Place Name
Originally Stafford Mews when it was laid out sometime in the first half of the 19thCentury, it became part of the Parish Lands Charity redevelopment of the Queens Road estate in the 1980s. It is most likely named after George Granville Leveson-Gower (January 9, 1758 – July 19, 1833) who held several titles but crucially was the Marquess of Stafford from 1803 to 1833 when he bought Landsowne House, sited opposite the the end of Friars’ Stile Road, from the Marquess of Townshend’s heir in 1811. He didn’t stay there long however as he rented it to Marquess Wellesley five years later. The house was sold in 1824 to the Marquess of Lansdowne when it got its new name. As for the George Granville Leveson-Gower, for a time he was the wealthiest man in Britain but he remains a controversial figure to this day because of his role in the highland clearances. As the 1st Duke of Sutherland he moved thousands of tenant farmers scratching out a living on his land and rehoused them in coastal crofts as part of a programme of improvement, it also meant that he could use the land for sheep farming which was far more profitable. The other possible contender is Richard Stafford, who was George III’s shepherd and who looked after the monarch’s flock of Merino sheep that were imported from Spain in 1788 and grazed at Kew.
