File:Capper Street - geograph.org.uk - 796129.jpg

It would be nice to think that the street was named after my grandfather, who was a senior lecturer in soil mechanics at University College, a couple of streets away. But sadly this is not the case.

In fact it was named after the farm which covered the area north of Great Russell Street, called Capper Farm, farmed in the mid 18th century by a Christopher Capper and his two spinster daughters, on land owned by the Duke of Bedford, the main use of which was as a holding area for stock from his lands at Woburn on their way to Smithfield market.

With the built up area of London reaching out to Oxford Street at the time, the farm was the first bit of open land to the north, and its fields therefore held an attraction to the town dwellers. Duelling was still legal at the time, and fights often took place in the fields. One was between two brothers fighting over the same woman, and who both lost their lives in the duel. A legend grew up that the exact spot where the brothers had fought, together with the place from where the woman had watched the duel, would always be bare, with no grass regrowing. This proved self-fulfiling, in that so many people went to check it out that their trampling ensured that no grass could regrow.

The fields also attracted vagrants and a 'vile rabble of idle and disorderly people' often 'insufficiently dressed' who played cricket and other games there.

In an early example of "Get Off My Land", so beloved of Geographers, the guardians of the place were really the two Capper sisters, Christopher Capper's daughters. Apparently they dressed in a most unladylike manner in riding habits and men's hats. And they took a great dislike to the abuse of their fields, their particular targets being the boys who used to fly kites and bathe in the ponds. Their response? One used to pursue the kite fliers with a pair of shears, with which she cut the strings, while the other used to confiscate the clothes of the bathers.

The end came with the building of New Road (the route now followed by Marylebone Road, Euston Road and Pentonville Road) as a new northern bypass (to the building of which the Capper sisters took a strong NIMBY line in their objection - the dust from the new road would ruin their hay). In another parallel with modern day practice, the open land inside the bypass succumbed to development, and Capper Farm was no more. At least its name lives on.

With thanks to http://www.storyoflondon.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=130 which I used as my source for this fascinating account.

I am pleased to report that I was not accosted by any of the local tenants when taking this picture, so at least round here it seems that the attitude of the Capper sisters died with them. I would also like to think that they were in no way related to me.

The other feature of the photograph, the Mortimer Arms pub, is presumably explained by the fact that, according to page 385 of "London; Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis and its Neighbourhood, to Thirty Miles Extent, From an actual Perambulation - Vol IV" by David Hughson (1807) (see https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VcuMPnnpvTgC ), the estate at the north end of Gower Street, which runs parallel to Tottenham Court Road, was owned by a Mr Mortimer. Mortimer Market, off Capper Street, is presumably similarly connected.