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 Foundling Hospital Estate

In addition to its work as an orphanage, the Foundling Hospital became, almost by accident, a major landlord in the fast-developing Bloomsbury area in the nineteenth century

The Governors of the Hospital had been forced to buy much more land (56 acres in total) than was actually needed for the orphanage itself, and by the late eighteenth century, when the Hospital faced a shortage of funds, residential development of the surplus land became its best financial option (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The planned development met with opposition from both local residents who had hitherto enjoyed uninterrupted views, such as the residents of Queen Square and Great Ormond Street, and also from concerned citizens who worried about the adverse effect on the health of the children as the surrounding area was built up (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The Hospital faced the further difficulty of the isolation of its site, and the surrounding estates which intervened between it and the established main traffic routes in the area; only Red Lion Street connected the estate’s land with the outside world (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Another potential problem was posed by St George’s Burial Grounds, north of the Hospital buildings; if the estate opened up road access across this part of its land, it risked funeral processions travelling through its streets (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Despite (or perhaps because of) these difficulties, the Governors of the Hospital went ahead with the development in the most careful and considered way possible, aided by their architect and surveyor, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, who submitted his plans to them in 1790 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The plans included a variety of residential housing of different classes, with the two grand squares of Brunswick Square and Mecklenburgh Square at the heart of the estate, flanking the Hospital buildings (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Development began almost immediately, thanks largely to James Burton, who took building leases on large parts of the estate from the 1790s onwards, and who became its major builder (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Difficulties in executing the plans, including complications caused by insufficiently-supervised subcontractors and the (unjustified) allegations of rival surveyors about the poor quality of his work, led Cockerell to be edged out by 1808 and replaced by Joseph Kay (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The estate was originally planned as being entirely residential, and requests to build shops or convert houses into shops were not permitted in Compton Street or Great Coram Street, although some were allowed in Kenton and Upper Marchmont Streets, which later became shopping streets sanctioned as such by the estate (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Despite its proximity to the Bedford estate and the high standard of much of its housing, similarly aimed at the well-to-do middle classes, the Foundling Hospital estate faced quite different problems from the Bedford estate during its first century of residential development

One perennial problem in the area was prostitution: in 1827, 34 inhabitants of Hunter Street petitioned the estate paving commissioners saying the street “has become the common walk of the lowest prostitutes”, and in 1845 the same problem was reported in Brunswick and Mecklenburgh Squares (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Another problem was the development of slums on the estate, particularly in its mews, which turned out not to be needed by many of the residents of the estate (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984); the Foundling Hospital estate appears to have been much less successful in this respect than the Bedford estate

Instead of being used for stabling, the Foundling Hospital’s designated mews were increasingly occupied by poor families, often criminal, and “chiefly Irish” in Compton Place, according to complaints made by residents of Compton Street in 1823

The Irish were also said to be causing problems in courts behind Great Coram Street in 1845 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Compton Place was one of the two main slum areas which developed on the estate; it was continually altered, pulled down, and re-erected, only for the same problems to recur, and complaints were still being made in 1858 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

The other problem area was on the western edge of the estate, between Tavistock Place and Bernard Street (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

“In January 1857 the medical officer of St Pancras suggested a permanent solution: the purchase of all the leasehold interests, followed by the demolition of the buildings. On their site could rise model lodging houses, the great new enthusiasm of the Victorian philanthropist” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Despite statistics showing the alarmingly high death rates in the slum areas, it was to be more than a decade later that such drastic measures were finally approved on the Foundling estate, in comparison to the building of model lodging houses on the Bedford estate as early as 1849–1850 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

“The 1870s finally saw the beginning of a vigorous program of demolition and redevelopment, but the initiative came from outside the Foundling Hospital. In the summer of 1872 the St Giles’s Board of Works obtained a legal order for the demolition of the whole of Russell Place and Coram Place. Later that summer the Peabody Trustees applied to purchase the freehold of Coram, Russell, Marchmont, and Chapel places, together with a portion of Little Coram Street. After some hesitation the governors agreed to sell the property for £5400” (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

The vestry of St Pancras condemned property in the Colonnade and in Poplar and Compton Places in 1884, buying up the leasehold interests and surrendering them to the Foundling Hospital, although nothing was built on the cleared sites in Compton Place until the late 1890s, and there were still 18 houses whose leases did not expire until 1907 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Like the Bedford estate, the Foundling Hospital estate had insulated itself by a gate at the end of Heathcote Street and by having few streets going across the estate’s northern boundary (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Boarding houses or let apartments were not allowed in the two showpiece squares until 1892 (Brunswick Square) and 1909 (Mecklenburgh Square) (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

The rental income of the Foundling Hospital estate was over £18,930 by 1897; the entire estate was eventually sold for £1.65 million in 1926 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984), after an unsuccessful attempt in the early 1920s by the University of London to acquire the site and turn it into a “University Quarter” (The Times, 26 May 1920, 1 October 1920, 7 October 1920)

Another large local institution, Great Ormond Street Hospital, made an equally unsuccessful attempt to take over the site when it was sold

Hunter Street

It is in the east of Bloomsbury, leading south from Leigh Street to Brunswick Square, continuing the line of Judd Street on the neighbouring Skinners’ estate

The Foundling estate boundary was south of the top end of the street, around the area which became Hunter Place

Hunter Street iself was developed between 1801 and 1812

It was developed along the line of an old straight track which ran from Lamb’s Conduit to Bowling Green House, shown on maps such as Rocque’s of 1746

It was named after John Hunter, the surgeon and anatomist, of the Hunterian Museum

No. 11 held the successful medical practice of Scottish physician and Benthamite public health reformer Neil Arnott from 1811 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 16 was one of the studios of the royal miniaturist William (Marquess) Grimaldi in the early nineteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 54 (house demolished; site now occupied by the Brunswick Centre) was the birthplace of John Ruskin in 1819, when his father was a partner in the sherry-importing firm of Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq, and his mother a publican’s daughter and cousin to his father; the family moved to Herne Hill in 1823 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 36 was the home in the 1820s of the radical Baptist Jonathan Dawson, who ran a grammar school (Hunter Street Academy) here, and his wife Rachel (née Biggs); their son George, radical preacher and activist, mainly in Birmingham, was born there in 1821 and educated at the school (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

In 1827 34 inhabitants of Hunter Street petitioned the estate paving commissioners saying the street “has become the common walk of the lowest prostitutes” (quoted in Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

Another problem was that of people wanting to open shops here: a butcher’s shop which did open and which slaughtered animals on the premises caused much annoyance to residents (Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

No. 42 was the home of artist John Sell Cotman, drawing teacher at King’s College School, from 1834 until his death there in 1842, whose son and assistant Miles Cotman, drawing teacher at King’s College School after his father’s death, continued to live there until 1843, while another son, John Joseph Cotman, had also lived there briefly in 1834 but could not adjust to teaching; both these sons died in poverty (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 55 was where biblical scholar and morning preacher at the Foundling Hospital John Hewlett died in 1844 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Charles Cruft, jeweller and goldsmith, lived here in the 1850s; his son Charles Alfred Cruft, the founder of Cruft’s dog show, was born here in 1852 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The artist Charles James Lewis had a studio here in the 1850s (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 4 was the home of Scottish liberal journalist William Weir, who died there in 1858 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Ellen Ranyard (née White), reformer and typhoid survivor, moved her family there in 1857 so that she could help to civilise the nearby slum areas; she subsequently founded the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission (Biblewoman) movement and Ranyard nurses, dying at the family home in 1879 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 13 continued as the family home of the Ranyards in the later part of the century; mathematician, astronomer, and early London County Council member Arthur Ranyard, son of Ellen, died there in 1894 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)