What’s the story?
To understand the significance of the estate today, we need to look at the history of the land and understand how the estate came to be built where it is.
Way back when…
The land where the Queen’s Road Estate stands was once two commons. The one to the north was called Pesthouse Common (more of why that was to come). The one to the north was Hill Common. More importantly, despite being commons, they both belonged to the Crown.
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Some things never seem to change. Like people being poor. And people dying. So by the late 18th century, the Parish of Richmond urgently needed somewhere for a new poor house and another cemetery. But the land they had their eye on – the two commons - belonged to the Crown.
It took lengthy legal negotiations and an Act of Parliament (1786 ) for the Parish of Richmond, better known then as the Vestry, to get the land it wanted. Even then there were strings attached. A legal proviso stipulated that the land was for “the good use of the poor […] in perpetuity”. The southern part of the land already was already used for a pesthouse. Now the Vestry used the northern part for a workhouse, a farm and a cemetery.
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The 19th century – which we think of as the Victorian age – brought a lot of changes to local government and, in particular, to Poor Laws. Decision making moved from the Vestry to local or even central government and the strings attached to the lands along Queens Road were partly forgotten.
By the 1850s London was spreading outwards. Richmond attracted affluent professionals and the land designated for the good use of the poor was instead used to build the first Queen’s Road Estate, consisting of large Victorian houses.
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Fast forward a hundred years. By the 1950s the Council had completely forgotten about the provisos. They wanted to demolish the now-run-down Victorian houses, many of which were derelict or home to squatters. In their place, they planned a by-pass (linking Richmond to Kingston by a tunnel under Richmond Park) plus a private development of high-rise flats.
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But not everyone thought this was a good idea. Local residents and dissident councillors vehemently opposed the plan and started a public campaign to scupper it.
The campaigners’ argument was that the 1786 Act didn’t give to the Council, but to the Parish or Vestry. The resulting legal battle went all the way to the Law Lords, then the highest court in country. In the 1960s, the Law Lords ruled the Council did not own the land but, at the same time, it did not recognise the Parish as the direct successor to the 1786 Vestry. The lands were only returned when, in 1971, the Richmond Parish Lands Charity (now called the Richmond Foundation) was set up for the purpose of looking after them “the good use of the poor […] in perpetuity”, in other words in the spirit of the 1786 Act.
A short account of the history is included a in Historic England’s Phase 1 Grade II listing https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1400339, while the full account can be found in The King’s Gift, p. RPLC, 1986; Royal Bounty – The Richmond Parish Lands Charity 1786-1991, by John Cloake, p. RPLC, 1992.