Estates in Bloomsbury
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1 Duke of Bedford
2 City of London Corporation
3 Capper Mortimer
4 Fitzroy (Duke of Grafton)
5 Somers
6 Skinners' (Tonbridge)
7 Battle Bridge
8 Lucas
9 Harrison
10 Foundling Hospital
11 Rugby
12 Bedford Charity (Harpur)
13 Doughty
14 Gray's Inn
15 Bainbridge–Dyott (Rookeries)
Area between the Foundling and Harrison estates: Church land
Grey areas: fragmented ownership and haphazard development; already built up by 1800
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About the Battle Bridge Estate
The Battle Bridge field was originally a field to the west and east of Gray’s Inn Road, sharing its name with the name usually applied to this part of London prior to the erection here of the memorial to King George IV in 1830, when the area became known as King’s Cross instead (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
The development of the New Road (Euston Road) in the middle of the eighteenth century cut across the 18-acre part of the field west of Gray’s Inn Road, leaving most of it south of the new road (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
This land was owned by William Brock in 1800 and continued to be used for gardens and meadows until the early 1820s, when it was purchased by Thomas Dunstan, William Robinson, and William Flanders (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
The entire site they purchased was 16½ acres, 15¼ of them south of Euston Road but also including part of the north side of the road around what later became St Pancras station, in the north-east corner of Bloomsbury (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
Dunstan, Robinson, and Flanders subsequently applied for an Act of Parliament to develop the land, in 1824, at the same time as the neighbouring Skinners’, Cromer, and Harrison estates were being developed, although development of the Battle Bridge estate proceeded more slowly and was not completed until the 1840s (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
Development was delayed in part by the failure of the ambitious Panarmion scheme, a large entertainment complex with a theatre, galleries, and reading rooms as well as gardens and pleasure grounds, opened in 1830 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
This would ultimately have filled a large area bordered by Argyle Street, Liverpool Street, and Derby Street but which closed after two years in 1832 and was demolished, without ever having all been built (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
The subsequent residential development was not particularly high-class: “Although the houses which they built have the charm inherent in diminutive dwellings of the early 19th century, with picturesque balconies and fanlights, the Battle Bridge area was never ‘highly respectable’ in the social sense of the day” (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)
The main part of the estate, comprising Liverpool Street, Manchester Street, Derby Street, and Belgrave Street, was reported to be healthy in 1842 (J. Worrell, 28 October 1842, Appendix to Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1843)
This was in marked contrast to the neighbouring Cromer estate to the south, the courts at the northern end of the Foundling estate, and the other part of the original Battle Bridge field to the east of Gray’s Inn Road, which had the highest death rate of the local areas (J. Worrell, 28 October 1842, Appendix to Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1843)
However, the whole area was reported to be overcrowded and squalid in 1848 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952), and the coming of the railways in the latter half of the century, with the opening of the stations at King’s Cross and St Pancras, rendered it particularly vulnerable to the conversion of its houses into lodging-houses and cheap hotels, many of which rapidly acquired a dubious reputation which continued well into the twentieth century
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Argyle Place
Also known as Argyle Terrace/Argyle Walk/Sion Terrace
Not to be confused with Argyle Place, Regent Street
It does not appear on Horwood’s 1807 map, but it appears in the 1819 edition
It is not mentioned in the Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952
On Horwood’s map of 1819 it is named as Sion Terrace, and it was still listed under this name in the 1841 census
On the Ordnance Survey map of 1867–1870 it had become Argyle Place, but it was named as Argyle Terrace on the Stanford map of 1862 and Booth’s poverty map of 1898–1899
It may have been renamed after the Dukes of Argyll (sic), along with the other streets nearby which share this name (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998); the origin of its original name is unknown
Horwood’s map of 1819 shows the houses on the south side numbered consecutively from 1 to 7, running from west to east; the north side had not yet been developed
Its south-side houses were extremely small
No. 5 was home to a clock manufacturer called Breese in the early nineteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 7 was the home of Jeremy Bentham’s friend and biographer Sir John Bowring from 1828 to 1829, at a time when he was very poor; he subsequently moved the short distance to Millman Street (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The 1841 census shows its inhabitants to have been working-class: there was a brickmaker, a greengrocer, and several laundresses and washerwomen
In the twentieth century; its buildings were mostly demolished and replaced with primarily non-residential buildings
There is still what appears to be a Victorian building on the corner with Whidborne Street (pictured)
In 2008 the street was the site of a hostel for the homeless run by St Mungo’s (www.mungos.org)
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