Property Summary
Leadenhall Street and Shaft Alley — Number 129 to Number 139This trapezoid-shaped piece of land in the City of London with 123 feet of frontage to the north side of Leadenhall Street and return frontage along both sides of Shaft Alley comprised 21 small tenements, warehouses, and shops in the late sixteenth century. The elevations on Thomas Badeslade's 1719 estate plan show four or five storeys on the buildings along Leadenhall Street, and and the elevations on Daniel Alexander's 1797 estate plan show four storeys on the tenements in Shaft Alley. Over the centuries these premises were combined and let in various configurations. The 1874 survey, based on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map, shows a concentration of the site in just nine premises, numbered 131-139 Leadenhall Street, and describes the property as follows: |
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In 1881 the site was redeveloped and let on two building leases: the premises on the west side of Shaft Alley were torn down and rebuilt as an office building named the Rochester Building, and the premises on the east side of Shaft Alley, including the alley itself, were incorporated into The Ship and Turtle Tavern.
Since the outer boundaries and superficial area of the site did not change between 1577 and 1914, the overall measurement of 0a.1r.12p. and 14 square yards, based on the Ordnance Survey map, has been used throughout the period and apportioned among the various small tenements by planimeter measurement of the eighteenth-century plans.
The total rent for the site rose steadily throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries and then rose spectacularly during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1577 the total rent was £43 6s. 8d. (£132 4s. 2d. per acre); by 1914 it had increased over two orders of magnitude to £4,746 10s. 6d. (£14,481 5s. 4d. per acre.)