NOTES AND SHORTER CONTRIBUTIONS 
Two things puzzled me. What had happened to 
the Arundell’s London estate, brought into the 
family by Elizabeth Panton on her marriage to the 
future fifth Lord in 1691? There were no records 
relating to it in the family archives (WSRO 2667). 
Only a single sketch map indicated that half the 
London property was sold in 1810 leaving just over 
one acre near Piccadilly Circus remaining in family 
ownership. There were no rent books or agent’s 
accounts and it had to be assumed that the 
‘Disastrous Dowager’, Anne Lucy, widow of the 
twelfth Lord, had sold the estate during the Great 
War and destroyed all the papers. Secondly, what 
was the truth behind the family legend that the 
ninth Lord was as much to blame for the decline 
and fall of the family as the eighth? When I asked 
295 
Mrs Fagan, sister of the 16th and last Lord 
Arundell why she thought the estates had been 
ruined, she insisted that the eighth Lord, or ‘Old 
Piety’ as he was known in the family, had caused 
much of the problem, but that the coup de grace was 
administered by the marriage of the ninth Lord. I 
asked for more details, but she could give none. I 
should have taken such family legend more 
seriously. 
Mr Alan Miller of Bournemouth has been 
researching Dorset landowning families recently 
and he came across the details of the sale of the 
Arundell’s London estate. Mrs Fagan was correct. 
In May 1816 the ninth Lord made a will leaving the 
Panton estate ‘in the parishes of St James and St 
Martin in the Fields’ in trust for his sons Henry and 
Robert, children of his second marriage 
to Mary Burnet Jones. The children of 
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Fig.l The Arundell Piccadilly estate (WSRO 2667/24/6). The dark 
ieee 
his first marriage, to the eldest daughter 
of the eighth Lord, simply received the 
Wardour estates. The annual rental 
value of the London estate was greater 
than all the other Arundell estates. At a 
stroke, the ninth Lord had ensured that 
the palatial mansion at Wardour could 
never be maintained as the seat of a great 
lord. 
Henry’s only child, Rudolphus, 
died in 1841, leaving the children of the 
second son, Robert, as the beneficiaries 
of the London estate. For some reason 
which is not clear, the children of 
Robert’s second marriage were omitted 
from the Trust. By 1913, one of Robert’s 
children, Edith, was still alive and the 
six children of her sister Aeddan. The 
Trustees decided to apply for an Act of 
Parliament to close Panton Street and 
Arundell Square and this was obtained 
in August 1913. The Estates Gazette 
reported the sale of the whole estate in 
July 1915 for £250,000 (about £12 
million at today’s values). The reporter 
commented: ‘The Arundell Estate 
occupies one of the finest positions in 
the West End, immediately contiguous 
to Piccadilly Circus and the Haymarket 
. its future, whether as a West End 
palace of pleasure or for other purposes 
will be watched with great public 
interest’. 
shading indicates the land sold in 1810; the area shaded at the edge was 
retained until 1915. 
