Family homes, foreclosures and fickle banks
SIR – In his piece on Damien Hirst’s occupancy of my old family home, Toddington Manor (Features, January 15), Clive Aslet tells how it was taken from us through nefarious banking practices.
We inherited the estate at Toddington from Edward the Confessor’s nephew, and at the end of the 18th century we inherited our estate at Gregynog in Powys, famous for its private printing press.
The right way for Lloyds Bank to approach our debt, arising on both estates out of the late 19th-century agricultural depression, would have been to allow us to sell assets at a comfortable pace for their proper value. Instead, for reasons unknown, it filed for bankruptcy, to result in a foreclosure.
Later on, the Gregynog Press was organised by Thomas Jones, secretary to Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin. On reaching the Lords, his daughter, Lady White, felt that 70 years on was a reasonable time to expect Lloyds to disclose the intent behind its foreclosure. In 1994 she encouraged me to put down my amendment to the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill on banks’ records.
The failure of Lloyds to respond exposes the evasiveness of banks about their records. On the one hand, the Independent Banking Advisory Service, which deals with malpractice, recommends the use of proper search powers, such as those held by HMRC. On the other, the Historical Manuscripts Commission warns that such measures would result in the concealment and early destruction of the records which it seeks to preserve.
Lord Sudeley London NW1