Sir Jimmy James
Shrewd property agent who transformed the Grosvenor Estate into a multi-billion pound company
SIR JIMMY JAMES, who has died aged 85, was a property expert who steered the changing fortunes of the Grosvenor and Duchy of Cornwall estates.
James was appointed in 1968 as chief agent of the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate, comprising most of Mayfair and Belgravia plus extensive rural landholdings and interests in Canada.
It was in poor financial shape and heavily burdened by death duties, ownership having passed from the flamboyant 2nd Duke (“Bend’or”) who died in 1953 to the young Gerald Grosvenor, later 6th Duke. In the economic crises of the 1970s, “to put it mildly, we had a bit of a problem,” the Duke later recalled; James had to fly to backwards and forwards to Canada “just to keep that business afloat while our home base was leaking like a sieve.”
But with James at the Duke’s right hand the estate’s fortunes were transformed over two decades from a traditional aristocratic landlord into a multi-billion pound property company with a shrewdly managed portfolio of investments at home and abroad, as far afield as Australia and Hawaii.
Meanwhile, the estate rigorously conserved the stucco and brick elegance of its London streets and squares – while fighting a rearguard battle against leasehold reforms that diluted its control.
On retiring from executive duties at Grosvenor in 1993, James was invited by the Prince of Wales to become Secretary and Keeper of the Records – effectively chief executive – of the Duchy of Cornwall. The new role involved him in projects in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles which he greatly enjoyed, and at Poundbury, the new town in Dorset designed according to the Prince’s architectural preferences. James embraced the concept with enthusiasm, admiring the Prince’s hands-on involvement and taking particular pride in its intermixing of social and freehold housing – “and you can’t tell the difference”.
John Nigel Courtenay James, always known as Jimmy, was born in Bournemouth on March 31 1935. His father Frank, a chartered surveyor, and uncle Henry, a dentist, were both killed by a stray German bomb on the town in 1941.
Jimmy and his younger brother were brought up by their mother Beryl, née Burden, at Corfe Castle and Wimborne. Jimmy was educated at Sherborne School, worked for a local surveying firm while qualifying at night school, and did National Service in the Honourable Artillery Company, including a stint in Suez.
He joined Grosvenor Estate in 1961 as a junior surveyor and rapidly made his mark, spending two years in Vancouver overseeing joint venture projects before being promoted to chief agent and estate surveyor – only the 11th person to hold that post since 1720.
He was much in demand for the breadth of his expertise, and James’s energy and well organised diary enabled him to take on a huge portfolio of commitments in his later career. He was president of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1980-81 and a Crown Estate Commissioner from 1984 to 1999, a vice-chairman of Sun Alliance and non-executive director of Woolwich Building Society and Royal Bank of Scotland.
He was also chairman of the Architectural Heritage Fund, deputy chairman of the RNLI, a member of the Commission for New Towns, a trustee of the Henry Smith Charity (owner of a Kensington estate) and a governor of Sherborne.
In his Dorset retirement he was active in the Royal British Legion, as a trustee of Weldmar Hospice in Dorchester, and as a parish councillor in his village of Church Knowle, where he enjoyed nothing better than helping organise the annual summer fete.
Jimmy James was appointed CBE in 1990 and KCVO in 1997. He married, in 1961, Jane St Clairford, who died in 2018, and is survived by their son and daughter. Sir Jimmy James, born March 31 1935, died February 16 2021