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Bloomsbury is an area of central ), and its numerous hospitals and academic institutions. While Bloomsbury was not the first area of London to acquire a formal square, Southampton Square (now named Bloomsbury Square ), which was laid out by Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl Of Southampton in 1660, was the first square to actually be named as such. The London Encyclopaedia , Edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. Macmillan London Ltd 1983 Bloomsbury is home to the British Museum , the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art , the British Medical Association , and the University Of London library and administration building, also some of the constituent colleges, including SOAS , University College London , Birkbeck College , the Institute Of Education , The School Of Pharmacy and the School Of Advanced Study , as well as the University Of Delaware London Centre, a full time outpost of the American university. Notable hospitals include Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College Hospital . UCL Hospital accessed 8 Mar 2007 Bloomsbury was formerly home to the British Library , housed within the British Museum, this moved in 1997 to larger premises at a nearby location next to St. Pancras Railway Station in Somers Town . HISTORY ]] The earliest record of what would become Bloomsbury is the 1086 Domesday 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. Camden Council Local History accessed 8 Mar 2007 The name Bloomsbury is a development from Blemondisberi - the bury, or manor, of Blemond. An 1878 publication, ''Old and New London: Volume 4'', mentions the idea that the area was named after a village called "Lomesbury" which formerly stood where Bloomsbury Square is now, 'Bloomsbury', Old and New London: Volume 4 (1878), pp. 480-89 Date accessed: 08 March 2007 though this piece of folk etymology is now discredited. At the end of the 14th century Edward III acquired Blemond's manor, and passed it on to the Carthusian 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 . In the early 1660s, the Earl Of Southampton constructed what was eventually to become Bloomsbury Square . However the area was laid out mainly in the 18th century, largely by landowners like Wriothesley Russell, 3rd Duke Of Bedford , who built Bloomsbury Market, which opened in 1730. GEOGRAPHY Bloomsbury has no official boundaries, but can be roughly defined as the square bounded by in the south, and with St Pancras in the north-east and Clerkenwell in the south-east. The area is bisected north to south by the main Southampton Row-Woburn Place thoroughfare, which contains several large tourist hotels and links Tavistock Square and Russell Square - the central points of Bloomsbury. The road runs from Euston and Somers Town in the north to Holborn in the south. Torrington Place is close to University College London and has a pub called the Marlborough Arms which has a wooden man propped by the window on the 1st floor to welcome drinkers. To the east of this busy road Bloomsbury is mainly residential. This half contains the Corams Fields accessed 8 Mar 2007 rather than north-eastern Bloomsbury. The area to the south is slightly less residential, containing several hospitals, including Great Ormond Street, and gradually becomes more commercial in character as it approaches the boundary with Holborn at Theobald's Road. The west of Woburn Place-Southampton Row is notable for its concentration of academic establishments, museums, teaching hospitals and formal squares. It is this side that contains the British Museum and the University of London. The most prominent road is Gower Street which is a one way road running south from Euston Square to Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden , becoming Bloomsbury Street when it passes to the west of the British Museum. Other neighbouring areas are Soho to the southwest, and Fitzrovia to the west. PARKS AND SQUARES Bloomsbury contains some of London's finest parks and buildings, and is particularly known for its formal squares. These include:
ARTS, UNIVERSITY, MUSEUMS AND MEDICINE Historically, Bloomsbury is associated with the arts, education and medicine. The area gives its name to the Bloomsbury Group (also ''Bloomsbury Set'') of artists, the most famous of whom was Virginia Woolf, who met in private homes in the area in the early 1900s , and to the lesser known Bloomsbury Gang of Whigs formed in 1765 by John Russell, 4th Duke Of Bedford . The publisher Faber & Faber is in Queen Square , though at the time when TS Eliot was editor the offices were in Tavistock Square. Educational institutions Bloomsbury is home to Senate House and the main library of the University Of London , and also University College London (with the Slade School Of Fine Art ), SOAS , Birkbeck College , the College of Law, the Institute Of Education , London Contemporary Dance School , the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art , and Goodenough College. Hospitals Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, is located just off Queen Square , which itself is home to the National Hospital For Neurology And Neurosurgery (formerly the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases) and the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. Bloomsbury is also the location of University College Hospital , which re-opened in 2005 in new buildings on Euston Road, built under the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The Eastman Dental Hospital is located on Gray’s Inn Road close to the Royal National Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital administered by the Royal Free Hospital . Museums The British Museum , which first opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House , is at the heart of Bloomsbury. At the centre of the museum around the former British Library Reading Room (where Karl Marx was a reader), the space formerly filled with the concrete storage bunkers of the British Library is today the Great Court, an indoor square with a glass roof designed by British architect Norman Foster . It houses displays, a cinema, a shop, a cafe and a restaurant. The British Library now has a new purpose-built home just outside the northern edge of Bloomsbury, on Euston Road . Also in Bloomsbury is the Foundling Museum close to Brunswick Square , which tells the story of the Foundling Hospital opened by Thomas Coram , for unwanted children (foundlings) in Georgian London. The hospital, now demolished but for the Georgian colonnade, is today a playground and outdoor sports field for children, called Coram’s Fields; adults are only admitted with a child. It is also home to a small number of sheep. The nearby Lamb’s Conduit Street is a pleasant thoroughfare with independent shops, cafes and restaurants. There is also The Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, and the Grant Museum Of Zoology in Gower Street. CHURCHES Bloomsbury contains three notable churches. St. George's Church , located on Bloomsbury Way in the south of the area, was built by Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1716 and 1731. It has a deep Roman porch with six huge Corinthian columns, and is notable for its steeple based on the Tomb Of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and for the statue of King George I on the top. The second is the Early English Neo-Gothic . The third is St Pancras New Church on the northern boundary, near Euston station. This church was completed in 1822, and is notable for the Caryatids on north and south which are based on the "porch of the maidens" from the Temple Of The Erechtheum . The church of St George the Martyr in and Sylvia Plath married on Bloomsday in 1956Walking Literary London, Roger Tagholm, New Holland Publishers, 2001. TRANSPORT The area surrounding Bloomsbury is served by numerous London Underground stations, although only two of these ( Russell Square and Euston Square ) have entrances in Bloomsbury itself. The other stations, located on the fringes of Bloomsbury, are Euston , Goodge Street , Warren Street , Tottenham Court Road , Holborn , Chancery Lane and King's Cross St. Pancras . The mainline rail stations Euston , King's Cross and St. Pancras are all located just outside the northern edge of Bloomsbury. Bloomsbury is also home to the disused British Museum Tube Station . It is well served by buses, with over 12 different routes running south down Gower Street, and both north and south past Russell Square. TfL Central London Bus Routes accessed 8 Mar 2007 Route 7 goes along Great Russell Street, past the British Museum, and on to Russell Square. There is one of the 13 surviving taxi driver's shelters on Russell Square Cabman's Shelters accessed 8 Mar 2007 where drivers will stop for a meal and a drink. NOTABLE RESIDENTS
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