LAND WORTH £13,000,000 AN ACRE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11603, 18 August 1899, Page 1

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 (sa;s the London Daily Mail) be to possess a few acres of land in the heart of the City of London, or, in fact, a single acre would make one wealtlrer than the most lucky miner that

ever starved in Johannesburg. This was proved conclusively tho other day, when the freehold of No. 54 Cheapside was sold for £28,500', which is equal to £60 per square foot, or £2,613,600 an acre. The highest price ever asked for land in London was at the rate of thirteen million pounds sterling per acre. The golden spot was in Bermondsey, where a few years ago a small piece of property was offered to the South eastern Bailway Company for £1,250,000. No wonder the railway company declined to buy. Coming back to the city again, we find that tho ground about Lorabardstreet is worth not less than £2,000,000 an aero, while something like £40 a squire fcot was paid for every piece of the land between King William STatua on Trinity Square. E.G. In Cannon- street, in 1880, 600 square feet of land was sold lor boildi&g sites for £4500, which amounts to £7 10s a square foot, or nearly £330,000 an acre. In the same year building sites in Gracechureh-street realised £18 18s a square foot, or £820,000 an acre. In 1886 these prices increased by leaps and bounds in the same stieets 1285 squate feet of ground being sold for £37,000, which 'is £28 16s per square foot, or not far short of £1,260,000 an acre. Going westward land becomes some* what che iper, but still safficientlj 1 higb, to make it no exaggeration to say that, metaphorically speaking, Londoners walk on gold. For instance, one could buy an acre in Pall Mall for half a million sterling, but i? gronnd was required in St. James-street something like threequarlers of a million would be required for a like quantity. Three years ago the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was letting his land on the CadoganEstate in Chelsea at £550,000 an acre on building leases, with an annual ground rent of half a crown' a foot. Three acres of his property near Sloan-street was sold for £175,000. Tie Marquis of Salisbury owns five acres of land at Charing-cross, which, 250 years back, was leased for grazing purposes to his an:estors at the rate of 10s an acre for 500 years. These few acres are now worth about a sovereign 3 foot. The value of properly in London has trebled since 1856, and today the houses within its borders are calculated to be worth some two hundred and fjity million pounds sterling, and the land 04 which they are bailt is valued at not less than six hundred million pounds. Upon the latter sum the landlords receive about twenty-five million pounds annually in rent ; and, sooner or later, under the leasehold system, honse property of enormous value will coma into their haaos. The owners of Londou include all sorts and conditions of men and women, from dukes to shareholders in building societies and owners of single tenements. Thesa small owners numb:r about 200,000. But the great bulk of the rental of the metropolis belongs to comparatively few people The ground landlords include the Duke of Westminster, to whom a large portion of the Belgravia, Pimlioo, and Grosvenor-square district belongs. Then the Duke of Bedford owns chiefly the Convent Garden district and Bloorubnry; Lord Portmc>n and the Duke of Port, lend West and East Marlebone districts, respectively ; Lord Cadogan a large part of Chelsea : while the Marquis of Northampton reigns in Clerkenwell, the Duke of Norfolk in the south of the Strand, the Marquis of . Camden in Camden Town, Lord Southampton in Toltenham-court-road and Kentish-town, and Captain Penton in the district of Pentonville,