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

About the Doughty Estate

The Doughty estate in the south-east of Bloomsbury was part of extensive lands owned by the Doughty and Tichborne families, mainly outside London (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Its proximity to the Foundling Estate meant that in the late eighteenth century it was involved in exchanges of land to enable the Foundling Estate to connect its new residential developments with the rest of London (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

This also prompted the Doughty estate owners to begin developing their land (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The estate is sometimes also known as the Brownlow–Doughty estate, after William Brownlow, who built the streets in the late seventeenth century, and Elizabeth Brownlow, who had married into the Doughty family

In 1867 the estate was embroiled in the celebrated Tichborne case, when a claimant came forward asserting his identity as Sir Roger Charles Doughty-Tichborne, which would have entitled him to the Doughty estate in Bloomsbury along with other property (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry for Tichborne claimant)

Sir Edward Doughty, né Tichborne, came into possession of the Doughty estate in 1826 from his cousin, Mrs Elizabeth Doughty, daughter of George Brownlow-Doughty and granddaughter of the fourth Baronet Tichborne; he changed his name to Doughty as a condition of the settlement (Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 193, May 1853)

Prior to this, it was Henry Doughty who had been negotiating land deals with the Foundling Estate on behalf of the Doughty Estate (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The entire estate was sold off in 1921; Joseph Henry Bernard Doughty Tichborne, The Doughty Estate, Holborn (1921) has details and plans of the property included in the sale

Brownlow Mews

It continues the line of North Mews and King’s Mews to its south

It was developed in the early nineteenth century as a mews for the east side of Doughty Street, which was built from 1792 onwards

This had been an undeveloped, largely rural landscape in the eighteenth century, according to Rocque’s map of 1746

It is named, along with Brownlow Street, after Elizabeth Brownlow, who married into the Doughty family and whose father William (d. 1675) built Brownlow Street

Horwood’s map of 1819 shows the houses at the bottom end on the east side as having consecutive numbers from 1 to 3, running from south to north; no other buildings are numbered

Some of its earliest buildings survived into the twentieth century