The Planning and Building of The Magdalen Estate with Holloway Bros
This series of blogs in our From The Archives series is intended as a resource for schools and local residents who are interested in researching local history.
We are very happy to help schools with access to relevant materials. However, the images that are reproduced here should be assumed to be the copyright and may not be reproduced without license from the archives and commercial use is therefore strictly prohibited.
The Magdalen Estate
After the run away success of developing The Toast Rack side of Trinity Road, Magdalen College probably expected the other side to a a fast paced enterprise. This did not take account of the very much larger area to be developed. The First World War 1914-18 or the Great Depression in the 1920’s which all factored in to slow progress. What can be seen from the values on the leases, is that some of the ‘lesser’ roads commanded relatively disappointing yields.
The plan actually dates back to 1884 and was approved by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Not much seems to have happened until The Toast Rack was substantially completed.
Even as late as 1890 Edward L’Anson was playing around with various road layouts as can be seen from this August 1890 submission to The Metropolitan Board of Works.
By 1901 things had finally got moving.
The start of works was clearly a cause for some celebration as this little bound volume was produced. It looks like a presentation item. Open the full multi page PDF here.
However, we do have to be a tiny bit careful with taking the progress mapped on the 1901 plan at face value as we can see from the correspondence, further down the page, between London County Council and Holloway Bros that things were not going particularly fast or particularly smoothly!
Here we are concerned with the area, coloured red, that was mostly developed by Holloway Brothers, in various guises:-
Lyford Road; Loxley Road; Magdalen Road; Herondale Road; Tranmere Road; Ellerton Road
One curiosity, is that the leases for all the properties on The Magdalen Estate end on 25th March 2100. This leads to some bizarre lease durations at the time of issue.
The developer / builders were Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway who were responsible for dealing with London County Council Architects Department.
We can see this from the following sample deeds -[the deeds reference numbers, where quoted, are to the Wandsworth Heritage Service collections].
43 Tranmere Road – 17th February 1902 – granted by Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway – noting the head lease was granted from Magdalen College, Oxford to Henry Thos Holloway and Henry Holloway of the within premises for 197½ years from 29th September 1902 at the yearly rent of £5 10/- the tenants to insure so long as they are owners in the sum of £350 in the Sun or Phoenix.
The Sun and Phoenix were insurance companies of the time. Which still exist albeit in merged forms.
63 Magdalen Road – 6th July 1907 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway – for 193½ years from 26th March 1907 at the yearly rent of £7 10/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/2727.
85 Ellerton Road – 6th December 1925 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway – for 174½ years from 29th September 1925 at the yearly rent of £12 12/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/2823.
12 Loxley Road – 12th April 1905 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Mr Roland Evelyn Holloway – for 195½ years from 29th September 1925 at the yearly rent of £8 10/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/3182
37 Magdalen Road – 6th July 1907 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Mr Henry Holloway – for 193 years from 25th March 1907 at the yearly rent of £7 10/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/3177.
39 Loxley Road – 19th May 1913 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway representative – for 189¼ years from 25h September 1912 at the yearly rent of £7 00/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/3180
49 Ellerton Road – 27th January 1911 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway – for 189½ years from 29th September 1925 at the yearly rent of £12 12/- lease expires 25th March 2100. Deeds/3648
This deed is interesting as the 190_ has had to be struck out. It was clearly envisaged when the form deeds were printed that development would be completed by 1909 – it was not to be! Indeed the development of the Madgalen Estate was a long drawn out affair as can be seen from the letter from Holloway Bros to LCC reproduced below there were struggles with the economic cycles.
This was, perhaps unsurprising as The Toast Rack is around 250 houses whereas the full Magdalen Estate development, as originally envisaged was around 1500-1800 houses – there are various schemes in the archives so it is hard to be sure.
Another aspect, could well have been, was the way the Magdalen Estate side of the scheme was built. The Toast Rack was build pretty systematically away from the Routh/Baskerville junction. That way the residents were assured of some degree of quiet enjoyment and not being in the centre of a building site. In contrast, the Magdalen Estate, was built plot by plot in a seemingly pretty random manner. This would not have been an incentive for wealthy purchasers.
81 Littleton Street – 29th October 1903 – granted by The President and Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford & Messrs H. T. & H. Holloway – for 194¾ years from 24th June 1903 at the yearly rent of £5 0/- lease expires 25th March 2100.
This extension and extension of the planning and building consents continued for more than two decades.
The slow pace is charted by the submissions to London County Council Architect Department for Building Act approvals. Below we have plans marked 1906, 1911 and 1924 for Ellerton Road. These appear to indicate that that the next step on from the 1911 scheme was only contemplated in 1924 – slow progress indeed.
This is the portion of the Magdalen Estate that Holloway Bros never got to build. It shows the roads layout as it was envisaged with a full interconnection of the grid.
Housing was desperately needed for London’s rapidly expanding population.
Ultimately Holloway Brothers lost control of the development when the remainder of the site was compulsorily purchased by Wandsworth Council on 3rd March 1931.
Another curiosity is the Burntwood Lodge Estate. As part of the development it was to link Lyford Road with Burntwood Road. Thankfully that through road never happened which kept Lyford Road relatively tranquil. If you look at the image below you can see the expanded view of the note about the removal of the offending wall.
