Estates in Bloomsbury
1 Duke of Bedford
2 City of London Corporation
3 Capper Mortimer
4 Fitzroy (Duke of Grafton)
5 Somers
6 Skinners' (Tonbridge)
7 Battle Bridge
8 Lucas
9 Harrison
10 Foundling Hospital
11 Rugby
12 Bedford Charity (Harpur)
13 Doughty
14 Gray's Inn
15 Bainbridge–Dyott (Rookeries)
Area between the Foundling and Harrison estates: Church land
Grey areas: fragmented ownership and haphazard development; already built up by 1800
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About the Bedford Charity (Harpur) Estate
The Bedford Charity, also known as the Harpur Trust, was founded in the sixteenth century by Sir William Harpur, for the benefit of a school he had helped to found in Bedford ()
The original 13-acre site in the east of Bloomsbury which formed part of the original endowment is now reduced to a mere 3 acres, but is still worth millions (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)
The original estate encompasses a crooked area south of the Rugby estate and north and east of Red Lion Square, including the southern half of what is now Lamb’s Conduit Street but was known as Red Lion Street until the late eighteenth century
Its proximity to already-developed areas to the south and east of Bloomsbury, including the legal centre of Gray’s Inn, meant that it was developed residentially much earlier than the western and northern areas of Bloomsbury, beginning in 1686
Much of the development was carried out by unscrupulous builder Nicholas Barbon, who built houses all over the Red Lion Fields area without necessarily obtaining the permission of the legal owner first (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
The Trust continues to own freeholds in Dombey Street, Bedford Row, New North Street, Sandland Street, Red Lion Street, and Theobald’s Road; it also invested in property in Eagle Street, outside the original estate boundaries, as a “vote of confidence in the present Estate’s future” (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)
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Harpur Mews
Also known as Bedford Court/Harpur’s Mews
Not to be confused with Bedford Court off New North Street, or with the numerous other Bedford Courts in London
It had been developed by the middle of the eighteenth century; Rocque’s map of 1746 names Harpur Mews as “Bedford Court”, and also uses this name for the narrow passageway leading from Lamb’s Conduit Street to Harpur Mews, and Cary’s map of 1795 shows the same
This part of Bloomsbury is missing from Horwood’s maps (between map sheets) but by the time of Elmes’s Topography of London (1831), the only Bedford Court in Bloomsbury was the one off New North Street, and Harpur Mews was known as Harpur’s Mews; the way through to it from Lamb’s Conduit Street is not named on maps
Its original and subsequent name both come from the estate on which it stands
Horwood’s maps of 1807–1819 show consecutive numbers from 1–6 running in an L shape south down the west side and east along the south side
The 1841 census has records for numbers from 1–9
It was presumably designed as the Mews for parallel Harpur Street
James Soanes had a stationery business here in the late nineteenth century
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