PLACE NAME
Endsleigh was a property in Tavistock, Devon (hence Tavistock Square and Taviton Street, Taviton being a corruption of Tavistock) 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 extensive landholdings through marriage in 1669. 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 street itself was developed by Thomas Cubitt from the 1820s onwards, at the same time as the surrounding streets. Its houses date from 1825. In 1892, geologists discovered portions of mammoth tusks exposed during routine excavations by St Pancras Vestry to deepen the local sewers.