Introduction
Perhaps known best as the home of the famous Bloomsbury Group in the first part of the twentieth century, the roots of this segment of London are traceable to the late fourteenth century. Bounded on the south by New Oxford Street/Bloomsbury Way/Theobald’s Road, on the west by Tottenham Court Road, on the north by the Euston Road, and on the east by Gray’s Inn Road, this district may well be called the intellectual hub of London, containing as it does University College of London, the British Museum, and the British Library.Its name apparently derives from William Blemond, whose manor house was dubbed Blemondsisberi. In the 1390s, Blemond gave the property to Edward III, who passed it on to the Carthusian Monks, where it remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Henry, in turn, deeded it to his Lord Chancellor, in whose family it continued until the late seventeenth century, when it become the property of Lord Russell. By that time the area had become commonly known as Bloomsbury.Soon it became a fashionable quarter of the town, with its major squares: Bedford, Brunswick, Russell, and Tavistock—and historic Red Lion Square (one-time home of four of the more famous Pre-Raphaelite painters), just south of Theobald’s Road. Further, it had the advantage of being close to the city and the country.Bloomsbury was the spawning ground of two major artistic/literary groups, both destined to change the course of British artistic history: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Bloomsbury Group. The PRB, consisting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, Frederick Stephens, and James Collinson, was formed in 1848 at the home of Millais on Gower Street. Though it was short-lived as a brotherhood, the members of this group changed the course of Victorian painting in the second half of the nineteenth century by rebelling against the major art theories of the Royal Academy of Art (see Mayfair walk).The more famous coterie, the Bloomsbury Group, influenced British literature and art in the early part of the next century by rebelling against Victorian standards in general. Formed from a nucleus of students at Trinity or King’s College, Cambridge, who had come under the influence of G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903), and A.N. Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica (1910–13), they set about to reexamine and redefine aesthetic and philosophical issues in a spirit of “comprehensive irreverence.” With Thoby Stephen as a catalyst, the group gravitated to Bloomsbury in London and the Thursday and Friday night salons presided over by Thoby’s sisters, Virginia (Woolf) and Vanessa (Bell). Before it broke up, the group included the sisters and their husbands—Leonard Woolf (Fabian writer) and Clive Bell (art critic), Lytton Stratchey (biographer), Roger Fry (artist and art critic), Duncan Grant (painter), John Maynard Keynes (economist), E.M. Forester (novelist), and on a more infrequent basis, Bertrand Russell (philosopher), Aldous Huxley (writer), and T.S. Eliot (poet and playwright). Roger Fry was responsible for the art exhibit called Post-Impressionism, from which that artistic classification derived.Blessed with several Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian homes, as well as blocks of Art Deco houses, Bloomsbury is also now one of the fastest-growing areas of London.
#1 Start: Tottenham Court Road Tube Station to Gower Street
Begin the walk at Tottenham Court Road underground station. Exit onto Tottenham Court Road and position yourself so that you are moving on the right side of the road. Turn Right on Great Russell Street. Turn left on Bloomsbury Street, and walk along that road after it becomes Gower Street until you come to the main administrative buildings of the University College of London. You will recognize this by the iron gates leading into a courtyard on your right.In the process of this walk, you will pass the British Museum on your right. This museum had its origins in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, a physician and naturalist, who upon his death in 1753 bequeathed his collection to George II for the use of the nation. Initially the museum consisted of books and manuscripts, plus some antiquities (primarily coins and medals). Consequently it included a reading room for the use of scholars almost from its inception. The collection began to burgeon with the acquisition of Greek and Egyptian antiquities, including the famous Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone in the early nineteenth century. The museum as it stands today was constructed in 1853. Its current collection of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Western Asian materials, as well as its medieval British collections, are world famous.Farther along, you will notice, across the road to your right, a blue plaque indicating the home in which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 (see Introduction). Note also across the road at 111 Gower Street, the Newman House for the university (see the South Kensington Museum Walk for information on Newman Houses). On this part of your walk, you will also pass a blue plaque for Charles Darwin on the Darwin House to your right. This is the same Darwin whose theories of organic evolution rocked the scientific world of the nineteenth century and remain the center of religious and scientific controversy today. Beginning at Torrington Place, notice the gargoyles along the friezes of the buildings to your right associated with the University College of London.
#2 University College of London to South Cloisters
When you arrive at the courtyard of the University College of London, go inside the courtyard and make your way right, to the last door in the corner in the South Cloisters.Take time for a careful look at the architecture of the central building of the University College of London. Note also the sign pointing to your left, indicating the Slade School of Art. This was the first art school in England to admit women on an equal basis with men. It also was attended by aspiring art students who were dissatisfied with the Royal Academy School of Arts. Students such as Vanessa Stephen left the academy to study at Slade. The Slade School was much more attractive to aspiring artists since most of its teachers had studied in Paris, where art schools were considered much more liberal and progressive at the time. In some ways, Slade School sounded the death knell of Royal Academy dominance.
#3 South Cloisters and Jeremy Bentham
Enter the door in the South Cloister and make your way forward to find the auto-icon (his term) of Jeremy Bentham, sitting upright in the wooden box.This is one of the sacred shrines of all economists: the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham, considered the father of the philosophy of Utilitarianism (as well as being in the forefront of prison reform and the anti-slavery movement). He is dressed in his own clothes with a wax head placed atop the skeleton. He had initially intended that his own mummified head be placed on the skeleton, but unfortunately the process went awry, and the facial features were greatly distorted. By conditions of his will, Bentham decreed: “The skeleton he [Doctor Southwood Smith] will cause to be put together in such a manner as that the whole figure may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought in the course of time employed in writing.”Jeremy Bentham has returned to the South Cloisters in his new and improved form after undergoing some conservation work (apparently they stripped him to his underwear for the first time in twenty years to check for decay and “pest infestation”), and improved his “box” with better lighting, etc. After getting spiffed up, Jeremy visited the US and was part of a major exhibition at the Met Breuer museum in New York. Must have felt good to get out, get freshened up, and travel after staying put since 1850.For several years, the mummified head was placed on the floor between his feet, but numerous incidents proved the folly of this. Accordingly, the head has been placed in the college vaults, where it resides today. Bentham’s will goes on to stipulate: “If it should so happen that my personal friends and other disciples should be disposed to meet together on some day or days of the year for the purpose of commemorating the founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation [namely, Bentham] my executor will from time to time cause to be conveyed to the room in which they meet the said box or case with the contents therein to be stationed in such part of the room as to the assembled company shall seem meet.”
#4 Back to Gower Street
Make your way back to the entrance and Gower Street.The buildings across the road are associated with the University College London Hospital, where the first operation was conducted using anesthesia (1846). The ghost of Jeremy Bentham is reputed to roam the hospital, chasing the staff, frantically waving his walking stick at them. Behind the hospital and beyond Tottenham Court Road is the region of Fitzrovia—north of Soho and south of Regent’s Park. Virginia Woolf, Bernard Shaw, and Roger Fry made Fitzroy Square a mecca for scholars interested in the Bloomsbury Group.
#5 Gower Street to Torrington Place
Turn left and retrace your path part way back on Gower Street to Torrington Place. Turn left at Waterstone’s, and proceed through the University College London (UCL) grounds.University College London will give you a good view of the campus of an urban university. You may want to take a quick look in Waterstone’s, since it serves as one of the major campus bookstores.
#6 Tavistock Square Gardens
Follow Torrington straight along as it becomes Byng Place and then passes along the bottom of Gordon Square to Tavistock Square Gardens. Enter and go through the gardens.Tavistock Square was the home of Charles Dickens, who wrote Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and part of Great Expectations while living here. He has a plaque at the place on Tavistock Court, north of the gardens, and a house on Doughty Street (near the end of this walk). In the center of what amounts to a garden dedicated to peace is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi (the Indian statesman who led the campaign for independence from Britain, employing the tactic of passive resistance) and to the left of the exit that you will use is a plaque dedicated to pacifists. A tree in the park has been planted as a tribute to victims of Hiroshima.A Jewish museum, The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is located at 29 Russell Square. It's open to the public Monday through Friday, and gives tours on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. As a registered charity, the museum is free of charge, but be aware that it relies heavily on public donations to keep it's doors open. The museum houses temporary exhibits, hosts talks, screens films, and offers workshops to the public.
#7 British Library
As you exit the gardens onto Tavistock Court, turn right and go to Upper Woburn Place. Turn left and go to Euston Street. Cross Euston and turn right to the British Library.The British Library is the national library for the UK. The contents of the library have been gathered from several library collections throughout the nation. Foremost among these collections was one housed in the British Museum, dating to 1753. Over the more than two-hundred years since then, a copy of most items printed in the UK (including books, periodicals, newspapers, maps, and printed music) are deposited with the museum’s Department of Printed Books. Vladimir Lenin noted in the nineteenth century that the British Museum contained a more comprehensive collection of Russian books than libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg.While there, view the marvelous collection of Christian, Muslim, and other sacred illuminations—and turn the pages one by one via a computer setup—or listen to Beatles records while viewing original scores. Original drafts of the works of Dickens and other British authors are there for viewing. Many of these works can also be heard read by professional actors and actresses, such as Sir Laurence Olivier reading Shakespeare. This is truly a library of the future.Sensing the growing need for space in the British Museum, the library board projected another building that would occupy grounds to the side of the museum, but an outcry regarding the historical importance of that part of London from citizens in the area forced the library’s board to seek space elsewhere. The current site, occupied by a derelict goods yard, was selected. The completed library was dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998, and The Great Elizabeth Court in the British Museum was created in 2000 to fill the space previously occupied by the library. The statue in the courtyard derives from William Blake’s painting of Sir Isaac Newton.
#8 St. Pancras/King's Cross Station
Go into the building and have a brief look around, but save your major visit for another day. Return to Euston Road and turn left. Walk the road to St. Pancras/King’s Cross Underground Station.St. Pancras/King’s Cross Station, has the distinction of carrying more underground lines—six—than any other London tube station, plus it is a terminus of the Midland Railroad. In 2007, it also became a terminus for the Chunnel (the Channel Tunnel), connecting the UK with France. With the exception of the Liverpool Street Station (see Londinium walk), it is the largest in London. St. Pancras Station (1867), which contains a hotel in its facade (1874), is certainly the most intriguing in its architecture. It is recognized as the best example of Victorian Gothic architecture in the nation. You might also want to have a quick look at the interior of this structure and compare it to the station at Liverpool Street and to its next door neighbor, King’s Cross.King’s Cross (the earlier of the two stations), with a very different style of architecture, was built as the terminus of the Great North Eastern Railroad in 1852. It initially contained a six-story granary capable of holding sixty thousand sacks of corn. Water tanks with a capacity for 150,000 gallons were placed on top. Under the goods platform were stables for three hundred horses. Like its neighbor, St. Pancras, King’s Cross contained a hotel to the left of the station, facing St. Pancras.This area was previously known as Battlebridge, an open meadow dotted by windmills used to process the grain grown along the banks of the Fleet River. During the eighteenth century, it became a fashionable spa district. It derives its name from a monument to King George IV, built in 1830 at the junction of Euston, St. Pancras, and Pentonville road. The cross, however, was so unpopular that it was removed in 1845, but the name stuck to the district.Currently the area is slightly rundown, but King’s Cross Station has achieved new notoriety from its connection with the Harry Potter novels. All wizards and witches wishing to board the Hogwart’s Express must report to the magical ‘”Platform 9 3/4” at this station. You might want to go in and check this out. When you get to platform seven, you might also pause to pay your respects to Boudicca, whose remains (according to one highly imaginative legend) lie buried far beneath the surface of the earth under this platform.While moving along Guilford street toward Grenville, you will pass Doughty Street on your left. The Dickens’ House Museum (see “Other Places to Visit” at the end of this walk) is just down that road. Don’t go there now, but you may wish to return later.
#9 Coram Foundling Museum
Locate Crestfield Street across from St. Pancras Station (right, off Euston Street), and go down that road, which becomes Argyle Street. Follow it to Gray’s Inn Road, which should alert you to the fact that you are now north of the Inns of Court (see the City Walk). Turn right onto Gray’s Inn Road, go to Guilford Street, and turn right again. Go to Grenville Road and turn right, which becomes Hunter Street. When you get to Brunswick on your right, turn right and go to the Coram Foundling Museum.Thomas Coram was an eighteenth-century British sea captain, who became concerned about the number of children being abandoned on the streets of London. He himself was an unwanted child of an unmarried mother. Accordingly, he began the Coram Foundling Hospital for deserted children in Coram Fields. To help with the finances, he sought the aid of William Hogarth (a British painter) and others. Hogarth, in turn, appealed to some of his friends and they collectively decided to donate paintings to the Foundling Hospital. Thus was born the first art gallery in London as Hogarth and others (including Joshua Reynolds, John Singleton Copley, and Thomas Gainsborough) put their paintings on display at the hospital. Admissions were charged and the proceeds given to the hospital. George Frederick Handel’s keyboard, which he had used to perform the Messiah doing benefit concerts at the hospital, was also donated.Much of Coram’s early life was lived in America where he became involved with philanthropic work in Georgia and Nova Scotia. His last proposed project in America involved the education of Indian girls. Sadly, Coram died in 1749 in financial straits resulting from his charitable work.In 2003, the museum began extensive renovations and reopened in a refurbished condition in June 2004. One hundred and fifty of these paintings and other items, such as objects brought by the foundlings as keepsakes and some of the letters that mothers left with their babies when they handed them over to the safekeeping of the hospital, are on permanent display.
#10 The End: Return to the BYU Centre
Turn left on Hunter Street and right at Bernard Street to arrive at the Russell Square underground station for the Piccadilly underground to Holborn (and the Central Line home).
#11 Other Places to Visit Nearby When You Have Time
The London Canal MuseumExit from King’s Cross Station, and go left on York Way to Wharfdale Road. Turn right onto Wharfdale, and left onto New Wharf Road.Housed in a former 1860s ice warehouse, the London Canal Museum illustrates the history of London’s canals: a narrowboat cabin (illustrating life on the boats), the cargoes carried, the horses and power boats that pulled the boats, the tugs that pushed them, and the people who made their livelihood on the canal. As a former icehouse, it contains a forty-two-feet-deep ice well used to store ice imported from Norway and brought to London by ship and canal boat. The well is well lighted and still running with water. The Canal Museum also doubles as a museum of the history of the ice trade and ice cream. The museum has received a substantial grant allowing it to do some much significant improvements.
#12 Other Places to Visit Nearby When You Have Time
Dickens House MuseumBegin at Russell Square tube station. Turn left onto Guilford Street and walk to Doughty Street. Turn right; the museum is a large Georgian building at #48.Of the many homes in which Dickens lived in London, this is the only one to survive, and one of the few museums to remain open on Christmas day (shades of A Christmas Carol ). It was here that he penned Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and Barnaby Rudge, and where he completed The Pickwick Papers, between 1837–39. It has functioned as a museum since 1925. The Dickens House Museum contains a collection of furniture from some of his other London homes, papers and letters (some going back to the time his father was in debtors’ prison), and portraits of Dickens and his family. The most comprehensive Dickens library is also here, and consequently the museum is a major research facility for Dickens scholars.Two other major features of the museum are a video that details Dickens’ successes and his troubled private life with his wife and children, and a collection of stage memorabilia, chronicling his extended connection as a producer, director, and actor with the theatre.
