“At one in the afternoon of 5th January, 1863”, in the offices of Taylor, Stileman and Underwood, of 15 Furnival’s Inn, EC “the memorial is registered of the “Deed of Conveyance of the Ornamental Pleasure Ground called “Ladbroke Garden”, Notting Hill, in the Parish of St Mary Abbotts Kensington to Trustees for the Management and Grant Assignment of yearly rents for maintaining the same.” The rent to be paid by the freeholders or leaseholders of the houses backing on was 1 guinea (£1.05) (worth £58.86 in 2002 values), with strict penalties for late-payers or non-payers.
The meeting at Furnival’s Inn on that January afternoon, marks one of the last developments of the Ladbroke Estate. This started on the north side of Notting Hill in the 1820s and moved down the hill in squares, streets and crescents enclosing “ornamental pleasure grounds” at the pace dictated by property transfers, legal disputes, boom and bust in the London economy, the rise and fall of the Hippodrome race course experiment, bankruptcies of developers and building contractors.