Place Name
Originally Hope’s Alley. After local landowner Nathaniel Sprigg who had made a fortune in the Jamaica slave trade before moving to Barnes and building St Anns sometime around 1765. The property was secondary in importance only to Barn Elms. In the early 1750s Sprigg had partnered with Thomas Hibbert to run a slave-factor in Kingston, Jamaica, purchasing slaves off the ships from Africa and reselling them to planters and others. The pair also traded in the commodities from the plantations back to the UK. Sprigg and Hibbert were close friends. When Sprigg returned to England, where he became a well-connected country gentleman known for entertaining literary figures, such as Samuel Johnson, Hibbert asked him to care for his daughter, Jane Harry Thresher. Jane’s mother Charity Harry was a free black woman and Hibbert’s long-term partner. When Sprigg died in 1778 he left the property to Nathan Sprigg Jeffer[e]y, on condition that his widow, Arabella, could remain at the house for the rest of her life. But Nathan died four years later and the property was became Arabella’s. She in turn left it to Margaret Hibbert, niece of Thomas Hibbert senior, in 1824. Soon afterwards Miss Hibbert sought permission from the Vestry to close this passage, which separated part of the garden from the house. But when they agreed in return for £500 she did not pursue the matter. In the 1830s Lady Hope, widow of a former governor of Chelsea Hospital, was living at the house and caring for her orphaned teenaged nephew and niece. When they died she left Barnes and the entire estate was bought by Lord Lonsdale.
