Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is an area in central London in the south of the London Borough of Camden, developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries into a fashionable residential area. It is notable for its array of gardened squares, its literary connections and its numerous hospitals and academic institutions.
Institutions Bloomsbury is home to the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Medical Association, the University of London's Senate House Library and the Bloomsbury Colleges: University College London, Birkbeck, Institute of Education, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, School of Pharmacy, School of Oriental and African Studies and the Royal Veterinary College. Notable hospitals include Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College Hospital. Bloomsbury was also formerly home to the British Library, housed within the British Museum; the Library moved in 1997 to larger premises at a nearby location next to St Pancras railway station. History Bloomsbury was initially a parish included within the borough of Finsbury London, in the county of Middlesex, and formed part of the adjoining parish of St Giles until 1730, when on the erection of St George’s Church Bloomsbury; it was constituted as an independent parish by the authority of parliament. The earliest record of what would become Bloomsbury is the 1086 Doomsday Book, which records that the area had vineyards and ‘wood for 100 pigs.’ But it is not until 1201 that the name Bloomsbury is first noted when William de Blemond, a Norman landowner, acquired the land. The name Bloomsbury is a development from Blemondisberi – the bury, or manor, of Blemond. However, others derive the name as a corruption of Lomesbury, the name of a hamlet anciently standing on the spot, which was the site of the Royal Mews until the year 1534, when they were burnt down. At the end of the 14th century Edward III acquired Blemond’s manor and passed it on to the Cathusian monks of the London Charterhouse, who kept the area mostly rural. In the 16th century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, King Henry VIII took the land back into the possession of the Crown and granted it to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, the son of Shakespeare's patron and friend.