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  UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

 

Bloomsbury Project

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Somers Estate


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 Somers Estate

The southern part of the estate most famous for Somers Town, north of Euston Road, lies just within Bloomsbury, being an area immediately to the east of St Pancras Church

It was acquired in the seventeenth century by the Cocks family, a member of whom was ennobled as Baron Somers in 1784 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The estate was developed in the early nineteenth century; its Bloomsbury terrace of Somers Place (east and west) was supposedly rather fine, but there is less information about its other streets here such as South Row (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Most of these have now disappeared; the terraces which formed part of Euston Road itself were all incorporated into Euston Road in the late nineteenth century


Vittoria Place

Its listing in the 1841 census places it near St Pancras New Church, on the Somers estate, but it does not appear on most maps, even the Ordnance Survey map of 1867–1870

The area was undeveloped and mostly fields until after the construction of Euston Road in the later eighteenth century

The street is marked and named on Weller’s map of 1868, which shows it as a tiny courtyard leading east off Duke’s Road, opposite the south end of St Pancras Church, with a turn to the north at its east end

The 1841 census has listings for houses numbered 1–12, with a variety of inhabitants including carpenters and a coach maker, a tailor, a cooper, a waiter, an oil and colour man, a dentist, a piano-makers’s apprentice, and several men of independent means

The 1871 census shows the residents of its twelve houses as employed in unskilled or semi-skilled trades, including porter, labourer, ostler, coach painter, cab driver, plumber, cooper, baker, joiner, cabinet maker, and “second-class schoolmaster” among the men, and laundress, charwoman, machinist, and dressmaker among the women

No trace of it remains

This page last modified 14 April, 2011 by Deborah Colville

 

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