PLACE NAME
Connects Bloomsbury Square with Russell Square and was built between 1801 and 1805. Named after landowners, the Dukes of Bedford who inherited Bloomsbury in 1669 and are accredited as being the main instigators in the residential development of the area. In 1801, Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford (July 23, 1765 – March 2, 1802) had the family house (Bedford House) on the north side of Bloomsbury Square demolished and commissioned prolific builder James Burton to build this street on its site as part of a wider development project. Camden History Society says that much of this development was in the form of “wide streets and grand squares fit for gentry.” Donald Olsen, in 1984, describes it as “the systematic transformation of the pastures of northern Bloomsbury into a restricted upper-middle class suburb”. The Bedfords also did a lot for the betterment of the area. “In 1854″ Olsen says, “the Duke had made at his own expense built sewers in Tavistock Mews, Great Russell Street, Little Russell Street, Gilbert Street, and Rose Street. The estate also was engaged at the time in a programme of installing water closets in the houses on its property, and connecting them with the new sewers, as required by law… In a letter to the Lancet that year the physician to the Bloomsbury Dispensary praised the Duke’s sanitary projects, and attributed to them the mildness of the recent cholera epidemic on his estate.” In 1880, the estate took down blocks of houses it didn’t believe suitable for dwelling, and widened streets to make way for institutions or factories. In 1898 and 1899 the stables in Southampton and Montague Mews were demolished and the site landscaped. The Duke had “similar plans for Tavistock and Woburn Mews (east of Woburn Place) before he decided to sell the property to the London County Council for a housing scheme.” Given the size and stock of the housing in the Bloomsbury estate, unlike the neighbouring areas west and south of the estate, the former St Giles’s leper hospital, it didn’t have any slums. As the area became more popular however, the Bedfords fought to preserve its genteel residential character, which according to Olsen found itself “with the task of preventing, or at least discouraging, the conversion of dwelling houses into private hotels, boarding houses, institutions, offices, and shops”. It didn’t have much success though. By the mid-19thCentury, many of the huge houses had been converted to private hotels, and by 1890 the lodges, gates and residents’ tickets of entry the estate had installed to separate it from traffic and pedestrians were removed by Parliament. This is one of more than 70 London streets with the Bedfords’ names bearing witness to three centuries of ownership.
