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  UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

 

Bloomsbury Project

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

 


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


Area of fragmented ownership

The area extending north from High Holborn east of the Bedford estate boundary at Southampton Row and King Street, being nearer to the city of London, was developed much earlier than the fields to its north

The major landowners in the east of this area were Gray’s Inn, and the Bedford Charity, Doughty, and Rugby estates, all of which also began developing their land in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century

Nicholas Barbon, who was the first major speculative builder in the area, laid out Red Lion Square itself as well as many of the streets further north and east; it is not clear who owned the land of Red Lion Fields on which the Square was built

To its north, Queen Square and surrounding land was part of an estate owned by the Curzons of Kedleston, Derbyshire, also developed in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, but sold off by about 1779 to pay off debts

Queen Square and Red Lion Square in particular, as well as the smaller streets in the area around them, thus became attractive locations in the nineteenth century to institutions which would have found it more difficult to establish themselves on the surrounding estates with their restrictions on non-residential and commercial tenants

Along the borders of Bloomsbury, the increasing importance of Euston Road, Gray’s Inn Road, High Holborn, and Tottenham Court Road as through traffic routes meant that they became more unified and coherent as streets, despite the multiplicity of estates whose land they had originally incorporated; as their residential significance to those estates waned, so they too became easier targets for institutions


Queen Anne’s Walk

It is a short access path (not wide enough for traffic) from Guilford Street into the north-east corner of Queen Square, in the middle of Bloomsbury

It has existed as pedestrian access into Queen Square since the eighteenth century, when it ran alongside the gardens at the top of the north side of the square; it appears on Rocque’s map of 1746

This area was undeveloped until the early eighteenth century, and Queen Square itself was the northern edge of development until the development of Guilford Street in the late eighteenth century

It does not have any houses; it was always intended only as an access route through to Queen Square

In the nineteenth century it was a pleasant walk past gardens on one side and and no. 21 Queen Square on the other into the main square itself, although the Square became home to many big hospitals in the later part of the century

The street was given its name in the twentieth century

Flats (Queen Court) were built on its west side in the 1930s, and the buildings in this part of Queen Square were also extensively rebuilt

This page last modified 14 April, 2011 by Deborah Colville

 

Bloomsbury Project - University College London - Gower Street - London - WC1E 6BT - Telephone: +44 (0)20 7679 3134 - Copyright © 1999-2005 UCL


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