Place Name
After one of the many titles of local landowners, the dukes of Bedford, who inherited Bloomsbury in 1669. The title Baron Russell of Thornhaugh was given to William Russell (died August 9, 1613), the younger son of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford and his first wife Margaret St John, by James I in 1603. Upon inheriting the land, an area covering Tottenham Court Road to Southampton Row and north to south, Euston Road to High Holborn, the Russells immediately set about developing it, laying out new and renaming many of the existing streets and squares. This part of the estate however, which formed its northern boundary, remained undeveloped fields and marsh land until the early 19thCentury, around the time this street was laid out. It was developed as a continuation of Montague Street, it appears only sketched out (as Montague Street North after the Duke of Montague who bought a plot on the Bloomsbury estate when it belonged to the earls of Southampton in the early 17thCentury) on Horwood’s map of 1819. Its extent was curtailed by the development of Woburn Square along most of its length in the late 1820s. When the 1950 Ordnance Survey Map was published the street was called Upper Montague Street. It was renamed sometime after that.