Great Russell Street Explained

Great Russell Street is a street in Bloomsbury, London, best known for being the location of the British Museum.^[1] It runs between Tottenham Court Road (part of the A400 route) in the west, and Southampton Row (part of the A4200 route) in the east. It is one-way only (eastbound) between its western origin at Tottenham Court Road and Bloomsbury Street.^[2]

The headquarters of the Trades Union Congress is located at Nos. 23–28 (Congress House).^[3] The street is also the home of the Contemporary Ceramics Centre,^[4] the gallery for the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain;^[5] as well as the High Commission of Barbados to the United Kingdom.^[6] The Queen Mary Hall and YWCA Central Club, built by Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1928 and 1932, was at No 16-22 (it is now a hotel).^[7]

Famous residents

Great Russell Street has had a number of notable residents, especially during the Victorian era, including:

• W. H. Davies (1871–1940), poet and writer, lived at No. 14 (1916–22).^[8]
• Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), illustrator, lived at No. 46.^[9]
• Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807–1880), architect, lived at No. 77.^[10]
• Harry Jackson (1836-1885), actor, lived and died at 45 Great Russell Street.
• D. E. L. Haynes (1913–1994), classical scholar and British Museum curator, lived at No. 89.^[11]
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), poet, lodged at No. 119 (February–March 1818).^[12]
• John Nash (1752–1835), architect, lived at 66 Great Russell Street, having designed 15–17 Bloomsbury Square and 66–71 Great Russell Street.^[13]
• George Brettingham Sowerby II (1812-1884), naturalist, specialized in conchology lived at 50 Great Russell Street, as written in the front press of the work The Conchological Illustrations^[14] where a display of full color illustrations and declarations according to Carl Linnaeus is presented.

See also

Adjoining streets:

• Bloomsbury Square
• Museum Street

Cultural institutions and sites

• The British Museum
• Faber and Faber, distinguished publisher (e.g., T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land)
• The park and garden in Bloomsbury Square
• Statue of parliamentarian Charles James Fox
• British Study Centres School of English

Nearby:

• The Cartoon Museum
• St. George's church
• Dominion Theatre

External links

51.5183°N -0.1261°W

Notes and References

1. Web site: British Museum – Getting here. britishmuseum.org. 4 March 2019.
2. Web site: UCL Bloomsbury Project. ucl.ac.uk. 4 March 2019.
3. Web site: Contact. TUC. 4 March 2019.
4. Web site: Contemporary Ceramics Centre. cpaceramics.com. 4 March 2019.
5. Web site: Homepage – Craft Potters Association. craftpotters.com. 4 March 2019.
6. Web site: High Commission of Barbados in London, United Kingdom . embassypages.com. 4 March 2019.
7. https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/womens-history/buildings-that-celebrate-working-women/queen-mary-hall-and-ywca-central-club/ Historic England
8. Waters, B. (ed.) (1951), The Essential W. H. Davies, London: Jonathan Cape, (Introduction: W. H. Davies, Man and Poet, pp. 9–20)
9. Web site: Caldecott, Randolph (1846–1886). English Heritage. 4 March 2019.
10. Web site: Thomas Henry Wyatt : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London. londonremembers.com. 4 March 2019.
11. Cook . B. F. . Haynes, Denys Eyre Lankester (1913–1994) . 7 April 2019 . en . 10.1093/ref:odnb/55011 . 23 September 2004 . 978-0-19-861412-8 .
12. Book: Bieri. James. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography : Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. University of Delaware Press. 31 October 2017. 57. en. 2005. 9780874138931.
13. Web site: 67-70 Great Russell Street, London, by John Nash .
14. Book: Sowerby. George Brettingham II. The Conchological Illustrations. 1841. 27 August 2024.