1500s

Marylebone can trace its beginnings as far back as the Norman Conquest. It originally consisted of two manors, Tyburn and Lilestone, as shown on this map. The map also shows the various private estates within Marylebone. The Portman Estate, which is marked ‘I’, originally covered an area of 270 acres stretching from Oxford Street to the Regent’s Canal, but it remained relatively undeveloped until 1755.

Sir William Portman, John’s grandson, joined the Middle Temple in 1517. In 1532 he was elected a Reader there – an important step – and the following year he was granted a wardship by Henry VIII – another distinction.

He went on to become a serjeant-at-law in 1540 and in 1546 a judge of the King’s Bench. In 1547 he was knighted by Edward VI and in 1554 under Queen Mary he reached the top of his profession, becoming Lord Chief Justice of England. Three years later he died and after a magnificent funeral, he was buried in the church of St Dunstan’s-in-the-West, Fleet Street. He had negotiated with remarkable success the political upheavals of the Reformation and the years of religious turmoil that followed and he was said to have displayed a degree of integrity and independence very unusual among the judges in those despotic times’.

He considerably enlarged Orchard House and in 1544 he acquired a number of manors that had previously belonged to four religious houses in Somerset, making the Portman family for the first time major west country landowners. However, this followed what would turn out to be his most important purchase – the 11 fields in Marylebone. Sir William is said to have acquired these fields as a means of supplying his wife with fresh milk. Almost 500 years later they remain the basis of The Portman Estate of today.

c1540

Sir William Portman enlarges Orchard House

Sir William Portman purchases the properties of four dissolved religious houses in Somerset.

The Somerset manors acquired by Sir William Portman in 1544 included North Petherton, Clavelshays, Durleigh, Goathurst and Dunwear. The family already owned property in Orchard Portman, Bickenhall, and Taunton. Thurlbear was added in 1556.

Sir William Portman’s death

In 1591 Sir William Portman’s son, Sir Henry, died after adding a further 1,000 acres to the family’s estates, including land in Thurloxton, Puckington, Pilton, East Chinnock and Closworth. The family also acquired the early 16th century manor house at West Coker at this time, described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘exquisitely beautiful’.