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 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)

Russell Square

No other names, but now including the former Southampton Terrace, and the pre-existing Bolton House (formerly Baltimore House)

It is in the middle of Bloomsbury, on the western edge of the Bedford ducal estate

It was laid out from 1800 by James Burton as part of the planned development of the estate following the demolition of Bedford House, which originally stood on the site, surrounded by gardens and fields (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1997)

The east side was the first to be built, between 1800 and 1817; the south side followed, then the gardens (by Repton), and finally, the west and part of the north side were built (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1997)

Bolton House predated the development of the square; it was built in 1759 as Baltimore House and renamed after a later occupant, the Duke of Bolton (Walford, Old and New London, vol. 4, 1878) and after the Square was developed, it became integrated into its numbering scheme

The relationship between the houses converted from Bolton House and the houses of Russell Square is confusing, especially as all have since been demolished; however, it seems from a comparison of maps and textual descriptions that the resulting houses became nos 66 and 67 Russell Square (no 66 being the larger and further south of the two) while the third unit, attached at the back of these houses next to what was then Brunswick Place, became known as Bolton Gardens and later still as 71 Russell Square

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, further houses were built on what had been the gardens to the north of Bolton House; these were nos 68–70 Russell Square

Its name comes from the family name of the Dukes of Bedford

Numbering is consecutive and runs anti-clockwise from Guilford Street, as follows: on the east side, consecutive numbers from 61 to 67, and from 1 to 8 (including a 1A), running from south to north (no. 67 was originally Bolton House, which was ultimately renumbered as 67–71); on the north side, consecutive numbers from 9 to 24, running from east to west; on the west side, consecutive numbers from 25 to 43, running from north to south, and on the south side, consecutive numbers from 44 to 60, running from west to east

It was a prestige development of big houses in a very large square, larger than any residential square previously built in London (Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London Buildings North, rev. edn, ed. Bridget Cherry, 1998)

The Swiss-born physician and chemist Alexander Marcet and his wife, the science author Jane Marcet (née Haldimand) took a house here upon their marriage in 1799; their four children were brought up here (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The banker David Bevan and his wife Favell (née Lee) lived in a house here; their daughter Favell Lee Bevan (later Mortimer), the evangelical author, was born here in 1802 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 21 was the home of Sir Samuel Romilly, his wife Anne (née Garbett), and their children from 1803 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 37 was the home of judge Sir James Mansfield (listed as resident in Boyle’s directories of 1808 and 1820); he died there in 1821 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The bronze statue of the fifth Duke of Bedford by Richard Westmacott was erected in 1809 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The educational author Ebenezer Brewer (most remembered for Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) was born here in 1810 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 50 (site now occupied by an office block) became home to Thomas Denman (first Baron Denman) and his wife Theodosia (née Vevers) in 1812; their son George Denman, the judge and politician, was born there in 1819 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 65 was the home of portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence from 1813 until his sudden death there in 1830 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography); “Legend has it that when the Russian general Platoff was sitting for him, the house was guarded by Cossacks mounted on white chargers” (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1997 )

The physician James Lind died here in 1812 at the home of his son-in-law William Burnie; another physician, William Saunders, lived here until 1814 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Edward Sterling, co-proprietor of The Times, moved here briefly with his wife Hester (née Coningham) and their surviving children in about 1815 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The military surgeon Helenus Scott opened a medical practice here in 1817 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Sir Samuel Romilly committed suicide at his home by slitting his throat here in 1818 after his wife's death, despite the best efforts of his nephew Roget, who slept in the same room (The Times, 4 November 1818)

Reporting on the inquest, The Times said that “The utmost anxiety prevailed in the neighbourhood, and gloom pervaded every countenance” (The Times, 4 November 1818)

The Secretary of the Board of Trade James Deacon Hume lived here with his wife Frances (Ashwell, née Whitehouse) and their many daughters in the early nineteenth century (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 40 was the home of East India Company director Charles Grant, who died there in 1823 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 36 was the home from about 1823 of the Scottish lawyer and former Morning Chronicle reporter Robert Spankie; he remained until his death there in 1842 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 6 was the home and medical practice from about 1820 of Scottish physician George Darling (a medical partner of Neil Arnott); he died there in 1862

No. 64 was the home of lawyer William Adams and his wife, the Hon. Mary Anne Cockayne; their son, genealogist George Cockayne (né Adams) was born here in 1825 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The physician John Armstrong died here in 1829 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

John Capel, MP for Queenborough, had a home here in 1830, the year in which his daughter Mary Ann married Sir Codrington Carrington (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography); he is listed here as early as Boyle’s directory of 1820, and was still listed in 1832

No. 9 was the home of the banker John Stevenson Salt and his wife Sarah (née Stevenson); their son William was the antiquary who made many bequests to the British Museum (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 56 was the home in the 1830s of lawyer, author, and society host Sir Thomas Talfourd, his wife Rachel (née Rutt), and their children (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 28 was the home of Charles Abbott (first Baron Tenterden), judge and Governor of the Foundling Hospital, who died here in 1832 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The judge Sir William Elias Taunton died at his home here in 1835 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The wealthy Church of England clergyman and poet George Richards died here in 1837 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 30 (site now occupied by the Royal Institute of Chemistry building dating from 1914) was the home of Henry Crabb Robinson from 1839 to 1867, when he died there

Thackeray used the square as the location for the family homes of both the Sedleys and the Osbornes in Vanity Fair; published in 1848 but set in 1815, it satirised the Square’s reputation in both the past and the present

In April 1848 crowds of marchers assembled in a Chartist scare (Illustrated London News, April 15th, 1848) and the British Museum was under threat of attack (entry for Henry Ellis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Many of its residents lived there for a decade or more, such as physicians Henry Shuckburgh Roots at no. 2 and George Darling at no. 6, both listed in Post Office directories from 1841–1861 (and a Miss Darling still occupied no. 6 in 1891, according to the Post Office directory of that year

The Salt family at no. 9 were even longer-established; John S. Salt had been there in 1820, according to Boyle’s directory of that year, and the Misses Salt were still listed in the Post Office directory of 1861

No. 12 was home to the economist Thomas Tooke, and later to his brother, lawyer and SDUK co-founder William Tooke, his wife Amelia (née Shaen), and their children. William Tooke died there in 1863 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The physician Golding Bird moved here with his wife Mary Ann (née Brett) and their children in 1850 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The architect Philip Hardwick lived here with his wife Julia (née Shaw) until the 1850s, when they moved to the more aristocratic Cavendish Square (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 47 was until 1853 the family home of railway magnate Sir Morton Peto, his second wife Sarah (née Ainsworth), and his numerous children (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 5 (site now occupied by the Russell Hotel) was the home in 1856 of F. D. Maurice

There was an exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings here in 1857

The composer Sydney Nelson died here in 1862 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 26 was the home of scenery painter William Roxby Beverly, his wife Sophia (née Burbidge), and their children; his brother, the actor Henry Roxby Beverly, died there in 1863, while another brother, actor and stage manager Robert Roxby, also died there in 1866 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Nos 50–51 (site now occupied by an office block) were the home of architect G. E. Street, designer of the Royal Courts of Justice (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 10 was home to architect Horace Horne and his wife Hannah (née Gibson); their son Herbert Horne, architect and art historian, was born there in 1864 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 45 was the home of art collector John Parsons from 1869 until his death there in 1870 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 33 was the London home of coach proprietor Benjamin Horne, who died there in 1870 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 1a was the birthplace in 1870 of diplomat Sir Francis Oppenheimer (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, it still maintained its reputation for being the home of merchants with more money than class: Edmund Yates, journalist and author (who had memorably quarrelled with Thackeray early in his career) wrote in a satirical novel of an artist whose father was “a merchant-prince—a Russell Square man—a person of fabulous wealth, who...lived but for his money, his dinners, and his position in the City; a fat, pompous, thick-headed man, with a red face, a loud voice, a portly presence, and overwhelming watch-chain” (Edmund Yates, The Business of Pleasure, 1879)

No. 43 was the home of naturalist Maria Gray (née Smith), who died there in 1876 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 49 was home to George Knowles, younger son of architect James Knowles, who moved in with him in 1876 following the death of his wife and George’s mother Susannah (née Brown); James Knowles died there in 1884 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 66 was the home of merchant and banker John Benjamin Heath, who died there in 1879 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 54 was the home of Jewish furrier Jonas Woolf and his wife Rose (née Hyman); their son, film producer Charles Woolf, was born there in 1879 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 13 (site now occupied by Russell Square House) was the home of Sir George Williams, founder of the YMCA, and his wife Helen (née Hitchcock) from 1879 until his death in 1905

No. 37 was the home in the 1880s of lawyer and politician Sir Edward George Clarke and his second wife Kathleen (née Bryant); their son William Clarke, wartime codebreaker, was born there in 1883 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 63 was the home of Middlesex County Magistrate John Fish Pownall in the 1880s (Charles Dickens (jr), Dickens’s Dictionary of London 1888: An Unconventional Handbook, 1888)

No. 61 was the home from 1881 of author and reformer Mary Ward (née Arnold), her husband Humphry Ward, and their three young children. It was also the birthplace in 1887 of her nephew, scientist Sir Julian Huxley (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

“In 1886 the Bedford Office attempted, without success, to eject the cab ranks that had just been established in Tavistock and Russell squares” (Olsen, Town Planning in London)

No. 50 was home to wealthy publisher George Routledge, who died there in 1888 soon after an operation by Thomas Lister to amputate his leg (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

No. 8 (site now occupied by the Russell Hotel) was the home from 1888 to 1892 of feminist campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden), her husband Richard Pankhurst, and their surviving children, feminist campaigners Sylvia Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, and Adela Pankhurst Walsh; their last child, Harry, was born there in 1889, and the house was a focus of radical activity during their residence (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The 1891 Post Office directory shows a remarkable continuity of occupation; John Fish Pownall, at no. 63, was occupying a house he had lived in from at least 1861 (Post Office directory, 1861) and which had been the home of Mrs Fish, presumably a relative, as far back as 1820 (Boyle’s directory, 1820), while other new residents were still listed as engaged in the same long-established occupations: stockbroker, retired banker, merchant, shipowner, architect, engineer, surgeon, alderman, judge

Both Bolton House and Bolton Gardens, including the former home of architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson, had become integrated into Russell Square by 1891; one of them, no. 71 Russell Square, was occupied that year by the National Union of Teachers and several related charities, managed by Thomas Edmund Heller

The Russell Hotel on the east side of the square (and on the site of nos 1–9) stands on the site of the original Bedford House; it was built in 1898 to a design by the Bedford estates’ architect, Charles Fitzroy Doll (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1997)

In 1898–1899 nos 38–43 Russell Square were acquired by the British Museum

The Royal Photographic Society was at no. 66 in 1901, according to the Post Office directory of that year

No. 55 was the home of George Grossmith in the early twentieth century, according to E. Beresford Chancellor, who noted that the square “seems to be resuming again its position as a fashionable locality. The legal profession is still largely represented, and to the legal has been added the theatrical” (E. Beresford Chancellor, The History of the Squares of London, 1907)

However, the large hotels were encroaching on private residential space; nos 66–67 Russell Square (the former Bolton House) was earmarked for the Imperial Hotel extension in 1910, and demolished in 1913–1914 (Eileen Harris, ‘Robert Adam on Park Avenue: The Interiors for Bolton House,’ Burlington Magazine, vol. 137, no. 1103, February 1995)

Original Burton houses survived unchanged at 38–43 and also (with terracotta embellishments dating from the 1890s) at nos 21–24 and 52–60 (Camden History Society, Streets of Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1997)

In the 1940s the entire Square was let to Holborn Borough Council by the Bedford estate