PORTMAN ESTATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 August 1929, Page 2

PORTMAN ESTATE

ONCE A FARM FOB ASSES.

Lord Portman, who died recently, aged 64, was one of the richest ground landlords in London. He inherited hits wealth, which was derived mainly from ground rents in Marylebone, from his father.

For many years the family name was associated with some of London’s most fashionable squares. They were file ground landlords of a large area lying between Oxford Street and Marylebone Road, which included Portman, Bryanston and Montagu Squares. At one time the family occupied Portman House, the large mansion im Portman Square.

Nearly 200 years ago one of their ancestors bought for ' about £2OOO a small farm and fields where lie proposed to keep some asses for a member of the family who had been ordered by a doctor to drink asses’ milk. These fields afterwards became the site of the fashionable residential quarter which made Lord Portman one of the largest landowners in London. Some of the property was sold some time ago, but a considerable proportion of the estate remained in the possession of the late viscount./

Bryanston, in Dorset, one ‘of England’s latest public schools, absorbed about two years ago, one of Lord Portman’s houses built by his father at a cost of about £250,000.

The heir to the viscounty is the Hon. Edward Claud Berkley Portman, his only son.