This week, Camden Guide, Dave Brown explores Fitzroy Square, a hidden gem in the heart of London. If you haven’t been, it might feel strangely familiar – this gorgeous Georgian square has featured in many films. Read on to discover its fascinating history.
Fitzroy Square (c) OpenStreetMap contributors
I do love Fitzroy Square. It’s very attractive – a green square, grand Georgian houses around all the sides, and crammed full of historic interest.
Fitzroy Square was originally developed in the 1790s by Charles Fitzroy, Lord Southampton. Lord Southampton wanted a development for the great and the good. The Fitzroy family name descends from Henry Fitzroy the illegitimate son of Charles II and his mistress Barbara Villiers. The family acquired the Manor of Tottenhall, which stretched from the bottom of Tottenham Court Road up to land in Highgate, including parts of Hampstead Heath.
The attractiveness of the square comes from the design of Robert Adam who created the South and East ranges (and the design was his last great work as he died shortly after the design was completed, and the two ranges were built by his brothers James and William, and were built to look like a single grand building, but each range is a row of grand houses. The houses were faced with expensive Portland Stone, and are large – big cellars, experimental fire-resistant floors, and each backs on to a mews where owners servants, horses and coaches would live. Most of the original buildings are listed as Grade I or Grade II.
In the early 1800s the Napoleonic wars had led to economic downturns, and the North and West ranges were built thirty years later – and although they look the same, the ranges were faced with cheaper Stucco rather than expensive Portland Stone. Although grand people were initially attracted to the square the rise of Mayfair and Belgravia attracted the rich to be closer to the centre of power, and the large houses around the square were split into multiple ownership and attracted poorer people and institutions. Perhaps partly because Fitzroy Square was off the beaten track the buildings still exist, and today the square is a highly desired place to live.
The central garden square is private, and owned by the freeholders of the square, but is sometimes open to the public (and usually during the Open Garden Squares week). It contains London Plane Trees, and a sculpture by Naomi Blake called View erected in 1977.
The Square has attracted many residents over the years. It’s particularly well known for literary figures (George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, and Ian McEwan), Artists and Painters (Sir Chales Lock Eastlake, Ford Maddox Brown, Duncan Grant, William de Morgan, John Pettie, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud). It’s also been the home of many medical institutions (see my post on the Medical History of the Square for more on this) , scientists and medics (William de Hoffman, Gavin Milroy) and one prime minister (Robert Gascoyne Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury). The section below covers the four sides of the square and highlights the main connections for each address.
In modern days the square is (or was) the home for director Guy Richie, musician Gary Kemp, restaurant critic Fay Maschler, comedian Griff Rhys Jones. and footballer Chad Gould. It also holds several embassies.
The square also has some cultural associations – it appears in literature in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and in Ian McEwan;s Saturday – in films and tv including BBC’s 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, the 1966 Doctor Who series The War Machines, and the 2017 film Phantom Thread. Scenes for the 2023 film Back to Black.
If you want a group or personal tour of Fitzroy Square and Fitzrovia history, then please contact info@camdenguides.com
List of Buildings
Fitzroy Square, London, W1: east side by Julian Osley, CC BY_SA 2.0.
East Side (Original Adam Design: Portland Stone)
- No. 1 Fitzroy Square
- Suffered WWII bomb damage; rebuilt with a neo-Georgian extension.
- No. 2 Fitzroy Square
- Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes (MP, wealthy resident)
- Metropolitan Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital (1911–1947; treated WWI soldiers with facial trauma)
- Oxygen Hospital (1897–1911; ozone therapy for TB & wound healing)
- No. 3 Fitzroy Square
- Sir Charles Forbes (merchant, MP)
- No. 6 Fitzroy Square
- The Georgian Group (preservation of Georgian architecture, current head office)
- Sir William Quiller Orchardson (artist, shared studio with John Pettie)
- John Pettie (artist)
- No. 7 Fitzroy Square
- Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (painter & first director of National Gallery)
- Mount Vernon Hospital Outpatients Department (1891–1902; for lung & heart diseases)
- No. 8 Fitzroy Square
- Dent family (East India/opium trade)
- Wilkinson Dent (resident)
- James McNeill Whistler (renowned painter)
St Luke’s Hospital Fitzroy Square North Side (c) David Brown, 2021
North Side (Later Stucco Fronts)
- No. 9 Fitzroy Square
- August Wilhelm von Hofmann (pioneering chemist & professor)
- No. 10 Fitzroy Square
- No prominent listing, but likely part of the original speculative housing.
- No. 11 Fitzroy Square
- Ian McEwan (writer, long-term resident, set novel “Saturday” here)
- Cresset Press, Merlin Press, Allison & Busby (publishers)
- No. 13–14 Fitzroy Square
- St Luke’s Hospital for the Clergy (charity, provided free treatment for Anglican ministers)
- No. 16 Fitzroy Square
- Henry Mayhew (journalist, “London Labour and London Poor”)
- Medical/Surgical Home (16–18; private hospital for affluent patients, 1878–1963)
- No. 17 Fitzroy Square (Grafton Street side)
- Gainsborough Du Pont (artist, Thomas Gainsborough’s nephew)
- No. 18 Fitzroy Square
- Medical/Surgical Home (see above).
- No. 19 Fitzroy Square
- Duncan Grant (Bloomsbury Group artist)
Fitzroy Square West Side, by Mike Quinn, CC BY_SA 2.0
West Side (Later Stucco Fronts)
- No. 20 Fitzroy Square
- Headquarters of the Rugby League International Federation
- No. 21 Fitzroy Square
- Robert Gascoyne Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (Prime Minister, multiple terms through 1885–1902)
- High Commission of Mozambique (current embassy)
- No. 23 Fitzroy Square
- Embassy of Liberia (current embassy)
- No. 25–26 Fitzroy Square
- Mark Boss (Prussian-born glass and timber merchant, family presence)
- No. 29 Fitzroy Square
- George Bernard Shaw (playwright, lived here 1887–98; blue plaque)
- Virginia Stephen later known as Virginia Woolf (writer, lived here 1907–11; shared house with Shaw, blue plaque)
- No. 30 Fitzroy Square
- Gavin Milroy (surgeon and medical writer)
- No. 32 Fitzroy Square
- Notably has grade II listed cannon-style bollards outside.
The South side of Fitzroy Square (c) David Brown 2021
South Side (Original Adam Design: Portland Stone)
- No. 33 Fitzroy Square
- Omega Workshops (1913–1919: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, decorative arts collective)
- London Foot Hospital (founded 1913, at No. 33 from 1929–2003)
- No. 36 Fitzroy Square
- St John’s House Nursing Sisterhood (1848–1852: Britain’s first Anglican nursing order, connected to Florence Nightingale)
- Solomon Alexander Hart (painter, Royal Academy librarian)
- No. 37 Fitzroy Square
- Ford Madox Brown (Pre-Raphaelite painter; salon was major arts hub)
- Sir William Quiller Orchardson (artist, also shared studio here)
- No. 38 Fitzroy Square
- Colonel John Drinkwater (later Bethune, historian & army accounts controller)
- Sir William Charles Ross (miniature painter)
- No. 39 Fitzroy Square
- Sir Charles Wilkins (orientalist)
- No. 40 Fitzroy Square
- London Foot Hospital (late 20th-century extension from No. 33)
- London Skin Hospital (1891–1958; tragic 1929 ringworm case)
- William de Morgan (ceramicist, glaze experiments in 1860s)