Bloomsbury: Woburn Square

Antiques from London on eBay

VINTAGE CABINET PLATE CRIES OF LONDON YELLOW PRIMROSES
30 Jun 2010 at 5:02am
US $44.65
End Date: Friday Jul-30-2010 3:02:06 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $44.65
Buy it now | Add to watch list
VINTAGE CABINET PLATE CRIES OF LONDON SWEET ORANGES
30 Jun 2010 at 4:57am
US $44.65
End Date: Friday Jul-30-2010 3:02:29 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $44.65
Buy it now | Add to watch list

W. J. Loftie, adding to the incomplete work of Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Bloomsbury with this look at Woburn Square:

Woburn Square is a quiet place, with fine trees growing in its pleasant garden.

In it is Christ Church, the work of Vulliamy, date 1833.

It is of Gothic architecture, and is prettily finished with buttresses and pinnacles, in spite of the ugly material used - namely, white brick.

It was at first designed to call the Square Rothesay Square, but it was eventually named Woburn, after the seat of the Duke of Bedford.

Great Coram Street was, of course, named after the genial founder of the Foundling Hospital.

In it is the Russell Institution, built at the beginning of the century as an assembly-room, and later used as institute and club.

It was frequently visited by Dickens, Leech, and Thackeray, the last named of whom came here in 1837, and remained until 1843, when the house had to be given up owing to the incurable nature of his wife's mental malady.

He wrote here many papers and articles, including the famous "Yellow-plush Papers," which appeared in Fraser's Magazine; but his novels belong to a later period.

We have now wandered over a district rich in association, containing some of the oldest domestic architecture existing in London, but which, taken as a whole, is chiefly of a date belonging to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries - a date when ladies wore powder and patches, when sedan-chairs were more common than hackney cabs, and when the voice of the link-boy was heard in the streets.

Next: London in 1903: Holborn and Bloomsbury Parish Boundaries