Fitzroy Square is one of the Georgian squares in
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and is the only one found in the
central LondonCentral London is the innermost part of London, England. There is no official or commonly accepted definition of its area, but its characteristics are understood to include a high density built environment, high land values, an elevated daytime population and a concentration of regionally,...
area known as in
FitzroviaFitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
.
The square, nearby Fitzroy Street and the
Fitzroy TavernThe Fitzroy Tavern is a public house situated at 16 Charlotte Street in the Fitzrovia district of central London, England, to which it gives its name.It is currently owned by the Samuel Smith Brewery...
in
Charlotte StreetCharlotte Street is a well-known street in Fitzrovia, central London, England. The southern half of the street has many restaurants and cafes, and a lively nightlife during the evening; while the northern part of the street is more mixed in character and includes the large office building of the...
have the family name of
Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of GraftonCharles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton KG PC was an Irish and English politician.He was born the only child of Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton and Isabella Bennet, 2nd Countess of Arlington...
, into whose ownership the land passed through his marriage. His descendant
Charles FitzRoy, 1st Baron SouthamptonCharles FitzRoy, 1st Baron Southampton was a British statesman and soldier.The second son of Lord Augustus FitzRoy and a grandson of the 2nd Duke of Grafton, FitzRoy joined the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards as an ensign in 1752...
developed the area during the late 18th and early 19th century.
Fitzroy Square was a speculative development intended to provide London residences for aristocratic families, and was built in four stages. Leases for the eastern and southern sides, designed by
Robert AdamRobert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...
, were granted in 1792, building began in 1794 and was completed in 1798 by Adam's brothers James and William. These buildings are fronted in
Portland stonePortland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major...
brought by sea from
DorsetDorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
.
The
Napoleonic WarsThe Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
and a slump in the London property market brought a temporary stop to construction of the square after the south and east sides were completed. According to the records of the Squares Frontagers' Committee, 1815 residents looked out on 'vacant ground, the resort of the idle and profligate'. Another contemporary account describes the incomplete square:
- The houses are faced with stone, and have a greater proportion of architectural excellence and embellishment than most others in the metropolis. They were designed by the Adams, but the progress of the late war prevented the completion of the design. It is much to be regretted, that it remains in its present unfinished state.
The northern and western sides were subsequently constructed in 1827-1829 and 1832-1835 respectively, and are
stuccoStucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
-fronted.
Today, the square is largely pedestrianised (scheme designed by Sir
Geoffrey JellicoeSir Geoffrey Jellicoe was an English landscape architect, garden designer, Architect and author.Jellicoe was born in Chelsea. He studied at the Architectural Association in London in 1919 and won a Rome Scholarship in 1923 which enabled him to research his first book Italian Gardens of the...
). In 2008 the square was upgraded by relaying most of the surface at a single level, removing street clutter such as bollards, and further restricting vehicular access.
https://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/press/2008/historic-fitzroy-square-goes-back-to-the-future---photos.en
Notable buildings
Fitzroy Square is home to the embassies of
LiberiaLiberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
(no.23) and
MozambiqueMozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
(no.21). The embassy of
CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
is located on Conway Street, just off the square.
The offices and library of the
Georgian GroupThe Georgian Group is an English and Welsh conservation organisation created to campaign for the preservation of historic buildings and planned landscapes of the 18th and early 19th centuries...
are also located here, at number 6, while the headquarters of the
MagistrateA magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
s' Association is at number 28. St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy is situated at number 14.
Numbers 1, 1A, 2-8 and 33-40 are grade I
listed buildings.
Notable residents
- Theatre critic and occasional Shaw collaborator William Archer
William Archer , Scottish critic, was born in Perth, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. He was the son of Thomas Archer....
lived at number 27.
- Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work...
lived at number 37.
- Epidemiologist William Farr
William Farr was a nineteenth-century British epidemiologist, regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics.-Early life:He was born in Kenley, Shropshire, England to poor parents...
(1807–1883) established his first medical practice in Fitzroy Square.
- Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
's Omega WorkshopThe Omega Workshops was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos...
, creating avant-garde furniture, was housed at 33 Fitzroy Square from 1913 to 1919.
- Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
artist Duncan GrantDuncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...
lived (c. 1909) at No.21.
- Chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann
August Wilhelm von Hofmann was a German chemist.-Biography:Hofmann was born at Gießen, Grand Duchy of Hesse. Not intending originally to devote himself to physical science, he first took up the study of law and philology at Göttingen. But he then turned to chemistry, and studied under Justus von...
(1818–1892) lived at 9 Fitzroy Square (blue plaque).
- Author Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
has also been a resident of the square, which was also the setting of much of McEwan's 2005 novel SaturdaySaturday is a novel by Ian McEwan set in Fitzrovia, London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, during a large demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the...
.
- William Nisbet
William Nisbet was a Scottish physician notable for having authored many widely used medical books that emphasized practice. Nisbet earned his MD at Aberdeen and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh . He eventually moved to London where he practised in Fitzroy Square...
(1759–1822) - Scottish physician and medical writer practised in Fitzroy Square after 1801.
- Artist Sir William Quiller Orchardson
Sir William Quiller Orchardson was a noted Scottish portraitist and painter of domestic and historical subjects who was knighted in June 1907, at the age of 75.-Early years:...
lived at number 37 from 1862, an address he shared for three years with John PettieJohn Pettie RA was a Scottish painter. He was born in Edinburgh, the son of Alexander and Alison Pettie. In 1852 the family moved to East Linton, Haddingtonshire...
.
- English statesman and Prime Minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Lord SalisburyRobert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC , styled Lord Robert Cecil before 1865 and Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until April 1868, was a British Conservative statesman and thrice Prime Minister, serving for a total of over 13 years...
lived at number 21.
- The house at 29 Fitzroy Square was home to George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
from 1887 until his marriage in 1898.
- Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
also lived at 29 Fitzroy Square, 1907-1911.
Adjacent to Fitzroy Square is Grafton Way.
VenezuelaVenezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
n
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
,
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
,
philologistPhilology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and patriot,
Andrés BelloAndrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...
(1781–1865) lived (1810) at number 58 (blue plaque), an address also associated with
Latin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n politician
Francisco de MirandaSebastián Francisco de Miranda Ravelo y Rodríguez de Espinoza , commonly known as Francisco de Miranda , was a Venezuelan revolutionary...
, who is commemorated by a
statueA statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...
on the corner of Fitzroy Square.
The square is described in
William Makepeace ThackerayWilliam Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
's
Vanity Fair as the "Anglo-Indian district", where many retired officials of the civil service in India resided.
External links