The Southampton Arms, Highgate Road, NW5

Image: © Mike Quinn Taken: 7 Aug 2009

According to Gillian Tindall in "The Fields Beneath", the land in this area was seized on the establishment of the Commonwealth in the middle of the 17th C. At the Restoration, the manor reverted to the Crown, and then came into the possession of Isabella, Countess of Arlington, who became the wife of Henry Fitzroy, and left it to her son, Charles Fitzroy, one of Charles II's many progeny. It was still in the Fitzroy family in the late 18th C when the current Charles Fitzroy became Lord Southampton. He had only a leasehold interest in the property but, through the offices of his uncle, the Duke of Grafton, then Prime Minister, he managed to have an Act put through Parliament converting his leasehold to a freehold to himself and his heirs for ever. The Southampton estate received £millions (at 19th C values) from the subsequent vast amount of speculative building on the land. Hence the name of this rather unprepossessing little pub.

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