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 Fitzroy (Duke of Grafton) Estate (also known as the Southampton Estate)

The north-west corner of Bloomsbury lies within what was originally Home Field, part of the manor of Tottenhall, owned from the seventeenth century by the Fitzroy family (Survey of London, vol. 21, 1949)

The names of the estate and many of its streets come from the name of family and its titles: Henry Fitzroy, an illegitimate son of Charles II, was created Earl of Euston and later Duke of Grafton in the seventeenth century, and his descendant Charles Fitzroy became first Baron Southampton in the eighteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The estate has no connection with the former Southampton estate in the south of Bloomsbury which belonged to the earlier Earls of Southampton and was acquired by the Dukes of Bedford when this Southampton title became extinct

The Bloomsbury part of the Fitzroy estate was developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century

Most of its streets have disappeared entirely under twentieth-century redevelopment, but one of its names, Euston, was the name chosen for the entirety of the Bloomsbury portion of the New Road in 1857, as well as the name given to the first of the three major mainline railway termini built along the road

 

Euston Place

It was a terrace of buildings on the south side of Euston Road, running between Gower Street and Gordon Street

It appears on Horwood’s map of 1813, although this only shows the first twenty-four houses

Horwood’s map of 1819 shows consecutive numbers from 1–25, running from west to east, with a further unnumbered seven or eight houses to the east

The 1841 census shows a diverse set of residents, many of independent means and/or keeping servants; there were solicitors and their families, army men and their families, a builder, a broker, an artist, a varnish manufacturer, physicians, and a young barrister

Other inhabitants listed in the 1841 census include three merchants, two of them foreign (with names which are hard to read, but one may be de Lizarzaburu), Casor Bruno, a professor of Italian, and his (presumed) daughter Sophy, a professor of music, as well as the Rev. Joseph Niblock, of the London High School

In 1857 the Metropolitan Board of Works recommended that the ‘New Road’ be renamed along its length, with the section between Osnaburgh Street and King’s Cross to be known as Euston Road; at the same time, all its individual terrace names should be abolished to lessen confusion, as along the length of the road this would “substitute three names for 50” (Report of the Metropolitan Board of Works, 30 June 1857, House of Commons, Accounts and Papers, vol. 17: Public Health; Woods and Forests, 30 April–28 August 1857)

At the same time, the Euston Road would be renumbered according to the new and supposedly rational principle whereby odd numbers were always to be on the left and even numbers on the right, working from the end of the street nearest to St Paul’s Cathedral (Report of the Metropolitan Board of Works, 30 June 1857, House of Commons, Accounts and Papers, vol. 17: Public Health; Woods and Forests, 30 April–28 August 1857)

Accordingly, all the separate terraces were incorporated into the road, and this section of it was renamed Euston Road, after the Euston estates of the Duke of Grafton whose land it crosses