Fitzrovia

Fitzrovia
Middlesex
Charlotte Place, Fitzrovia
Location
Grid reference:	TQ292821
Location:	51°31’23"N, 0°8’20"W
Data
Post town:	London
Postcode:	W1 WC1
Dialling code:	020
Local Government
Council:	Camden / Westminster
Parliamentary constituency:	Holborn and St Pancras / Cities of London and Westminster

Fitzrovia is a plus urban village of Middlesex, developed in the Georgian period by the Dukes of Grafton, whose surname is 'Fitzroy', near the West End of London. It has earlier roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, being urbanised in the 18th century. The name 'Fitzrovia' was coined in the late 1930s by Tom Driberg, after Fitzroy Square that lies at its heart, or the Fitzroy Inn.

This area is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail, education and healthcare, with no single activity dominating. The once bohemian area was home to writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Rimbaud. In 2016, The Sunday Times named it the best place to live in London.

Name

The Fitzroy Tavern

Fitzrovia is named after Fitzroy Square, or possibly the Fitzroy Tavern, a public house on the corner of Charlotte Street and Windmill Street (both the square and the tavern are in the east of the area). The name of both features derives from the area's origin, as until the end of the 19th century the area was an estate of the Dukes of Grafton, descended from Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, a bastard son of Charles II by Barbara Villiers; hence 'FitzRoy'.

The name Fitzrovia came into use in the late 1930s among an artistic, bohemian circle that that had begun using the Fitzroy Tavern and surrounding area as a cheap northerly alternative to the West End. The name was recorded in print for the first time by Tom Driberg MP in the William Hickey gossip column of the Daily Express in 1940. The writer and dandy Julian MacLaren-Ross recalled in his Memoirs of the Forties that Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu aka "Tambi", editor of Poetry London, had invented and used the name Fitzrovia. By the time Julian Maclaren-Ross met Tambimuttu in the early 1940s this literary group (which included Dylan Thomas) had moved away from the Fitzroy Tavern, which had become a victim of its own success, and were hanging out in the lesser-known Wheatsheaf and others in Rathbone Place and Gresse Street. Maclaren-Ross recalls Tambimuttu saying: "Now we go to the Black Horse, the Burglar's Rest, the Marquess of Granby, The Wheatsheaf... in Fitzrovia." Maclaren-Ross replied: "I know the Fitzroy", to which Tambimuttu said: "Ah, that was in the Thirties, now they go to other places. Wait and see." Tambimuttu then took him on a pub crawl. The name was largely forgotten as the avant-garde set moved out in the late 1940s, but was revived in the 1970s, with its use having waxed and waned since.

History

The south-west part of the parish of St Pancras in 1804. The core of the area later known as Fitzrovia. The north is to the right-hand side.

The core area of Fitzrovia has its roots in the ancient manor (estate) of Tottenham Court – first recorded as Þottanheale, from a charter from around AD 1000. The manor was subsequently described as Totehele in the Domesday Book of 1086, Totenhale in 1184 and Totenhale Court by 1487. Tottenham Court formed the south-western part of the parish and later borough of St Pancras.

The Fitzroy Tavern was named after Charles FitzRoy (later Baron Southampton), who purchased the Manor of Tottenham Court and built Fitzroy Square, to which he gave his name; nearby Fitzroy Street also bears his name. The square is the most distinguished of the original architectural features of the district, having been designed in part by Robert Adam. The south-western area was first developed by the Duke of Newcastle who established Oxford Market, now the area around Market Place. By the beginning of the 19th century, this part of London was heavily built upon, severing one of the main routes through it, Marylebone Passage, into the tiny remnant that remains today on Wells Street, opposite what would have been the Tiger public house, now a rubber clothing emporium.

In addition to Fitzroy Square and nearby Fitzroy Street, numerous locations are named for the FitzRoy family and Devonshire/Portland family, both significant local landowners. Charles FitzRoy was the grandson of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, hence Grafton Way and Grafton Mews. William Bentinck, 2nd Duke of Portland and his wife Margaret Harley lend their names to Portland Place, Great Portland Street and Harley Street. Margaret Harley was daughter of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, for whom Oxford Street (the southern boundary of Fitzrovia) and Mortimer Street are named. The Marquessate of Titchfield is a subsidiary title to the Dukedom of Portland, hence Great Titchfield Street. William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland (Prime Minister) married Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire (also Prime Minister), and they lend their names to New Cavendish Street, Cavendish Square and Devonshire Street. The name of the Grafton family's country estate is Euston Hall, in Euston, Suffolk, the origin of the names of Euston Station and Euston Road.

Two of London's oldest surviving residential walkways are in Fitzrovia. Colville Place and the pre-Victorian Middleton Buildings (built 1759) are in the old London style of a way.

The area's most prominent feature is the BT Tower on Cleveland Street, one of the tallest buildings in Middlesex. It was open to the public until an IRA bomb exploded in the revolving restaurant in 1971.

21st century

Fitzroy Square

The Middlesex Hospital, which closed in 2005, covered an extensive part of the area, and its redevelopment as Fitzroy Place was completed in 2016. The site had initially been acquired by the property developer Candy and Candy, which demolished the existing buildings to make way for a housing and retail development. The Candy brothers' scheme, which was unpopular with local people, failed during the 2008 financial crisis. Later developers eventually completed the new Middlesex Hospital development in 2014.

Tottenham Street

Separately, Derwent London plc acquired 800,000 square feet of property in the area, to bring their holdings to about 1,000,000 square feet across more than 30 sites in Fitzrovia, with plans to transform part of Fitzrovia into a new retail destination with cafés and restaurants.

Today, over 128,000 people work within half a mile of Fitzrovia, according to the Fitzrovia Partnership's Economic Report.

Arts

Fitzrovia was a notable artistic and bohemian centre from roughly from the mid-1920s to the present day. Amongst those known to have lived locally and frequented public houses in the area such as the Fitzroy Tavern and the Wheatsheaf are Augustus John, Quentin Crisp, Dylan Thomas, Aleister Crowley, the racing tipster Prince Monolulu, Nina Hamnett and George Orwell. The Newman Arms on Rathbone Street, features in Orwell's novels Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), as well as the Michael Powell film Peeping Tom (1960).

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791) was published during his residence at 154 New Cavendish Street, in reply to Edmund Burke (author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790), who lived at 18 Charlotte Street. Artists Richard Wilson and John Constable lived at 76 Charlotte Street at various times. During the 19th century, painters Walter Sickert, Ford Madox Brown, Thomas Musgrave Joy and Whistler lived in Fitzroy Square. George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf also resided at different times on the square, at number 29. The French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine lived for a time in Howland Street in a house on a site now occupied by offices. Modernist painter Wyndham Lewis lived on Percy Street. The house of Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester on Tottenham Street now shows a commemorative blue plaque. 97 Mortimer Street, where H. H. Munro (Saki) lived, now has a blue plaque commemorating his time there. Colin MacInnes author of Absolute Beginners (1959) also resided on Tottenham Street, at number 28, with his publisher Martin Green and his wife Fiona Green.

X. Trapnel, the dissolute novelist (based on the real Julian MacLaren-Ross) in Anthony Powell's Books Do Furnish a Room (1971), spends much of his time holding forth in Fitzrovia pubs. In Saul Bellow's The Dean's December (1982), the eponym, Corde dines at the Étoile, Charlotte Street, on his trips to London, and thinks he "could live happily ever after on Charlotte Street"; Ian McEwan quotes this in Saturday (2005). McEwan lived in Fitzroy Square, and his novel takes place in the area.

At the back of Pollocks and in the next block was the site in 1772 of the Scala Theatre, Tottenham Street – then known as the Cognoscenti Theatre – but it had many names over history: the King's Concert Rooms, the New Theatre, the Regency Theatre, the West London Theatre, the Queen's Theatre, the Fitzroy Theatre, the Prince of Wales and the Royal Theatre until its demolition in 1903 when the Scala Theatre was built on the site for Frank Verity and modelled on La Scala in Milan. It was home to music hall, ballet and pantomime. Before its demolition in 1969, to make way for the office block and hotel that exists now, it was used inside for the filming in 1964 of the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, the Mr Universe World competitions, and Sotheby's Auction in 1968 of the Diaghilev costumes and curtains. It was also briefly in the 1970s, in the basement of the office block, the site of the Scala Cinema and later still of Channel 4 Television. The branch of Bertorelli's Italian Restaurant on Charlotte Street was prominently featured in the film Sliding Doors. Guy Ritchie more recently made RocknRolla using Charlotte Mews.

The Fitzrovia Chapel, in Pearson Square, is a Grade II* listed building which hosts exhibitions throughout the year. Stephen Friedman Gallery, Erskine, Hall and Coe and the photographer Richard Ansett have shown at the chapel. The chapel is also used for weddings and fashion shows.

Business

The BT Tower from Fitzroy Square

Initially, Fitzrovia was largely an area of well-to-do tradesmen and craft workshops, with Edwardian mansion blocks built by the Quakers to allow theatre employees to be close to work. Modern property uses are diverse, but Fitzrovia is still well known for its fashion industry, now mainly comprising wholesalers and HQs of the likes of Arcadia Group. New media outfits have replaced the photographic studios of the 1970s–90s, often housed in warehouses built to store the changing clothes of their original industry — fashion. Dewar Studios, leading fashion and modelling photographers based in Great Titchfield Street continue the traditional link to studios. Charlotte Street was for many years the home of the British advertising industry and is now known for its many and diverse restaurants. Today the district still houses several major advertising agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA as well as CHI & Partners, Fallon, Dare Digital and Target Media Group. However, the modular ex-BT building occupied by McCann-Erickson was demolished in 2006 after the firm moved to an art deco home in nearby Bloomsbury.

A number of television production and post-production companies are based in the area, and many other media companies.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Fitzrovia)

• The Fitzrovia Partnership

References

• Mills, A.D.: 'A Dictionary of London Place-Names' (Oxford University Press, 2010) ISBN 978-0-199-56678-5
• Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher; Key, John; Keay, Julia: 'The London Encyclopaedia' (Pan Macmillan) ISBN 978-1-405-04924-5

Further reading

• Basu, Ann, Fitzrovia: A Social History 1900-1950. The History Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-75098-790-5
• Camden History Society, Streets of Fitzrovia: A Survey of Streets, Buildings and Former Residents in a Part of Camden. CHS, 2017. ISBN 978-0-90449-194-4
• David, Hugh, The Fitzrovians: A Portrait of Bohemian Society 1900-55. Michael Joseph, 1988. ISBN 978-0-71812-879-1
• Girling, Brian, Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia Through Time. Amberley, 2012. ISBN 978-1-44560-744-3
• Homer, Johnny, A-Z of Soho and Fitzrovia: People - Places - History. Amberley, 2022. ISBN 978-1-44569-475-7
• Hudson, Roger & Blundell, Joe Whitlock, Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Soho ("The London Guides"). Haggerston Press, 1996. ISBN 978-1-86981-214-0
• Pentelow, Mike & Rowe, Marsha, Characters of Fitzrovia. Chatto & Windus, 2001. ISBN 978-0-70117-314-2
• E. Beresford Chancellor: London's Old Latin Quarter (Jonathan Cape, 1930)
• Bailey, Nick: Fitzrovia, by (Historical Publications, 1981) ISBN 0-9503656-2-9
• Pimlico (2002), ISBN 0-7126-8015-2