relate to some of the Dean and Chapter's properties in Southwark, Surrey, particularly those in and around Tenter Alley and Three Fleur de Lys Court. There are some plans of the properties and several reports as to their state of repair. By the mid-eighteenth century many of the houses were ruinous and the Dean and Chapter were having difficulties finding tenants willing to invest in short-term leases.
Their solution was to apply for an act of Parliament which would allow them to grant a lease for a long term of years to a tenant who would then improve the area, safe in the knowledge that he would get a return on his investment. The act was passed in 1766 (BB 52/55 being a copy) and the lease of the whole site granted to Philip Cox in 1770 (BB 52/57).
The ruinous tenements were pulled down, and Tenter Alley and Three Fleur de Lys Court became Dean Street and Canterbury Square. Many of the properties built there were purchased by the railway companies in the 1830s for the extension of the London and Greenwich railway and the enlargement of London Bridge station with the building of the London and Croydon railway. BB 52/62-65 are papers relating to the railway purchases as a result of the latter circumstance.
BB 52/60 is the parliamentary bill relating to the Grand Surrey Canal. BB 52/66-67 are modern papers transcribing and translating a lease from 1511. The last three items in the box are leases, apparently unexecuted, which date from the early eighteenth century. They have all been used as wrappers at some stage. |