The City's West End Estate: A 'Remarkable Omission'
Abstract
The City's West End Estate: A (Remarkable Omission' IAN DOOLITILE N1754 the Corporation of the City of London took the astonishing decision to grant perpetually renewable leases on its most valuable estate. Conduit Mead is a twenty- seven acre site to the south of Oxford Street and the west of Regent Street. At its northern end it passes close by Hanover Square and its southern tip abuts on Berkeley Square. It is bisected by New Bond Street and it also takes in all or part of Brook Street, South Molton Street, Maddox Street, Grafton Street and, naturally enough, Conduit Street. Many of the fortunate leaseholders of this most prestigious estate pay no more for their lucrative properties than their predecessors did two hundred years ago. Some leases have been resumed by the Corporation for failure to comply with the terms, and others have been revised in return for a dispensation from the legal requirements for renewal. The remainder, however, are still in their original form, save that they have been converted into two-thousand-year terms by the Property Act of 1925. City officials will have to wait 1950 years to undo the work of their eighteenth-century counterparts! When The Times