About Bloomsbury - History
"Wood for a 100 pigs" and a few vineyards: this is Bloomsbury's first appearance in history, from the 1086 Domesday Book.....

The name comes from the French family who acquired the manor in the 13th century, the De Blemunds, and Blemundisberi came slowly into existence.

Edward III took the area into royal ownership and ceded the district to the Carthusian monks of nearby Charterhouse. With the Reformation a century later Henry VIII granted Bloomsbury to his great favourite, the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Southampton. It was this family who would kick-start Bloomsbury.

It was the 4th Earl of Southampton who imported a strange Italian novelty: the square, complete with shops nearby and servants' houses. A partial version had appeared at Covent Garden a few years earlier, but the first London square to be named as such was Southampton Square - renamed Bloomsbury in the early 1800s - built in the late 1650s and such a wonder that foreign visitors were regularly transported to see what diarist John Evelyn called in 1665 "a little towne". Great Russell Street was built to link the square to Tottenham Court Road.

Following the Earl's lead other noble families pitched their tents in the district, with the manor houses of Montague House and Thanet House appearing first. The Bedford family and Nicholas Barbon became the main protagonists for development, and when Barbon attempted to lay out a 17-acre paddock to create Red Lion Square he met with opposition from the nearby lawyers of Gray's Inn. Incensed that they would lose their rural views a hundred of them turned up to beat up the workmen. Led in a counterattack by Barbon the workmen won the day and the lawyers tasted a rare defeat.

It was such rural views which kept Bloomsbury popular throughout the 18th century; but when the 5th Duke of Bedford showed no interest in living in London he demolished the manor house just north of Southampton Square and the entire area was up for building.

James Burton and Thomas Cubbitt set about creating a vision of squares and short roads, popular with both the artistic and legal fraternities. Locked gates controlled strictly the access to and from the squares and these stayed in place until 1893.

A more altruistic development had come with Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital. After a lifetime travelling the world Coram returned to his home country but on his first visit to London he was profoundly shocked to see children "left to die on dunghills".

By 1741 the great scheme was under way, but the place was overwhelmed by interest from all over Britain; a third of the children died within the first year. It was thanks to deep and involved help from two great artistic patrons, Handel and Hogarth, to see the hospital survive its early tribulations.

Bloomsbury's reputation dipped somewhat as it became the depository for the great number of institutions we still see today, notably the University from 1829 onward; this had begun as early as 1755 with the British Museum, originally only open to ten people at any one time, to those who had specifically written in to apply for the privilege and who had received printed admission cards in return. By 1866 one resident noted "a very unfashionable area, though very respectable".

To the south the notorious rookery of St. Giles, a hotbed of crime, was cleared away in 1847 with the creation of New Oxford Street. A further lease of life came with the Bloomsbury Set of 1904, a motley bunch of anti-Victorian artists, writers and aesthetes based around the Stephen family home in Gordon Square.

A more disturbing note came with a stroll through the area in September 1933 by Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard. While waiting for the traffic lights to change at Southampton Row/Vernon Place, on his way from the Strand Palace Hotel to a conference at the Russell Hotel, Szilard realised the concept of a nuclear chain reaction without which atomic weapons could not have existed. Twelve years later he was writing to President Truman hoping to stop their deployment.
Spirulina Online Property Canary Wharf London Docklands

 

Central London Estate Agent, Letting Agents and Property Management Specialists covering
Bloomsbury, Holborn, Clerkenwell, Bankside Smithfield West End & Central London
©2004
Berkeleys Property south coast
Payne & Son online shop
exfl website exfl.com
TroytheMovie website
Property & home improvements

About Bloomsbury - History
"Wood for a 100 pigs" and a few vineyards: this is Bloomsbury's first appearance in history, from the 1086 Domesday Book.....

The name comes from the French family who acquired the manor in the 13th century, the De Blemunds, and Blemundisberi came slowly into existence.

Edward III took the area into royal ownership and ceded the district to the Carthusian monks of nearby Charterhouse. With the Reformation a century later Henry VIII granted Bloomsbury to his great favourite, the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Southampton. It was this family who would kick-start Bloomsbury.

It was the 4th Earl of Southampton who imported a strange Italian novelty: the square, complete with shops nearby and servants' houses. A partial version had appeared at Covent Garden a few years earlier, but the first London square to be named as such was Southampton Square - renamed Bloomsbury in the early 1800s - built in the late 1650s and such a wonder that foreign visitors were regularly transported to see what diarist John Evelyn called in 1665 "a little towne". Great Russell Street was built to link the square to Tottenham Court Road.

Following the Earl's lead other noble families pitched their tents in the district, with the manor houses of Montague House and Thanet House appearing first. The Bedford family and Nicholas Barbon became the main protagonists for development, and when Barbon attempted to lay out a 17-acre paddock to create Red Lion Square he met with opposition from the nearby lawyers of Gray's Inn. Incensed that they would lose their rural views a hundred of them turned up to beat up the workmen. Led in a counterattack by Barbon the workmen won the day and the lawyers tasted a rare defeat.

It was such rural views which kept Bloomsbury popular throughout the 18th century; but when the 5th Duke of Bedford showed no interest in living in London he demolished the manor house just north of Southampton Square and the entire area was up for building.

James Burton and Thomas Cubbitt set about creating a vision of squares and short roads, popular with both the artistic and legal fraternities. Locked gates controlled strictly the access to and from the squares and these stayed in place until 1893.

A more altruistic development had come with Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital. After a lifetime travelling the world Coram returned to his home country but on his first visit to London he was profoundly shocked to see children "left to die on dunghills".

By 1741 the great scheme was under way, but the place was overwhelmed by interest from all over Britain; a third of the children died within the first year. It was thanks to deep and involved help from two great artistic patrons, Handel and Hogarth, to see the hospital survive its early tribulations.

Bloomsbury's reputation dipped somewhat as it became the depository for the great number of institutions we still see today, notably the University from 1829 onward; this had begun as early as 1755 with the British Museum, originally only open to ten people at any one time, to those who had specifically written in to apply for the privilege and who had received printed admission cards in return. By 1866 one resident noted "a very unfashionable area, though very respectable".

To the south the notorious rookery of St. Giles, a hotbed of crime, was cleared away in 1847 with the creation of New Oxford Street. A further lease of life came with the Bloomsbury Set of 1904, a motley bunch of anti-Victorian artists, writers and aesthetes based around the Stephen family home in Gordon Square.

A more disturbing note came with a stroll through the area in September 1933 by Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard. While waiting for the traffic lights to change at Southampton Row/Vernon Place, on his way from the Strand Palace Hotel to a conference at the Russell Hotel, Szilard realised the concept of a nuclear chain reaction without which atomic weapons could not have existed. Twelve years later he was writing to President Truman hoping to stop their deployment.
Spirulina Online