Jonathan Carr (property developer)

His father was a cloth merchant in the City of London, known for his radical political views; Jonathan inherited a share of his business.

[2][4] The architectural history author Mark Girouard writes that his family seem to have found him an embarrassment, suggesting that their description of Carr as "genial and optimistic" was a euphemistic gloss for "specious and not altogether honest".

[11][2] Carr commissioned the artist F. Hamilton Jackson to create publicity images for the development; one of them, showing the estate's church and neighbouring red brick buildings, has become "iconic".

[3] The journalist and author G. K. Chesterton jokingly compared Carr's red brick Bedford Park with John Burgon's 1845 poem Petra, "Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as time", writing "Match me this marvel save where aesthetes are, A rose-red suburb half as old as Carr".

[3] In 1881, St James's Gazette published the humorous Ballad of Bedford Park, seemingly penned by a resident of the garden suburb,[3] which began:[2] In London town there lived a man a gentleman was he Whose name was Jonathan T. Carr (as has been told to me).