In 1677, Sir Thomas Grosvenor married the 12-year-old heiress Mary Davies and came into possession of 500 acres of swamp, pasture and orchards to the west of London.
More than 330 years later, a majority of those 500 acres remain in the possession of Sir Thomas’s family. Now, however, they are part of London’s most exclusive districts and the core of a property empire worth billions that stretches around the world.
With the death on Tuesday of the sixth Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, at the age of 64, the vast Grosvenor estate passes to his 25-year-old son Hugh, who inherits one of London’s remaining great landed estates, albeit one that underwent fierce modernisation during his father’s era.
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