London’s Midtown By acclaimed London historian Jerry White Area map and Midtown’s history guide @inmidtownbuzz GoToMidtown Go explore on a FREE Guided Walk Discover Midtown on foot under the expert guidance of the impressively well-informed Aly Mir! With over 100 different routes under his belt, he’ll introduce you to everything from the haunts of highwaymen to the places where Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and the Sex Pistols ambushed pop history. Walks last around an hour and, for most, there’s no need to book. They start from the information kiosk outside Holborn tube station or from the inmidtown shop in New Oxford Street. Pick up a programme from either place or go online to mid.bz/towalk, make your choice and simply turn up. So Midtown has it all: myth, murder and riot; learning and literature; and shops, squares and streets revealing a fascinating history from the end of the seventeenth century to the present day. There can be few more appealing parts of London than this. inmidtown.org/discovermidtown What a history! This central London district encapsulates in one small area the huge diversity of London’s story. Midtown – the historic central areas of Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles – has been at one time or another London’s leading criminal district, a centre of riot and turbulence, home to medicine and the law, the capital’s great intellectual quarter and a seedbed of multicultural London before the idea found a name. Sometimes it has been many of these things at once. Midtown is a cluster of suburbs. The most venerable is St Giles in the Fields, an ancient country village sufficiently far from the City to host a leper hospital from the early twelfth century. Despite becoming a parish with a fine church rebuilt in the eighteenth century, its reputation as an area associated with outcasts continued as it remained populated with beggars and the very poor, even after its absorption into London. By 1800 St Giles was known as ‘The Rookery’, a desperately poor and violent place. Rats’ Castle, one of the biggest and most ramshackle of the district’s many lodging houses, was to be found in Dyott Street (1), where it is said that more murders have taken place than in any other street in London. A ‘St Giles Bowl’ was the last drink taken by men and women on their way to be hanged, ceremonially presented to them at one of the pubs near the church, latterly at one called the Angel Inn. It’s possible that the phrase, ‘One for the Road’ was a saying that was coined here. Small surprise that this area was at the heart of the Gordon Riots in 1780, with the firing of Langdale’s Brewery in the High Street and the sacking of Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury Square. The district was eventually tamed with the clearance of part of ‘The Rookery’ for New Oxford Street in the 1840s and the spread of industrial premises squeezing out the remaining poor by around 1880. There were other spin-offs that have helped Midtown cement its place in the history and social traditions of London. First, the university brought intellectuals from all over the world to study or teach in the area. Surprisingly early in the history of multicultural London, the University Hall of Residence in Gordon Square was home to people of many different nationalities, all reported to be staying there and attending courses at University College and elsewhere in the 1880s. When Mahatma Gandhi came to London to study law between 1888 and 1891 he ate at the Holborn Restaurant, where Sainsbury’s now stands opposite Holborn tube station (2). Secondly, the district’s congenial appeal to bookish people helped attract some of the nation’s most celebrated writers to make a home there. Greatest of all was Charles Dickens. He lived as a young married man in unfashionable Doughty Street (3), where number 48 remains as a museum to him, and on becoming famous he moved to the better-off west area of Midtown to live in part of a grand house in Tavistock Square. The district was later immortalised by the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ of writers centring on Virginia and Leonard Woolf, who followed in Dickens’s footsteps to live in Tavistock Square from 1919. Virginia had moved into 46 Gordon Square with her siblings in 1904 with the great economist John Maynard Keynes occupying the same house from 1916 after they left. Midtown’s newer suburbs were far more respectable. The old lawyers’ chambers at Lincoln’s Inn (4), Gray’s Inn (5) and elsewhere had long bred an association between Holborn and ‘the gentlemen of the long robe’. When London began to develop to the north of the City in the eighteenth century it was the lawyers who first occupied Queen Square (6), Red Lion Square (7), Bedford Square (8), Bloomsbury Square (9), Russell Square (10) and others: some of this legacy can be seen in the University of Law in Store Street. Lawyers were joined by medical men who made their own lasting heritage, most visible in the British Medical Association headquarters in Tavistock Square and in a cluster of hospitals, among them Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. This last was founded in 1851 and remains a world-renowned children’s hospital. The connection between the great scholarly professions of law and medicine was an important step towards the establishment of Bloomsbury as London’s intellectual quarter. Around the same time that the London suburbs began to grow, another culturally important Midtown institution began to develop: in 1755 a great mansion, Montagu House, was acquired to house the first collections of what was soon to become the British Museum. The old house was demolished and replaced in 1852 by Robert Smirke’s present building, housing among its global collections one of the world’s greatest libraries. It was in its celebrated round Reading Room that Karl Marx researched his influential critique of capitalism. The British Museum and its collections made Bloomsbury the natural place to root a university in the capital. The shameful lack of a university in London had been felt for many generations before the well-known lawyer Henry Brougham began a movement to found one in 1825. It led to the opening of what is now University College London three years later. Over a century later Charles Holden’s Senate House provided London University with its headquarters in Art Deco Portland stone. Birkbeck College, London’s evening university which was established in 1823, moved nearby in the 1950s, with much of the western area of Midtown now dominated by the university, its colleges, schools and institutes. The many bookshops are still to be found nearby, serving the huge numbers of students and scholars that have clustered here for generations. Inevitably, Midtown suffered from bomb damage during the two world wars. In September 1915 a Zeppelin raid hit Red Lion Street (11), where the Dolphin public house and a nearby bank were damaged. The Dolphin (still there today) proudly showed off its clock, which stopped at 10.49 never to go again, for a generation to come. Red Lion Street and much around it was damaged again in the Blitz of 1940–41, with the Holborn Empire music hall on High Holborn (12) a victim on the terrible night of 11–12 May 1941. Other musical legacies in Midtown’s history include the Delane Lea music recording studio, which once stood on Kingsway opposite Holborn tube station where you can now find Boots (13). Many musical legends recorded there including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Besides all this, the area has become the stuff of legend. Queen Elizabeth is said to have danced around the cherry tree outside the forerunner of today’s Old Mitre pub in Ely Place (14); the famous highwayman Dick Turpin reputedly used the White Hart Pub on Drury Lane; and the exhumed corpse of Oliver Cromwell, who had been dead for two years, along with the bodies of two other regicides, John Bradshaw and Sir Henry Ireton, were reported to have been kept in the yard of the Red Lion Pub on Red Lion Street before being dragged to Tyburn Gallows where they were hanged and beheaded in January 1661. There is still a pub nearby with a similar name. Illustrations by M BYNG PLACE 0 UCL Euston L SQ UA ATM Holiday Inn Bloomsbury Hotel CO RN AR TRE D S ET ON ET EL LA Y C O S TA UR L T L KIN YS TA LL ST R WA EE T RN ER ST IL E H L ME WS A D R O POR REE T SUMMERS Litt le Ita ly TPO OL LAN E STREET St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church ON ET R AY S T R E W L Key N N LA St. Clerk GD Underground station O LEI SA FF RO N PL HI AC LL E KIRB RO N ST RE ET SA FF RO N HI L E AT EE Y STR N I N BR HER PLA CE LAN E OO KE ’S CO UR BLEEDING H E A R T YA R D LL GH S ET BRO E’S BROOK ET MARK EN T WA RW WO OD WN ICK H AT T HOL S LOW COU PLA CE OUR D C STR T ARD ON G T EET RT A D R O N ARDE ON G EN URN GT T SO UT HA STIL ST CH MP TO AN N ET DU R CTE PRO EET STR BOR ON UI E B CE BU IL DI AC Y UR SB RD M YA OO RT BL OU C NEW LE STI TURN EET E NE LD RY NG IN LA S GA L N P WM AN COURT RO 14 St. Andrew Holborn Prince Albert Statue RE W ST RE RE ’S NE PA ET SS NE AG S ND . A ST N W ST ’S TE N ES NE T CE MU E WT LIN NT SE E CO SH RA UM SM ON ET OE A LN L ST RT ST GS ’S ’S RE ER LAN Sh oe Lan e DY GR RE PL A INN CH OURT TOOK’S C E T AP OT E ST CE AN T ST ST RE ET CE RE ET D RY LA REET SQ U RU RY ARE LITTLE N EW STRE ET LA N NE MAC’S PLACE NS W HA OLD S G BLD SQ TR W S ET ET E W SE PS RL S TA A R Y WINE OF Shoe Lane E HA RDIN G ST Library Gunpowder Square OURT FICE C TR E S RD NE Q GOUGH S EET EN EE LL PO RT SM G T T FFICE C WINE O BEL AR L Y CHA B O LT C T HIND CT ST NCER COURT RED LION JOHNSONS CT S T. D U N S TA N ’ S COURT T K S T EY N EA N N L’ N’S RE EA ET ST S OT RE YA L ST TI N GH EN N & HE CKEN I CH OURT C T CRANE COUR ST BU ILD RD RE AM D EL HARE RE IN CO UR L ST D NE Y LA PL ET GS GR S O S C R RE S W N G K I KE AN WH ST INN LOMB ITE EE ET ET T N RE HOUGHT ER ITRE OLD M FRI TEM RD’S C L I F F OP S G INN ON F A L CT C ARS ST T K S B EA CT ANE ARD L L ET A Y PLE RE RE A D R O ST H STR RE A N O VE EET COURT St. Paul’s Cathedral AC MA HANGING SWORD ALLEY S T R E E T MAGPIE ALLEY ET ET R GR ’S LD R O WE D R R E YA ET TR ASHEN EE T LA LA ES N HARE COURT M G SE LE ES X MID Y SE MITRE C O U R TG S IN BUILD TREE ER ST ET JA M UX RE T VE UR DE CO X CO UR DLE TEMPLE LANE EE T RE ES ST S CE R ST RE RE MI LF TEM TUDOR STREET KE FINS RR I CT CL NE Clerks’ Underground entrance Well Bus stop ET RE ST E E DG IN RI Taxi rank V B Public toilet ET FF Information Kiosk SA GoToMidtown Shop RE S ST E LY St. Etheldreda Ely REET E ST L Y P 1 VILL Hat t on G ard en GRE ATM B LE New Street Square AR T LIL 2 ROS S T. C Central School of Ballet AL R O A D TT H G AT A T RD O EN N HA Lea th er La n e M arket ON S Shopping ATM LANE ON TEMPL E LA Dr. Johnson’s House PEMBERT Apex Temple Court Hotel TT Holb or n ATM Ci rcu s DEAN S TT EN Holborn PLOUGH PL BART L PA S S E T T S AGE ATM H O L B O R N GREYSTOKE PL TREET NORWICH S HA RD EET ITOR STR H AT T GA CURS ARD ON G ’ S A Y G R FUL HAN TON W AGE NGS ’S BUILDI H AT T N’S E WI LAN LD N ST ST Waterhouse Square HAMP INGTO BEAUC DORR St. Alban’s C of E Primary School & Nursery BA St. Alban the Martyr ATM Royal Fusiliers Memorial Chancery Lane Staple Inn Subway DS PA R LEOOURT C D IEL S F S ER EY’ W NG TH CK O D R DI LEA JO OR E PL CT SS S PA BREAM Fet t er Lan e DGS S BL ING FA EET K E N W E L L E R C L TR M S IL ATM BU VIN N G’S WS DF ON ITY ROLL ROLL ICE F L E E T WEST HARD OFF WN W RO SE ET PT E ULA LAN VER OL M AL T TS L RE PO HA QU GS UR REN CRO Inner Temple CHURCH COURT St. Mary Temple Church HIL L S T RT BLD CO ER Maughan Library King’s College RT SS AL OLD EST P’S ICH HO CH BIS ROW I N RE RD ET AC RY ET ET RE T EY S St. Dunstan in the West Church OUR P C T E T R E S T PUM COU DE FR T K S RE ST ET OR ET T PLE ET CH RE D AR T LA LA ES LAN ITH N GL SE ST ING SL EY W X EL GA K I N G ’ S B E N C H WA L K AN RE CRO IN GS CT T LI ST RE RD © Crown copyright and database rights 2013 Ordnance Survey 100035971/021 © Copyright Transport for London 2013 TEMPLE ELM O ET LA YS T PO UT LA Christopher Hatton P BUIOOLES LDI N G S Primary School UA The Law Society S REW A N DO S S E CR T E E F L BRICK COURT Middle Temple CL RE SQ UX CT CAR RE L ST HY RT WO RE LS UA HO SQ T OUR D C South Square Gray’s Inn Square 15 mins M FIEL London Silver Vaults Old Square W DE AL ’ S W ST ME BE PL W NE New Square Lincoln’s Inn RE NE SQ UA HOLBORN SO T HILL ME HN ’S YA INN 5 G ray’s In n Y’S Gray’s Inn Gardens GRA LSE ATM High Court of Justice Principal Registry of the Family Division High Holborn ET ST IN TA UN T FO OUR C RB JO HN PIT TR N S RE RE TREE EYRE S H ET JO CK ST MP THA W RO BU M HA ED CE ST LA P S ST X VE Royal Cou rts of Ju stice SE HE Y RT WS LIO NE PL RE RE LD RE Y R N ATM B OATM H O L FIE CA EM I D AN STR ND RA ST ES EL STRE A RE STR EET ROGER ST ON INN NO HN NGT ’S P LSE CL TS T W JO ME DA ON ST ST RE LN E R T THI OW NL OW WS BR ME EE ’S NOR Holborn Library TRE ND S ET A D R O DLA CO Bandstand LIN ’S L AN PS G Royal College of Surgeons of England T EE TR Hunterian L S GA Museum TU OR LSE ENT LSE ME N T’S INN LSE EN NN St. Clement Danes Church Gladstone 1809-1898 LI PA TR Y S RED IRE SH RK Y YO GRE D R YA PT M IC LK ATM H H I G SAN EE T H RP S CU D YA R ’ S K WA ET G HT ET SOU M EU PT T Y S NA FIE CA RE LSE CLE S T. C LEM C M AL A R E RK ET LSE Main Building LSE LSE A L D W Y C H Australian High Commission D London A N T R S St. Maryle-Strand Church King’s College London (KCL) RD UG EE T EET TO AR E P CO STR ST T ST T K S ES CE EET H EE ET INN ET LSE H S T Lin coln’s In n Field s 4 OUT LSE RK DA Sir John Soane’s Museum LDS KIR JAM IN TR N S RT HA CO HB ST ET HN E AT 11 LIO ET US UG T RE JO GR PR RED NO TR E S ST DO S EET RE GL 12 IA ’S WH Rosewood London IN A E M ON Sierra Leone High Commission RD AR Peacock Theatre CL LSE High Commission of India Bush House Aldwych Charles Dickens Museum ROGER STR EET 3 W STR PL St. George, the Martyr C of E Primary School ES JAM GT TREET S LD ELL E Y M ERA HB HT EET EM EET ST M LLO OT SA TR N S L D B A E O T H RIC UG STR ET STR UR UT E DY T T S DO RE BY T D S ST RM T O RE RUG UIT RP UA AN EA D L O N G YA R GR ET WS 7 ME RE UR ST RP SQ Conway Hall HA EY N LLM MB LIO LE ILE ST Citadines Apart’hotel EA Red Li on Sq u a re D ND HA RE Fenner Brockway Statue Y E LSE LN Queen Mary CO LIN School of Law (University of London) L D P AN OR MN YF Holborn TW RE ATM UR LA N Aldwych Theatre St. Clement Danes C of E School DR CO DO T SO AC ET EAR G I N A R C H TE ITH AN RE B’S REE WI E G EE FR DE ST LAM ST PL RE AC ET E ET D SQ ST PL RE La mb’s Con d u it St reet OL RE E AK DR REET ST ST EET ET ET RY Y E R BE ON LC EWS M GR BA E ON AP E C HP L A C T IN RE RE Y BU UR IN ET FA ET EET CA HE R ST ET SS BY NG EN RE GE RO TO RR ET ET N ST DEL UN AR REET ST NE W NE T C ET CT E Somerset House IN PL DIA AC E FO 10 mins ORD ILF GU LACE P ST UR SB EL RE AD ST ST H SB M AD ST RO ER UIT RT M ET OO L T RK Kensington College of Business E Kingsway RE Grand Hall Hotel Connaught Rooms T ND NO ET RE BL EL UR RE ET CO W ET W OO ER STR LL NE RE RE BL ST RE W CO ST STR RE ’S ET T SH TON G AT E S T Exit only HA UR ON RB E BA LOS C RE CO ST L 1 John Bunyan Statue C AT FI Cochrane Theatre EL ND SW MO Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children OR BO ST O E UE T ST ET MI T E L R GU EN ATM ATM PA Catholic Church of St. Anselm & St. Cecilia Holborn Hotel AV E UR DE CL EL ST N E AN W CO L OR GR ND SW O TA AC ILI 2 ATM 13 WILD City Lit Freemasonry Library & Museum LA N Freemasons’ Hall RY CR O N EL Crown Fortune Court Theatre Church of Scotland SS MB MO ET BO E ON UA OR M HO W Fielding Hotel BO S RU LA RE ER M SQ PL U MS OR ST E GE ON ATM RN SI C ATM DR OS EA E T R E S T 6 GA The Mary Ward Centre VE RN ST RE D M HA Y ATM The DoubleTree by Hilton LE RE CE T PL Victoria House ET KE ST St. Joseph’s RC Primary School ET LBO ATM O H H U ET OU AC Y GL P ST UR D PL SB RE OL M M ST HIG ST RE AC A D E OR AY ER ET ST PL RE DF W RE N IS H BE Y 9 UR RT ST CK W S OO RE T ET SB Y A LI Commonwealth House LE M New London Theatre ET N Waldorf Hotel Novello Theatre Duchess Theatre Theatre Royal COVENT GARDEN Young Dancer DE R Covent The Piazza London Transport Garden Museum Market AW DE BL Charles James Fox Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery R D F O I L G U CO Waverly House Hotel M O P L Bloomsbury Park Hotel St. George C of E Church RE U OR GU T M RN RE PO ATM O DF TA ET OO RN ET A BA Bloomsbur y Squa re Bedford Hotel Hotels RE O UA BE ON ST BL LB SQ M E L S RE E EL ED PI ULL B RD YA N LE E GALAC P O N UA ET ET H EE SQ SS Clarendon Hotel RU RE H QU L T ST IG UA EL L EA E GR AC EL S RE SQ SS PL SS H EN N SQ RU Hotels The Montague Hotel T RU The Kingsley by Thistle Hotel RD EE L ST R ET ER LE A ST ’S EL ET T RE LB TT G N QU SS S ST GI LI St. George’s Church S O NE AN K N E E WA L RU R LL The Cartoon Museum RT RT Statue Queen Squa re NA BE LON SQ EEN QU LACE P Russell Square 10 Imperial Hotel Hotel President ATM ST ST AL RE EN ET O ET TE Travelodge SH B E ST ND AY H E ST TT RE N S QU L EL E SS AR RU QU S UG NT TO ST EN OR RD O D W HA A M LK S MO E HA E M US T R HA A ET OR D N AC AT G LB Travelodge S O H H R RT RE LE VIL EN T GR TREE S N RE RA UA Hotel Russell RB OR PL EA British Museum GR RE S O ST GA Royal Opera House NT CR 5 mins HE TH E ATM ST ATM 2 E E T S T R Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church E N VE BAKER’S ST M GU ET D SH EE T Oasis Sports Centre HIG Shaftesbury Theatre Princes Circus S TO Pineapple Dance Studios Marks & Spencer E Covent Garden ST CO E WN DO CE NS LA ERRA T RE ND RE OU TA RE ST ET The Swiss Church N AM EARLHET STRE SH Cambridge Theatre EL R G A Thomas Neal TS Centre OR SH Donmar Warehouse DE N ea l St reet Neal’s Yard G IN RT CH OU C Seven Dia ls ET Francis Duke of Bedford Statue Fountain Russell Squa re Café RA EL Royal National Hotel SS Institute of Education Institute of Advanced Legal Studies RU Brunei Gallery Institute of Commonwealth Studies Wiener Library ON EET ST Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Street ST M Hotel HA AT LL SE B LO O M S B U RY M Senate House, University of London EET RB ET STR STR NA ET S TR E St. Martin’s Theatre L HILL HE UA RE 8 ELL DGE AC SQ ET ST UE SS BRI PL ON RE EL EN RU IN CK RE 1 R D F O O X BU Central St. Giles St . G iles TRE M S Earlham Street LHA Mercer Street Hotel Covent Garden Hotel STRE S T. G I L E S H I G H ATM M ST ER RE CE ET R Chinese Church in Odeon London The Phoenix Garden ET St. Giles-in the-Fields Church W N E RE N GT ST W PP AV RE ST UR IN ET O M RE D ST X OB RR AL G DG UA OR K NI W TO M RI SQ DF E AT BA The Bloomsbury Hotel GR AR ET Centre Point M Tin Pan Alley N OE Phoenix Theatre PH ON XT LK C AW A EAR ES Cambridge Circus Tristan Bates Theatre and theT ActorsWCentre O W E R STREET The Ambassadors Theatre LITCHFIELD RA YD ER RN walking scale D School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Woburn Square ON GT IN RE RR UA TO SQ Birkbeck College OR KE London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine DF BE K AR E NM C DE PLA DE Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Bed ford Sq u are St. Giles Hotel Area under development YA EET ET W E SO W TT STR RE D AC RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) ET The Langland Hotel W ER The Academy Hotel GO BE The Political Cartoon S Gallery M E W ST RO SLE TTE ST OR University of London Union Catholic Apostolic Church E RE Un iver sit y of Lon d on AC ST PL S RE ET NT OU M CE DG LA P ST EY Tottenham Court Road ON GO NE D PT Palace Theatre MOOR STREET ON The Borderline MA Greek Street M ET CO RE UE DF PL ON IE RI E YL Architectural Association The Building Centre and NLA E TT ET RD Dominion Theatre Barbados High Commission RE D ST EN BE GT ET IN AL RR UCL TO EN Hotels CH The Drill Hall OR Cavendish College ST AC Primark ST LY OL IL AV R C A G N O Long Acre O E LY P L A C E H T UT EN SO SC E CR PL BA My Hotel Bloomsbury AY ST N SU Tottenham Court Road MA Prince Edward Theatre M Y L FL E E LA N Odeon ST NW AY TE OO EW S DG WE MEW St. Patrick’s RC Church Soho NHS Walk-in Centre BA Ronnie Scott’s RO UR Curzon Cinema SB Leicester Square THA VIES INN ER ST PRINT MOUNT PLEASANT PE E F HA NW ET RE TE Arts Theatre W RO W L A N E T T E R G R E AT N E W STREET MIDDLE N EW STRE ET E N BROOKE STREET E R Y B E S O WA RY S Q EBE ROS NT SA PL NT OU M EA R WHITE BEAR YA R D GS DYER’S BUILDI N L E AT H E R L A N E FETTER LANE FETTER LANE F U R N I VA L S T R E E T E AG SS PA T UI ND A V E N U E S TA P L E I N N B U I L D I N G S S B’ M LA BACK L A N E T E R F E T HA RE ST AF LD S T T UR ET SHO PRIMROSE HILL T UR CO GE AN GR Soh o Sq u are ST ON ET Old Compton Street R PT IE M CH CO UR D SH BOUVERIE STREET Soho Theatre BO OL St. Anne’s Church MELBOUR NE PLACE ST ON ST RE ET HO UG HT AL UG RT PO FFIE SHE D IL W ST N EE QU T EA GR S EW M RE ST ER L TURITT N ET RE ST CK ET RK ER RK PA KE U ST E NU AV E RY SBU FTE SHA CO H YC DW AL ET RE ST E CO ST EY EL KE RE M BL TO CT TT LE RT MA E RE ST EN D RY ET RE PA CT D OA BR H STREET MONMOUT D CR A G N LO W NE ET VIS STREET KE TA T EE L S TR EL SS RU CT ER TOW CT ER W TO MONMOUTH M CO ST ON PT UE EN AV Y UR SB TE AF SH ET RE ST FT O CR IT FL Goodge Street EN H EP ST Oxford Street ET AR D RE ON ST PL AD U P P E R S T. NE MARTIN’S LA PL PL ET
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