Boston Manor - History of The Former Manor of Boston

History of The Former Manor of Boston

The earliest reference to Boston (or Bordwadestone as it was then spelt) was around the 1170s. It may mean Bord's tun or farm by the stone. It was situated towards the northern end of the Manor Boston. The lord of the Manor is recorded as Ralph de Brito. There is no record as to where he built his manor house. He founded a chapel at the southern end of the Manor call St. Lawrence on a site that is now derelict. The ecclesiastical boundary under this chapel was -or became over time- coterminous with that of the manor boundary. Today, this boundary would have been approximately to east side Boston Manor tube station's railway sidings and would have roughly followed Piccadilly line west as far as the river Brent. Turning south, it followed the Brent down to the Thames. After a very sort distance east, it turn north following Half Acre Road, then up along Boston Manor Road and thus back to the Tube station again The northern extent of the manor was marked by a boundary stone. Later a tree to the west of it, came to be the local Gospel Oak. Here the old pagan custom of blessing the field and crops took place whilst beating the bounds. Thus, the boundary of chapelry of St. Lawrence not only coexisted with that of the manor but was also a subdivision of the Parish of Hanwell.

Then in about 1280 King Edward I granted this area of the township to the prioress of St Helen's Bishopsgate. It is at this point that one can consider that it becomes a district in its own right. For under the feudal system, lands could be divided up according to use, ownership, possession (right to take profit), and occupancy. The prioress received what amounted to both “constructive possession” and ‘ownership.’ Although the King did this to make raising tax easier, it had the benefit of preventing alienation of any parts of the property by subinfeudation, thus keeping it more or less intact over the coming centuries.

The King may have favoured this particular Convent in Bishopsgate because it was full of the unmarried daughters of members of the Guild of Goldsmiths, and so by making them self-supporting by giving them the means to charge their new tenants rents and to sell the produce grown on their newly acquired demesne, he could justify taxing their fathers more heavily and collect the tax in the form of silver coinage, which was more convenient.

Things stayed this way until 1539 when under Henry VIII the convent was dissolved and these manor holdings returned to the Crown.

It passed out of the control of the Crown in 1547 and into the hands of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset during the reign of King Edward VI.

After the Duke was forced to forfeit both his lands and his head, it once more returned to the Crown until Elizabeth I granted it to her favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester who immediately sold it to a Sir Thomas Gresham who had become a fabulously wealthy merchant and financier who had also bought Osterley as his summer residence. He went on to found the Royal Exchange.

As Gresham died without issue, the property went via his wife, to his stepson Sir William Reade, whom she had borne during a previous marriage. As Reade resided in nearby Osterley, he too had to obtain a Patent of Possession (1610) from James I so that he could legally administer the estate. He married Mary Goldsmith and immediately after his death she built Boston Manor House in 1622/3. She then married Sir Edward Spencer of Althorp. As Sir William’s second wife he didn't let her inherit the legal ownership, instead she came into legal possession of the property but only to last for her own lifetime. However, they appears to have had bought out the claims of the late William Reade's heirs to the property so that upon her own death (1658) the title in the property of Boston Manor passed to her kinsman John Goldsmith as they themselves had had no children to leave it to. On Goldsmith’s demise (1670) executors sold it to another very wealthy city merchant James Clitherow I. The price he paid for the house with its then 230 acres (93 ha) for his own use, was £5,136/17s/4d.

It stayed within the Clitherow family for the next 250 years although over those years parts of the estate were sold off. As the neighbouring settlement of Brentford village grew, it expanded onto the property of this manor, and thus it became known as the Manor of New Brentford to reflect the fact that is was under a different Lord to that of Old Brentford.

The population had grown so much by 1621 that the chapelry council could no longer refer every issue back to the Hanwell parish council for direction but needed to take control themselves. Not yet have parish status the area covered by the Manor became an administrative township and known as the New Brentford Township. This is why the letters NBT can be seen on local boundary stone.

It was during the 18th century that both the manor landholdings and the area of the New Brentford township, the boundaries of which were now coterminous, were being commonly referred to as simply Boston Manor rather than the Manor of New Brentford.

John Bourchier Stracey-Clitherow was the last private owner of Boston Manor and in 1923 he sold the remainder of the Boston Manor estate. The house and the surrounding 20 acres (8.1 ha) was purchased by the Brentford Urban District Council and opened as a public park in 1924.

The Green Flag Award scheme, which recognises and rewards the best green spaces in England and Wales, has given this award to Boston Manor Park in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.