Renter’s Farm was situated in Shirehall Lane close to Shire Hall, Hendon.

The Renter’s estate had been owned by the priory of St Bartholomew, Smithfield. Their Hendon estate consisted around 1538 of fifteen fields, crofts, meadows and some woodland, north of the Clitterhouse estate.

It may have become known as Renter’s after the freehold was held by Geoffrey le Renter in 1309. He was recorded as holding a freehold estate in 1321, along with ’Bourncroft’ - perhaps the same location as ’Bone Croft’, which lay north of Renters farm.

The manor was granted by the king in 1543, along with the manor of Edgware Boys, to both Sir John Williams and Antony Stringer. They granted it in 1548 to Sir Roger Cholmley, together with a barn, 30 acres of arable land, 40 acres of meadow, 60 acres of pasture and 26 acres of wood. Cholmley was a judge, who in 1565 left it to his servant and clerk Jasper Cholmley.

Until the 17th century much of Renter’s was woodland - used for making charcoal in the Tudor period.

In 1682 the manor was transfered by a Cholmley descendant, to Jerome Newbolt, great-grandfather of J.M. Newbolt of Winchester, who still held it in 1795. Manorial rights had already lapsed and in 1796 Newbolt’s estate - no longer described as a manor - consisted of twelve fields.

The estate was tenanted in 1795 by P. Rundell, a London goldsmith, and after his death in 1827 by his great-nephew Joseph Neeld, a solicitor. Neeld had married the eldest daughter of John Bond and had bought houses and land in Brent Street and also Burroughs Lane from Joseph Crosse Crooke in 1809.

So began the Neeld family’s Hendon holding - once the land became valuable for building, they amassed a great fortune.

At the close of the nineteenth century, the area directly around the farmhouse was used for Hendon Sewage Works.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Sir John Neeld had acquired a large block of land in Hendon stretching south from the Burroughs to Park Road and including part of the old Renter’s property. His land was developed for housing by Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, the grandson of Joseph Neeld, who inherited in 1900.

---

Main source:	British History Online
	Further citations and sources