LAND WORTH £13,000,000 AN ACRE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11320, 2 September 1899, Page 5

LAND WORTH £13,000,000 AN ACRE.

LONDON STREETS WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD. One of the surest and safest ways of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice would (aaya the London ' Daily Mail ' ) be to possess a few aoreß of land in the heart of the city of London, or, In fact, a single aore would make one wealthier than the moat lucky miner that ever starved in Johannesburg. This was proved conclusively the other day, when the freehold of No 54/ Oheapside was sold for £28,500, whioh Is equal to £60 per square foot, or £2,603,600 an aore. The highest prioe ever asked for land in London was at the rate of 13 million pounds sterling per acre. Tun golden spot was in Bermondaey, where a few years ago a small piece of property was offered to the South-Eastern Railway Company for £1 250,000. No wonder the railway oompany deolined to bay. Comiug baok to the oily again, we find that the ground about Lombardstreet is worth not less than £2,000,000 an aore, while something like £40 a square foot was paid for every pieoe of the land between Sing William Statue atsd Trinity -square. E.G. In Cannon-street, iv 18S0. 600 square feet of land was sold for building sites for £4500, whioh amounts to £7 10 j a square foot, or nearly £330,000 an aore. In the Bame year building Bites in Graoeohuroh.streqt realised £18 a square foot, or £820,000 aa acre. In 183Q these prloes increased by leaps and bounds in the same streets, 1285 square feet of ground being sold for £37,000, whioh is £28 16-1 per square foot, or not far short of 1,260,000 an aore. Going westward land beootnes somewhat oheaper, but still sufficiently high to make it no exaggeration to aay that, metaphorioally speakiag Londoners walk on gold For instates, one could buy an aore in P .11 Mall for half a million sterling, but if grcund was required in St James-square or Si JameVstrest aoajetbloj like three quarters of a million for a like quantity, Three years ago the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was letting his land on the Oadogan Estate in Chelsea at £550,000 an aore on building leases, with an BDnual ground rent of half a orown a foot. Three acres of his property near Sloae-street were sold for 99 ye»ra for £175,000. Toe Marquis of Salisbury owns five acres of land at Charing cross, whioh 250 years bank, was leased for grogiug purposes to hia ancestors at the rate of 10j an aore for 500 years. These few aores are now worth a sovereign a foot. The value of property has trebled since 1856, and to-day the houses within its boiders are oaloulated to be worth Bomo two hundred and fifty million pouods Bterling, and the lot) 4on whioh they are built is valued at no less than six hundred million pounds. Upon the latter sum the landlords receive about twenty, five million pounds annually iarent; and, sooner or later, under the leasehold aystem, house property of enormous value will oome into their hands. The owners of London Include all sorts and conditions of men and women, from dukes to shareholders in building societies and holders of single tenements. The-e small owners number about 200,000. Bnt the great bulk of the rental of the metropolis belongs to comparatively few people. The ground landlords ioolude the Duke of Westminster, to whom a large portion of the Belgravia, Pimlioo, and Grosvenor -square district belongs. Then the Duke of Badford ownij chiefly the Oovent Garden distriot and Bloomsbury ; Lord Fortman and the Duke of Portland West and East Marjlebone distrlots, respectively ; Lord Oidogan a large part of Chelsea; while the Marquis of Northampton reigns in Olerkenwell, tbo Duke of Norfolk in the south of the Strand, the Marquis of Oamden in Oimdentown, Lord Southampton in Tottenham-court-road and Kentish-town, and Captain Penton in the distriot of Pentonvllle.