DeBeauvoir Town, Middlesex Family History Guide

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DeBeauvoir Town is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Middlesex, created in 1842 from West Hackney Ecclesiastical Parish; located on Northchurch Terrace.

Alternative names: Beauvoir Town, St Peter, Northchurch Terrace, De Beauvoir Town

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

  • Parish registers: 1842
  • Bishop’s Transcripts: None

Nonconformists include:

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

Until 1820 the area now covered by De Beauvoir Town was open country with a few grand houses. In 1821, stimulated by the opening of the Regent’s Canal the previous year, developer and brickmaker William Rhodes (1774-1843), a grandfather of Cecil Rhodes, secured a lease for 150 acres of land from Peter de Beauvoir. Rhodes planned to build residences for the upper classes set on wide streets in a grid pattern, with four squares on diagonal streets intersecting at an octagon. However, work stopped in 1823 when Rhodes was found to have obtained his lease unfairly and after a court case spanning over 20 years the land reverted to the de Beauvoir family in 1834.

The delay in the building had meant that Rhodes’ clientele had since moved on to the new suburbs of the West End. The scheme was scaled down and of the planned squares only the southeastern was built, as De Beauvoir Square, although the diagonals partly survived in Enfield Road, Stamford Road and Ardleigh Road. Occupied in the 1840s by the newly emerging middle classes, the estate was almost wholly residential except around Kingsland Basin and the south-west corner where a factory was leased from 1823.

Boundaries

Its boundaries are defined by its highly geometric streets and an early 19th century canal. They are: Kingsland Road to the east, Regents Canal to the south, Southgate Road to the west and Balls Pond Road to the north; the middle of the last two roads marks the border of the London Boroughs of Hackney and Islington. Direct neighbours are Canonbury, Dalston and Shoreditch (the latter’s Hoxton and Haggerston areas).

Administration

  • County: Middlesex
  • Civil Registration District: Hackney
  • Probate Court: Court of the Commissary of the Bishop of London (London Division)
  • Diocese: London
  • Rural Deanery: Not created until 1858
  • Poor Law Union: Hackney
  • Hundred: Ossulstone (Tower Division)
  • Province: Canterbury