Thomas Leverton was a key figure in St Giles-in-the-Fields parish at the beginning of 19th century. He was a surveyor and distinguished architect who built several of the houses in Bedford Square, particularly Nº 1. He lived and worked at 13 Bedford Square from 1795 until his death in 1824.
The Thomas Leverton Charity, founded with money left in his Will, was intended to benefit six deserving local women who may have fallen from affluence into distress. In 2005, it was amalgamated into St Giles-in-the-Fields and Bloomsbury United Charity, which still makes a semi-annual award to one annuitant – a distant relative of the founder. His gift may still form part of the modern charity’s financial endowment of £1.1m some 200 years later!
A portrait of Thomas Leverton (pictured above), bequeathed by his relative to the trustees, hangs on the staircase of the south lobby of St Giles-in-the-Fields Church.
During his lifetime, he was a Justice of the Peace for Westminster, Kent and Middlesex. He was also surveyor to the Grocers’ Company, for whom he built a new Hall, completed in 1802 (since demolished). He features briefly (and photographs of his portrait) in two new history books about the Grocers’ Company and St Giles-in-the-Fields parish.
Leverton was born in Waltham Abbey, Essex in 1743 and died on 23rd September 1824 in London. He was buried at Waltham Abbey and is commemorated there by a beautiful memorial in the church. A commemorative plaque is also mounted on the North Gallery of St Giles-in-the-Fields Church, which reads:
Sacred to the memory of Thomas Leverton Esquire, who departed this life on the 23rd day of September 1824, aged 81 years. He was in the Commission of the Peace for the City of Westminster and for the Counties of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. His remains are interred in the Parish of Waltham Abbey Holy Cross, Essex, in which he was born; but his name will long be remembered with gratitude in this Parish, in which he was a resident householder for more than sixty years and to which, besides other considerable benefactions, he left by his Will, the sum of 5000 Pounds, three percent consols: the interest thereof to be applied annually for the benefit of six deserving females, who may have fallen from affluence into distress: a preference being always given to such as are widows and inhabitants of the united Parishes of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury.