Royal Owned London

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 89 months ago
Royal Owned London
The Oval — all owned by royals. Photo by Kris in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Ever wondered how much of London the Royal Family owns? We did too, so we put together this map. It's everything we could find that has its ultimate ownership with the Crown or a member of the Royal Family — this information hasn't been that easy to track down so some areas are a bit vague, and we have no doubt we've missed something off. If you know better, please enlighten us in the comments.

Actual ownership is also a bit fuzzy. What's known as The Crown Estate is land and property belonging to 'the Sovereign' — the Queen isn't the personal owner, plus The Crown Estate is a public body and the surplus money goes to the Treasury. In return, the monarch gets money from the Civil List. The Crown Estate manages part of the portfolio, the Royal Parks Agency runs the parks, Historic Royal Palaces runs the palaces that aren't used by the Royal Family — the Tower of London, Hampton Court, the Banqueting House, Kew and the public bits of Kensington Palace, and the Royal Household runs the occupied palaces.

The Duchy of Lancaster belongs to the Sovereign and provides income for the reigning monarch. It owns the Savoy Estate, which includes the historic Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, but as for other property? In early 2012 Ian Visits went to Hadley Wood and Tower Bridge Business Park to see the other bits of the portfolio, but now the Urban Survey makes no mention of anything in London other than the Savoy Estate.

The Prince of Wales's Duchy of Cornwall owns 15.7 hectares of Greater London, comprising 39 residential properties and 18 commercial properties. Can we find out where those properties are? No, we can not.

Click through to the Google map to see the full key, and some of the smaller bits that don't show up on the zoomed-out version — spot the warehouse currently let to Carlsberg as a distribution centre.

Last Updated 14 October 2016