The London Daily Newsletter Friday 24 February

Renters Farm
Near to where Brent Cross Shopping Centre is today was a farm called Renter’s.

Renter’s Farm was situated in Shirehall Lane close to Shire Hall, Hendon. The Renter’s estate had been owned by the priory of St Bartholomew, Smithfield. Their Hendon estate consisted around 1538 of fifteen fields, crofts, meadows and some woodland, north of the Clitterhouse estate. It may have become known as Renter’s after the freehold was held by Geoffrey le Renter in 1309. He was recorded as holding a freehold estate in 1321, along with ’Bourncroft’ – perhaps the same location as ’Bone Croft’, which lay north of Renters farm. The manor was granted by the king in 1543, along with the manor of Edgware Boys, to both Sir John Williams and Antony Stringer. They granted it in 1548 to Sir Roger Cholmley, together with a barn, 30 acres of arable land, 40 acres of meadow, 60 acres of pasture and 26 acres of wood. Cholmley was a judge, who in 1565 left it to his servant and clerk Jasper Cholmley. Until the 17th century much of Renter’s was woodland – used for making charcoal in the Tudor period. In 1682 the manor was transfered by a Cholmley descendant, to Jerome Newbolt, great-grandfather of J.M. Newbolt of Winchester, who still held it in 1795. Manorial rights had already lapsed and in 1796 Newbolt’s estate – no longer described as a manor – consisted of twelve fields. The estate was tenanted in 1795 by P. Rundell, a London goldsmith, and after his death in 1827 by his great-nephew Joseph Neeld, a solicitor. Neeld had married the eldest daughter of John Bond and had bought houses and land in Brent Street and also Burroughs Lane from Joseph Crosse Crooke in 1809. So began the Neeld family’s Hendon holding – once the land became valuable for building, they amassed a great fortune. At the close of the nineteenth century, the area directly around the farmhouse was used for Hendon Sewage Works. By the beginning of the 20th century, Sir John Neeld had acquired a large block of land in Hendon stretching south from the Burroughs to Park Road and including part of the old Renter’s property. His land was developed for housing by Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, the grandson of Joseph Neeld, who inherited in 1900.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

’A View of Erith, Looking Up the Thames” , hand-coloured etching by John Boydell (1750)

Yale Center for British Art

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.