What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Cartoon satirising the British College of Health

Bloomsbury Institutions

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

James Burton (née Haliburton) (1761–1837)

He began his career as a speculative builder in 1785

When the Foundling Hospital began to investigate the possibility of developing its land, he approached the estate to request permission to become its major developer

Although the estate was at first sceptical about Burton personally and reluctant to lease a large proportion of its land to any single developer, Burton’s success with the early building leases he did succeed in obtaining meant that he was allowed more and more of its land (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952), being responsible for almost six hundred houses built between 1792–1802 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

As well as becoming the major developer of the Foundling Hospital estate land, he also built houses on the neighbouring Bedford, Somers, and Skinners’ estates

For more general information about James Burton, see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography