Buckingham Palace
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LORDS OF LONDON (part 1)
City Corporation
Many centuries ago, London already had two centers: one economic, in the City, and the other political and cultural, in Westminster. Hence the two oldest holdings of London – the holdings of the Crown, established in 1066 under William the Conqueror, and the holdings of the City Corporation.
The City of London Corporation is the municipal administration of the district. Its origins date back to the 12th century. The territory currently managed by the Corporation is the famous 'Square Mile' (1.22 square miles, or just over three square kilometers), which houses the headquarters of leading financial and insurance companies.
In the City, the Corporation owns and operates two covered markets – Smithfield Market and Leadenhall Market. It also owns land outside the City: parks totaling 40 square kilometers in Greater London and its surroundings, including most of Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, and many public spaces in Northern Ireland. In addition, the organization owns the Old Spitalfields Market and Billingsgate Fish Market in the neighboring London borough of Tower Hamlets (borough – an administrative unit of the British capital).
A branch of the Corporation, Bridge House Estates, owns bridges in London – Southwark, Millennium, London Bridge, Blackfriars, and Tower Bridge.
Crown
The Queen does not personally own land. The Crown's property officially belongs to the organization Crown Estate (literally, 'Crown Holdings'). The Royal Parks Agency manages parks, Historic Royal Palaces manages palaces not used by the royal family (these are the Tower, Hampton Court, Banqueting House, public areas of Kensington Palace), and the Royal Household manages palaces – royal residences. The Duchy of Cornwall of Prince Charles of Wales owns 15.7 hectares of Greater London, including 39 residential properties and 18 commercial ones.
The British royal family, including the Crown Estates, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, owns about 274 thousand hectares. The value of the Crown Estates portfolio exceeds £8 billion (as of 2013), half of which (£4 billion) is urban properties. Among the Crown's holdings in London are Regent Street and part of St. James's Street in the West End. It also owns many commercial properties in Oxford, Exeter, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Harlow. In addition, the Crown owns 144 thousand hectares of farmland and woodland, the Windsor Estate (6,300 hectares), and marine territories.
Church
The Church of England today owns only a tenth of the land it owned in the Victorian era. In particular, it owns a plot of land north of Hyde Park, including shops and residential buildings, the Royal Lancaster Hotel, and several hundred parking spaces.
Foreigners
Many seriously fear that a significant part of London will fall into the hands of wealthy foreigners. Foreign investors purchase about a third of prime real estate in the center of the British capital. They even own many famous landmarks.
Battersea Power Station has Malaysian owners, One Nine Elms has Chinese, the famous 'Gherkin' has Brazilian. London City Hall, where the office of London Mayor Boris Johnson is located, belongs to Kuwait. Many properties on Savile Row are owned by Norway.
One Qatari royal family alone owns: 95 percent of the Shard skyscraper, part of Canary Wharf, freeholds in Chelsea Barracks and the Olympic Village, the American embassy building on Grosvenor Square, a stake in Camden Markets, Harrods department store, numerous apartments in the luxury residential complex One Hyde Park, and more than a quarter of the Sainsbury's supermarket chain.
Everything suggests that London is becoming increasingly cosmopolitan, and the old order in which all land belonged to the Queen and the nobility is becoming a thing of the past.