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

 

Constitution Row

Also known as Gray’s Inn Road, of which it became part in 1862

This terrace on the east side of Gray’s Inn Road by the junction with Acton Street was adjacent to the Battle Bridge estate but actually formed part of the Swinton estate (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

No. 2 Constitution Row was the first site of the London Fever Hospital, founded there in 1802 as the Institution for the Cure and Prevention of Contagious Fevers; it moved to the site of the old Smallpox Hospital, King’s Cross, in 1815

No. 9 Constitution Row was the home until 1813 of the artist and engraver Luke Clennell and his wife Elizabeth, née Warren, daughter of engraver Charles Warren (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The 1841 census shows a mixture of inhabitants, from the presumably poor (shoemakers and polishers) to the better off (merchants, clerks, an accountant, those of independent means) as well as a butcher and a publican

In 1862 it was integrated into Gray’s Inn Road proper and renumbered; this terrace became nos 296–320 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)