What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Cartoon satirising the British College of Health

Bloomsbury Institutions

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Hon. Arthur Kinnaird (1814–1887)

a summary of his Bloomsbury connections

He was a devout evangelical and a supporter of numerous charitable causes

In Bloomsbury, he was Treasurer of the Home for Gentlewomen in Queen Square (Sampson Low, The Charities of London, 1850; Sampson Low, The Charities of London in 1861, 1862)

He was also later involved in the foundation of the Home for Working Boys, also in Queen Square, and was the Secretary of St John’s Servants’ School at 22 New Ormond Street

His wife Mary Jane (née Hoare) was the niece of Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel; she became the founder of the YWCA

She was also active in charitable enterprises in Bloomsbury, including St John’s Servants’ School at 22 New Ormond Street, which she and Mrs Jane Noel, the wife of Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel, helped to administer

For more general biographical information about Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography