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

Smith, Payne, and Smith

a summary of their Bloomsbury connections

Smith, Payne, and Smith was the banking firm whose partner John Smith MP was one of the three purchasers of the land on which the University of London (later University College) was built, the others being Benjamin Shaw and Isaac Lyon Goldsmid

The University employed the firm as its bankers (Henry Morley, ‘A Short History of the College’, University College Gazette, vol. 1, 22 October 1886, UCL Special Collections)