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 Bedford Charity (Harpur) Estate
The Bedford Charity, also known as the Harpur Trust, was founded in the sixteenth century by Sir William Harpur, for the benefit of a school he had helped to found in Bedford (www.bedfordcharity.org.uk)
The original 13-acre site in the east of Bloomsbury which formed part of the original endowment is now reduced to a mere 3 acres, but is still worth millions (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)
The original estate encompasses a crooked area south of the Rugby estate and north and east of Red Lion Square, including the southern half of what is now Lamb’s Conduit Street but was known as Red Lion Street until the late eighteenth century
Its proximity to already-developed areas to the south and east of Bloomsbury, including the legal centre of Gray’s Inn, meant that it was developed residentially much earlier than the western and northern areas of Bloomsbury, beginning in 1686
Much of the development was carried out by unscrupulous builder Nicholas Barbon, who built houses all over the Red Lion Fields area without necessarily obtaining the permission of the legal owner first (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The Trust continues to own freeholds in Dombey Street, Bedford Row, New North Street, Sandland Street, Red Lion Street, and Theobald’s Road; it also invested in property in Eagle Street, outside the original estate boundaries, as a “vote of confidence in the present Estate’s future” (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)
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New North Street
Not to be confused with New North Street, Finsbury, or any other streets of the same name in London
It was developed by Barbon in the seventeenth century (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)
The area was formerly fields
It was named as a continuation of the already established Old North Street
Horwood’s map of 1819 shows on the east side, consecutive numbers from 2 (sic) to 20, running from south to north, and on the west side, consecutive numbers from 21 to 36, running from south to north, although as the street is split over different sheets this is not very clear
It was designed as a mainly middle-class residential development
In the early nineteenth century it was respectable enough for some of its inhabitants to be included in The Times birth, marriage, and death announcements; residents included solicitors like J. H. Webber (The Times, 8 December 1823)
It remains partly residential, although mainly rebuilt in the twentieth century
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