On a cold, misty winter’s evening, when everyone is huddled indoors, you can stand in Doughty Street and be transported back to the time of Dickens. Built between 1792 and 1820, its terraces of grand, five-storey, brick houses remain remarkably intact: many still have their original layouts. It’s not mere fancy that calls to mind the man who brilliantly chronicled a warts-and-all Victorian London. For Dickens himself resided at number 57 and, since the 1920s, his old pad has been the Dickens Museum.
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Now we can’t claim this is an affordable place to start looking for your first flat, but it’s the key axis in what – in estate-agent parlance – could be called Bloomsbury East. Within our self-declared borders of Theobalds Road to the south, Lamb’s Conduit Street to the west, Mecklenburgh Square and Coram’s Fields to the north and Gray’s Inn Road to the west, you have a series of roads that shoot up and down the social and housing-stock scales.
Within this area of grand residences and public housing live a large number of ambitious students studying at London University, dog-tired nurses and doctors keen to reside near to Great Ormond Street Hospital, cut-throat lawyers (very Dickens) virtually living above the shop of Lincoln’s Inn, and at least two Hollywood stars. You can go from jet-set to salt of the earth in one street. Indeed, Porsche next to pushbike is a very Bloomsbury image and perhaps that’s why people who find their way into the area rarely want to leave.
The other great attraction is that you are in ‘tube triangle’ with Russell Square, Holborn and Chancery Lane stations all a short walk away. With King’s Cross’ redevelopment and the arrival of the Eurostar in St Pancras later this year, the area is set to become one of the best places for transport in London.
But before you get any ideas about living on this smart strip, be warned that several whole houses have recently been sold on Doughty Street (and its extension, John Street) in record-quick time – including the former Spectator offices – for sums of £2.5million to £3.5m.
At the backs of these houses, on both sides of the road, are a series of more affordable mews, some of which are still lined with lock-ups and workshops with wide doors that hint at their original use as stables.
The prettiest is tranquil, plant-lined Doughty Mews which has a large bollard at one end to warn drivers that it’s a no-through-road. An added attraction is a gem of a pub – the ’30s-built Duke with good pub grub – on the corner of Doughty Mews and Roger Street. Johns Mews, North Mews and Brownlow Mews are all busier and offer a mix of small flats, loft apartments and houses that have had architectural makeovers. It’s the workshops and studios that add character to all of these mews: here a car workshop, there a plumbers’ merchant, over there Tom Dixon’s office. And a red-faced David Bailey standing on the balcony at his studio taking a break.
There’s also a boon here for inner-city parents – a popular Church of England primary school with a large playground on Johns Mews. Harried young parents flock to Coram’s Fields (www.coramsfields.org), a large play area to which you can only gain access if accompanied by a child. This was the home of Captain Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital, built in the mid-1700s to take in illegitimate and abandoned children.
Coram was moved by seeing impoverished children dying on the capital’s streets. This was a time when 74 per cent of London children died by the age of five. The hospital only closed in 1926, after which Lord Rothermere bought seven acres of the land for use by London’s children.
Back to the ’hood: on the borders of our area, you’ll find more life, more shops and cheaper prices to rent or buy. On the southern edge, Theobald’s Road, you hit a busy thoroughfare but, as long as you make it across to the other side safely, there are the lush lawns of Lincoln’s Inn Fields that almost every weekend are surrounded by Winnebagos and catering trucks using the lawyers’ offices as a movie set (’Spooks’ is a regular visitor). The old library on Theobald’s Road is being converted into smart flats. Above some of the shops here are modest flats that occasionally come up for rent.
Turn down Lamb’s Conduit Street and you have a perfect-looking, old-school high street: cafés, bookshops, barbers, tailors, a police station, a deli, Cigala (a great neighbourhood restaurant) and… Starbucks. In the run-up to the arrival of the latter, some locals got themselves into a steaming froth. They petitioned and they moaned, but Starbucks’ opening hasn’t hurt anyone and it’s always full.
The revamped Brunswick Centre with its gleaming new Waitrose has created tougher competition for the independent shops to cope with. Yet it seems to have provoked less ire, perhaps because it has nice wine. Indeed, the arrival of Waitrose has generated more excitement than the area’s known for years. By comparison, Madonna moving into Bloomsbury would have seemed very dull.
Around the corner in Lamb’s Conduit Street there are many more affordable flats that come up for rent, including some ex-council properties. The only problem is that Lamb’s Conduit Street – and indeed all of Bloomsbury – can be a bit lively at times thanks to a few feral youths. In the old days, of course, they knew how to deal with such oiks. On the Old Bailey website, you can look at crimes that went to trial at the court between 1674 and 1834. Just typing in the names of a few of Bloomsbury’s streets reveals a catalogue of criminals who were dispatched to gaol, deported or given a date with the hangman for crimes that today would hardly merit a response from the police.
Mecklenburgh Square is taken up with halls of residences for Goodenough College. The flats and houses on the stuccoed eastern terrace are a mix of social, rented and elite housing, and residents get to use the stunning garden in the square. You will also find an eclectic selection of flats along our final border, from the smart red-brick flats in Churston Mansions to the smaller, modern homes above the shops. All of which goes to show it may take some tenacious research but you might yet join the Bloomsbury set.
Transport
Russell Square tube on the Piccadilly Line is six minutes from Leicester Square, Holborn on the Central and Piccadilly Lines is two minutes nearer to the West End; and Chancery Lane (Central) is two minutes further away. All are in Zone 1.
Estate agents
Banbury Ball (020 7833 4466/ www.banburyball.co.uk).
Barnard Marcus (020 7242 6650/ www.barnardmarcus.co.uk).
Callum Roberts (020 7242 9977/ www.callumroberts.org).
Frank Harris (020 7387 0077/ www.frankharris.co.uk).
Can you afford it?
£275 per week
One-bedroom apartment in Thanet Street, near the Brunswick Centre.
£229,000
Studio apartment with balcony in Woburn Place, near Russell Square.
£460,000
One-bedroom garden flat on
Doughty Street.
£1.5 million
Three-bedroom duplex penthouse in Bloomsbury Mansions.
