Bloomsbury
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bloomsbury is an area of central London in the south of the London Borough of Camden, developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries into a fashionable residential area. It is notable for its array of gardened squares,[1] its literary connections (exemplified by the Bloomsbury Group), and its numerous hospitals and academic institutions.
While Bloomsbury was not the first area of London to acquire a formal square, Southampton Square (now named Bloomsbury Square), which was laid out by Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton in 1660, was the first square to actually be named as such.[2]
Bloomsbury is home to the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Medical Association, the University of London's Senate House Library and its colleges ( University College London, Birkbeck, Institute of Education, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, School of Pharmacy, School of Oriental and African Studies and the Royal Veterinary College).
Notable hospitals include Great Ormond Street Hospital, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and University College Hospital.[3]
Bloomsbury was formerly home to the British Library, housed within the British Museum; the Library moved in 1997 to larger premises at a nearby location next to St Pancras railway station in Somers Town.
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[edit] History
The earliest record of what would become Bloomsbury is the 1086 Domesday Book, which records that the area had vineyards and "wood for 100 pigs".[2] But it is not until 1201 that the name Bloomsbury is first noted, when William de Blemond, a Norman landowner, acquired the land.[4] The name Bloomsbury is a development from Blemondisberi - the bury, or manor, of Blemond. An 1878 publication, Old and New London: Volume 4, mentions the idea that the area was named after a village called "Lomesbury" which formerly stood where Bloomsbury Square is now,[5] though this piece of folk etymology is now discredited.
At the end of the 14th century Edward III acquired Blemond's manor, and passed it on to the Carthusian monks of the London Charterhouse, who kept the area mostly rural.
In the 16th century, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, King Henry VIII took the land back into the possession of the Crown, and granted it to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton.
In the early 1660s, the Earl of Southampton constructed what was eventually to become Bloomsbury Square. However the area was laid out mainly in the 18th century, largely by landowners like Wriothesley Russell, 3rd Duke of Bedford, who built Bloomsbury Market, which opened in 1730. The major development of the squares that we see today started in about 1800 when Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford removed Bedford House and developed the land to the north with Russell Square as its centre piece.
[edit] Geography
Bloomsbury has no official boundaries, but can be roughly defined as the square bounded by Tottenham Court Road to the west, Euston Road to the north, Gray's Inn Road to the east, and either High Holborn or the thoroughfare formed by New Oxford Street, Bloomsbury Way and Theobald's Road to the south.[6].[2] Bloomsbury merges gradually with Holborn in the south, and with St Pancras in the north-east and Clerkenwell in the south-east.
The area is bisected north to south by the main Southampton Row-Woburn Place thoroughfare, which contains several large tourist hotels and links Tavistock Square and Russell Square - the central points of Bloomsbury. The road runs from Euston and Somers Town in the north to Holborn in the south. Torrington Place is close to University College London and has a pub called the Marlborough Arms which has a wooden man propped by the window on the 1st floor to welcome drinkers.
To the east of the busy Southampton Row-Woburn Place main road Bloomsbury is mainly residential. This half contains the Brunswick shopping centre and cinema,[7] and Coram's Fields recreation area. The area to the north of Coram's Fields consists of tenements and is generally considered part of St Pancras[8] or King's Cross[9] rather than north-eastern Bloomsbury. The area to the south is slightly less residential, containing several hospitals, including Great Ormond Street, and gradually becomes more commercial in character as it approaches the boundary with Holborn at Theobald's Road.
The west of Woburn Place-Southampton Row is notable for its concentration of academic establishments, museums, teaching hospitals and formal squares. It is this side that contains the British Museum and the University of London. The most prominent road is Gower Street which is a one way road running south from Euston Road towards Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden, becoming Bloomsbury Street when it passes to the west of the British Museum.
[edit] Location in context
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[edit] Parks and squares
Bloomsbury contains some of London's finest parks and buildings, and is particularly known for its formal squares. These include:
- Russell Square, a large and orderly square; its gardens were originally designed by Humphry Repton. The Square is adjacent to the Russell Hotel and Russel Square Tube Station.
- Bedford Square, built between 1775 and 1783) is still surrounded by Georgian Town Houses
- Bloomsbury Square, a small circular garden, but called a square, also surrounded by Georgian buildings including the former Victorian House and state home of the Lord Chancellor
- Queen Square, is home to many hospitals including the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
- Gordon Square surrounded by the history and archaeology departments of University College London, as well as the former home of John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist.
- Woburn Square and Torrington Square, which are home to other parts of University College London.
- Tavistock Square, home to the British Medical Association, its eastern edge was the site of one of the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
- Mecklenburgh Square To the east of Coram's Fields and one the few squares remaining locked for the use of local residents.
- Coram's Fields - a large recreational space on the eastern edge of the area was formally home to the Foundling Hospital.
- Brunswick Square Now occupied by the School of Pharmacy and the Foundling Museum
[edit] Arts, university, museums and medicine
Historically, Bloomsbury is associated with the arts, education and medicine. The area gives its name to the Bloomsbury Group (also Bloomsbury Set) of artists, the most famous of whom was Virginia Woolf, who met in private homes in the area in the early 1900s, and to the lesser known Bloomsbury Gang of Whigs formed in 1765 by John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford. The publisher Faber & Faber is in Queen Square, though at the time when T. S. Eliot was editor the offices were in Tavistock Square. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street in 1848.
[edit] Educational institutions
Bloomsbury is home to Senate House and the main library of the University of London, The Bloomsbury Colleges (Birkbeck, University of London, Institute of Education, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, School of Pharmacy, School of Oriental and African Studies and the Royal Veterinary College) and the University College London (with the Slade School of Fine Art), the College of Law, London Contemporary Dance School, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Goodenough College. Other colleges in the area include the School of Advanced Study, the Architectural Association, and several London campuses of American colleges including the University of Delaware London Centre, Huron University, University of Florida, and the Syracuse University London Facility.
[edit] Hospitals
Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, is located just off Queen Square, which itself is home to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (formerly the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases) and the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. Bloomsbury is also the location of University College Hospital, which re-opened in 2005 in new buildings on Euston Road, built under the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The Eastman Dental Hospital is located on Gray’s Inn Road close to the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital administered by the Royal Free Hospital.
[edit] Museums
The British Museum, which first opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House, is at the heart of Bloomsbury. At the centre of the museum around the former British Library Reading Room (where Karl Marx was a reader), the space formerly filled with the concrete storage bunkers of the British Library is today the Great Court, an indoor square with a glass roof designed by British architect Norman Foster. It houses displays, a cinema, a shop, a cafe and a restaurant. The British Library now has a new purpose-built home just outside the northern edge of Bloomsbury, on Euston Road.
Also in Bloomsbury is the Foundling Museum close to Brunswick Square, which tells the story of the Foundling Hospital opened by Thomas Coram, for unwanted children (foundlings) in Georgian London. The hospital, now demolished but for the Georgian colonnade, is today a playground and outdoor sports field for children, called Coram’s Fields; adults are only admitted with a child. It is also home to a small number of sheep. The nearby Lamb’s Conduit Street is a pleasant thoroughfare with independent shops, cafes and restaurants.
There is also the Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, and the Petrie_Museum and the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London in Gower Street. The Museum Mile, London is a route covering many of the museums in Bloomsbury.
[edit] Churches
Bloomsbury contains three notable churches. St. George's Church, located on Bloomsbury Way in the south of the area, was built by Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1716 and 1731. It has a deep Roman porch with six huge Corinthian columns, and is notable for its steeple based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and for the statue of King George I on the top.
The second is the Early English Neo-Gothic Church of Christ the King on Gordon Square. It was designed for the Irvingites[10] by Raphael Brandon in 1853. Since June 10, 1954 it has been a Grade I listed building.
The third is St Pancras New Church on the northern boundary, near Euston station. This church was completed in 1822, and is notable for the caryatids on north and south which are based on the "porch of the maidens" from the Temple of the Erechtheum.
The church of St George the Martyr in Queen Square was built 1703-1706,[11] and was where Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath married on Bloomsday in 1956[12]
[edit] Transport
The area surrounding Bloomsbury is served by numerous London Underground stations, although only two of these (Russell Square and Euston Square) have entrances in Bloomsbury itself. The other stations, located on the fringes of Bloomsbury, are Euston, Goodge Street, Warren Street, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Chancery Lane and King's Cross St. Pancras.
The mainline rail stations Euston, King's Cross and St. Pancras are all located just outside the northern edge of Bloomsbury. Since Wednesday, November 14, 2007, Eurostar services have relocated to St Pancras, promising shorter journey times to Paris and Brussels and better connections to the rest of the UK.
Bloomsbury is also home to the disused British Museum tube station.
It is well served by buses, with over 12 different routes running south down Gower Street, and both north and south past Russell Square.[13] Route 7 goes along Great Russell Street, past the British Museum, and on to Russell Square.
There is one of the 13 surviving taxi driver's shelters on Russell Square[14] where drivers will stop for a meal and a drink.
[edit] Notable residents
- Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), painter, sister of Virginia Woolf lived at 46 Gordon Square.
- William Copeland Borlase M.P. (1848-1899)
- Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), illustrator, lived at No 46 Great Russell Street.
- Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) lived at 12 Upper Gower St in 1839.[15]
- George Dance (1741–1825), architect lived at 91 Gower Street.
- Charles Dickens (1812–1870), novelist lived at 14 Great Russell Street, Tavistock Square and 48 Doughty Street.
- Philip (1792–1870) and Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), father and son architects lived at 60 Russell Square for over ten years.
- John Maynard Keynes, lived for thirty years in Gordon Square.
- Bob Marley lived in 34 Ridgmount Gardens for 6 months in 1972.
- John Shaw Senior (1776–1832) and John Shaw Junior (1803-1870), father and son architects lived on Gower Street.
- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), author, essayist, and diarist resided at 46 Gordon Square.
- Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807–1880), architect lived at 77 Great Russell Street.
- William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), poet, dramatist and prose writer lived at Woburn Walk.
- Ricky Gervais, comedian, until recently lived on Southampton Row and Store Street.
[edit] Gallery
 The British Museum |
 Statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Tavistock Square Gardens |
 Gordon Square |
 The UCL Main Building |
 Bloomsbury Square from the south |
 Bloomsbury Square from the north |
 Tower of St. George Bloomsbury with lion, unicorn and George I on the steeple |
 Bedford Square, Central Gardens. |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Bloomsbury Association
- Bloomsbury Improvement Group
- Bloomsbury Guide
- Bloomsbury attractions
- Ridgmount Gardens - typical Bloomsbury mansion block
- Panorama of the British Museum
- Holborn and Bloomsbury, by Sir Walter Besant and Geraldine Edith Mitton, 1903, from Project Gutenberg
[edit] References
- ^ Guide to London Squares accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ a b c The London Encyclopaedia, Edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. Macmillan London Ltd 1983
- ^ UCL Hospital accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Camden Council Local History accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ 'Bloomsbury', Old and New London: Volume 4 (1878), pp. 480-89 Date accessed: 8 March 2007
- ^ WikiTravel accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Brunswicks Centre - Restoration accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ View London accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Corams Fields accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Church of Christ the King accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ St George's Bloomsbury accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Walking Literary London, Roger Tagholm, New Holland Publishers, 2001.
- ^ TfL Central London Bus Routes accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Cabman's Shelters accessed 8 March 2007
- ^ Charles Darwin accessed 8 March 2007
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