Estates in Bloomsbury
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 Duke of Bedford’s Estate
For many people the Bedford estate and Bloomsbury are synonymous, although sales of land in the twentieth century have reduced the original 112 acres to a mere 20 (Survey of London, vol. 5, 1914; Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)
The Bloomsbury holdings of the Duke of Bedford originated as the estate of Thomas Wriothesley, later Earl of Southampton, who acquired them at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1545 (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
This estate was inherited by Rachel (née Wriothesley), daughter of the fourth Earl of Southampton, when the Southampton title became extinct; it passed into the Russell family, Dukes of Bedford, through her marriage to the heir of the first Duke of Bedford
It was the widow of the fourth Duke, Gertrude Leveson-Gower, who was a prime mover in the residential development of the estate, which began in the late eighteenth century and was continued by her grandson, the fifth Duke, in the early nineteenth century (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
Much of this development was in the form of “wide streets and grand squares fit for the gentry” (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997); Donald Olsen described it as “the systematic transformation of the pastures of northern Bloomsbury into a restricted upper-middle class suburb” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
It was a well-timed development;
the Bedford Estate’s Bloomsbury rental was worth about £13,800 in 1805, but jumped to £17,242 in 1806 because of all the new buildings (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
By 1816 it was nearer £25,000, and by 1819 the London rental income was as much as all the other Bedford estates put together; by 1880 it was worth £65,791 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
The very northern part of the estate was, however, swampy and more difficult to build on, a problem exacerbated by the building slump of the 1830s, which led to areas like Gordon Square being part-developed and left unfinished for decades (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
For the crucial part played by Thomas Cubitt in the development of this estate, see Hermione Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt: Master Builder (1971)
The size and quality of the houses meant that for the most part, the Bedford estate was never likely to turn into a slum: “Except for Abbey Place and the other narrow courts east of Woburn Place, the Bloomsbury estate had no slums. Even its narrow streets south of Great Russell Street—such as Gilbert, Little Russell, and Silver streets—were, if undeniably lower-class in character, far superior to the streets just west and south of the estate” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
However, as the area became more popular and convenient as a location for institutions, the Bedford estate had to fight to preserve its genteel residential character; it found itself “with the task of preventing, or at least discouraging, the conversion of dwelling houses into private hotels, boarding houses, institutions, offices, and shops” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
In 1886 the Bedford steward reported 140 tenement houses in Bloomsbury; Little Russell Street had 21 of them (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
“By the middle of the century many of the huge houses in Bloomsbury had been illegally converted into private hotels...By 1892 Stutfield [the Bedford estate steward] had come to regard Montague Place as a lost cause” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
By the 1890s, too, the estate had lost the battle to keep itself separate from the flow of traffic and pedestrians, originally enforced by a system of lodges, gates, and residents’ tickets of entry: “The five lodges and gates on the Bloomsbury estate—in Upper Woburn Place, Endsleigh Street, Georgiana Street (later Taviton Street), Gordon Street (originally William Street), and Torrington Place—had all been erected by 1831, presumably by Thomas Cubitt” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
The removal of all these gates, except the one in Endsleigh Street, was authorised in 1890 by Act of Parliament; that of Endsleigh Street itself was authorised along with any other remaining gates in London in 1893 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
Developments in transport during the century had affected the estate for decades before the 1890s: “The suburban train and the season ticket reduced the significance of Bloomsbury’s proximity to the City and the Inns of Court. To make matters worse, three of the railways chose to locate their London termini virtually at the entrances to the Bedford estate, thereby depreciating its residential value” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
However, the estate “was generally successful in keeping bus and tram lines off its residential streets. For a long time the estate was able to exclude omnibuses from Hart Street (now Bloomsbury Way)...The 1806 Bloomsbury Square Act forbade hackney coaches from standing for hire in the square or within 300 feet of it. In 1886 the Bedford Office attempted, without success, to eject the cab ranks that had just been established in Tavistock and Russell squares” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
The estate’s desire to maintain a certain standard of living for its residents included attention to public health issues: “In 1854 the Duke had made at his own expense sewers in Tavistock Mews, Great Russell Street, Little Russell Street, Gilbert Street, and Rose Street. The estate also was engaged at the time in a programme of installing water closets in the houses on its property, and connecting them with the new sewers, as required by law...In a letter to the Lancet that year the physician to the Bloomsbury Dispensary praised the Duke’s sanitary projects, and attributed to them the mildness of the recent cholera epidemic on his estate” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
Along with concerns for the health of the residents, the estate continued to try to impose restrictions on what kind of tenants would be allowed in its houses: “The number of public houses and hotels on the estate fell from seventy-four in 1854 to fifty in 1869. By 1889 there were forty-one, and in 1893 only thirty-four...Such practices followed logically from the consistent desire to maintain Bloomsbury as an area of decency, uniformity, restraint, and above all of respectability” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
The desire to maintain the integrity and amenities of the estate persisted throughout the nineteenth century: “In 1895 the Duke decided to turn the waste ground north of Tavistock Place North and behind the houses in Upper Woburn Place into a lawn tennis ground” for some of the local tenants (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
Efforts to continue development and improvement in response to changing circumstances were assisted by the length of the leases granted on the estate right from the start of residential development in the 1770s: a standard 99 years: thus “[t]he later years of the century saw a great deal of new building in Bloomsbury as the original building leases fell in” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
The estate seized the opportunity for wholesale redevelopment of streets which were no longer suited to their location or which no longer fulfilled their original purpose, mews premises being a good example of the latter
“In 1880 the estate took down the block of houses between Store Street and Chenies Street, from the City of London’s estate on the west to Chenies Mews on the east...The estate widened Chenies Mews and formed it into the present Ridgmount Street. It proposed to let most of the vacant ground for institutions or factories, as it did not think the location suitable for dwelling houses” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
“In 1898 and 1899 the estate demolished the whole of the stable premises in Southampton and Montague Mews (between Southampton Row, Bedford Place, and Montague Street) and had the sites landscaped. The Duke had similar plans for Tavistock and Woburn Mews (east of Woburn Place) before he decided to sell the property to the London County Council for a housing scheme” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
“Far from being typical, the Bedford estate may well have been the best managed urban estate in England” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)
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Bloomsbury Square
Also known as Southampton Square, it was developed on the site of Allington Row, Seymour Road, and Vernon Row
It was developed in the seventeenth century as Southampton Square by the 4th Earl of Southampton after the Restoration, with a new town house (renamed Bedford House in 1754) for himself and shops and market nearby (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
The fields to the north remained as farmland with numerous ponds visible on maps of the time (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
The house occupied the whole of the north side, and the other three sides were originally Allington Row to the west, Vernon Row to the south, and Seymour Road to the east (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
Building of the Square was carried out piecemeal and no original houses remain (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
Some old houses remain, for example nos 5–6 on the southwest corner, built in the 18th century, possibly by Flitcroft (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
The demolition of Bedford House was followed rapidly by the erection of two terraces each of five houses on the north side by James Burton; their listed building information says they were built between 1800 and 1805
They are often said to be on the site of Bedford House but actually stand where its front gardens were
Horwood’s maps show the pre-existing houses on the south side of the square east of Southampton Place as still part of Hart Street; these are now numbers 43–45 Bloomsbury Square (consecutive)
Similarly, Horwood’s maps show nos 5 and 5a (modern numbering; built 1744) as being no. 23 Hart Street, although the numbering of this street is confusingly ambiguous on the maps
In the late seventeenth century this had been the site of a cherry orchard (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
Originally named after the Earl of Southampton, it was renamed Bloomsbury Square after the estate passed into the family of the Duke of Bedford in the seventeenth century
According to Horwood’s map of 1819, its numbering system was as follows: on the west side: consecutive numbers from 6 to 17, running from south to north; on the north side: consecutive numbers from 17 (sic) to 26, running from west to east (this obvious mistake is repeated from earlier editions of the map); on the east side: consecutive numbers from 28 to 38, running from north to south, but with two consecutive number 34s; and on the south side: consecutive numbers from 1 to 5, running from east to west
Earlier editions of Horwood (1807 and 1813) show only nos 28, 31–32, and 36 on the east side, 31 in the same place as in 1819, but 28 in the place of 29, 32 in the place of 33, and 36 in the place of 37
Its modern numbering is as follows: on the west side: consecutive numbers from 5 and 5a to 17, running from south to north; on the north side: consecutive numbers from 18 to 27, running from west to east; on the east side: Victoria House (completed 1932) in place of the original terraces; and on the south side: consecutive numbers from 43 to 47, and 1 to 4
It was a prestige development; the gardens were originally laid out by Repton, and living in Bloomsbury Square was the height of fashion in the early eighteenth century (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
“The Bedford office was generally successful in keeping bus and tram lines off its residential streets...The 1806 Bloomsbury Square Act forbade hackney coaches from standing for hire in the square or within 300 feet of it” (Olsen, Town Planning in London)
No. 8 was the family home of James Donaldson, architect and surveyor, and the father of Thomas Leverton Donaldson, the architect of buildings for University College and University Hall, who was born there in 1795 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Richard Meux, of the brewing family Meux, lived here in the early nineteenth century, with his wife, Mary (née Brougham), aunt of the Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham; she died here in 1812 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 10 was the home of dermatologist Robert Willan, according to its blue plaque, although he left London for health reasons in 1811 and died abroad in 1812
Brougham’s friend James Loch, lawyer and member of the provisional committee for the University of London, later UCL, lived here from at least 1825 to at least 1830 (correspondence, UCL Special Collections)
In 1816 a statue was erected here to Charles James Fox, Whig hero of the Duke of Bedford (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
The civil engineer Henry Austin (brother-in-law of Charles Dickens) lived here as a child; his father William was a doctor (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The actress Sally Booth lived here in the earlier part of the century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
George Man Burrows had a house and a medical practice here; his son George (later Sir George) Burrows, also a distinguished medical practitioner, was born here in 1801 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The judge Lord Ellenborough owned a house here in the early nineteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 6 was occupied from 1817 to 1829 by the Disraeli family, who moved there from King’s Road, Bedford Row, to be closer to the British Museum (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 14 was leased around 1820 by the surgeon Richard Bright, of Bright’s disease fame; he lived there with his first wife, who died after the birth of their only child in 1823, and subsequently with his second wife, whom he married in 1826 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Their increasing family caused them to move to a bigger house in 1831 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Nos 43, 44, and 45, a terrace of c. 1760, were altered in the 1830s, according to their listed building information; a plaque here commemorates the residence of the Earl of Chesterfield in an earlier house on this site
Habershon and Pite had an architectural practice here in the mid nineteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 2 was the home of the herald Edmund Lodge, who died there in 1839 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 17 had been remodelled by the architect Nash in 1777–1778 into two houses; in 1841 they were leased by the newly founded Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, who rejoined and remodelled them in 1860, adding a third floor (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain; listed building information)
No. 7 was the home of the Aikin scientific family; Charles (vaccinator who worked with Jenner) and his brother Arthur (geologist and chemist; former Unitarian minister) both died here in 1847 and 1854 respectively (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 39 was the site of the Hahnemann Hospital, established in 1850
In 1851 no. 28 was the office of the Secretary of the College of Preceptors, John Parker
No. 5 was from 1853 the office of James Brooks, the Gothic-revival church architect (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 38 (demolished) was the home of surgeon and editor of the Literary and Scientific Register, John W. G. Gutch, he died there in 1862 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 47 was the home of Thomas Horne, senior assistant librarian in the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum, who died there in 1862 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 29 was from 1862 to 1864 the home of Herbert Spencer, social philosopher and coiner of the term “survival of the fittest” (Gibson, The Capital Companion, 1998)
In 1865 the retired Principal Librarian of the British Museum, Anthony Panizzi, moved out of the Museum and into a house at 31 Bloomsbury Square, which he described as being “in a very unfashionable quarter, though very respectable” (Louis Fagan, The Life of Sir Anthony Panizzi KCB, late Principal Librarian of the British Museum, Senator of Italy etc. etc., 2 vols, 1880); he died there in 1879 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
In 1870, the Square featured in Charles Dickens’s last and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood; in the novel, a lodging house in Bloomsbury Square is used to provide a temporary haven for a single young lady, away from the threatening behaviour of men
No. 36 (now demolished) was the site of a house designed and built for his own occupation by architect and designer Edward Collcutt in about 1878 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Nos 2–3 were remodelled in 1887 for the College of Preceptors, according to their listed building information; they were still at this address in 1902, according to the Post Office Directory of that year
Nos 7–8 were rebuilt in 1881; the new no. 8 was home to playwright Francis Marshall and his wife, actress Ada Cavendish, until the former died there in 1889 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 17 was in the 1880s home to Dr Theophilus Redwood, who held the offices of Analyst for both Holborn and St Giles (Charles Dickens (jr), Dickens’s Dictionary of London 1888: An Unconventional Handbook (1888)
No. 6 was in the 1880s home to architect and campaigner Edward Prior and his wife Louisa (née Maunsell); their two daughters were born there (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Prior was at the same time active in the St George’s Art Society and its successor, the Art Workers’ Guild (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
No. 40 was the address of Middlesex County Magistrate John Carr in the 1880s (Charles Dickens (jr), Dickens’s Dictionary of London 1888: An Unconventional Handbook, 1888)
No. 29 was the family home and office of architect Sir Edwin Lutyens from his marriage to Emily Bulwer-Lytton in 1897 until 1914 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
When G. H. Duckworth walked round this area on 13 July 1898 as part of the project to update Booth’s poverty maps, he noted that it remained red, as it had been on the original map; this stood for “middle-class, well-to-do”
No. 20 was home in 1902 to Gertrude Stein (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, 1997)
The Post Office Directory of 1902 lists many institutions here, in addition to the Pharmaceutical Society and the College of Preceptors: there was the Froebel Society and National Froebel Union at no. 4, the office of the British Asylum for Deaf and Dumb Females at no. 5 and the the Private Schools’ Association at the same address, the Royal Institute of Public Health and the Institute of Sanitary Engineers at no. 19, and the Institute of Chemists of Great Britain and Ireland at no. 30
Nos 9–13 were transformed into the White Hall Hotel between 1909 and 1911, according to its listed building information
The east side of the square was demolished in the 1930s and replaced by Victoria House
No. 12 was the office of architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner in the later twentieth century
The Square also gained an underground car park
In the 1950s the entire Square was let to Holborn Borough Council by the Bedford estate
The Square briefly lost its prestige in the late twentieth century, when its northwestern part was derelict and set to be developed as the new British Library, although eventually another site was chosen for this development
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