The Gardens - the very beginning

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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on August 9, 2008 at 15:21

The land was owned, I think, by the church of St John of Jerusalem... Does anyone know much about it/them.. I think the church was very important politically and didn't they have someone high up in the House of Lords..??

Permalink Reply by Hugh on August 9, 2008 at 15:26

The following is what I was able to find out for one of my Wikipedia articles:

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To the east of Green Lanes, the lands were originally part of Tottenham Manor. Seized from Waltheof II by William the Conqueror, the Manor was held for about for 150 years to the end of 13th century by the Kings of Scotland. Death and feuding within that great family led to subdivision of the manor into three smaller manors in 1254. Harringay lands were within a manor called Pembrokes. The lands of this manor stretched from the southern boundary of Tottenham Manor, near Hermitage Road today, north to West Green and east to Tottenham High Road. The three parts of Tottenham were reunited by John Gedney in the early 15th century but were still often referred to by the names they took on during the period of manorial division.[6] As with western Harringay, the Church was a holder of large areas of land in Tottenham. This included a very large plot of land which ran from St Ann's Road in the north to Hermitage Road in the south and was roughly bounded by Green Lanes and Hermitage Road from east to west. This land was granted to the Hospitaliers of St John’s of Jerusalem shortly after the Norman Conquest. The income from the land would have initially supported their hospital in the Holy Land, tending for the casualties of the crusades and pilgrims to the Holy Land. With Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the mid-sixteenth century, the land passed to the Crown.[11] In the Dorset map of 1619, the land consisted of eleven fields. These fields are probably the area referred to in contemporary documents as the 'Great Hanger'[17] Sold by the Crown as farm land, it is known that at least some of this land became part of St John's Farm.[18] Of the southern part of this land, it is known that some was retained in public ownership until it was developed in relatively recent times - rating records show some of the southern area as common land owned by the Parish and Manor of Tottenham up to the late nineteenth century.