Jonathan Carr (property developer)

Jonathan Thomas Carr (1845–1915) was an English cloth merchant turned

garden suburb in Chiswick, west London. While he probably was not made bankrupt by that development, he later received a record-breaking 342 bankruptcy petitions.^[1]

Life

Background and character

Jonathan Thomas Carr was born in 1845. His father was a cloth merchant in the

Norman Shaw soon resigned as estate architect, apparently exasperated, either by Carr's tight requirements or by his late payments.^[2]^[5]

Speculation and bankruptcy

It is popularly supposed that the Bedford Park development brought Carr to

bankruptcy petitions, a record.^[1] Both the Kensington Court and the Whitehall Court developments proved to be too risky, and by 1888 Carr's creditors had taken over both of them.^[9] Carr died in February 1915.^[1]^[10]

Developing Bedford Park

lithograph by Frederick Hamilton Jackson

, c. 1882

The decision to develop the Bedford Park estate was made either by Carr privately, or in partnership with his father-in-law Hamilton Fulton, in 1875.[2] Carr engaged some of England's best architects to design Bedford Park's houses and community buildings, starting with

Norman Shaw as estate architect. Shaw set the tone for the entire development.^[1]^[11]

The

British Queen Anne Revival, meaning a mixture of designs in red brick based on English and Flemish domestic architecture, often with tile-hung gables, and often with white-painted roughcast for part of the surface.^[11]^[2]

Carr commissioned the artist F. Hamilton Jackson to create publicity images for the development; one of them, showing the estate's church and neighbouring red brick buildings, has become "iconic".^[12]

Reception

Carr's work at Bedford Park was both admired and mocked.^[3] The journalist and author G. K. Chesterton jokingly compared Carr's red brick Bedford Park with John Burgon's 1845 poem Petra, "Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as time", writing "Match me this marvel save where aesthetes are, A rose-red suburb half as old as Carr".^[3]

In 1881, St James's Gazette published the humorous Ballad of Bedford Park, seemingly penned by a resident of the garden suburb,^[3] which began:^[2]

In London town there lived a man
   a gentleman was he
Whose name was Jonathan T. Carr
   (as has been told to me).

'This London is a foggy town'
   (thus to himself said he),
'Where bricks are black, and trees are brown
   and faces are dirtee.'

'I will seek out a brighter spot',
   continued Mr. Carr.
'Not too near London, and yet not
   what might be called too far.'

'Tis there a village I'll erect
   with Norman Shaw's assistance
Where men may lead a chaste correct
   aesthetical existence.^[2]

References

^
Bedford Park Society
. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
^
ISBN 978-0-300-03068-6
.

^
ISBN 978-1-317-27960-0
.

^ "Hamilton Henry Fulton (1813-1886)". Grace's Guide. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
^ "Bedford Park, Ealing". Hidden London. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
^ "Adolf Manfred Trautschold (German, 1854 – 1921)". The Knohl Collection. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
^ "The Exhibition that saved Bedford Park". The Bedford Park Society. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
^ "1879 – Tower House, Bedford Park, Chiswick, London". Archiseek. 5 October 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2021. Published in The Building News, October 31, 1879
^ "John James Stevenson". Scottish Architects. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
^ "Mr. Jonathan Carr". The Guardian. 4 February 1915. p. 6. Retrieved 7 February 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
^ ^a ^b Banerjee, Jacqueline (24 September 2008). "A road in Bedford Park, London's first "garden suburb"". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
^ "St Michael's in Health & Architecture exhibition". St Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park. 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 August 2021.

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