Abstract

ANDREW ·SAINT HAPPY SIDE of working for the Survey of London under Francis Sheppard's command was the freedom he allowed his staff to break the topographical bounds of the series and to pursue individual lines of investigation, if the results added to knowledge of London's development, history and architecture. In pursuit of data for the Survey, one would stumble across facts A which allowed unanticipated connections to be made and unsuspected dramas to be tickled out of the building fabric. Often the format of the volumes made it hard to do more than hint at the full story. But the knowledge accumulated in pursuit of the series' inexorable goals has tended to trickle out over the years. The story that follows, that of Jonathan Carr (1845-1915), the developer and promoter of Bedford Park, is one such example. From early research on Kensington Court for Volume XLII of the Survey of London, a much fuller picture began to emerge of this imaginative, resourceful but ill-fated property speculator's career. In the process the tangled tale of one of London's most grandiose Thames-side buildings, the spectacularly silhouetted Whitehall Court, has also gradually come to light. * * Jonathan Carr is best known