Career
Article subject to corrections, Cator accumulated a large estate, his heir John Barwell Cator acquired permission to sell plots of land in from 1825, he and his heir Albemarle Cator continued to lease plots to various builders. Other purchasers of parts of the estates contributed to property and railway development I.e. Wythes, Forster, Redman throughout the 19th century and into the 20th.
Records in Bromley Local Studies library and elsewhere.
John Cator was not an urban developer implied in the first sentence. The earliest ordnance survey maps post John Cator"s death still show a patchwork of fields.
The son of John Cator, a Herefordshire timber merchant and Quaker, Cator joined the family business which had relocated to a new London base at Mould Strand Wharf (now the Bankside site of the Tate Modern art gallery) in Southwark, and sought to capitalise on the growth of the capital by investing in property, mainly in south-east London and Kent. In 1778, Fanny Burney wrote:
He was appointed High Sheriff of Kent for 1780-1781.
Married to Mary Collinson (daughter of botanist Peter Collinson), he was Lord of the Manor of Beckenham from 1773 and devoted much of his energies to transforming the village into a significant suburban town, with opulent houses situated along wide tree-lined avenues.
Slightly closer to central London, he also planned a major estate – today known as Blackheath Park or the Cator Estate – to the east of the centre of Blackheath village, and south-east of the Heath itself. Work started in 1783 after Cator bought the Wricklemarsh mansion (formerly owned by Sir Gregory Page) and its 250-acre (1 km²) estate for a bargain £22,250. The Palladian mansion (designed by architect John James) was gradually demolished from 1787 onwards and Cator began to break up the estate into small packages of land to be individually developed.
Among the earliest commissions was one for architect Michael Searles to design a 14-house crescent, "The Paragon", on the south side of the Heath.
Some of its colonnades are said to incorporate pillars used in Page"s mansion. Cator died in 1806 and was buried in the churchyard of Street George"s Church, Beckenham.
Cator"s descendant, Elizabeth Cator (died 1959) was the mother of Michael Bowes-Lyon, 17th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.