What's in a chief rent?

It will soon be time to pay the chief rent again.

It doesn’t amount to much; in fact the total sum is less than the cost of our Sunday paper.

And it is an odd thing dating back to the period when speculative builders were helping transform Chorlton from a rural community into a suburb of Manchester. Most of our land was owned by the Egerton and Lloyd estates and was rented out to farmers and market gardeners.

 In some cases the arrangements had gone on for centuries. The Renshaw/Bailey family had become tenants of the Egerton’s in the 1760s and were to continue farming in Chorlton into the middle years of the last century.

But from the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th we underwent a housing boom as the land was sold off to build houses for both the growing population and the increasing numbers of middling people who fancied living on the edge of the countryside.

The arrival of mains water from Manchester in 1864, and the improved sewage system in the 1870s combined with the arrival of the railway in 1880 provided the infrastructure which would make the township an attractive place to live.

Equally important was the way the land itself was parcelled up for development. Instead of selling directly for a set sum the Egerton and Lloyd estates chose to transfer ownership by a perpetual land rent, which the builder could pass on to the house owner once the houses were built. This freed up the builder’s capital which could be used to construct the properties.

 It also benefited the landowners who not only had a perpetual rent which far exceeded what could be got from agricultural use but allowed them to dictate the future development of the land. There was to be no industrial development here in Chorlton and even the brick works which was opened on Longford Road was to operate for just a fixed period.

Chief rents varied, but in 1909 a plot on the west side of what is now Reeves Road went for £20 a year upon which the builder constructed nine houses. And just under a decade later a stretch on Beech Road was offered up for £13 which accommodated six homes.

 For the land owner this was a real advance on what the land might earn from agriculture. As the Manchester Evening News pointed out in 1900 a field earning as little as 50s an acre as farm land could command up to £30 an acre when offered for building.

Of course individual house holders paid only a share of the total and with the passage of time the value of these rents has fallen. In some cases these were later sold on and I remember one house I lived in where the rent was clearly being paid to an elderly couple whose spidery handwriting appeared on a lined piece of writing paper pushed through the door.

Originally ours was paid twice a year, on May 1st and November 1st which are close enough to the traditional days when rents were expected to be paid in the past and the demand notices today arrive at much the same time.

 But of course the difference is that compared to 1920 the value of our chief rent has faded to almost nothing. Still it is irksome and remains a historic anomaly which adds nothing to the value of our house. As a result I nearly took up the offer of buying out the chief rent but reasoned I would have to reach my 89th birthday before the sum I paid out matched the yearly charge.

So in the meantime I console myself that when I send my pennies to a PO Box in the middle of the country I am just playing my part in the historical story.

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection