Post by Michael Lever

Trip down memory lane… While researching the background of a retail property in Woolwich, London SE18, I find that in 1964 numerous freeholds owned since 1812 by the Ogiby family were bought by Chesterfield Properties Ltd. My having acted for the freeholder/long leaseholder of a 52,000 sqft store at 71/77 Powis Street (acting since my client bought the investment in 1989 until 2024 when my client sold), I knew that Chesterfield Properties had owned part of the site upon which the store was built. The store was developed by Comgrove Properties Ltd, for which Chesterfield was surety. The investment I guess sold because part of the leasehold includes a raft over the railway line. But what I did not know until today was how what is known as the Woolwich Arsenal Estate, more than 100 properties including 56 retail shops, came to be owned by the Prudential Assurance Co Ltd. The answer is that the Prudential funded Chesterfield Properties and as mortgagee acquired the Woolwich interests, selling some in 2000 to the newly incorporated Powis Street Estates Ltd, (that on 20 November 2000 appointed Mark Pears and Trevor Pears and David Pears as directors. Soon after Alan Mattey (late of Barnett Ross) followed by Peter Khalastchi, also directors.) Powis Street Estates split the interests, created the Woolwich Arsenal Estate, and enabling Powis Street Estates to retain a significant holding in the town. The Prudential / Chesterfield arrangement might also answer a question that a client asked, when Edward Erdman, the eponymous commercial property agent, went broke owing approximately £6 million, how come an estate agent owed so much? The mystery solved perhaps because Edward Erdman personally was a director of Chesterfield Properties. In 2014, Powis Street Estates sold The Woolwich Arsenal Estate to Mansford for £52.2M. In 2018, Mansford sold the Estate to British Land for a headline price of £103M, a net yield of 4.1% As for 71/77, the store was developed for Littlewoods and let on a long lease. When Littlewoods closed their stores, they created sub-leases and 71/77 was sublet to New Look. I'm not entirely sure how Littlewoods interest ended up with Mansford, but that's for another day. As for the property whose background I am researching, the freehold was bought by my client in 2009 from a Powis Street Estates group company. In 1966, the land had been transferred by the Ogilby Estate (Woolwich) Ltd to The Prudential Assurance Company Ltd. And it's from wondering about the connection that I've added to my knowledge. With so many large firms of UK surveyors taken over by American, Canadian, and French congromerates, to be rebranded by their new masters, i think it's a great pity that their heritage - the property companies and the retailers the UK firms have acted for - is lost. A few lines on a website, itself not considered a durable medium, is nothing compared to the human stories that the property market owes its foundations.