A Changing World: Swinging London
- Restoration to Regency
- The Era of Empire and War
- The Blitz
- Swinging London
- A Cultural Shift
- The Quiet Revolution
Apple Boutique in Baker Street 1968
The seventh Viscount Portman died in 1948 leaving an Estate valued at £10 million and subject to Estate duty of £7.6 million. Originally the Portman family had owned everything from Baker Street to Edgware Road, and from Oxford Street north almost to Lord’s.
To pay the duty the family had to sell thousands of acres of land in Dorset and Buckinghamshire. This was not enough: in 1951, the northern part of the London Estate, around Dorset Square, had to go: then, the next year, the area around Crawford Street.
For most of London’s ground landlords, it must have looked like a depressing and prophetic fate in store for them all. It could be only a matter of time, it must have seemed then, before all London’s great Estates were sold off and broken up.
When capital transfer tax was introduced in 1974, the Portman Estates set up discretionary trusts to enable it to face the future without the fear of financial disaster.
If the social tectonic plates that had held Britain in a state of suspended animation were forced apart by the upheaval of the war, then they were irreversibly altered by the cultural earthquake of the 1960s. If New York with its multi-cultural verve had been the dominant city of the 40s, and Rome, with its blend of chic and antiquity, the city of the 50s, then London was unquestionably the world capital of the 60s. Time Magazine’s cover story labelled it ‘Swinging London’ - reflected in a stylish youth culture that was forward-looking, irreverent and self-confident.
Bell-bottoms, the Beatles, and boutiques were dotted across London, and the Portman Estate was home to some of the most distinguished movers and shakers in that cultural revolution.
With thanks to Conrad Keating