Place Name
James Sayer was one of a prominent and well-connected family who moved to Richmond sometime in the mid-18thCentury. There were in fact two James Sayers, the first had been deputy steward of the manor. The second was his grandson an important member of the Vestry and an agent for all the royal property. It was the latter who had to remind the Parish Trustees in 1780 that George III had agreed to grant lands on the commons for a workhouse. The family owned a property on Richmond Hill. It was this = house referred to in the Vestry Minutes for June 1794 “Mr Sayer’s house on the hill with a field garden and offices having been let to H R H. the Duke of Clarence for £420 ready furnished, resolved that Mr Sayer be assessed for the same for Poor and Highway Rates at £200 p.a.” Sayer’s Walk was created as part of the redevelopment of the Queens Road estate by the Richmond Parish Lands Charity in the late 1970s and early 1980s on land that had been given to the Vestry by the king some two centuries earlier.
