Place Name
Endsleigh was a property in Tavistock, Devon acquired by the dukes of Bedford at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540. The dukes already owned Covent Garden by the time they added Bloomsbury to their property holdings through marriage in 1669. The suffix Gardens is reference to the former Bedford Nursery Gardens located in this area which appear on Horwood’s 1819 map. Today the Devonshire property is a hotel. Its website says that, “in the medieval period Endsleigh formed part of the estate of the abbots of Tavistock, and had been given to the Church by the Edgcumbe family of Cotehele, Cornwall. In 1540, the abbot’s 15,000 acre estate was granted to John Russell, first Earl of Bedford. The abbots of Tavistock had a hunting lodge at Leigh Barton, south-east of Endsleigh, but after the Reformation it fell into disuse, and no permanent residence was established on the estate until the early C19, when John, sixth Duke of Bedford decided to replace ‘an irregular farmhouse little better than a cottage’ which existed near the site of the present house.” The surviving row of Thomas Cubitt houses were actually built as the south side of Euston Square; in the latter part of the 19thCentury, they were reassigned as Endsleigh Gardens.