Place Name
Thought to be named after Edward Beeston Long (March 1, 1763 – September 25,1825), the Lord of Barnet Manor, who, despite living at Hampton Lodge in Seale, Surrey, was a major landowner in Barnet whose wealth was derived from slavery in Jamaica. His two great-grandfathers, Samuel Long and William Beeston, were founding figures of Jamaica as a slave society. The family owned the Lucky Valley and Longville plantations, enslaving hundreds of people, while his father authored a notorious, racist history of Jamaica in 1774. Although he never returned to Jamaica after age six, Long was supported by this enslaved labor throughout his life as a landed gentleman, and his heirs later received compensation upon the abolition of slavery. Exploringsurreyspast website: “The family had a colonial association with Jamaica reaching back to Samuel Long‘s participation in its military conquest in 1655. Much of the Longs’ later wealth was based on ownership or co-ownership of two plantations on the island, Lucky Valley and Longville (the latter named after the family), as well as a more short-term interest in at least one other. Therefore, they possessed hundreds of enslaved people: on the Lucky Valley estate alone between 1813 and 1826, when it was owned outright by Edward Beeston Long, the numbers recorded never went below 246 people and rose to as many as 290. Edward Beeston Long’s father was Edward Long, who belonged to the West India merchants’ and planters’ committee, and more notoriously was the author of what is now recognised as a racist work of history, the three-volume History of Jamaica published in 1774.” Long, who went to school at Harrow and later graduated from Cambridge University, married Mary Thomlinson, heiress of Barnet Manor, and thus took ownership in 1787.
